More Music for a Sunday: Also, FUCK the Grammys.

Wanna know just how badly the latest top 40 radio shit sucks? Listen to this…

…and weep:

No lip-synching, no autotune, no bullshit. Just great sounds from a great Canadian band. CRANK IT.

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Nothing is certain but death…

How’s that old saying go about death and taxes? Seems to me a bit more of the latter could have prevented the former, as in this sad case:

A spokeswoman for University Hospital has confirmed a man who witnesses say waited close to 16 hours in the emergency room died Tuesday morning.

Alfred Garza, who said he spoke to the man while also awaiting treatment, said the man was in obvious pain and told him he had been waiting in the ER since 8:00 a.m. Monday.

Garza said he noticed the man in distress at about midnight and asked a nurse to check his vital signs.

“She stood up and went and talked to another nurse, and they just stood at the window and looked at him,” said Garza.

Garza said he sat next to the man a half-hour later and noticed he appeared to have stopped breathing. This time, he said he was able to get a nurse to attend to him.

Charles Davila, who said he was also waiting in the ER with his wife, said the nurse tried to wake the man, but he remained unresponsive. At that point, Davila said the man was taken to receive treatment.

[…]

“It was very frightening,” said Davila. “I had been there for a while, watching this man wheel around in his chair, and if it was my grandfather, I would be very, very upset.”

Both Davila and Garza said they believe the man’s life could have been saved had he received proper medical care in a more timely manner.

A sad sign of the times indeed. And shameful, too, that hospital staff seem to have grown so callous to the needs of the elderly in their emergency rooms. Nobody should have to go for so many hours without even seeing a doctor. The very least those nurses who stood behind their window looking out at him could have done was to approach him and say something like, “Sir, how long have you been waiting here?” O Canada, where’s the outrage?

Oh yeah…I guess I should say that this unconscionably long wait time happened not in Canada (where right-wing wankers like those at the Fraser Institute keep clamoring for more privatized health services, presumably to prevent such things), but in San Antonio, Texas.

Yes, that’s right–this tragic wait-time death occurred in the Fraser Institute’s beloved model nation, the United States–where the taxes are lower, and privatized healthcare is supposed to take care of all that. And where, by strange coincidence, public healthcare, provided by overstretched ERs such as this one, suffers accordingly. After all, it’s the public ERs of places like University Hospital that have to pick up the ever-growing “slack”–of people who can’t afford expensive private plans, or those who have them but are still not covered for certain things. “Pre-existing conditions”, I believe the euphemism goes.

In this case, it would appear that old age and its many attendant infirmities are pre-existing conditions that all the major private insurers would refuse to cover. This sort of thing happens all the time, not only in San Antonio, but all over the US. And that’s no surprise, seeing as the elderly are living on fixed incomes. They’re too old and unwell to work. Their pensions are often barely adequate (or downright inadequate). They couldn’t afford private insurance even if they found a plan that would cover every inch of them–and such a plan does not exist in the land of Sicko. So they are forced to rely on the public system…and the public system, being grossly underfunded, lets too many of them die like this.

Maybe a bit more taxation could have bought this poor soul a bit of time, instead of leaving him in the ER for 16 hours, waiting for death. Just something for all the teabaggers out there, north and south of our borders, to consider. After all, they’re not getting any younger (or healthier), either. And if one of them should collapse while wheezing a teabaggish slogan like “Keep your government hands off my Medicare”, why…just think what could happen.

Or not happen, more likely.

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Economics for Dummies, If You REALLY Care, Isn't It Ironic?, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, She Blinded Me With Science, Socialism is Good for Capitalism!, The "Well, DUH!" Files, The United States of Amnesia | Comments Off on Nothing is certain but death…

Music for a Sunday: Friends of Mr. Cairo

Now that one gangster is out of Cairo, let’s hope the rest soon fall, too.

And while we’re on the theme of Cairo, here’s another one for you:

Burn, baby, burn.

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Posted in Music for a Sunday, Rivers in Egypt | Comments Off on Music for a Sunday: Friends of Mr. Cairo

Wankers of the Week: Sweethearts of Stoopid

Crappy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Are we feelin’ all luvvy-duvvy yet? No? Well, don’t worry. Auntie Bina has just the thing to get you in the mood. It’s called WANKING! And here’s who’s been at it like a motherfucker this week:

1. The Fucking Texas Legislature. It’s a joke at the best of times, but at the worst, what is it? The heavy-handed legislative arm of the fetus-fetishist crowd…of course. Now they’re trying to pass their anti-choice bullshit off as some kind of pro-woman thing, judging by the way they’re wording it. They’re hoping we don’t twig to the fact that they’re really just trying to emotionally blackmail women out of having abortions. Awwww! Don’t all you ladies down there feel special now, seeing how they’re going to the trouble of making this tearjerker an “emergency” vote and all? Be sure you send your valentines to State Sen. Dan Fucking Patrick, the author of this latest invasion of your right to privacy. And by “valentines”, I mean parcels of fresh male bovine feces.

2. Cornelius Fucking McGillicuddy the Fourth. Yes, ladies and gents, “Connie Mack” continues to show what a big fat man-crush he has on Huguito Chavecito, the democratically-elected and extremely popular president of Venezuela. And on Joe Kennedy, too! Isn’t that cute? Only one widdle problem there, Corny: They’re just not that into you. The more you make a fool of yourself, the more they (we) laugh their (our) asses off at you. Maybe you should leave off all this boring love-letter writing of yours and actually start working for the poor dumb schmucks who voted for you, yes?

3. Alejandro Fucking Peña Esclusa. While we’re on the subject of wanks with the hots for Chavecito’s cuddly bod, how about this one? He’s a fascist and a terrorist, wanted for trying to overthrow a legitimately elected man. And now he’s got Joseph Fucking Farah wrapped around his pinky with a buttload of twaddle about al-Qaida, who have ZERO presence in Iran, never mind Venezuela! And just think, the WingNutDaily wants you to subscribe and PAY to receive this convoluted crapola! Ain’t (unrequited) love grand?

4. Bill Fucking Maier. “Doctor”, is it? I bet his patients leave him feeling worse than when they came. Someone please inform this homophobic quack that my best friend and his hubby are two of those “selfish” people that he’s slamming with his misinformation, and that they’re raising two kids whom no one else could or would look after. And the kids? THRIVING. Must be all that queer selfishness rubbing off on them.

5. Fucking Dubya. His entire reign was one big, long, international nightmare of an uninterrupted wank. Chucklenuts got his rocks off on torture, mass murder and a whole slew of other war crimes. Now he can’t even travel abroad without risking arrest and landing up in The Hague. Awwwww, my heart bleeds!

6. Frank Fucking Gaffney. You can always tell who the sore losers are by how much crapaganda they have to generate in order to keep their lame in the news.

7. Matt Fucking Lewis. Does the world need any more conservative columnists, much less those styling themselves “iconoclasts”? What “icons” has this dude clasted, anyway? I never heard of him until this past Tuesday. Oh well, he won’t be missed, wherever he’s from.

8. Angeles Fucking Duran, again. No, I’m not planning to pay her any sun taxes. Neither, I’m sure, are you. For all I care, she can go broke trying to enforce her fraudulent claims of ownership.

9. David Fucking Cameron. A bankster stooge? Say it ain’t so! (Actually, this one was kind of a “DUH!” Remember, the phrase “right-wing” arose from the French parliamentary custom of letting those who represent the oligarchs sit on the right-hand side of the floor.)

10. Lila Fucking Rose. Maybe she and her delusional followers think she’s justified in committing the sin of bearing false witness. Alas for Lie-là, the Vatican’s own anti-choice encyclical of 1968 says otherwise. So do those same ten commandments that all the far-right Christers are constantly trying to shove into the public square. Lying for God is like whoring for chastity. PS: Oooooo, what’s this? Hypocrisy? Or should I say, more of it? Tsk, tsk. Someone’s going straight to a self-made hell for that one!

11. Christiane Fucking Ouimet. Can you believe she used to be something called an “integrity czar”? And that she was appointed by those who have none? Little wonder she was a no-show at a hearing on her own (poor) job performance.

12. Julia Fucking Hurley. Yes, you too can go from Hooters waitress to successful (?) politician. Just ask her how. (And be on the lookout for falling IQ digits.)

13. Joe Fucking Pitts. I was alerted to this one by Kitty, who posted a response to my “terrible story” post. And oh lordy, this one really takes the biscuit. He is so anti-choice that he wants to make it legal for doctors to refuse to give referrals for an abortion, even to save the woman’s life. And this is what he calls “protecting life”? Well, now it’s official–to these arch-misogynists, women aren’t living human beings. They’re just incubators. Who cares if they die and take the fetus with them, as long as some fucktard’s “principles” and “conscience” remain inviolate? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Anyone who doesn’t support a woman’s right to choose, and her right to life, doesn’t belong in any health-related profession, and should seek another job.

14. Bristol Fucking Palin. Future half-term quitbull, coming right down. Look out below! PS: Oh, ugh.

15. Tony Fucking Clement. How do Con-tards turn 50? With unfunny “jokes”, natch.

16. Tzippi Fucking Khutubelli. Finally, we find a real feminazi…in Israel, where this one makes dire noises in the Knesset (with a pseudo-feminist gloss, of course) about Jewish women “contaminating” their blood and soil with marriages to Muslim men. The HORROR!

17. Christopher Fucking Lee. Need more proof that Craigslist is a bad place to try to get lucky? Try being a married Republican congressman attempting to pass himself off as a mere divorced lobbyist, while trawling for Other Women. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in his bedroom this Valentine’s Day…or maybe not. Something tells me it’s gonna be awfully quiet, and awfully, awfully lonely. PS: Oh, surprise!

18. The entire fucking Repugnican party. Job creation? What’s that? No, let’s just waste vast amounts of time and public money trying to ban abortion in every way. Including, ironically, using the heavy hand of government to interfere in business and private insurance plans. Which, if I’m not mistaken, goes against that cherished Republican ideal of unfettered free enterprise, or some such. The mind boggleth.

19. Glenn Fucking Beck. He claims he’s going blind. I think it’s his brain that’s the real problem. What is up with that silly nativity shepherd costume? And that horrible Yoda imitation? A Jedi knight you are not, and never will be, Biff. A loonyfuckingtoon, you are.

20. John Fucking Boehner. The Weeper of the US House, embroiled in a sex scandal? You don’t say! (I have to say this: I wonder if his penis resembles a baby carrot. Oooooo, mindbleach! STAT!)

21. Peter Fucking Kent. Why?

That’s why. “We have a plan, and the plan is working”? What is it, pray tell? And HOW? Merely saying so doesn’t make it so, Old Talking Head. Must get over those bad anchorman habits you picked up at Canwest Global. (I’m talking about reading off industry press releases instead of actual reporting, in case you hadn’t guessed.)

22. Silvio Fucking Berlusconi. When it comes down to a constitutional showdown over some bought-and-paid-for under-age nookie, and he claims his teenage hooker was the granddaughter of Hosni Mubarak of all people, you know the man’s not fit to govern a popsicle stand, never mind a country. Italy, take notes from your Egyptian neighbors there across the Mediterranean, and give this skanky old pervert the boot!

23. Andrew Fucking Breitbart. Obsess much? Actually, it sounds to me like this chronic wanker is now trying to retroactively justify his going on the attack against the innocent Shirley Sherrod months ago. Which just makes him seem all the more creepy, and yes, frankly, RACIST.

24. Duane Fucking Starkenburg. Srsly, he sounds like a real fart smeller. Er, I meant to say smart feller. Yeah.

25. Doug Fucking Ford. The brother of Toronto’s nastiest mayor is just as big a piece of shit as you-know-who. I bet you’re just as surprised as I am. Which is to say, not at all. What could be a more original or novel solution to the poverty problem than saying protesters are all whiny slackers who should just get a fucking job? It means you don’t have to do a fucking thing about it yourself, and that sounds about right for these two. Because, surprise, they’re not gonna do a fucking thing about it themselves, other than snark at people who very likely have jobs. The phrase “working poor” is obviously one they’ve never heard, which is not surprising either–both are descended from money, after all.

26. Rush Fucking Limbaugh. The Pigman is stupid every time he opens his pill-hole, but when it comes to Egypt, he’s especially fucking dumb. How the hell do you “rent-a-mob” of MILLIONS, in a country that’s been pissed off at shitty western-backed “leaders” for DECADES? Do you think they’d work for the chickenfeed Hosni Fucking Mubarak’s thugs got paid? And who was paying them, pray tell?

That’s what I thought.

27. Tom Fucking Friedman. Self-referential asshat is self-referential. Also an asshat.

28. Peter Fucking Goodman. Yeah, there’s a reality out there “beyond left and right”. Sure. A reality beyond truth and lies, in other words. Fairness and balance and blah, blah, blah. In short, False Equivalence has once more reared its ugly head, in the guise of a Wise Editor, Philosophizing. And here I was feeling bad about using facts to spank all these big media types over their mergers and acquisitions, for making the quality of news coverage suffer! Gosh do I feel silly now!

29. Lindsay Fucking Lohan. Yes, she’s lost it:

Hey, I have a better idea, Linds–how about Israel starts making peace with its neighbors instead? I’m speaking, of course, about the West Bank and Gaza. Oh wait, that would mean making peace with PALESTINE. Never mind!

30. The Fucking Dissociated Press. Cuba holds a US citizen prisoner for more than a year without trial! Shock! Outrage! BTW, Gitmo is also in Cuba…but since it’s not run by the Cuban government, and it’s been holding prisoners for almost ten years now without trial, of course IT doesn’t count. Amurrican Exceptionalism fucking rulez. And just think, they want us bloggers to pay them for the privilege of using their schlocky sausage filler!

31. Mark Fucking Regenerus. So, basically, marriage is still prostitution, and women are still looking for sugardaddies, and feminism has sold us short because women are becoming more educated than the men, who get their pick of us, rather than the other way ’round (never mind that little thing called mutuality). And of course, without the V-card, we have no bargaining chips left, and have to settle for a frog when we coulda stayed dumb and virginal and kissed a prince instead. So says he. I dunno, girls, are you buying any of this? Because if you are, I say you should demand your money back. You deserve better!

32. Wayne LaFucking Pierre. Even at such a concentrated gathering of cross-threaded right-wing nutz ‘n’ boltz as CPAC, The Peter is outstandingly crackbrained. There ought to be some kind of award handed out for such high levels of gun-nut lunacy.

33. Fucking Harpo. His “leadership”, like his response to the fall of the tyrant in Egypt, can be summed up in one word: LIMP.

34. Glenn Fucking Beck. Uh, I believe that “go to hell” is OUR line, Biff. And speaking of which, isn’t it time for you to do just that? You ARE crazy. And your insanity belongs in a straitjacket, not on a TV show watched by impressionable children (some of them very superannuated indeed, judging by FUX Snooze’s demographics.) Go to hell, Biff, and take all your pet conspiracy theories with you…right back where you, and they, came from.

35. Bev Fucking Oda. A partisan agenda, you say? And it led to doctoring of documents, which led to defunding of a perfectly legitimate NGO that simply didn’t kowtow to Harpo’s Israel-sucking agenda? Tsk, tsk. And this in the department of international co-operation. No wonder our profile on the world stage has collapsed. Harpocracy has made us look like a nation of assclowns. (We’re not. Our Conservative minority government is. Please don’t anyone confuse the two. And oh yeah: Dear World, I’m sorry they’re all such fucking idiots. I, like most Canadians, didn’t vote for them.)

And finally, a special shout-out (and razzberry) to Hosni Fucking Mubarak. Or at least, it would have been, had he not finally transferred power to his torturer-in-chief yesterday. His dishonorable mention is therefore transferred to Omar Fucking Suleiman, one smirky douchebag…who’s bound to get his. After all, the people of Egypt don’t believe in letting go of the reins, either.

Good night, and get fucked!

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Posted in Wankers of the Week | 6 Comments

Festive Left Friday Blogging Too: Democracy Now’s live stream on Egypt

Watch live streaming video from democracynow at livestream.com

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Amy Goodman so happy. Or heard Sharif Abdel Kouddous, the producer, who’s from Egypt and is in Tahrir Square right now, talking revolution openly. This is an amazing day!

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Posted in Festive Left Friday Blogging, Rivers in Egypt | 4 Comments

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Be there or be (Tahrir) square

Here are all the details:

The Harper Government has hypocritically criticized the “shrinking democratic space” in Venezuela while tail-ending Israeli Imperialism in supporting Mubarak in Egypt. We encourage everybody to support the movement for a free Egypt and attend this important event tonight.

*PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY*

The Arab Revolution: Tunisia, Egypt, Where next?

Friday 11th February @ 6:30pm
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), room 2214
252 Bloor St. W. (at St. George station)

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=190600287624455

Over the last few weeks, the world has been witnessing in astonishment the heroic uprising of the Arab masses. Starting with Tunisia, where waves of strikes and protests forced the Dictator Ben Ali to flee the country and his regime to collapse, passing through Egypt, where the regime of Mubarak is on the verge of collapsing under the pressure of angry demonstrations, the Arab masses have made themselves well heard: down with dictatorship, poverty, and unemployment. The glorious revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have been accompanied by demonstrations in Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, and Sudan where the Arab masses have been living under the same unbearable conditions as those in Egypt and Tunisia.

These events have shaken the Arab society to its foundation and opened the doors for a new era of revolutionary struggle. Join in us in a friendly, lively discussion about the roots, development, and future of the revolution in the Arab World and the Middle East.

Join us for panel discussion & debate featuring:

Kamil Shami, Ryerson Student Activist, Toronto Young New Democrats
Ahmad Khalifa, Egyptian Activist, organizer of rallies in Toronto
Naira Badawi, Egyptian Student Activist at University of Toronto
Arash Azizi, Journalist and Activist; Supporter of Fightback, Marxist newspaper

Organized by:

Fightback (www.marxist.ca)
Activists of Marxy.com (www.marxist.com/www.marxy.com)
Arab Students Association at University of Toronto
Arab Students Association at Ryerson University

Sponsors:

Afghan-Iranian Youth Network of Ontario (AIYN)
Toronto Young New Democrats (TYND)
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at Ryerson (SPHR)
Rahe Kargar – Organization of Revolutionary Workers of Iran
Mobareze Tabaqati (Class Struggle), Iranian communist group
Pakistani Student Federation at University of Toronto

For more information:
Email: fightback@marxist.ca (write in Arabic, English, or Farsi)
Phone: (647) 330-8170

If you’re in Toronto tonight, this would beat shelling out on yet another crappy Hollywood movie, yes?

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Festive Left Friday Blogging, Huguito Chavecito, If You REALLY Care, Rivers in Egypt | 3 Comments

How lucky is Luis Posada Carriles?

Pretty damn lucky, if he can manage to avoid getting prosecuted for terrorism over not one

A Salvadoran man jailed in Cuba in connection with a string of 1990s hotel bombings says he told a U.S. prosecutor that he got explosives and money directly from a former CIA operative now on trial in Texas, and that he is willing to testify against him.

Otto Rene Rodriguez told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Tuesday that he received powerful C-4 explosives and $2,000 in cash directly from Luis Posada Carriles to carry out an Aug. 3, 1997, bombing at Havana’s Melia Cohiba hotel. He was captured trying to enter the country on a subsequent trip with 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) of C-4 that Posada had given him, he said.

“Truthfully, looking me in the eyes he cannot say he doesn’t know me,” Rodriguez said. “He does know me. He used me like a tool.”

…but two (and more) credible witnesses coming out against him:

A Cuban special investigator is testifying in the perjury trial of a former CIA agent in Texas.

The evidence is a rare example of cooperation between the US and Cuba.

In all, two security officers and a medical examiner from Cuba are expected to testify in the US government case against Cuban native Luis Posada Carriles.

He spent a lifetime using violence to destabilize communist political systems throughout Latin America, backed by Washington.

Mr Posada, 82, is not on trial for the bombings, including that of a Cuban airline off Barbados in 1976 – only for lying about them at his immigration hearings.

Gee, isn’t it a good thing he’s only being tried for lying his way into the country that sponsored his terrorist activities? And isn’t it a good thing that said country isn’t that serious about fighting terrorism if the terrorist is white, Christian and right-wing?

And isn’t it absolutely hilarious that the same country, which operates the brutal torture centre at Guantánamo Bay, and which has also outsourced its torture operations to countries specializing in all kinds of sadism, fears that this old man will be tortured in Cuba and/or Venezuela–even though neither country does that anymore (with the obvious exception of the US military base at Gitmo)? This is why they won’t extradite him, despite repeated requests on the part of Venezuela and Cuba.

If that’s the kind of crook you are, you don’t need no stinkin’ rabbit’s feet. All you need is a wink and a slap on the wrist, and you’re good to go.

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Posted in Cuba, Libre (de los Yanquis), CubanaBomber Death Watch, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Law-Law Land | Comments Off on How lucky is Luis Posada Carriles?

Rap like an Egyptian

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Posted in Rivers in Egypt | Comments Off on Rap like an Egyptian

Why it took a dirty war to make Guatemala safe for democracy

So that CIA-backed terrorists could get fake passports from there in order to illegally enter the country that sponsored them. Why else?

Don’t let the name on this passport fool you. That’s not Manuel Enrique Castillo López, Guatemalan–that’s Luis Posada Carriles, ex-Cuban, ex-Venezuelan, now living in Miami, and still very much a CIA asset. Which is why they’re not prosecuting him for the terrorism he has admitted committing; they’re just going after him for illegal immigration. Using the above fake passport, among other things.

What an embarrassment it’s gonna be when the US government’s full role in this becomes known–if it ever does during the CubanaBomber’s lifetime. Don’t hold your breath on THAT one, kiddies. They’ve swept their part in the Guatemalan dirty war under the rug, and they’re gonna do the same with this old fart.

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Posted in CubanaBomber Death Watch, Guatemala, Guatebuena, Isn't That Illegal? | Comments Off on Why it took a dirty war to make Guatemala safe for democracy

A terrible story

At Sunday dinner today, my mom shared a story about a woman in the German farm village where she grew up.

This woman and her family, like my mother’s, were ethnic German refugees from Yugoslavia, who came up around 1944, when the Russians invaded the Vojvodina province where the Germans had lived for some 200 years. The woman had two sons, about the same age as my mom and her younger sister. And she had a husband who, not to put too fine a point on it, was ein richtiger Mistbock–a real fucking bastard.

Every day at noon, whether she felt like it or not, the woman’s husband demanded sex of her. If she protested, he beat her. She was his wife, and that’s what she was there for–so ran his reasoning. He had “needs”. Her job was to cater to them. Period. End of discussion.

After two children, the woman decided that she didn’t want another; they were not rich, after all. The war had been over for three or four years; they were refugees; times were hard. They had two rapidly growing sons to feed and educate. And she worked so hard in the fields; she was so scrawny and so tired all the time. Another pregnancy on top of all that? Nein, danke.

But the husband had his “needs”, and she had to submit, or else. Every day at noon, the same thing.

The result was sadly predictable. She got pregnant for the third time.

But this time, she was determined not to stay that way. She did something to herself; no one knows what exactly, but it went wrong. By the time the doctor saw her, it was too late for him to help her. The woman died.

What followed was, in my mother’s words, a real circus. There was weeping and wailing all the way from the little Protestant funeral chapel to the graveyard and back. It was customary at old-timey German funerals for all the women to cry loud and hard; there was even a word for those that did–Klageweiber, literally wailing-women. They were remarkably like the professional mourners at Egyptian pharaohs’ funerals, only they weren’t paid; they were volunteers with an exaggerated sense of propriety. For a person to be buried unwept was a terrible thing; the more black-clad women there were sobbing at your funeral, the more important you were. Pillars of the community could count on a veritable cathedral choir of cryers to show up at their last leave-takings.

But this was something else. Under all the howling and the tears and the carrying on, the wailing-women also whispered. The Klageweiber were also Klatschbasen (gossipy dames). But what they gossiped about was not fit for the children’s ears. So they had to hush it up. Frau So-und-so had died, suddenly and horribly and tragically young, but of what? Don’t ask, it’s too terrible to tell.

My mom was maybe 10 years old when this happened. And she was curious as all girls that age are about the facts of life, and also bewildered by all the whispering around the village. She was also an obedient child; she never pestered anyone for answers. But many years–decades–later, she finally worked up the nerve to ask her mother what had really happened to poor Frau So-und-so. And so her mother, my grandmother, finally told her.

Frau So-und-so had tried to abort herself. No one knew just how except maybe the doctor, and he was certainly not about to tell. Had she survived with his help, he would have had to answer to the authorities. He might have had to report her. Both of them could have gone to jail if he had saved her life. It was just as well for him that she was too far gone. The doctor, like all the village Klatschbasen, was an old fuddy-duddy when it all came down to it; his sense of propriety, like everyone else’s, was offended by what Frau So-und-so had done. Why hadn’t the silly woman just had the baby? All right, it would have been inconvenient, but so what? At least she wouldn’t have died…and so scandalously! One would think she’d been some stupid unmarried Flittchen, instead of the respectable farmwife she was.

There are several reasons why she didn’t, of course. Several reasons why she felt desperate enough to risk death rather than another birth. And another, and another, and so on until her horny goat of a husband finally kicked the bucket, or she did, from the cumulative effects of one unwanted pregnancy after another. The way he was going, it was obvious that he meant to keep it up until exactly that happened. Condoms? A vasectomy? An insult to his manhood! One might as well ask him to give up his daily lunchtime sex sandwich. Which he was not about to do.

Nobody talked about marital rape in those days. Nobody talked about spousal abuse, either. There was no such thing in the eyes of the law. Sure, people might gossip about what a swine Herr So-und-so was, but that was as far as it went. They might pity her, but they could not intervene on her behalf. No one told him to lay off her. It was his marital right, and her marital duty, and that was that.

And yet.

It was rape. It was spousal abuse in every sense of the word. Nobody who saw her pale, drawn face at noon could doubt that. She must have gone around looking like a victim of shell shock, or a survivor of a death camp. How hard must it have been for her to meet the eyes of her village, knowing that everyone knew just what kind of a man her husband was…and no one did anything about it?

And then there were her children. One might think he would concern himself more about that…but no. He had to have what he had to have, and that was all there was to it. Her job was to bear child after child until she died or hit menopause, whichever came first.

Her sons could not help her; they were too young to understand, and they were at school. Given time, one of them might have put himself between him and her, but neither of them was big or strong enough yet to do so.

She was utterly alone in her plight.

Given that this was her life, can you blame her for thinking it worthwhile to risk death? In a sense, that poor woman was dead already. Or might as well have been, for all the care and concern her husband showed. And for all that anyone else was willing to do for her. It as not as though she hadn’t made some pretty desperate noises. The doctor might have slipped her a diaphragm, or given her an IUD (the Pill was still more than a decade away), but he did not. He didn’t even take the husband aside and tell him to buy condoms. What happened between those two was none of his business. Until he had to show up at her deathbed, of course. That much, he seemed to have no problem doing.

I could write volumes about how fucked up you have to be to accept such things as “normal” or “proper” or whatever other idiotic adjectives people were willing to attach to such atrocities then. Maybe, compared to the death camps and the war, this sort of thing was small potatoes. After all, women have died aborting unwanted pregnancies since time immemorial; and while their cumulative numbers are staggering, ultimately every such woman dies alone. Many have died shunned, especially if they were not married. If it was rape, it was always somehow her fault, never his. And even the unhappily married ones, like Frau So-und-so, died essentially as outcasts. The reason? They had shirked their wifely duty, which was to provide sex on demand and children willy-nilly. Hard evidence, if you will, of Herr So-und-so’s manhood. If a woman says no to that, what other taken-for-granted duties might she renege on? And if all the women just do what they want, won’t society crumble? So goes the thinking.

That’s fucked up.

A fucked-up mindset is what you need in order to accept the illegality of abortion, especially in a time when the procedure can be done safely by doctors, nurses, paramedics or midwives, and all that’s needed is the proper training and a few pieces of surgical equipment. Had Frau So-und-so been able to ask the village doctor legally for an abortion, she would have survived. But she could not, and therein lies the other half of the tragedy. Medical science had advanced sufficiently by the late 1940s and early 1950s that a surgical abortion, done correctly, would have been quite safe. And even an unsafe, self-administered abortion need not have killed her. If she hemorrhaged, she could have received a transfusion, and if there were infection, intravenous antibiotics could have cleared it up. But if abortion had been legal, she would surely have gotten one, legally and with dignity, and not waited to see the doctor until she was so far gone that there was nothing left for him to do but shake his head and pull the sheet over hers.

Abortion was not legal. Years would go by before even the stupidest little concessions would be made: exceptions in the case of rape or incest, or if her life was demonstrably at risk. But for that, she would have had to go before a panel of doctors and tell them why she wanted the abortion, and do you think they’d agree? Marital sex, however coerced and abusive, was still not considered rape. It was your wifely duty to submit. And if you didn’t, you were a bad woman. No abortion for you, Jezebel.

Not even under the extreme circumstances in which Frau So-und-so was living would she be allowed any dignity or autonomy or life-saving treatment. It would have been illegal, immoral, unthinkable. Church and state both inveighed against it. Women were supposed to stay under the thumb of men, and be content with that. If they couldn’t, there was always the ultimate wage of sin. There was always death.

And that was all the choice you were given, back in the “good” old days. Do your duty, or die. Or die doing your duty, since your own right to life as a woman was never guaranteed. Or do your duty, and go through life with a dead spirit. The “pro-life” choice somehow always ended up as death.

It’s terrible stories like this that confirm why I can never be nostalgic for those “lost” times. Those times can stay lost, as far as I’m concerned. Any ideology which restricts a woman’s choices is a terrible waste of a valuable human life; I not only believe that, I know it. I have always been pro-choice for this reason, from the moment I first learned what abortion was (and I was not much older then than my mother was when Frau So-und-so died!) I did not need to hear this story in order to know why I could never be any other way. As a woman who has spent all of her fertile years avoiding unwanted pregnancy, I already know the reasons. I know them the way I know my own body, its cycles, its lunar variations. I know them the way I know my body is mine, totally and unequivocally. Mine to do with as I will, harming none (myself included; the Wiccan Rede is just eight words, but it covers an awful lot of territory). Mine to give freely and mine to take back just as freely when the giving is done. Mine to withhold, if I so choose, with no excuses or further explanations needed.

Given a real choice, I would never choose to die like Frau So-und-so. I don’t think she would, either. And I don’t think anyone should.

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Posted in Confessions of a Bad German, Fascism Without Swastikas, Fetus Fetishists, If You REALLY Care, Law-Law Land, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, She Blinded Me With Science, Sick Frickin' Bastards, Uppity Wimmin | 4 Comments