Women's Issue

Sarah Palin and her church and her pastor have made themselves abundantly clear on issues of reproductive privacy -- there won't be any. In a Palin world, if my daughter wanted birth control, she wouldn't be able to get any, and if I wanted sex education to be taught in my son's school, I would be out of luck. If a girl I knew were raped and impregnated by her uncle and she elected to have an abortion, she would not be allowed to do so. She wouldn't even be allowed to take the morning after pill in case he got her pregnant. Maybe there's something you guys don't get about this. Bristol Palin's pregnancy is at the heart of what women and the right wing have been fighting over for thirty years, and it isn't abortion, it's privacy and the right to control your own reproductive choices. There will always be abortion, and there will always be choice, but Palin would like the choice to be illegal and punishable. Same with birth control.

I like you, Barack, but you don't get it either. The issues of birth control and abortion have been made into public issues by the right wing, and millions of women and girls have suffered because the right wing wants to impose its ideas of what women should do upon every woman in America including those who don't share and have never shared their values. So, Barack, I suggest that you, as a man, should do the backing off.

Bristol Palin's pregnancy, which her mother has known about for months, is at the heart of this battle. It has been shown over and over that abstinence education doesn't work, while sex education does work. Do I accept that teenagers have sex? You bet I do, and I tell the ones I have borne how to make it safe and what to watch out for and be careful of, girls and boys. Sarah Palin, for whatever reason, did not do the same thing, and yet she presumes, PRESUMES, to tell me as a mother and a woman what I can and cannot do with my body, and what I can and cannot provide for my children.

Sarah Palin has constructed her appeal to the right wing around this "social conservatism" in exactly the same way that John McCain has constructed his appeal around his aggressive foreign policy views. Both are equally political, and as political as Cheney's ideas about the unitary executive, for example. Women are citizens, too, and our privacy is a political football, and has been used as such to win elections for a generation, so I supposed you mean well, you guys who are telling me to back off, but you don't get it. So shut up.

Comments

[jbatch]

Ms. Smiley:

Barack's point abut backing off was in regard to smearing the daughter with the sins of the mother. He is in violent agreement with you about womens' rights to privacy and control over their reproductive choices.

He was urging people to back off from criticizing a 17 year-old girl who became pregnant precisely because her mother did not honor those rights, not to back off from those rights.

I love your columns and your novels, but you're on a bit of a hair-trigger these days, Ms. Smiley. Barack is as good an ally as you could hope for in these issues.

[pcplz]

Well.....for the first time in a long time....looks like the 'stud' that did the deed is being held accountable.

Moose gun wedding.

[ballewb]

What ARE you talking about?

[Nikian]

A major factor that no one has addressed: Shot-gunning' the 'stud' punishes both him, her and the baby. Even if they are more mature than the average 17 yr-olds, compatible, & have the total support of their families, what are the odds such a marriage will work? Just as this young woman must be under enormous pressure to give birth, how informed and independent could her decision to marry and raise the baby possibly be? If she had wanted to let a childless couple adopt it, would her mother, Senator McCain & the Church People have allowed it? I agree with Jane (as I nearly always do), that this right wing festival of joy is an incredibly insensitive response to Bristol; the nature of her entire life, more than that of anyone else involved, depends on decisions which can only be made in privacy. I hope that she gets counseling from someone independent of her family, et al.! BTW, how I can I write to Jane Smiley about her novels, other than in this blog?

[nessus]

Jane,

I appreciate and agree with your position and your anger. Governor Palin wants to take the choice she was allowed to make in dealing with her body and her children and remove that choice from everyone else's lives by making her choice mandatory for all American women. Who the &*%$ do these people think they are? I get it, for all that I own external genitalia and all. But I truly do think Senator Obama gets that too. The problem is that he has to run an election campaign that simply must be won, and there are a series of political traps set for him in this VP choice of McCain's. If he or his campaign criticizes Palin too sharply they will be accused of sexism; the Republicans have already made that quite clear. He also cannot be seen as criticizing Palin's children after reacting so strongly to the Republican attentions paid to his own family. So Obama must be seen as telling people to back off, and his campaign must be seen having backed off.

That leaves the field open for women like you to step up. So don't you back off, not one bit. This will be a fight that only women can win. Make it clear that Palin's idea of abstinence-only education is a sad joke. Make it clear that as her choices are protected; everyone else's choices need to stay protected as well.

[ohnoyoudidnot!]

Thank you! I don't know why women cannot come together and use our numbers to achieve equal rights and protect our right to reproductive privacy.

[Angelus2007]

Exactly, choice is what it is about. And I don't know Bristol Palin any better than you do. Maybe she made a choice to have a child. It may be a bad decision, but many women, most married and older, have chosen to have sex not for enjoyment, but to have a child. We don't know what was going on in the head of Bristol, but until we know that she planned to get pregnant or not, we cannot make a judgement on her individual situation. You are making the choice for her it seems, you say she is pregnant because of education and no birth control. But you don't know and cannot claim to. If you want to have a discussion on sex education, abstinence, birth control, and abortion, that is fine (and we should). But to use an individual case to make you point, is not a valid assessment. Anybody can point out an individual case on either side of the argument. There are girls who are taught sex education, have access to birth control, and choose not to use them. Does that mean those things don't work? No, and Bristol Palin may or may not have had access to those things, but until we know we cannot pass judgement.

[johnnydajogger]

This is consistent with Obama's past. Rather than face and issue, he will vote "present". He wont risk alienating any potential voter and that shows in his great reluctance to address substantive issues. In contrast, notice that the third party candidates (Nader, Paul, Barr, etc.) tackle real issues head on and dont deal in nonsense. We dont have to vote for twiddle dum or twiddle dee. Please explore what the 'fringe" candidates have to say.

[jfcee]

You write well.

I never thought of it the way you put it.

Thanks.

[burndtdan]

Interesting article. I didn't quite get your bit about Obama... I'm just not sure what you meant that he doesn't get, etc. A little bit of an elaboration would be nice.

[Jennifer]

I agree completely. The rabid Right has made abortion, reproduction, and choice a huge issue to manipulate the American people and their base, to create false issues in big elections, and to control people's private lives based on their religious beliefs, and it should not be off-limits. They can't start this and they cry foul when we call them on the carpet.

The same goes for not 'picking' on Sara. Take everything that the republicans have done to Hillary and Chelsea over the years, and tactfully show them for the hypocrites that they are. Where were their moral values when Hillary was First Lady and a mother? Where was the hands-off of Chelsea? How did McCain’s off-color Janet Reno joke fit into this moral standing they are taking today? It doesn’t.

It is one thing for Democrats to take the moral high ground, and it is another thing to let these people run us over in the process. They don’t care, and it doesn’t bother them in the least to be hypocrites, because they know they can manipulate people in the process.

Keep up the fight. :)

[torrrep]

Murder is not a choice. It is a crime.

[jeanrenoir]

Glad to see Smiley coming out strongly against Palin. But the one who has to drive a stake through her heart, on all the issues Smiley raises, as well as many more, is Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hillary may be reluctant to alienate her hard-won "hard-working, you know, WHITE" female base, which is obviously the target of Rove's Palin missile. But Hillary had better saddle up and confront this Alaska Annie Oakley now, or Palin may well win in '08, become the most popular woman in America with white working-class women, and then demolish Hillary herself in '12, and then take out the whole Women's Movement for dessert. Smiley is right to hammer Palin. But, with all respect, hardly any of the women Rove has targeted with Palin even know Smiley exists. This is a job that Hillary alone can do. Ideally on Oprah. I'm not kidding. NARAL, NOW, and Emily's List must lean hard on Hillary to bite this bullet, since Palin is the greatest threat to left feminist values in the history of modern American politics.

[patianneb]

NO sex education
NO birth control for teens
NO abortions under ANY circumstances for ANY woman.

What is to be admired let alone seen as desirable about any of this?

Am I to be denied the right to make my own moral decisions, forced abandon the rights and responsibilities of my personal life and my personal relationship with my God in deference to her repressive views?

I respect her right to live within the framework of her views, no matter what I think of them.
To allow her to live vicariously in mine is repulsive.

Her own house (life) is far too in need of care for her to be thrashing about in mine.

MR. OBAMA: THIS aspect of this situation is one you should definitely NOT back away from or ask us to.

[torrrep]

It's not the government's job to raise your kids. You want to teach them sex education and half of them can't even read and write. If you want your kids to learn about sex then do your job as a parent and raise them right. I'm sick of the government having to fill in for lazy, ignorant parents.

[werbenjagermanjensen]

I was raised in the Unitarian church, which includes a very good elementary sex education module in its Sunday school curriculum, so I really can't remember when I didn't know the facts of life, including the concept that responsible persons who didn't want to have a baby got hold of birth control and used it when they wanted to have sex. Later, when for reasons unrelated to religion I attended a Catholic girls' school, I was offended when we were given antiabortion lectures, not so much because I was pro-choice as because I thought it presumptuous of them to assume that I was sexually incontinent. My best friend in that school, who was Catholic, did end up getting pregnant, was taken to the local Jewish hospital for an abortion, and had a small nervous breakdown as a result.

Legal medical abortion, birth control and sex education were not instituted in American culture by perverts determined to turn our children into nymphos and satyrs. They were put in place by people who knew well the human devastation created by people left to deal with their sexual instincts in ignorance and shame.

[littlepuffycloud]

Good point Jane, however, I believe Senator Obama was telling people to back off the rumors and accusations about the daughter. I do believe O 'gets it', as much as any man can. I've had a knot in my stomach since Palin was announced and the anger rising up is a 'total mystery' to my husband. Most mean do not and will never get it.

[ballewb]

"I do believe O 'gets it', as much as any man can"

Sexist?

[mexamerican]

right on, jane. i hope more feminists speak up about the sheer hypocrisy of touting her daughter's "choice" to have a baby while working to make sure that no one else's daughter has a choice. it's sickening.

[ballewb]

It's not a choice for the anti-choice crowd. In their view, they are required to give birth. The opinion would not give her a chioice and take away yours, it would remove all ability to choose and stay within the law.

[tuttlemsm]

Hooray! Someone willing to fight! Someone who sees the Republican hypocrisy for what it is!

Someone who understands that in proactively trying to strip away the patina of privacy for women all over the U.S., Palin leaves herself open to attack when it can be shown that her policy impositions fail her own family.

If Republican candidates for office don't want their private lives scrutinized, then they should STOP lecturing and legislating the private lives of the American people.