Heard a terrific piece on Alternative Radio this morning

[Orrex]

I missed the beginning and the end, so I don't know when or where the talk was originally given, but it was an (almost) hour-long speech by Katha Pollitt including Q&A.

I can't access the page from my work computer, but the program aired over Alternative Radio, and you might be able to stream it from that site.

It was a discussion of abortion rights and the decades-long attack they've endured in the modern world. Pollitt drew from her own late mother's experience with illegal abortion in the 1960s as well as her great-grandmother's experience in (I believe) tsarist Russia.

Utterly terrific from first word to last. She covered the subject on multiple fronts, but focused especially on the point that women's control of their own bodies is superseded by a zygote's purported ownership of it, and she spent some time exploring the idiocy of legal but effectively impossible abortion. She explored the challenge in defending abortion rights when someone in a progressive state with access to abortion services might forget that a woman in a more restrictive area like Wyoming or Texas might as well be living in pre-Roe v. Wade America. She also dismantled the bullshit propaganda that women who have abortions hate children or are anti-family, when a significant majority (61% IIRC) of women who have abortions already have at least one child, and most of the other 39% will have a child later in life.

I was driving and wasn't able to take notes, but she seemed to be springboarding off of a recent or new book, and she covered much more than I've briefly summarized here. Amazing presentation, very clear and succinct and wholly unapologetic. She handily crystalized more than a few points that I struggle to make, and I'll be following her example in future discussions on the subject.

A very impressive program. If you haven't heard it already, then I heartily recommend it.

[MsJaneFuzzyWuzzy]

1. your post made me curious so I googled

http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Reclaiming-Abortion-Katha-Pollitt/dp/1250072662
published at the end of July of this year.

http://us.macmillan.com/proreclaimingabortionrights/kathapollitt

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights
Katha Pollitt
Picador

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

An "important, revelatory new book" (Elle) that is a powerful argument for abortion as a moral right and force for social good

Forty years after the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, "abortion" is still a word that is said with outright hostility or vague discomfort by many, this despite the fact that one in three American women will have terminated at least one pregnancy by the time they reach menopause. Even those who support a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy often qualify their support by saying abortion is a "bad thing," an "agonizing decision," thereby placing the medical procedure on a pedestal so remote and radioactive that it takes it out of the world of the everyday, turning an act that is often necessary, and often welcomed, into something shameful and secretive. Meanwhile with each passing day the rights upheld by the Supreme Court are being systematically eroded by state laws designed to end abortion outright.

In this controversial and necessary book, Katha Pollitt reframes abortion as a common part of a woman's reproductive life, one that should be accepted as a moral right with positive social implications. In clear, concise arguments, Pollitt takes on the personhood argument, reaffirms the priority of a woman's life and health, and discusses why terminating a pregnancy can be a force for good for women, families, and society. By whole-heartedly defending abortion rights, Pollitt argues, we reclaim the lives and the rights of women and mothers.

Thank you for posting about it.

I'm not familiar with Alternative Radio, but it seems there is a charge to download the program:
http://www.alternativeradio.org/collections/latest-programs/products/polk001