A case involving a Boston bar (Grendel’s Den) may be invoked in legal challenges to the new Texas abortion ban. What would Beowulf do?
Tag Archives: Abortion
Alabama Returning Women to Doll’s House
Friday I’m missing much of the news as I travel across country but managed to hear about Alabama threatening doctors who perform abortions with 99-year prison sentences. Here’s a post I wrote four years ago about how state legislatures are infantilizing women. I managed some optimism then but, with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh now on the […]
Fundamentalists Send Readers to Atwood
Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale” is topping bestseller lists at the moment. The reason is probably because of the GOP’s prospect of success in curbing reproductive freedom.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged 1984, Donald Trump, George Orwell, Margaret Handmaid's Tale Comments closed
All Must Love the Human Form
In “The Divine Image,” Blake gives us a poem for our time, a call to pray for mercy, pity, peace, and love and to recognize the human form in diversity. In “The Human Abstract” he adds that prayer is not enough. It must be accompanied by human justice.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Divine Image", "Human Abstract", analysis, Christian Right, classism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, politics, racism, Steve Bannon, William Blake Comments closed
Unwanted Pregnancies, Desperate Women
As reproductive service centers are closed down by conservative state legislatures, attempted self abortions are on the rise. For a literary depiction of a desperate woman there is Hetty Sorrel from George Eliot’s “Adam Bede.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Adam Bede, George Eliot, Planned Parenthood, TRAP laws Comments closed
Clifton, Abortion, & Respecting Women
Shock strategies by anti-abortionists may work on Congress but are less likely to work on women. As the body poems of Lucille Clifton demonstrate, women already know much more about their bodies than Congressmen do.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "lost baby poem", anti-abortion movement, Lucille Clifton, Planned Parenthood, pro-choice movement Comments closed
Queasy about Bodies Used for Medicine
The sting videos by anti-abortion activists are designed to shock. But being shocked by the use of dead bodies for medical research is nothing new, as seen in the grave robbing scene in “Tom Sawyer.”
Mr. Collins and the Right’s War on Women
Rightwing attacks on reproductive rights have their antecedents in the moralistic judgments of Mr. Collins and Mary Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Birth control, Jane Austen, Planned Parenthood, Pride and Prejudice, religious right Comments closed
