"Law and Order" anti-choice nonsense, with clips! Also, the laws and ethics regarding fertility treatments, and questions about whether or not to vaccinate boys for HPV.

 

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Links in this episode:

Reacting to Bob McDonnell’s thesis

FDA permits vaccinating boys for HPV

Anti-choice extremists try to raise money

 

 

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be interviewing Naomi
Cahn on her book on fertility treatments and the legal issues surrounding
them. Also, I watched the Law and
Order exploiting Dr. Tiller’s murder so you don’t have to, and the FDA approves
use of the HPV vaccination for boys.

 

Virginia’s NARAL decided to take candidate for governor Bob
McDonnell’s thesis to the streets and have people read what amounted to a rant
against anything threatening a strict patriarchy to see what the people think. The people think it is silly.

 

• mcdonnell
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Funny stuff.

 

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I’m sure you’ve heard by now that "Law & Order" did a
despicable episode based on the murder of Dr. George Tiller, and as is often
the case with these shows, they pander so much to conservatives in the audience
that they forget that women who have abortions and those who provide them are
people who deserve respect. Early
in the episode, you have an idea of how bad this is going to be.

 

• l&o
  1 *

 

Right away, they make sure to spare your average anti-choice
nut responsibility for this, and even wrongly imply that they go out of their
way to stop these murders. There is no reason to believe this. Those who shoot abortion providers tend
to move freely amongst other anti-choicers, and even though someone like Scott
Roeder spoke openly of his belief that murder was justified, as far as I know,
no one tipped off the police or the potential victims. They are too busy
spreading dehumanizing rhetoric about abortion providers that gives killers
moral support.

 

Of course, they have to make one of the cops an
anti-choicer, which means that the rest of us have to listen to the cheap
sentimental stuff that assumes that women who have had sex, even forced sex,
forsake their right to be treated like human beings.

 

• l&o
  2 *

 

Oh, way to make the pro-choicer look like a bad guy. Here’s a better reply: You poor mother
was in such hell that she threw herself down a flight of stairs in despair, and
you can’t even pause to think about what that must have been like for her? You weren’t even around! Or maybe not write that story in the
first place, because it’s stupid and implausible. Most women who attempt to self-abort do so early in the
pregnancy, because that’s the best chance they’ve got. Remember kids, if you parents didn’t
have sex the night you were conceived, you also would have never been
born. Do you think that means that
abstaining should be illegal?

 

We also see an example of the anti-choice unwillingness to
believe pregnancy occurs in women’s bodies. The argument that the rape was the crime, but the life isn’t
makes no sense, if you believe women are human beings. He is completely uninterested in the
11-year-old’s physical and mental well-being. As soon as she was raped, apparently she is not a person who
deserves consideration. She is a
nonentity; all suffering dealt out to her is irrelevant. What a horrible way to think.

 

They do show the anti-choice activists as smarmy people, but
most of the episode takes anti-choice nonsense too seriously. It also hangs the
show on the unlikely event that a judge would allow a defense of others defense
in an abortion shooting. And then
the clichés:

 

• l&o
  3 *

 

As Kate Harding as Salon noted, this notion that giving
birth means you’re comfortable forcing others is completely false. 60% of women getting abortions are
mothers already. In addition, there’s some evidence showing that parents of
daughters become more liberal about reproductive rights. Your feelings on choice statistically
are more likely to depend on your attitudes about women, not about fetuses.

 

And then there’s the blatant lies:

 

• l&o
  4 *

 

This story comes from the obviously false story that Jill
Stanek delivered to the Illinois Senate, causing then-senator Barack Obama to
practically laugh in her face. It
would be funny, if it weren’t so sad.
They are spreading lies about Dr. Tiller, who was a good man who gave
his life to serve women’s health, and he loved children. In fact, if you want
children to do well, you don’t attack their mothers. Unsafe, illegal abortion doesn’t just kill women, it orphans
children. Playing the
anti-choicers love babies card doesn’t fly if you look at the facts.

 

They also have another abortion doctor on the stand who is
supposed to be a villain because he calls anti-choicers hypocrites and
fools. I found myself liking him,
and it occurred to me that the only reason that the audience is supposed to
hate him is they’ve been fooled for so long about what anti-choicers are about.

 

And now for the part pro-choicers love—two dudes without
uteruses talk about women’s rights as if they’re a rhetorical exercise and not
a lived experience!

 

• l&o
  5 *

 

First of all, not every birth defect is correctable. And
contraception is not always used or always perfect. But let’s deal with the idea that abortion is like
slavery. This is exactly
backwards. Like slavery, forced
birth is an old-fashioned, conservative idea based on the belief that entire
classes of people should be stripped of their basic right to bodily
autonomy. The people closer to the
abolitionists of yesteryear are the feminists of today. You know, there’s all on the left,
pushing for greater rights and dignity for all human beings.

 

I’ll spare you the humiliating scene where the tough female
lawyer converts to being anti-choice.
Suffice it to say, they might as well have had a good old horse-whipping
of the murder victim’s widow, while they were at it. Finding the defendant
guilty doesn’t make up for this. Dr. Tiller saved lives. Shame on Law & Order for this
horrible misogynist pandering.

 

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• insert
  interview *

 

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Semi-good news: the FDA recently approved the use the HPV
vaccination for boys, and recommended it as part of the boys package of
childhood vaccines, but they are still not officially recommending it, just
staying in the permissive
category. NPR did a segment on the pros and cons of vaccinating young men for
HPV, which would mainly be done to prevent cancer. But not cancer in the boys, but cancer in their potential
partners.

 

• hpv 1
  *

 

But the shots cost money. And so the question remains, should boys be required to get
it in order to increase herd immunity?
As someone who plans to get an H1NI shot so that I’m not a risk to
pregnant women I encounter, I tend to say yes. But from a public health
cost/benefit perspective, the question is up in the air.

 

• hpv 2
  *

 

 

And there lies the rub. In the U.S., at least, there’s a lot of people that aren’t
going to get the vaccine for their girls.
It’s a combination of two factors.
One is the general anti-vaccination hysteria that’s out in the air, most
of it sadly coming from the left.
A lot of people see that Big Pharma will make money off the HPV vaccine,
and as an impotent form of protest against capitalism in every part of our
lives, they decide vaccines are dangerous and won’t get them. That there is no evidence whatsoever
for their fears, but plenty of evidence that cervical cancer is deadly doesn’t
deter them.

 

And part of the reason is coming from the right, and their
belief that preparing young women for sex just inclines them to have it. The right continues to believe that
abstinence will happen if you provide enough pressure, even though the
continuing existence of the human race indicates that sex is as popular as
ever.

 

These two ridiculous mindsets work together to create an
extra special paranoia about the HPV vaccine. The combination of sex and medicine tends to be incendiary
for whatever reason. That, plus
the expense of the vaccine. What this means is that we might not get the herd
immunity we need just by vaccinating all the girls. And then there’s this.

 

• hpv 3
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Well, there’s a couple flaws in the idea of only vaccinating
gay men. For one thing,
vaccinating only one group tends to escalate fears about the vaccine. For another, how do you separate gay
men from straight men, especially before they become sexually active? Most gay people still are assumed
straight until they say otherwise, and a lot of gay people don’t come out until
after they become sexually active.
To make the vaccine the most effective, it’s best to get people
vaccinated before they start having sex.
Plus, a lot of men have sex with men while identifying as straight. There are just so many flaws in the
idea.

 

Personally, I think that vaccinating men to protect women’s
health is a smart idea. It helps
drive home what people don’t understand about vaccines, which is they are both
about self-protection and about herd immunity. We get vaccines as part of the social compact, like paying
your taxes. We all do our part, and we all benefit. Men may not get cervical
cancer, but if someone they love does, they suffer, too.

 

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, life isn’t Law and Order
edition. Here’s a clip from a
Kansas news station covering attempts by anti-choice extremists to raise money
for Scott Roeder’s defense through an eBay auction.

 

• roeder
  *

 

Sure, the show Law & Order portrayed the so-called
necessity defense as something a judge would allow in court, but as I
demonstrated earlier, Law & Order isn’t very interested in reality at
all. This entire thing is a joke,
intended to do what 95% of anti-choice actions are supposed to do, which is
create attention for anti-choicers, so they can feel righteous in their
misogyny. Luckily, eBay will not
allow the auction.