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Excerpt from the Talk of the Town by Ellen Willis about the feminist disruption of the all-male (save one nun) New York abortion law hearings. Published in the New Yorker, February 22, 1969 and, Nona tells me, about to be republished in the forthcoming anthology!
“Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, recounted in her 1970 autobiography, Unbought and Unbossed, her journey from opposing the repeal of New York’s abortion law to changing her mind and becoming honorary president of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (as NARAL was then known). Noting the harm done to black women by illegal abortion, she wrote: “Which is more like genocide, I have asked my black brothers—this, the way things are, or the conditions I am fighting for in which the full range of family planning services is freely available to women of all classes and colors, starting with effective contraception and extending to safe, legal termination of undesired pregnancies, at a price they can afford?”
Greenhouse, Linda; Siegel, Reva (2010-06-01). Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling.
A small, fluffy white dog — I think it was a poodle, but I’m bad with this stuff — bit me on the corner of Degraw St and 4th avenue yesterday, and now I need to track it down to avoid getting a series of very unpleasant rabies shots. Do you live around here and can you help me? Here’s what I know:
Yes, I should have gotten the dog’s/owner’s info. But I actually didn’t realize I’d been properly bitten, because after it lunged at my leg twice with no provocation, I checked the black tights I was wearing and saw they hadn’t even been torn and I’d only been scratched, or so I thought. And I was late and the owners were already backing away without a word of apology.
Hours later, I found a small actual wound and went to the ER, where they told me I have ten days to either find the dog to find out if it’s up to date on its shots, or get a miserable suite of shots. Or die of rabies.
So if you have any recollection of this dog in the Park Slope area, especially paired with the characteristics above, email me at icarmon@salon.com or, if you know me, contact me on whatever platform you want.
UPDATE: I think it may have been a Maltese or a Bichon Frise and have added a vaguely similar photo. Also, it’s been suggested that because there were two disparate dogs, the people were walkers and not owners. So don’t rule out all the fluffy white dogs you know just because their owners don’t fit this description. THANKS!
Jay Smooth, Feministing
Here is my favorite response to the abortion regret paternalism/pseudoscience, pointed out to me by Linda Greenhouse (it’s from a decision by Laurie Smith Camp in Oklahoma — a George W. Bush appointee!)
Like the Supreme Court majority in Gonzales, this Court has “no reliable data” to measure the phenomenon, but notes that unscientific surveys readily available on the Internet indicate that parent “regret” levels reach as high as the infamous 70 percent tallied by columnist Ann Landers in 1975 when she received 10,000 letters from readers in response to her inquiry:”Do you regret having children?” The enactment of Nebraska’s short-lived “Safe Haven Law” in July of 2008 caused parents from around the nation to stream into Nebraska to relinquish their children. More reliable data are available reflecting regret levels for the decision to marry – an important choice presumably preceded by sober thought and deliberation. The most important choices have consequences, and no matter how well-reasoned and fully deliberated, those decisions can lead to remorse. That is part of the price we pay for our freedom. (Only Edith Piaf was without regret. Had she been sober, she, too, might have had second-thoughts.)
“Cartagena is a tale of three cities, all dancing hand in hand in a ménage a trois of Latin juxtaposition.”
“In reality, Colombia’s past and present is far more complex: A rare Latin American nation with little history of military dictators, but where conversations of ongoing subjects like guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, liberals, conservatives, Hugo Chavez, US free trade agreements, Caribbean influenced music and hot chocolate invariably link back to the days when the first Spaniards rowed ashore in 1500.”
Senator HEFLIN: I only have one or two questions. Judge Scalia, I noticed you smoke a pipe. It may well be that someday you may have to rule in the right of privacy as to whether or not an individual can smoke a pipe in his study or in his bedroom, so I hope you take care of us smokers one of these days.
I have no further questions.
Senator BIDEN. …. If you believe that implicit in the 9th amendment is a recognition of a right called the right of privacy— not to what extent it applies, but that there is such a thing as the right to privacy.
Judge SCALIA. I think that’s in effect asking me to rule on cases. I can say that the Supreme Court has held that there is such a thing as a right of privacy. But they haven’t tied it to the 9th amendment. As far as I know, there is no Supreme Court holding that rests any right exclusively on the 9th amendment. They may include the 9th in a litany of amendments from which various penumbras emanate, and the 9th was among them.
Senator BIDEN. DO you believe that there is such a thing as a constitutional right to privacy, not delineating whether, for example, the right to terminate a pregnancy relates to the right to privacy or the right to engage in homosexual activities in your home is a right to privacy, or the right to use contraceptives in your home is a right—but, in a philosophic sense, is there such a thing as a constitutionally protected right to privacy?
Judge SCALIA. I don’t think I could answer that, Senator, without violating the line I’ve tried to hold.
…
Senator BIDEN. Well, the fact that you believe in the right to privacy doesn’t mean that a case before you in fact rises to the level of being protected by that right. I think you are being a little bit disingenuous with me here. If in fact you conclude that there is an existing right to privacy that in no way predisposes you to have to rule one way or the other about whether or not a claimed right is encompassed by the provision.
Judge SCALIA. Senator, I beg to differ. There have been scholarly criticisms of the whole notion of right to privacy.
Senator BIDEN. Oh, I agree.
Judge SCALIA. And it’s not at all inconceivable that that criticism will be reflected in a brief before the Supreme Court, and I don’t…
…
Judge SCALIA. It’s very hard to answer—you began this line of questioning by answering me never mind what the right of privacy consists of. I can’t answer that question without knowing what you mean by the right of privacy.
Senator BIDEN. True, you can acknowledge whether or not you believe there is in fact—let’s just start over again, clean the slate. Do you believe that Americans as a whole believe that that they have inherent right to privacy—that they think they have a right to privacy? Do you think that is a deeply and profoundly held belief by American society, whether it’s found in the Constitution or found in natural law or found in their Bible or found in the Talmud? As a society, do you have any doubt that Americans believe it?
Judge SCALIA. NO, I’ll give you that, Senator.
Senator BIDEN. Good man, I tell you we’re getting there—all right.
…
Senator BIDEN. Second, if in fact—well, I don’t have to go any further actually, because in fact it seems to me that in some form or other there is a constitutionally protected right of privacy. What that means remains to be seen, whether it means the right to engage in homosexual activity in one’s bedroom or anything else remains—I’m not going to ask you to comment on that.
But let me—I guess my time is—I know my time is up—but let me pursue this one step further, if I may. When I look at your musings—and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, because I love to read what you’ve written, I love the way you go about it, I wish I had had you in class. I’m probably too old to have had you in class, but you’re the kind of guy that I would have liked to have had in class. I could have gotten by with you because we could have talked about philosophy and as long as you didn’t ask me what the case stood for, I’d be all right.
But when I tie your musings on original meaning and original intent, where I must admit I put you more in the school of the original-intent fellows than I do in the living Constitution area, I begin to be concerned. … Now the irony of all ironies is that the people who are concerned about you, some who are concerned about you, women’s groups—prochoice women’s groups who are concerned about you—they worry you will use that rationale to overturn Roe v. Wade.
DES: That’s the dark side of feminism—that men are swine, obsessed with large breasts and the sex act, devoid of any idealistic or romantic sensibility, when in fact, we have that idealistic sensibility in spades. For instance, you have no idea what men really think about women’s breasts…
ALICE What do men think about women’s breasts?
DES Well, it’s not something you just blurt out—it’s far more complicated and nuanced than that…. Okay, I’ll tell you a story. When I was in college, there was a girl I had a crush on who always had older boyfriends, invariably some senior. Finally they all graduated, and one night we went back to her room alone. Suddenly, her shirt was off and I was confronted with these breasts, which turned out to be…completely surprising and, frankly, disconcerting. They were rather large and…and not ugly, or especially strange shaped, but in all the time that I had thought about her, these breasts had never figured. She took off her shirt so quickly, there was no time for adjustment, and I said something arrogant about it, as if her abrupt unveiling about her large-ass breasts was somehow going to slay my swinish male self, as if I hadn’t already been slain on a much higher level.
— The Last Days of Disco (1998)
and
One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend’s parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this point–”Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?” she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn’t sure what to say, but then I wasn’t sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business… and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered–”You know, I’m on the pill…”
— ”Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class,” by Ross Douthat (2005)
