Molly's Blog

Molly Saves the Day is an interesting read. I found her blog after reading about her infamous post on an abortion manual for the women of South Dakota. My expectations and assumptions of her philosophy were pleasantly voided several times.

From her "abortion manual" post:

I understand that [women of South Dakota are] probably really angry right now. Maybe you're reading a blog expressing that anger -- the anger that your state thinks it knows better than you what to do with your body.

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There is no reason you should be beholden to doctors -- especially in a state where doctors have been refusing to perform them, forcing the state's only abortion clinic to fly doctors in from elsewhere.

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For under $2000, any person with the inclination to learn could create a fully functioning abortion setup allowing for both vacuum aspiration and dilation/curettage abortions. If you are careful and diligent, and have a good grasp of a woman's anatomy you will not put anyone's health or life in danger, even if you have not seen one of these procedures performed.

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DISCLAIMER: I am posting this as information only. Whether anyone chooses to act upon this information is their own concern. I believe in the free exchange of information and ideas. I believe this information has been kept from women for too long, and there is no reason they should not know about a procedure being performed on their own body, and no reason women should be kept in the dark about how to perform it -- especially if someone they know is having their health jeopardized by this law.

Citizens, take off your thinking caps.

Science is not a criminal enterprise. Science and knowledge should not have to be taken underground, or only demonstrated by people with the money and determination to acquire federal licenses. If this government insists on continuing to treat scientists and teachers like terrorists, the free exchange of ideas and information will be at risk in every field.

When thinking is outlawed, only outlaws will think. Make yourself more knowledgable -- and dangerous -- today. Get yourself a brand new chemistry set and start to experiment.

Always a contrarian: a problem and a solution

It's my opinion that the Constitution does not have what would pass as a contemporary right to privacy. Perhaps the closest that it actually does come is in the most dead and buried amendment of all: the third, which prohibits soldiers from being quartered in the houses of civilians. There's no textual evidence that there is a right to privacy. In fact, the only way to delineate one out of the existing document is to use original intent interpretation -- which is a dangerous thing to do, as the Framers did not necessarily intend other things we take for granted today.

Essentially, we may be falling into the same trap that caused some of the Framers to oppose giving us a Bill of Rights in the first place: some, most notably Jefferson, believed that outlining the rights we do have might mean that people would interpret them as the only rights we had.

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...I think people need to stop and think about what the right to privacy guarantees as it's been generally interpreted. It guarantees that you can talk to your doctor and receive treatment without the government interfering. If you didn't have that right, trust me, you'd want it. 98 percent of women use birth control in their reproductive lifetimes (and I'd wager a significant number of the remaining ones are sterile or non-sexually active). Your right to privacy doesn't just mean the right not to have the government interfere with your abortion, it means the right to talk to your doctor about having HIV without the government deciding this makes you ineligible to marry, or the right to take Viagra while unmarried.

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...it's so important that the right of a patient to decide, in conjunction with a qualified medical professional, their own course of medical treatment without Uncle Sam (or a state governor) complaining...

Brief note (real post will come later):

If you say you are pro-choice, but that the women of South Dakota and Mississippi or anywhere being stripped of abortion rights should really just take a bus to another state to get an abortion, you're really saying one thing and one thing alone:

You're okay with whatever reproductive rights the government feels like giving women on a particular day. But rights don't work like that, or at least, that's not how they should work or how they were supposed to work. The government doesn't GIVE you rights, it only enumerates the rights you already have and works to protect them. The right to control your own body and your own medical decisions is perhaps the most basic human right of all, and if you believe it's okay for the government to take it away when they feel like it, you don't really support human rights.

If you're okay with whatever the government feels like giving women, you are not pro-choice, you are not pro-reproductive rights, you are pro-government. Pro-"state's rights" means anti-human rights -- and it always has.

And finally, V For Vendetta and the dangers of reading novelizations

I have been a fan of Alan Moore's graphic novel "V For Vendetta" for many years, and have been eagerly awaiting the movie for about half a decade now. So when I saw the novelization of the movie in the local bookstore, I had to pick it up, to make sure all my favorite parts were intact.

Only one -- out of about ten -- was in any form that preserved the meaning of the original.

If the movie is anything like the novelization, I will not be going to see it. Yes, it keeps some of the most basic anti-authoritarian views, but most of it is crap.

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Evey's story is supposed to be one of a naive but intelligent young woman changing from an ordinary citizen to a terrorist. That's a powerful arc! But in the novelization, she starts as an activist against the government. Her only issue with V is that he is violent. But the story of a non-violent activist becoming a violent one is nowhere near as amazing -- or as relevant -- a story as that of an ordinary citizen reacting violently to violent times.

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All references to The Land of Do As You Please have been cut.

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V's speech to the statue in praises of anarchy? Gone. V's speech as God to all of humanity, warning them that their time is up? You guessed it. Gone. Replaced by V making a speech that is approximately "Your fascist government is bad, mmmmmkay?"

Basically, an eloquent, amazing statement on what could turn ordinary humans into terrorists has been changed into Random Speculative Fiction Action Movie

Though her writing more often than not has clear acceptance of the state and all that implies, she does have elements to her that show promise.

Ma'am, you have my sympathies for the shitstorm kicked up by Drudge and Newhouse News.

Pay special attention to those expressing total horror at non-licensed people performing medical procedures.

Posted by Drizzten at March 17, 2006 08:50 AM