This article was sent to me by Planned Parenthood, and includes a link to a Times article with more information.  Crazy shit.

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend to one of Indiana's Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a so-called "crisis pregnancy center" run by an anti-abortion group, one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their "other office" (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there. The "crisis pregnancy center" had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The "crisis pregnancy center" staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl's home and calling her father's workplace. Planned Parenthood's clinic director reports that the girl was "scared to death to leave her house." They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.

The anti-choice movement is setting up these "crisis pregnancy centers" across the country. Some of them have neutral-sounding names and run ads that falsely promise the full range of reproductive health services, but they dispense anti-choice propaganda and intimidation instead. And according to a recent article in The New York Times, there are currently more of these centers in the U.S. than there are actual abortion providers. What's more, these centers have received $60 million in government grants. They're being funded by our tax dollars.

A bill has just been introduced in Congress to stop the fraudulent practices of fake clinics, but it desperately needs more support. Tell your representative to take a stand: anti-choice extremists must not get away with this any longer!

Go to: http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/fake

Special thanks to Evan today, who reminded me to be inspired and even learn something.  This seems especially relevant with the immigration reform debates (that I'm sure no one outside the Beltway, Texas and southern California is paying attention to).

Let us not forget that even the most brilliant and creative minds will sometimes clean our floors to feed their growling stomachs.

http://www.alhewar.com/Gibran.html

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.  As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.  Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.  Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit.  If you compare yourself to others you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.  Keep interested in your career however humble; it is a real posession in the changing fortunes of time.  Exercise caution in you business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.  But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.  Be yourself, especially do not feign affection.  Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchatment it is perennial as the grass.  Take kindly the counsel of the years gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture the strength of spirit to sheild you in sudden misfortune.  But do not distress yourself with imaginings.  Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.  Beyond a whilesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.  You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars: you have a right to be here.  And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be; and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep pace with your soul.  With all its shams, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.  Be cheerful.  Strive to be happy.

--Max Ehrmann

...and, by the way, this is the worst lemonade I've ever had.

With safe, effective birth control available today, women should have access to better ways of preventing pregnancy.

Today, 98% of American women have used a form of birth control during their reproductive lives. And yet the Bush administration continues to block women's access to contraception.

• Join our national Prevention First Challenge for Common Ground to demand that local, state, and national leaders stop blocking women's access to birth control.
• Find out more about our Prevention First campaign.
• Send your own e-card to spread the word!

Trust me, I'll get around to South Dakota's issues later.

Never Say Never

The arrogance of the partial-birth abortion ban.

By William Saletan
Posted Friday, Feb. 24, 2006, at 7:39 AM ET

Three days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would review the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The announcement signaled a possible rescue of the law, which had been struck down by appellate courts. Pro-lifers rejoiced. Pro-choicers fumed. The press saw it as a possible turning point in the campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Here's a different way to think about the case. It isn't about whether you're for or against abortion. It's about how confident you are that an unwelcome medical scenario will never happen.

The ban has become so politically central to the abortion debate that it's easy to forget how medically marginal it is. At most, it would affect fewer than one in 250 U.S. abortions. Of these 2,000 to 5,000 unborn babiesif that's what you believe they areit would save none. It doesn't ban abortions beyond a stage of pregnancy; it just regulates the methods by which they're done.

Despite this empty resultor maybe because of itmany pro-choice politicians are willing to accept the ban. If you can end a pregnancy safely by other means, it seems gratuitously revolting to partially extract the fetus during the procedure. But that's a big if. What pro-choicers demand, and pro-lifers reject, is an exception to allow this method in situations where it's ostensibly necessary to protect the woman's health. According to the National Right to Life Committee, "the vast majority of partial-birth abortions do not involve any acute medical circumstances." So, in theory, the dispute is confined to a fraction of a fraction of all abortions.

Because the justifying scenarios are exceptional, and because the rationales for the procedure are technical, the federal judge who heard testimony in this case issued an opinion short on generalizations and long on details. His opinion runs 474 pages. It spends 57 pages reviewing congressional testimony over a nine-year period and another 278 pages reviewing medical testimony at the trial. It discusses numerous health conditions that, according to doctors who testified, make partial-birth abortion possibly the safest procedure for the woman. It concludes, "The trial evidence establishes that a large and eminent body of medical opinion believes that partial-birth abortions provide women with significant health benefits in certain circumstances." Not all circumstancesjust certain ones.

The appeals court opinion affirming this ruling takes similar care. It enumerates scenarios in which testimony and logic indicate that partial-birth abortion might be the safest procedure. It acknowledges contrary testimony but concludes, "If one thing is clear from the record in this case, it is that no consensus exists in the medical community." Quoting a six-year-old Supreme Court opinion, it warns that "the division of medical opinion about the matter at most means uncertainty, a factor that signals the presence of risk, not its absence."

The ban's authors in Congress, like its defenders in the Bush administration, show no such humility. The nine years of congressional testimony that took 57 pages to describe in the trial court's opinion are boiled down in the ban's text to five pages. Every inconvenient nuance, witness statement, or piece of evidence is obliterated. The word "never" appears 10 times. "Congress finds that partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother," says the law, offering no details. "These findings reflect the very informed judgment of the Congress that a partial-birth abortion is never necessary to preserve the health of a woman." Who needs information when you've got informed judgment? Who needs sometimes when you've got never?

In its brief in defense of the law, the Bush administration adopts the same attitude. It crafts a list of legal precedents designed to cow judges into accepting the ban's "findings" instead of trial evidence. The precedents involve the economics of television stations; the sophistication of high-school administrators in interpreting legislation; the ability of volunteers to staff non-combat military jobs; and limits on attorneys' fees in claims for veterans' benefits. It's a telling list, full of one-size-fits-all policies. Three times, the brief quotes a line that says Congress deserves deference because it's "better equipped to amass and evaluate the vast amounts of data bearing on such an issue." But vast data-crunching isn't what's needed here. What's needed is sensitivity to variable particulars.

The administration cites four cases that purportedly validate deference to Congress "on issues of medical or scientific judgment." Two of the cases pertain to treatment of people who have previously committed crimes, which begs the question of whether partial-birth abortion should be criminalized. In the third case, which was decided during Prohibition, the administration's brief notes that the Supreme Court "deferred to an 'implicit congressional finding' that alcohol had no medicinal uses." The administration conveys no acknowledgment, much less embarrassment, that medical evidence now shows this finding to be wrong. In the fourth case, the court upheld a congressional finding that X-rays were too crude to catch all instances of a disability-related disease. The finding was upheld because it rejected, not imposed, a glib medical generalization.

The argument made by pro-lifers against a health exception is that doctors will interpret it too broadly. Maybe so. But whom do you trust less: Doctors who apply the exception too broadly, or politicians who categorically dismiss it? As the doctors challenging the ban observe, Congress has no "particular expertise" in medicine. Only 11 of its 535 members are doctors, and none has performed abortions. If doctors err in using partial-birth abortion when they should rely on a different procedure, the number of additional fetuses killed is zero. But if lawmakers err in ruling it out, every case they screw up is a woman subjected to medical risk.

Unlike Congress, the appeals court that affirmed the necessity of this procedure didn't purport to close the question. It conceded,

This is not to say, however, that because the Supreme Court concluded "substantial medical authority" supported the need for a health exception in 2000, legislatures are forever constitutionally barred from enacting partial-birth abortion bans. Rather, the "substantial medical authority" test allows for the possibility that the evidentiary support underlying the need for a health exception might be reevaluated under appropriate circumstances. Medical technology and knowledge is constantly advancing, and it remains theoretically possible that at some point (either through an advance in knowledge or the development of new techniques, for example), the procedures prohibited by the Act will be rendered obsolete. Should that day ever come, legislatures might then be able to rely on this new evidence to prohibit partial-birth abortions without providing a health exception.

That's the kind of open-minded caution you need to adjudicate complex medical questions. And that, not life or choice, is the crucial question in the partial-birth abortion case. Which party in the dispute has more expertise? Which takes more care? Which shows more humility? By any of those standards, the doctors and judges put the politicians to shame.

William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.

Just a quick shout out to all my lovely MySpacers... thank you so much for all this!  After such a stressful time and a boring, mindless weekend of sleeping in 12-hour intervals, watching TV while conscious, and sleeping on a futon last night that was less comfortable than a torture rack and probably worse for my joints, it was cleansing to get to work and read everyone's posts, comments, and messages over the weekend.  I miss you all.  I miss having poets around.  Thanks for letting me share in some of the poetry and random trains of thought though here-- it's encouraging.

Tonight my house should be ready to sleep in again so I'll spend the evening putting things back together (and rearranging with some stuff I got yesterday on my first trip to Ikea-- more evil and indulgent than starbucks!).  Tomorrow the phone will be off the hook as I plan to soak in a quiet bath and possibly get myself drunk on wine just because I can!

I suppose some of you already know about the new "bug" out there that can get into your computer if you simply view a webpage with an infected thumbnail (ewwww) and erase everything on your hard drive.  I know, this sounds like something my mother saw on 60 Minutes and called about panicked, but then, I said the same thing about hurricane Katrina before that hit.  (Someday I'll grow up enough to take my mother seriously.  Soon after that I'll assume she's senile and ignore her again).

Anyway, just so everyone knows, Microsoft said it will release a permanent fix on Jan. 10.  I personally plan to view a webpage or two before then, so here's a temporary fix:

On your Start menu, click 'Run' and copy-paste the following into the blank

regsvr32 -u shimgvw.dll

a little box should tell you it's successful.  You'll have to do this every time you start your computer or wake it up from hibernation, and there might be a few thumbnails you don't see displayed, but it will work as a patch for now.

You're welcome.  and it was William's find, passed along to you.

Here are some things I've already learned only 5 days into this new year:

-- Old houses use cast iron pipes because plastic and PVC didn't exist in the 1890s.

-- Since it was built in the 1890s, my house has cast iron pipes.

-- Cast iron pipes have cast iron joints.

-- Cast iron joints normally have tiny leaks (I think of a movie submarines when they tie shirts around the pipes while the camera shakes and people fall around).

-- These leaks, being always wet and full of sewer-type nutrition, are a perfect place for tree roots to grow.  They grow very quickly.

-- Tree roots are a little over-aggressive and don't know when to let go.  They will probably squeeze your cast iron sewer pipes until they are too crushed and narrow to allow water though.

-- This causes your toilet to bubble and rumble most terribly and your shower to back up regularly with sewage. 

-- Yuck.

-- When this happened in November or so, DC came out and dug up my entire garden and sidewalk to replace the pipes.  They did not look under the house.

-- Having a house on the ground will not stop tree roots under the ground and their need to eat wet sewage.

-- After a few days of not properly showering and washing your hair in the kitchen sink, one gets a little cranky.

-- When plumbers don’t know what’s wrong with your pipes, they can push a little camera down your toilet to find out.

--Plumbers are very messy people who always want to use your clean towels and white carpets to wipe their hands.  Sometimes they do this without asking.  This can also make one a little cranky.

--PVC pipes, being sealed with glue, do not leak.

-- When plumbers finally discover a “root ball” under your house, the only solution involves a pickaxe and a jackhammer.

-- If you live in a studio basement apartment like I do, you don’t have the space to live around a big trench through the direct middle of your floor.

-- A job like this takes three days.

-- Plumbers don’t work on the weekends.  Not no way, not no how.

-- I’ll be back in my house on Monday, hopefully.

-- Tonight my landlord got me a hotel room on the Hill, so William and I will stay there.  William leaves early tomorrow morning. 

-- This weekend I will spend at my aunt and uncle’s house in College Park, Maryland (the uncle who’s the trainer at UofM), even though I haven’t spent more than a few hours with these people in the last 15 years. 

-- As much as this was made a little harder by having a houseguest, I’m really glad William was here through it.  He was very good about spending days at home with the plumbers and cleaning up the shit-covered bathroom when they left.  Plus having him there made it easier to spend the evening and nights there.

-- Life is an adventure, ain’t it?

-- Sorry, especially to Evan and Glenn, for not returning your calls.  I’ve been a little stressed lately.  And cranky.  Please know that I’m thinking of all of you a lot, even if I seem scarce!

*whew* made it.

the holidays, with the exception of tomorrow for which I still have no plans, have come and gone.  I had a great trip to florida-- good to see the family again, certainly.  They're pretty alright.  Want to hear about it?  If not, stop reading...

I flew down late on thursday night.  My parents met me at the airport, my dad wearing a full beard for the first time in my life... weird.  I told him later he looked like a gold prospector and we did a little dance.   

Oh, I also found out on thursday that I didn't get that job with the Advisory Board Company that I was counting on and hoping for.  I was pretty crushed about it, I really wanted it and thought I could do it.  But I didn't even get called back for a second interview-- just a form email rejection.  disappointing.  but something will come up.

On friday I slept late and spent the afternoon hanging out with mom and dad.  For dinner we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant, mmm.  Then I met with Jen and we traded presents—she got me the coolest oil-paint-by-number of the Last Supper!!  We went to the newest Starbucks in Lakeland (the second!) where we saw the two least desirable people in the city, who are now married.  Boo.  But we had a fun time laughing.

Then Saturday, christmas eve.  I spent most of this day with the family again, as one tends to do.  Mark was home by then too.  we did our traditional lighting of the candle and saying a prayer at 6:00, then the christmas eve church service.  David and his sister were there, so that was fun, but mostly it was painfully boring.  The preacher at our church is ... zzzzzzzz.   He just reads a sermon he’s already prepared word for word without any inflection, sense of humor, or even contractions.  He even misspoke “Santa” and said “Satan,” without even cracking a smile.  Snooze.  Then home where we got to each open our one christmas eve present.  I got fuzzy flip flops to wear around the house.  yay.

then Sunday!  We got up early and opened up all the presents before church (church again?  yes, more church in two days than I’ve seen all year!).  I did pretty well—not as many gift cards as I would have liked (they’re So much easier to pack), but mom did well in picking out clothes for me.  Also added to my Tim Burton collection with Beetlejuice, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  [Here’s an interesting tidbit I learned while watching Nightmare last night:  the singing voice of Jack Skellington is Danny freaking Elfman himself, and the speaking voice is... Prince Humperdink from Princess Bride!  look him up, awesome.]  After church it was delicious smoked turkey cooked all day long and a bunch of great side dishes, mmmm.  I had dessert with William’s family which was also very pleasant, then we watched Sin City, which was not so christmas-y.  Good, well-done movie, very good looking, but, um, I wasn’t such a huge fan.  pretty disturbing and victimizing.   but whatever.

Monday was spent with dad and I going to the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa (along with most of the rest of the world, apparently) for the Bodies exhibit!  Really good show and I recommend it to everyone.  I learned a lot, including why no one in my family is a doctor (I got a little queasy).  There’s a bunch of bodies all dissected to different levels with explanatory labels, along with cases of parts, some with diseases.  Smokers?  Bad news for you here.  So of course it’s an educational exhibit, and the bodies, being real humans and all, still have all their parts although many are missing skin.  In the first room that displayed muscle formation I happened to stand next to a woman with several kids around 7-10 years old.  As soon as the mom noticed this man’s (gasp!) penis, she said “oh my, no.  we can’t look at this one.  let’s go over here,” and proceeded to try to herd the kids onto a case full of disembodied legs and feet.  the kids wanted to stay because “he’s so cool!” (he was bent over backwards kicking a soccer ball) so the mom started with, “um.  well, ooohhh, look at his face here!  and his arm!  ok, let’s go.”  In the next room (the nervous system, where I started to get queasy), I happened upon another mom and 10 year old duo in front of a body.  the boy pointed and made a crack about the penis and the mom started to laugh, then said, “now what have I told you?  Bodies are beautiful, there’s nothing wrong with being nude...” to which the son replied, “mom, he’s a little more than nude.”  excellent.  Following these rooms were the circulatory system, the digestive system, the respiratory system, the reproductive system, fetal development, and medical improvements (like false joints, etc).  Worth seeing for sure.  After the museum, it was dinner with Aunt George & Co. until late that night.  More good food.

Tuesday my family and I went down to Sarasota to meet with mom’s family, which has spent the last week or so with pure in-fighting.  My uncle in Alexandria (the one I lived with for a month here) has been staying with my grandma on vacation for the last couple weeks and will for a few more.  They can barely stand each other because they’re both too used to living alone and are bullheaded as anything.  But we met with them and several other aunts and uncles and cousins for pizza, then went home.  On the way we stopped at ellington outlet mall where I got a bee-yoo-tiful leather jacket from wilson’s leather.  yay!  and some other people got some stuff too.  whatever.

Wednesday I managed to meet up for a fun lunch with Jen, William, and David before William and I had to head for the airport.  We ended up getting the same flight and seats next to each other back to washington, so that was really good.  Except when he threw a napkin at me and hit the guy on my other side, but whatever, the guy just tried to ignore us misbehaving.  He’s staying here for another week until his additional job interviews and conference in Boston.  It’s going really well, by the way, but more on that later. 

And now I’m back!  working, playing, blah blah blah.  It was such a busy few days I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted, but I think everyone got some type of christmas greeting, right?  Saw King Kong today—rock.  really, total rock.  I was seriously entertained for 3 hours solid, and I already knew what was going to happen!  great, seamless effects, lovable characters, and really frightening in several parts.  the scene on the empire state building gave me vertigo—william and I were literally clinging to our seats to avoid falling onto the streets of 1930s New York. So glad I saw this on the big screen and I recommend it to anyone.

Big plans for tomorrow?  If you have them, let me know!  I’m still a loser. 

‘Tis the season, I know, but I’ve been especially hectic lately.  And I owe many of you calls, emails and play dates, and I’m sorry I haven’t been up to speed lately.  I don’t hate you, I’m just swamped.  Some have you have even wanted real sit-down-and-talk talks, and I’ve had to brush you off.  I suck, sorry.

William’s here now, which takes up about 400 % of my time, until we go down to Lakeland on Thursday to return on the next Wednesday.  Work finally fired the bitch-girl, but this hasn’t made my life much easier since the new person doesn’t start until early January.  Not that bitch-girl did any work, but all the work that she was supposed to have done is now rolling onto me as well.  So now I’m wasting time digging through piles of unmarked papers for pay stubs from March, cancelled checks from May, and my boss’s Jaguar payment schedule.  ‘cause I was bored before.

I got a letter from the DC DMV that kindly informed me that my auto insurance has been terminated since October 3^rd.  That’s nice.  Especially since I made in payment in November.  That would have been even better to hear from Allstate, maybe--I don’t know--two months ago.  So I check online and call Allstate and they say, ‘yep, you missed a payment and we cancelled you.  That’s too bad.’  What payment, you ask?  that one of the cancellation notice, of course.  the what?  I don’t know, but somewhere in there I should have received an invoice that said if I didn’t pay the balance they would cancel my insurance.  When I told them (I spoke to three different people because I kept calling and finally figured out the sneaky trick to get to talk to a human being) I didn’t receive such notice, I was encouraged to contact my post office.  I expressed my shock to one person that even though they had my phone numbers and email on file, no one had attempted to contact me to continue coverage, she said, “Look, we have a lot of customers.  We’re not going to call you.”  So much for the Customer Service Department.  I told this person that I wanted a copy of this cancellation notice, if nothing else to put in writing all this bullshit she was feeding me, and she said, “We already sent that to you once.  I can’t go back and send it again.”  The next person I talked to said, “oh, that’s really too bad.  yeah, I can send that out tomorrow.  but it’s really your responsibility to call us if you don’t get a bill on time.”  she concluded with, “did you want me to get you a new policy?”  um, no.   I’ve looked since I got home to find out that I don’t have an agent, every piece of correspondence I’ve received from Allstate was signed by the president, or the “customer service center.”  humpf. 

I officially disavow Allstate and I would recommend anyone who’s shopping for insurance to try anyone else.   

I owe the District $150 for the lapse in insurance, plus $7 for each day over 30 I still don’t have it.  I’m up to about $430 right now.  So I started shopping for a new policy.  I was paying about $1600 for 6 months with Allstate because I had that wreck in Georgia still on my record that actually came off in October, but my rate wouldn’t go down until my renewal in January (remember that wreck?  good times, good ti—rainbow!!).  Progressive says they can do it for $860 for 6 months, which is awesome.  Gieco is more like $1177, which is weird because on everything except collision they were a little cheaper.  I’m still waiting for State Farm to get back to me—I couldn’t get a quote online because I don’t currently have insurance.  damn.

So that’s what’s going on with me.  Again, sorry I haven’t been available to anyone, I’ve been kind of defeated.  and I'll be home for a bit, so feel free to call me there, or on my cell.  I hope to get back on track soon, or at least by January.