Category Archives: Feminism

Defending the Indefensible

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

April 4, 2005

Tina’s small table was inconspicuous in the back of the conference room.  Filled with brochures, posters and business cards, she was looking forward to sharing information about her abstinence program.

But, at the end of the day, packing to go home, she shared her frustration with me.  Here she was at a conference dedicated to problems caused by teen sex.  It had seemed reasonable to think that nurses and teachers would want her information.  Instead…she spent the entire day defending herself and the notion that teens could and should remain sexually abstinent until marriage.

At every turn, sexual restraint and abstinence are being challenged.  The Department of Health and Human Services has just launched a new website that helps parents promote abstinence to their children as “the healthiest choice.”  We should be thankful.  Instead the director of HHS must defend himself against attacks from the ACLU and gay rights groups.

On today’s news, reporters discuss candidates under consideration as the new Catholic pope.  They point out that some people are enthusiastically hoping for a pope who will “modernize the church”…a pope who will withdraw opposition to abortion, birth control, premarital sex, and divorce.  In essence, from his place in heaven, Pope John Paul II, must defend himself.

This week, an uncommon convergence of news stories gives shape to an ethic that has come to dominate our land.  America’s heart can be best be known by making a list of the beliefs and behaviors we oppose, by cataloging the great offenses that make us angry.

Maybe, instead of rejecting sexual abstinence, gay activists could speak out in loud and clear voices…not to mention angry and indignant voices…opposing individuals and organizations such as NAMBLA who advocate adult-child sex.  What a wonderful sight it would be to see a sit-in of gay leaders blocking access to bookstores that sell the two-volume book set, Loving Boys.

Or…when is the National Organization for Women going to take on the media and demand a return to respect for women…real respect?  Why did NOW pass up the chance to give a good tongue-lashing to NBC, Terrell and Nicolette over the prime-time striptease on Monday Night Football?  If anyone should defend himself, why not start with Commissioner Paul Tagliabue?

Where are the class action attorneys when you really need them?  No matter how much “protection” Planned Parenthood educators promise with a condom, there is no denying that the unacceptable incidence of genital herpes infections – accurately labeled an epidemic by experts – is due to the failure of condoms to protect.  Where is the attorney to represent the thousands of students betrayed by educators who labeled condoms “safe sex”?

What about journalists wedded to promotional packets put out by the ACLU, NARAL and Planned Parenthood, reporters who do not take the time to educate themselves and write about the basics of sexually transmitted diseases and fetal development?  Shouldn’t they have to offer a defense of their news stories filled with inaccuracies and bias for the sake of advancing the politics of these organizations?

The ACLU has a long history of spending millions supposedly to oppose injustice and defend our rights.  Maybe they could defend the right of helpless pre-born babies to make it through the birth canal in one whole piece, living and breathing as they were created to be.  Isn’t this a choice worth defending, the choice to be born alive?

And at the top of the defenseless mob are the judges who pass themselves off as arbiters of justice and sound reasoning.  Is there any serious person in America, much less a Supreme Court Justice, who can truly defend the notion that we are unable to determine the moment when life begins?

Defending the indefensible is big business in America.  We have an intricate set of laws, complete with elections, judges, courts and attorneys.  But it will all come to naught unless we can fix what is truly wrong with us…the list of things that make us angry…and those that don’t.

July 2, 2004:  Abused by Freedom

To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.                –Confucius

 

I Think I Can’t….I Think I Can’t

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

January 24, 2005

Her question stopped me in my tracks.  “So why can’t you have a baby and go to college?”

I opened my mouth to speak, “Because….”  I stopped.  “Well, it….”

The modern proscription for a successful life in America is rigid.  You graduate from high school, you go to college and graduate, you get a master’s degree, and you begin your career.  Only then are you given permission to settle down and consider having a family.

The promise of “success” hangs in front of our nose, like the hare racing in front of the greyhounds at the track.  We have our life mapped out, no time to waste, and no room for detours.  But why?

It wasn’t always this way.  There was a day not so long ago when diversity was more than a political slogan.  It formed the very fabric of life, a patchwork of possibilities, a life of beauty designed around the varied circumstances of men and women.

Once upon a time, we took life as it came.  We planned.  But we also made allowances for the turns in the road, the detours and side trips that inevitably occur.  They were not evidence that life was over.  They were moments of creativity, unbidden opportunities to incorporate the unexpected into life and call it success.

Love wasn’t rejected until we had our college diploma framed behind the leather chair.  It came in joyful moments of surprise, and it was received as a gift.  Students in love got married.  If children came along, life wasn’t over.  It was extended.

Married students moved into married housing.  And if they became pregnant, the children were welcome.  Life was big enough to have it all.

Not so today.  For all the pride we have in our ability to plan the perfect life, we have created the ultimate rigid path that rejects life’s diversity.  If success is only possible as single men and women without children, then our fate is sealed.  Sex is recreation, relationships are void of commitment, and babies are unwelcome.

Thus, it is quite an easy matter for clinics on college campuses to sell young women the solution to unplanned pregnancies.  Abortion in college is just one more part of the so-called prescription for success.

Abortion counselors don’t counsel.  They simply latch onto our fears and reinforce them.  “Oh, my dear,” they tell young women, “you don’t want to drop out of school.  You’ll never be able to do it.  Here let us fix it for you.”

Sealing their fate, reinforcing the promise of failure, we withdraw support from pregnant women.  If they want acceptance, love, careers, and a future…they have only one path, one narrow path, just big enough for one person to walk alone, no babies allowed.

As a nation we are all caught in the fear of failure.  Parents push their daughters to abortion.  Boyfriends expect abortions.  And women have bought the lie.  They can’t be a woman, a mother, a wife, and a student…because we tell them they can’t.

When did we decide that the best life to be had is the life of a sterile woman?  What justification do we have for preaching the Mother Goddess in feminism even as we demand that she sacrifice the joy of mothering in order to move ahead?

Do you plan joy?  Or does it flow from your ability to accept the unexpected treasures found along the way…love, commitment, marriage, and family?  If humans were created to be parents, what kind of happiness will we find by denying our creation?

Babies are not the enemy…but only if we are willing to believe in the value of life and all that it brings.  What joy have we lost today by pretending that the best of life can be planned?  When did we give up on ourselves?

 

June 5, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

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The Peterson Verdict: Truth Reclaimed

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 20, 2004

Twelve people, ordinary citizens, accepted the ultimate challenge of a civilized society.  They sat through five months of grueling testimony in the Scott Peterson trial in order to defend truth.

There is something immediate and real about sitting in the jury box, examining bits of concrete, clothing, and recorded phone conversations, searching for truth.  When the prosecution passed the peasant maternity blouse thought to have been worn by Laci shortly before her murder, one juror burst into tears.  Literally touching the truth can be painful.

The Peterson verdict makes me think back to another trial I witnessed firsthand in 2001, where Dr. John Biskind was accused of letting his patient die.  Like Laci, his patient LouAnne was pregnant.

In order to prove their case against Dr. Biskind, prosecutors needed to prove the age of LouAnne’s baby.  Twelve jurors focused on a description of the proper use of ultrasound to measure the widest part of the baby’s temple, slightly above the eyes.  The expert witness assured them further measurements of the baby’s waist and femur could be used to confirm an estimated age.

The jury listened intently.  The truth seemed to be that LouAnne’s baby had been 25 to 26 weeks old, at the age of viability, when, under ordinary circumstances the baby could have survived outside the mother’s womb.  But these were not ordinary circumstances.

Scott Peterson and Dr. Biskind were both convicted by juries.  Both prosecutors won their cases.  Two trials, two mothers, two babies, and four deaths.   But oh, the difference in truth.

You see, as tragic as his death was, at least Connor had a name.  He is remembered in the hearts of people who wanted him, and he is honored by a nation who grieved when his little body was found on the shore of San Francisco Bay.  Laci’s baby was a victim.  And Scott will pay the price for his murder.

LouAnne’s baby was measured and counted and aged.  But he…or she…was never named.  Prosecutors in the Biskind trial were under a strict order from the judge not to make the trial about the baby.  Just figure out how old “it” was…and then move on.

Later in the trial, when prosecutors described the death of “it”, they explained how the broken leg bone of the baby could have ripped a hole in LouAnne’s uterus as the doctor pulled it out.  And the metal tool that broke the leg bone…and crushed the skull of “it”…that sharp metal tool might have cut into LouAnne and caused the uterine wound that made her bleed to death.

The Peterson trial was about two people, Laci and Connor, who each died a brutal death.

The Biskind trial was about one person, LouAnne…and “It”.  LouAnne died a painful and undeserved death, and Dr. Biskind was convicted of this crime.  “It” never died, because “It” was supposed to die.

When “It” was measured at the trial…her little head, her tummy, her legs and arms…she was a fully-formed picture on an ultrasound with a beating heart.  But when time came to describe her death in the trial, she became a fetus…a linguistic charade that snuffed out her humanity, a life summed up by a medical examiner in three words of dispassionate science…a “Product of Conception”…or more simply said…“It.”

Is this the truth that we require of juries?  Is the truth a matter of declaring what you want, even if the evidence proves otherwise?  If you name him Conner, then he was killed.  If she was only an “It,” then she never was…and she never died.

This week, just as Americans work to make peace with the conclusion of the Peterson trial, the brutal truth we work so hard to avoid has been savagely resurrected on the front page of national newspapers.

Another mother, Bobby Jo Stinnett, was murdered.  Her fetus?  Her product of conception?  Her “It”?  It lived.

Bobby Jo died.   But because someone wanted her fetus enough to kill her for it, to take it by force from the womb, a grateful father has been reunited with his baby…Victoria Jo Stinnett.

In Kansas, another jury will eventually convene in another trial, with another long trail of evidence leading to the conviction of a murderer.  And as the jury weighs the evidence of this unspeakable crime, our nation will once again be faced with a serious truth that refuses to die.

The definition of life is not fluid…changeable from one trial to the next…based on whether we wanted to receive the life…or not.  Life, like truth, exists of its own volition…separate from our juries and verdicts…life is.  And truth is.

No amount of evidence and testimony will ever be enough to reach truth if we close our eyes and hearts.  The greatest challenge for a jury in a civilized society is not to determine truth, but to open its eyes to the truth in plain sight…and accept it.

 

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June 25, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

December 10, 2004:  The Best Part of Snuggling

 

The Best Part of Snuggling

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 10, 2004

It is black outside.  Soft pits and pats against the window…rain…and I pull the blanket closer, sinking back into the arm of the recliner.  A hot cup of tea rests at my elbow.  It is my favorite time of the day.

In the darkness, I think back to other special mornings, twenty years ago.  Wrapped in my green plush robe, rocking back and forth, it was many a quiet dark morning when I would slowly sense the presence of another person.  My son, a toddler of three, had padded into the living room, up next to my chair, with his small eyes fixed on me.

Wordlessly, in agreement that the peace of the morning was large enough for both of us, I would open my robe.  Knowing what to do, he climbed onto my lap, and I pulled the robe around us, a snuggling of two.  In many a dark early morning, so many years ago, we kept the peace together.

Snuggling…it’s hard to know the best part.  Is it the dark, the quiet, the soft touch of a hand on the shoulder?  Is it protection, comfort, acknowledgement, relationship?  Safety?  Is it the promised assurance between human beings that what happens to you will happen to me because I share your heartbeat?

I was jarred to attention last week.  I was asked to consider the first time I ever snuggled, my earliest snuggle of life, and the question brought me up short.

Was it inside the warm white blanket wrapped around me as I was laid into the arms of my mother in the hospital?  Or was it later…close against her as she nursed me, her firstborn?  Maybe my father was the first to snuggle me, peering intently, measuring the smallest eyes and lips of a baby…his…held in the crook of his arm.

Maybe…but the magic of science has opened the window on snuggling, and I think it must surely have been weeks, even months before my birth, when I knew I was safe, a knowing of safety available to all living beings even before they can explain it in words.

Surely, weeks before birth, wrapped into a bundle of baby, between my bursts of pushing and kicking against the walls of the womb…surely there were quiet moments shared with my mother where we snuggled and dreamt.  Already at this stage I had fine hair, teeth, and eyelash fringes around eyelids that opened and closed…and opened again…for infant eyes that looked around.  When she spoke, I knew my mother’s voice…outside…serenading me as I waited my time.

Certainly, even weeks earlier, when the womb was large enough for me to swim and stretch and turn somersaults, I took time to rest and sleep and snuggle.  Inside my mother’s quiet belly, worn out from my infant gymnastics, curling my toes, I would have stuck my thumb into my mouth and felt the safety of darkness…protected and safe.

One thing is certain.  I know I snuggled long before I made my first appearance under bright hospital lights.  No matter what some want to claim I was back then…a blob, a mass of cells, an embryo, a fetus…a product of conception…I was, without a doubt, a flourishing child of my parents, thriving and growing.

Today, cloaked in a battle of terminology, creating labels devoid of humanity, there are those who wish us to forget that we once snuggled in the womb.  They will not have their way with me.

I claim my existence, refusing to be dehumanized at any stage of development.  Supported by the miraculous development of four-dimensional ultrasound, doctors and parents can follow the development of babies like me.  At eight weeks, I was fully formed, a human of one inch in length, every organ present, with a strong beating heart.

At nine weeks, my fingerprints were already engraved, and my fingers were ready to grasp an object placed in my palm.

At ten weeks, my body was sensitive to touch. I squinted and swallowed. I puckered my brow and frowned.

And then I smiled…at eleven weeks.  And if I could smile, it is certain that I smiled because I felt safe, snuggled inside, nurtured and protected…my life ahead to be enjoyed and cherished.

So many years later, watching the dawn break on the mountains outside the window, I follow the beads of rain that trickle down the glass.  Another beautiful day outside, crisp and damp.  The garden will sparkle when the sun breaks through the clouds.  I take a sip of tea and pull the blanket up under my chin.

My son is grown now, and I must snuggle alone.  It’s enough, but it’s not the best there is.

If there really is a best thing to snuggling, this would have to be it…revived by thoughts of long ago…a bundle wrapped together, two of us sharing the morning…the best thing of all surely being the promised assurance between human beings that what happens to you will happen to me…because I share your heartbeat.

 *************************************

DEDICATION 

This column is dedicated to the many committed educators who are not afraid to teach our children about their earliest days of life inside the womb.  May these faithful teachers be encouraged in their work.

 

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 June 25, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

Bringing Poppa Home

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 22, 2004

Nanny remembers it as “1963, the year the fifties ended, and the fathers in our town were leaving…. It was our collective great fear, that our fathers would leave us, start new families with younger and prettier children; we had seen it happen before.” A brave young girl in Anne LaMott’s All New People, she gave voice to the fears of an entire generation of children…and for the children of two successive generations.

Nanny was a prophetess.  On January 1, 1970, the first no-fault divorce law, California’s Family Law Act, became effective and eliminated the requirement to use one of seven statutory reasons for filing for divorce.  In the following decade, all other states followed California’s lead, making divorce an easy-as-pie solution to “incompatibility.”

In the past thirty-five years, as divorce has become commonplace, another statistic has been on the rise.  Unwed teen pregnancies have given birth to children whose fathers are absent from the very beginning…no divorce needed.

In just three decades, between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent.  Poppa’s gone.

Mama is left to handle the children on her own…their lunch money, their bruises and hurt feelings, their temper tantrums, fights at school, homework, dating, proms and first loves.  When children reach for a hand up and when they celebrate with a high five, they aim for one hand…the hand of their Mama.  Papa?  He’s gone.

This is no exaggeration.  About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father’s home.

The impact of absent fathers has proven complicit in a wide range of social problems: crime; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse and alienation among adolescents; and the growing number of women and children in poverty.

How do we bring Poppa home?  The answer is being melded from many sources.  An Arizona judge requires counseling before divorce.  Legislatures are considering changes in no-fault divorce laws.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has developed a special initiative to support and strengthen the role of fathers in families.

In the private sector, groups like the National Fatherhood Initiative and The Fatherhood Project are reaching out to dads with help on parenting, encouraging them to take an active role in the lives of their children.  And faith-based groups are taking the lead in helping to strengthen marriages and in giving couples effective strategies for dealing with conflict before it leads to divorce.

But the biggest hope in bringing Poppa home…and creating a home where he will stay…comes from a surprising group:  abstinence educators.  Abstinence education is all about placing sex in context, helping students understand that the natural result of sex is to produce children…in families…with parents…with Mamas…and Papas.

Joneen Krauth, who developed Wait Training abstinence programs, has her students begin a marriage file.  She encourages them to collect information on how to create and maintain healthy and happy relationships, and in particular, how to “marry smart”.  What are the compatibility factors that predict survival of relationships?  What are the seven warning signs of a bad relationship?  Is he/she “just a date”…or are they “my soul-mate”?

Students learn that relationships require the same planning, goals, and commitment as college educations and career plans.  They gain hope by realizing that even in a culture of divorce, they can learn how to avoid the mistakes that lead to broken relationships.

Abstinence until marriage…students learn to see sex, not in isolation, but in the full context of human life and relationships.  And in this context, where marriage is valued, students are laying the foundation for families where Papa and Mama come together…and stay together…for each other…and for their children.

October 15, 2004:    Where’s Poppa?

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