Contributed by Kathleen Sloan

The worldwide use of reproductive technologies has grown exponentially in recent years.  While these developments have brought benefits to many by successfully treating some types of infertility, deep regulatory divides – or their complete absence such as at the national level in the United States – have fueled growing national and international markets in which privileged individuals and third party intermediaries, who benefit financially from the commodification of reproduction, exploit vulnerable, uninformed, low income and poor women for their reproductive capacities.  Surrogacy and the trade in human eggs in particular have become pervasive national and international phenomena in which women’s poverty and subordinate status everywhere increase their exposure to gender-based exploitation and physical harms.

Unequal relationships between the buyers (intended parents) and the women who rent their uteri, favor the needs and desires of the buyers.  These unequal transactions, in the absence of regulation of the fertility-industrial complex, result in “uninformed” consent, low payments, coercion, poor health care, and severe risks to their short and long-term health.  In addition, both the children conceived through commercial transactions and the intended parents may suffer as a direct result of these arrangements.  While the full magnitude of the harms resulting from reproductive exploitation is unknown due to lack of regulation, documentation and oversight, reports of egregious harms continue to mount.

Unless her own eggs are used with intrauterine insemination, women recruited to serve as surrogates are subjected to the many risks of synthetic hormonal stimulation in order to synchronize their menstrual cycles with those of the egg provider.  Hormones and drugs used include Lupron which is not FDA-approved for this purpose; estrogen, which is linked to breast and uterine cancers, blood clots, heart attack and stroke; and steroids which can produce high blood pressure, glaucoma, cataracts, peptic ulceration, and an impaired immune system.  High rates of multiple births and infection resulting from Invitro Fertilization (IVF) place both surrogates and babies at high risk for complications.  When problems arise during the pregnancy, the wellbeing of the fetus tends to be given precedence over the health of the woman serving as a surrogate since the intended parents are paying large sums of money for the baby being produced.  Care of the surrogate ends with the birth of the baby even when the woman who bears the child suffers lasting effects. 

If the intended parents’ circumstances change during the pregnancy, or if the child is born with health problems or disabilities, the infants may be left to the surrogate or abandoned.  Intended parents may find that they face unplanned financial costs and inadequate legal protections. The practices of reproductive organ, tissue and cell commerce, particularly surrogacy and ova sale, infringe upon several basic human rights under international law, and are violations of international agreements on health and medical standards.  Policy makers and the public at large must recognize reproductive commerce as a unique kind of human exploitation.  As the European parliament stated in a resolution, surrogacy and egg sale constitute an “extreme form of exploitation of women.”

It is estimated that nearly half of surrogates in the U.S. are “military wives” who represent an ideal supply source for agencies and brokers.  They often survive on low incomes and tend to marry and have their own children at young ages, so the prospect of doubling their income by serving as a surrogate is a powerful incentive.  These women have few legal or regulatory protections, making them sitting ducks for exploitation and fraud.  It is no coincidence that surrogacy brokers and clinics are concentrated in areas where there are large military bases.  One could also point out that while the military heavily recruits from the working class and poor demographics to provide their cannon fodder for endless wars and occupations, these people are doubly exploited for their reproductive capacities by profit-driven private enterprise. 

Society has barely begun to grapple with the issues surrogacy raises.  In many countries, most notably in Europe, surrogacy is an illegal medical procedure.  But in the U.S. there is no national regulation, earning its title of the Wild West of third party reproduction and its status as second world-wide only to India in the supply of surrogates. 

 Surrogacy is a stark manifestation of the commodification of women’s bodies.  Surrogate services are advertised, surrogates are recruited, and operating agencies make large profits.  The commercialism of surrogacy raises the specter of a black market and baby selling, of breeding farms ala The Handmaid’s Tale, turning impoverished women into baby producers.  Surrogacy degrades a pregnancy to a service and a baby to a product – an entitlement for those with the financial means to procure one.

For millennia, women’s human rights have been abused and ignored with impunity.  As developments in biotechnology facilitate the commodification of reproduction, alarm bells should be sounding about the new door that has been opened for yet further disregard and degradation of women’s humanity, wholeness, physical and emotional inviolability.  Simply put, if you care about women’s human rights, you cannot allow their exploitation as commodities and their health endangerment for others’ profit and gain.

Kathleen Sloan is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Organization for Women (NOW), a consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture, and the former Program Director of the Council for Responsible Genetics.  

First it was Maggie Gallagher.  Today, it’s Helen Alvare.  Salon.com has taken aim at New Feminists.

A sure indicator that New Feminism has arrived in the public forum are recent attack pieces at Salon.com which focus not upon approaches to a specific issue affecting women, but upon a particular woman who is injecting a conservative, religious or politically incorrect point of view into the public discussion.

Today’s piece by Sarah Posner, “Birth Control’s Worst Enemy,” is nasty and disapproving in tone and surprisingly devoid of analysis.  Posner ignores entirely the content of the Alvare’s OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA, SECRETARY SEBELIUS AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS:  DON’T CLAIM TO SPEAK FOR ALL WOMEN, now signed by over 28,000 women.  Rather, Posner assumes her readers find women like Alvare “absurd.” Posner wastes no brain power on Alvare’s – or New Feminism’s – actual arguments against funding “free”  contraception for all fertile females, treating unplanned pregnancy as a female disease, promoting sexual intercourse as a sport activity unrelated to human reproduction and exposing young women to a disturbing range of serious health consequences and STDs which the free meds and devices popular with progressive feminists like Posner often occasion.

While Posner does acknowledge Alvare’s argument that the HHS mandate grossly infringes on the First Amendment protections for free practice of religion, Posner oddly abandons her train of thought when she notes that the Administration’s next most recent effort to restrict what constitutes religious practice lost 9-0 at the Supreme Court.  Posner, at any rate, seems anxious not to distinguish Alvare’s legal arguments against the HHS mandate from Alvare’s social arguments against promoting wider use of contraception among women:  both of which Posner would have her readers believe Alvare argues as a mouthpiece for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (for which Alvare worked over a decade ago before becoming a law professor).

Posner’s attack on Alvare, and her disregard for the substance of Alvare’s arguments, disserves women. 

I am going to assume that Posner, like 99% of the women I know, is a person of goodwill and sincerely interested in the health and happiness of women.  I am going to assume that she wrote the piece, not to engage in dialogue, but to entertain the choir to which Salon.com sings.  I am going to hope that Posner will, in another forum, tackle some of the hard underlying realities that have motivated activists like Alvare and other New Feminists to challenge prevailing cultural norms as detrimental to the long-term health and well-being of females.  While we might not reach agreement, we most certainly can agree that rational discussion and analysis better serve the future of women than mindless compliance with prevailing systems of domination and intimidation – such as Posner’s attack piece represents.

Here are but a few of the “realities” that are motivating New Feminists like Alvare to challenge social policies being foisted upon all women as presumptively in their interests – rather than in the interest of male sexual standards, pharmaceutical profits or Malthusian anti-population theorists.

• “Women’s happiness has fallen both absolutely and relative to men’s in a pervasive way among groups, such that women no longer report being happier than men, and, in many instances, now report happiness that is below that of men.”

• One in four women is taking medication, including antidepressants, for a mental health condition.

• STDs affect young women in epidemic proportions and adversely impact their health, leaving our healthiest young women with reproductive damage, infertility and other long term health consequences.

• Unplanned pregnancy is not necessarily unwanted pregnancy.  Contraception has little impact on the birth rate of impoverished teens.  The majority of women who terminate a pregnancy do so because they perceive lack of support from those around them for having the child.

• Suicide rates among girls have drastically risen in recent years.

• Young women are increasingly unable to find healthy, responsible young men with whom to interact and date and begin the families which young women seek to combine with their career objectives.

Progressive feminists, like Posner – who often fail to place their outrage and dismay at opposing points of view in the broader context of women’s daily realities – might say, “What do these realities have to do with contraception? ~we are just talking about meds and devices which will repress normal female fertility so that females can have sex whenever they want just like a guy?”  To which the New Feminists reply, “Exactly.  We are talking about the very same thing.”

And as Posner notes with some distress in her article, we are not going away anytime soon.

Two weeks ago I wrote on premarital virginity.

Last week I got married.

Towards the end of our wedding reception my husband and I danced along with our guests to the hip-hop song Give Me Everything Tonight, and we sang every word to each other. It seemed to capture our feelings quite well. And for the first time, we were allowed to really mean it.

But when he had carried me up the stairs (six flights!) to our secret room the song didn’t quite fit anymore. On the floor were rose petals and the theme song from Braveheart, For the Love of a Princess was playing in the background. (For those of you who do not know, this song is a beautiful, heart-wrenching bagpipe ballad played when Braveheart marries his princess in the forest. You should listen to it or watch the movie if you haven’t.) Give Me Everything Tonight suddenly seemed, well, kind of silly. I felt like a beautiful princess, not a Nicki Minaj set free, and he was a brave and handsome warrior. I’ll take you to the candy shop, and all other previously forbidden language and concepts became jokes that sure, we could now say to one another, but why would we when Braveheart finally was alone with his princess?

And why is this weird? Because lovely bagpipe melodies are not what our culture associates with sex. In our culture sex is supposed to be dirty. Desirable and necessary and fun and unavoidable, but dirty. Gone are the days where children grow up admiring the statue of David or the painting of the Birth of Venus. Children are shielded from such things. Instead, at younger and younger ages, they are introduced to Victoria’s Secret models and The Hangover. We want to hide our five year olds from any knowledge of sex whatsoever and we mourn the first time they learn of it—but once they do learn of it, we shower them in condoms and birth control pills and consider it none of our business when they want to try it out. We hate the idea of our daughters dating, but we let our sons look at porn. We now hide sex not because it is precious or sacred but because it is shameful and disgusting. It destroys innocence, it’s mischievous, but everybody ought to do it anyway. And what a confusing contradiction this is!  We can’t handle the idea of sex being something beautiful and perhaps unattainable whether for a short time or forever. We’d rather be animals, seizing it violently. We’d rather joke about it and laugh about it and flirt about it and use it than actually talk about it or admire its beauty. We treat sex like an inevitable fall. In other words, we humans have to eat from the forbidden apple, so let’s just get it over with.

My husband and I are a part of this culture and so we could not help but be influenced by it to some degree. And so once we went inside our beautiful hotel room we actually became a little sad. We both felt like children of Eden, standing at the foot of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Up until now the world had been telling us seize that apple and eat it! And we had resisted. But now, we were supposed to take it? We were supposed to do something dirty? What if we just stayed here and danced to this beautiful song and held each other? Wouldn’t that be enough? Goodness was too wonderful and too beautiful to be thrown away in pursuit of an apple.

But this is where our culture was so wrong. For when we turned around and braced ourselves to look at the tree, it was as if an angel came down and smiled, and led us back into the garden—to a time even before we met. What had been hailed as the breaker of innocence I now understood as the breaker of insecurity, bitterness, and all the many walls we build around ourselves as we grow old. The nakedness we might associate with a dark and sultry club scene can be instead the nakedness like that of cherubs. What we might think of as the end of childhood, can be only the beginning—a rebirth, together, unashamed and pure.

Sex has been deemed dirty because sin is dirty. The apple was never dirty– just the act of taking it when it wasn’t yours to take. The problem is, in our culture, we have nearly forgotten the difference between sex and sin. We have forgotten that they do not have to, and ought not go together. The prevalence of taking the apple when it’s not yours to take has muddied our conception of sex and even love. Deep down, when we steal something, we are ashamed and so we hide in dark alleys. On the contrary, when we are given something precious and sacred, we don’t hide in dark alleys. We seek the most beautiful castle for shelter in which to properly adore and adorn our gift. That’s what is so cool about marriage. You are given to. You don’t have to request give me everything because it is implicit that you will both be giving everything, freely and always. And you don’t have to be ashamed and you don’t have to lose any innocence.

My husband and I heard Candy Shop the other day and we laughed, but honestly, 50 Cent seems kind of pitiful now as he grunts out his animalistic desires to a woman he treats like an animal. Once sex became completely accessible to him to grab and seize, it lost its beauty and grandeur. It lost its humanity and became associated with dogs and cows (literal terms used in our culture to discuss sexuality.) What might be seen as the freedom to do what you want when you want becomes a stifling slavery to sin and a lonely dwelling in a dark alley.

I want to end with a quote by G.K. Chesterton. He says this in reply to the complaints about the “rules” within many religions. We hear this all the time: I love Jesus, but I don’t like how organized religion has all those rules. Why shouldn’t I be able to have sex with someone I love? Why shouldn’t I be able to… etc. Here is what Chesterton says:

Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased. – Orthodoxy, Chapter 9

When you enter into marriage, (really, when you enter into family, religion, or any sort of place where there are “rules”) you enter into a room surrounded by walls. But as I have learned particularly in the past two weeks, if you submit to them they are entirely the walls of a playground. And the walls of a playground are far more free and light and beautiful than the walls of a club. My husband and I will still dance to and sing Give Me Everything Tonight, but it will be with a laugh and the knowledge that Pit Bull only knows the half of it.

Who came up with the “war on women” terminology in the first place?

Most women I know hate war.  They hate the concept; they hate sending their children and spouses into battle; they think combat is a stupid way to resolve disputes and weapons an atrocious way to spend scarce resources.  Most women I know struggle whether to permit water, nerf, bee bee and airsoft guns into the hands of their youngsters – forget about sniper rifles and M9 pistols.  Many women participate in religious observances that emphasis peaceful co-existence, not survival of the “bad asses” with the biggest artillery.

I am well aware there are some female warriors, and women who talk in military terms like “My husband is visiting behind enemy lines” when he’s gone to see his mother.  But most women I know talk about differences in point of view in a more female way.  

EXAMPLE: 

“Did you hear that Fred decided to stop carrying light chocolate Silk soy milk at the corner store, girls?”

SHRIEK and interspersed exclamations: 

“Well, he will get an earful from me.”

“How could they?  It’s soooo delicious?”

“I am not spending another dime there until he restocks it.”

Silent pause and SHRIEK. 

“OMG, I know his wife.  I’ll talk to her and get this taken care of!”

I do not mean to make light of the conflicts raging over Obamacare and who will pay what for contraception.  I do not find the First Amendment encroachment of this administration remotely funny – to the contrary, it’s breath-taking serious business involving the future of religious practice in this country.

But who decided to try to woo women voters by calling the heated disagreement over a range of issues most directly impacting women  “war on women?”  And who decided to counter the charge with a countercharge about the “real” war on women? 

First, no one is making any war on women and most women both know and admit this.  You can certainly pay some women enough money to use the words on air or convince them that, for the good of the cause, they will have to characterize the differences over access to contraception and abortion – and who decides what is religious and what is not – as a theater of battle.  But I have never heard one single woman in my broad range of friends use any military metaphor to describe the divide or the differences.  Rather, I have engaged in interesting and often insightful discussion with points like these: 

1.  Why should the government be paying for oral contraceptives that can gravely injure and even cause death in young women? And why would the government pay for any contraception that does not safeguard against STDs? 

2.  Is the government going to pay for men’s contraception?  How is it remotely fair to expect young women to assume all responsibility for reproduction?

3.  Why is female fertility being treated like a disease in young women and medicated?  And when it becomes infertility due to age, women are medicated again, as if they have a disease?  Is this really what feminism sought to accomplish? 

Most women I know are discussing concerns and questions they have typically from a deep sense of responsibility for improving the options and quality of life for the next generation of women.  My female lawyer friends are discussing the First Amendment issues with an informed sense that the administration seeks a historical expansion of government into the religious realm.  We may not reach agreement on many conclusions, but we most certainly do not think we are fighting or defending a war, as much as the political rhethoric is trying to create the sense of a war zone.

Second, to the extent today’s “war against women” is waged over abortion access, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, new about these tensions.  In fact, the “war” over abortion – if you have to call it that – is more fairly characterized as a “war” among women, not “against” women – and it always has been.  As one scholar has rightfully pointed out,

On the one hand, the [abortion] issue does mobilize donations, and galvanize support among one group of women. On the other hand, it was perhaps the most polarizing issue—between women themselves, and among self-identified feminists—from the start. And in this sense the abortion issue was a foundation [of feminism] built on a faultline.  

So it does not surprise me that the first “assault” from the left flopped.  And I would expect the “assaults”  from the right to be a “dud” as well.  I am waiting for someone to come up with a political campaign that speaks to women in the terms they use, stroking the values they hold dear. 

That will catch my interest.

Today marks the 75^th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge – one of the great architectural Wonders of the World.  The arched bridge spans the one mile yawn of the San Francisco Bay from San Francisco to the Marin Headlands and includes walkways to accommodate the hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists who exercise and sight see from its famous orange frame everyday.

 I can see the full expanse of this marvel from my living room.

It is much more than an architectural achievement.  It’s a lesson in the species – and the feats, frailty and unpredictability of humanity.  While my husband, and today’s celebration, focus upon the nuts & bolts engineering breakthroughs and man’s dominance over nature, I reflect on the human side of the bridge – the other side of the bridge – the interaction of frailed and flawed human beings with their own masterpiece.    

1.  Human memory. Eleven men died during construction of the bridge – not because of callous disregard for their safety.  Ten of the men who died plunged into a newly designed, mobile safety net that had saved lives over the course of construction.  It was well designed to catch and save men.  It was not designed, however, to catch the scaffolding which fell with the men on February 13, 1937 and tore through the net.   

You might think memory of the deeply tragic incident would run with the bridge but things do not remember, only people.  Sometimes people forget what they do not want to remember . . . which is why the 50^th Anniversary celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge drew to a close with an enormous sigh of relief. 

GOLDEN GATE CROWD MADE BRIDGE BEND

”Imagine the Golden Gate Bridge flattened out by the weight of human beings!”

Officials estimated that 250,000 people crowded the bridge deck Sunday morning to walk across the Golden Gate.  More than 500,000 others packed the bridge approaches, but were denied access by the authorities.

Mr.Giacomini said officials regretted that so many were turned away, but added, ”In a way, I’m grateful because if they had gotten out there, maybe the bridge would have fallen down.”

Sometimes, people do remember what they would rather forget.  This year, on the 75^th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, organizers announced: 

Marking the official 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, tens of thousands of participants are expected at the historic celebration along the San Francisco waterfront.

• There is NO BRIDGE WALK.

2.  U-turns.  Today, the bridge has six undivided lanes for vehicular traffic.

The flow is divided manually each day by a slowly moving crew switching yellow cone-like peg markers across lanes.  This does not, however, prevent head on accidents by confused drivers.  Nor do these highly visible, closely spaced markers stop people from making u-turns in the middle of the bridge.

I know this because my sister lives north of San Francisco and I was expecting her to arrive to my home in downtown San Francisco any minute.  When my cell phone rang, my sister said,

 “Marge.  I am stuck on the bridge.  Seriously stuck.  Traffic both ways is stopped.  Marge.  There is a woman trying to make a (expletive deleted) U-turn.”

The bridge authorities know this, too.  It has happened enough that they posted signs – hoping plain language will supplement where common sense fails. 

3.  Fog.  Man may have bridged the gap between the city and her north neighbors but he’s yet to dent the fog.  You can drive the bridge, walk the bridge, travel to visit the bridge but, many days, you can’t see the bridge.  It’s a shock to some people.

Tourist walking along water’s edge in Crissy Field: “Excuss me, we look for famous biddged.  We got map.  Map says biddged near to here.”

Me, wiping from my glasses the cold, condensed fog that I have been walking through for 30 minutes:  “I have good news and bad news for you.  The good news is that you are less than 100 yards from the Golden Gate Bridge.   The bad news is that you are not going to see the Golden Gate Bridge until this fog burns off.  I suggest you go that way (pointing), look up and you will be able to see the underside of the bridge.  Sorry.”

A disappointment to tourists, a nuisance to commuters, the fog keeps the bridge unpredictable and people, humbled.  From my living room, I have watched fog come and go over a day, moving in, under and about the bridge in every imaginable density and pattern, like a juvenile showing off, unable to hold anything back.  But I know the fog.  It will do something new tomorrow. 

Personally, I am glad that the engineers have settled (so far) with fitting the bridge only with deep, resonating fog horns.  I worry they may one day affix a gigantic, fan system which will try to blow the mighty fog into Marin because the county needs the moisture.  For now, the fog prevails

The bridge, in all it’s engineering wonder, attracts a range of human events, tragedies and celebrations no one planned for, no one intended.  But it is these human events – the suicides, marriage proposals, small plane passes, and bungee jumping (to name a few) – that keep the bridge alive and the bridge authorities endlessly challenged by the humanity, the other side, of the bridge.  It is this side of the bridge I think about today on its 75th Anniversary.

The report, published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Breast Cancer Prevention, concluded that ‘compared with women who had no history of induced abortion, women with a previous induced abortion had a significant increased risk of breast cancer.”  For older women there was an even higher breast cancer link.

This study has all the possibilities of a great story.

I use the word possibilities because, as a seasoned journalist I understand how the media operates when it comes to covering negative abortion related stories:  they don’t.  I am probably dreaming that this new study revealing yet more fallout from abortion will see the light of day on-line, on the air, or in print in secular news circles.  The pattern of a media blackout on certain topics continues regularly.  Just this week, ABC News all but ignored what one would think would be a major attention grabber:  an additional 43 lawsuits filed by dioceses and other Church related organizations over the HHS mandate requiring employers to cover contraception and sterilization in their insurance plans. 

I hope I am pleasantly surprised, but in case I am not, I am asking everyone to share this story now for the good and well-being of all the women in your life.  This new study comes from China, yes China.  China’s been making headlines lately regarding the case of blind Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng who recently sought asylum in the United States.  Chen has been speaking out against China’s one child and forced abortion practices for years.  As a result, he has been tortured and imprisoned and his family threatened.  Despite his efforts to protect women and unborn children, the secular media have mostly described him as a “human rights advocate”.  Little or no attention is given to the pro-life focus of his work.  And now just days after he arrives here in this country this new study is released; a study conducted in China that shows more evidence of an abortion-breast cancer link. 

The report, published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Breast Cancer Prevention, concluded that ‘compared with women who had no history of induced abortion, women with a previous induced abortion had a significant increased risk of breast cancer.”  For older women there was an even higher breast cancer link.

The story angles and tie-ins are obvious.  Here we have one of the most well known pro-life and human rights advocates on American soil.  What does he stand for?  Why did he have to seek help from the United States?  He defended women who wanted their children and tried to stop the forced killing of their children in the womb.  Wouldn’t it make perfect sense to follow up the latest developments in the case of Chen Guangcheng with a story, however brief, on this new study from China? 

I’m not the only one who wants to shout “hello is any one listening?”  The report has also caught the attention of Janet Morana, co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.  Silent No More is a ministry that reaches out to post abortion men and women and allows them, if they choose, to share their stories.

“This is a perfect time for a study that finds an abortion-breast cancer link to come out of China, while the world’s attention is still focused on the fate of forced abortion protester Chen Guangcheng.  Perhaps it is time for an honest assessment of how this common surgical procedure-sold to American women and forced on unwilling Chinese women-is actually hurting all women.”

Speaking of studies, reports and surveys dating back more than 30 years show those working in most of our major newsrooms support legalized abortion.  In a perfect world, a reporter’s opinion shouldn’t matter unless they are writing for the Op-Ed page.  As Janet Morana said, it is indeed a perfect time but the world we live in along with the majority of the media, is far from perfect.   So the possibilities of such an abortion related story getting coverage are unfortunately somewhere between slim and none.

So let’s make this study the news it ought to be.  Spread the word: Guangcheng has arrived and so has further confirmation of a link between abortion and breast cancer.

“Baby on the belt number 5, baby on belt number 5,” a husky TSA security guard barked into his walkie-talkie as I was clearing the lane for my departing flight.

Over one line, a young mother struggled to get her 6-month-old chunky boy positioned into his baby seat.  Mom had balanced the seat unsteadily on the rollers just beyond the moving belt.  Juggling suitcases, coats, shoes, grey bins and the big baby, busy Mom did not notice that oncoming luggage aimed to bump and dislodge both seat and baby – who was flailing and unbuckled.

“Baby on the belt, number 5,” the TSA agent barked one more time bringing belt number 5 to an abrupt stop and a wave of people to help buckle up and move chunky baby off of number 5.

“Whew,” I mumbled, “nice move everyone,” instantly recalling a large sign flashed recently in my face.  Waved by a loud, green-haired, multi-pierced, pissed off young woman at a demonstration, the gal and her black bold lettering declared:

Women Are Not Incubators

Staring at the baby on the belt, I imagined the sign I’d give the angry young woman to wave:

Women Are Incubators & You Are Going to Help Like It or Not

To “incubate” is to regulate the environment, to provide conditions, protection and care that allow an organism to grow and develop properly.  Women, like it or not, tend to serve this role with respect to their babies with a natural talent.  Men most certainly can take on the incubating role but the near-unanimous observation is that they do this function differently and, often, not as well.  What we expect of men, and others around us, is to help and support us as we incubate the young.

Mom’s near miss on TSA belt number 5 is what, after all, we women expect and demand of the world.  We expect and demand that others around us take notice that we hold in trust the future of humanity.  Babies, after all, grow up to be humans – and somebody has to incubate those babies, keeping them safe in a busy, fast paced world not designed for them.

If luggage had knocked boy baby off belt number 5, TSA would have had hell to pay to Mom who, doing her job, fully and righteously expects everyone in the vicinity to support her.  Her expectations and demands as the primary incubator of the baby not only dictate what Mom does going through TSA but, as importantly, imposes responsibilities upon TSA and everyone else going through security with her.

Women serve this role not only for babies but also for adults acting like babies.  Women, in fact, incubate all of humanity with concern for nurturing, caring and empathy.  We are called to this role even when we really don’t want to.

I live in San Francisco and take a daily walk.  I typically wear a visor, sunglasses and earphones blasting Talking Heads, Tim McGraw and Amy Winehouse.  I walk briskly and don’t wait for stoplights.  I don’t make eye contact with other pedestrians and I most certainly do not stop to pet the hordes of dogs this city adores.  I like to think of the time as my alone time.

But it never is.  Nine walks out of 10, cars, pedestrians and even bicycle riders draw alongside me, point at my earphones (a hand signal for “You need to listen to me”) and proceed to ask, “Where is the nearest bathroom?” or “Is there a bus stop nearby?” or “We’re looking for someplace yummy to eat. What do you recommend?”

I Am A Walking Incubator Like it or Not.

Often, to be honest, I feel a tad resentful of the interruption.  Inevitably, there is any number of men or couples or teenagers in the exact same vicinity of me, but no one stops them.  The lost are riding around looking for a mature, motherly looking woman, preferably doing “nothing,” so they can say, “Help me.”

And I do.  I push aside my annoyance, look at the trusting face needing some gentle directions and start telling them the best route to get where they want to go.   I am after all an incubator for this ratty species called human.  That’s why a car with 4 20ish young men recently stopped me in the Presidio … pointed at my ear phones … and then asked in embarrassed spurt and starts, “Where are the, you know right, the buffalo?  This is San Francisco … and there are buffalo, right?”

Their trust that I would help them was so lovely, so ridiculous, that I had to make myself stop laughing as I leaned in the car window and said, “yes, but you are in the Presidio and the buffalo are in Golden Gate Park, my dears.”  I watched them drive away following the directions I’d just given them. I’d done my part.  For that, I hoped they’d do their part one day when they noticed a “baby on the belt,” a big baby in danger on belt number 5, like it or not.

This past April 13^th, Bloomberg.com reported that Bayer was going to pay at least $100 million to settle about 500 lawsuits regarding injuries and death connected with the use of its Yasmin line of birth control which includes Yasmin and Yaz.

Maybe you’ve seen the ads on TV by lawyers looking for clients to join these lawsuits.  The problem:  young women dying of blood clots leading to heart attacks and strokes from these particular brands of “The Pill.”  No lament about the loss of life.  Just the lament about falling stock values.

 Why isn’t the death of young women news?

The fact that young women on “the pill” are more likely to have heart attacks, strokes, clots in leg veins and clots in the lung while on the pill has been known since their inception.  In fact, when several young women in Puerto Rico died when the pill was first tested for safety, the pill was still deemed safe enough for use by healthy young women.  The increase in incidence of these sometimes fatal ailments was judged to be tolerably low enough for the continuing promotion of the Pill.  

Shockingly, fatalities in women were deemed worth the risk while cases of mildly shrinking testicles were enough to end trials of a birth control pill for men.

There were at least 50 deaths linked to Yasmin and Yaz from 2004 to 2008. But that does not mean they were the only brands of birth control pills linked to deaths.  They were just singled out because they increased the “low” known risk 74%.  In fact, all birth control pills are known to TRIPLE the risk of heart attack, stroke and pulmonary embolism (clots in the lung).

In medicine, doctors are use to balancing the risks and benefits when prescribing therapies. For instance, if you have a fatal cancer it is deemed worthy to take the many risks of chemotherapy because you have a fatal disease and chemotherapy is the only way you have a hope for cure. 

But what about a young woman who does not have a life threatening disease?  In fact this young woman is healthy.  She just wants to control her fertility.  Should she be given a pill that could disable or kill her in her prime? Or should she be taught about her normal fertility cycle? 

After all, what may be true in epidemiological terms, “a low risk”, is not low when it’s you or your daughter or your wife who is now disabled or dead from those risks.

Teaching takes more time than a quick script for the pill from the doctor.  Yet a woman can learn to recognize her fertile times by the normal bodily changes she experiences with her menstrual cycle.  A woman is only fertile only about 100 hours a month.  During her fertile times she can either abstain from sexual intercourse or use another method (such as a barrier method) to control her fertility that won’t put her life at risk.

Why should she be given a Group 1 carcinogen for breast, cervical and liver cancer, again “the Pill”, for the non disease of “fertility” for 3 out of 4 weeks when she is fertile for only 100 hours a month?  Triple the risk for heart attack, stroke, pulmonary embolus, and cancer?  The International Agency on Research of Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, listed the Pill as a Group 1 carcinogen in 2005.  I don’t remember seeing that on the 6 o’clock news.  Do you?  Why is a young woman’s life so devalued that risks of death and disability from the Pill are deemed low enough to be inconsequential and “worth it”?  Those risks are not even necessary to obtain her goal of fertility control.  Is the specter of abstaining or the use of a condom or diaphragm so off putting that taking chances with her life (not his) seems so reasonable?

The pill does kill many women every year.  Even a low risk if it’s taken by 82% of the 16 million women of reproductive age (15-45 years old) translates into thousands of deaths a year.  The pill not only increases her risk of heart attack, stroke, lung clots, breast cancer, cervical cancer, and liver cancer but it also increases her risk of contracting HPV (human papilloma virus) and contracting and transmitting HIV, the AIDS virus.  It influences what partner she chooses and increases her risk of violent death.

These are the facts which are ignored and/or unknown by both women and their doctors.  During the next months I will review the data that have established the four major ways the Pill Kills: clots, cancer, contagion and violence.

So what if it wasn’t just a big party? What would that mean?

What if the wedding was a death.

At first glance, that seems a horrifying concept. We don’t want it to be a death. We don’t want to lose all the things we know marriage is inclined to take from us, so in turn we lessen its seriousness. We sign pre-nuptial agreements. We try out sex before the wedding night to make sure it won’t be awkward. We get married in the courthouse to avoid all the expectations and religious connotations of a big church. If marriage involves any sort of death, well, we’d rather have the big party without the consequences.

The problem is—it’s these big parties without true substance that leave us unfulfilled. Weddings are meant to be deaths. Because it is only through completely and happily submitting to that death that we can find the true and complete beautiful new life of marriage.

How is this possible? With the wedding vow, you ensure to another human being that you will always give to them—in all circumstances—through all sufferings. You are theirs, and they are yours. And whatever love you have within you belongs to them. You share everything, your body, your heart, your mind, your thoughts, your bed, your bank account. Everything. This vow is a crazy concept. And it is so very risky. Something within you really must die—that part of you that holds back, that part of you that keeps your love safe, that part of you that makes decisions only for yourself—it must die. And how in the world can it be worth it when you don’t know for sure that the other person will keep his vow?

I would reply that you do it because it is what you were made to do. Human beings are made to love. They are made to be able to fully and completely give themselves to another. And marriage is one of the most perfect opportunities for this. I know, not because I have been married, but because I have loved. I know that when I receive love, it is perhaps the most wonderful thing in the world. But I know that if I do not give love, I am an incomplete and miserable human being. Giving love frees us from loneliness even if we do not receive it back. Because in the end, our giving attaches us to Love Himself—and He will never, ever forsake us. It is through His ever constant Gift and our own ability to imitate that that we find utter and complete salvation from our human sadness and woe. The marital vow lets us promise to daily kill our own selfishness. And that selfishness is what makes us unhappy. The marital vow, in tying us down, frees us.

And so virginity.

It is understood by many cultures that the marital vow is two-part—spiritual and physical. We are spiritual and physical beings, so we need to vow with our souls and our bodies—especially when we are going to be promising to share both. It used to be that many cultures checked to ensure that the second, bodily vow had been made. If it had not, the couple was not officially married. In our odd culture of the dichotomy of sex being dirty and sex being everywhere, we have pretended that this understanding doesn’t exist. But we know it exists. It is why we create all these subjective boundaries about sex and the right time for it. We know that sex promises something. Sex is a vow. It says, my body is yours, and yours is mine. And that vow is a part of another one. And they all come together in the concept of I give you myself. And there are few more beautiful words that a human being can ever say—and few more fulfilling.

I don’t know why human beings are so paradoxical. We want our freedom, but we can’t find that freedom until we give it up. It is hard to understand, but it is the way we are. We are meant to love. And to love fully. Our vows save us and our vows are better when they are complete. When they can be assuredly given along with the rest of us, as a holistic entity. I could go on about statistics regarding premarital sex and couples who abstain and couples who practice NFP and how divorce rates decrease with such activity. But I find that the most convincing argument for it all is that of love. And that love begs to be given freely and completely. And this is much more easily done in the context of virginity, be it saved always or saved as a renewed commitment to abstinence, and it is done most easily in the context of a vow. This vow, this free gift of love– this crazy, daring, romantic adventure– it helps us find the path to the joys of new life. And happily, gloriously, we get to walk that path together, as one, and free.