Sherry Chandler

Louise Erdrich has this article on the op-ed page of the NYTimes – An Army of One:

Minneapolis

I FIRST noticed that he was unusually polite when I brushed by him to get into my middle seat on the plane out of Los Angeles. Then I saw the rose at his feet. It was a long-stemmed red rose. I’d nearly stepped on it. I showed him how to roll it in a magazine and we put it safely in the seat pocket. He looked at my newspaper and said he was interested in Iraq.

“Why?” I asked, though I could tell by now.

“I just came from there.”

His eyes were a clear, pale, unusual green. His cheeks thin and sunburned. He could not keep still. His fingers fluttered, his eyes darted to each person who entered the aisle. He told me that he’d graduated two years ago from his high school outside Seattle on a Friday and that he had enlisted on the following Monday. “Because I’m sort of patriotic.”

Read the rest.

I See Invisible People, via Digg, points to this item at PhysOrg:

A British study suggests the Roman Catholic Church-approved “rhythm method” may kill more embryos than other methods of contraception.

The “rhythm method” relies on abstinence during the most fertile period of a woman’s menstrual cycle. For women who have regular 28-day cycles, that occurs around days 10 to 17 of the cycle.

It’s believed the method works by preventing conception from occurring. But Professor Luc Bovens of the London School of Economics says it may owe much of its success to the fact that embryos conceived on the fringes of the fertile period are less viable than those conceived toward the middle.

Bovens says it can be calculated that two to three embryos will have died every time the rhythm method results in a pregnancy.

So if this is true, what of all those baby-killing arguments?

The article appeared in the Journal of Medical Ethics, and online access is limited to subscribers. You can read the abstract here. I’m not sure that it’s a study exactly, not a clinical study with controls and all. Perhaps more a reasoned argument. I’ll see whether I can dig out the original.

Meantime, the Journal gives access to this article, Women’s reproductive autonomy: medicalisation and beyond, for free.

Nothing would advance women’s welfare more than respecting their reproductive autonomy. This statement presupposes autonomy’s prerequisites, such as decent health care, education, and alternative ways of supporting themselves. By reproductive autonomy, I mean the power to decide when, if at all, to have children; …

In 2005, the factors that influence women’s reproductive autonomy most strongly are poverty, and belief systems that devalue such autonomy. Ensuring that every woman had the prerequisites for practising basic reproductive autonomy would take only a fraction of the world’s resources: but that autonomy is a low priority for most societies, or is anathema to their belief systems altogether. So poverty and anti-autonomy belief systems work together to deny women control over their lives. Although lack of access to the prerequisites for exercising autonomy is often a result of anti-autonomy belief systems, it can also be a consequence of racism or limitless greed.