bambi birth

Right now in the north corner of the first floor of the McMaster Museum of Art, laying on the tile, is a gray set of plausibly female legs. Torsoless, the groin is bound in gauze, a big paramedic’s spool of it floats up into the sky. Like a transsexual’s phallus (indeed, the work is titled "A She"), a crooked, bony animal leg pushes out from between the legs, kicking the air. The phallus/animal baby is almost pornographic in size, and resembles the beginnings of a breeched baby fawn.

The first critique I read of Insoon Ha’s work explains that she is concerned with the abuse of “comfort women” in Korea (she is originally Korean, now apparently living in Kitchener). The next critique claims very vaguely that she is disturbed by what can happen in the “name” of progress.

Why the fawn leg, Ha? Bambi as USA? It is a good image, lots there: the deformed womb all planted with a big crooked c*ck, the birth of “deformed” genetic mixes of Korean comfort women and occupying soldiers (one body for captor and slave/animal and master), the pretty tissue cover-up that simply got tugged away.

Hurray FDA Redux

So, only one and a half years after Health Canada commonsensically allowed Plan B to be available, without a physician's prescription, simply by marching up to the pharmacy counter, the US FDA is following suit. Well done. Restrictions to abortion and contraception have practically NEVER been so severe in the US (at least not since I started having sex and caring about such things), so this is really a coup for American women. Everybody go on out and get yourself a couple just-in-case packets: for the medicine cabinet, your hangbag, your office drawer...

Now the fight is on to get Plan B cheap cheap cheap.

Our Bodies, Ourselves- 30 years later

Just read that one of my favourite tomes on women's health has made it into the top 20 books of all time to influence health policy in the world. See Black & Neuhauser's article in the July 06 issue of Journal fo Health Services Research & Policy.

Philip Iverson

Philip Iverson, Fredericton native and brilliantly emotional painter, has died of brain cancer.

Photo credit James Baird Gallery in Newfoundland.

hurrah for the FDA!

The FDA approved Merck's new cervical cancer/HPV vaccine, Gardasil. Now doesn't that name just make you feel all warm and guard-railed? Whatever, yeah FDA! But they're not off my hook yet: The FDA has engaged in expensive, harmful delays in moving ECP to OTC status. They continue to argue (it's almost hilarious if it weren't so sick and twisted) that naughty little ladies will have more unprotected sex so that they can take an hour the next day to bother themselves with an extra trip to Walgreen's. Even though ECP is saving the Cdn system thousands upon thousands of dollars, not to mention helping thousands of women in Canada avoid the emotional, physical and financial experience of abortion, the FDA persists to resist. HOWEVER, credit where credit is due, as always: thank you FDA for coming to the wise conclusion that this vaccine will not actually promote promiscuity. (There are no signs the chicken pox vaccine has been associated with rising rates of toddlers rubbing scabby little sores together). Still to be decided is the "optimal age" for first vaccination (the vaccine has about a five-year lifespan), with Merck advocating age 9 (vaccines go down like a teaspoon of sugar when you're little, plus, how many people do I know who were getting it on by 14?), and the evangels advocating something like ten years after you're in the ground already from CC. We shall see. Meanwhile, get those pap smears...

c-section soliloquy

my mother, on an annual basis, compensates for her years of agorophobically exiling me from the kitchen and its teaching laboratory by subscribing me to chatelaine. recipes in this magazine have gotten me through many a dinner party, my gratitude is actually pretty profound. however, this magazine is inane. however however, it is widely read. thus, i am compelled to respond to a piece this month ms. rebecca eckler, that columnist who writes "baby blogging" in the saturday globe style section. her writing is about as fascinating as baby puke. she typically writes about such fascinating things as people who get their sonograms made into expensive cookies. see what i mean? EATING your fetus is FASCINATING, right? but sick.

chatelaine frequently infuriates me with its coverage of such idiot topics as whether 7 1/2 glasses of water or 8 is better for your health. this month rebecca had two pages to righteously pronounce to readers why she still thinks she continues to constitute a "woman", even though she went to a different city to find a doc who would give her a totally unnecessary elective c-section, her mother flying in on westjet for the occassion. as if the biggest debate about c-sections was whether you remained a WOMAN after you had one.

NB currently has a c-section epidemic. believe me, it is not because snotty over-privileged, morally bankrupt narcissists are selecting an hour between spa treatments to inconvenience themselves with labour. it is not because it is convenient. it is not convenient to stay double time in hospital, to cost the system almost double, to steal away an ob-gyn from legitimate surgical deliveries. it is not convenient to risk death under anaesthetic. it is because women in NB *seem* to *need* the interventions more than any where else in the country.

why? NB women are not as healthy. why? give me two pages in chatelaine...

shooting a debate that involves the economic status of women, the agency relationship between physician and woman patient, the availability of maternal and newborn care practitioners, the economic strain on the system, the medicalization of women's lives, etc, into the mad cow bull's eye of whether you are still a WOMAN or not after righteously getting your tummy untucked is so typical of these times. rather than confront meaningful, challenging questions in our system, let's giggle competitively about the size of our c-sec scars exposed during our last sisterly brazilian wax. good grief.

children of chernobyl

a favourite bioethics blog of mine led me to this, a photomontage of the children of chernobyl. i had no idea what i would see.

http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/?GT1=8019