—Sarah Palin, Gabrielle Giffords ... Annie Oakley? What is America's obsession with the rootin' tootin' female politician? [New York Times]

—At 4 p.m. today Oprah will reveal her big secret that "shook her to the core." What is it? [CBS News]

—In the wake of the shooting of a close friend, Kirsten Gillibrand may be an upcoming political heavyweight. [Daily Beast]

—What does Modern Family say about modern families? [New York Times]

—Patricia Marx wanted a high-end lifestyle, so she decided to rent it. [The New Yorker]

—Over the holiday months, Scotland had a painfully high level of domestic abuse—approximately 154 cases reported per day. [BBC News]

—Women in Pennsylvania have alleged that abortions performed by Dr. Kermit Gossnell left them sterile and near death. [AP]

Photograph of Oprah by Frazer Harrison for Getty Images.

Tags: abortion, Cowgirl politicians, domestic abuse, kristin gillibrand, modern family, Oprah big secret, scotland

—Rebecca Traister, writing in the New York Times, takes another look at The Feminine Mystique and its lack of popularity among minority and working-class women. [New York Times]

— The dearth of female bylines at highbrow magazines like The New Republic and The New Yorker is systemic, writes Elissa Strauss. [Jezebel] via [The Sisterhood]

— Lisa Miller of Newsweek argues that Tiger Dad’s minor role in Amy Chua’s book, Tiger Mother, may indicate his complicity in her child-rearing methods. [The Daily Beast]

— As it prepares to attempt a repeal of health care legislation, the GOP has reinserted abortion into the bill as a tactic to rally the base. [Politico]

Tags: abortion, new yorker, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the Feminine Mystique, the new republic

As Tracy Clark-Flory points out at Salon’s Broadsheet today, Choice USA has a new ad making fun of Colorado’s “fetal personhood” initiative which is on the ballot in November and would effectively outlaw abortion by granting the rights of personhood to everyone from the very vague “beginning of biological development.”

The video shows a pregnant woman going through the course of her day and being asked to pay for two-thirds of a restaurant bill and play doubles tennis by herself. Because, you know, her fetus is a person.

I completely understand the left’s disapproval of fetal personhood initiatives.  I am pro-life, but these proposed laws even make me uncomfortable: They look like an end run around Roe v. Wade and they really don’t seem like the best way for pro-lifers to achieve their goals.

But this Choice USA ad is boringly unfunny.  It’s not offensive, or unfair, or even mean. It’s just THAT unfunny. And I think its snarkiness could actually backfire. By focusing on a character who is so hugely and obviously pregnant, you’re reminding the viewers that women who really are that pregnant have a pretty darn big—and pretty darn viable—baby in there. And don’t nearly full-term fetuses deserve some kind of protection? Let’s not forget that Scott Peterson was charged with two counts of murder when he killed his wife Laci and their son. Almost 40 states have “fetal homicide laws” that, excepting abortion, make it a crime to harm or kill a fetus. So, for example, if a drunk driver injures a pregnant woman and kills her unborn child, he or she can be charged with vehicular homicide.

No, the Colorado law doesn’t just focus on viable fetuses. And it’s an anti-abortion initiative, not a protect-babies-from-drunk-drivers-and-homicidal-maniacs initiative. But that doesn’t come through in the Choice USA ad. And frankly, what does come through makes them look a little cold-hearted. Those on the left like to complain that conservatives don’t care about the weakest among us.  But here the weakest are mere fodder for unfunny jokes.

Tags: Choice USA, Colorado Amendment 62, fetal personhood, political ads

The pro-life movement has put a lot of energy into arguing that abortion harms women. The first wave of this effort claimed a link between abortion and breast cancer. When scientists definitively shot that down, the pro-lifers shifted to arguing that abortion—and regret about it afterward—connects to higher rates of depression and suicide. This is the fabled “post abortion syndrome.” I wrote about women who believe in it in 2007. The next year, the American Psychological Association issued a report, based on an exhaustive review of all the medical literature published on the topic since 1989, which found no credible evidence that abortion leads to higher rates of mental health problems for women. But the APA couldn’t speak with certainty about teenagers, because there wasn’t enough research.

A new study in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health helps fill in that gap. It used data from an ongoing, nationally representative survey of teenagers. The authors compared 220 girls who said they’d been pregnant and hadn't had an abortion to 69 who had. The key finding is this: “The young women in this study who had an abortion were not more likely to become depressed or have low self-esteem within the year of the pregnancy or five yars later than were their peers whose pregnancies did not end in abortion.” Abortion is a fraught event for many teens, no doubt. But this study is good evidence that it’s one they bounce back from.

Tags: abortion, depression, pro-choice, pro-life, teenagers

—Afghan families have many reasons for pretending their girls are boys, including economic need, social pressure to have sons, and, in some cases, a superstition that doing so can lead to the birth of a real boy. [New York Times]

—For some women, not having kids hardly feels like a choice at all: It is a defining and unchangable part of their identity. Click here to read DoubleX's Amanda Marcotte on being "childless by choice." [The Daily Beast]

—With an ever-increasing rate of obesity and insurers slow to cover obesity treatment, patients often must foot the bill. [Washington Post]

—You think the legroom in airplanes is tight now? These new seats are even less spacious. [New York Times]

—Jennifer Grey took the top spot in the season premiere of Dancing With the Stars, receiving 24 out of a possible 30 points for her waltz with dance partner Derek Hough. [Washington Post]

Photograph of Jennifer Grey by Frederick M. Brown for Getty Images.

Tags: abortion, afghan children, childlessness, dancing with the stars, jennifer grey, obesity

With recent polls showing  a dead heat between California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and Republican nominee Carly Fiorina, Luisita Lopez Torregrosa in the IHT predicts the results “will most rigidly test who holds sway: Sarah Palin or Emily’s List.” And indeed, even as Boxer and Fiorina discuss more immediately pressing issues like jobs, two significant themes in the race thus far have been the hot-button terms abortion and Sarah Palin, not necessarily in that order. It will be interesting to count how many times those words come up during their first debate tomorrow.

The presence of the abortion issue in this race may speak to how close it is. Boxer, known for her strong pro-choice stance, has charged that Fiorina’s support for overturning Roe v. Wade is “out of touch with Californians,” a statement that polls suggest is true. More recently, Boxer’s campaign released a Web ad saying, “Fiorina would make abortion a crime.” NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez suggested that the ad’s use of the “scarlet A-word” instead of a euphemism was “rhetorically unusual” and quoted the forever-quotable political analyst Larry Sabato: “I think Boxer fully realizes what a close race she is in.” The Web ad also prompted a San Francisco Chronicle blog to wonder whether "the fact that Boxer is dropping the abortion card BEFORE the Labor Day sprint begins" might mean that polls are causing desperation in Boxer’s camp. (Abortion has also come up in the context of attacks on Boxer—George Will has written two columns this summer criticizing the senator's support for partial-birth abortion, suggesting that “it is theoretically impossible to fashion an abortion position significantly more extreme than Boxer’s.")

And now for that other ever-popular phrase, Sarah Palin. If you squinted, you might think Boxer were running against the former Alaska governor, who endorsed Fiorina, rather than the former Hewlett-Packard CEO herself. As this Chronicle piece points out, in an atmosphere in which “candidates are finding it simpler to say what they won't do instead of what they will,” the going-negative strategy has even carried over into how often the candidates say their opponents’ names. Fiorina says “Barbara Boxer” frequently, trying to tap into voter anger with the three-term incumbent, while Boxer avoids saying Fiorina’s name.

Guess what name you hear instead of Fiorina’s. One Boxer campaign ad shows Palin praising Fiorina; in another ad by an independent group, Fiorina’s face morphs into Palin’s. Most recently, another independent ad shows Fiorina and Palin in side-by-side clips, using almost identical language about immigration policy. Just how much do California voters despise Sarah Palin? If this trend continues, we may find out.

An aside, while we’re on the topic of controversial names: There’s another one that’s been uttered a lot recently in races across the country. Politico points out the toxicity of Nancy Pelosi, who’s long been a predictable target for Republicans and is now being attacked by members of her own party. “Three vulnerable Democrats from conservative-oriented districts are already running TV ads spotlighting their defiance of Pelosi,” Politico points out.

And then there’s the recent case of Rep. Bobby Bright, a Blue Dog Democrat from a conservative district in Alabama. When asked whether he would again support Pelosi in a run for speaker, Bright offered a host of reasons why the issue might never come up. The last was paraphrased by a reporter present as, “Heck, she might even get sick and die.” The line prompted laughter from his audience.

Tags: abortion, barbara boxer, carly fiorina, George F. Will, Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin

KJ, I can see why some women's choice to abort or selectively reduce might seem to you, an outsider, ethically questionable or uncomfortable. And I can see why that might make you question the late Dr. Tiller's simple philosophy "trust women." To my mind, however, it shows how powerful that statement is, because it's a reminder that being pro-choice is simply about extending the same assumption to women that they're the best judges of their own lives that we extend to situations where men can be choice-makers. When we allow men to make their own personal life-choices, we may not always think, as outsiders, they're making the choice we consider the most ethical. But we believe trusting them is better than the alternative, which is allowing outsiders who don't know the situation as thoroughly to make those choices.

I see abortion as even less ethically fraught than divorce, because in divorce, people with real conscious brains feel real pain and drop real tears. If a man wakes up one day and decides, for no external reason, that he doesn't love his wife anymore, he will break her heart when he divorces her. But it's better than the alternative of a loveless marriage. If someone feels she can provide for one baby but not for two, I still feel she's in the best position to make that call. And the good news is there isn't a living, breathing person whose heart will break upon being not chosen.

This may be easier for me because I personally feel that the number of children that is best for me is zero, so I can easily see why someone thinks two is better than three. As an ethical question, I tend to think providing for existing children trumps bringing forth potential children. In my experience, most parents overestimate their abilities to provide as much time, energy, and resources as a child will need, so if someone truly balks at extending themselves to an extra, unexpected child, I tend to trust that judgment. The more kids you have, the more you have to spread resources around. The ethical argument in favor of not overextending yourself and potentially neglecting a child trumps ethical arguments about what you owe to people who don't even exist yet.

Tags: George Tiller, IVF and selective reduction, trust women

Warning: if you have yet to watch last night's Mad Men, there are spoilers ahead!

After the booze-fueled, conga-lined, get-drunk-and-make-bad-decisions office Christmas party that was the highlight of last week’s episode of Mad Men, the third installment of the season opened with a more sober scene: Joan is sitting in a hospital gown in her doctor’s office, cool and calm as ever, asking her Doc if her two past abortions (“procedures”) will affect her fertility. As it turns out, one of Joan’s past abortions was performed by her doctor (maybe quasi-legally?) and the other by a midwife. And sure, Mad Men is a show of extreme subtlety, but for the duration of the short scene, Joan seems pretty damn self-possessed and matter-of-fact about the whole matter. Ironically enough, a medical conversation about abortion without overtones of despair and emotional upheaval seems harder to come by now in this day and age when the procedure is actually legal.

This revelation about Joan’s past also brings the abortion-on-TV count this year up to two (see Jess’s great post on the Friday Night Lights abortion), which is basically bonafide abortion bonanza in entertainment terms.  No more terribly convenient miscarriages (ahem, BIG LOVE). No “schmabortion” jokes necessary on the small screen. It's about time television has gotten better at confronting a reality that 33 percent of women will undergo before they’re 45. Let’s hope the trend extends to movies.

Tags: abortion, friday night lights, joan, mad men

Why don’t more OB/GYNs do abortions? Lori Freedman’s new book, Willing and Unable, is the most thorough answer yet to that question. Freedman is a researcher at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at U.C.-San Francisco. In 2006, she interviewed 30 OB/GYNs across the country who’d gone to residency programs that offer abortion training unless a resident asks to opt out. The doctors were in their mid-30s to early-40s—they are the next generation. Freedman found that 18 of the OB/GYNs wanted to provide abortions, but only three were actually doing it. Here’s my write-up of quotes from Freedman’s research explaining some of the reasons why, from a piece I wrote recently for the New York Times Magazine:

One doctor from a midsize city in the Midwest described her job interview at a group practice: “The one partner who’s very senior in the group and very pro-life, basically his only job is to sit with you and just tell you . . . ‘If you join this group, you will not be performing abortion procedures. And if that’s a problem for you, then you will work elsewhere. O.K.?’ ” Another doctor from the suburbs of a big Western city said that she refers her patients to Planned Parenthood. “Actually, in my first couple of months in practice, the people that are in my office here told me, ‘Don’t even bother,’ ” she said of wanting to perform abortions.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 93 percent of abortions in the United States today are performed in standalone clinics, 5 percent in hospitals, and only 2 percent in doctors’ offices. From the point of view of making abortion part of doctors’ regular practice, those numbers are bleak. But is Guttmacher inadvertently undercounting? In response to my NYT piece, one doctor wrote me to say he was sure the answer is yes:

First of all, we don’t reply to questions about abortion from anyone, whether they identify themselves as being from a reputable outfit like Guttmacher or from anywhere else. They would not get any numbers from our 11-doctor ob/gyn office. Next, I would estimate that at least 35 percent, but probably more, of abortions done in our area are done quietly in doctors’ offices.

The virtue of Freedman’s method is that she got past the cold call and the front door, so that she can paint a full picture of the constraints doctors who aren’t like this one face.

Tags: abortion, Guttmacher Institute, lori freedman

Before he was murdered by an anti-abortion activist/terrorist, Dr. George Tiller's motto was "Trust women." On its surface, it seems like a strange and shallow motto—is the implication that half of the human race is inherently trustworthy? But once you start to really look at the way the abortion debate is concocted, it starts to make sense. Dr. Tiller was countering millenia of misogynist propaganda that painted women as inherently untrustworthy, as fickle, stupid, deceitful, or otherwise incapable of making decisions as soundly as men are expected to do. And if you have a smidgen of doubt that people are primed to believe the worst of women, reading about the alarm raised over the teeny-tiny percentage of IVF patients who abort should change your opinion.

If you invest in Dr. Tiller's worldview, the news that a small number of women who get IVF decide later to abort won't ruffle your feathers. You'll think, "I'm sure they have a very good reason." You imagine birth defects and broken relationships. And, of course, you'd be right. I had an abortion counselor tell me once about a lesbian couple who went through fertility treatment hell only to have an abortion because of a terrible birth defect, a tragedy that felt so cruelly ironic to the couple in question that they had to joke about it to cope. But if you're most people, you're so primed to believe the worst of women that you immediately go where the Times of London did, and conclude that the women who have abortions after IVF are bad people, too fickle to deserve rights.

Danielle Friedman, writing for the Daily Beast, says this about the outrage over the relatively rare IVF-to-abortion path: "[S]ome people believe that mothers who conceive through in vitro fertilization give up a degree of bodily autonomy." Of course, that's true of any decision a woman makes. Some people believe that women who go drinking in clubs give up their right not to be sexually assaulted. Some people—you may call them "pro-lifers"—believe that a woman who has sex at any time for any reason gives up her right to control her body. It's all a dressed-up way of saying that women didn't have a right to bodily autonomy in the first place.

Saying "trust women" doesn't mean believe women are better than men or especially trustworthy people. It's just assuming women are human beings, and, like men, can be expected to make rational decisions most of the time. And indeed, as Friedman points out, that assumption plays out when you look at women who abort after conceiving through IVF. And if you doubted that before you hear their stories, you should be hit with the sudden realization of how your sexism took you to an ugly place. Viewed with empathy, women who go through the hell of IVF and then abortion are people who deserve our utmost sympathy for their struggles, not our contempt.

Tags: infertility, IVF, reproductive rights