Sherry Chandler

Wanda New of Kay’s Branch in Monterey, Kentucky gets her hair cut for Locks of Love on the Today Show.

Click through here for the video.

You’ll have to sit through an ad and then Wanda’s footage is about the last two minutes or so of a six minute video — forward to minute 3:49.

Monterey is in Owen County, where I grew up. Wanda and I were in school together, though she’s about five years younger than I am. According Katie Couric, Wanda hadn’t had a haircut for 42 years.

[Update: Local coverage from the Owenton News-Herald.

A recent measurement shows that from the crown of her head to the tip of her hair is 57 inches.

“I debated cutting it when I turned 40 and then 40 came and went,” she said. “I considered it at 45, then 50. Now I’m 55.”

About 10 years ago, she had Glamour Shots done in anticipation of a cut. She also went to Nashville for a visit with Crystal Gayle. She wanted to see whose hair was longer. Gayle’s was — but not by much.

Since then, she said she’s been thinking about cutting her locks. Last week, a teller at a Frankfort bank, Lisa Mitchell, told her about the Today Show segment. She e-mailed them with the length of her hair. Her phone rang the next day.]

Photo credit to the News-Herald.

I woke up this morning mulling over what I might have to say on the issue of choice. I have felt compelled to say something. I am after all a woman of feminist leanings, and I do believe very strongly that a woman has the right to make her own moral choices and to control her own body.

Beyond that is the simple fact that women have always practiced abortion and they always will practice abortion. Making it illegal simply turns it into a class issue. Rich women will still be able to get safe abortions. Poor women will have to resort to the coathanger and the fall down the stairs.

Making it illegal creates a criminal class.

But punishment seems to be what the rightwing is all about these days, and I don’t know what any outrage of mine can do to change the situation. This South Dakota law and the confrontation it will bring about have been inevitable since we actually elected George W. Bush in 2004. (I defer to my friend Jeff Hess as to whether this was a free and fair election but it does appear to have been legal.)

Perhaps this discouragement is victory for the anti-abortion fanatics. I’ll admit to a great weariness of the Roe v Wade battle, a battle that has been going on most of my life, and in which pro-choicers seem to have won a series of Pyrrhic victories. I am weary of besieged abortion clinics and murdered doctors. I am weary of impassioned sermons and the circus of fetal screams that travels from college to university. Most of all, I am appalled by the way this single issue has been allowed to politicize the Supreme Court. Look, for example, at what I found in this morning’s NYTimes:

WASHINGTON, March 1 — In his first weeks on the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. sent a note to Dr. James C. Dobson, the influential Christian conservative, thanking him for his support and vowing that “as long as I serve on the Supreme Court, I will keep in mind the trust that has been placed in me,” Dr. Dobson said Wednesday in a radio broadcast.

…

Justice Alito alluded to the response in his letter. “I would also greatly appreciate it if you would convey my appreciation to the good people from all parts of the country who wrote to tell me that they were praying for me and for my family,” he wrote.

In his broadcast on Wednesday, Dr. Dobson indicated that he had taken that as a request to share the letter with his audience. Celebrating the Supreme Court confirmations of both Justice Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Dr. Dobson said, “We do not yet know how these men will vote, but every indication is that they get it, they understand.”

So I’m pretty sure the battle in the courts is lost. And what we’ve got for all our fighting is a bunch of justices that are smarter at politics than at the law. The whole process of appointing a Supreme Court justice has turned into farce. By using Roe V Wade as a single issue rallying cry, cynical rightwing politicians have taken away a lot more than our right to choose.

Maybe life will surprise me. It’s happened before.