Call me egotistical, but I’m not lining up behind the well-wishers cheering on Carolyn Savage, the Ohio woman who, in the process of undergoing IVF, was mistakenly implanted with another couple's embryo. She decided to carry the baby to term and just passed the 35-week mark.

Her predicament is clearly wrenching from a zillion standpoints, not to mention fraught with thorny ethical dilemmas. But I’m interested in why she decided to continue the pregnancy once she learned very early on—in the same conversation, no less—that yes, she was pregnant, but no, the baby was not hers.

Various articles about Savage and her husband, Sean, have cited their religious beliefs. Can’t argue with that. But I can wonder at what point self-interest should trump altruism. Sure, some women claim to sail through pregnancy, but I think (hope?) they’re lying. It’s hard work growing a baby, and it can tear up a woman’s body. My sister-in-law had surgery last month to restore bladder control after the births of her two girls. I’ve racked up thousands of dollars in medical charges trying to treat a painful varicose vein caused by the weight of my growing uterus, times three pregnancies. Savage herself delivered her second child 10 weeks premature after being diagnosed with HELLP, a life-threatening pregnancy complication related to preeclampsia. It took her 10 years to get pregnant with her third, who also arrived early when HELLP resurfaced.

Her current pregnancy has got to be her last, her doctor has counseled her, out of concern for her health. So Savage, an unwitting surrogate, has now signed a contract with a surrogate of her own—someone who will do exactly what she is doing, albeit wittingly.

It’s fraught enough to sign up to be a surrogate with your eyes wide open (as XXers discussed at length this summer). But being forced into it? I can’t imagine the rawness of birthing a baby, then giving it away, all the while mourning what should have been.

There’s not much data out there about surrogates’ experiences, but a study of 34 surrogates published in 2003 in the journal Human Reproduction revealed that 32 percent reported some difficulties after they relinquished the babies they’d carried. A few months later, 15 percent still were having trouble coping. And these are women who made an intentional decision to pursue surrogacy.

In my eyes, Carolyn Savage wasted her last chance at pregnancy carrying a baby that wasn’t hers. She suffered all the pain for none of the gains. What she did get is a lot of heartbreak. Sometimes, I guess, that’s what parenthood is all about.

Tags: adoption, carolyn savage, ethics of surrogacy, in-vitro fertilization, surrogacy, surrogates

CNN’s morning show did a segment on this new breast-cancer PSA that’s making the rounds on Break.com and YouTube.

What does everyone think? In the ages-old battle over whether such material is degrading or empowering, I usually come down on the side of I-am-woman-hear-me-roar. (I am also incredibly slow to take offense.) So, I say kudos to Aliya Jasmine Sovani of MTV News Canada, who came up with the idea, wrote the commercial, and stripped down to her bikini for the spot after her cousin was diagnosed with breast cancer. If boobs are good enough to sell beer and magazines and everything else, why not to raise breast-cancer awareness?

If I have any quibble, actually, it’s that I wish there were a way to sex up similar awareness for heart disease, which—as you might not know based on all the attention given to breast cancer—is still the No. 1 killer of women.

Tags: Aliya Jasmine Sovani, breast-cancer awareness, breast-cancer PSA, save the boobs

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In another age, Kathleen Parker suggested last week, Joe Wilson's impertinent scurrility would have prompted not a congressional reprimand but a proper duel. So it was with Wilson in mind that I delved into historian Richard Bell's entertaining new paper on the campaign to end widespread dueling in these United States. The larger story is that of anti-duelists attempting to link dueling and suicide during a bizarre moral panic about self-annihilation in the 1790s. But Bell also writes of an attempt to co-opt ideas of manliness. Whereas Southern men thought dueling necessary to show what manly men they were in the face of threats to their enternal honor, anti-dueling activists would try to claim that it was even manlier to walk away. Dueling was "a refuge for the thin-skinned," pathetic recourse for the "anguish of wounded pride," proof of an effete moral constitution. "By engaging in a duel," declared New Jersey preacher Charles Hoover, "[the duelist] virtually concedes that his character is questionable, and an appeal to arms is necessary to establish it."

In other words, if you're so confident in your manhood, what do you need that big pistol for? Hard to say whether this worked, but dueling does seem to have fallen out of favor. And we're still using Hoover's preferred rhetorical strategy. Are you so insecure in your sexual orientation, boys? Hoover sounds like no one so much as a modern liberal telling some homophobic frat boys how pathetic they are.

Tags: what makes a man

Even though the body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old teacher and Census field worker, was found on Sept. 12, the news of this potential hate crime didn't reach the broader public until yesterday afternoon. An anonymous investigator leaked the news that Sparkman's body was found hanged near a Kentucky cemetary, with the word "Fed" written across his chest. The whole thing couldn't be more sad, as Sparkman was revealed to be a sweet guy who had recently battled lymphoma without giving up on his student-teaching position and his dream of getting a teaching certificate.

There's reason to believe that this was a hate crime inspired by the lurid right-wing conspiracy theories that have reproduced like gremlins ever since Obama took office, reasons beyond just the fact that the word "Fed" was written on Sparkman's chest. Right wing media has been working really hard to associate the Census with the unfairly maligned ACORN, and also to argue that ACORN is a brownshirt organization. It's not hard to see what all this insinuating is supposed to lead the right-wing audience to conclude: Obama is the new black Hitler, and he and his brownshirt organization intend to round up either all white people or maybe just Republican voters and put them in concentration camps. And that they're using the Census to gather the necessary info.

Hey, I know it sounds crazy. In fact, the sheer craziness of it makes it hard to report on it, for fear that readers will transfer their annoyance at the crazy onto you. Can I really believe that people really believe this, just because they blog it, email it, and reference it on talk radio?

Sadly, yes. This theory has enough traction that Rep. Michele Bachmann decided to acknowledge it on Fox News, with the standard-issue right-wing plausible deniability necessary to keep getting invited back on TV. But she didn't conceal that she's a believer, and insisted that it was dangerous and ill-advised to fill out your Census forms. This wasn't the first time Bachmann alluded to fears of concentration camps for conservatives under Obama, either.

Not that this will stop any right-wing pundits from poo-poohing the threat of violence that comes from unhinged fear-mongering. They wouldn't admit moral culpability after the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing, and anti-choice groups arrogantly poo-pooh any responsibility for clinic bombings and shootings, even though they didn't even wait until Dr. George Tiller was buried before putting up helpful information about how to monitor the comings and goings of other doctors someone might want to shoot. Their unwillingness to admit culpability doesn't mean the rest of us have to play along, however.

Tags: ACORN, crime, murder, right wing media, tea parties, Terrorism

Really interesting reader comments on the effect of the false charges of rape at Hofstra on the guys who were accused, and how much false reporting is a problem.

From bluestone:

I know one of the kids accused and have known him for 5 years. What the DA and the Hempstead police have NOT made clear is that two of those guys, including my friend, did not have sex with the woman at all. They just continue to say that the sex with all 5 was consensual. I think this should be corrected.

That said, when you Google my friend's name, this story is, of course, the first thing that comes up. That will probably be true for years to come, as he looks for employment, dates, whatever. That the same notoriety does not attach to his false accuser, whom he never actually met, seems unfair.

Fair point. The stories about the recantation are also out there, but they don't erase the first wave of coverage.

Also really interesting, a note from pes1012, who says he is a criminal defense lawyer in the Navy and handles a lot of sexual assault cases: (Hey, counsel, if you're reading this, I'd love to talk to you for a follow up story. Email me at bazelon@slate.com.)

False-reporting is not as serious a crime as rape. Not even close ... I've seen plenty of instances where the woman does fabricate. Motives vary. And I know of one occasion where there was no motive at all. Women can be sociopathic just like men, it seems.

On Broadsheet, Judy Berman is also skeptical that the rate of false reporting of rape is high.

pes1012 also says this, which indeed I didn't know: "As a matter of trial strategy (and this may come as a surprise to DoubleX readers), it's common knowledge that the defense always wants as many women on the jury as possible. Women tend to apportion blame on the putative victim for the situation she put herself in, irrespective of the man's actions after she said 'no.'"

Tags: false rape accusations, hofstra recanted rape