What Is Her.meneutics?
The Christianity Today women's blog provides news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women. We cover news stories and books related to international justice and evangelism, pregnancy and sexual ethics, marriage, parenting, and celibacy, pop culture, health and body image, raising girls, and women in the church and parachurch.Her.meneutics is edited by associate editor Katelyn Beaty and online editor Sarah Pulliam.
books we're reading
Stanton Jones, CedarvilleOUT Come to Campus
As a resident director mentoring struggling students, I welcome open conversation about same-sex attraction.
Last spring, John* asked if we could meet at the Hive, our college campus snack shop. After a bit of small talk, he confided, “My friends said that you’re someone I’d feel safe talking to. And this is what I wanted to tell you: Since junior high, I’ve known that I am gay. I don’t think I’ll ever change. If you lined up one hundred of the most beautiful women you could find, I’d maybe be somewhat attracted to one.”
“Have you told your parents?” I asked. “Yeah. I came out right before I returned to school this year. I’m not looking forward to going home.”
Last year, Hope* told me that she struggled with homosexuality. Hope grew up in a legalistic Christian home where an older sibling had sexually abused her. Her parents have no clue about her struggles, and based on past experience, Hope believes her mom would turn suicidal should she discover her daughter’s same-sex attraction.
This semester, as we sat and talked in my apartment, her eyes beamed. “I actually had a crush on a guy who I worked with at Christian summer camp! I don’t feel so gay anymore.” But she also related how her ex-girlfriend recently ridiculed her faith in Christ, and how a female co-worker had confessed to having a crush on her. “The thing is, I have never told anyone I was gay. I don’t even know how she knew. Please pray that I would be protected from temptation.”
As a resident director and spiritual mentor at Cedarville University, a Baptist evangelical school in the Midwest, I interact with students in almost every facet of college life, and delight in encouraging them to follow Jesus closely in the midst of their struggles. I live with my husband and 2-year-old daughter in an apartment attached to a women’s dorm at Cedarville. In the past few years, the Residence Life Department has seen an increase in the number of students confiding their struggles with same-sex attraction. And because we believe the Bible expressly forbids homosexual behavior, yet desire help in being Christ to students who struggle with their sexuality, we invited Stanton Jones, provost and psychology professor at Wheaton College, to discuss the research published in his 2007 book, Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation, for Cedarville’s Critical Concern Series.
Continue reading "Stanton Jones, CedarvilleOUT Come to Campus" »
A Quest to Question Mainstream Media
Connecting the dots between what we see on screen and who we become.
Many people who know me as an author and women's ministry speaker are often curious about why I started a film company. They seem to assume there is a split focus there. Perhaps there is, but because I see media in a more holistic way, one of the reasons I started Citygate Films was to influence the diet, so to speak, of what is being consumed in mainstream media. I also have a heavy concern that the "screen generation" is being fed more harmful images and narratives than uplifting ones.
For example, this is how my day has gone so far. I checked the news, and saw stories about a 15-year-old girl who was brutally gang-raped by anywhere between 7 to 10 men outside of a high school while at least a dozen others stood by and watched it without interfering, and a sadist who allegedly raped, murdered, and stowed the bodies of at least 10 women in his home. Those are just the stories in CNN's headlines — the tip of the iceberg nationally. There are numerous local stories about child sex abuse and murder that don't even make the national news.
Next, I checked my Twitter feed, which carried news of many nonprofit organizations (Christian and mainstream) that are working to improve the conditions of women and girls around the world. High on their list of concerns is sex trafficking and enslaved prostitutes.
I then started work by listening to a media panel about "transmedia" efforts — telling a single story across a variety of media platforms. One of the panelists spoke without shame of working with a clothing company that sponsored an interactive game about a stripper. The gamer controls the stripper's actions, which this media expert cheerfully said allowed the player to either make the stripper engage "in the most depraved actions" or "save her." It's an odd sponsorship, given the fact that the sponsor's clothes aren't seen very often. (The clothing company wasn't mentioned in this panel, but I wish it had been so that I would not patronize their stores or product.)
Planned Parenthood Puts Restraining Order on Former Director
The director had resigned after watching an ultrasound for an abortion.
Planned Parenthood has found itself in a legal battle with a former director who said she had a change of heart after watching an ultrasound for an abortion and quit the organization .
KBTX of Bryan/College Station, Texas, reports that Abby Johnson worked for Planned Parenthood for eight years, and two years as director, but joined forces with the Coalition For Life earlier this month, praying with volunteers outside the clinic.
Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian churchgoer recently became convicted about. "I feel so pure in heart [since leaving]. I don't have this guilt, I don't have this burden on me anymore that's how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion."
Planned Parenthood filed a temporary restraining order October 30 to prevent Johnson from disclosing information about the organization.
Johnson told Fox News that she became disillusioned after she felt pressure to increase profits by performing more abortions, which cost patients between $505 and $695.
"Every meeting that we had was, 'We don't have enough money, we don't have enough money — we've got to keep these abortions coming,' " Johnson said. "It's a very lucrative business and that's why they want to increase numbers."
Continue reading "Planned Parenthood Puts Restraining Order on Former Director" »
The Day We Let Our Son Live
It ended up being the most important day of my life.
When it comes to the chance for those with genetic defects to live, the news has not been good on either side of the Atlantic. Last week’s Telegraph reported that of all women in the U.K. who find out through prenatal testing that their baby will have Down syndrome, about 90 percent choose to have an abortion. And yesterday, ABC News reported a near-identical rate among women in the U.S.: 92 percent of those who find out their child will have the chromosomal defect decide to abort. One geneticist at Children’s Hospital Boston found that, without prenatal testing, the number of Down syndrome births would have increased by 34 percent between 1989 and 2005. Instead, the number of Down syndrome births has dropped by 15 percent over that time.
Upon hearing such news, I remembered Ellen and Al Hsu (pronounced shee), a Christian couple who works at InterVarsity Press in Downers Grove, Illinois, and who faced the same situation as the women above. This is Ellen’s story of Elijah, their 4-year-old with Down syndrome, as originally told on their family blog, Team Hsu.
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I gazed in wonder at the blurry form on the screen. “Hi, Baby,” I whispered. The image of our baby was much clearer on the level-two ultrasound. The technician rolled the ultrasound wand over my growing abdomen, and I marveled as I watched our son squirm and suck his thumb. A new life forming within me.
Our OB/GYN had referred us for a level-two ultrasound after he noticed choroid plexus cysts on our baby’s brain during the standard 20-week ultrasound. I was anxious about what the maternal health specialist might find. We knew a couple whose ultrasound also had showed choroids plexus cysts, but whose baby was perfectly fine when he was born. We had spent the past week praying for our baby and hoping for the best.
Al walked into the exam room as the technician was finishing up. She hadn’t said much and explained that the doctor would be in to take a look for himself and to explain what he found. Al and I chatted quietly while we waited. I was relieved that he had made it before the doctor came in. Little did I know how much I would need him.
The doctor came in and began his exam. I was delighted at the chance to see more images of our baby. But my world was shaken when the doctor finally began explaining what he saw. “Something is very wrong with this baby.”
He continued to roll the wand over my tummy as he pointed to various spots on the screen and began listing all the “abnormalities”: larger than usual nuchal folds; clenched fists; possible club feet; something wrong with the liver; enlarged ventricles in the brain; possibly no stomach. My tears flowed as his list grew longer. My delight at the new life within me turned to icy fear, and I clutched Al’s hand tightly.
The doctor suspected a chromosomal problem, possibly Trisomy 13 or 18, birth defects caused by an extra 13th or 18th chromosome. He explained that both of these conditions are generally “incompatible with life.” We were told that if our baby was born alive, he was likely to die within a day. If we were lucky, he might survive for 6 to 12 months. We wondered if we should begin preparing for death instead of life.
It's a Not-So-Happy But Wonderful Life
God doesn't call us to be happy.
A couple weekends ago, I took my kids to an historic farm run by our local forest preserve. The buildings there have been authentically restored, and the staff and volunteers roam the property in costume and in character to give visitors a pretty-close encounter to what it must’ve been like to live and work on a family farm at the turn of the last century.
So when one of the in-character volunteers stopped hammering the chicken-coop roof, stepped off his ladder, tugged up his suspenders, and asked if we had any questions, I wasn’t entirely surprised by his answer to my question.
I pointed to the fluffy black and white chickens racing behind their wire and asked, “What color eggs do they lay?”
“Dunno, ma’am,” he said. Then he smiled, betraying his character entirely. “Chickens are women’s work.”
As he continued on about how his “wife” had an egg-selling business so she could buy “pretty things” from Sears Roebuck, a weird stream of envy washed through me. Truth be told, this same weird stream trickles through whenever I read Edith Wharton or read or watch anything about times and places where gender roles were fixed, expectations rigid, and life (and death) somehow more certain.
This is weird, of course, because I’m a liberated woman. I call myself a feminist — unapologetically. And I have since I was a girl. I was born in 1972, the year Helen Reddy and her woman-roaring made the charts. My early childhood memories are of parents, teachers, and Brownie leaders telling me I could do and be anything.
I grew up aware of the doors being thrown open all around me, the ones I’d be able to skirt through more confidently than any other generation of women in human history. I stood under some ceilings as they shattered, and throughout my professional career, my writing life and my motherhood I have continued to push (with the Spirit behind me) on those doors and ceilings that have yet to budge.
All this to say, you’d think hearing such things like historical “women’s work” wouldn’t make me jealous but rather happy or relieved. And yet, not so.
Are You Happy Now?
How to think about the inverse trend of women's rights and women's happiness.
It’s been said before: Today woman have more than they have ever had but they are more unhappy than they have ever been. In a recent Time article, Nancy Gibbs, using the newest statistics, enumerates the significant progress women have made in just one generation. But she goes on to acknowledge that as a result, women are also more stressed and burdened by the weight of their new responsibilities.
In my experience, when Christian women discuss this trend, they often do so with a cynical “I told you so” attitude. The common assumption is that women can (and should) realize their greatest potential by staying at home as a wife and mother and leaving the workplace to the man. They would be happy if they just did that, instead of chasing after equality.
But whether or not this assumption holds up to biblical scrutiny, it misses a vital point: It’s not about happiness.
Jesus didn’t address the Samaritan woman at the well — elevating her to a much higher place in society — so that she could be happy. Jesus didn’t allow Mary to sit at his feet and learn — a place often occupied by male students — just to keep her happy. Christians don’t follow God so that they can be happy. And Justin Wolfers, co-author of the study “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” told Time in trying to explain the trend, “As Susan Faludi said, the women’s movement wasn’t about happiness.” It is about doing what is right. Or, as a Christian might put it, about bringing about God’s vision for society.
What Christian Women Want Now
How do we respond to recent reports of women's declining happiness?
Get excited, because Her.meneutics brings two perspectives on Time magazine’s recent cover report, “The State of the American Woman.” Author Nancy Gibbs explores the questions, “Is the battle of the sexes really over, and if so, did anyone win?” Time, in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation, conducted a survey to find out how we have responded to 40 years of change as we now approach a time where women will for the first time make up a majority of the American workforce. Gibbs reports, "Among the most confounding changes of all is the evidence, tracked by numerous surveys, that as women have gained more freedom, more education and more economic power, they have become less happy." Just a few weeks ago Maureen Dowd wrote on the same topic in The New York Times, and now everyone’s asking, “Why aren’t women happier?”
Is it because we now take on double the responsibilities and stress, as Gibbs suggests, that we now report more unhappiness? Is this necessarily a bad thing? And how do we, as Christian women, frame the issue in light of our own gospel call?
Cancer’s Mercies
October is breast cancer awareness month, and I’m so aware I might as well be pink.
435 days ago there were meteor showers over Cincinnati. My world was rocked that night, but it had nothing to do with the meteors that my teenage son, Mikey, and I were watching in the wee hours of a sleepy summer night.
Right before I joined Mikey for Perseus’s fireworks, I had awakened to get a drink of water, and while being one of those things that go bump in the night, trying to find my way to the kitchen sink, I happened to find a bump. Or a lump, rather, on my breast.
I cannot explain the shock and awe I felt. It was like a meteor to the chest, literally. I remember the lump felt like a shooter marble right beneath the “milky way.” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there the day before. My husband, Dave, is pretty sure it wasn’t there the day before. I don’t see how we could’ve missed a meteor like that.
When the meteor show was over, I had a hard time keeping my thoughts from spiraling out of control. A sensible part of me, that I had to dig deeply for, took all the other parts of me and put them to bed.
I lay there, not wanting to wake Dave, deciding to wait out the night, wait for him to wake, wait to see if it would just go away. Wait. And pray.
Since my thoughts like to play connect the dots, this would be where my inner Lady Macbeth started coming out, as "Out, damn'd spot" were the words that came out as I prayed. This seemed like a reasonable prayer, so I went with it.
Mazel tov for Jewish Women
Orthodox Judaism gets in touch with its feminine side.
Orthodox Jewish women have a reason to celebrate this month.
Ten years ago, Nishmat, an advanced Torah study center for women in Israel, was founded as part of a larger experiment. The center sought to certify female students as experts in rabbinic law without overstepping the strict rules of the Orthodox faith. Orthodox rules do not prohibit this type of certification, though strict Orthodoxy does not allow women to be ordained as rabbis.
In 1999, Nishmat awarded the first Yoatzot Halacha (rabbinically-certified women consultants in Jewish Law) certificates to two female scholars. All graduates were certified experts pending a re-evaluation every 10 years. The program has graduated 61 female scholars in the 10 years since it was created. On October 11, Rabbis Yaakov Varhaftig and Yehuda Henkin announced that the 10-year limit on certification had been officially lifted, essentially declaring the program a success.
Rabbi Henkin said in a press release:
Because we understood the historic and political significance of creating women halachic experts – we were stepping where no one had in 3,000 years – we chose to proceed with caution … Now, ten years later, the Yoatzot Halacha program is no longer just a promising experiment – it is a vibrant reality for the Jewish people. The achievements of the Yoatzot are great and their positive effect on the community-at-large is so clear that we are removing this restriction permanently.
Mixed Reports on Abortion
The media reports on a new abortion study while "The Gray Lady" shows a different side of the debate.
A new report by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice reproductive think tank, suggests that while abortion is safe and legal in most developed countries, it is risky and restricted in the developing world. The Associated Press and USA Today both emphasized the 70,000 annual deaths the study attributes to unsafe abortions.
Political science professor at the University of Alabama Michael New writes that media analysis is “faulty” because it neglects potential social factors and implies restrictive abortion laws are solely responsible.
“These (developing countries mentioned in the report) have low per capita income and a higher incidence of social pathologies that may increase the perceived need for abortion,” New writes on The Corner. “This nuance is not picked up in any of the media coverage of the AGI report.” New also points out AGI has released other studies linking stricter abortion laws with reduced abortion rates.
Redeeming Roman Polanski
Looking for a Christian response to a child rapist with powerful friends.
Film director Roman Polanski was recently arrested on a 32-year-old charge of statutory rape, which he pled guilty to in 1977 before fleeing the country. Now, while Polanski fights extradition, Hollywood rallies for his freedom, and news sources turn it into a story about a celebrity instead of about our justice system, others are asking, “What if Polanski were a Catholic priest who had abused children?”
Meanwhile, many Americans are scratching their heads. Unfortunately, it seems many of the people quick to give their opinion on this issue got their facts from Wikipedia and assume it wasn’t as appalling as it sounds. Well, they are wrong. (Warning: Reading the facts may make you sick.)
Hollywood hasn’t forgotten, however, because apparently Hollywood never blamed Polanski for raping a 13-year-old girl in the first place. (To be fair, there are exceptions.) People protesting the “Polanski persecution” include Harvey Weinstein, Peter Fonda, and Whoopi Goldberg, among others, who are all old enough to know better. No, it’s probably not fair that the only reason the L.A. Police Department knew Polanski would be in Switzerland was because he’s famous. It’s not fair that Polanski has been celebrated — and publicly awarded, including an Oscar in 2003 —for the 32 years since he fled the country, either. His arrest in Switzerland, in fact, came about because he had a Lifetime Achievement Award to accept.
But as Jeri Thompson, wife of Law & Order mainstay Fred Thompson, and no stranger to celebrity culture, wrote, it’s “one more piece of compelling evidence of just how out of touch the ‘artistic’ community is with the rest of America.” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said yesterday that such an explanation is a little too easy, just as it would be to say that Catholics are out of touch with the rest of the denominations.
Does Religiosity Encourage Teen Pregnancy?
An interview with Joseph Strayhorn, the co-author of "Religion and Teen Pregnancy Rates."
Some social liberals used a recently published study in Reproductive Health that found a strong link between high religiosity and teen pregnancy rates to further their case for why abstinence-only sex education doesn't work.
Double XX, Mother Jones, Bonnie Erbe at U.S. News & World Report, and Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic say the results of "Religiosity and Teen Birth Rates" — which found higher teen birth rates in the most religiously conservative states, even after controlling for differences in income and abortions — point to conservatives' hypocrisy on family values. The researchers, father-daughter team Joseph and Jillian Strayhorn, speculated that perhaps teens in highly religious states are more likely to become pregnant because they are less likely to know about or use contraception. Jillian's work went toward fulfilling an advanced home-schooling course in statistics, roughly equivalent to a sophomore college course in regression analytics. (Dr. Strayhorn noted that "ironically, one or two of the bloggers I read who used our article to slam religion also slammed home-schooling.")
![154017695_e566265aea.jpg](http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/upload/2009/09/154017695_e566265aea.jpg ""Pregnant Profile IV," by Mahalie, Flickr.com")
After reading such interpretations, Her.meneutics regular Christine A. Scheller decided to interview Dr. Strayhorn, associate professor of psychiatry at Drexel University College of Medicine.
You said that your research "has already made many people angry." What about it has provoked such hostility?
The three topics most likely to anger people are sex, religion, and politics, and our article concerns all three. Various people have said that it’s bad research, not worth the money of whoever funded it, ignorant, biased, and so forth. Many critics dismissed the findings as a result of fewer abortions in more religious states, or of greater poverty in more religious states, not understanding or probably not reading about our attempts to control for these variables. Some commented that the excess of teen births was the fault of African Americans or Hispanics.
Is there legitimacy to the criticism?
After the article was published, we did another analysis taking into account the percent of the population for each state that was African American. This variable accounted for a non-significant fraction of the variation in teen birth rates in addition to that accounted for by religiosity and income.
Your study begins with this background statement:
The children of teen mothers have been reported to have higher rates of several unfavorable mental health outcomes. Past research suggests several possible mechanisms for an association between religiosity and teen birth rate in communities.How are mental health outcomes and teen parenting linked, and how do they relate to religiosity?
Some research has suggested that the social disadvantage that seems to accompany teen birth is the main causal factor for poor [mental health] outcomes. As to the relation of teen parenting to religiosity, one might predict that the emphasis on self-control and morality would result in lower teen births by religion, and some research points in that direction. One might also predict that teaching abstinence, as promoted by many religious leaders, could result in less preparation for use of contraception, which in turn could lead to more births when resolutions are not kept — and some research also points in that direction. Thus, for a social scientist, the research question was a good one in that whatever the results, they would be interesting.
How did you come up with the conclusion that religious communities may be less likely to use birth control? Is this scientific or personal opinion?
When we asked ourselves, “What about religious culture could possibly account for an increase in teen births?” we figured that it was unlikely to be, “A soft answer turneth away wrath,” or “Blessed are the peacemakers,” or “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
We figured it was more likely something like, “The church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable.”
This quote is a statement from the Vatican; it’s well known that the Catholic Church’s official position is that contraception, even when used by married couples, is a “grave sin.” (Mitigating the predicted effect of this teaching is that a rather high fraction of U.S. Catholics appear to disregard it.) Many Protestant leaders, without condemning contraception within marriage, strongly condemn teaching teens how to use contraception.
Continue reading "Does Religiosity Encourage Teen Pregnancy?" »
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Early marriage sounds great — as long as there are mature Christian men willing to initiate.
If you thought navigating the 20-something dating and marriage scene wasn’t complicated enough, former President Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson just put his oar in.
In an argument similar to Mark Regnerus’s cover story in the August issue of Christianity Today, Gerson says that “it doesn't seem realistic to expect most men and women to delay sex until marriage at 26 or 28.”
He believes that kind of self-control is possible but not likely, even among churchgoers. Besides, marrying late in one’s 20s can result in unhappier marriages, while early-20s marriages have the happiest results.
Where does Gerson get those numbers, you might ask? Slate’s XX Factor did some digging and found this 2004 study from the National Fatherhood Initiative. (Especially check out the graphs on page 19.) XX Factor also notes that some key information, like statistical significance, is missing from the graphs, so it’s hard to tell how seriously we should take the information.
Statistical reliability aside, Gerson’s argument — marry young, because people cannot handle not waiting to have sex until their late 20s — is weak on many levels. Is marriage really an excuse for sex? Should a lack of self-control be rewarded with early gratification? To say nothing of evangelical churches and families, it doesn’t seem like that mindset will lead to a healthy society at large.
U.K. Christian Says Yes to Abstinence, No to Gardasil
Should women like Simone Davis be required to take STD-preventing shots if they are not having sex?
Simone Davis, a 17-year-old British immigrant and devout Christian, will be denied U.S. citizenship unless she agrees to a new immigration requirement that she be vaccinated with Gardasil, a compound that targets human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer and genital warts.
Davis, who was adopted by her paternal grandmother in Port St. Joe, Florida, applied to Citizenship and Immigration Services for an exemption on moral and religious grounds, saying she is not sexually active and does not plan to be in the near future. Her exemption application was denied. Davis’s citizenship quest has been funded thus far by church groups, but her grandmother, Jean Davis, says she cannot afford an appeal. Other opponents say the requirement places an unfair financial burden on women because a three-shot series of Gardasil costs between $300-$1,400.
Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Chris Rhatigan told ABC News, "The decision to include HPV as a required vaccine was made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] . . . The objection to a waiver would have to be to all vaccines, not just Gardasil." But the requirement differs from other vaccines in that it is the only one that targets a virus spread through sexual contact. The other 13 target highly contagious diseases.
Continue reading "U.K. Christian Says Yes to Abstinence, No to Gardasil" »
The Confusing Case of Caster Semenya
The South African runner may lose her gold medal after gender test results are released.
What might have been weeks of celebration have become ones of public scrutiny for Caster Semenya, the South African runner who won the women’s 800 meter final at the World Athletics Championship August 19. Due to Semanya’s 8-second gain over her time in 2008, as well as her masculine appearance, the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) required the 18-year-old to take a gender verification test. Initial test results confirmed that the teenager has three times the normal levels of testosterone for women. Rumors swirled about Semenya’s head coach, Ekkart Arbeit — who was accused of giving female gymnasts steroids in the 1970s — and whether he had given Semenya similar treatments.
Now, a source close to the IAAF probe has told an Australian newspaper that the test showed that Semenya “had internal testes and no womb or ovaries,” calling her a hermaphrodite later in the report. (Medically speaking, the source is wrong: a hermaphrodite is someone who has simultaneously functioning male and female sex organs. Thomas Rogers at Broadsheet helpfully clarifies the differences between a number of rare intersex conditions.)
While the IAAF stated today that it will not release its findings — which could disqualify Semenya’s win — until November, media have already picked up on the hermaphrodite label. Semenya’s parents and other South Africans have responded angrily, not only because the test might strip Semenya of her gold medal and an athletic career, but because it has exposed Semenya to sexual humiliation and her family to shame. Whether or not Semenya is biologically female, she has understood herself to be a female her whole life — something Semenya asserted with jewelry, makeup, and trendy clothing in You! this week (pictured above). As she told the South African magazine, “I am who I am and I am proud of myself. God made me the way I am and I accept myself.”
How do Christians make sense of Semanya’s story?
The Case for Male Circumcision
Why the arguments from sentiment and sexual pleasure don't cut it for me.
What mother hasn’t, in the halcyon days after the birth of a son, felt her ferocious she-wolf instincts kick in when it comes time for her boy to be circumcised? Having perhaps suffered violence to her genitals during the birth, the physical ache to all that is vulnerable in her world can seem unbearable. And then it is done, and life goes on.
Anti-circumcision activists would have us believe that life does not in fact go on, that boys grow into men whose sexual pleasure (and that of the women they love) is compromised by this act of “genital mutilation.” While increasing numbers are swayed by both argument and sentiment, I’m stupefied by the controversy.
Male sexual pleasure is not my highest priority, having rarely witnessed a lack thereof. Nor is my own, if in fact I’m speaking out of my ignorance of the delight foreskin can deliver. What I am concerned about is sky-rocketing rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and the gender inequality evident in these rates.
A 2008 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study estimates that 25 percent of American women ages 14–19 are infected with at least one of the four most common STDs. Eighteen percent of them have human papilloma virus (HPV), which can cause genital warts and cervical cancer. Four percent have chlamydia, which, if left untreated, can lead to Pelvic inflammatory disease and sterility. Chlamydia can also be passed from mother to baby during vaginal birth, and is reported to occur in women at three times the rate it occurs in men. Furthermore, nearly half (48 percent) of African American women in this age group were infected with an STD, compared with 20 percent of white women.
Based on multiple studies suggesting that male circumcision reduces the risk of STDs, U.S. health officials are encouraging routine circumcision for male babies at a time when circumcision rates are declining. In a BloggingHeads.tv discussion with colleague Emily Bazelon, DoubleX editor Hanna Rosin surmised that the recommendation is ultimately about confronting a decline in Medicaid funding of the $300 procedure in at-risk communities.
The Lutherans and Twister Theology
Julia's first-person account of the strange events at last week's ELCA convention.
When is a warning from God not a warning from God? Or a "we can't tell whether or not it's a warning from God"?
This question came up last week while I was covering the church-wide assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in Minneapolis. Members of America's largest Lutheran denomination voted to allow non-celibate gays to become clergy and paved the way for same-sex blessing ceremonies. Conservatives I talked to were devastated by the convention, but even they admitted that before the meeting began August 17, they knew they did not have enough votes to prevent the juggernaut.
Then the tornado came.
It was just before 2 p.m. on Wednesday, August 19, right before one of the first significant votes of the assembly. The Lutherans were slated to vote on a sexuality statement that, for the first time I know of, gave the gay-friendly view a place at the table as one of four theological positions Lutherans could have. If the statement passed, it indicated where the convention would go from that point on.
Then someone rushed into the press room and told us to vacate the place fast. A tornado had touched down close by, we were told. The police wanted us in a safe place away from the glass windows that encase the Minneapolis Convention Center.
Everyone rushed into the main hall to join some 1,045 voting members who were listening to a Bible study being led by a female preacher. (A few blogs say the debate on the statement had already begun, but that is not true. I was there). A palpable blanket of fear descended on the entire group as the doors to the outside hallways were shut, enclosing us in the giant hall, which was apparently was the safest place to be. We could hear the winds howling outside. I thought of my rental car parked nearby and hoped it would stay in one piece. After the Bible study, ELCA President Mark Hanson read the 121st Psalm to calm everyone down.
"We trust the weather is not a commentary on our work," said the Rev. Steven Loy, chairman of the ad hoc committee on the sexuality statement.
Breast-feeding Dolls: Cute or Creepy?
I'm pretty ambivalent about Bebe Gloton, the world's first electronically nursing doll.
Let me start this post off by saying that I'm a little bit of a lactivist. I don't think I'm the scary kind, but I do champion the rights of nursing mothers, practice child-led weaning, and, well, use words like lactivist.
And I'll admit to having filched the toy bottle out of the package before giving my daughter a new doll for her birthday, in an effort to minimize the bottle-as-normative aspect of our culture. (See what I mean? That's lactivist logic.)
So having said that. My reaction to the news of a new breast-feeding doll from Spanish toy company Berjuan?
Eww. Gross.
Meet Bebe Gloton — which translates out to "Baby Glutton" according to The New York Times, and "Greedy Baby" according to The Daily Mail. (I'll hold my comments on the name.) The doll, sold in both baby boy and baby girl versions, is being marketed as the world's first breast-feeding doll. When held up to the chest of young mommies-in-training, electronic sensors in Bebe Gloton's mouth "suckle" at strategically-placed daisies on the girl-sized halter top that comes in the box with the doll.
I'm creeped out just writing that. And I'm not alone. Bebe Gloton is garnering criticism as videos of the doll in action go viral, with readers' comments ranging from concern about the sexualization of young girls to fear over an unhealthy ramp-up in early maternal desires.
Running in the Shadow of 9/11
Much of my life has been lived in the kinetic shadow of New York City. Last weekend, I owned that city’s streets for three hours.
I have loved New York City my whole life. By that I mean since I was a preschooler living across the Hudson in North Bergen, New Jersey. Even from the relative distance of the Jersey Shore, where my family moved when I was 6 and where I’ve spent most of my days, “the city” has been as prominent a backdrop as the cool green Atlantic. From trips up north to see family, I watched the derided Twin Towers get built. While flying into Newark Liberty International Airport when I lived in California post-9/11, I pondered the void.
It was as a hometown girl that I ran (and walked) the New York City Half-Marathon last Sunday on behalf of the Children’s Tumor Foundation (CTF). I love to run and have been doing it since winning ribbons at elementary school field days. Running with CTF’s NF Endurance Team for research into a disease that may have contributed to my son Gabriel’s death is a particularly rewarding experience. Not only is CTF the world’s leading non-government funder of neurofibromatosis research, it has given me education and encouragement ever since Gabriel was diagnosed with NF as an infant.
CTF is headquartered on Pine Street in New York City, so it was a hometown race for the team as well. It was more than that for me though. Life for my family had been pretty idyllic for a decade before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Two nights before those attacks, Gabriel’s friend Christopher Braca was at our house. His dad Al picked him up. Al Braca worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and had lived through the first World Trade Center bombing. He didn’t live through the second. He was known as “The Rev” at work because of his outspoken faith. Stories came back to his family after his death that on that fateful morning, when all hope of survival was lost, Al had gathered people around him to passionately invite them to go to heaven with him.
A week after the attack, I dropped Gabe off at Christopher’s house to hang out. His mom, Jeannie, said, “I realized last night that Al isn’t coming home and neither is his body.” A little later, I got a call that I needed to come pick Gabe up. Despite Al's body having fallen more than 100 stories amidst tons of debris, it was found intact. We called it a miracle in the midst of unspeakable tragedy.
As it happens, our hotel near the finish line at Battery Park in Lower Manhattan was a block from Ground Zero. I hadn’t anticipated that, nor had I spent time there since volunteering at a relief worker respite station in spring 2002. On Saturday morning before the race, my husband and I strolled around the site and took in the changes, including a visitor center and a bronze memorial to firefighters who had died there. Locals were giving tours, telling tourists about human remains found as late as a year ago.
The Charismatic Alberto Cutie
Time will tell if the celebrity priest lives up to Church of the Resurrection's lively tradition.
It's been about three months now since we heard of Alberto Cutie, the former Roman Catholic priest who was caught kissing his girlfriend on a Miami beach. No sooner was he removed from his post than he left the Catholic Church altogether for the local Episcopal diocese, which welcomed him with much fanfare and sent him to pastor a local church.
As I looked at photos of Cutie, I realized there was something very familiar about the background: I used to attend that church.
That was when I was a reporter for the Hollywood Sun-Tattler, a daily of about 35,000 circulation when I moved there in 1983 as a general assignment reporter. Hollywood is a few suburbs to the north of Biscayne Park, where sits the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, Father Cutie's digs.
Back then, the church is not the smallish place it is today. Many of us drove 20 or more miles to attend Resurrection because it was the only openly charismatic church in the diocese. Two others were somewhat into the charismatic renewal, but Resurrection was huge on the prophecies, healings, and speaking in tongues the renewal movement is known for. It also had a healthy emphasis on the Bible and weeknight home groups.
It also helped that the rector, Cliff Horvath, and his wife, Nedda, had been committed to the place for years and held to rock-solid evangelical theology. Cliff was a risk taker when it came to things charismatic, and he drew many like-minded people to sit under him. The parish flourished with involvements in everything from Cursillo to Life in the Spirit seminars, and what was a quiet Anglican worship style when I first arrived became a full-blown swinging-on-the-chandeliers (I exaggerate a tad) church by the time I left in 1986 for a job at The Houston Chronicle.
2D Love and Lars and the Real Girl
The Japanese phenomenon reveals a right human desire gone askew.
Falling in love with caricatures of girls and women, such as blow-up dolls or pillows imprinted with female characters, is still on the margins of Western culture, but it's getting noted enough to merit a recent New York Times Magazine story about the phenomenon in Japan.
"2D love," what the phenomenon is called in Japan, emerges from a subculture of people who have real relationships with characters in the imaginary worlds of video games, anime, and manga (cartoons and print comics popular in Japan). The NYT Magazine story featured 37-year-old Nisan, a single man who fell in love with the video game character Nemutan. He has a stuffed pillow with her image imprinted on the fabric. He calls Nemutan his girlfriend and takes her out on dates and extensive road trips.
Japanese analysts think the trend reveals the difficulty men (in particular) have negotiating relationships with 3D women. It's easier to control a relationship with an inanimate object than with a real woman who can talk back and will from time to time have her own ideas. A similar explanation has been used to explain the attraction many males have to pornography in the States.
A particularly dark side of 2D love is the sexual obsession men have with prepubescent female characters. Momo, who makes and sells X-rated anime images of prepubescent females, says he has sex with his imaginary lovers. He also says he neither views child pornography nor is attracted to his young niece. Whether or not this trend will translate into harmful behaviors toward young girls is to be determined, but the question has at least been raised. Regardless, being obsessed with 2D images says something has gone terribly awry.
The Urban Chicks Movement
Living out faith can include 'just food.'
"What are you building?" the cashier asked as we paid for several sheets of plywood and some 2×4s. When we told her she said, "a lot of people are building chicken coops this summer."
City ordinances are changing to allow for backyard chicken keeping. From Portland to New York City, ordinances are being revised, spelling out what will be allowed as cities respond to pressure from residents for permission to raise chickens. (See ordinances for information about your city.) Most cities prohibit roosters (this video shows why) and backyard slaughtering, and limit the number of hens allowed and the placement of coops near homes and property lines. Many prohibit backyard chickens altogether, though if neighbors don't complain residents raise them anyway.
Urban chickens were common in the 19th century, and helped supplement family diets and budgets during the Great Depression. While the current urban chicken movement did not emerge in response to economic woes, it may play a part in reshaping how we think about ourselves as consumers. The trend is part of a growing movement encouraging people to buy local or raise their own - whether beans and corn or eggs and honey.
Journalists Link Rising Teen Pregnancy Rates to Bush Administration
Rates of teen pregnancy, STDs rose during 2006-2007. Does this mean abstinence education isn't working?
The rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in the U.S. rose steadily during the Bush administration, U.K. newspaper The Guardian reported earlier this week.
The Centers for Disease Control press release mentions three statistics as "signs that progress has halted in some areas" (the full report is here):
• Teen birth rates increased in 2006 and 2007, following large declines from 1991-2005.
• Rates of AIDS cases among males aged 15-24 years increased during 1997-2006 (AIDS-related data reflect people with HIV who have already progressed to AIDS.)
• Syphilis cases among teens and young adults aged 15-19 and 20-24 years have increased in both males and females in recent years.
U.S. News and World Report's Bonnie Erbe responds to the statistics by directly blaming Bush and the "Christian Right," while The Dallas Morning News's Tod Robberson offers tips for how to educate teens about sex, and Time magazine adds perspective by examining the numbers specifically for young women in foster care.
Not all the data in the release are new; The New York Times reported on some of it in 2007, where Robert Rector, a senior fellow with the American Heritage Association, connected low levels of education with a desire for motherhood without marriage.
"We should be telling them that for the well-being of any child, it's critically important that you be over the age of 20 and that you be married," he said. "That message is not given at all."
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Cohabiting Couples on the Rise
The cultural trend isn't going away anytime soon. How should the church respond?
A new national study suggests that the trend toward cohabiting continues its forward march for young adults, many of whom still expect to marry someday.
More than three-quarters of 20- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. said they believe that "love, fidelity, and making a lifelong commitment are very important to a successful relationship." Women, predictably, aspire to marriage at significantly higher rates than men. Perhaps less predictably, married young adults tend to have negative views of living together with no intent to marry, even though (or perhaps because) more than half of them have cohabited themselves.
In 2008, the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University published "Cohabitation, Marriage and Child Well-being," a report in which sociologist David Popenoe traces the history of cohabitation back through the sexual revolution. He concludes,
It should be obvious . . . that in an era of relatively unrestricted premarital sex, women in the work place, delayed marriage, and high marital breakup, there is a profound logic - almost an inevitability - about the practice of living together before marriage. What are the alternatives? Either marriage at a young age (not a good idea because, among other reasons, it limits access to higher education and is associated with a much higher risk of divorce), no sex before marriage (hard to imagine reinstituting this social norm across the population), or ‘sleeping around' rather than living with one sex partner (not good for a variety of reasons). It seems likely, therefore, that non-marital cohabitation is a practice that is not going away anytime soon.
Breast Cancer and the Bible
Does HarperOne's forthcoming Pink Ribbon Bible push the boundaries of niche-marketing?
Gone are the days when personalizing your Bible meant choosing between a leather or patterned Bible cover.
The wide variety of Bibles currently on the market allows for customization based on age, sex, and interest. There are Bibles for teenage girls (with "a unique design that fits her lifestyle") and college students, Bibles for men and Bibles for women, picture-book Bibles (even Manga Bibles), and Bibles for occasions, like the American Patriot's Bible, released by Thomas Nelson this summer to celebrate the Fourth of July.
Now you can also customize the Bible to a particular cause. Last year, HarperOne released The Green Bible, to "help you see that caring for the earth is not only a calling, but a lifestyle"; now Tyndale House has a Hungry Planet Bible (part of a project "raising awareness of the plight of the homeless and hungry") and a Pray for a Cure Bible aimed at breast cancer support, released in 2007. This September, HarperOne will release the Pink Ribbon Bible. One dollar of every purchase will go to the Pink Ribbon Girls, a nonprofit organization providing support, education, and awareness of breast cancer. Although Pink Ribbon Girls is not a Christian nonprofit, founder Tracie Metzger says the Bible was an encouragement in her own battle with breast cancer.
These specialty Bibles allow their owners to identify themselves by a cause they feel passionate about, not just their stage of life or color preference. But are we shaping the Bible to our lifestyle more than molding our lifestyle to the Bible?
Where Does Francis Collins Stand on Stem-Cell Research?
The question is more pressing now that he is heading the National Institutes of Health.
President Obama announced last Wednesday his pick of Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian, to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the government's biomedical research wing. While a couple news reports have highlighted onlookers' hesitation over Collins's faith, few have examined Collins's views on embryonic stem-cell research, for which President Obama lifted by executive order a ban on federal funding this March.
So what exactly are Collins's views on the ethics of embryonic stem-cell research and when life begins? Below are some comments he has made on the matter in the last few years. See what you can parse out:
In a 2006 interview with Steve Paulson of Salon:
Paulson: Geneticists are sometimes accused of "playing God," especially when it comes to genetic engineering. And there are various thorny bioethical issues. What's your position on stem cell research?Collins: Stem cells have been discussed for 10 years, and yet I fear that much of that discussion has been more heat than light. First of all, I believe that the product of a sperm and an egg, which is the first cell that goes on to develop a human being, deserves considerable moral consequences. This is an entity that ultimately becomes a human. So I would be opposed to the idea of creating embryos by mixing sperm and eggs together and then experimenting on the outcome of that, purely to understand research questions.
On the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands of such embryos in freezers at in vitro fertilization clinics. In the process of in vitro fertilization, you almost invariably end up with more embryos than you can reimplant safely. The plausibility of those ever being reimplanted in the future - more than a few of them - is extremely low. Is it more ethical to leave them in those freezers forever or throw them away? Or is it more ethical to come up with some sort of use for those embryos that could help people? I think that's not been widely discussed.
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Women's Ordination: A Crack in the Cathedral?
Female bishops outlawed, female priests tacitly allowed at last week’s Anglican gathering in Bedford, Texas.
After the Anglican Church in North America's (ACNA) momentous inaugural gathering, the verdict is out on whether the issue of women's ordination will inhibit the budding alliance from moving forward.
Last week more than 800 men and women gathered in Bedford, Texas, to elect an archbishop and ratify a constitution for the ACNA, a new alliance for churches that have left the Episcopal Church. Led by Robert Duncan, bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the ACNA comprises more than 700 theologically conservative churches with about 70,000 parishioners.
There were many central theological beliefs that last week's attendees could agree on in their constitution and canon laws, including the full inspiration of the Bible, the centrality of baptism and Communion to church life, and the authority of the historic church creeds. But for the time being, ACNA leaders have not reached full agreement on female priests. At this time, each jurisdiction is free to decide whether or not to ordain women, but jurisdictions cannot force others to either accept women's ordination or to stop practicing it. Women bishops are forbidden.
"For those who believe the ordination of women to be a grave error, and for those who believe it scripturally justifiable . . . we should be in mission together until God sorts us out," said Duncan in last week's opening address. "It is not perfect, but it is enough."
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Am I My Sister's Keeper?
A new movie explores tensions between preserving a life when a terminally ill patient feels ready to die.
My Sister's Keeper, director Nick Cassavetes' (The Notebook) new weeper film starring Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin, releases today.
Fans of the original 2004 Jodi Picoult novel may be expecting a cinematic exploration of the ethical ramifications of PIDG (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis), the medical practice of engineering and selecting embryos for specific medical reasons.
After all, in both the novel and the movie, the drama centers on a cancer-stricken teenager and the younger sister who was engineered in a test tube to be an ideal donor of blood and bone marrow. (USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman, a fan of the novel, offers a succinct summary of the issue and its implications on her Faith and Reason blog.)
Although the film is faithful to the book in a number of ways, a significantly altered ending and a shift in emphasis make PIDG more of a plot point than a central theme. Intriguingly, a different, but closely related issue, bubbles up in its place.
Top Clothing Lines Downsize Plus-Size Offerings
Which clothing lines are belt-tightening during the shrinking economy.
Women in the market for plus-size clothing may have a harder time finding what they're looking for, according to a recent article at Crain's New York. Several clothing manufactures have trimmed or even eliminated their plus-size offerings, while many have moved their larger lines, generally considered to be sizes 16 and up, to an online-only basis.
Popular women's clothing lines such as Bloomingdale's, Liz Claiborne, Ann Taylor, and Ellen Tracy are among those cutting their plus-size offerings, citing falling demand as the primary reason. "From March 2008 to March 2009, sales of plus-size apparel fell 8 percent, while sales of standard sizes only fell 2 percent," reports one New York article.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, neither obesity levels in the U.S. nor the average weight of U.S. women (163 lbs.) is decreasing. So why are plus-size women buying not only less than they used to, but also less than their size-14-and-under counterparts? One reason, offered by "plus-size expert" Catherine Schuller, is that many plus-size women are homemakers and cannot afford to spend a lot of money on clothes. I couldn't find any statistics on average weights of stay-at-home women versus those who work outside of the home, but regardless, Schuller's explanation doesn't seem to fit.
Continue reading "Top Clothing Lines Downsize Plus-Size Offerings" »
When a Pro-Life Blogger Goes Too Far
The case of 'April's Mom' is less an indictment on the pro-life movement and more the story of a deeply pained woman.
Last Sunday night, a popular pro-life blogger known as "April's Mom" or "B" posted the tragic news: Her newborn daughter, whom she had carried to term though diagnosed with a terminal case of Trisomy 13 and HPE, had died hours after a difficult home birth. This marked the end of the nine-month journey she had shared with the world on her blog, Little One April, where she chronicled her struggles, pains, and hopes as she traveled the journey many would have ended after such devastating news. She wrote often of the centrality of her Christian faith and pro-life values to her decision and motivation, and filled her posts with Bible verses and Christian music. Her readers lauded her courage, prayed for God to save the baby, and sent gifts anticipating her arrival: a baby hat, a pair of little shoes, a hair bow, a crocheted blanket. Pro-life bloggers rallied around this embodiment of the cause, linking to the blog and adding "Pray for April Rose" buttons to their own.
It could have ended there, but "April's mom" decided to post a picture of the baby, a picture that was quickly identified by some readers as not a baby at all, but a "Reborn doll," a vinyl toy made to look like a real newborn. The entire story quickly unraveled; April's mom was actually 26-year-old social worker Rebecca Beushausen, a Chicago-area woman who had not been pregnant at all, though she had lost a child in 2005.
All that is left of the blog now is an apology - and a media mess. In her final post, Beushausen wrote, "I am a Christian and while I wrote many of my posts under dishonest contexts, the God I shared with all of you and wrote about is still God; the Creator or life, Father and Savior. I hope to regain my relationship back with Him, fully, myself." She went on to apologize for her actions - she never intended for anyone outside her immediate circle to find or read the blog - and to link readers to a site for families actually dealing with T13 pregnancies.
So why did this happen? Beushausen told the Chicago Tribune that "I've always liked writing. It was addictive to find out I had a voice that people wanted to hear. Soon I was getting 100,000 hits a week, and it just got out of hand. I didn't know how to stop. . . . One lie led to another." But there's no hiding on the Internet; though Beushausen scrambled to remove the blog, along with its accompanying Twitter and Facebook pages, when it became clear she had blown her cover, the details of her identity came spilling out over the blogosphere and then the national news over the course of a few days.
The Downside of Hooking Up
The message of 'female sexual liberation' comes with a cost.
In 1980, Roger Ebert reviewed a coming-of-age movie called Little Darlings. The movie starred Tatum O'Neil and Kristy McNichol as summer campers who embark on a bet to see who can lose their virginity first. Kristy was taught by her mother that sex is nothing more than a biological function. About her on-screen deflowering, Ebert wrote this:
"It was not, of course, quite like she expected it to be. She sits quietly in a corner of a deserted summer cottage, her thoughts a million miles away from her teen-age boyfriend. At last she says, "I feel so lonely." The feelings implied in that single line are completely true to the scene and to the character. Kristy is lonely because she has suddenly and rather unhappily passed on from the ranks of pubescent girls. She is now an individual, possessed of the sometimes uncomfortable freedom to make decisions. Sexual intercourse, she tells the boy, "made me feel like you could see right through me." She slept with him for childish reasons, but now, we feel, she will never approach the decision so casually again."
That was nearly three decades ago.
Fast forward to June 2009. NPR reports the now-old news that young people are "hooking up" rather than dating. The reasons, according to "experts" cited in this article, include delayed marriage, fragmented lives that make young people skittish about intimacy, women's sexual empowerment, and social media.
Hooking up reportedly emerged in the 1960s and '70s out of the worst idea ever: co-ed campus housing. Back then it was called casual sex or one-night stands, which stilled carried a stigma, at least for women.
Is it a Sin to Nip and Tuck?
Cosmetic surgery may be one more manifestation of Paul's warning about self-improvement.
"Beauty often wins love. It just does," write Karen Lee-Thorp and Cynthia Hicks in Why Beauty Matters. No wonder women and, increasingly, men are willing to endure the pain and risk of elective cosmetic surgery to attain it. New York Times reporter Alex Kaczynski states it bluntly in her cosmetic surgery expose, Beauty Junkies. "In the end it all comes down to sex. . . . We are looking for love. And we will accept lust."
Few admit this with the aplomb of Cena Rasmussen, a former model who readily confesses that her cosmetic surgery addiction was fueled by the bliss of turning heads. By her own admission, Rasmussen has spent years looking in the mirror. Aesthetic surgery was a biannual ritual that continued for two decades. There were rhinoplasties, breast surgeries, lifts - eyes, face, neck - and non-surgical procedures as well.
Although she had medical complications along the way, her regimen ended with a hyalauronic acid peel in 1999 that burned the skin on her face so badly, she says it left her looking like a "freak of nature." Since then, Rasmussen has had nothing but $4,000 worth of laser treatments to reduce the scarring. Still, she remains undaunted and is planning another facelift - her third, or is it the fourth? She can't recall.
Rasmussen may represent an extreme in the use of cosmetic surgery, but the trend saw no signs of slowing until the economic crisis. In 2006, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons reported that Americans spent just under $12.2 billion on 11.5 million surgical and non-surgical procedures. That's a 446 percent increase from 1997. Surgical procedures increased by 98 percent, and nonsurgical procedures by 747 percent. Liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgery, abdominoplasty (tummy tuck), and breast reduction were the top surgical procedures that year, while Botox injections, hyalauronic acid, laser hair removal, microdermabrasion (skin peel), and laser skin resurfacing were the most popular non-surgical techniques.
So is it a sin to get a nip and tuck? It depends on whom you ask.
Sonia Sotomayor: 'I Feel Your Pain'
Why the new judge's empathy — extended to more than just Latina women — will serve the Supreme Court well.
Women: Imagine you've been having problems with pre-menstrual depression or unpleasant menopausal symptoms. Men: Imagine you're having problems that are probably prostate-related, or maybe you're having trouble getting it up. All else being equal (though of course it never is), would you rather see a male or a female physician?
Empathy matters. That's why I'm not worried about the line from Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's 2001 lecture, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Yes, she needs to explain what she did and did not mean - and I'm sure she'll be given the opportunity to do so. Chances are, she did not mean that she would toss objective law out the window whenever a Latina woman walked into the courtroom. After all, in 1997 Sotomayor told Senator Jeff Sessions, "I do not believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it."
And I'm guessing Sotomayor didn't mean she thinks that, all things being equal, Anglo-Saxon men make inferior judges. In the 2001 lecture, in fact, she said she believes "that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable."
The point is, all things are never equal, and with a diversified set of justices, unconscious prejudices - whether on the part of white males, Latina females, black males, Jewish females, or anyone else - inevitably are held up to the light.
Introducing Julia Duin
And her untold story of women who choose not to abort their handicapped infants.
I'm very grateful to have been asked to join the list of contributors to Her.meneutics. I work as a full-time religion reporter, but I also veer off into related topics, such as a piece I did for Mother's Day on women who decide not to abort their handicapped children.
I got the idea for that article the way I get ideas for most of my columns and news articles: I get around, I talk with people, I experience things. I was hearing from various pro-life women about genetics counselors from hell who, once they learn you are pregnant with a deformed child, are on you in two seconds to abort. Which is why many such women were patronizing Catholic hospitals and clinics, where they knew they would not be pressured to get rid of their child. I looked into the matter and found a pile of websites and sources - many of them from women who chose to bear such children - geared to support difficult pregnancies. One thing I like to do in my work is highlight a group or point of view that doesn't often get mentioned in the media, so I embarked on learning what it's like to bear a child, only to have him or her die that same day.
The parents in my story all said they were so glad to have continued their pregnancies, because at least they had photos of these children to carry with them forever. With an abortion, there are no photos.
I had encountered parents of such children back in the mid-1990s during the partial-birth abortion debates on Capitol Hill. I met parents who had been told they needed a horrific third-term abortion, only to learn that their child's health was not terminal. One couple hoisted a boy about 10 months old who had some of his organs outside his body when he was born. Yes, his tummy looked like a train track, but medics managed to reinsert his organs, and he was a healthy child. That's when I realized that genetics counselors often tell parents to abort such boys.
What to Do with Smoking Moms
New research makes me reexamine smoking as a women's issue, and question when it's time to speak up.
The other day, a friend of mine was telling me about a recent trip she took to the park with her preschoolers.
"Two women were sitting on the bench by the slide, chain-smoking," she complained. "They must've gone through an entire pack in the time we were there."
"I would have said something," I told my friend. A park may be a public, outdoor place, but I still don't want people blowing smoke all over my children. Neither does my friend.
"But they had their own kids," she added.
Oh. That complicates things. While I might have the guts to ask a stranger not to smoke near my children, especially given that my youngest is only two months old, what if the stranger is also a parent? Suddenly my request smacks of one-upmanship - or should I say, one-upmomship, that smug, I'm-a-better-mother-than-you attitude that turns my stomach. Is there a way to ask another mother not to smoke near your children, without implicitly accusing her of being a bad mom?
I'm not sure that there is. "I probably wouldn't have said anything," I finally concluded.
Coincidentally, that afternoon I read a Chicago Sun-Times article about a study that found that smoking is more harmful to women than it is to men: "A study presented Monday at the American Thoracic Society's annual meeting in San Diego found that women developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at an earlier age and after fewer years of smoking than men." The article reports that women smokers have a greater loss of lung function, again even after fewer years of smoking, than their male counterparts. Researchers are looking both at lung size - women have smaller lungs - and at hormones, specifically estrogen, to try and understand why.
When Childbirth Means Risking Your Life
Midwives may be one major factor in offsetting Africa's high maternal mortality rate.
"Pregnancy and childbirth kill more than 536,000 women a year, more than half of them in Africa," writes Denise Grady from Tanzania in the May 24, 2009, New York Times. Her article, "Where Life's Start Is a Deadly Risk," contrasts the World Health Organization's (WHO) estimate of Tanzania's maternal mortality rate - 950 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births - with Ireland's: 1 per 100,000.
In other words, a Tanzanian woman has a 1 in 24 lifetime risk of dying in childbirth; an Irish woman's risk is 1 in 47,600. (U.S. statistics, which you can check at the WHO website: a mortality rate of 11 deaths per 100,000 births, with a 1 in 4,800 lifetime risk.)
"The women who die are usually young and healthy, and their deaths needless," Grady writes. "The five leading causes are bleeding, infection, high blood pressure, prolonged labor and botched abortions."
Most women give birth at home (50%) or in local clinics (30%), going to a hospital - sometimes by bicycle! - only when they have been in labor for days and realize they need a caesarean. Because hospitals are understaffed and overcrowded, the surgery may be performed by a physician's assistant, and the woman may end up sharing a twin bed with another woman. This is scary enough to read about, but the shock value is even higher in the series of 21 photos, "Childbirth in Tanzania," accompanying the article.
Continue reading "When Childbirth Means Risking Your Life" »
Obama's Kinder, Gentler Culture War
At Notre Dame this weekend, President Obama seemed to forget the indelible pain of having an abortion.
I didn't see this one coming. K. and I had been talking about her sex life. We had arranged to meet before a sexual abstinence event at a church in Michigan. I was there interviewing young people for a book project on evangelical abstinence campaigns, and K. travels the country with an organization that promotes waiting for sex until marriage. K. is an attractive, gregarious young woman in her early 20s, but her easy laugh belied her deeper pain.
I had asked her about her previous dating relationships and what led her to commit to abstinence. What began as a tale of sexual escapades quickly devolved into a heartbreaking story of abortion. As can often be the case in the complex tangle of life, she wanted the baby, but at the same time she didn't. Her much-older boyfriend had left the cash for the procedure on the dresser. She bled for quite a bit afterward, and through her tears told me that she had found a fragment that looked like a small hand on the floor of her bathroom. It had happened a few years ago, but the pain was still fresh. She had been eleven weeks pregnant at the time. My eyes filled with tears, threatening to shatter my objective researcher posture, as I tried to nonchalantly continue taking notes. I instinctively touched my belly - I was eleven weeks pregnant myself.
Stories like K.'s often get lost in the vitriolic rhetoric surrounding abortion. President Obama's abortion rhetoric in his commencement address at the University of Notre Dame yesterday is a small step in the right direction. "How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?" Obama asked the graduates. But what about individuals like K. who are implicated by the rhetoric without holding strong convictions of their own?
President Obama's appearance at Notre Dame has sparked controversy and protests in recent weeks, but not as much as one might expect from an ostensibly pro-life Catholic institution. A recent poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests that Catholics are little different from the rest of the population: For both groups, about half had not even heard of the Notre Dame controversy. Perhaps a sign of battle fatigue in the decades-old culture wars?
A Weighty Issue
The church's silence on food addiction is ignoring sin — and hurting women.
Years of women being taught to develop a positive body image may actually be hurting them. A recent study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology surveyed 81 Philadelphia-area women who fell along all points on the body mass index scale. Conducted by Marisa Rose at the Temple University School of Medicine, the study found that, as the women's body mass index increased, two-thirds of them said they still believed they were at an ideal body size. When asked to pick out an ideal body shape from a series of silhouettes, 20 percent of the women categorized as obese chose an overweight or obese model.
This study points to the body-image confusion that has surfaced over and against Western culture's unhealthy emphasis on thinness as the ultimate feminine asset (e.g., the recent gossip about Jessica Simpson's pants size). The debate pits those who advocate health against those who preach unwavering self-acceptance, isolating the two as mutually exclusive. And Christian women often face an added, more complicated dimension as thinness becomes associated with moral purity.
As any woman who struggles with weight issues can well attest, finding a balance between loving yourself and changing bad habits can be psychological turmoil. I grew up bombarded by images of impossible thinness in ads and on TV, but at every turn - at school, at home, and at church - these standards were countered by messages of self-acceptance, even celebration. "We should be happy and proud to be who we are," I was told. "Don't let anyone make you feel bad about the way you look!" I internalized the messages all too well; for me, as I suspect it is for many others, the cycle of food addiction is deeply emotional and linked to my most essential understanding of self. Many of us have so successfully developed a sense of self-acceptance that we cannot find the motivation to break bad and potentially dangerous habits; to gain one would be to lose the other.
Q+A: Kaffie McCullough on Craigslist
A top advocate for stopping child prostitution is skeptical about Craigslist's decision to pull its 'erotic services' ads.
The same feature that has made Craigslist so popular - namely, unlimited free advertising - has brought the decade-old website under heavy criticism for providing unmonitored forums for prostitution in its 570 city hubs. After several state representatives met with Craigslist attorneys Wednesday, the site agreed to remove its "erotic services" section and replace it with an "adult services" section, in which posts will cost $5-10 and be manually reviewed by staff before going up.
While adding oversight to the free-for-all forum is an improvement, it's simply not enough - especially for stopping the sexual exploitation of children. Kaffie McCullough, who for eight years has led a statewide campaign to stop the prostitution of children in Georgia, is one skeptic. Her initiative, the Atlanta-based A Future. Not a Past. program, a wing of the Juvenile Justice Fund, released a study just this week on Craigslist and child prostitution. It showed that out of the 334 known adolescent girls in Georgia's sex trade, about 53 percent are advertised through Craigslist's erotic services section - what McCullough calls the "ground zero for pimps to profit from children." Further, the number of girls being pimped on Craigslist rose dramatically from November 2008 (100 girls) to February 2009 (176).
McCullough spoke recently with blog editor Katelyn Beaty about Craigslist's decision.
What was your response to yesterday's announcement?
I'm grateful that Craigslist is trying to monitor what's happening, because their erotic services [section] was clearly a place where young girls were being prostituted. I have mixed feelings as to whether this is going to work. I'd want to know what they mean when they say they're going to "monitor" it. And without training staff, for instance, the research that we've been doing since August 2007 says that people were not accurate when they'd make estimates as to whether somebody is young or not. I'd like to think Craigslist would be open to having training so that staff can screen more effectively.
I realize that all of this makes it harder for the perpetrators, but . . . the reality is that even if Craigslist had totally taken it down, that wouldn't stop the problem of the prostitution of children - it would just spring up somewhere else.
Donald Trump Says Miss California Can Keep the Crown
But will conservative Christians continue to put her on a pedestal?
If you haven't had enough of Miss California yet, she's still reigning in the news today. Donald Trump, owner of the Miss USA pageant, says Carrie Prejean can keep her crown, even after more racy photos were released online this morning.
A gossip site has posted more pictures of Prejean, some of which are topless. Trump called many of the pictures "lovely."
"We have determined that the pictures taken are fine," he said. "Some were very beautiful, some were risque, but, again, we're in the 21st century. . . . In many cases they were actually lovely pictures."
Trump and Prejean reminded the press at a news conference today that both she and President Obama oppose same-sex marriage. Several conservative Christian groups have praised Carrie Prejean for saying during the pageant that she is against same-sex marriage.
But Ben Smith writes that at the press conference, Carrie Prejean put some distance between herself and the movement, saying she stood by her beliefs but didn't plan to make a career of them.
"I am not working for the National Organization for Marriage. I spent about an hour with them," she said. Politico posted a short video from the news conference:
In an ad for USA Today, Focus on the Family asks "What would you sacrifice for your beliefs?"
Continue reading "Donald Trump Says Miss California Can Keep the Crown" »
Never Been Kissed
The Virgin Lips movement, and shades of ‘how far is too far?’
It turns out that Susan Boyle has been kissed. But her earlier claim that she hadn't was met with disbelief. So, too, are pre-20th century European mores, when premarital kissing was forbidden. Can you think of a recent historical movie where the hero and heroine didn't kiss before their wedding? Is it even possible?
Well, yes. It's more than possible. Some people have never been kissed without ever having decided against kissing. Others, like the Virgin Lips Movement, which The Tennessean recently profiled, are saying that premarital kissing is a morality issue for Christians.
The article starts off with Katy Kruger's wedding day, where she kisses for the first time in front of 200 guests. "I wasn't sure what to do . . . I thought I would mess up," she told The Tennessean. It turned out just fine.
The University of Missouri?Columbia's student newspaper also published an essay on the movement, which emphasized that the idea isn't that weird.
Al Mohler writes that not kissing before wedding is an admirable decision, given our culture:
In the space of little more than a single generation, we have seen the breaking down of virtually every social and cultural support for sexual abstinence. Arousal and intimacy come with the romantic longing that marks the deepening relationship between a man and a woman. Young couples no longer court on the porch swing with the girl's parents sitting inside and very close at hand. Now, most young couples face the temptation of romantic contexts in which intimacy - and this means sexual intimacy - is a likely outcome.
The Virgin Lips Movement represents a serious effort to push back against this expectation and to create boundaries that will protect virtue and honor marriage.
The Tennessean's article mentions the usual objections to purity pledges: if you haven't, you won't know whether you and your fianc? have chemistry; if you try and fail, you'll feel terrible; purity shouldn't be a goal the way earning a bachelor's degree should. Idealists are unlikely to base their decisions on arguments like that.
Instead, they are likely to respond to I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. The Tennessean calls it "the Virgin Lips Movement bible."
Women Benefit from Health-Care Overhaul
The failing industry says it will stop charging women at higher premium rates than it charges men.
In an attempt to stave off a major federal overhaul of the $2.5 trillion health-care industry, health-insurance companies agreed yesterday to stop insuring women at higher premium rates than they do men.
Karen Ignagni, president of the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, testified before the Senate Finance Committee that she doesn't think gender should factor into rates for individual policies. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) likewise introduced a bill that would prevent health insurance companies from considering sex in setting policy premiums.
"The disparity between women and men in the individual insurance market is just plain wrong, and it has to change," said Sen. Kerry, whose proposed bill also bars insurers from denying or limiting coverage based on a woman's "pregnancy status or delivery method." "With Mother's Day around the corner," he said, "there's no better gift to American women than discrimination-free, affordable and accessible insurance that meets their health needs."
Two-thirds of women in the U.S. ages 18 to 64 are medically insured through their employers, and so are already protected by federal and state laws that bar employer plans from setting premium rates based on gender, race, or poor health. It's the 5.7 million women, often self-employed, who buy insurance in the individual market that are most vulnerable for being charged at rates higher than men for similar policies.
Continue reading "Women Benefit from Health-Care Overhaul" »
Miss CA Becomes Ad Spokeswoman for Traditional Marriage
Meanwhile, two pageant directors say they paid for Prejean's breast implants weeks before Miss USA.
Carrie Prejean, who received hearty praise from conservative Christian groups for her statement on same-sex marriage in the Miss USA beauty pageant, is appearing in a TV ad for the National Organization for Marriage, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit led by Maggie Gallagher and Princeton University professor Robert George.
Prejean went on the Today show Thursday to defend her decision. "You know what, Matt, I never thought in a million years that this would be happening right now. I was attacked for giving my own opinion on stage at a Miss USA contest. I'm gonna do whatever it takes, Matt, to protect marriage. It's something that's very dear to my heart."
The Senates in both New Hampshire and Maine passed bills this week that would legalize same-sex marriage if the respective House of Representatives approves them. The New England states would become the fifth and sixth in the country to legalize gay marriage.
Meanwhile, two Miss USA pageant directors told celebrity gossip show Access Hollywood Wednesday that Prejean received breast implants - paid for by the Miss California Organization - six weeks before the Miss USA contest. Shanna Moekler, co-director of the organization, said in the interview, "Breast implants in pageants is not a rarity. It's definitely not taboo. It's very common. Breast implants today among young women today is very common."
Continue reading "Miss CA Becomes Ad Spokeswoman for Traditional Marriage" »
Going Undercover to Expose Planned Parenthood
Lila Rose's pro-life activism may be breaking state privacy laws. But does it matter?
The Los Angeles Times recently profiled a college student who videotapes counseling sessions at Planned Parenthood clinics to expose potential wrongdoings.
Lila Rose, a 20-year-old UCLA history major, has led her group Live Action to videotape clinics in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Bloomington, Tucson, Phoenix, and Memphis. In the following video, she poses as a 13-year-old impregnated by an older man.
"OK," the aide says, "I didn't hear the age. I don't want to know the age. It could be reported as rape. And that's child abuse."
"So if I just say I don't know who the father was, but he's one of the guys at school or something?" asks the girl.
"Right," says the aide.
Robin Abcarian writes that the nurse's aide seen on the tape was fired and a second staffer resigned.
The videos are also making an impact in other states, according to United Press International:
In Tennessee, legislators said Wednesday that they will try to cut off a $721,000 contract with Planned Parenthood, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. The legislators were inspired by a video made by Lila Rose, 20, a student at UCLA who posed as a minor seeking an abortion at a clinic in Memphis. Orange County, Calif., supervisors last month rescinded a $300,000 grant for sex education. A conservative businessman who had met Rose raised objections to the grant.
The UPI story is unclear, however, whether Rose was breaking state laws while she was video taping.
Continue reading "Going Undercover to Expose Planned Parenthood" »
A Campaign for (Kind of) Real Beauty
"Real" fashion models may present as many problems as their hyper-stylized counterparts.
Over the past week, I have mentioned the April issue of French Elle - whose cover features European celebrities without makeup or Photoshop retouching - to nearly every woman I know. Each of them has echoed the sentiments ringing from every corner of the fem-blogosphere: "What a refreshing response," they say, "to the airbrush culture that has become synonymous with American fashion magazines." "How great it is," they gush, "that we can celebrate natural beauty and provide a healthier standard for women."
But Matthew Yglesias of The Atlantic questions the assumption that the "Stars Sans Fards" (translation: "without rouge") on Elle's cover are somehow more "real" or even more "empowering" than the typical fare. He even considers this a step back:
A lot of people have done a lot of work over the years to get people to understand that images you see on magazine covers are not images of actual human beings. They're complicated collaborations between photographers, hairstylists, makeup people, and digital image-retouchers that use real people as an important element of source material. The results have an extremely vivid hyperreal quality to them that we intuitively respond to as if we're just looking at pictures of people, but we can come to understand what's really happening and that nobody ought to beat themselves up over not looking like a computer-retouched image.
So, now that we have "real" models to compare ourselves to - models who are still abnormally beautiful, professionally styled, and photographed in flattering light - might this standard of beauty be just as harmful as its hyper-stylized counterpart?
The Other Miss California Controversy
Carrie Prejean might have stood up for Christian sexual ethics by skipping the Miss USA pageant altogether.
By the time a story like Miss California's has been covered on blogs and in tweets for three days, it seems like old news. On Tuesday, the editors at Her.meneutics discussed how to cover 21-year-old Carrie Prejean's answer to celebrity blogger Perez Hilton's question about same-sex marriage in the Miss USA pageant Sunday. At first the story seemed to offer too much hype and not enough meat. But of course, the mere fact that Prejean's answer - which more or less conveyed what many U.S. citizens still believe about marriage and family - got so much attention is the story.
When Hilton, who is gay, asked the politically charged question, "Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or not?" Prejean answered, "We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite [marriage]. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."
After Hilton went on a slandering blogging and Twitter rant, and Prejean told several media sources that her answer had cost her the crown, many Christian media lionized Prejean for standing up for biblical convictions in the face of public scrutiny. The Family Research Council's Tony Perkins released a statement Wednesday saying, "Put simply, Miss Prejean is right: Marriage can only occur between one man and one woman. Mr. Hilton absurdly wants to translate his opposition to this truth into a standard for beauty pageants." Gary Bauer, president of American Values, apparently sent an e-mail blast Monday saying, "The backlash to Prejean's commonsense comments demonstrates the naked intolerance of the militant homosexual movement . . . And if it gets its way in Congress, comments like [hers] may someday be considered a ?hate crime.' " Even State Rep. Jay Love, R-Montgomery, a Christian, has drafted a resolution supporting Prejean. It states, "Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the Legislature of Alabama that Carrie Prejean . . . is honored for affirming her faith and standing true to her beliefs . . .".
What has surprised me about the Christian media's response is a seemingly inconsistent sexual ethic at play: Celebrating Prejean as the lone voice for biblical convictions in a public square where it's now bigoted to oppose same-sex marriage, while never questioning if a Christian woman like Prejean should be participating in the Miss USA pageant in the first place.
FDA Accepts Ruling, Minors to Have Access to Morning-After Pill
The Obama administration further sealed the deal that girls 17 and older will be able to purchase the "morning-after pill" without a prescription.
The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it would accept a federal judge's ruling that lifts the Bush administration's restrictions that limited sales of the pill to women 18 and older. The judge also told the agency to evaluate whether all age restrictions should be lifted.
"The morning after pill," or Plan B, reduces the chance of pregnancy by preventing fertilization or implantation of a fertilized egg.
Continue reading "FDA Accepts Ruling, Minors to Have Access to Morning-After Pill" »
Is There Such a Thing as Too Many Children?
Questions linger as last of Nadya Suleman's octuplets heads home.
The last of Nadya Suleman's octuplets has been discharged from the hospital and is now at home with his family. Following a three-month stay at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower, California, Jonah Angel Suleman - who weighed only a pound and a half at birth - now weighs just over four and a half pounds and has been deemed strong enough to survive outside the hospital.
The Suleman babies' hospital stay may be over, but the many questions raised by their birth - questions about in-vitro fertilization, medical ethics, single parenting, and welfare, just to name a few - are still raging.
Nadya Suleman, 33, has become a familiar face online as the single mother of 14 children, the oldest of whom is seven. All of her children were conceived, Suleman states, through in-vitro fertilization. Amid talk that Suleman will soon be starring in her own reality show, is trademarking the name Octomom, and has cost the La Habra police department $4,000 in overtime fees for watching over her family since their move to the neighborhood in March, it's hard to sort out my feelings from the furor.
Continue reading "Is There Such a Thing as Too Many Children?" »
Strip-Searched Girl Heads to Supreme Court
How far can a public school go in an anti-drug campaign without violating students' rights to privacy? That's the question heading to the U.S. Supreme Court next Tuesday, when it will hear the case of Savana Redding, who, as a 13-year-old at Safford Middle School in 2003, was strip-searched by a nurse and administrative aide after another student said she had received Ibuprofen pills from Redding.
Joan Biskupic of USA Today reports:
"I went into the nurse's office and kept following what they asked me to do," Savana, now 19, recalls of the incident six years ago that she says still leaves her shaken and humiliated. "I thought, 'What could I be in trouble for?' "
That morning, another student had been caught with prescription-strength ibuprofen and had told the assistant principal, Kerry Wilson, that she'd gotten the pills from Savana. The nurse and administrative assistant, both women, were alone with Savana in the nurse's office when they asked the girl to take off her shoes and socks, then her shirt and pants. The two women then asked Savana to pull open her bra and panties so they could see whether she was hiding any pills. None was found.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled 6-5 against the Safford school district, concluding, "At minimum, Assistant Principal Wilson [who ordered the strip search] should have conducted additional investigation to corroborate [the] 'tip' before directing Savana into the nurse's office for disrobing." The school district had portrayed itself as being on the frontlines of fighting student drug use, citing a 2006 report from the Office of National Drug Control Policy that said more than 2 million American teens abused prescription drugs the previous year, and that teens ages 12-17 abused prescription drugs more than any other except marijuana.
Continue reading "Strip-Searched Girl Heads to Supreme Court" »
Test Tube Ethics
Some couples pay the hefty price of storing frozen embryos, despite increasing pressure to donate them for scientific research.
President Obama's March 9 decision to open up federal funding to previously unapproved stem-cell lines has brought the related issue of frozen embryos back into the national conversation. Bob Smietana at The Tennessean recently reported on couples who choose to keep embryos in storage despite increasing pressure to give excess embryos for research purposes. Smietana says an estimated 500,000 embryos are frozen in storage - "leftovers" from in-vitro fertilization. Some are being saved for possible implantation, while some are kept because the donors cannot bear to have them destroyed or given away.
Breast-feed, If You Can Afford To
Judith Warner's April 2 New York Times op-ed piece, "Ban the Breast Pump," is sure to stir up a hornet's nest: Warner comments favorably on Hanna Rosin's "The Case Against Breast-Feeding" in the April Atlantic.
A La Leche League enthusiast in the early 1970s, I expected to disagree with Warner. I nursed my two babies for a year apiece, and I was a lot like Rosin's Mama-Nazi playground pals even though I'm at least as old as their mothers. So I was surprised at how much I appreciated Warner's viewpoint, especially this insightful question:
Why, as a society, have we privileged the magic elixir of maternal milk over actual maternal contact, denying the vast, vast majority of mothers the kind of extended maternity leave that would make them physically present for their babies?
As both authors point out, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months - that is, no water, no supplements, no formula, no additional food - and breastfeeding with other foods for the next six months, or longer.
That's easy for the pediatricians to say.
Trouble is, more than half of American mothers of infants work outside the home, and America is one of only five countries in the world that do not guarantee new mothers any paid leave (the others are Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea).
Right now the European Union is pressing member countries to extend fully paid leave from 14 to 18 weeks. By contrast, as the Institute for Women's Policy Research reported in August 2007, "only 8 percent of workers [in the United States] have paid family leave to care for newborns and other family members." Even the companies ranked among the 100 best by Working Mother magazine offer considerably less leave than needed by nursing mothers: over half allow six weeks or less.
Is anyone wondering why so many mothers feel guilty most of the time? When they're not too tired to feel anything at all?
Why Melissa Rogers Signed the Health Care Workers Document
Dozens of religious leaders met in Washington with members of Obama's administration last week to go over policy issues. Right before the meetings began, the White House also announced the full Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. One of those members included Melissa Rogers, director of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity Center for Religion and Public Affairs, who joined the council to make sure partnerships between faith-based groups and the government would be constitutionally sound. I recently asked her about the council and why she signed the statement on conscience protections that Katelyn wrote about last week.
Why did you sign the statement urging the Obama administration on conscience protections for health workers? Do you think it will be effective?
First, a bit of background. There are specific conscience protections for health-care workers in federal statutory law. These statutes will continue to exist no matter the outcome of the administrative process - an administrative agency cannot undo federal statutes. The administrative process asked whether a Bush regulation dealing with these issues should be rescinded or retained.
Continue reading "Why Melissa Rogers Signed the Health Care Workers Document" »
Christians Urge Obama to Keep Conscience Clause
Today is the last day for arguments supporting medical workers' right to refuse to provide care that violates their conscience.
Among those speaking up are evangelicals who belong to Obama's own faith advisory group: Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland Church in Florida, Melissa Rogers, director of Wake Forest Divinity School's Center for Religion and Public Affairs, and Jim Wallis of Sojourners. According to Michelle Boorstein over at The Washington Post's God in Government blog, these three were part of a group who signed a document calling for the Obama administration to "reaffirm its commitment to decades-old federal laws meant to offer some ?conscience' protections," and to indicate what Obama plans to replace the clause with, if anything. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Catholic law professor Doug Kmiec also signed the document.
Continue reading "Christians Urge Obama to Keep Conscience Clause" »
Your Responses: AIDS in Uganda
Part Two of 'Meanwhile, What about the Women and Children?'
The initial success of the ABC (Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms) program in Uganda was dramatic, with the HIV prevalence rate dropping from 15 percent in 1991 to 5 percent in 2000. (See Avert's lengthy analysis here.) I completely agree with Edward C. Green's statement that "condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa" (emphasis mine) - the primary approach must be based on abstinence and fidelity, because the epidemic in Africa spreads through a vast web of "ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships."
However, I also agree with Green's statement that "all people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship." This indeed is how condoms were used in Uganda in the nineties: "The number of condoms delivered and promoted by international groups rose from 1.5 million in 1992 to nearly 10 million in 1996."
Meanwhile, What about the Women and Children?
On March 18, my friend Tim Morgan posted an article on Christianity Today's Liveblog called "Why the Pope Is Right about Condoms and HIV in Africa." "You can't resolve [the AIDS crisis] with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the plane heading to Yaound?. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."
Maybe the pope had to say that. He's a spiritual leader, and it's his job description to hold up the ideal, no matter how difficult it may be to fulfill in real life. Certainly sexual abstinence and fidelity are the best ways to prevent the spread of HIV. But such either-or idealism may be harmful to millions of people whose morality is exactly what the pope prescribes - the faithful wives and innocent children of HIV-infected men.
According to international AIDS charity Avert, in 2007, 22 million people were living with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Only 37 percent of these were men (defined by the survey as males over the age of 15). Women made up 55 percent of the total, and children the other 8 percent. Another grim statistic: 11.6 million children under the age of 18 had lost one or both parents to AIDS.
Continue reading "Meanwhile, What about the Women and Children?" »
Faith, Fashion, and Forever 21
The skimpy tops and flirty miniskirts on sale at Forever 21, a cheap-chic mega-retailer known for its runway knockoffs and rock-bottom prices, seem to have more in common with Paris and Milan than the local church.
Owners Don and Jin Chang have built a fashion empire on two principles that don't often get mentioned in the same breath: fashion and faith. The Changs attend church daily, give generously to their church, and attend mission trips. In May they will launch Faith 21, a plus-sized version of their flagship store. This new venture embraces overt language of faith in an industry that generally steers clear of the potentially polarizing issue.
But what does it really mean to be a Christian retailer? Forever 21 is known for producing less-than-modest clothes, though in recent years more professional and mid-market garments have found their way onto the shelves alongside the tank tops and miniskirts that define the brand's image. The retailer has been criticized by the fashion industry for blatantly ripping off runway designs (US copyright law only protects logos and brand names) and their styles often end up on racks before the higher-end originals as they rush the typically months-long process from sketch to store into just a few weeks.
'Morning-After Pill' to Become Available to Minors
A federal judge ruled today that the Food and Drug Administration must allow company sell the "morning-after pill" to 17-year-olds without a prescription. U.S. District Judge Edward Korman also ordered the feds to consider expanding access to women of all ages.
Plan B, also known as "the morning after pill," reduces the chance of pregnancy if taken within three days after sex. It prevents ovulation or fertilization or implantation of a fertilized egg, which some people consider to be equivalent to an abortion.
Articles about the decision from the Associated Press, Washington Post, and U.S. News & World Report offer only positive quotes about the ruling. Conservative groups released statement criticizing the ruling for endangering parental rights.
"Given legitimate concerns about the safety of self-medicating with Plan B, it is incomprehensible that we would allow a minor to walk into any pharmacy and obtain this drug without medical oversight or parental involvement," Charmaine Yoest, President & CEO of Americans United for Life said in a statement.
Continue reading "'Morning-After Pill' to Become Available to Minors" »
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