As if miscarriage isn’t painful enough, Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams reports that it could become a punishable offense in Utah:

“Utah still grants that there’s “no cause of action for criminal homicide for the death of an unborn child caused by an abortion” (yes, in Utah, abortion = “death of an unborn child”) but would now define criminal homicide to include behavior that “intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, with criminal negligence, or acting with a mental state otherwise specified in the statute defining the offense, causes the death of another human being, including an unborn child at any stage of its development.”

Key words there are “recklessly,” “unborn child” and “at any stage.” In other words, if you’re not being a fully responsible baby incubator – even if you’re so early along you don’t know you’re pregnant — and you lose the fetus, you could potentially find yourself up on a murder charge.”

While Williams doesn’t necessarily believe that abortion is the death of an unborn child, I do. But I definitely share her concern that women may be prosecuted for suffering a miscarriage, or even questioned about the events leading to it. (Okay, ’share her concern’ is understating it; I’m scared witless.)

 Read the full story here.

Photo: Equality Now

An article in Salon about girls suffering genital mutilation set my hair on fire. (Genital mutilation is a euphemism for several grisly procedures, often performed with unsterile instruments and without anesthesia.) Turns out, female genital mutilation  — or FGM –doesn’t just happen in other countries. It’s happening here. In the United States.

The Salon piece, written by Lynn Harris, offers this sobering information:

“Yes, FGM is practiced — or at least planned — on U.S. soil, on girls in immigrant families who were born and/or raised here. Perhaps even among people you know: Not long ago, a concerned mother posted on my Brooklyn-area parenting list-serv that she believed an eight-year-old friend of her daughter’s had undergone some form of the procedure in her home country in the Middle East (and appeared to be markedly traumatized). Archana Pyati, an asylum attorney for Sanctuary for Families in New York, has encountered dozens of FGM cases just in the past six months. ‘The majority of our African clients have been through it, and most often, they are fighting to protect their daughters,’ she says. (Older relatives with ’seniority’ often push for the procedure.) ‘It is our hope that by recognizing that FGM may be occurring under our noses we will become better able to respond to it, just as we would any other form of violence against children,’ she says.”

Check out the rest of the piece here. Violence, oppression, and being sold into sexual slavery are just some of the commonplace horrors women all over the world face, and we can help stop it. We can donate money to Equality Now. Even better, we can take part in one of their letter writing campaigns  to help females who don’t have it as good as we do.

It scares the hell out of me. The “Christian” Right has embraced Psalm 109:8 with regard to our president, Barack Obama. In case you’re wondering, Psalm 109:8 declares:

May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership.”

Okay, that’s Verse 8. Hold on for Verse 9:

May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow.”

Check out the above video from last night’s The Rachel Maddow Show; the bit about Psalm 109:8 comes up about a third of the way in. Rachel interviews Frank Schaeffer, author of Patience With God and a former leader of the Religious Right. He’s had it with the “journalists” who painted our president first as the Antichrist and now as an unjust ruler God must take down.

And pray for the safety of our president and his family.

MSNBc’s Dylan Ratigan and filmmaker Michael Moore have something to say about it.

What do you have to say about it? We want to know.

A lot of people seem to think he will.

But in this interview, Jon Stewart combs through the proposed health care bill with Betsy McCaughey to find out for sure. (Incidentally, Jon Stewart should be given some kind of award for his work here; unlike others in the media, he offers information, not sound bites.)

Here’s Part One:

Here’s Part Two:

Have you ever read a book and said to yourself, “I could have done better than that?” I have, more than once. But after I finished Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife, I came away feeling I probably shouldn’t be allowed to handle pens.

I belong to a book club, which requires me to read a good deal of fiction, but Sittenfeld’s latest is the smartest, most enjoyable novel I’ve read this year, last year, and probably the year before that, too.

American Wife is the story of a fictional first lady named Alice Lindgren Blackwell (based on Laura Bush, although names and places have been changed). It answers the question, “How did a woman like her end up with a guy like him?”

Sittenfeld reveals her first lady in the most honest, observant, and captivating way without ever making fun of her or the man she marries. But I did laugh out loud at times. The depiction of events are often hilarious without being mean-spirited.

She also makes some really cool observations, especially in this excerpt from Alice’s single days, where Alice attends a party given by smug married acquaintances:

“Alice, how about you?’ Rose dunked a potato chip in a bowl of onion dip. ‘You must have your eye on someone special.’

‘Not really.’ I smiled to show that I didn’t mind. The irony was, I honestly didn’t mind, or not in the way they imagined. In my least charitable moments, I’d think about these women, It’s not that couldn’t have married your husbands; it’s that I didn’t want to. But it was a rare married woman who was able to believe that a single woman had any choice in the matter of her own singleness.”

American Wife kept me turning pages until I reached its astonishing ending.

It’s out in paperback. Check it out.

This post appeared on SWR LA Founder Vanessa Torres' blog, Thathappenedtome.com

Wow.  What a week it turned out to be.

Last week started out as a run-of-the-mill busy week of professional obligations for me, but turned into a bizarre series of news “events,” stories of death, divorce and revolution.  At first, I felt merely like a witness to a string of unrelated events, but then I noticed a theme emerging, rather more than one, that struck me as particularly poignant.

Iran, upside down with political unrest, had citizen protesters gunned down indiscriminately by unnamed “security forces” after a questionable election process.  Emerging from the otherwise sad story of yet another oppressive dictatorship, was the story of the Women of Iran, for the first time being recognized as a powerful group of resilient members of that society, no longer willing to let their husbands and sons die in silence.  Suffering for years at the hands of their own government, they are refusing to be shuffled off quietly now, despite horrific political and religious constraints.  The murder of Neda Agha-Soltani at the hands of her own government has resonated with the world, who is treating the 26 year old student as a martyr, even dubbing her a modern day Joan of Arc.  CNN has aired several interviews with other women in and around the area of Tehran begging for global assistance as they fight for what we consider basic human and civil rights.

On a completely different note, came the Monday announcement that celebreality couple Jon & Kate Gosselin have officially filed for divorce.  Not exactly a surprise to anyone who owns a television set, but it still felt like the final nail in the coffin after the slow death of what was once an ordinary marriage between a young and promising couple.

Kate Gosselin issued this statement: “Over the course of this weekend, Jon’s activities have left me no choice but to file legal procedures in order to protect myself and our children.”  Her husband Jon remained characteristically mum, glibly commenting that he’s sorry if his actions have hurt his family, but that he remains dedicated to the health, happiness and well-being of his children. Read more »

Photo credit: Mary Ann Chastain - AP

I disagree with Dana.

While I can think of many reasons why more women should be elected to office, a reluctance to
cheat isn’t one of them. I’ve read plenty of studies that show women are as just as likely to fall prey to extramarital temptation as men, especially since we started making our own money.

But forget studies. Here are some real life examples: I learned from a friend yesterday that her good friend, a woman, recently left her marriage because monogamy just doesn’t agree with her. A male acquaintance filed for divorce after coming home to find his wife in bed with another man. A good male friend broke off a 15-year relationship after he found out his girlfriend had been chronically unfaithful (he was faithful and has since married a woman who shares his commitment to fidelity). Two other friends, a married couple, had their world rocked when they learned that close friends were divorcing because the wife had been cheating.

So, while the media continually depict woman as victims of infidelity, men get hurt, too. Which makes me wonder: Why are we depicted as victims?

I should probably clarify that I don’t think infidelity is okay, whether it’s committed by a man or a woman. If it’s beyond you to be faithful, stay single. Single is good.

And I’m thrilled that Jenny Sanford, the most recent “victim” of a philandering elected official, bucked tradition and refused the hold her husband’s hand during a press conference in which he apologized for his affair with an Argentinian woman.

Normal men travel for a change of scenery; creeps travel for something else.

Even worse, some of these pervs don’t limit their activities to adult women; Equality Now says that children can be included in the sex tourism package, as well.

In October 2005, Equality Now issued Women’s Action 27.1, which called for federal U.S. law enforcement agencies to end sex tourism and to prosecute Gunter Frentz, the owner and operator of G.F. Tours, a travel agency.

According to Equality Now:

G.F. Tours openly advertises its sex tours online, and posted testimonials from previous G.F. sex tourists that clearly illustrate the purpose of the tour. One G.F. sex tourist explained, ‘for a 350 baht ($14), I could take her back to my hotel, f**k her all night…and tip her 1000 ($40) in the morning, or whenever I was done with her.’”

(Excuse me while I get sick to my stomach.)

Not only would I like to see the owner of this and other sex travel agencies prosecuted, I’d love to see the photos of their loser customers published online and in every major newspaper in the United States. I’d like those photos to be tacked up in post offices and in churches in the towns where said losers live.

Well, that probably won’t happen, but if you’d like to see the U.S. goverment to prosecute the people who supply these travel deals, Equality Now recommends the following:

Please write to the new U.S. Attorney General and call on him to prosecute Gunter Frentz, the owner/operator of G.F. Tours, and other sex tour operators for knowingly and openly transporting individuals to other countries with the intent of engaging in prostitution in violation of the Mann Act and Travel ACT. Retierate that sex tourism is a criminal act that exploits and harms women, and very often children, while it supports a multibillion industry in human trafficking. Urge the Attorney General to clarify to all federal prosecutors that the Department of Justice policy is to prosecute U.S.-based sex tour operators.”

Please send your letter to:

U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr.
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20530
USA

or email it to:

AskDOJ(at)usdoj.gov

President Obama introduces Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to the United States Supreme Court. (PHOTO BY Alex Brandon / AP)

A Bronx resident, and a woman, I fell off the couch when President Obama annuonced Sonia Sotomayor as his pick for the Supreme Court. Our friend, Dr. Bella DePaulo ironically interviewed someone who personally knows the hopeful Justice-To-Be.  

Here is an excerpt of the post by Dr. Bella DePaulo was featured on her blog, Living Single on Psychology Today.  Read the full post here.

One of my collaborators in the study of people who are single and the place of friendship in their lives and all of our lives is a law professor, Rachel Moran. So as soon as I heard that Sonia Sotomayor was Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, I immediately sent Rachel an e-mail asking what she thought. At that moment, I had no idea that she knew Sotomayor.

What I got back was an intriguing first-person account. I then asked Rachel - a 1981 Yale Law School graduate, UC Berkeley chaired professor, and now a founding faculty member of the UC Irvine School of Law - if she would do a brief Q & A to share her impressions with others.

Bella DePaulo: How did you get to know Sonia Sotomayor?
Rachel Moran: Sonia was a year ahead of me at Yale. I got to know her through an organization called LANA (Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans). Believe it or not, at the time, there were so few members of these groups in the student body that we could not form separate organizations!

Bella DePaulo: What are your impressions of her? In the flurry of initial reports in the media, is there anything you know about her that has not yet gotten much attention?
Rachel Moran: She has a keen intellect, an articulate voice, and a sense of humor (though this is not usually mentioned in the press coverage). I think she will be a formidable presence on the Court, who will be a lively, engaging, and challenging colleague for the other Justices.

I know I’m late to the party on this one, but I’m compelled to support Wanda Sykes, the comedian who came under fire by people with zero sense of humor for her performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Full disclosure: I think Wanda is one of the funniest humans in the world. I try never to miss The New Adventures of Old Christine because she’s on it. I used to tune in regularly to her short-lived Comedy Central show. She was the best thing about a network New Year’s Eve special three or four years ago (hosted by Dick Clark? Ryan Seacrest? The guy who goes on after Jimmy Fallon? I don’t remember. Wanda is what I remember).

She had just about everyone howling with laughter at The White House Correspondents dinner, but after servers scooped up the water glasses, many in the media claimed to find her act offensive (one of the broadcasters who expressed outraged can be seen yukking it up in the second clip).

And Christopher Hitchens, the man who once wrote a piece for Vanity Fair that maintains that women, by our very nature, are not funny, responded to Wanda Sykes’ performance by telling New York magazine, “The black dyke got it wrong. Nobody told her the rules,” he said.

Okay, so Sykes is wrong, but referring to her as ‘the black dyke’ is all right. This fascinates me. Sykes is black, she is a lesbian, and she’s also many other things, including smart and funny, while Hitchens is yet another white male who takes himself way too seriously.

I also wonder why it’s acceptable for Rush Limbaugh (whom she pillories in the second clip) to say he hopes our president fails, that Michael J. Fox milks his Parkinson’s disease, and that women will never achieve equality while Nancy Pelosi remains Speaker of the House.

Whatever. I didn’t find Sykes remotely offensive. Like Miss California, she merely said what she believed. Unlike Miss California, she made people laugh when she said it.

What do you think?

My hero talks to Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue and Bodies.

Over the past couple of weeks, several women have asked me similar questions:

-What can I do to keep a guy interested after I have sex with him?
-Why do some guys assume I’m going to have sex on the second or third date?
-If I don’t have sex with him, I’m probably not going to keep him interested, right?

OKAY, LET ME CLEAR SOMETHING UP HERE (and I’m passionate about this subject).

Sex is not the way to a man’s heart.

Let me repeat: Sex is not the way to a man’s heart.

The world is full of women and men who leave the house at night looking for sex and not a relationship. If you are one of these people, that’s certainly your prerogative as long as you know what you want and don’t pretend to want something else…oh, and as long as you’re protecting yourself.

BUT IF YOU WANT A RELATIONSHIP, it’s unwise to lead with sex. In other words, don’t play at sex to get love. It usually ends up confusing things, and it usually does not work. (Does that mean it never works? Yeah, once in a while it works. But rarely.) Read more »

Photo: Jim Young/Reuters

But if we believed the tripe in the mainstream media last week, First Ladies Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni were fated to clash in a “fashion face-off” (as if neither one of them had anything else to occupy her tiny mind than pretty clothes). And, then when it turned out they actually did get along (big surprise there — two women actually getting along instead of competing for the role of Homecoming Queen), some toad actually referred to them them as “BFFs.”

Oy.

Crap media commentary aside, Brazen Careerist Penelope Trunk called last week’s G-20 Summit “BS for women” and “the tea party from hell.” Read all about it here.

By the way, I really hate the term catfight.

In case you haven’t already heard, former presidential candidate John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, a writer for The Daily Beast, suggested that an extremist like Ann Coulter isn’t doing the Republican party any favors.

Conservative pundit Laura Ingraham rose to Coulter’s defense by doing an ugly Valley Girl imitation of McCain (which made Ingraham sound more of a fool than her intended target) and referred to her as a ‘plus-sized’ model. We all have the right to disagree, but it really is disheartening when one woman calls another out on her weight. Surely we can do better than this. Meghan later appeared on The View and struck back.

For another perspective on this story, check out Crooks and Liars.