#katha pollitt

[iirulancorrino]

Katha Pollitt, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights

[amundsenxcook]

To an Antarctic Traveller — Katha Pollitt (1982)

[violettesiren]

Everywhere I look I see my fate. In the subway. In a stone. On the curb where people wait for the bus in the rain. In a cloud. In a glass of wine.

When I go for a walk in the park it's a sycamore leaf. At the office, a dull pencil. In the window of Woolworth's my fate looks back at me through the shrewd eyes of a dusty parakeet.

Scrap of newspaper, dime in a handful of change, down what busy street do you hurry this morning, an overcoat among overcoats,

with a train to catch, a datebook full of appointments? If I called you by my name would you turn around or vanish round the corner, leaving a faint odor of orange-flower water, tobacco, twilight, snow?

Amor Fati by Katha Pollitt

[atheistcartoons]

The existence of the Ten Commandments as they are generally reported should be enough to make anyone question that god.

The good news for people who think they’re bullshit is that the Jewish god agrees with you. After banning murder, he told Joshua to kill all the men, women and children and every ox, sheep and donkey too.

[aveleyra]

Pro: Reclaming abortion rights, Katha Pollitt

[cure-your-delusions]

[celebratingamazingwomen]

Katha Pollitt (b. 1949) is a feminist essayist and critic. Her writing focuses on social and political issues, presenting them from a left-leaning perspective.

She has written for numerous publications, such as The New York Times, Ms. Magazine and The Nation, especially in defense of feminism, identity politics or human rights. She has also coined the phrase ‘The Smurfette Principle’, which refers to the trope of the token female in a group of male characters.

[theorynotebook]

Abortion opponents claim that many women change their minds when show a sonogram of their embryos and fetuses before their abortion. "So why do abortion providers avoid showing ultrasound images to women?" asks Lifenews.som. "Perhaps this is because up to 78% of women who see an ultrasound of their babies choose not to have abortions." A footnote leads one to a 2011 Time article about the results of a 2008 Focus on the Family study on the effect of hearing the fetal heartbeat, a study cited by Michele Bachmann but subsequently retracted by the organization: "We don't have any 'studies,' and we don't publish percentages like that," a Focus on the Family official acknowledged. Lifenews.com was still citing this nonexistent fact in 2013. Conservative pundit Rachel Campos-Duffy, wife of Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), claimed the true number of changed minds was "upwards of 90%" and the Family Research Council cited "one pregnancy resource center director in Baton Rouge who claimed that an astonishing 'Ninety-eight percent of women who have the ultrasounds choose to carry to term.' " One wonders how any abortion clinic stays in business. Politifact investigated Campos-Duffy's claim and found it to be false, although, based on one study, it also found that "some women" did change their mind after seeing a sonogram. Other studies, also cited by Politifact, find that women stick to their abortion decision. A 2014 study in Obstetric & Gynecoogy, the largest to date, looked at the records of 15, 575 patients at one Los Angeles clinic. It found that of the 42.5 percent of abortion patients who voluntarily looked at the ultrasound, 98.4 percent stuck to their decision to end the pregnancy. Of the 1.6 who changed their minds, all were part of the 7.4 percent of patients who were already ambivalent.

Katha Pollitt, “Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights.” 2014.