DADT Repealed; We're Not Done Yet

Obama tells gay activists that he is committed to equality (CNN).

I didn't post or comment on the repeal of DADT on Tuesday this week, because while parts of the world celebrated as this U.S. soldier came out to his dad, other parts of the world mourned after a 14-year-old teen committed suicide last weekend. The teen had made a video that is part of the "It's Get Better" series, which features the message to gay teens that it will get better as they get older, so they have hope to hang in there. It didn't get better quick enough for Randy.

Or Matthew Shepard. Or Brandon Teena. It hasn't been quick enough for countless teens for whom the thought of going to school makes their insides do flip-flops and their palms sweaty and their brains empty. How can you go to school and concentrate on the material when you're looking at the clock counting down the minutes to your next beating?

We're all smart. Everyone last one of us. You can't question your sexuality for very long without getting into some serious existential philosophical arguments with yourself. For some of us, we never stop questioning. On occasion, I try to convince myself that no, I'm not really bisexual, I'm just kidding myself. And the latest cosplay thread on Fark pops up and I realize that I'm doomed to a lifetime of getting turned on by women.

It's not my choice. I can't help that I have the same sex drive as a man, including the object of that drive. And besides, who would choose this? Who would consciously choose to subject themselves to a lifetime of ridicule? How important, how monumental, how massive, must an issue be, that people are willing to sacrifice their livelihoods, their families, their friends, everything, just to be able to feel the freedom to be who they are inside? How sweet must that taste, to finally come out of that closet and breathe that air and see those lights and know that somewhere, out there, you belong.

I got really lucky. With few exceptions, my family is overwhelmingly supportive of who I am. But others aren't so lucky. We need to teach our children that it is not okay to bully someone. It is not okay for adults to bully someone either, so parents must hold themselves to a higher standard. Playground hijinks are one thing. But the constant, day-to-day terrorist threat of bullying that goes on in our schools, our media, our government, must stop. If we expect our children to do well in school, the first thing we have to do is give them safety and freedom. It gets better, but it is our responsibility to make sure that in the future, it doesn't have to.

Moving In Progress

Hey guys!

We're moving. The site was supposed to go live today, but we all know how those things go. The move is in progress, and I'll will update you all as soon as it's completed so you can update your bookmarks. I apologize for any service issues there might be in the meantime; the situation for the next little bit is going to be very fluid, so thank you for your patience.

Also, this site will be up until this end of the year. Once the link to the new site is posted, I won't keep this site updated with the newest posts, so you'll have to change your bookmarks to the new site (I know, it's a pain, but I'd rather do it now than later).

Hopefully the new site will be fully live soon!

Take care,
Becky Littlefield

Nursing Student Safely Delivers Baby In Car

Nice. Further evidence women don't need hospitals to do something they've evolved to be able to do. Nursing student in Brooklyn safely delivers baby in car.

Baby born in car. Source: NY Post

Woot woot! I've been waiting for an article like this, because there are few things I'm more passionate about than a woman's right to have a safe, natural, intervention-free childbirth. No, I'm not one of those tree-hugging hippies who host drum circles, though I do hug trees sometimes and my mom's a hippie. There are two, very strong stories, among a boat-load of evidence, that lead me to feel that at-home childbirth under the care of a midwife is the safest option for me and my (as of now hypothetical) child.

The first is the story of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis (link goes to Wikipedia page). Dr. Sammelweis was the equivalent of a chief resident today at a hospital in 1847, and at the time the maternal death rate for puerperal fever was about 10%. In the midwives ward of the hospital, the death rate was less than 4%. He noticed that the doctors were going into the delivery rooms right after having performed autopsies. When a friend of his died after getting a cut during an autopsy, Dr. Sammelweis put two and two together and experimented with his own doctors ward. He found that a chlorine solution similar to bleach today seemed to work the best at removing the cadaver smell. He started to make the doctors wash their hands when travelling from autopsy to patient. The results were staggering: the death rate went from 18.3% in April to 2.2% in June (policy implemented mid-May). He took his case to other hospitals.

Instead of his solution being implemented immediately, he was laughed as, as germ theory had yet to be discovered. His proposal stated that some "unknown cadaverous particle" was being carried on the doctor's hands, and it seemed ridiculous at the time. Once Louis Pasteur discovered germs, Sammelweis's policy was revived, and maternal deaths due to infection dropped dramatically. Moral of the story: Doctors can sometimes create the very problems they seek to avoid. A modern day example of this is having sick people congregate in one location (a hospital), where illness can be easily spread in waiting and emergency rooms. Yet having a hospital over a home-visiting doctor is considered "progress."

The second story is about The Farm, which is near Summerland, Tennessee. This small community is the location of one of the longest free-standing birthing centers in the U.S., directed by Ina May Gaskin (pictured above to the left), and has been keeping statistics on its births for over 30 years. The birthing center is run by midwives, who have good relationships with doctors in nearby hospitals in case a woman needs to transfer. This rarely happens: from 1970 to 2000, less than 5% of women needed transportation, and only 1.3% of the total births were transported on an "emergency" basis (see image below). Their c-section rate was 1.4%, while the national average in 2001 was 24.4%, with some suggesting that it's as high as 33% now. The World Health Organization says that any level of c-section rate above 15% is likely to cause more harm than good.

Source: InaMay.com

The U.S. is killing its mothers with doctors who pursue courses of active management, a seemingly benign attempt at controlling a natural form of chaos that cascades into major surgery in which a woman who has just had her guts splayed out for the world to see and a baby ripped from her womb is supposed to recover in just 2-4 days (NIH). She is then sent home with a 7-9 pound baby while recovering from said major abdominal surgery. Just how is she supposed to pick the child up? Let alone breastfeed it when her stomach is sore and she's on pain meds (which probably shouldn't be fed to the baby anyway) and the meds are dulling the bonding response that is so key in developing successful breastfeeding. Modern surgical technology is advancing in the direction of being minimally invasive, yet there is no minimally invasive way to pull a 7 pound baby out of a uterus. That's like trying to gently remove a testicle. It just doesn't work.

When I am ready to have a child, I will not choose the supposedly educated M.D.s, who may have never seen a normal, non-medical, physiological birth that is supportive of the mother's ability to deliver a child on her own. Doctors go in to a delivery assuming they will be needed, and then got bored when they realized women didn't need them. Now there are monitors and drugs and guided pushing and episiotomies all to make the doctor feel a little less useless. No thanks. I don't need a busybody trying to control what my body already knows how to do.

While I know my passion about the subject comes through rather strongly, and that may even be putting it lightly, I hope that each person does their own research, and follows what their body tells them. There are many stories of women reporting a feeling of something just not being right just before or during labor, deciding to transport to a hospital, and learning that their gut feeling was correct. Get enough information to make intelligent decisions, and always keep in mind there may be alternatives you just don't know about, because either the media doesn't present them to you or because some (rather wealthy) people have an interest in keeping you ignorant.