Tild~ » reproductive rights

In which Swiftee gets his very own crate label

Tild — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 21:38:30 +0000

Resistance is futile. I love you, Swiftee!

UPDATE:

The title of this post should actually be “In which my love of crate label art happily coincides with my love of Brit slang [see also] with hilarious results.”

It’s really the only non-ironic way I could associate the concept of ”love” with the concept of ”Swiftee”, but then you longtime readers probably knew that already.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Tom Swift, aka T.J. Swift, aka Swiftee, the link above, to a rather innocuous comment at Norwegianity, is really not enough to give a true picture of the full majesty and magnificence that is Swiftee. This link may further enlighten you:

“I smell the stink of your fetid breath in the welfare lines; in crime ridden public housing compounds, in the detox wards where the detritus of liberalism wretch the bile of leftist compassion onto the floor; and in the horror chambers where Dr. Frankenstein rips your doomed children from the wombs of your defiled women.”
— ApathyBoyblog comment section, T.J. Swift “Swiftee” , Conservative Minnesota blogger

If that isn’t a big enough whiff of Eau de Swiftee for you, here’s more:

Powerline Blogger Scott Johnson Teams Up With Sleaze-Blogger “Swiftee”

Yes, that’s our Mr. Swift.

Turns out that a beneficial consequence of making “Tom Tit” Swiftee’s very own brand is that I was reminded that I’m due for a mammogram. My mother had breast cancer, so starting at age 35 I’ve gotten a mammogram every other year for the past 23 years. Which also reminds me: Did you know that mammogram referrals are just one of many health services provided by Planned Parenthood?

With the knowledge and advice I obtained from Planned Parenthood, I used contraceptives for years, until I decided I wanted to have a child and subsequently got pregnant for the first time at the age of 33. After approximately 12 weeks that pregnancy ended in miscarriage — after which, like many women, I needed a D&C to completely clear the uterus of all remnants of the pregnancy. In my case, if that blood and tissue debris had not been removed there was a significant chance it could become cancerous. My doctors advised me to use contraceptives for the next year or possibly longer, to insure that any remaining hormone-producing cells from the first pregnancy were completely gone before I got pregnant again. So that’s what I did. To act otherwise would have been to endanger my life.

Every two weeks I had to go in for a blood test to check the level of HCG in my blood. Finally, after 8 months of tests coming back negative, I got a clean bill of health and the go ahead to try for another pregnancy. A little more than a year later I gave birth to my first child, and eighteen months after that I gave birth to my second. Two uncomplicated, full-term pregnancies; two healthy, beautiful babies.

As I neared 40, I started thinking more and more about whether or not I wanted to have another child. My partner and I did some research– BTW, Planned Parenthood is an excellent source of accurate medical information about men’s as well as women’s health issues –and when I came to the conclusion that 2 children were enough for me, Mr. Tild offered to get a vasectomy. Ultimately tho, since it concerned my future reproductive capability, not his, I was the one who made the decision: When I was in my early 40s I had my tubes tied.

Not too many years later I needed to decide how I was going to manage my symptoms of menopause. At the time, hormone replacement therapy was practically de rigueur for menopausal American women, but the findings of the Women’s Health Initiative had recently cast serious doubts on the safety of some forms of HRT.

Remembering that in the 1960s, shortly after experiencing her first hot flash, my mother was given a prescription for Premarin, which she continued to take, just like thousands of other women did, for years – nearly twenty years! She finally stopped taking it a few years before she was diagnosed with breast cancer. .. (Four months after her mastectomy my mother died suddenly of a massive pulmonary embolism.)

Regarding my own menopause, once again Planned Parenthood’s current, accurate health information helped me make the choice that was right for me. Planned Parenthood gives people — people, as in “women AND men” — the tools to make informed choices about not only their reproductive health but their general health over the course of their entire lives.

Planned Parenthood didn’t make my choices for me. They weren’t Planned Parenthood’s choices to make. Or Sarah Palin’s. Or NARAL’s. Or Michele Bachmann’s. Or the government’s. Or the church’s. Or Swiftee’s. Or yours. They were mine. I chose.

And you know what else? It doesn’t matter what I chose. The important thing is that I chose it.

Whatever choices you make, it is YOU who chooses. If you havent figured it out yet, this is what choice truly means.

Swiftee, for reminding me of the many reasons why I stand with Planned Parenthood today and tomorrow and always, I’ve made a donation to Planned Parenthood in your honor.

Thank you, Tom Tit!

In honor of Dr. George Tiller: $100 to Planned Parenthood

Tild — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:48:26 +0000

“He was an evil man – his hands were covered with blood.”

You don’t say. Speak for yourself, Randall.

“No question Dr. Tiller has blood on his hands.”

And there’s certainly no question about what’s on your hands tonight, is there Bill?

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Today, in honor of Dr. George Tiller and the decades of courageous service and support he gave to women, I donated $100 to Planned Parenthood.

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Digby: “If you think that women should have to endanger their lives in order to give birth to a fetus with no brain, then you probably think this man was a murderer. For the women who went to him, and for whom he put up with a horrifying amount of harrassment and violence before they finally managed to kill him, he was a Godsend.”

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Attaturk: “There’s no point in sugar coating it, Dr. George Tiller was assassinated. Tiller is the fourth physician to be murdered by self-identified “pro-lifers” since 1993. And nobody can say they were surprised.”

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Postcards

Tild — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 15:58:46 +0000

About Referred Law 6, South Dakota’s campaign to limit abortions: Charlie gets us to the crux, so to speak, of the ongoing battle over women’s bodies in the war for South Dakota’s soul.

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Elsewhere, driftglass sings a verse of Another One Bites the Dust and observes:

As has been said on this blog many, many more times than once, in the Age of Dubya one can either be a Good Republican or a Good American but one can no longer be both.

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Broken Nails calls our attention to a shouting match in Willmar.

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And NTodd ruminates whether it’s He Who Controls The Cocktail Weenies Controls The Movie? No, Wait, He Who Controls The Popcorn…

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And for the finish, here’s a couple of postcards I made back in April that are due for another viewing:

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Sister Joan Chittister: “Listen carefully for the twigs”

Tild — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 01:31:07 +0000

If you saw Bill Moyers’ show “NOW” tonight on PBS, you might have been thrilled, as I was, by the segment featuring Sister Joan Chittister. Wow! Every single word she spoke resonated within me so much. After a minute or two I realized I was standing up; standing at attention in front of the tv just listening to her speak.

So, why was I so impressed by this Benedictine nun from Erie, PA? As I’ve mentioned before, my relationship with religion goes like this: I know I can never again in good conscience “go back” into the comforting fold of the Lutheran church; maybe not of any church ..or temple …or mosque. I call myself an agnostic; I often feel like an atheist. I sometimes make laughing references to The Invisible Sky Fairy, a moniker that perfectly sums up for me the disenchantment I feel toward organized religion, which has so often and so deliberately misled people and used people for its own very earthbound purposes during these long centuries past.

All that being said, I hope the day never comes when I let my disillusionment turn me away from voices that speak truth to me, just because those voices happen to belong to ‘persons of faith’. This woman spoke truth to me tonight, and that truth feels so exhilarating, I’m just giddy. From the transcript:

MOYERS: Not in our lifetime has religion been this powerful a dividing line in American politics. You’d think that line was between Christians and non-Christians. But it isn’t. It’s a line between a particular group of Christians, a large group of Christians, who regard their version of divine truth as definitive and immune to challengeÃ¢â‚¬Â¦and everybody else.

In that other category are millions of faithful Christians, among them is Sister Joan Chittister. She is a Benedictine nun who served as a prioress of her order for 12 years.

She’s a social psychologist, she leads a worldwide network of women for peace and runs a spiritual Web site. Sister Joan has a Ph.D., 11 honorary degrees and was the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from Penn State. And that’s not all.

She is the author of 30 books, including CALLED TO QUESTION: A SPIRITUAL MEMOIR, SCARRED BY STRUGGLE; TRANSFORMED BY HOPE, and this classic in contemporary spirituality, WISDOM DISTILLED FROM THE DAILY.

Sister Joan is also a regular columnist for the independent Catholic newspaper, THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER. [Read this week's column here.]

Welcome to NOW.

CHITTISTER: Thank you, Bill.

MOYERS: It’s always surprising to discover that nuns look like you.

CHITTISTER: Yeah, that’s right. Well, as in what does a nun look like?

MOYERS: I read a column you wrote a week before the election in which you said the election won’t be over when it’s over. Well, as we’ve just seen the Religious Right says it’s over. And they say they’ve won. What do you think about that?

CHITTISTER: Well, I think the word religion is being used very loosely in this day and age. I don’t think that is religion.

This whole notion that my truth is everybody’s truth, there’s something wrong with that in a world of differences.

MOYERS: I can hear them saying this. I can hear James Dobson and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson say, “I was called by God to do what I’m doing.” You feel called by God.

CHITTISTER: I do. But I don’t feel called by God to impose my life on yours. I believe that I’m called by God to keep God a constant question in the human heart. I believe that anything that isn’tÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ that anything that uses God as an instrument of oppression on other people is not of God.

And I believe that their belief is a powerful witness. I just simply do not believe that it can be imposed on the beliefs of people who are witnessing to another face of God.

MOYERS: What do you mean impose?

CHITTISTER: Well, I believe that when, to have the voice of religion, to have the religious voice in the public arena, as far as I’m concerned, is very faithful to the intention of the founding fathers. Therefore no established church, no established church, no single church or tradition that monitors and weighs and measures everybody else’s attitudes, approaches or moral decisions. I believe that that’s absolutely essential especially in a pluralistic world where we’re all looking for the voice of conscience in our hearts. But when you take the religious voice and you turn it into a religion in the center of the system, do it our way, there’s something wrong with that.

MOYERS: But they are saying they’re acting from moral concerns. That they are trying to carry their moral values into the public square.

CHITTISTER: And so did the Puritans and the Prohibitionists.

It was exactly… they believed that their moral values should be carried into the public arena. And we did it. When the Puritans did it, they burned witches all in the name of God. When the Prohibitionists did it, they decided what you could and couldn’t discipline yourself to do.

MOYERS: But I don’t hear these people talking as harshly as that. They’re not going to burn you at the stake, although some of them might think you’re a witch right?

CHITTISTER: Well, yeahÃ¢â‚¬Â¦

MOYERS: Or pagan.

CHITTISTER: Listen carefully for the twigs.

MOYERS: They’re notÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ do you see them as extremists like that?

CHITTISTER: I do, in many instances. When you begin to use that kind of religious criteria and translate it into law, into God’s call for Armageddon, why are we in Iraq now? God apparently wants us there. Not my Jesus.

MOYERS: All right, then they would say, “We went to Iraq to overthrow a brutal dictator who was persecuting his own people and to prevent Iraq becoming a terrorist haven.” You know what they say.

CHITTISTER: Sure and we have a terrorist haven in Iraq right now. We don’t have the so-called dictator anymore. But if those are our criteria, then we’re going to be, for religious reasons, in a lot of other countries in the next 12 months.

MOYERS: Depending on the sources, Sister Joan, there have been some 37,000 civilians killed in Iraq, or maybe a 100,000. Why is abortion a higher moral issue with many American Christians than the invasion of Iraq and the loss of life there?

CHITTISTER: Could I ask you that question? Because that is the moral question that brings me closest to tears. I do not understand that, Bill. You see, I’m absolutely certain that some of the people that we’re killing over there are pregnant women. Now what do you do? Now what do you do? That’s military abortion.

MOYERS: Somebody said to meÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ that’s what?

CHITTISTER: That’s military abortion. Why is that morally acceptable?

MOYERS: Somebody said to me the other day that Americans don’t behead, but we do drop smart bombs that do it for us.

CHITTISTER: And that are not smart as we think they are.

MOYERS: What do you mean?

CHITTISTER: Well, what is this smart bomb stuff? We’ve still got a image in our head from 1991 of this little golf ball dropping down a furnace. It’s not working that way.

MOYERS: Dobson, Falwell, Robertson and a lot of secular pundits and columnists are saying that this election was decided by moral issues. Do you think moral issues were that decisive in this campaign?

CHITTISTER: Well, I don’t believeÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ I’m not exactly sure that they were as decisive in the end. And I’m not sure that there’s any way we can measure that. But even if I say, “Yes, they were,” the fact of the matter is that they are some moral issues, they’re not all moral issues.

The fact of the matter is that they’re all in contention with something else which is also a moral value and also equally important unless you put it completely out of your mind or your heart. For instance, let’s look at the abortion question. I’m opposed to abortion.

But I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking. If all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed and why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

Read the rest here.

Listen carefully for the twigs…