Live Blogging! (Kinda-Sorta-Maybe)

I'll hopefully be live-blogging kinda (if local technology is cooperative) from the national Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice conference April 24-26 in Washington, DC for the Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom blog with plans to cross-post here.

Sweet!

In US South, No Justice for Poor Women and Children

The New York Times reports today that after decades of progress infant mortality is on the rise in the southern US. Many are pointing to cuts in welfare and Medicaid, as well as lack of access to doctors. Reading between the lines, however, there is also a story of the feminine face of poverty, racial disparity, and a lack of access to sex education and family planning. It's a travesty that in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, women lack access to information that can save their children, as well as improve their own lives.

Federal Abortion Ban and the Value of Women's Lives

I've been silent recently, I know, because I've been busy at work, traveling (home over Easter, DC for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice conference next week), preparing to become a consociate, and getting ready for the wedding and moving . . . but (ironically, I think) I was at Minnesota's pro-choice lobby day when I got the news that the Supreme Court upheld the ban on so called "Partial Birth Abortion." While there's a lot I could say, Amanda at Pandagon has already said it.

So this bill skips the preliminaries of dismantling women’s rights one at a time and instead gets to the heart of the matter. Late term abortions are performed for maternal health reasons, full stop. Sometimes it’s a fetal health issue, that it’s dead or will die as soon as it’s born, but in the end, it’s still about not forcing a woman to go through labor and delivery, which are dangerous, for no reason. And sometimes they are performed because the mother will die, be crippled, or have serious mental health problems if she delivers. The concept of “choice” isn’t really part of this discussion so much. This is about the concept that women deserve to be treated as full human beings who deserve proper medical care despite their current situation of being in a state only women can be in. That is what was on trial and the answer is no.

It’s a strike at the concept that women have independent value. If you reduce a woman to a baby factory, then one who needs a late term abortion is malfunctioning in her purpose somehow, so if she dies, she’s scrap metal, I suppose. Or scrap blood and tissue, as it were. I hate to be blunt like this, but there it is. They skipped over the preliminaries about what kind of rights women should have and attacked the idea that our very existence and health matters if we’ve failed in our duties as fetal incubators.

Take action to support the Freedom of Choice Act at NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Women Crucified

O God,
through the image of a woman crucified on the cross
I understand at last.

BustedHalo just released "The Contemporary Christa" by Donna Freitas, exploring the controversial image of Madonna crucified on stage:

If you managed to avoid the controversy last summer and fall, the centerpiece of Madonna’s summer Confessions Tour was a crucifixion scene. Each night an enormous, mirrored cross rose up from the performance stage to reveal Madonna wearing a bright crimson blouse and long black skirt, a crown of thorns resting on her head. With her arms outstretched, she sang the somber ballad “Live to Tell” (reportedly written about her experiences of domestic abuse while married to Sean Penn), while images of African children suffering from AIDS flashed in the background.

It didn’t go over well.

What more approprate image than the slow, painful death of crucifiction to represent the slow emotional and physical death caused by domestic violence?

Freitas goes on to detail the contoversy surrounding not only Madonna on the cross, but the imaging of God or Christ as a woman. But, as Freitas notes, if we are all in the image of God/Christ, can we not be images of God or Christ in the world?

It’s not that I’m not aware of Madonna’s past and her infamous ability to shock and scandalize especially when it comes to all things religious—it’s that in this case, I don’t think it’s relevant. In She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, Elizabeth A. Johnson argues that “the Christological symbol of God’s active suffering in Christ [is] a historically inclusive one, encompassing the suffering lives of women and men of all ages.” In other words, the possible portrayals of the divine are not only endless but endlessly diverse. For as Johnson argues, women are “imago Dei, imago Christi, daughters of Wisdom.”

If we are all imago Christi, then why not Madonna too?

Freitas' article brought to mind two other images of women crucified. The first being "In the Name of God," a life-size statue of a pregnant teen girl on the cross, representing victims of the Catholic Church's official policy on condoms as a means of AIDS prevention. This image stirred up controversy of its own, along with cries of blasphemy.

The next image that came to mind is of a woman crucified on a uterus posted in a blog on Rock for Life. Respondents to the blog call it "disgusting," a "mockery of Christ's crucifiction," etc.

What I find most interesting about the responses to all of these images is a revulsion towards equating women's bodies with the sacred, and a fear of women's sexuality, along with really examining or dealing with the issues attached (such as sex, abortion, birth control, and violence against women).

I have known you as a vulnerable baby,
as a brother, as a father.
Now I know you as a woman.

As women's lives are seen as disposable, women are crucified every day. These images, tragically, reflect that reality. Ignoring that fact will not make it go away.

(Italicized portions from an untitled prayer in Soul Weavings: a gathering of women's prayers edited by Lyn Klug)

A Farewell to Frances

After twenty-five years of leadership on church reform and women's rights on a global scale, Frances Kissling steps down from her presidency at Catholics for a Free Choice.

Kissling has led CFFC through numerous controversies with church officials. Predominantly, these have related to the right to be Catholic while disagreeing with church positions on contraception, abortion, gay rights and stem cell research. Under her direction and with an extraordinarily talented staff, CFFC has grown into one of the largest church reform groups in the world with partner organizations in six Latin American countries, Canada and Spain, and representation in the United Nations and at the European parliament.

Executive VP Jon O'Brien will be stepping in as president.