Pure Sugary Joy

To make up for the crushing depression I left you with last night, here's some ear candy to start your Monday.


Music Go Music "Light of Love" from Music Go Music on Vimeo.

Sweet Crushing Depression

Inspired by the folks at All Songs Considered, and culled from a playlist ("Pardon Me, Didn't I Break Your Heart") I created for Mistress Allison's exclusive Midnight Ramble series, V-Day edition, I present to you the most heartbreaking breakup songs ever (at least those with decent videos on YouTube).


Coming in on my "Top Nine of Oh-Nine" list:











And for the grand finale, Michael Caine's rendition of Roy Orbison's "It's Over" from the movie Litttle Voice. He could have just up and retired after this - it's that amazing.

Focusing on Families: Behind the Tebow Super Bowl Ad

In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, national controversy swirled over the inclusion of an ad produced by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family in the coveted Super Bowl commercial lineup, showing during the most-watched hours of television each year. Though commentators and advocates had not yet seen the ad, it was described from the start as an anti-abortion advocacy spot featuring Pam Tebow and her son, Tim, a football star known for sporting bible verses on his face while on the playing field.

The initial reactions from pro-choice organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America were for censorship: CBS should pull this women-hating ad. The catch for me was that the ad was evidently focused on how Pam, with her family as missionaries in the Philippines at the time, chose to carry a pregnancy to term that she had been told would be dangerous to her own health. That “pro-choice” feminists would call for the censorship of a message of one woman’s choice is of course incredibly problematic. In fact, it’s an issue that has long troubled the movement, as if admitting that some women struggle with having an abortion, or that for some women carrying a difficult pregnancy to term is a choice they willingly make, somehow weakens a pro-choice argument. It does not.

Anyway, the tenor of the response soon rightly shifted from “we must censor Focus on the Family” (and let me be clear – they are an organization with enormous resources who stand for an agenda that I abhor) to a focus on CBS’s hypocritical policies on advocacy ads. With a history of rejecting spots with liberal messages from the United Church of Christ and MoveOn, to name a few, in the past, CBS’s decision to air the conservative Focus on the Family ad was clearly suspect. (Click here to read a piece on the controversy written by a sports writer Dan Zirin. Thanks to Herr Hartman over at Cheeze Blog for pointing me to this article.)

My purpose here, however, is not to rehash the pre-Bowl controversy, but to look at the ad itself. Not a football fan, I chose to watch the ad on the Focus on the Family website.

And wow was it underwhelming. But fascinating in its underwhelmingness. I bet that the average Super Bowl watcher was unaware of the brouhaha over the ad, and moreover I strongly suspect that most chose those 30 seconds to run to the kitchen to grab more cheese. Featuring a well-groomed Pam Tebow talking about her “miracle baby,” and a comedic tackle by her Heisman trophy-winning son, the ad in its concomitant polish and simplicity seems like an innocuous pro-family/”moms are strong” message in the tradition of those old NBC “and now you know” public service announcements. Even the accompanying soundtrack, a cheerful “doo doo do do do do,” underscores the “aw, how sweet” factor. In the midst of talking babies shilling stocks, KISS hawking Dr. Pepper, and cars, cars, beer, and more cars, the Tebow ad must have seemed utterly normal and even boring. In the face of the ad’s seeming inoffensiveness, the protests seemed, well, excessive.

The question for me, and I’m sure FotF could tell us from their web stats, is how many people actually followed the commercial’s “for the full Tebow story go to” directive to visit the organization’s website. After all, the anodyne “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life” tagline is probably only read as a specific political message by those already committed to supporting or opposing FotF’s agenda. Surely if there had been no controversy, those numbers would have been far fewer, and I’m sure that generating controversy was part of the organization’s strategy from the beginning.

Even when you do watch the “full story” on the website – an interview of Pam and Bob Tebow by FotF’s president Jim Daly – the group’s anti-abortion message is curiously veiled until well into the ten-minute video. One sign does come early in the piece, however, when Bob is retelling the story of how as a missionary in the Philippines he prayed for another child for their already six-member family. In an odd bit of bad audio editing – especially for such a slickly produced commercial and web package – Bob’s story is clearly spliced as the camera leaves his face and pans over pictures of the small brown masses who the towering white Tebows were busy saving with the gospel of Jesus Christ. (Um, maybe someone should tell them about the 400+ years of colonialism during which time Filipinos had ample, uh, opportunities to hear the “good news.”)

Bob says, “I was weeping [audible audio splice] over the loss of millions of babies in America who were never given a chance [end of splice] and I prayed and said, ‘God, if you want another preacher in this world, give me Timmy’ – and this was before he was conceived – ‘and I will raise him to be a preacher.’”

The noticeable addition of the anti-abortion message feels forced – clearly it’s not what Bob said during the initial interview. Likely the editor told the producer, “Hey we need some more anti-abortion sentiment in here” and added the phrase, recorded over the phone from the sound of it, post-production. The effect of this jarring addition is a direct revelation of FotF’s anti-choice agenda, which is otherwise effectively cloaked in a fluffy, heart-warming tale of a Christian couple doing their best to be good parents and live what they believe is God’s plan for them, using the platforms given to them and their children.

Only at 8 ½ minutes in does Daly direct the conversation to the issue at hand: saving babies. Daly asks the Tebows what they would want to say to a young woman (often referred to as a “girl”) with an unplanned (“surprise”) pregnancy. Pam offers that the baby is “not a mistake,” and that there are many people who want to help her, including “pregnancy centers,” which I observe are now conspicuously missing their former adjective “crisis.” Pam then defers to Bob, as she often does in the video. Looking directly into the camera, Bob tears up as he tells this hypothetical pregnant girl that “God loves you” and “don’t kill your baby,” platitudes that have been delivered aggressively and violently by clinic protestors for decades.

So again I ask, who, other than people like me, sat through this ten-minute video in order to receive this soft-focus version of the long-standing anti-abortion message? Admittedly I’m not in touch with football culture. Does Tim Tebow have lots of adoring adolescent girl fans who would gladly watch an online video of his parents just to learn any new scrap of information about him, and wham!, in the process realize that they shouldn’t kill their hypothetical babies? Honestly, if the video was aimed at teenagers the style should have been very different. The links to resources “Know Your Options” and “Be a Voice for Life” do seem aimed at college-age women and mothers of teenagers alike. The OptionLine ad is standard (crisis) pregnancy center fare.

(An aside – I was chilled to see on the Be a Voice for Life site a call to “Help us Thank Pregnancy Centers for Serving Women and Saving Lives,” a clear appropriation of the message of the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers, started by the now-defunct Refuse & Resist, which I for many years helped organize.)

So again, why this ad? Why now? Why so cloaked? Tim Tebow has always been forthright about his faith – why not have him record a straightforward video saying, “I’m glad my mom didn’t abort me. Don’t kill your baby – you never know, he might be the next Heisman winner.” Don’t get me wrong. For years the anti-abortion movement has been mainstreaming their message, moving away from a focus on protesting clinics towards a pro-woman sounding stance. This is clearly another (extremely well-funded) example of this, highlighting the "strong" mom, Pam Tebow. I guess I’m just having a hard time understanding the place of this ad in the overall anti-abortion strategy at this political moment. Is this ad, and its supporting web videos and pages, the Trojan horse of a new, slick, public relations attack on abortion? Coupled with the murder of Dr. George Tiller less than a year ago and increased threats against always (literally) embattled abortion providers, Focus on the Family’s ad could indeed prove quite dangerous.

I spy with my little eye...

Alfre Woodard at the Santa Monica Trader Joes. Favorite Alfre Woodard line (from Star Trek First Contact):

"You broke your little ships."



J.K. Simmons, aka the psychiatrist on Law and Order, and Juno's dad. At the Los Angeles Farmer's Market.

Who Will Take His Place?

I turned on the computer this morning intending to write a breezy post on Facebook about my partner having begun the 545 mile San Francisco to Los Angeles AIDS LifeCycle ride. Instead I was greeted by the horrible, devastating news that Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Wichita, Kansas, had been murdered while serving as an usher at his church.

Eyes blurred with tears, hands shaking, I entered this status on my Facebook page:

Angry and devastated at the murder of Dr. George Tiller today in Wichita. I'm looking now at a t-shirt he gave me that says "We can do it! Team Tiller." It encompasses his and his incredible staff's dedication, persistence in the face of constant harassment and violence, and complete belief in compassionately being there for women who needed his late-term abortion services. He will be desperately missed.

I can tell you exactly where I was when I found out about each of the previous seven murders of abortion providers by anti-choice extremists who claimed they were killing for life. The moments are frozen on my brain.

March 10, 1993: Dr. David Gunn, Pensacola, FL

June 29, 1994: Dr. John Britton and James Barrett, Pensacola, FL

December 30, 1994: Shannon Lowney and Leann Nichols, Brookline, MA

January 29, 1998: Robert Sanderson, Birmingham, AL

October 23, 1998: Dr. Barnett Slepian, Rochester, NY


And now I have to add, through tears that won’t stop:

May 31, 2009: Dr. George Tiller, Wichita, KS

The names and dates and cities don't take up enough space on my computer screen to account for the weight of the losses chronicled there. My years of work as a reproductive rights organizer, administrator, and activist have brought me into contact with each of these lives senselessly ended in the name of “life”: I worked with Dr. Gunn’s son, David Gunn, Jr., as part of the Refuse & Resist! task force that initiated and planned the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers, which happens every year on March 10, the anniversary of Dr. Gunn’s death. I met Dr. Slepian’s niece at a vigil I helped organize in her uncle’s memory. I served on the board of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice with June Barrett who was in the truck with Dr. Britton and her husband Jim when they were riddled with bullets; sitting in the backseat, she was wounded but survived. I met Emily Lyons, the nurse who was maimed in the Birmingham clinic bombing that killed off-duty Officer Sanderson, when she was given a Courageous Resister award by R&R! A friend and former Planned Parenthood co-worker held Shannon Lowney as she bled to death. I’ve done clinic defense for women’s health centers that were the victims of these horrible acts of violence. But Dr. Tiller was the only one I knew personally, and I’m taking his death particularly hard.

I will leave the important tasks of outlining the political context and rallying the sadness and protest into action in the able hands of my friends and colleagues such as Debra Sweet and Cristina Page. What I want to write here is a more personal reflection. An intimate look at commitment. Persistence. Belief.

David Gunn, Jr. says that his father’s favorite song was Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down.”

Well I won’t back down, no I won’t back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won’t back down

Gonna stand my ground, won’t be turned around
And I’ll keep this world from draggin me down
Gonna stand my ground, and I won’t back down

This could certainly have been Dr. Tiller’s theme song, as well. One of the ever-shrinking generation of doctors whose commitment to providing abortion services stemmed from seeing first-hand the horrible consequences of illegal abortion before Roe v. Wade changed the law in 1973, Dr. Tiller provided compassionate abortion services in Wichita for 36 years. He was one of less than a handful of late-term abortion providers, certainly the most public, who saw women from all over the country. Women with wanted pregnancies with severe fetal anomalies incompatible with life. Young rape survivors whose pregnancies were discovered too late to be handled by most health clinics who will only perform first-trimester abortions[1]. Low-income or rural women, for whom costs or distances or mandatory counseling laws had forced them to delay abortion services until the closest clinic would no longer help them. In fact, one of the ways I interacted with Tiller’s clinic, Women’s Health Care Services, was as a co-founder of the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund. As a member of the National Network of Abortion Funds[2], EMA has helped numerous women find the funds necessary to travel to Wichita for what is often a multi-day procedure.

Dr. Tiller and his staff provided these services despite being the targets of constant harassment and periods of intense violence, including the 1991 “Summer of Mercy” in which the notorious anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue pummeled the clinic with six weeks of blockades. Thousands of people were arrested. Two years later, Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms by Army of God[3] member Shelley Shannon; he continued his work, undeterred. Protestors outside his door were not the only opposition he faced. The Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline and conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly, among many others, singled him out for attack, contributing to an atmosphere of hatred in which the epithet “Tiller the Killer” could be casually tossed around, even on national TV.

Though I’d seen him at conferences, I really got to know Dr. Tiller when I went to Wichita in 2001 to defend the clinic during the “Summer of Mercy Renewal,” wrought by the re-named Operation Save America. I discovered him to be not only defiant, but warm, with a ready sense of humor that was probably a necessary defense mechanism. The day I and my colleagues from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, along with members of Refuse & Resist!, Anti-Racist Action, the Feminist Majority, and others arrived in Wichita, Dr. Tiller and his staff greeted us in the clinic parking lot, decked out in specially made t-shirts that said “Apple pie, ice cream, and abortion: 43% of American women can’t be wrong[4].” The back of the shirts read “Outpost of Reproductive Freedom, Summer 2001,” matching a flag that flew above the clinic, right below an American flag. Perhaps it goes without saying that he then invited us all inside for…yes, apple pie and ice cream, as a thank you for having traveled so far to support the clinic.

The week I spent in Wichita was tense and sometimes scary. I know my family worried about me being in close physical contact and sometimes confrontation with Army of God members and signers of Paul Hill’s[5] so-called “justifiable homicide” petition (in fact the Wichita police made no efforts to separate pro-choice defenders of the clinic from the protestors). But how could I waver if Dr. Tiller did not? My action was so small in comparison with the way he literally put his life on the line every single day.

I’m not one to lightly use the word “hero.” I think it’s overused, often inappropriately so. But if anyone deserves to be called a hero, Dr. Tiller certainly does. Not only did he persist in his work against overwhelming pressure, he did so without becoming embittered, and by honoring those who worked with him. And he did so without faltering in his simple philosophy, “Trust Women.” This motto appeared on buttons, t-shirts, and bags. Any way the clinic could proudly spread their message, they did. Trust women to know when abortion is the right choice for them. Trust women to know when parenting is the right choice for them, or adoption. Trust women who say that abortion is a relief, not a tragedy. Trust women who are pro-choice, yet mourn a pregnancy that they chose to end. Trust women. Not a politician, or a minister, or even a doctor. Women. These days, when the best one can hope for from a political leader (and sometimes even pro-choice leaders) are platitudes about abortion being “legal but rare” and “common ground,” Tiller’s unwavering and unapologetic insistence upon the rightness of his work as an abortion provider, and his centering of women as moral agents, were heroic stands from which he never backed down. And his did all of this with a smile, as you can see in all the pictures accompanying news stories of his murder.

Mourning Dr. Tiller today, I ask: Who will take his place?

Organizations such as the National Abortion Federation and the Abortion Access Project, where I worked during the most violent and murderous years of the 1990s, have long tracked the “graying” of abortion providers, those doctors like Tiller whose pre-Roe experiences have kept them committed to their work, despite all the violence. These organizations, and others like Medical Students for Choice and Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, have been working for the better part of two decades to insert abortion training in medical school and residency programs, recruit and support new abortion providers, and expand early abortion practice to advanced practice clinicians such as nurse midwives, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. Their work has met with some success, but the threat of violence is a powerful deterrent. One provider in the bold tradition of Dr. Tiller is Dr. Susan Wicklund, who chronicled her story in the 2008 book This Common Secret. I am proud to call Sue a friend, and am constantly in awe at her bravery and perseverance, demonstrated in almost unbelievable stories of intimidation and violence that she has endured as a provider to women in rural northern states, areas that would not have any abortion services at all if Sue did not fly in or drive hundreds of miles each way to reach them. There are others, of course, who I won’t name because they choose to not be as public, to protect the safety of their families. The late-term abortion provider whose clinic is like a fortress. The nurse midwife who is constantly willing to push the law to allow her to provide the full range of reproductive health services to her patients. The doctor who as a young woman pre-Roe who was forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term and vowed to never let another women endure the same punishment. The medical students who fight their administrators to expand reproductive health curriculum beyond pregnancy, childbirth, and gynecological cancers. But they are not enough.

Nor can the weight of filling Dr. Tiller’s big, big shoes fall solely on medical providers or clinic staff. I write somewhat hypocritically here, given that three years ago I retreated from my non-profit career to graduate school. Burnt out and disillusioned by what I saw as constant concessions on the part of the mainstream pro-choice movement, which at the same time was channeling so-called grassroots activism into activities that were in my opinion ineffective, I left active participation in the movement. But here I am three years later, at my computer too late at night, compelled to write, urgently asking: Who will take Dr. Tiller’s place? And how will we – because it has to be a we, one person shouldn’t have to take on so much responsibility – act?

This is a serious and critical question, for which I do not have the answer. The status quo of point-and-click activism, donations to national pro-choice organizations[6], and calls to elected officials is not enough. Indeed, all it’s gotten us is right back to 1993. Clearly, something else is needed. Something new. We need to figure this out together. We owe Dr. Tiller that much.


Rosemary Candelario
May 31, 2009


Endnotes:
1 In fact, 89% of all abortions take place within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Only 1% take place at 21 weeks or later. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
2 NNAF’s documentary video and publication Legal But Out of Reach share women’s stories that demonstrate why late-term abortion is sometimes necessary. http://www.nnaf.org/press.html
3 See the excellent documentary Soliders in the Army of God (2000) for more information on this loosely-affiliated group of individuals.
4 This refers to the number of American women who (it was estimated at the time) will have an abortion during their reproductive lifetimes.
5 Paul Hill murdered Dr. John Britton and James Barrett, and wounded June Barrett, in Pensacola, FL in 1994. He was executed by the state of Florida in 2003.
6 On the other hand, your local abortion fund can very much use your donations. The need for their services is even higher now in the bad economy. See http://www.nnaf.org/fundinfomap.html to find the fund closest to you.