That’s us in San Francsico a few weeks ago (more on that later). Isn’t she gorge?

Anyway: Yes. We’d planned to go through the remaining winter, all of spring and the first six weeks of summer in our old duds. It was tough. But we made it an entire four months before I got the call I never expected to get. “That’s it, I’m done,” she said without so much as her usual, “Hey, it’s me,” introduction. She was in line at Nordstrom Rack purchasing a pair of jeans and a new shirt and probably some other stuff, too.

People who know us would never have thought she would cave first. While I’m hardwired for the easy transmission of impulses, Rachel is a solid combo of steel wool, iron, platinum and Teflon. She sets her mind to something and by God, she’s not just going to do it, she’s going to be the World Champion at doing it. If anyone was going to make it to the end of this challenge in hole-y underwear and pilled sweaters, it was going to be Rachel. For sure, I was the underdog. So there was a great deal of vindication in the staying power of my will power. And let me just say here, that it feels especially good to win when everyone has bet against you. I might have done a little end zone dance at my desk right then, shortly before I went online and ordered some new shoes.

But the question is, how did I manage to make it so long without heeding the siren call of more new shit? The answer lies in two words: Fashion bloggers.

At the time of our pact, I began to fill my Google Reader with a variety of fashion blogs so I could get inspiration for re-mixing what I already had in my closet. And the fashion blogs served me well in this purpose. I was able to get so many ideas from women who seemed far more creative and sartorially brave than I am. At the beginning, I loved these women. Well, not loved, exactly. I liked them. Or rather, I liked what they were doing, and I respected their individuality.

But over time, I stopped believing my lying eyes. I began to notice that the individuality was less…individual than I had previously thought.  And this is when I started to not like these bloggers so much, and began a process of Google Reader Deletion, beginning with high-falutin’ Atlantic-Pacific (no, I’m not linking,) and her ridiculous hair bows. But I digress.

Where was I? Oh, yes! I was talking about lack of individuality. Take, for instance, these shoes:

Actually, this particular blogger, Beth Jones, is one of the few that I can still stand, and that’s because she largely maintains a unique style. Her clothes are quite often thrifted,  one-of-a-kind pieces she mixes in all kinds of wack-a-doodle awesomeness. Regrettably, she recently stepped into the how-to video market and this may very well be a deal breaker for me. Nevertheless, the woman marches mostly to the beat of her own ribbon-decorated tambourine instead of being a shill…which she sometimes is (watch those shoes up there and keep reading), but a girl’s got to make a living.

So: The shoes. They’re cute, right (what you can see of them)? Well, about the same time that Beth posted the above outfit with shoes she received gratis from Nine West, these bloggers wore:

These self-proclaimed movers and shakers really do have the most fabulous pouty lives…

Are you seeing a pattern? Remember: These women all received their shoes from—or “partnered with”—Nine West. Here. Take one more look:

And it’s not just the shoes these women are selling. Have you heard? Every girl loves a sequined skirt. Behold:

Did you not get the memo? No? Well, here:

The sequined skirt looks especially good if you stand on your tippy-toes…

…or when worn in a herd. The I’m-a-ten-year-old-girl pigeon-toed stance is also as popular as these penny loafers the bloggers are selling:

These are two different fashion bloggers who got the exact same pair of free shoes from Tory Burch. I couldn’t bear to upload any more of them but believe me when I say, this loafer has taken the fashion bloggers by storm. They want you and me to buy! These! Loafers! They are the It Thing right now (along with sequined skirts).

You have to admit, this is low-cost marketing brilliance on the part of the fashion houses. They send out free stuff to fashion hobbyist women who blanket the web with their images wearing the free stuff, and then viewers got out and buy said stuff. Check this out:

Everything she’s wearing—except the sunglasses and belt—she got for free. And good for her. Good for all of these women, for taking something they love and turning it into a business. But as a consumer, I start to feel a little bit played, you know? Especially when it comes to this:

As you can probably tell by the pink, this woman is promoting a breast cancer awareness campaign. This particular campaign is sponsored by a company that makes $198 blue jeans, and this month, if you buy a pair of their $198 blue jeans, the company will donate $5 to breast cancer research. That’s right, they will generously donate 2.5% of the cost of one pair of blue jeans. Just look at some of the many conscientious bloggers who have “joined forces” with the blue jean company for this wonderful cause! They have donned their free $198 blue jeans and called themselves activists while urging you to be an activist, too, by buying the totally awesome blue jeans! It’s that easy!

It’s sort of like when George W. Bush told Americans to go shopping after 9-11. Ah, American activism at it’s finest.

I wonder if these bloggers know that black women are more likely to get breast cancer before age 40, and are more likely to die of breast cancer at any age?  I wonder how many black women are the audience for these raise awareness blog posts…

I hate to break it to this (otherwise darling) blogger (who looks fantastic in the expensive pants) but NO. You are not proactive because you slip into an exorbitantly priced pair of free-to-you jeans, and then encourage your readers to buy them under the guise of making a difference. A truly proactive fashion blogger might encourage her readers with such disposable income—mostly middle- to upper-middle class white women—to write checks to a local charity that provides breast cancer screening and education to poor and under-served women. A proactive fashion blogger would walk the walk in her fancy pants, and not just try to sell a product as a means to an end.

And finally, with respect to these fashion bloggers who are probably very nice people (or not), there is that whole look-at-me-I’m-so-darling-and-beautiful-and-don’t-you-want-to-take-my-picture-too vibe that becomes tremendously off-putting when you get a Reader full of the smirks. I know saying this makes me a complete hypocrite, as I dared be narcissistic enough to take a photo a day for one year. But leaping around for other bloggers to snap “spontaneous” pictures of you is…well, it’s just different. It’s sort of like seeing The Wizard behind the curtain.

What a difference a year makes, huh? As you may or may not recall—depending on the number of cocktails you enjoyed at my 40th last year, and the brain cells you’ve obliterated since—you gave me a boundless ration of grief over my official entré into middle age. You laughed and ribbed and smirked your way through the evening at my expense, and you were quite funny.

It’s why I like you. Mostly though, I had to laugh to keep from crying.

You might be expecting me to get even, now that it’s your turn to stuff the cake with candles until it begins to implode from the weight of melting wax, leaving your guests with heaps of molten cake lump, given your weed-charred lungs haven’t the capacity to blow out three flames, let alone 40. I do hope yours is a sheet cake from Costco so your wife doesn’t have to watch all her hard baking work undone by your physical failings. Oh, the disappointment. Though, in time, she will come to be very familiar with such limitations and will lower her expectations accordingly. Who’s laughing now, my friend?

Well. I’ll tell you: It’s not me.

You see, I won’t laugh at you or make snarky remarks about the slow process of decline that is about to engulf you like a novice snowboarder caught unawares and goofy-foot in an avalanche. Because, truth be told, there is little to laugh about at this juncture.

If you don’t believe me, take a picture of yourself naked the night before your 40th birthday and compare it to one taken the day after. (And remember: Only one Weinergate per year, please. No tweeting these images.)

If you look at the belly region, Bri, you will be able to see evidence of your slowing metabolism, which will have officially gone on strike about three minutes before midnight on the day of your birth. Even if it comes back to work, it will have a crappy attitude and only do half as much as it used to.

There is very little that’s funny about the disappearance of the fat pockets located around the eye sockets. What? You didn’t know about these? Well, once those go, your eyeballs recede, making peripheral vision a thing of the past, like the second glance of college girls or having sex three times in the same night. You may have given very little thought to those fat pads. But just wait until Fern at Window 19 at the DMV revokes your driver’s license. You will lament those fat pads. Mark my words.

Here is the thing. Or, as e.e. cummings might say, “Here is the deepest secret nobody knows / (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) / and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart”:

Forty blows.

I’m telling you this as your friend, Brian. Your true friend. And as such, I implore you not to believe any of that other bullshit the optimists in the world tell you. They are liars. They will swear to you that this is the best time of your life and encourage you to embrace all the positives of aging. “Forty is liberating,” they’ll say. Then they’ll offer the over-played, almost-convincing example that—unlike in their self-conscious 20s and settling-in-to-their-skin 30s—they no longer care what other people think of them. Which is compelling, indeed.

My father-in-law—a wonderful man—couldn’t care less what people think of him. He also drops ass in public. Equally compelling, don’t you think?

The truth is more that you simply won’t care what people think of you when you bitch about your ailments. And just you wait. You will have more joint pain, more back aches, more random bumps and rashes, more gastrointestinal discomfort, a possible hemorrhoid or maybe colon cancer. At least, you’ll think it’s colon cancer until some nurse laughs at you on the phone, tells you to eat more bran, pick up some Tucks Medicated Pads and some Preparation H—off brand, though; it’s way cheaper, and not suppositories, unless the hemmy’s internal, then suppositories. Not that this has happened to me. I’m just saying. I know people.

You’ll get toothaches, headaches and hangnails (on your toes, Brian, on your damned toes!); you’ll suffer random, intense skin pain that you’ll believe to be shingles (fight the urge to Google it and just wait for it to go away while imagining the rest of your downhill spiral lived with blistering sores).

You will have more gray hair than you ever wanted, in places that you never wanted it. Though, you’re a guy, so you probably don’t care about the eyebrows or pewbs the way a woman might. And someone is bound to reaffirm your belief that you look distinguished with silver at your temples.

“You’re getting better with age,” a friend might tell you. And go with it. Because, while your bilateral rotator cuff tendonitis might be keeping you awake at night, and turning you into the grumpy guy in his underwear, baby-blue terrycloth bathrobe and Ugg boots who yells at speeding drivers to “Slow down, goddamnit!” while picking up the morning paper, it sure will be nice to fall back on that beautifully perceived exterior. See? Post-40 and you do still care what other people think.

But other than that—and some other stuff I have no space to get into—it’s simply peachy over here on this side of four decades.

Happy birthday.

Love,
~aaryn

(As published in San Diego CityBeat on July 27, 2011.)

Despite our the brevity of our in-person friendship, I felt an instant affection for her when we were introduced. She is wise beyond her years, as they say; an old soul. She is beautiful, warm, funny, kind, creative, insightful and smart. All of which add up to this: The woman can write. I mean, She Can Write Like A Mo Fo.

Isn’t she lovely? She just looks like a gifted writer.

Recently Kia’s life took an unexpected detour and she has found herself battling Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma. As Dorothy Parker would say—and as I wrote to Kia in an email a few days ago—this is terrible. It’s fancy terrible. It’s terrible with raisins in it. I have to admit, I’m really angry about it.

But if Kia is angry, she hasn’t let on. She has chosen positivity to carry her through this unplanned-for journey. And she’s also chosen to share it at CaliforniCancerCation in a most eloquent, humorous, honest, grace-filled and, yes, a tad-bit-heartbreaking way, which is sort of her way. I think this may just culminate in her first book. I encourage you to check her out, starting with this post. It’s a killer.

And if you feel so inclined, if you have just a moment, please send a few positive thoughts or prayers or mantras or whatever it is you do, out into the universe for her.

…and it got me to thinking.

The man has access—for the rest of his life—to the best health care in the world (evident by the fact that he is still alive (assuming there’s been no Weekend At Bernie’s tomfoolery going on these past 10 years)). And not that he shouldn’t, of course, since Being Fundamentally Evil And Covertly Murderous isn’t a reason for an insurance company to deny you coverage.

The real issue is why shouldn’t the rest of us have access to even the most basic health care, too?

Today was the first day of the year that felt like summer. It was warm out—not hot—with a mostly cloudless sky as blue as a Popsicle®.  It was quintessential Southern California, the kind of day that begs you to toss your obligations out the window and head directly for the beach with your Coppertone, a double-wide towel and your latest copy of The New Yorker. Or any of the previous four backed up on your nightstand.

I didn’t do that, though, because on Friday, I had a 2mm hunk of skin removed from my chest by a dermatologist who doesn’t think it’s “b.c.c” but wanted to be safe. If it is basal cell carcinoma, of which I have a history,  it’s better to remove it now to minimize scarring. Good thing I don’t fancy v-neck tees, or anything. (Which, of course, is part of what got me into the situation in the first place, but save me the lectures. I’m a child of the 70s, a.k.a the Bain de Soleil Era.) After the doctor put the Band-Aid on, she counseled me on caring for the would and said the best thing to prevent it from scarring is to “stay out of the sun.” By which I think she meant, move to Seattle.

I’m not moving. I did, however, pair my 30 SPF lotion with white jeans, a lavender scoop neck t-shirt and a super cute, 3/4 sleeve fuchsia cardigan I picked up at Target last weekend, for a May Day party this afternoon.

Ruby had a great time getting tossed around in the pool by the other grown-ups who weren’t hiding from the sun. I settled for getting splashed on and taking pictures with my phone, mulling the familiar awareness that my child, as usual, was the only brown person in attendance. And I wondered, as usual, how long before she will begin to notice this, too.

Later, when it was time to go home, Ruby wrapped a towel around her body, stuck one corner between her teeth and began to shimmy out of her swim suit, the towel like a tent around her. I knew exactly what she was doing, but asked her anyway needing verbal affirmation as to why my heart was seizing up.

“Here, let me hold the towel for you,” I said.

“No, mom. I can do it myself.” The end of the towel not in her mouth slipped from her bare shoulder. She caught it in with her harm and pulled it around her.

“Well, you don’t need to hide behind a towel, honey. If you want privacy, we can go to the bathroom and change there.” I was starting to panic and trying not to sound like I was starting to panic.

“No, Mom,” she said, beads of water stuck to her eyelashes and glittering on her nose. The towel was still in her mouth and she was speaking through clenched teeth. “I’m trying to do it like the girls at the pool.”

I mean, really: Can the future be any more daunting?

Every Wednesday at 5-o’clock, Ruby has swim class. Once her thirty minutes of floating, leaping, belly-flopping and retrieving pink plastic rings has elapsed, it is our routine to head for the locker room and change her into her “soft pants.” This has proven to be a giant effort because while I’m trying to get her wet clothes off and her dry clothes on, she is involuntarily frozen in place like a zombie, transfixed by three 8-year-old girls who are also changing—secretly, beneath towels pulled around their bodies like cocoons—at the same time each week following their swim team practice. Oh, how her eyes swirl when these little girls tramp through the locker room in their swim caps and racer-back suits, dripping wet, shivering and hugging themselves on the way to the showers.

Ruby stares at them as I wiggle her swim suit over her bottom, around her hips and down to her ankles.  She stares as I dry her naked body with the mostly wet towel, as I coach her like I might an invalid to step into her underwear (if I remember to bring them) and then into each of her pants legs. Meanwhile, the girls completely ignore her—with the exception of a slight smile offered by one on the very first day of lessons—while they gossip about other kids and prevent any accidental exposure of their privates.

As I’m pulling Ruby’s clothes across her sticky skin, watching her rapturously watching them, I’m aware of the already-in-full-bloom body image issues being modeled not 6 feet away from my daughter. And I’m reminded of 7th grade gym class. And my teacher, Mrs. Allen.

At nearly 6-feet tall, Mrs. Allen was an imposing figure. She wore white tennis socks, white leather athletic shoes and pleated navy blue Bermuda shorts, always with a cotton tank top, usually white. She might wear a wind breaker or warm up pants if it was cold, the kind that made a wooshing noise as she walked.  She was big boned and thick-kneed with a voice like ball bearings and short, curly brown hair that looked like it had been plucked from a mannequin head circa 1977. I used to watch for wig confirmation, to see if it would slide around when she scratched her head, something she did often when she wasn’t handling equipment or managing fitness tests.

Whatever our activities, each day at the end of dreaded gym class, we were required to take a dreaded shower and then, to prove it. Mrs. Allen would lean against the doorway of the shower room with a clipboard in her hand, inspecting each girl for shower evidence. I don’t know where I’d learned to be self-conscious but, like the other girls in my class, I wasn’t about to get naked in front of anybody, which of course makes it fairly challenging to shower. But, like the other girls in my class, I managed my way around the requirement quite well.

I wrapped myself in a white towel, tucking it at mid chest like I’d learned from my mother, and I did the hokey-pokey in the communal shower like the rest of the troops: Stick one leg in, then the other. Stick one arm in, then the other. I’d splash some water on my chest, shoulders and face (sure, actual showering would have been less effort but this was equally convincing and less…nude). Then I’d show Mrs. Allen the necessary proof to be freed for a day. I was 12 years old.

Later, as a dance major in college—a situation that sometimes required full costume changes not just backstage, but in the wings—I had a very difficult time unlearning the don’t-get-naked-in-the-locker-room rule that had defined my self-loathing since junior high. I’d hidden and hated my body for a long time and that didn’t just magically come undone. And now my four-year-old is learning, from girls only twice her age, that she should be embarrassed and ashamed of her body.

Raising a daughter is treacherous. Short of stripping off my clothes in the locker room every Wednesday, I’m not exactly sure how to combat this message or if anything I say will be half as cool as what those girls do.

This week, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPTF) released a new set of recommendations for breast cancer screening that turns on it’s head what women have come to expect as far as screening for breast cancer, the second leading cause of death in American women.

Recommending that women not receive mammograms until the age of 50 and then once every other year after that, the USPSTF has concluded that “the current evidence is insufficient to assess the additional benefits and harms of clinical breast examination beyond screening mammography in women 40 years of age or older.”

That part about “current evidence is insufficient to assess the additional benefits and harms” raised my eyebrows. Insufficient evidence to make a call either way? So that means this influential panel upends the current protocol—mammograms every one to two years beginning at age 40— instead of sticking with it?

*Shakes head.*

Call me crazy but the new guideline instantly made me think this is has something to do with money. But what really got my hackles up was this next part about how the USPSTF “recommends against clinicians teaching women how to perform breast self-examination.”

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!? As if the first part of this announcement wasn’t disturbing enough on its own, this second bit feels utterly irresponsible and lazy and callous and pitiable and oy vey, I need a drink. Or a bong hit. Or a shopping spree at Anthropologie with Michael Bloomberg’s credit card.

Now, perhaps there’s a reasonable reason for postponing mammograms. Probably not, given all that copious “insufficient evidence,” but I’m willing to suspend disbelief for a moment and offer a one-time-only benefit of a doubt on this one. I’m feeling generous today. But how, how, HOW can it be bad for a woman to learn what her normal breast tissue feels like? Someone? Anyone? Bueller? Because if you know normal breast tissue when you feel it, you will know abnormal breast tissue when you feel it. You feel me? Which makes me think immediately of my friend Amanda.

Isn’t she gorgeous? Vivacious? Young? Indeed. Gorgeous, vivacious, young Amanda found a lump in her breast with her very own fingers  and was diagnosed with stage-3b breast cancer when she was just 27 years old.

Amanda is a breast cancer survivor. You can read Amanda’s story here.

I’m curious to know: How do you women (and my male readers, too) feel about this dramatic shift in women’s health care? Do you feel like maybe we’re getting the shaft? Just a little?

It just so happens, my liver turns every single thing I ingest—pâté or iceberg lettuce, same diff—into cholesterol. An over-abundance of the glop is the genetic parting gift from my father, a sort of consolation prize to me: Sorry I couldn’t be there for ya kid, but here’s a little something to help you remember your y-chromosome donor. Available medications disintegrate my muscles, meaning I suffer from untreatable hypercholesterolemia. Yes, I’m the fit-looking lady in the Lipitor commercial who knocks over an entire row of surfboards after proudly planting her own in the sand.

And golly! Wouldn’t you know it, but a study published last week in the journal Dementia & Geriatrics Cognitive Disorders describes a link between elevated cholesterol levels in mid-life and the onset of Alzheimer’s in the sunset years. Having a close relative with the illness—like, say, a father for instance—further increases the risk.

Oh joy, I thought as I read about having as much as a 66-percent greater chance of developing Alzheimer’s in my 70s (assuming A or C do not take me out first). Not only will I be uninsurable should I leave my day job to strike out on the freelance circuit like I want to do, but there’s a good chance my kid will eventually spoon-feed me with one hand and wipe my butt with her other.

And to this I say: Bring on the death panels—or, at the very fucking least, guaranteed access to counseling as it pertains to end-of-life care.

I know death is not a cotton-candy-and-vanilla-ice-cream subject. It’s so unpalatable a topic that I’m convinced it’s why HBO’s Six Feet Under got so severely snubbed year after year during awards season.

Many Americans reject the finality of death so severely that they don’t want to think about it, let alone watch a show about it. Certainly, the terminally ill shouldn’t be allowed to discuss it with their doctors. So the ideologues—backed, let’s not forget, by the insurance and pharma industries—ginned up a lie so heinous and so effective that the Senate Finance Committee is now capitulating on the end-of-life provision, which will be excluded from the Senate version of the bill. Don’t you just love the way the majority—Helloooooh! Majority!!!—Democrats roll right over, spread their cheeks and offer their collective chocolate starfish in surrender?

“You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life,” said Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a man with unlimited access to this country’s best healthcare thanks to his job title. “You ought to have counseling 20 years before you’re going to die. You ought to plan these things out.” To begin to deconstruct everything wrong with these comments requires a whole ’nother column.

But Amy Sullivan of Time takes him to task. She goes for the jugular after pointing out that Grassley (and John Boehner, too) voted in favor of funding counseling for end-of-life issues in the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill: “So either Republicans were for death panels in 2003 before turning against them now—or they’re lying about end-of-life counseling in order to frighten the bejeezus out of their fellow citizens and defeat health reform by any means necessary.”

Some of our more obtuse fellow citizens—whose siren call is the drum beat of AM radio and Kathie Lee Gifford albums—have extremely vulnerable bejeezuses, and the fundies play to this. Rather than have a reasonable discussion like adult humans, adult monsters like Glenn Beck hone in on the hysteria gene shared amongst their audience members. Using just the right combo of word-twist, stage prop and wild-eyed indignation, they easily convert their flock of sheeple into mobs of zombies and borderline terrorists, who bring their misplaced ire and loaded weapons into civil discourse. History, if any of them cared to look at it, would show that this combo does not bode well.

These folks are already behind the 8-ball when it comes to intellect. Take, for instance, blogger John Swift, who describes himself as “a reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture. Since the media is biased I get all my news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues.” I was happy to stumble across his blog on a Google search because it gave me a giggle, followed by a disturbing pause: He may be dim, but whip up a million Swifts and suddenly people are dropping loaded guns on the floor at town-hall meetings.

Faster than you can spot the irony in the panicked howls of Keep government out of my Medicare! coming from the blue-hair set, Democrats have tucked tail between their legs. This is swift-boating all over again, for fuck’s sake, not rocket science! I want my goddamned death panels! And I want them to decide Glenn Beck’s fate. And Charles Grassley’s. And John Boehner’s. And that vile woman from Alaska whom I refuse to name’s fate, too. Oh, and Dick Cheney’s. I’m officially volunteering to sit on that panel.

Of course, by the time all this health reform is sufficiently smothered, bludgeoned and water-boarded until it’s unrecognizable, I may have already succumbed to Death Option D, which I failed to mention before. When all is said and done, I may just die of outrage combined with extreme and stunning disappointment.

(As published today in San Diego CityBeat. Word to your mutha.)

1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government

I am unspeakably sickened by today’s murder of Dr. George Tiller, a man who dedicated his life to womens’ health, despite myriad intimidation tactics and at least one previous attempt on his life by psychotic idealogues who piously claim to be “pro-life.” Because my feelings at the news of this loss are so surprisingly strong, my instinct is to say that I’m as devastated as if I had known Dr. Tiller. But that would be insulting to those who did know him and love him, because there is no way my grief could ever compare to theirs. I mourn alongside them, though. And I wish I’d known him. He sounds like the kind of human being I would have liked to have known.

The method and unjustness of Tiller’s death is horrifying. It’s stomach-turning and fist-pounding and knee-buckling all at the same time. That a self-righteous whack-job could walk into a church and gun a man down during his time of worship simply because a part of the man’s job is disagreeable, is an unfathomable tragedy. It’s a tragedy for his family and his patients. But it’s also a devastating tragedy for women everywhere in this country.

It is disturbing on a molecular level because it feels like the proverbial shot fired from the bow of a ship, an open declaration of war. Of course, this war has been on for a very long time as this is not an isolated incident: Violence at the hands of “pro-lifers” is uncomfortably commonplace. But this feels particularly frightening given U.S. Marshals are being deployed to protect workers of women’s health clinics and the patients who seek their services.

Imagine being a woman in Wichita who, tomorrow, needs to walk into a Planned Parenthood to get her birth control pills. Or a pap smear. Or counseling. Or, yes, an abortion. Imagine being the people who work in these much-needed clinics all over the United States, a country whose Constitution protects a woman’s right to choose. Women should not be afraid to make choices about what is best for their health. Doctors and nurses and administrators and counselors should not be afraid to do the work they’ve been trained to do. That it should be so is wholly un-American.

The man who murdered Dr. Tiller is a terrorist and those in the pro-life movement who support what he’s done are terrorist sympathizers. They are Evil-Doers. These vile people are different from those 19 men who flew planes into the twin towers only in the God they worship.