a conscription: reflections on the loss of dr. tiller.

may 31, 2010 12:55 pm

A year ago this morning, my fondest dreams were of cold soda and indoor plumbing.

It was my last day of a short absence from modern civilization. As a volunteer on a wildlife study on an uninhabited island off the New England coast, I was sunburned, aromatic, and had a headache from too much reading by too few candles the previous night. Despite all that, I wasn't ready to leave yet, but commitments in the "real world" left me no choice. The icy colas and hot showers I planned to enjoy at my first opportunity would be my best attempt at beating back my envy of those researchers and volunteers who would stay behind to launch the next phase of their ambitious research project without me.

Something else I'd missed while on the island: the Internet. In my daily life, I had long since come to think of it as ubiquitous. It is, of course, no such thing and being apart from it had been the first, and most daunting, challenge of my island sojourn. Late that Sunday afternoon, as the fishing boat that was my ride back to the mainland pitched and swayed through a gathering storm, I took shelter in the cabin, pulled my iPhone from my pack, and turned it on to see if I was near enough to land to have data service yet.

The first email was from NARAL. The second was from Planned Parenthood. They both said the same thing: a hero had been murdered, shot by a lunatic encouraged by violent rhetoric from the so-called Christian right, who believed that assassination was God's work. Dr. Tiller was gone. I stood, grabbing on to any stationary object I could--and made my way to the nearly-abandoned deck where I sat back down in an empty chair, put my head down, and cried. Another departing volunteer made her way over to me to ask if I was okay. She thought I had been overwhelmed by the lurching of the boat over the choppy waves. I didn't tell her that these were tears not from the ocean but from the plains. I wouldn't have known where to begin.

A year ago tonight, I could not stop thinking of the women who had needed Dr. Tiller, and those who needed him still. Most of all, I could not stop thinking of the women who might have had appointments to see him the very next day. I know that I cannot begin to imagine the pain of the tragedies that led women to Dr. Tiller's clinic in Kansas. The cases of horrific fetal anomaly among wanted, loved, planned-for, prayed-for pregnancies are tragedies. The pregnancies of girls too young to realize they were pregnant or to carry to term without grave risks to themselves are tragedies. The illnesses of women who might dearly love to have children if only their bodies were able to rise to the occasion are tragedies. Rapes and incest and the mental anguish they confer upon their victims--all tragedies. The abortions all these women chose? These are not tragedies, but mercies.

In a society that truly valued women and motherhood, women such as these would be offered all the compassion and all of the options and resources that our society's riches and technology could command. Instead, we have allowed just a few brave doctors to bear the harsh burdens and the enormous risks of caring for these women. The loss of Dr. Tiller tore a gaping hole in the already inadequate safety net that is available to these women whose circumstances are so dire that only a monster could seek to deepen their suffering, as the doctor's assassination surely did and is still doing today.

A year ago next weekend, I found a way to begin to mend a little part of that hole as best I can. It's pretty laughable in comparison to Dr. Tiller's level of dedication. But escorting at a local clinic is what I can do to keep alive some of the kindness, understanding, and support that Dr. Tiller offered women who badly needed it. And making sure that I am never, ever again silent about the need for safe, legal, accessible abortion is what I can do to try to encourage others to join me in restoring and renewing the tattered net of care and compassion through which so many vulnerable women and families fall.

It's bitterly appropriate that today, the first anniversary of Dr. Tiller's death, is Memorial Day. Dr. Tiller, himself a military veteran, died in a war being waged right here on United States soil. He died defending American freedom as surely as any uniformed fighter ever did. It feels like my duty to fight, too, in whatever ways I am able, against religious fundamentalism and domestic terrorism. My human duty, my humane duty. Seeing such a beloved doctor brought down in cold blood, in his church no less, made me realize that there's a war on whether I'm fighting it or not--so might as well join up and ship out.

I'm proud of the escorting and the noise-making work I have done in the last year: it feels good to be making an impact, and I truly love the community of caring, passionate activists, volunteers, and other fighters in whose company I have happily found myself. I was calling myself pro-choice when I was still in elementary school, yes, and have attended rallies in support of abortion rights for years. But if you had told me, a year ago today, what the next 365 days of my life would be like--flights to Kansas? road trips to Kentucky? arguments, debates, and shouting matches with people on record as wanting people like me dead? wait, seriously: standing at a podium talking about abortion? about MY abortion?--I'd've laughed at you, I think. But at the same time, I feel like there's far more I should be doing. I don't know what it is: I'm trusting that with open mind and heart I'll figure it out. The movement will tell me, one way or another, what it needs--or better yet, the women the movement exists to serve will.

This is all I know for sure: I was forever changed by Dr. Tiller's death. His assassin, Scott Roeder, issued my draft notice--you made me a soldier, you son of a bitch, you made me a soldier and my weapons are different from yours but I will never lay them down.

tx gop says no to big gov't: film at 11.

march 3, 2010 11:57 am

From the "if you can't find a news story to tweet, write it yourself" desk---

Yesterday's GOP primary vote in Texas featured five non-binding ballot propositions. No law can result from such propositions; they're simply a means of gauging support for hypothetical legislation among the party faithful (see also, "firing up the base"). In a state where there is no mechanism for voters to get a proposed law onto the ballot directly, the ballot proposition mechanism is a crucial way for Republicans to test the political waters on an issue before expending the effort to propose a bill themselves. (State Democrats, for reasons of their own, aren't nearly as enthusiastic about ballot propositions, and this year offered none at all.)

Proposition 5 was a blatant come-on to the anti-choice hard right. It reads as follows:

The Texas Legislature should enact legislation requiring a sonogram to be performed and shown to each mother about to undergo a medically unnecessary, elective abortion.

They're not asking, as some other legislatures have, that abortion providers be required to offer women ("mothers") the option of seeing a sonogram. The proposition says the ultrasound will be performed and will be shown. No word on a funding source for the A Clockwork Orange-style machine to hold open the women's eyelids and the staff to administer the moistening eye drops, and no word on how this proposition doesn't make a mockery of any and all right-wing protestations regarding the unacceptability of intrusion into healthcare.

It seems that 32% of GOP voters themselves had some of the same questions in mind when they voted "no" on Proposition 5. "Yes" votes remained the majority, but the 68% support that Proposition 5 was able to muster is shockingly small when compared to the 92% to 95% support that every other GOP ballot proposition won in yesterday's vote.

93% of voters favored mandatory photo identification from voters at polling places. 92% supported strict formulaic limits to state government budgets. 93% thought Congress should cut federal taxes. And 95% want to see more God, more prayers, and more Ten Commandments on government property and in government events. The subject matter covered by these propositions reads less like a selection of issues up for any substantial debate within the party, and more like a feel-good affirmation of shared values embraced by nearly all of the American right wing.

In that light, Proposition 5's lousy 68% affirmative vote should be viewed as both an embarrassment to the Texas Republican Party, and as a warning. It turns out that quite a lot of God-fearing, tax-hating conservative voters are against Big Government, whether it's their Big Government or the other side's. If 68% is the best they can do among the primary-going base, such legislation just has no future in Texas. The antichoice waters are running very cold indeed.

the @clinicescort 1000.

december 8, 2009 12:38 pm

UPDATE: You did it! My fundraising goal of $1000 has been not only met, but exceeded. And my superfly anonymous donor promises to match the little bit we went over, too. Thank you all so much!

This concludes my fundraising drive and my donor's match. But it DOES NOT conclude NNAF's need for donations. The wall of legislation that exists to block the reproductive rights of disadvantaged women is being built higher all the time. Until the Hyde Amendment is repealed, lower-income women need NNAF, which means NNAF needs you. Please give--thank you!

****

As my Twitter account neared the milestone of 1000 followers, it seemed like a celebration was in order. But how? By helping disadvantaged women pay for their abortions. Of course!

The National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF) is dedicated to this work. How amazing to help a woman reclaim her life in the face of an unwanted or non-viable pregnancy---but how heartbreaking to have to say no, because your fund is out of money.

I decided to give $100 to the fund of my 1000th follower's choice. I mentioned the idea to a friend with some fundraising experience, and before I knew it I had a donor who was willing to match all the donations I could scare up, to a max of $500 for a matched grand total of $1000. FOR THE WIN.

So here's how we do.

1. Browse NNAF's state-by-state fund list. Pick your favorite, or pick the National Reproductive Justice Fund (NRJF), which helps women facing the most extreme obstacles to care around the country and also covers states where no local Funds exist, like Mississippi and Alabama.
2. Then go to NNAF's Network For Good donation page. On the first step of the process, please type the fund to which you'd like to donate in the Designation box, and specify "@ClinicEscort 1000" in the Dedication box.
3. When you have completed the process, please forward a copy of your receipt email to 1000@clinicescort.e4ward.com. Redact any of your contact info you like, but leave the payment amount, date/time, and reference number intact, as well as the designation info so I know which fund to match to. Lastly, include your Twitter username or other website if you'd like an optional link on this page.
4. I'll keep this page as up-to-date as I can. If the thermometer there shows less than $1000, then my donor is still matching your donations, so make your gift before we empty the pot!

Questions? Email or hit me on Twitter. Thanks a million to all of you---I'm so proud to be a part of such a fantastic movement! Extra-special thanks to my anonymous donation matcher person who is and will always be 10 feet tall in my eyes. Note: I have no affiliation with NNAF; I just think they're awesome.

Abortion Funds on Twitter

Tweeple Who Spread the Word or Followed on 1KDay

P.S. Suck it, Stupak.
P.P.S. You too, Nelson.

miniature coat hangers.

november 14, 2009 10:37 pm

Aren't they the cutest little symbolic representations of horrific death you've ever seen?

I will be sending one of these coat hangers to each and every one of the 64 Democrats [sic] in the House of Representatives who voted in favor of the anti-choice Stupak Amendment to the healthcare reform bill that passed last weekend. You can too! The idea started on the Facebook group Stupak Amendment REVOLT and it's been picked up by a CREDO Mobile campaign too.

I ordered my miniature hangers at Casey's Wood Products, but there's a bunch of different crafting sites that have them.

chants for choice.

october 21, 2009 6:24 pm

@FairAndFeminist on Twitter just asked me and some others if we had any ideas for pro-choice chants for a rally being held tomorrow. I plugged a few of my favorites into Google, hoping for a page full of them, and was amazed to find no such thing. Let it never be said that I do not respond upon seeing a need.

• Not The Church, Not The State, Women Will Decide Their Fate
• Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
• Our Bodies! Our Lives!
• My Body! My Choice!
• Anti-Woman, Anti-Gay, Right-Wing Bigots Go Away
• Pro-Life? That's a Lie! You Don't Care if Women Die!
• Gay, Straight, Black, White! All Unite To Fight the Right!
• Hey Hey, Mister Mister! Keep Your Laws Off My Sister!
• Women’s Rights Under Attack! What Do We Do? Stand up! Fight Back!

Those are all that come to mind right now. I'll add more as/if I think of them, or if anyone has any additions hit my Contact link and I'll add them.

...boy, it occurs to me that like 60% of this blog, now, is either transcribed tweets or march slogans. Talk about your lowest-common-denominator web content. Oh well, what're you gonna do.