That’s what Ruth Marcus claims in today’s Washington Post, quoting Sarah Palin’s remarks from a—what else—a pro-life fundraiser. At the dinner, Palin discussed her “choice” to have a child with Down syndrome  at the age of 44—a choice that, as Marcus points out, Palin wants to deny other women. Marcus is miffed that right-to-lifers like Palin routinely justify their anti-choice positions by describing their own “correct” “decisions” to have children. This isn’t the fist time Palin has used choice to explain why women shouldn’t chose—who could forget Palin’s election-season classic, “We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby”?

Palin’s pro-”choice” comments—where she describes twice considering abortion before deciding to carry her pregnancy to term—after the jump.

Read More “Sarah Palin Makes Case For Abortion” »

Waiting for the dough: Tsubata and children Lan Lee, Kensei Tsubata, and Mie Smith

Kate Tsubata is not your typical abstinence advocate. She wants you to choose one person to have sex with for the rest of your life, but her fidelity to the movement’s traditions ends there. She refuses to draft no-sex pledges, forge promise rings, stage purity balls, or cite scripture. She doesn’t care if the sex you’re not having is straight or gay. She likes sex, actually, as long as you only do it with one person ever—no wedding required. The stakes are lower, too. In Tsubata’s abstinence movement, sex won’t lead you down a road of eternal damnation—all it will do is kill you.

Read More “Why the Chaste AIDS Movement Can’t Get Paid” »

And we’ve got the whole, non-white-trashy thing on tape:

Sarah Seltzer for Reproductive Health Reality Check wonders if Levi is a “victim” in the Palin spotlight. “The Internet is buzzing over Levi Johnston’s appearance on Tyra yesterday to ‘break his silence,’ and providing us all with a reminder that patriarchal policies like abstinence-only education hurt young men, too,” writes Seltzer.

I couldn’t agree more: We’re all victims here: Levi, Bristol, Tripp, and Palin herself all suffered at the hands of her ridiculous abstinence (with a teenage pregnancy backup) method. Everyone, that is, except Tyra, who pulls a fierce Katie Couric to get the daytime interview of the post-pregnancy season.

Unborn fetuses: Your lives are in Saletan’s hands.

Welcome back to “Sexist Beatdown,” the weekly event wherein Sady, of New York ladyblog “Tiger Beatdown,” and myself, of D.C. ladyblog “The Sexist” carry on evolved conversation on such topics as abnormal boners. This week, we discuss William Saletan, the Slate contributor obsessed with what Sady and I have, but what he does not: wombs (and the fetuses that sometimes develop in them).

Saletan is the king of the Ethical Ladypart Curveball, searching out freaky weird situations involving reproductive rights, in order to blow his fucking mind and encourage him to completely rethink the ethical rules involving abortion. Observe:

“If you stop paying a surrogate mother, what happens to the fetus?”

“Would you abort a fetus just because it wasn’t yours?”

Hey, we’re cool with “lady’s choice.” Not Saletan—it can never be that easy for Saletan. Is this awesome, or awesomely offensive? We decide, after the jump.
Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Debating William Saletan Edition” »

Yesterday was “Back Up Your Birth Control Day.” In case you missed it, you still have 72 hours after your non-backed-up-birth-controlled sexual intercourse to participate in the day’s events. “Back Up Your Birth Control Day” was created to “raise awareness about increased access to emergency contraception,” which will soon be available over-the-counter to women 17 and up. For me, Back Up Your Birth Control Day is actually the day after a condom breaks or you miss your daily pill, not March 25 of every year. But it doesn’t hurt to have a Plan B pack on hand just in case—so you don’t have to schlep off to a condescending pharmacist at the exact moment his shaming will be most unbearably offensive.

Photo by nateOne

Getting your baby in there doesn’t come cheap.

In his Slate column this week, William Saletan discussed what happens when biological parents stop paying the surrogates who are carrying their fetuses. SurroGenesis is a California surrogacy service that sets up infertile couples with willing replacement mamas, and facilitates payments between the two parties—well, it used to. It recently announced that its bank account is empty, along with $2 million in payments infertile families had intended for the keepers of their growing fetuses. Dozens of women currently undergoing the arduous and expensive task of carrying another couple’s child are now left without a paycheck.

How much is the going rate for a womb rental, anyway? Check out SurroGenesis’ surrogacy fees—including $2,000 for “termination” (not guaranteed) and $5,000 for “Loss of Reproductive Organs (very rare)”—after the jump.

Read More “How Much Does it Cost to Rent a Womb?” »

On Tuesday, Sarah Palin called out Obama on pay equity. “Does he think that the women aren’t working as hard? Does he think that they are 17 percent less productive?” she said, quoting a story in the National Review that alleged that Obama’s Senate offices paid women 83 cents on the dollar compared to his male staffers. Palin’s diversions from McCain doctrine—the campaign officially opposes the Ledbetter fair pay act—have been hit or miss. Here, the sentiment behind the attack is a good one but the pit-bull attitude, again, is presumptive, especially since it’s hastily reported. Jezebel has a great, in-depth breakdown of the real salaries for men and women in the Obama and McCain campaigns. It turns out that, of course, the situation is more complicated than it appears in stump speeches.

Good morning, Washington. Your sex & gender links of the day:

* Jezebel considers telling off Columbus Day.

* How did big tobacco make smoking acceptable for women? It got cozy with women’s lib, writes Jennifer 8. Lee for the New York Times:

Recognizing that women were still riding high on the suffrage movement, [American Tobacco Company P.R. dude] Mr. Bernays used the equality angle as the basis for his new campaign. He convinced a number of genteel women, including his own secretary, to march in the 1929 Easter Day parade down Fifth Avenue and light up cigarettes in a defiant show of their liberation.

* Internet nerds plan nerd union with Twitter engagement. Nerds. [via Boing Boing].

* How long must you date IRL before txt breakups become uncouth? From This Recording, In Which You Autocomplete Me, by a Georgia Hardstark.

* The raddest 106-year-old Roman nun is voting for the first time since Eisenhower. Which whippersnapper does she support?

* A couple of breeders who cannot, themselves, breed tell homosexuals why same-sex marriage is unnatural: “Patricia and Wesley Galloway could not have children of their own. Yet for them, the essence of marriage is rooted in procreation,” write Ray Rivera and Christine Stewart for the New York Times.

NYT covers this angle—opposing gay marriage for biology, not religion—as if it’s a new trend, when homosexuals (women, non-gender conforming individuals, minorities of any kind) everywhere know this “nature” bullshit has always been used to perpetuate institutionalized discrimination even among the non-religious. It’s just a hop and a skip from “it’s just not how God made us” to “it’s just not how nature intended.” Laments Ms. Galloway, “Everyone who disagrees is automatically labeled a right-wing bigot.” Adds Mr. Galloway, “How can you be a bigot when you’re looking out for society as a whole?” Thanks, Mr. & Ms., for showing us two bigots who defy the odds to manage that just fine.

Oh, and let’s add some misogyny in there for good measure: “Mr. Galloway, whose father died when he was 3, said being raised solely by women—his mother and his aunts—hindered his development and altered his sense of self-worth.” Hi, mom!

* Donna Fish is tired of people telling her she can’t be a little bit pregnant when she’s had an embryo implanted invitro and she’s waiting to see if it turns into a real live baby, because apparently people tell her she can’t say she’s a little bit pregnant or she wouldn’t have written this blog post about the new trend of being a little bit pregnant. How about being a little bit baby crazy?:

For six years, my husband and I lost seven babies. Two of them in the sixth month, five in the first trimester. We tried everything. Doctors could offer us no further options, so we turned to adoption. One evening I threw caution to the wind and became pregnant. For reasons no doctor to this day can understand, my first daughter was born nine months later. My subsequent two pregnancies were also uneventful and lo and behold, we have our three daughters.

Attn. Mr. & Ms. Galloway: Some people are so into nature they only turn to adoption after losing their seventh baby, and the miracle of nature rewards them with three healthy pregnancies. Who really deserves to be married now?

Last month, reports of a 17-year-old Palin spawn’s unplanned pregnancy briefly satiated tabloid hunger for babies-having-babies coverage. The announcement redirected the evergreen “Pregnant Teen” story from Britney sis and new mom Jamie Lynn Spears, also 17, who gave birth to her first child in June. Now, tabs like the National Enquirer (probably more reliable than USA Today!) are again turning their exacting eyes on Spears. “Whoops—she did it again!” reports the Enquirer:

“Jamie Lynn is about eight weeks pregnant, and she and her mom Lynne are hysterical,” revealed a close source. “Neither of them knows what to do, but for now they’re trying to keep the news from getting out.”

“Too late,” sneers the Enquirer, after reporting that Spears’ “pals are begging her to abort.”

There’s something very strange about outing celebrity pregnancies (many gossip mags have their own “bump watch” to perpetuate the fetal rumormongering). But reporting on the reproductive activities of underage girls—those who are raised in the shadow of fame, and those who encounter it, suddenly, when their personal lives become political news—can be downright sinister.

Here’s why: Teen girls, for the most part, aren’t planning to become mothers. Those who do carry a pregnancy to term stand to sacrifice their childhoods, leave school, and abandon their career paths in order to become moms. That choice, of course, is a valid one. But by poaching these girls’ pregnancy stories before they’re able to even make that choice, the tabloid, blog, or mainstream paper that outs a girl’s pregnancy effectively eliminates her option to choose abortion. It’s a funny thing about conservative families, industries, and cultures—the abortion option looks a hell of a lot better when it’s done in secret, without neighbors, friends, or the entire media knowing about it. Once the pregnancy is revealed, though, you’ve got a baby, a marriage, and a hastily-worded press release on your hands.

The shame machine affects girls in pro-choice environments, too (like Godless, liberal Hollywood). No matter a girl’s situation, if a tabloid gets her pregnancy story out before she does, “pro-choice” politics bend to a more powerful force: PR. (Yeah, adoption’s probably off the table, too).

So here’s the rule on pregnant teen coverage, Enquirer. It’s only a story when she says it’s a baby. Hey, there’s an upside, tabloids: When you don’t shame a teen into having a baby, it’s a lot easier for you to continue to shame her for having the baby.

Photo by Pete Barr-Watson.

* For Slate, The Abstinence Teacher author Tom Perrotta explains the political appeal of Sarah Palin’s “Sexy Puritan” archetype:

I’m only trying to locate her within the context of the great American culture war, which she seems to have single-handedly reignited during an election season that was supposed to have been dominated by other issues (and may well be again, now that Wall Street has imploded). With the selection of Palin, McCain succeeded not only in thrilling the Christian right but in scrambling the categories of the campaign. It used to be perfectly clear which ticket represented youth and change, which seemed old and boring, and which had more appeal to women voters. For a moment, at least, Palin seems to have turned these certainties into open questions.

* Also in Slate: How the financial crisis is good for the high-end prostitute business:

Sex workers of the past waited on street corners, outside bars, and around parks, and their transactions were fleeting and usually for a few dollars. Today’s high-end sex workers see themselves as therapists, part of a vast metropolitan wellness industry that includes private chefs and yoga teachers. Many have regular clients who visit them several times per month, paying them not only for sex but also for comfort and affirmation.

Ahh, but what of the comfort and affirmation of your local alt-weekly?

* Stuff Hipsters Don’t Like: Hipsters. Thinking about the economy. Pregnancy:

Hipsters are very torn about pregnancy. On the one hand, they don’t have any problem with abortion seeing as they got their BA in post-structuralist conceptual astrology and have endured hundreds of hours of NPR, Ira Glass’ infanticidal socialist drone lingering in their subconscious. On the other hand, being pregnant is kind of cool. It gives them some sort of purpose in an otherwise directionless post-graduate existence. In fact, some hipster girls dream of having a traditional nuclear family. They fantasize about their husband handsomely dressed in wool flannel and Ray-Bans returning home from his long shift at the record store and coddling their infant son decked out in a vintage neon Morrissey romper.

That said, most of the time they just get an abortion.

* Women dumb! Men lazy! Unfabulouz.com shows “the difference between men and women” in this recovered gender cartoon.

* Guess what’s the only supreme court case Sarah Palin can name! Yeah, that one.

Photo by dreamsjung