The Republic of T.

The debate over health care reform has taken a particularly worrisome turn. Suddenly we’re in a place where passing something kind of like reform may be more important than getting to reform itself. In the name of "compromise" and in interest of getting something passed, we could get a health reform bill that helps fewer people than originally intended, and preserve more of the status quo than almost anyone wants.

For minorities low income families and individuals, that means more of the kind of disparities — in access to care, quality of care, and health outcomes — that are all too common in our present health care system. The 2008 National Health Care Qualities & Disparities report spells out some of these disparities, including: higher rates of disease, access to care, and lack of routine care and prevention.

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When Dr. George Tiller was murdered, it immediately occurred to me to write the series I’ve been publishing all this week. That’s because my first thoughts were of the women who faced heartbreaking choices after getting devastating news late into what were often very much wanted pregnancies. What choices would they have now that there was one less doctor who offered the procedure they need? What options does the other side offer?

The point I tried to make in the series was that opponents of legal abortion have not offered these women any alternative, except one. The other point I wanted to make was one that I remembered from a previous post that actually inspired the series posted this week.

Talk is cheap, and easy. So is telling people where they should be than meeting them where they are. So is taking away the choices of some families, rather than looking at the realities of all families and changing in order to help all families, whatever their circumstances. It’s easier, and simpler, to see that help as “rewarding” them for “immoral” choices, rather than choosing to help all families in order to help - and heal - our whole society. It’s easier not to see helping “them” as helping us, because it doesn’t require us to change.

That’s the intentional choice we’re making. Still.

Anyway, after writing the series, I wanted repost the piece that inspired it. So here it is.

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In the previous post, I wrote that neither posthumous abortion rights icon Gerri Santoro or the anonymous nine-year-old raped and impregnated by her father are representative of the women who sought Dr. Tiller’s services, or who seek late-term abortion in general. It’ safe to presume that neither of them wanted to be pregnant, each for her own reasons. Opponents of legalized abortion in all case would have both of them give birth.

There’s no way I know of to come up with exact numbers, but many of the women who sought Dr. Tiller’s services, and who seek late-term abortion in general, seem to be women who very much want to be pregnant, but found out well into their pregnancies that there were severe complications, as Dr. Tiller himself pointed out in a 1991 interview.

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In the course of researching another post, I came across some events that weren’t on the the abortion-related violence timeline I posted earlier. So, I’ve updated the timeline and shared it below.

Further updates will follow as I find events to add to the timeline.

Aw, man. First K-Fed and now this?

Levi Johnston is now officially an aspiring actor and model. And according to his new manager Tank Jones, he is getting closer to a clinching a deal that will help him support the baby son he fathered with his former girlfriend, Bristol Palin.

“There’s offers on the table for a little bit of everything – sitcom appearances, a reality show, some modeling,” Jones tells PEOPLE. “We haven’t signed anything, but there’s offers.” Jones declined to give specific details.

Johnston’s interest in a show business represents one of the few viable careers open to him, Jones adds. A high-school dropout passionate about hunting and hockey, Johnston, 19, “is going to go and take the test and finish school and enroll in some college courses,” his manager says. “[But] it’s not like he can go and get a normal job now. Because of all the publicity. The whole interviewing thing, and red carpet and paparazzi – he still hasn’t gotten comfortable with it, but what else does he have? Can he go work at McDonald’s? … He wants to take care of his son financially.”

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This is something I’ve been wanting to say something about for a while, because it comes up so often, but never think to bring it up. So, I have to thank Pat Robertson for giving me the opportunity this time.

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Finally, somebody said it. It’s been on my mind to say for a while now, but I never got around to it. Finally now, somebody else has said it. So all I have to do is say, “Amen.”

After months of hearing everything from national service programs, to the stimulus, and even health care reform to slavery, somebody finally said it. That somebody being brooklynbadboy at DailyKos.

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(WARNING: IMAGES BELOW FOLD NSFW, DISTURBING, POTENTIAL TRIGGER.)

In the previous post, I wrote:

What is the saying? “When God closes a door, he opens a window”? How many windows are there?

…The Doctors Tiller — father and son — like Hearn and others, are in the business of keeping a window open, up against people who are dedicated to eliminating windows.

What the politics of the right means is a life without windows for many of us. Just as they drive people like Dr. Hearn away from windows, their politics drives them to board up the windows that might otherwise be available when life closes other doors, for those of us whose lives don’t fit into the narrow opening they leave — the narrow window they leave open, after boarding up all the others.

It’s worth noting that Tiller’s murder took place just a week shy of the 45th anniversary of the death of a woman for whom all windows and doors out of her desperate situation were firmly closed.

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Friends will let you down
Friends won’t be around
When you need them most
Where are your friends?

Friends are hard to find
Friends, yours and mine
Im talking ’bout your friends

Jody Watley ~ “Friends”

No, not me. I’m not sure I could defend the Obama administration’s defense of the Defense of Marriage Act , even if I wanted to. However, Chris Crain — a blogger whose writing and thinking I respect even when I disagree — does so.

But he does so in a way that leaves me with more questions than answers.

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Lately, I’ve become interested in timelines, and their usefulness in helping to create a kind of narrative. So, when I saw the AP list of abortion-related violence, after Dr. Tiller’s murder, I thought it would make a good timeline.

But then it seemed to be missing something.

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A couple of years ago, I’d never heard of Dr. George Tiller, but I posted a couple of times about late-term abortion, and some of the reasons why some women seek a medical professional who’s willing and able to do the procedure. Later, I posted about the stories of two women with difficult, even tragic late-term pregnancies, and the different choices they made.

I thought about those stories in the days after Dr. Tiller’s murder, and went back to read them again. And then I read more stories of women who found themselves in need of Dr. Tiller’s services, and the circumstances under which he provided it to them. I read stories of women who weren’t patients of Dr. Tiller, but met with desperate circumstances and even disastrous news late into pregnancies they had wanted very much.

I realized, then, that Dr. Tiller’s story was really one about a man of conscience.

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I’ve been working on a post about the murder of Dr. George Tiller for most of the week, and since it isn’t a four-paragraphs-a-link-and-a-blockquote kind of post, it’s taken that long. Then in the middle of it, the shooting at the Holocaust Museum here in D.C. happens. And my thoughts turn to the connections between the two. At least, as I see them.

I’ll finish up that post, including the Holocaust shooting, on Monday. But in the meantime, while researching stuff for that post, I came across this CNN article about hate groups being "riled up" these days, and something in it sounded familiar.

President Obama’s election has been a huge issue with white supremacist groups, in part because he represents in their minds a demographic shift in which the white majority in the United States is becoming slimmer, Levin added.

"Interracial marriage and interracial children are the worst thing in their world, so [the demographic shift] is a big deal for them," Levin said.

Popular opinion surveys indicate the United States is less racist than it was 20 years ago, and social change in this and other areas, including issues relating to gender and sexual orientation, have "radically changed what our culture looks like in a short period of time," Blazak said.

"If you’re not on board with the social change, then you’re increasingly alienated," Blazak said. "A lot of the hate movement is about slowing history down or turning it back."

Well, yeah. I have unwritten blog post in my brain about the economy and the changing demographics of the country, and how they played out before the election and will continue to play out during the Obama administration. It will probably stay unwritten, because I’m sure somebody else has written it already.

But the above reminded me of something I wrote after the VA Tech shooting.

I’ve joked, on occasion, that the great complaint of the last 20 years or so of American politics boils down to the reality that being white, male, and heterosexual (throw in Christian or Protestant here, too, if you like) just doesn’t come with as many privileges it used to. If I were to make a sweeping generalization, I’d say that a good bit of conservative politics these days, boiled down to gravy, adds up to not much more than that.

And this.

Think about where we are now and how far from the birth of this country, when its promises were reserved for a narrow portion of its population. Yet, its principles provided the basis for ever progressive movement that had as its goal the extension of those promises to the full spectrum of the population.

And yes, they were progressive movements. By the very nature of their work, they could hardly be otherwise.

pro-gres-sive
/prəˈgrɛsɪv/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [pruh-gres-iv] Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
1.     favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, esp. in political matters

From the abolitionists movement, to the labor movement, to the suffragists movement, to the civil rights movement, to the feminist movement, to the LGBT movement; every progressive movement that has advocated for change “as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are.”

They were and are driven by individuals lending their strength and their hearts to bending the arc of the universe towards justice, because they are comprised of people for whom the status quo is the opposite of justice and people for whom injustice — even though visited upon others, and even though it afforded them some privileges — is intolerable.

And in each case they were opposed by people for whom the status quo and its injustices were and had to be the natural order. People who were (and yes, I love to pick on this quote) standing athwart history yelling “Stop!”

They were yelling “Stop!” as every progressive movement above marched forward, pushing the envelope of change and expanding the the qualifications for full citizenship in this country and full membership in the human family. They were yelling “Stop!” as every one of those movements marched passed them towards freedom, enfranchisement, and equality.

They are still yelling. And we are passing them by, on our way to the same destinations. We may not all  have reached all of them yet, but we’re closer than we were, and some of them are already in sight.

They’re still yelling "Stop!" alright. And sometimes "Stop, or I’ll shoot!" Even that’s not new. They’ve done it before. Von Brunn was yelling "Stop!" George Tiller’s murderer was yelling "Stop!" Jim Adkisson was yelling "Stop!"

They will keep yelling "Stop!" because we are are passing them by. They will keep yelling "Stop!", but we can’t stop and they (apparently) can’t come with us. What they can’t "Stop!" through legitimate means, they will attempt to "Stop!" through terror and fear.

They always have. But they’ve always failed in the long run, because … well, look at where we are now compared to where we were on gender equality, racial equality, and LGBT equality before.

And they’re still with us, yelling "Stop!"

So, do they come with us whether they want to or not? Or do they self-destruct?

In other words, if we don’t "Stop!", do we take them with us or do they self-destruct and take us with them?

Again, look at where we are. If they’re still yelling "Stop!", that means we’ve made progress. We haven’t stopped and they haven’t stopped us. But they’re still yelling "Stop!"

And they’ll yell louder as we get close to our destination.