Does Circumcision Encourage Rape and Other Sexual Violence?

My husband, who rarely vocalizes outrage at world politics, was visibly upset when he learned that African men were being told they had to become circumcised in order to avoid spreading AIDS. A well-read and uncircumcised man, my husband knew that he had “dodged a bullet” when he had been born in Africa while his father was stationed at a naval base there. The hospital had refused to circumcise him, and his parents never forced him to face the possibilities of the operation again.

Unfortunately, few parents are as well read as he is, and most Americans continue to have their baby boys tortured needlessly all for the sake of an ancient cultural tradition—circumcision, the removal of the foreskin over the penile glans, usually performed without anesthesia and often within hours of the trauma of birth. Psychologists continue to argue about whether or not the extreme pain and torture of circumcision leaves a lasting impression on the infants, with some arguing that the baby boys do remember, at least subconsciously, and warn that that violence on them establishes a pattern that can set the course for more violence, especially violence in relation to sex, in some men’s lives.

Dr. William Keith C. Morgan, in his “The Rape of the Phallus,” concurs with many of his peers—the “removal of the prepuce exposes the glans to foreign stimuli which dull [the] special [pleasurable sensation] receptors” (Journal of the AMA). Dr. Morgan likens the different sensations during penetration between circumcised and uncircumcised penises to pulling on a sock—circumcised men experience penetration something like “thrusting the foot into a sock held open at the top,” with every little bump being felt like a painful snag on a toe nail; whereas “the intact counterpart…[is like] slipping the foot into a sock that has been previously rolled up,” smooth and easy. Because circumcised men have the sensual receptors around the heads of their penises dulled by constant contact with the outer world, many circumcised men seek greater, and perhaps more painful, sensations to get greater satisfaction out of sexual intercourse.

The fact that circumcision dulls these receptors has been known for centuries. Dr. Robert Darby in his “History of Circumcision,” reports that laws were passed in the late 1800s requiring African American men to be circumcised because it was thought they were too ignorant to maintain proper hygiene and were so promiscuous that they were the ones primarily responsible for the spread of syphilis, arguments that sounds suspiciously familiar to the ones being used on the African continent today regarding AIDS. Dr. Darby also points out that “whatever the U.S. media may claim, there are increasing reports that AIDS is making rapid headway in the Middle East—that is, among Moslem populations where most of the males are circumcised,” clearly indicating that logic and scientific facts are not being used in the push to circumcise African men. In my survey of websites purporting phenomenal changes in the spread of AIDS (one site seems to claim the change in the rate of the spread of AIDS is instantaneous after circumcision—maybe the men were too sore to have sex for awhile?), most of the websites arguing vehemently for circumcision for African men were sponsored by conservative religious groups, many of which claim to be on the forefront of the “battle against AIDS.”

Significantly, the national and worldwide statistics for the number of men arrested for rape and other violent crimes, including spousal abuse, who are circumcised far outnumber those arrested who are uncircumcised, leading some experts to consider that circumcision could have a direct link not only to rape, but to incidents of incest and practices of sado-masochism, often called “rough sex.” Sadly, very little direct research has been conducted to verify the link between violent sexual behavior and male circumcision.

While some researchers feebly argue that mothers allow this violent act on their infant sons as some sort of retribution for being second class citizens in a male dominated world, increasing numbers of parents are choosing not to circumcise their sons. As Jeannine Parvati Baker revealed in her “Ending Circumcision: Where Sex and Violence First Meet,” “When I learned that only in dominator societies, in warring cultures, does genital mutilation of the young occur, I saw a way I could be a peacemaker - by fulfilling my central responsibility as mother. By raising peaceful sons, mothers could stop the destruction of our Earth. If mothers protected their boys from the unconscious initiation into the military cult, we would create a sustainable future” (Birth and the Origins of Violence).

The Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden was not what I expected. I had heard about the Garden in Lucas, Kansas on television and read about it in newspaper clippings, but neither did justice to the one-man monument to cement, freedom, and Populism.

According to some people in Lucas, S. P. Dinsmoor, who was born in 1843, became enamored with cement because the invention of Portland cement in the 1820s made cement more workable and longer lasting. After he retired from farming, and possibly because he was drawing two Civil War pensions by accident (some say he tried to have the error fixed, but was unsuccessful), Dinsmoor moved into Lucas in 1907 and began construction on his post-rock “log” cabin home.

For those unfamiliar with this area of Kansas, because of a lack of wood for fencing, early EuroAmerican farmers began using the natural limestone rock, easily quarried throughout the area, as posts to support barbed wire fencing. These “log” rocks, some as long as 20 feet, were mostly used just for the fencing, but Dinsmoor used them as the logs for his cabin home.



There are many charming aspects of Dinsmoor’s concrete depiction of the Garden. One of the first that I noticed is that Eve looks very much like a Paleolithic goddess figure—lushly, fruitfully full and round. That aspect of her is best seen from inside the Garden’s arbor, as though seeing her and Adam from a place of hiding, almost devilishly.

Dinsmoor had many opinions about religion. He didn’t hold with Moses’ depictions of what the Garden of Eden must have been like. He even says, in his self-published booklet, Pictorial History of The Cabin Home in Garden of Eden, that “Moses did not give God credit for any kindness toward the human family.” Instead of leaving the humans in the Garden to suffer alone, Dinsmoor has added a hand to catch those who are falling.

Dinsmoor, a registered Populist (I suspect he was also once a Mason, given some of his comments and the Masonic symbol on his coffin), was very open in this long-term artistic effort about his opinions on everything from labor rights to religious and racial intolerance. In his Pictorial History, he defends “heathens,” pointing out that “one man on this earth is just as good as another, and sometimes a darned sight better. They are as good as they act.”

Our tour guide showed us the most controversial part of the Garden just before a visit to Dinsmoor’s pyramid style crypt. The depiction of Labor Crucified is controversial because Dinsmoor chose to depict four groups of people he felt were the leaders responsible for crucifying those who labor for a living: Lawyers, Doctors, Preachers, and Bankers.

Having been raised in conservative, bible-thumping Kansas, I asked the tour guide how many people object to Dinsmoor’s claim that Preachers “eat Labor’s cake” by only preaching to think only of the afterlife (which he said they knew nothing about), not to think about the dilemmas of the present. She admitted that some people get offended, but the group that worried her most had been a group of bankers, especially when they heard that Dinsmoor felt the banker “has the money, takes the interest and breaks up more people than any other class” (Pictorial History). She was thankful that particular group hadn’t hurt her.

In many ways, Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden, like Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, depicts a world of tolerance based not just on Populist labor ideals, but also on more pagan-like beliefs of Theosophy, wherein humanity is part of a sort of universal mind, which was popular about the time Dinsmoor was growing up, and which seems to stem from ideas which rose out of Naturalism and the Enlightenment, at least as it was practiced in America. Theosophists were the New Agers of their time, and I imagine that many super conservative Kansans and Nebraskans (where there were growing numbers of Theosophists, like the Baums) would have predictably been frightened by many of their suggestions.

Dinsmoor felt that everyone should be treated equally, regardless of race, gender, or religion. Sadly, even by today’s standards, he would have been considered a radical. Luckily, he built his monument to free thinking in cement, and it promises to stand the test of time.

For Those Naïve Women

I have met many women who firmly believe that abortion is murder. Absolutely nothing I say to them about how Mother Nature aborts 3-10% of all zygotes and fetuses because there is something wrong with them, or about how much more humane it is to abort an unwanted child than to have her or him suffer from lack of love or nurturance, ever convinces them otherwise.

They’ve seen the videos the anti-abortionists show, but never question how they got those videos, or if they are even real.

The anti-abortionists are clever folks because they have learned how to manipulate the uninformed emotionally through videos, billboards, and arguments about murder.

Never, however, do they admit that the people who want to maintain women’s rights to choose whether or not to be pregnant also believe that abortion is the last resort choice for any woman. But it is, and always has been, a choice.

Making abortion illegal will never change whether or not women choose to have abortions.

What it will change is who can afford to get one, which means, in the very easy to verify mathematical scheme of things, that poorer women will continue to have children they don’t want or can’t afford to have, either physically, spiritually, emotionally, or financially. Or that these poorer women will, once again, be the ones who become sterile or even die from backstreet abortions.

In effect, the single minded goal to make abortion illegal by anyone is either a miscalculation on their part about what will happen afterwards, or a deliberate calculation—keep women poor and pregnant.

This frightening possibility—that these religious fanatics who want to impose their point of view about abortion on the rest of us—is becoming all too real, even without making abortion illegal.

One of my nieces, who is the daughter of a zealot sister of mine, chose to keep the baby conceived in a one night stand. The conception happened because she did not know the medicine the doctor put her on for a muscle injury would compromise her birth control pill. The doctor should have known better, but never bothered to inform my niece, or she simply chose to ignore the warning. She admitted that she finally decided not to have an abortion (see, she still made a CHOICE) because she knew her mother would be unreasonably angry with her if she did, and because, once she found out it was going to be a boy, she wanted to give her father the son he always wanted.

Personally, I find her reasoning appalling, not because she chose to have the baby, but because she chose to have it for other people’s reasons, not her own.

The pressure anti-abortionists have put on young women to feel even more guilt than they normally would have (and they would have felt a tremendous amount of guilt having an abortion) has created a whole new American culture—a culture based increasingly on single mothers.

These women are raising their children in the most selfish society in the world. While anti-abortionists rail against abortions, most do nothing to help the young women who become trapped in this nearly endless cycle of poverty. Instead, these same conservatives have limited the number of years these single parents can get any kind of social welfare, so that they can’t even afford to get a college education anymore, further preventing them from “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps,” as I’ve heard so many conservatives say.

I’m continually shocked (which shows my determined naiveté) when my students—18-29 years old typically—voice conservative prejudices against people who need welfare or who can’t afford to go to college. They always assume, like their parents probably do, that anyone who wants a good paying job can get one. They always assume that merely wanting something and putting some hard work into obtaining it always means they’ll get it. They assume success is just a matter of CHOICE!

Unfortunately, these young people are from the same generation that has produced the boom in unwed mothers. The fathers, it seems, CHOOSE not to be fathers. And the mothers, it seems, feel they have no CHOICE but to become mothers.

Why didn’t they use better birth control, some ask? Most of the same kids who grow up in conservative households choose not to ask for birth control because of fear of how their parents will react, so they are often the ones who end up getting pregnant. The intense desire to have sex, especially in the quest to become close to someone emotionally, usually comes with no specific planning on either gender’s part. Even if the males use condoms, the chance that someone has compromised the integrity of the latex (see my other posts) is great, which increases the already problematic unreliability of condoms.

Why aren’t they taking that “other option” anti-abortionists seem to think is an easy solution for these young women? Why aren’t they adopting out their unwanted babies? For the same reason they choose to have them to begin with—they sincerely want to do the “right” thing, and they have been told, by these same religious fanatics, that the “right” thing is the responsible thing. To them, being responsible, means raising the child themselves.

Who suffers from all this programmed choosing?

The unplanned children probably suffer most of all, but the mothers suffer, and, typically, her parents bear a large part of the financial burden, which often causes resentment from the child’s grandparents.

Or, as in my niece’s case, they resent their parents’ attempts to help them raise the child, so they completely remove themselves from their parents’ influence, until they need them. The resulting strain in familial relations will be felt for some time to come.

My niece, like so many unwed mothers, was not ready to be a mother. She definitely tries her best, but she still holds the conservative values of her parents and spanks her son when he misbehaves. His resultant anger—both from the spankings and her threats to remove valued objects from his use, as well as from his resentment at having to be shuttled twice a year across the U.S. to see his father, and also possibly because his mother, too, harbors deep resentments at having her singlehood compromised against her wishes—has made him a rather volatile young man.

The Vatican has, on several occasions, published edicts that predict what will happen to the world if women are given equal rights and if abortion is made legal. Their wildest claims were that 1. people would stop marrying, 2. women would all become lesbians (as priests, they apparently don’t understand women’s sexual needs at all), and 3. the world would plunge into chaos caused by the ensuing economic upset.

While their first prediction seems to be coming true, it isn’t. In reality, both men and women are making choices. The women realize they can survive without men, as much as they don’t want to. But they have also realized that they don’t have to put up with men who only have selfish desires. Government statistics show that fewer people are marrying, but that those fewer marriages are actually lasting longer.

More women have come “out of the closet” since many of the Vatican edicts were written, but lesbianism isn’t on the rise. It’s just out of the closet.

The economy, still largely dictated by men around the world, is still making the wealthiest wealthier and the poorest poorer. The main difference is that, now, among all those poor are millions of American children, born to mothers who “did the right thing.”

The Not So Intelligent Kansas Women

My family recently took an I-70 Vacation—we explored places we haven’t been to before on either side of I-70 as it runs through Kansas. Frequently, we saw anti-abortion signs along the highway. Someone, apparently, believes he can influence others merely by supplying misinformation.

Unfortunately, he’s right. Loads of people in Kansas approve of a recent law that, disguised as an effort to “protect” pregnant women against violence—especially against the kind of violence that would injure or kill their unborn children—elevated fetuses from potential human beings to actual human being status from conception.

Why would so many Kansans approve of such a change—a change which, to most intelligent people, obviously is meant to be the wedge that could completely make abortion illegal again in the state of Kansas?

Most Kansans don’t know their history, especially not history that relates to women’s reproductive rights.

They probably have no idea that contraceptives didn’t even become legal for women, not even married women, to use until the late 1960s.

They probably have no idea that, because contraceptives were illegal and abortions were illegal, women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies did so in back alley or self-help style. They probably have no idea that the vast majority of women who had back alley abortions either became sterile for life or died.

In our town, women wrote into the newspaper in favor of this new bill because, as one woman seemed to tearfully write, they had miscarriages and mourned those losses everyday. The one woman never indicated that her loss was caused by violence, but her concerns over the unborn, potential human beings everywhere undoubtedly convinced others, like her, who either had had miscarriages or who had never been able to conceive that anything and everything should be done to protect those lives.

Forget the women who carry them….

Why should it be necessary for a state to enact such a law, if that state was already protecting its women adequately?

Such a question didn’t seem to enter the minds of the legislators who passed the bill, nor through many of the minds that elected them there.

In Kansas, a man who rapes a boy gets twice the prison sentence that a man who rapes a woman or girl gets. Our law makers couldn’t send a clearer message: males are more valuable than women (so they believe), and now fetuses are more important than the women who bear them.

In Kansas, women are no longer second class citizens; we’re third class, right behind the unborn.

Where are the women (and men) who will protest this violation of our rights? Where are the people in Kansas who Value Women?

I had almost given up hope that such people existed in Kansas, but had been heartened discovery, nearly a year ago now, when, among all the anti-abortion booths that tend to crowd the state fair, I discovered a booth with a banner that said, simply, “Trust Women.” Available at the table were petitions to sign to urge legislators to vote against the proposed laws to limit women’s rights to choose whether or not to be pregnant, as well as pins to wear that said, “Value Women.” Everyone in our fair going group put on a pin, and all the adults signed the petitions.

We weren’t successful in defeating this fool-em-into-believing-we-care legislation, but we did learn we are not alone.

There are intelligent women (and men) who want to ensure women’s rights, and help make abortion scarce, not illegal. There aren’t many of us. But we do exist.

G-Spot Lies Your Doctor Told You

My husband recently reported to me that my G-Spot moves around.

This man has made love to me at least once a week for the last 20 years, but he comes up to me, seemingly serious, to announce this information as though he’s Moses on the Mount. He says he found the information on Wikipedia.

He hates it when I prove him (and his sources) wrong.

But I did it anyway.

You see, about two years into our relationship, I had an abnormal pap smear, and had to have cryotherapy. At the time, the doctors, without the aid of any blood test, assumed my abnormal cervical cells were because of hpv (human papillomavirus), which is sexually transmitted. They almost caught hubby in this web of deceit by trying to convince him that he was the one transmitting it to me, and wanted him to undergo laser surgery on his penis. He would have none of it, and, in retrospect, it was probably a wise choice—he followed his gut instinct and stood by it, although I have to admit I resented his indifference to my health at the time (I was still rather naïve).

I underwent the cryotherapy to avoid cervical cancer.

From the beginning of the procedure, the doctor lied to me. “You have no nerve endings on the cervix, so this might be a little uncomfortable, but you won’t feel any pain,” he said, after showing me the little white places on my cervix through a special scope. Not only did the procedure produce real, live pain, but it produced so much pain I couldn’t stand up by myself for several hours.

Since I’ve always been very attuned to how my body feels, I noticed right away (as soon as the pain was gone and we could resume normal sexual activity) that I couldn’t have Mothers or Grandmothers anymore. My husband and I had realized early in our sexual forays that I have three main levels of orgasm: normal orgasms, which are something akin to what clitoral masturbation produces, Mother orgasms, which are much more intense than normal orgasms, and Grandmother orgasms, which involve so much of my body that the most intense one I ever had actually made me briefly lose consciousness (okay, I was MUCH younger then, and our love making was a lot more intense).

The trauma to my cervix from the cryotherapy was so great that I couldn’t experience the best two kinds of orgasms I normally have for nearly a year!

It was during this time that I realized that my primary “g-spot” is my cervix, and I find it difficult to believe that any other region of a woman’s uterus reacts the same way. Considering how thoughtful Mother Nature has been in organizing our bodies, the cervix—which is where She wants the sperm to travel through, after all, would seem to be the most logical spot to make so sensitive that women desire having it prodded regularly.

Yet, here in 2006, we still have so-called authorities who still cannot agree on what a “g-spot” is, let alone WHERE it is. Granted, hubby used Wikipedia. While I applaud Wikipedia’s efforts at egalitarian “scholarship,” the fact still remains that anyone can post information to it. Men, you should note, especially if you haven’t figured this out already, are not good sources of information about what causes women to have orgasms. Face it. We sometimes fake it, and most men can never tell the difference.

The documentary series, The Human Animal, verified for me what I had known since that year of the bad pap: the cervix is intricately involved in women’s orgasms. The film footage of a woman’s cervix dipping down into the pool of sperm was indeed ground breaking photography of an actual orgasm in progress. As far as I know, it is the only film footage of its kind. While Desmond Morris might be too thick to figure out why humans love the taste of sweet things (apparently, he never sucked on any woman’s lactating breasts; breast milk is sweet!), he did find out what mechanically is happening in a woman’s body during at least one kind of orgasm.

About the time of my cryotherapy, I met a married woman who had never had an orgasm (she was in her late twenties) until she had an affair. The topic came up because she had known I’d had the treatment on my cervix, and in my anguish I had admitted that sex was just not the same. She raved about the orgasms she was now having with her lover (divorce was on the horizon, she admitted). Her descriptions of her new found sexual glory clearly indicated that this man, as opposed to her husband, was reaching further into her vagina. Instead of the standard “missionary position,” they were experimenting and finding new depths. I told her my theory about the cervix’s role in orgasm, and she readily agreed.

I believe most women can have orgasms, even if they have yet to experience any, and I think many women are fortunate to have multiple orgasms.

In case you are interested in experimenting to see if you can have orgasms, if you can have more orgasms than you usually do, or if you can have more intense orgasms, I recommend:

1. always have intercourse with at least a semi-full bladder; the pressure of the bladder on the cervix and vagina increases the possibilities of having the penis actually stroke the cervix (when my doctor did a sonogram of my uterus, she required me to have a full bladder for the same reason—the whole genital area is more available lower down when the full bladder pushes it down);

2. try something other than the missionary position, or, if you insist on the missionary, prop your bottom up on several pillows and insist your lover lean as far forward as he can, so that he’s bearing his weight mostly on his arms and with his thighs; when his knees are right up against your buttocks, the penetration won’t be deep enough for Grandmothers;

Warning about Woman on Top: I can’t do this position often because my cervix is so sensitive that my orgasms become extremely intense, and I literally get light headed. If you are a woman who doesn’t have strong orgasms often, this position might be the ideal position to change the frequency and duration of your orgasms.

3. monitor your peak times of the month for sexual activity and try to work it out with your husband or lover to have sex more often during the times when sex feels best for you, and less often when it doesn’t. If he is insisting on having sex even during times when your need is low or it just isn’t making you feel good, you will end up not wanting to have sex as often, which will be bad for both of you all the way around;

4. avoid using condoms or intravaginal devices to prevent pregnancy; if the man’s penis head cannot touch the cervix, much of the sensation will be lost. So you’ll have to make sure you’re both disease free and have access to other kinds of birth control (see further below).

Oh yes, in case you were wondering: I finally insisted that my doctor give me the blood test for hpv; I don’t have it, and probably never did, although the doctor insists, now, that my immune system probably “threw it off.” While that is a possibility, I also now know that I am intensely allergic to latex, which is, of course, what most condoms are made of. I believe it is very likely that my latex allergies resulted in my cervical abnormalities—kind of like a rash on my cervix.

Hubby and I have long since stopped using condoms or latex diaphragms for birth control, and it is probably a good thing, especially given the fact that I have had students who are store clerks who have admitted to poking needles through condom boxes “for fun.” I reminded them that condoms prevent diseases and pregnancy both, but they still refused to see any harm in compromising the integrity of such products. Typical prudish Midwesterners, their responses were, “well, they shouldn’t be having sex anyway.”

I recommend that condom manufacturers sell their products in tins, not card board boxes.

Since I gave birth to our son twelve years ago, hubby and I have used Vaginal Contraceptive Film (vcf; the film is made up of spermicide, which is folded and placed directly over the cervix) for our birth control choice.

My current gynecologist isn’t happy with the choice because she claims it only has a 75% success rate, but it has worked well for us all these years. One thing that could make the vcf more effective for some really fertile women would be to have an additional small film cap to adhere to the man’s penis with his preseminal fluid. Using both the vcf and a penis film cap should bring the rate of pregnancy prevention up considerably, and such birth control film doesn’t expose either sex partner to latex. Vcf does not prevent diseases, however, so remember that important point when choosing a birth control that is best for you.

Sex is an important part of feeling vital and alive for many people. As long as we treat each other with respect, including ourselves, everyone should be able to enjoy their sexual gifts.

Have fun finding your “g-spot”!

Why Limit Women's Choices?

Because I live in Kansas, part of a midwestern mental "state" that seems hell-bent on ending women's "equality" (if such a thing actually exists), I feel bombarded on almost a daily basis with anti-choice voices arguing for something they obviously understand very little about.

There's currently a movement in the Kansas legislature to force public schools to teach students about the stages of fetal development, which is, in and of itself, a good idea. I am surprised that all biology classes don't already cover this basic concept. I know mine in south central Kansas did. Kansans, however, have to put a nasty spin on this piece of education legislation because the senator proposing the legislation wants the material to specify how much pain a fetus must feel as it is aborted (as if anyone can measure zygote or fetal pain)!

Signs I often pass as I drive between central Kansas and the Kansas City area are in one farmer's field, and include statements like, "Abortion stops a beating heart." Like much of the anti-choice propaganda that has been aimed--rather effectively, judging by the number of unwed mothers out there--at making women avoid making the tough choice of having an abortion, the claim is both incomplete and emotionally bent. These claims want to add more emotion to a choice that is already extremely emotional for any woman who faces having to decide whether or not having an abortion is the best thing for her to do.

One element that is missing from the anti-choice movement's claims is the fact that no woman (although they will dredge up, or, I believe, make up, women who are routinely and happily having abortions) can ever face the prospect of having an abortion without some fear and lots of anxiety. It has never been an easy decision to make, and these fanatics would like nothing more than to completely take that decision out of all women's hands. They firmly believe we are too stupid to make the right decision for ourselves (hence, my main title, "Intelligent Kansas Women").

Until they admit that women can and will continue to make their own decisions, anti-choicers continue to use misinformation and emotion to sway the less educated. Biologically, for instance, much technical information is missing from the anti-choice's arguments that anyone with a good biological background probably wants to laugh. I know I do.

For instance, as a woman who has experienced infertility issues, I know that I have had at least two "miscarrieages," a.k.a. spontaneous abortions--both of which happened within the first month after conception. According to my physicians over the years, I probably sloughed off a fertilzed zygote once a month while my husband and I were trying to conceive. We are both fertile, in that I have eggs, and he has lots of sperm, but I couldn't carry a child (for the year we tried before one, our son, succeeded in hanging on) because of poor conditions in my womb.

Am I a murderer?

There is no statute of limitation on murder, and, if the rabid legislators in Kansas (like those in South Dakota; my kudos to the president of the Oglala's for having the guts to start her own clinic on reservation lands) have their way and make "conception" the point of when viable human life begins, I could be tried for manslaughter, at the least, for the audacity of having a poor womb!

Is that what these fanatics want? To make women so scared of being accused of being murderers that we won't even report miscarriages to our doctors?

Don't assume such goals are ridiculous, either. Nearly half a dozen states (including Nebraska and South Dakota) have sued women, who were either alcoholics or drug addicts, of child abuse because they continued to abuse drugs while they were pregnant. From what I have been told, the women were all "lucky" that each state already recognized such addictions as diseases, otherwise they would have been convicted.

That Kansas billboard blasts another significant inaccuracy. While it is accurate to state that women are encouraged by physicians to consider the sound they can hear from about the 12th week on as a "beating heart," the fact is that a baby's heart isn't fully developed until much later, and sometimes not even until the month before birth. One of my students told me about how his son was born with an incompletely formed heart valve and would have died within minutes of being separated from his mother, except that the hospital in which he was born was next door to a children's hospital, and the specialist needed to operate on the child was on hand. This incident is proof that the fetus's blood flow is primarily directed by the mother, not its own heart valves.

Such misinformation as is spread by the Kansas farmer about fetal development is rampant in Kansas. Most people can't even name the stages of fetal development, firmly believing that the mass of cells formed immediately after conception is a baby. If wise Mother Nature knows better, how come so many humans are still so ignorant?

I was born to a farm family that lived in a small central Kansas town where the only hospital was Catholic run. My mother was never permitted to get her tubes tied, and birth control was still illegal for married couples back then. I was the tenth baby my mother gave birth to, and her twelfth pregnancy. She had had two mid-term miscarriages between my older sister and me, was 42 when I was born, and had been warned four pregnancies prior (and with each subsequent pregnancy) that she would die, if she didn't stop having babies.

My father was the traditional "head of household" lord and master, and refused to get a vasectomy. He had some sort of "macho" competition with one of his brothers to see who could father the most kids. My father won. He also desperately wanted boys. Out of the ten of us, only three are male.

But I used to love to hear my mother tell the story of my birth. When I was born, Dr. Filley, our family physician, refused to release my mother from the hospital until my father agreed to come down to his clinic for that much needed vasectomy. Dr. Filley, you see, was barely five feet tall, and my father was six foot, two. The image, to me, of little Dr. Filley standing in the doorway refusing to let my father even visit my mother until he had the vasectomy has always amused me. And Mom always told the story with such relish--as though she, too, delighted at the fact that the combination of my father's high sex drive and his fear of Dr. Filley convinced him to have that vasectomy that very afternoon.

Stupid people ask me: well, then, aren't you glad your mother gave birth to you, instead of aborting you?

And I always say: If I knew that my mother's life would have been healthier, happier, and overall less stressful because I had never been born, and if it was actually possible for me to reverse time and make it so, I would give up my life to make my mother's that much better. Don't you love your mother enough to be willing to have made that sacrifice?

As a child, I thought my mother was the most wonderful person on earth, and, if I close my eyes and breathe deeply, I can still smell her slightly floury and slightly flowery scent, still feel her firm arms, and imagine my head resting on her cushy bosom. She's been dead for more than eight years now, and I still feel her loss in my heart and my soul.

She died six months after my father did, just when she was rearranging the house to her own satisfaction...finally. So she never really had a chance to live life like she wanted to.

Even though it would mean giving up my very loving family (my husband, son, and cats), if I could have improved my mother's life by not having been born, I would do it...you guessed it...in a heartbeat!

We Exist

There are Intelligent Women in Kansas. While that claim might surprise many, I will endeavor to explain what I mean by Intelligent.

Intelligence is the capacity to think independentally, even creatively, but most of all critically about information put before us. I believe that everyone has the ability to think critically, but many in America believe women, especially, are incapable of thinking critically about their own lives, and are seeking to restrict our abilities to make our own decisions.

As a college professor, I have met many women who feel they lack the ability to think creatively, but were surprised when they were able to think through problem-solution exercises. What surprises them most is the fact that they can bring their own experiences to the critical thinking process, and that those experiences actually help them process information--creates usually unconscious ideas that create prejudices most have no idea they hold. By helping my students become more conscious of those subconscious prejudices, I am able to show them that, once they recognize what makes them feel what they believe, they can become more conscious of whether or not those beliefs are logical (i.e. critical thoughts) or programmed thoughts--programmed by their experiences, including the programming that happens when they embrace, without thought, what they are told to believe.

Take Toby Young, for example, who now claims she had no idea that helping John Manard escape from a Lansing prison would involve being captured and tried for the crime. Manard claims she was influenced by him, and that he is fully responsible for the escape. He makes impossible claim that he bought their getaway vehicle, even though everyone knows that Young took care of all the outside details of the escape. The notion that this middle aged woman was seduced by a younger man appeals to the romantics of Leavenworth County, who only want to remember Young's positive contributions to the prison systems with her SafeHarbor Prison Dogs program--the same program that brought her into frequent contact with Manard.

Young's entire case rests on being able to prove she is innocent because of a lack of ability to judge the consequences of her actions--whether blinded by lust for Manard or ensorcelled by him--the reason she was so easily influenced is not important. Her case won't appeal to jurors unless she appears to be a woman whose lack of judgment put her in an inescapable situation.

She's hoping, she says, to "get back" to her old life, including the family (husband and children) she abandoned. Young, then, is relying on the fact that most people think Kansas women are incapable of making such tough decisions for themselves.

I think Young knew what the consequences for her actions would be, but she found the attraction of a Bonnie-and-Clyde like life with a man who promised to spice up her sex life for a few weeks too tantalizing to pass up.

Everytime a woman like Young is treated as a poor, innocent woman--which she clearly is not--men and women in Kansas will continue to view all women as too stupid to make their own decisions.