Month: June 2013

Equal protection from literacy tests

by digby

Via Slate’s history blog called The Vault, we have an example of a Louisiana voting literacy test:

This week’s Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder overturned Section 4(b) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which mandated federal oversight of changes in voting procedure in jurisdictions that have a history of using a “test or device” to impede enfranchisement. Here is one example of such a test, used in Louisiana in 1964.

After the end of the Civil War, would-be black voters in the South faced an array of disproportionate barriers to enfranchisement. The literacy test—supposedly applicable to both white and black prospective voters who couldn’t prove a certain level of education but in actuality disproportionately administered to black voters—was a classic example of one of these barriers.

By the way, one wrong answer resulted in failure and the test had to be finished in 10 minutes.

I would imagine that if Louisiana were to implement this test today, the difference would be that it would have to be given to all voters and not just the African Americans. Even in deep south, I don’t think they can get away with singling out people purely on the basis of their skin anymore. And in that case, the entire state of Louisiana would likely be disenfranchised. It’s not exactly a democratic outcome but at least it would be fair.

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Free at last

by David Atkins

The arc bends:

Same-sex marriages in California resumed Friday when a federal appeals court lifted a hold on a 2010 injunction, sparking jubilation among gays and accusations of lawlessness from the supporters of Proposition 8.

In a surprise action, a federal appeals court cleared the way, bypassing a normal waiting period and lifting a hold on a trial judge’s order that declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional.

The news came in a single, legalistic sentence Friday afternoon from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The stay in the above matter is dissolved immediately,” a three-judge panel wrote.

Gov. Jerry Brown told county clerks they could begin marrying same-sex couples immediately, launching plans for ceremonies up and down the state. The two same-sex couples who filed the federal lawsuit against Proposition 8 headed to the city halls in Los Angeles and San Francisco to tie the knot, ending their long fight to become legal spouses.

The first wedding, in San Francisco, began at 4:45 p.m. At 4:10 p.m., a cheer went up in the San Francisco City Hall rotunda. Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, made their way from the city clerk’s office, where they got their marriage license, to the marble steps of City Hall, stopping for photographs.

This fight isn’t over yet. But let no one say that we don’t tend to make progress as a species, slowly but surely. And let no one say that it doesn’t matter which political party holds power. Because it definitely does.

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Don’t mess with Krgthulu™

by digby

Oh, this was obviously a very bad move:

In response to Erick Erickson’s latest us-versus-them screed against the Acela-corridor…

The rest of America is nervous about where their next meal and paycheck are coming from, how they are going to afford to bail their kids out of crumbling schools, and the price of a gallon of milk and loaf of bread that keep going up though Ben Bernanke tells them there is no inflation. 

Paul Krugman drops some Bureau of Labor Statistics data to show that the price of milk and bread haven’t actually gone up at all. And asks: 

So, how does Erickson know that the prices of bread and milk are soaring? Has he been carefully keeping track? Or is it just fake populism, an attempt to sound like Everyman while actually just whining? 

UPDATE (9:43 a.m.): Erickson emails POLITICO:

Paul uses a chart to try to disprove the reality that Americans with small kids actually experience at the grocery store. His problem is he thinks I’m attacking the Democrats and wants to defend them, when the criticism is broader and bipartisan. And if he hung around moms and dads with kids more often he’d hear a lot more real world complaining about bread, milk, and other grocery item prices going up while paychecks are staying the same. Not everything is academic or chartable and sometimes the accuracy of the chart isn’t as real to people as the perception they have that their grocery store bills are getting more expensive though their shopping habits haven’t changed. 

And later adds… 

Seriously, Paul’s point is correct, but it is an issue of perception of people versus the reality of his chart.  He can certainly go tell people milk prices haven’t gone up, but good luck getting them to believe him. 

UPDATE (12:59 p.m.): Krugman responds on his blog: “Ok, this is awesome”:… 

Erickson’s response is, hey, it isn’t true, but people feel that it’s true… Notice, by the way, the implication that I don’t appreciate the problems real people (who don’t eat quiche or ride the Acela) are facing; actually, I do, but those problems are lack of jobs and stagnant wages, not rising prices. And if you want to solve problems, getting the nature of those problems right matters. 

 But then, only elitists want to solve problems; true men of the people just vent, and what matters is perception, not truth.

I needed that. It’s been a long week…

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Uh oh, here come 26 more Insider Threats 

by digby

Yes, they are all traitors who fail to understand just how important it is that we be protected from the boogeyman by any means necessary:

A bipartisan group of 26 US senators has written to intelligence chiefs to complain that the administration is relying on a “secret body of law” to collect massive amounts of data on US citizens.

The senators accuse officials of making misleading statements and demand that the director of national intelligence James Clapper answer a series of specific questions on the scale of domestic surveillance as well as the legal justification for it.

In their strongly-worded letter to Clapper, the senators said they believed the government may be misinterpreting existing legislation to justify the sweeping collection of telephone and internet data revealed by the Guardian.

“We are concerned that by depending on secret interpretations of the Patriot Act that differed from an intuitive reading of the statute, this program essentially relied for years on a secret body of law,” they say.

“This and misleading statements by intelligence officials have prevented our constituents from evaluating the decisions that their government was making, and will unfortunately undermine trust in government more broadly.”
[…]
In a press statement, the group of senators added: “The recent public disclosures of secret government surveillance programs have exposed how secret interpretations of the USA Patriot Act have allowed for the bulk collection of massive amounts of data on the communications of ordinary Americans with no connection to wrongdoing.”

“Reliance on secret law to conduct domestic surveillance activities raises serious civil liberty concerns and all but removes the public from an informed national security and civil liberty debate,” they added.
[…]
The senators also expressed their concern that the program itself has a significant impact on the privacy of law-abiding Americans and that the Patriot Act could be used for the bulk collection of records beyond phone metadata.

“The Patriot Act’s ‘business records’ authority can be used to give the government access to private financial, medical, consumer and firearm sales records, among others,” said a press statement.

In addition to raising concerns about the law’s scope, the senators noted that keeping the official interpretation of the law secret and the instances of misleading public statements from executive branch officials prevented the American people from having an informed public debate about national security and domestic surveillance.

Here’s the letter:

The Honorable James R. Clapper
Director of National Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 2051 1

Dear Director Clapper:

Earlier this month, the executive branch acknowledged for the first time that the “business
records” provision of the USA PATRIOT Act has been secretly reinterpreted to allow the
government to collect the private records of large numbers of ordinary Americans. We agree that it is regrettable that this fact was first revealed through an unauthorized disclosure rather than an official acknowledgment by the administration, but we appreciate the comments that the President has made welcoming debate on this topic.

In our view, the bulk collection and aggregation of Americans’ phone records has a significant impact on Americans’ privacy that exceeds the issues considered by the Supreme Court in Smith v. Maryland. That decision was based on the technology of the rotary–dial era and did not address the type of ongoing, broad surveillance of phone records that the government is now conducting. These records can reveal personal relationships, family medical issues, political and religious affiliations, and a variety of other private personal information. This is particularly true if these records are collected in a manner that includes cell phone locational data, effectively turning Americans’ cell phones into tracking devices. We are concerned that officials have told the press that the collection of this location data is currently authorized.

Furthermore, we are troubled by the possibility of this bulk collection authority being applied to other categories of records. The PATRIOT Act’s business records authority is very broad in its scope. It can be used to collect information on credit card purchases, pharmacy records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information, and a range of other sensitive subjects. And the bulk collection authority could potentially be used to supersede bans on maintaining gun owner databases, or laws protecting the privacy of medical records, financial records, and records of book and movie purchases. These other types of bulk collection could clearly have a significant impact on Americans’ privacy and liberties as well.

Senior officials have noted that there are rules in place governing which government personnel are allowed to review the bulk phone records data and when. Rules of this sort, if they are effectively enforced, can mitigate the privacy impact of this large-scale data collection, but they do not erase it entirely. Furthermore, over its history the intelligence community has sometimes failed to keep sensitive information secure from those who would misuse it, and even if these rules are well-intentioned they will not eliminate all opportunities for abuse.

It has been suggested that the privacy impact of particular methods of domestic surveillance should be weighed against the degree to which the surveillance enhances our national security. With this in mind, we are interested in hearing more details about why you believe that the bulk phone records collection program provides any unique value. We have now heard about a few cases in which these bulk phone records provided some information that was relevant to investigators, but we would like a full explanation of whether or not the records that were actually useful could have been obtained directly from the appropriate phone companies in an equally expeditious manner using either a regular court order or an emergency authorization.

Finally, we are concerned that by depending on secret interpretations of the PATRIOT Act that differed from an intuitive reading of the statute, this program essentially relied for years on a secret body of law. Statements from senior officials that the PATRIOT Act authority is “analogous to a grand jury subpoena” and that the NSA “[doesn’t] hold data on US citizens” had the effect of misleading the public about how the law was being interpreted and implemented. This prevented our constituents from evaluating the decisions that their government was making, and will unfortunately undermine trust in government more broadly. The debate that the President has now welcomed is an important first step toward restoring that trust.

To ensure that an informed discussion on PATRIOT Act authorities can take place, we ask that you direct the Intelligence Community to provide unclassified answers to the following questions:

– How long has the NSA used PATRIOT Act authorities to engage in bulk collection of
Americans’ records? Was this collection underway when the law was reauthorized in
2006?

– Has the NSA used USA PATRIOT Act authorities to conduct bulk collection of any other
types of records pertaining to Americans, beyond phone records’?

– Has the NSA collected or made any plans to collect Americans’ cell–site location data in bulk’?

– Have there been any violations of the court orders permitting this bulk collection, or of
the rules governing access to these records? If so, please describe these violations.

– Please identify any specific examples of instances in which intelligence gained by
reviewing phone records obtained through Section 215 bulk collection proved useful in
thwarting a particular terrorist plot.

– Please provide specific examples of instances in which useful intelligence was gained by
reviewing phone records that could not have been obtained without the bulk collection
authority, if such examples exist.

– Please describe the employment status of all persons with conceivable access to this data, including IT professionals, and detail whether they are federal employees, civilian or
military, or contractors.

Thank you your attention to this important matter. We look forward to further discussion in
the weeks ahead.

Sincerely,

Ron Wyden (D-Or), Mark Udall (D-Co), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt), Mark Kirk (R-Il), Dick Durbin (D-Il), Tom Udall (D-NM), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Jon Tester (D-Mt), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Dean Heller (R- Nev),Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), Patty Murray (D-Wash), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Al Franken (D-Minn), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chris Coons (D-Del), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn), Max Baucus (D-Mont), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).

That’s quite a group of Senators from all over the country and every ideology within the Democratic Party. It includes 4 Republicans, (none of whom answer to the name Rand Paul, you’ll notice.) It would seem they’re getting tired of being lied to.

Perhaps you don’t like the way these issues came to light. But they would not have come to light any other way. Wyden and Udall have been trying to get this out for years but were hampered by all this classified nonsense. And all the sneaky Catch 22s the government set up to prevent anyone from being able to talk about it meant that it took a whistleblower going to the press to get it out there.

You can think Snowden is a narcissist and Greenwald and Gellman are jackasses or communists or anything else but it doesn’t alter the fact that none of this would be the subject of the “open debate” everyone claims they are dying to have if it hadn’t been for these leaks — leaks which 26 US Senators now believe have raised serious questions about the government’s surveillance programs.

I’m sorry that makes people uncomfortable.  But when the government is intent upon governing in secret even when it doesn’t have to, what choice do we have?

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Obamacare will reduce abortions. Not that conservatives care.

by David Atkins

Once again with feeling: if you want to reduce the number of abortions, the best way is through education and expanded healthcare:

A new study focusing on low-income women in St. Louis, MO concludes that expanding access to free contraception — just as the health care reform law does through its provision to provide birth control without a co-pay — leads to significantly lower rates of unintended teen pregnancy and abortion. Researchers found that when women weren’t prohibited by cost, they chose more effective, long-lasting forms of birth control and experienced many fewer unintended pregnancies as a result.

Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis worked in partnership with the local Planned Parenthood affiliate to track over 9,200 low-income women in the St. Louis area, some of whom lacked insurance coverage, during a four-year Contraceptive CHOICE study. The CHOICE project simulated Obamacare’s birth control provision by allowing teens and women to select from the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive options and receive their preferred method at no cost. They found that birth rates among the teens who received free birth control in the CHOICE project were less than a fifth of the national teen birth rate — just 6.3 births per 1,000 teens, compared to 34.3 per 1,000 teens nationwide in 2010 — and abortion rates were less than half of both the regional and national rates.

But for conservatives, the goal has never been actually reducing the number of abortions. It has always been about controlling women’s sexual freedom. Expanded sex education and health coverage gives women greater sexual freedom while reducing abortions, so on balance conservatives hate that. Given the choice between more abortions and more freedom for women, conservatives will pick more abortions every time.

And that tells you everything you need to know.

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I know that people pretty much don’t care about this Internal Threat Program (certainly the media doesn’t) but perhaps you might find it a teensy bit interesting when you see the brochure they’re using at the defense department.  Via Michael Moore:

This is a public document by the way. And yes it seriously says, “it is better to have reported overzealously than never to have reported at all.”


Here’s the FBI’s version. Found it through a simple google search:

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  These are so over-the-top paranoid that I can’t help but wonder if it’s some kind of a joke. But clearly, it isn’t.  And if you read the original McClatchy story, you’ll see that each federal department — even the Peace Corps, has implemented this program.

Also note that this isn’t just about national security. It’s aimed at contractors as well as government employees and its designed to protect against “intellectual copyright” and proprietary information. And the personal factors in the FBI’s list encompass the whole of the human condition as suspicious behavior: financial need, anger, problems at work with lack of recognition, disagreements with co-workers, dissatisfaction with the job, ideology (“a desire to help the ‘underdog’ or a particular cause”)divided loyalty — allegiance to another person or company, adventure/thrillseeker,vulnerability to blackmail. Indeed the only person who would not from time to time come under suspicion is a robot or a person so paranoid about being suspected that they act like a robot and totally avoid any real relationships among the people they work with.

Keep in mind that the Defense Department brochure even makes a point of saying that many “spies” have no access to classified material.  This means everyone in the government is under suspicion. That’s absurd.

I don’t know whether most people remember the last time we went on witch hunts within the government but it really wasn’t that long ago.  A great playwright, Arthur Miller, talks about his play The Crucible and why he wrote it here:

I was suffocating, as most other people were, looking for some way of replying to all this because the nature of paranoia, which is what we were really experiencing, is circular, that is that anybody who strives to counteract it is suspicious.  That is, the act of opening your mouth against it casts you into the camp of those who are accused.  And there was no breaking out of this circle.  

It seemed to me that in the experience this country had in 1692, perhaps I could throw some light, not on the politics of the occasion, but on the mood.  

You can get people excited enough, for example, that a persons right to paint or write whatever he chooses is managed without much defense.  People get hot enough that they’ll trample all over anything.  

What my play is really about and what I think Salem means or should mean is that here are some people who refused to compromise with the government and tell lies in order to save their lives.  

We can be led or misled by appeals to a certain kind of purity of belief.  And a politician who has no qualms about lies — it happens all the time of course — it can very quickly generate a following among certain people by telling them that if they follow him they leave sin behind.  

If you read carefully the record of the trial you have to be struck by the number of people who are telling the court that they were being tempted by Mr So and So in an obviously sexual way. So it was through these testimonies that they could speak of things that were normally repressed.  It was the return of the repressed as Freud would say it, things that were out in the open which would be prohibited otherwise were under the cloak now of a campaign to clean up the town.   

I don’t think this ever ends, I don’t believe it ever ends. Every human being and every society has a panic button and anybody who’s unscrupulous enough to mash it will create a condition which, if it’s unopposed successfully, can end up killing a lot of people. Somebody’s gonna yell fire and there is no fire, there’s going to be a stampede and somebody’s gonna get it. And I don’t foresee a time in any society that’s going to guarantee against that.

There’s obviously no guarantee. But it can be successfully opposed. McCarthyism ruined a lot of lives. But it was eventually ended by the decision to throw sunlight on the hearings and by courageous journalists who revealed it for what it was.

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The second half of the equation: “just give it up for adoption”

by digby

Earlier David commented eloquently on Natasha Chart’s great piece about the fatuousness of telling women “just have the baby.” I wanted to talk about the second half of that equation — “and give it up for adoption.”

That piece of advice is undoubtedly unimaginable to a new mother like Natasha, madly in love with her little baby and worried sick about his health as they’ve gone through these crises. But imagine if Natasha were a single mom with no money, no job, no insurance and no partner to help her through this. Imagine further that she is 16 years old and is facing motherhood at a time when she is almost a baby herself. Or imagine she is a 43 year old single mom with four kids already.

These are women who not only have to face the health implications of childbirth but the emotional implications of having a child at the wrong time and feeling they cannot care for it. “Just have the baby and give it up for adoption” sounds like it should be easy in that situation, but imagine actually doing it. Regardless of the circumstances, that woman is likely going to feel a deep attachment to this child she cannot care for. She is going to be giving up a child that will be her future or present childrens’ sibling. Is that easy? Really? Just a quick 9 months of gestation, push it out and go on with your life? Of course it isn’t.

Now, many women make that choice every day and they live with it, knowing in their hearts they have done the right thing despite the personal pain. Others are haunted by it and wish they would have made a different decision. And, obviously, there are also countless adoptive parents who are grateful that they did what they did. But for many, many women the decision to have an abortion is, by far, the right decision for them. They know they cannot take care of a child or that doing so would alter their lives so substantially that they will never be able to live to their full potential if they do it. And going through pregnancy, childbirth and adoption is something they know would be devastating both physically and emotionally.

Either way, this is not easy. Not by a long shot. And people who blithely throw out this advice to “just have the baby” no matter what the circumstances are people who have no empathy for those who find themselves in such a complicated situation.

Biology makes pregnancy very easy for most women. Nature very strongly wants us to procreate and it has no care for the circumstances under which we do it. Women get pregnant in times of war and famine and regardless of their ability to raise the child. Left up to nature women die frequently in this process and many, many babies die in infancy. If we use the appeal of nature, that’s what we are really talking about.

But in this modern civilization in which women have agency, free will and lives that are not dictated by these “natural” events, that is pretty damned barbaric. Because of their role in human procreation, choices women make about reproduction are fundamental if they are to be able to function freely as equal citizens with the ability to fulfill their potential — and do the right thing by their families present and future.

New moms like Natasha, in good circumstances although tired and hurting, thrilled with her new baby are what we want for every family. And yet some women will give birth into bad circumstances and make the best of it. Others will endure the physical and emotional pain and give their child up for adoption. And many others will decide that doing either of those things is wrong for them and they will have an abortion. Also too, most of those women will have other children and have happy and fulfilling lives as mothers.

Having some stranger take the decision for all of that out of the hands of women is wrong. They are the only ones who can know the exact circumstances that make the pain of childbirth, giving it up for adoption or raising it to adulthood the right decision for them. Anyone throwing out advice saying “just have the baby and give it up for adoption” is essentially saying that women are all cut from exactly the same cloth and have no individual needs or wants or beliefs. It’s treating them as if they are not fully human.

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Immigration reform by the numbers

by digby

… or rather, why it’s likely going to fail again:

Today, the Senate voted for immigration reform by a seemingly overwhelming margin: 68-32. That might seem like a “B.F.D.” It’s not. We’ve been here before: In 2006, the Senate voted for immigration reform by a 62-32 margin. The House killed it.

Today’s vote appears more impressive than the 2006 Senate vote. But back then, there were only 39 Democratic “yes” votes, compared to 52 today (independents excluded). As that implies, there was less Republican support for today’s bill than there was in 2006: Only 30 percent of Senate Republicans voted for today’s immigration bill, compared to 42 percent in 2006. Much of that decline is due to the loss of blue state Senate Republicans who were defeated in 2006 and 2008. But over the last seven years, just two Senate Republicans—Lamar Alexander and Orin Hatch—switched from “no” to “yes.”

Today’s vote shows congressional support for immigration reform breaking along roughly the same lines as 2006, when it failed to attract a majority of Republicans in the House—despite the backing of a Republican president. And unlike the Senate, the House hasn’t become more Democratic since 2006. In fact, it’s gotten more conservative.

So if the Senate bill can only attract 30 percent of Senate Republicans, it has no chance of earning 50 percent of the more conservative House GOP caucus—the threshold for overcoming the so-called “Hastert Rule.” In reality, the Senate bill would be lucky to even approach 30 percent of the House GOP caucus. In the fiscal cliff deal, for instance, only 30 percent of House Republicans supported the Senate compromise, even though 89 percent of Republican Senators were on board. Perhaps Boehner can craft a bipartisan immigration bill that attracts an even greater share of House Republicans. Probably not.

This is where the gerrymandering really becomes a problem. These wingnuts are in safe districts as long as they don’t do anything that might upset their most radical voters because the only challenge they are likely to face is from their right.

The only thing that can change this in the near term is for the right wing noise machine to start some deprogramming. And that’s not going to be easy. The ultra-conservative creature they’ve created is no longer under their control. It may easily take them just as long to wind it down as it did to wind it up.

On the other hand, they may be very happy as the opposition party for a decade or more. They have the court protecting corporations and carrying out much of their agenda and can successfully obstruct any progress by a Democratic majority. That’s called winning. For them. For the rest of us it’s an encroaching dystopian hellscape from which we can’t escape.

It won’t last forever, but they can do a whole lot of damage before they’re done. And on some issues, like climate change, it could be irreversible.

I don’t know what to do. I’m beginning to think that the biggest mistake the Democrats ever made was John Roberts. He’s very, very good:

The more meaningful way to look at the court is as a movie, one starring Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as a canny strategist with a tough side, and his eyes on the horizon. He is just 58 and is likely to lead the court for another two decades or more.

Chief Justice Roberts has proved adept at persuading the court’s more liberal justices to join compromise opinions, allowing him to cite their concessions years later as the basis for closely divided and deeply polarizing conservative victories.

His patient and methodical approach has allowed him to establish a robustly conservative record while ranking second only to Justice Anthony Kennedy as the justice most frequently in the majority.

“This court takes the long view,” said Kannon K. Shanmugam, a lawyer with Williams & Connolly in Washington. “It proceeds in incremental steps.”

On Tuesday, when the court struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice Roberts harvested seeds he had planted four years before. In his 2009 opinion, writing for eight justices, he allowed the Voting Rights Act to stand. But the price he exacted from the court’s liberal wing was language quoted in Tuesday’s decision that seems likely to ensure the demise of the law’s centerpiece, Section 5, which requires federal oversight of states with a history of discrimination.

The chief justice helped plant new seeds on Monday, when seven justices, including two liberals, agreed to sign an opinion that over time could restrict race-conscious admissions plans at colleges and universities. Only the senior member of the court’s liberal wing, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, filed a dissent.

Last year, in the second-biggest surprise of his decision upholding President Obama’s health care law, Chief Justice Roberts persuaded two liberal justices to join the part of his opinion allowing states to opt out of the law’s expansion of Medicaid. That ruling has added significant complications to the rollout of the law.

Only the justices know their motives and arrangements, but there is a pattern here. The price of victory today for liberals in the Roberts court can be pain tomorrow.

If that sounds familiar to Democratic activists, it should. This has been the GOP strategy for decades. Pull right, pull right, pull right. Let’s hope that the liberal wing of the Supreme Court wises up faster than the Democratic Party has done.

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Shackling women to their wombs

by David Atkins

Longtime progressive activist and new mother Natasha Chart writes about the inhumanity of demanding that women with unwanted pregnancies “just” have the baby and give it up for adoption.

After describing her experiences buying multiple sets of maternity clothes and almost contracting gestational diabetes, there was this:

I’m sure the last month of pregnancy would have been all kinds of interesting, but I wasn’t going to find out. Friday, May 24th, I had a prenatal checkup where everything seemed fine and my doctor was unconcerned about the weekend train trip my husband and I were taking to New York City. Monday, May 27th, at about 3 am, I suspected that my water had broken. The medical advice line directed me to go to the nearest hospital at once and not to try to get home to Washington, DC.

The doctor in the labor and delivery triage unit doubted that my water had broken because I wasn’t dilated, but an ultrasound confirmed that there was practically no amniotic fluid left around the fetus. They told me that if I didn’t start labor they’d have to induce to prevent infection. They admitted me. I went into labor, and delivered my son about 26 hours after my water broke.

The hospital bill was over $24,000. The anesthesiologist’s bill for the epidural was over $9,000. The presiding obstetrician’s bill was around $4,500. Those are just the bills we’ve seen so far, and we’re lucky that our insurance is going to pick up the majority of it. I do not know the full range of what happens when you get a set of bills like that and you have no health coverage or little to no income, but it can’t possibly be good.

The baby came out face up, which makes for a difficult labor, and had a large head for a six-pound baby that came five weeks early. If someone had wanted me to show up at a job site that week, they would have been out of luck, and I might have been out of a job. Until last week I couldn’t even sit up on a chair without serious medication and I still feel bruised, because why wouldn’t I?

While there are some few people who are up and about like nothing happened just days after a normal vaginal delivery, and some few who have significant birth injuries, it usually takes about six weeks to recover from giving birth if everything goes well. Since there are millions of parents in the United States who can’t even get a day off for the flu, it’s not hard to figure out that birth itself causes a lot of immediate job loss.

To the other option, a nurse I was talking with over the weekend said it took her a month to recover from her c-section to the point where she could even lift her 10-pound son after he was born. They didn’t make the incision large enough, so they still had to vacuum the baby out and she lost 2 liters of blood in the process. She said she wasn’t back to full strength yet, even though it’s been over a year.

Not something I had to go through, but it’s a good reminder that it’s offensive to talk about having a c-section as if it weren’t major abdominal surgery. Like other kinds of surgery, some people recover quickly and well, but some people don’t. It’s monstrous to expect an exceptionally quick healing response from everyone after getting their abdomen cut open and sewn up.

To say, ‘just have the baby,’ is to say, just risk a prolonged illness, surgery, and the loss of your income when you have a lot of new expenses. It’s to tell someone casually that they should sign up for the possibility of experiencing more physical pain and agony than they thought a person could live through, and maybe having a great deal of it continue for days, weeks, months, possibly even years.

But that’s not all. Natasha’s baby has illnesses associated with premature birth as well, involving long and expensive care in NICU. Read the whole thing.

Two points stand out here:

First and foremost, it’s cruel, arbitrary and monstrous to tell any woman that she must simply carry a fetus to term as if it were a mere minor inconvenience. Beyond the mere principle of civil rights and freedom involved, it’s an insult to women that severely underestimates the expense and danger involved in pregnancy. Some pregnancies go very smoothly, but many do not.

Secondly, however, it’s particularly monstrous in the context of a society that does not provide remotely adequate worker protections for pregnancy, childbirth, post-natal care and nursing–for women or men for that matter. To tell women what they can do with their bodies and to underestimate the problems with pregnancy is horrible enough. To do so while failing to provide free universal healthcare and worker protections isn’t just patriarchal and monstrous, but downright punitive.

It’s the result of a sick, twisted culture whose highest priority is punishing women for daring to have sex outside of their husband’s strict jurisdiction. And every culture that places punishing women for being sexual beings ahead of basic human rights should be humbled and brought to heel, with half its population emancipated from the monsters who would shackle them to their wombs.

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Door of no return

by digby

What a picture:

President Barack Obama toured a former slave house on Goree Island, Senegal Thursday as part of his three-day trip to Africa.

Obama was accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama and his daughters. The former slave house’s “Door of No Return,” opening onto the Atlantic Ocean, is said to have been the last location for slaves being shipped to North America. The president spent a few moments there alone, per a pool report.

The president said the trip was a reminder that “we have to remain vigilant when it comes to the defense of human rights,” according to the report.

Indeed we must.