How was your weekend?

[heidi]

I'm trying to mesh everything into one post...

But first - if you're not interested in the political issues, check out the Palin Baby Name Generator - my name would be Trinket, it seems. Which I don't dislike.

1. Did you see Sarah Palin in her Tina Fey glasses on SNL last night? Note-perfect and full of amazing soundbites. It's up on Hulu if you missed it last night.

2. Speaking of video clips, the "Not Worth the Risk" one that I've been working on over the last two weeks is up on YouTube and DailyKos and

- please pass it around!


I've talked to mijan about doing a second one, if anyone is interested in participating. We didn't manage to get stem cell research, same-sex marriage, the fact that she calls people who've disagreed with her haters, rape kit coverage, or anything about her utter lack of knowledge of international relations and diplomacy into this one, so if you're interested in participating in a second one, let me know.

3. Speaking of the rape kit issue, it hasn't been covered much by the mainstream media, but the gist of it is, Palin and her chief of police in Wasila billed sexual assault victims for the cost of the rape kit used to collect evidence when they reported the crime. No, they didn't also charge burglary victims for fingerprintings, or battery victims for the cost of photographing their injuries. Just rape victims. Just rape kits.

The quirky thing is, states and municipalities are required to absorb/cover the cost of rape kits because of an important provision in the Violence Against Women Act, which was shepparded through Congress in 1994 by Joe Biden.

Oh, and McCain voted against it at the time. He's also voted against Equal Pay for Equal Work legislation. Dude.

So when Wasila continued charging victims, Alaska's governor pushed passage of a statute that mandated municipalities not charge victims for the rape kit costs, and at that point, they stopped.

Rape kits include the Morning After pill, which prevents conception (that's the implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterine wall). Sarah Palin seems to believe that this is the same thing as an abortion, and as she does not believe in women being able to choose to have an abortion even after being raped, she did not want taxpayers to pay for such things.

The thing is, the Morning After pill does not cause an abortion when used properly. As the Mayo Clinic writes, "Progestin prevents the sperm from reaching the egg and keeps a fertilized egg from attaching to the wall of the uterus (implantation). Estrogen stops the ovaries from releasing eggs (ovulation) that can be fertilized by sperm."

If you think life begins at conception, then something that blocks implantation does *not* cause an abortion because conception hasn't yet happened. And blocking the ovaries from releasing eggs is also pre-conception!

So her whole thing about wanting women to carry to term even if the pregnancy results from rape or incest? She put that into practice by obligating women to pay for the rape kit that contained something that would prevent conception.

Perhaps this means that she doesn't think life begins at conception but instead she thinks it begins at fertalization! To me, that's meshing church and state because my religion's theology holds that life begins at quickening, and an embryo or a blastocyst is not a living entity.

Anyway, if you think that a woman who's been the victim of rape should be allowed an abortion in the first days of pregnancy, then you have to have a problem with her refusal to comply with the Violence Against Women Act.

4. I ordered some campaign signs and buttons from the Obama website but I got an email yesterday saying that some things were on backorder. Does anyone have recs for any un-"official" storefronts on cafepress or elsewhere that will use any profits from their yard-sign and button-sales for good causes, so I can order from them until the Official stuff arrives?

Comments

[bella-felis.livejournal.com]

conception (that's the implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterine wall)

Are you serious?


For as long as medicine has known about gametes until the fallout of Roe v. Wade, conception and fertilization have been used as completely interchangeable terms. A good majority of the world still considers them synonymous, and probably will continue to long after this fad has passed.


If you're going to start defending political platforms by changing definitions, that's certainly your ballgame, but be aware that it makes all your other arguments look questionable by association.


If you want to work for "change", start by bucking the system of misinformation, rather than buying into it and "changing" definitions.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I am serious, but the use of different terms befuddles me, which is why I took a moment to explain it. I'm not changing the definition at *all* - from my perspective they are completely interchangeable. Others feel otherwise, and have mis-used the terms over the years so that there's no coherent linear explanation of the argument.

[bella-felis.livejournal.com]

Speaking of coherency, I coherented myself more, have a look. :3

[schnoogle.livejournal.com]

Actually, according to Stedman's Medical Dictionary conception is the "Act of conceiving; the implantation of the blastocyte in the endometrium."

[schnoogle.livejournal.com]

Then again, Larsen's Human Embryology (3rd Ed) avoids using the word "conception" all together, though "fertilisation" and "implantation" are both given index listings. Hmm.

Am curious!

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Is quickening even defined in medical texts anymore, except as an archaic term?

Re: Am curious!

[schnoogle.livejournal.com]

I can find it in Stedman's dictionary but not in Larsen's embryology textbook, but Larsen's is a very scientific sort of text, not clinical. Fetal movements are a quite important sign of healthy pregnancy, so I'd imagine that you'd find it in clinical texts about pregnancy management.

[bella-felis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my quick look at malleable online sources indicated such a trend toward treating the term with political correctness, too, but my hardcopies of textbooks dating back to the seventies show the little white lie there.

My question really doesn't have to do with the changing of the definition of the word (that happens all the time) so much as anxiety at how widely it's pretended that it's always been that way.

The fact that I'm rereading 1984 right now probably adds to my concern.

[schnoogle.livejournal.com]

I can see how reading 1984 would do that to you!

I'm only 21, a third year med student (it's an undergraduate degree here), so I'm one of the people surprised it ever meant anything different. I'd guess that the changing definition has to do with growing understanding - perhaps the studies showing that a LOT of fertilised ova fail to ever implant, even in healthy women, have prompted the change?