The Fourth Amendment and American Va-Jay-Jay

In a house with three women, my male housemate swore up down and sideways that every Sunday without fail, we'd end up talking about our periods, usually around the dinner table. Well, it's Sunday, and I think it's time to talk 'bout some 'ginas.

The New York Times was chock full of 'em this week, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling on "partial birth" abortions as well as a new drug, assumed to be approved by the FDA shortly, that will allow women to forgo menstruating all together. What would women have to talk about on Sundays? Nothing follows "Hey, did you catch Cheney on Meet The Press?" quite like, "Yeah, I did -- but I was distracted because I've commenced my menses."

You don't have to have The Red Tent on your bookshelf to know that periods tend to make people squeamish, uncomfortable, etc. As Stephanie Saul rather weakly put it in her article, "Views about menstruation have long been mixed." No matter how Pro-Choice you are, abortion procedures and their intricacies will always be some degree of macabre. If these subjects are so unpalatable, what's with the sudden spotlight?

Oddly enough, that spotlight is about privacy. In the constitution, it's about the penumbras of privacy, as there is no literal right to it. Rather, in the fourth amendment, we have the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects." When in doubt, I always turn to the West Wing to show me the way:

"20's and 30's it was the role of government. 50's and 60's it was civil rights. The next 20 years it will be about privacy. The Internet. Cell phones. Health records. And who's gay and who's not. Besides, in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?"

Sorkin might use nine words where two will do, but he's frequently right. Don't believe him? Well, there's a federal agency posting social security numbers online, the NYPD spying on American citizens across the country before the Republican Nation Convention in 2004 (and still keeping their secrets), not to mention the biggie: Bush's domestic spying program.

What on earth could be more private than your body? I'll spare readers the mumbo jumbo of your body being your temple, or a wonderland or whatever, but when we impose legislation on a woman's body, we traverse the line that delineates human beings from objects. Thus, restricting the choices a consenting adult woman has for her body is the ultimate form of the objectification of women. Granted, we seem to have a paradoxically strong apathy about the objectification of women, but seen within this larger context, I think people will start to pay a little more attention.

The right for women to have free will where their bodies are concerned is not just a woman's issue, that loathed, smirked-at category, but one example of a larger issue that will affect all Americans, male, female and everything in between, as we move into an age where everything about us will be observed and noted. Whether it's every day, or every Sunday, start talking about what's up down there.