Steph Herold talks about talking about abortion on Twitter. The TSA uproar has implications for reproductive rights, if we look closely. Also, does Bush’s fetus in a jar mean what anti-choicers hope it does?

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John McCain constantly moving the goalposts

New screening procedures

Bureaucracy logic

3-year-old accosted at security

Mother’s baby kidnapped by hospital/CPS

George Bush and the fetus in a jar

Barbara Bush’s interpretation 

On this episode of Reality Cast, Steph Herold will be on to talk about her new mission to get women talking about abortion online.  Also, I review a pro-choice take on the new TSA screening processes, and take another look at the story about George Bush and the fetus in a jar.

The Daily Show had a great time making fun of John McCain constantly moving the goal posts on what it would take for him to consider supporting a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

• dadt *

I can’t believe McCain didn’t realize that the leadership and the research would come to this point where he’d be caught in a lie.  I just don’t get it.  What did he think would happen?

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This may not seem completely relevant to the topic of this podcast, but I think it is, if you’ll bear with me.

• tsa 1 *

I think everyone in the country understands the issue by now, but I’ll recap: the Transportation Security Administration has decided rather suddenly that they want to up the amount of hassle that passengers get at security in airports.  The official reason is they’re afraid of terrorism, but as Lindsay Beyerstein pointed out, they’ve also been trying to bully people into submitting to full body scan machines.  It used to be that you could opt out of the body scan and get a pat down instead, but that took longer, and plus makes it harder for them to justify spending money on these scanners.  So what they did was change the protocol so the TSA agent is basically fondling your sexual body parts, like your genitalia.  I think they hoped people will pick the scan over having their junk fondled, basically.

The result is chaos and revolt, for a couple of reasons.  The first is one that’s hard for me to take, as cynical as I am after spending years pushing for civil liberties.  And that’s that there have been a couple cases of small children having the privates touched by TSA agents.  One was a little girl whose father happened to be a journalist.

• tsa 2 *

This is frightening, because basically it’s not only cruel on the spot, but it sends a message to kids that they should submit to intimate touching from adults if they are authority figures.  To be clear, I’m not with some of the people who are being over the top about this, and saying that TSA agents are getting off on it.  I’m sure some are, because creeps are everywhere, but most agents had this sprung on them, too, and let’s face it, finding another job in this economy is a frightening prospect.  This was not part of the job they signed up for.

The other thing that really set it off was the guy from the first clip, the don’t touch my junk guy?  Yeah, the TSA publicly opened an investigation on him after he publicized this clip.  Basically, they are using the power of the government to criticize free expression of a frigging political opinion, which is exactly what the First Amendment was written to protect.

Most of the time on this podcast, I focus on being pro-choice because it’s about women’s equality and religious freedom, as well as about public health.  But civil liberties and the right not to have your bodily autonomy violated is a big part of this.  One reason the state and the church like to go after women’s rights is that women, especially when they violate some chastity standards, are second class citizens, and few people defend them.  And that warms the public up to the idea that the government has a right to control our bodies.  And then you start to see crap like this TSA security theater. 

Take this story, for instance.

• tsa 3 *

This kind of crap happens all the time, and feminist media cares about it.  And sometimes local news media cares about it.  The ACLU cares about it.  But it’s not getting endless coverage on cable news, and people aren’t organizing a day of protest.  That, I believe, is in no small part due to the fact that the people who tested this woman without her knowledge and called the cops on her were smarter about choosing their victims.  The parents in this case, from the beaming family picture I’m looking at right now, appear to be a white woman and a black man.  The TSA needs to be stopped right away from groping people.  But we need to think of civil liberties as belonging to everyone.

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insert interview

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It’s an article of faith for anti-choicers that someone who learns there is actually a fetus inside a woman’s pregnant belly will instantly and without hesitation decide that woman has lost all her rights to bodily autonomy.  The anti-choice community is rife with mostly false stories about how formerly pro-choice people were informed about the fact that fetuses are actually inside pregnant women, and they changed their opinion on abortion rights.  These stories justify floating fetus pictures around, either intact ones from ultrasounds or the gruesome ones that purport to be from abortions, though many of those pictures are faked or from relatively rare and medically necessary late term abortions.  Personally, I just think they like fetus pictures as fetish objects, much the way I like vinyl records or band T-shirts.  It’s a nice reminder of my hobby, though I suppose my hobby is healthier for me.

I bring this up because, as you may have heard, George Bush saw a fetus his mother’s body expelled when he was a teenager.  I’m not making fun of Barbara Bush, at least not in this particular instance.  What happened sounds awful. George Bush took her to the hospital.

• fetus 1 *

This was immediately seized upon as the reason Bush is anti-abortion by much of the media and public, again because of this myth that knowing there’s a fetus in there will make you suddenly anti-abortion.  Never mind that pretty much every pro-choicer is quite aware what a fetus is, thank you very much.  And never mind that most abortions happens well before the period where a fetus looks like much at all, since it’s tiny and doesn’t resemble a person. You rarely see early term fetuses in the fetus paraphernalia anti-choicers favor.  Bush himself smiled a bit on this interpretation of this story, that it’s all about abortion.

• fetus 2 *

This is a fishy story, for two reasons.  One is that Barbara Bush was almost surely pro-choice at the time, and is known not to be a sentimental person on top of that.  The second is that the reasons George Bush is anti-choice are more obvious than this.  It’s part of his faith as an evangelical Christian, for one.  Another, and probably more important reason, is that he pretty much had to be hardline anti-abortion to get anywhere as a politician, since his base is so misogynist.  But I do think he’s a true believer, since his administration did so much to discourage contraception use.  But if he was compelled by the love of fetuses, he would be pro-contraception, since contraception prevents abortion.  Since he was anti-contraception as a President, we can exclude the pro-fetus rationale.

Plus, Barbara Bush doesn’t see it that way at all. 

• fetus 3 *

Yeah, that’s not the language of someone who thinks this is a human corpse or the same as a dead baby.  More like it’s a novelty, like you’re saying, this is kind of weird but neat.  In fact, if you go back to George Bush’s interview, I think that’s actually what he was saying, too. 

• fetus 4 *

Oh, and he said this, too:

• fetus 5 *

Here’s what I think happened.  I think Barbara Bush had a miscarriage and perhaps did show her son the fetus.  But in that way you do when you have a nasty bruise or a broken fingernail and you show your loved ones or friends.  It’s a combination of commiserating and also because it’s interesting to see that stuff, which can look weird.  Back then, the Bushes were pro-choice.  This anti-choice interpretation is being tacked on, and obviously with much reluctance, because it serves a political agenda.  But that’s not how they actually feel about it. 

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, not the way to protest edition.  I’m glad Mike Huckabee is speaking out against the TSA searches, but this isn’t the way to do it.

• huckabee *

The unconstitutional part I can get behind, but the rest?  He makes it sound like women are property that belong to men, and that the real offense is to him because his women folk that he owns are being touched.  What about women not connected to a husband or father?  Are they eligible for abuse?