Why I Did It: How I Came to Write a Comic Book About an Aborted Fetus @4:20 PM
In Why I Did It, artists and authors explain just why they made something. This week, Matthew Lickona talks about the making of Alphonse: A Monster For Our Time, a comic book about, yes, an aborted fetus.
I mean, yes, what was I thinking? Here’s the rationale I wish I could give.
A lot of good horror stories are moral anxiety writ large (see also: Frankenstein and humanity’s attempt to put nature on the rack, The Bacchae as the first in a long line of what my friend Michael calls “you screw, you die” stories.) And I think it’s fair to say that there is moral anxiety about abortion. READ MORE 53
After it was reported that its health insurance plan for employees covers elective abortions, the Republican National Committee has announced that it will withdraw that option. So I guess they really do want to take it away from everybody. @11:15 AM 15
Anti-Abortion Win Slightly Marred By Murderous Technicality @12:15 PM
"George Tiller's slaying has accomplished what anti-abortion activists had tried to do for decades: The doors to his Kansas clinic will shut forever. The announcement Tuesday from Tiller's family was a tainted victory for the nation's anti-abortion movement."
Uh, yeah, I guess "tainted" is one way of describing it. READ MORE 15
A Brief History of the Anti-Abortion Terror Movement @8:14 AM
I found this recounting of the recent persecution of abortion doctors in the United States quite chilling (particularly having re-read The Handmaid's Tale over the weekend). It's a good point: if shootings and bombings (and their legislative counterpart: unnecessarily restrictive state-by-state law-making) render doctors unable and unwilling to perform legal abortions, why, that's a home-grown terror network performing really well! 10
The Obama Infatuation; 9/11 and the Rush to War; the Murder of George Tiller @10:09 AM
- 1. Robert J. Samuelson: "The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time."
- 2. Richard A. Clarke: "Yes, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — but it was because they had not listened."
- 3. Suspect Held in Kansas Abortion Doctor's Slaying and The Pro-Life Insurrection.
Does Judy Blume Make Abortion Seem Like A Pony Ride? @1:34 PM
In an era where the young adult fiction aimed at teen girls concerns itself with such pressing problems as how to dissuade your vampire boyfriend from performing cunnilingus when you're having your period, it's difficult to remember that author Judy Blume was once considered shocking or controversial. It's almost quaint to reflect on Blume's oeuvre when you put it on the shelf alongside current titles like OMG I Sucked A Lot Of Cock At Sandy's Party or Bent Over At The Ass Olympics: Diary Of A Teenage Girl, Book 3. But Blume can still inspire outrage from those on the other end of the culture wars: a recent solicitation for donations made on behalf of Planned Parenthood resulted in the author receiving a torrent of hate mail. (Planned Parenthood, wisely, used the attack to raise even more funds.) READ MORE 12
