Dodging the question of how much time she should do, dodging patients who want contraception, and dodging the lube while reaching for your Gideon Bible. Amanda also talks to Harriette Wimms about the difference between getting fertility treatments when you're straight vs. getting those same treatments when you come out as a lesbian.

Links in this episode:

Spray-on condoms
Don't you dare ask that question
Federalism and abortion
Choice
Doctors vs. patients
Using hotel rooms for sex?!

Transcript:

On this week's show, Harriette Wimms will read from her story about the obstacles awaiting a lesbian seeking infertility treatments, CNN tells the truth about doctors who refuse to care for female patients, and I reply to the non-answers that some Republican candidates gave on abortion in a recent debate.

Thanks to flea at the blog Lock The Bedroom Door for reporting on some of the more confusing news from the world of sex tech. A German inventor has invented a spray-on condom for men who are too small or large for the standard sizes. A worthy idea, but color me skeptical about how it works. You stick your penis into a pump that sprays it with latex, wait 20 seconds, and then you're ready to go. If your erection hasn't wilted from being sprayed with latex. And if it doesn't break—condoms aren't supposed to be completely skin tight. The little give at the end helps keep them from breaking, you know.

Maybe a better idea is a greater variety in sizes of condoms?

**************

Apparently, the fact that some voters had the nerve—the nerve I tell you!—to ask Republican candidates where they stand on abortion during the Republican YouTube debate is sending the right wingers into a tizzy. I'm not sure why, though. It's not like most candidates didn't do a magnificent job of dodging the question.

The first question is a favorite one of mine to ask anti-choicers, since I have yet to hear one who will answer it directly. Shout out to a fellow Texan for having the ovaries to ask it.

*insert republican question one*

Congressman Ron Paul, how will you get out of saying that 1/3 of American women are murderers who should be in jail as we speak?

*ron paul answer*

Ah, the federalism dodge! Leave it to the states! Does Ron Paul really believe that the federal government needs to stay out of abortion? If so, then why on earth did he vote for the most sweeping federal anti-abortion legislation bill to come down the pipe, the federal "partial birth" abortion ban?

Fred Thompson hides behind the "ladies are too stupid to know what they're doing" dodge that presumes that women aren't full citizens under the law, but should be treated like minors who are unaware of their actions.

*fred thompson answer *

A favorite anti-choice dodge that makes no sense. If you honest to god thought abortion was killing a human being, then procuring it or paying someone to do it is a crime that is equal or greater to performing the act for pay. If you hire a contract killer to kill your own child, that's a crime, is it not? If you think abortion is murder, shouldn't it be treated like murder?

It's almost like anti-choicers are being insincere about the murder thing, and are in this because they oppose a woman's right to control her own body.

Second question, same subject.

*insert republican question two*

A bit more of a softball. Giuliani gives a straightforward answer.

*insert rudy Giuliani answer*

Leaving it to the states is a popular answer. My suspicion is that your average sympathizer with the anti-choice view enjoys having the warm, fuzzy, misogynist feeling of having anti-sex legislation on their local books to make them feel that they're in a morally upright community. But they like the idea that abortion is legal in New York or wherever so that when they need one they can get one. It's cool as long as the appearance of rigid Puritanism is maintained. It's a great system, except for all the women who don't have the means to travel to another state to get an abortion. But I guess those women can be sacrificed for the sake of a hypocritical morality that's all for show.

It's worth noting that Giuliani is from a state where abortion would most likely stay legal if Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Mitt Romney gives me pains with his devious answer. He's smart enough to jump on the "leave it to the states" bandwagon, and then hedges his bets by saying he'd also sign a federal abortion ban. Either, or, whatever you want!

*insert mitt Romney answer*

But I think what really churned my stomach was the idea that there's a single reason to think that not wanting to have abortion in the country has anything to do with abortion bans in the real world. Not wanting to have legal abortion, sure. Wanting women to die in back alleys or hotel rooms from desperately trying to self-abort, sure. Wanting women to be punished for the sin of sexuality with infertility, infection and even death, sure. If that's what you want, you want an abortion ban. But abortion bans have little to no relationship with this fantasy of stopping abortion. As long as women are getting pregnant when they don't want to be, there will be abortion.

************

HARRIETTE E. WIMMS is completing her Ph.D. in child clinical psychology and community psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her dissertation explores the experiences and perceptions of doctoral students of color in psychology. She has an M.S. in developmental psychology from Johns Hopkins University and a B.S. in English from Towson State University. Her poetry has appeared in the anthology From the Listening Place: Languages of Intuition. She lives in Baltimore, where she is the proud and busy mother of a three-year-old boy.

*insert reading/interview*

**********************

CNN recently had a segment on the growing movement of medical workers with anti-choice views pushing their views on patients. I watched it, waiting for the usual tip-toeing around the anti-sex, anti-woman views of anti-choicers and the usual pretending that they're primarily motivated by saving babies, when we all know it's about controlling female sexuality. Luckily, the segment hit the truth about anti-choicers right off the bat.

*insert cnn medical one*

They interviewed Dr. Scott Ross, a Catholic doctor who delivers moralizing lectures instead of prescriptions when women come to him seeking contraception.

*insert cnn medical two*

Splitting hairs. But I'm thinking that it's very rarely an apologetic, "Sorry, I can't do that" kind of thing. I'm guessing once you're actually in the doctor's office and a bit of a captive audience, you get disapproving stares at the least, at worst a lecture about how you should be pumping out one baby after another if you're going to be naughty enough to have sex. Women who are getting shot down for their requests for basic care certainly feel judged.

*insert cnn medical three*

Of course he was judging her. Later in the show, they have a representative from the American Medical Association come on and give the AMA's general view of the issue, which is that medical workers have the basic right not to do things they find immoral, no matter how silly their moral framework. But they also have an obligation to make sure the patient gets the care she needs, which is absolutely not happening. In fact, there's been reports of pharmacists snatching away birth control prescriptions and refusing to relinquish them, doctors refusing to give referrals, and of course the entire issue with emergency rooms. If you've been raped and you're looking for emergency contraception, you don't have time to get a referral and call someone in the morning. The sooner you swallow the pills, the more likely you'll escape pregnancy.

Needless to say, the stonewalling of women who need emergency contraception means that anti-choicers are effectively guaranteeing that there will be more abortions than there would be otherwise. Said before, worth repeating: Given the choice between preventing abortion and punishing a woman for being sexual or even being raped, they'll choose the latter, every time.

The thing that bothers me especially about doctors who see the patients and THEN tell them no on contraception is that they're being kind of sleazy if you think about it. Your average gynecologist knows that a good percentage of his business, probably half I'd bet, is going to be in helping women control their fertility. If you're unwilling to do half your frigging job, you should be willing to put a big sign over the door that says, "Will not prescribe birth control, so don't even ask." Why not do it? Well, with a sign like that, you wouldn't have half naked women of you cowering in front of your lecturing judgments, nor would you have the pleasure of making them pay for the favor. Thus the bait and switch technique.

****************

Now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, this time a find from Pam Spaulding. The latest wingnut cause of alarm? People are using their hotel stays more for having sex than engaging in spontaneous conversions to Christianity. It takes a special kind of person to find that news shocking.

*insert hotel sex*

So many things wrong with that clip, starting with the implication that a cadre of PC types, probably radical feminists, hippies and college professors, is swapping out Bibles with baskets of condoms. In reality, it's the invisible hand of the free market at work. And here I thought the free market was a god only second to the Christian god, and sometimes not even that.

But what really gets me is how the fundies proclaim themselves the defenders of family values and yet they can't even value marriage enough to tolerate the things married people do to bond. Don't they want marriages to stay together? I bet if anyone cared to research it, they'd find that massage oil holds more marriages together than the dusty Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms ever could.