I AM Voting Pro Life

This is not, I am sure, an original thought in the social justice blogosphere.

But.

As I’m driving around this election season (you know, like Christmas shopping season — it all started in July!), I keep seeing these signs.

Vote Pro Life.

Vota Pro Vida.

Since I am so easily swayed by the power of words on paper posterboard, I have decided that voting pro life is precisely what I’m going to do.

I’m going to start with the people who respect the fact that my uterus, my ovaries, my vagina, and all those darn X chromosomes don’t make my life less valuable and doesn’t make me less fit to govern my own choices. This means people who understand that nothing — not a penis, not an ultrasound wand, not a baby — comes into or out of my cunt without my consent.

Pro life means respecting the lives, respecting the agencies, of roughly half the people on this planet. We are the individual bosses of our bodies, and this includes our sexual and reproductive organs.

Next, I’m going to look for the candidates who believe that food and health care are entitlements. Yes, entitlements (and yes, italics) — because you know, food and medical treatment are essential to staying alive. I know that not everyone is into that whole Bible thing, but I think there are worse words to live by than these:

35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”

– Matthew 25:35-45, NIV

Even for folks not looking to receive eternal reward or to avoid eternal punishment, this also falls well under the umbrella of just being a decent human being. And while I cannot personally feed every hungry person or look after every person who is sick or hurting, I can help elect people who prioritize those things and say, “Yes, this is where I want my tax dollars to go.” Because that is pro life.

Then I’m going to check out the candidates who candidates acknowledge the life of the mind. It is my experience that a good many politicians believe that the primary purpose of education is to create obedient, unquestioning little drones and peons who can fill in the bubbles and who can regurgitate rote facts — but who cannot empathize, innovate, or problem solve. It is also my experience that this style of “education” is a direct contributor to drop-out rates, juvenile delinquency, and school-to-prison pipelines. We do it this way both because it is cheap and because it reinforces and already prejudiced social hierarchy, not because it values the potential within each young life.

With this, all I can say is that I hope more people will —

Vota Pro Vida.

Vote Pro Life.

Links. And More Links.

Unhappy Birthday to the Amendment That Started the War on Women by Jessica Arons at The Daily Beast — “Earlier this year, when an all-male congressional panel debated whether employer health plans should have to cover birth control and Rush Limbaugh lambasted law student Sandra Fluke for arguing that they should, many people were left asking, ‘When did birth control become controversial?’ In some ways, we can thank former Rep. Henry Hyde (R.-Ill.) for setting us on this path.”

What We Talk About When We Talk About College by Miriam at Brute REason — “I still remember the pervasive sense of loss I felt when I realized that I was never going to get what I came here for. That beautiful, glossy image of college that I’d been sold would never be my experience.”

Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises by Adam Liptak at The New York Times — “Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.” — Included because over the past few elections, I’ve experienced an increasing amount of outside pressure to register for early mail-in ballots. I don’t want to, for reasons that are my own. And totally good for people for whom it’s the best option — but for anyone who feels the same sort of pressure I do, it might be worth knowing that mail-in voting is not always the magic answer some political groups want it to be.

Sex Scribbled on my Skin by Jo at A Life Unexamined — On which bodies are allowed to be sexual, are not allowed to be sexual, and are required to be sexual.

A parable: What about a conscience clause for gun sellers? by Literata at Works of Literata — “I work in a sporting goods store. One day, a man comes in and wants to buy a handgun. He’s had his background check, and his safety training, and has waited the required period…. I refuse to sell him one.”

Vote for Me

So, there’s a (probably unpaid, of course) leadership opening at my school. My principal asked members in each department to — confidentially — vote for what is basically a grade level department chair. (Our freshmen are teamed, and so freshman team teachers spend a lot of time with one another and relatively little time across grade levels — which, in the absence of seamless communication, makes for alignment issues. The sort of sub-chair position is an attempt to remove some of the jagged seams from our school’s communication.)

When considering the colleague who would best represent us, my first thought was, “Me.”

By the time I clicked open the nomination ballot, I was already mentally scanning my colleagues, trying to decide who I should vote for instead.

It’s not that I don’t want to the position or that I’m concerned about the additional responsibility, as it’s a position I’m currently unofficially filling right now anyway. As such, neither is it that I have doubts as to whether I’d be able to fulfill those duties competently. Objectively, there’s no reason I wouldn’t be a good candidate for the position and at least a few reasons why I might be the best candidate.

Rather, I resisted the idea of voting for myself because I worried that doing so was insufficiently humble. You know, that people might think I was full of myself for daring to believe that in a given set of people, I might be the best at something. Even now, I’m tempted to gush about how awesome all of my colleagues are and how each one of them would do a fine job as well — which is true but not actually relevant with respect to how good I am or would be at something.

So then I realized, “Fuck this noise.”

If the collective vote of my colleagues plus me selects someone else for the position — if this is what happens when too much awesome is concentrated in one place — fine. I can fully support whatever we decide as a group. However, if my gut reaction, followed by my carefully reasoned reaction, is to vote for me — then the best thing for me to do is to trust my own judgment, say what I think, and vote for me.

So I did.