We are accustomed to bullying in America. It seems to be the tactic most favored in the political arena, too. School kids are being taught the nasty consequences of bullying – but adults seem to need a refresher course. Over recent years we have seen thuggery such as that evidenced in Town Hall meetings by the “Tea Party” that roughed up people the majority did not want to hear.

What has become even more disheartening is the adoption of those same “rules of the game” by so-called progressives. This is the story of how those tactics recently caused the death of a major piece of highly-valued legislation in California. The long-term consequences will not be known for months, maybe years.

In 2004 then-State Senator Sheila Kuehl introduced the most ambitious legislation in the history of California health care – a state single-payer plan. Long sought by a coalition calling itself Health Care for All, various groups had formed and occasionally cooperated to pursue the bill through several legislative sessions, passing both houses only to be vetoed by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In 2008, with Kuehl termed out, the bill SB 810 was eagerly adopted by Sentor Mark Leno. However, he began his march through the legislature with a crop of new legislators who had no history with the bill or with Sen. Leno. It was a somewhat more conservative bunch who required significant fiscal evidence that the bill would save the state money and be affordable to individuals and families. Single payer supporters paid little attention to educating these new legislators since the bill had passed handily before. But these were different people, different times.

In late 2010 the main group pursuing passage of the bill, the State Strategy Group (SSG), agreed that to help move the bill, they would create and fund a panel of experts who would do a new fiscal analysis. The SSG knew it would cost about $250,000 to get this done well – and they agreed it was a top priority.

Without a new fiscal analysis, the bill began to bog down, not passing the Assembly in its first foray under Leno. In response to that loss, and to a perceived threat from federal health care reform, the SSG began to challenge Sen. Leno’s “dedication”, question Senate and Assembly supporters’ “commitment”, and became more and more angry that things were not materializing as they had projected.

At the behest of one member group in the SSG, the majority decided suddenly to by-pass SB 810 and take single payer to the ballot as a proposition. The member group’s policy director boasted they were ‘best buddies” with new Governor Jerry Brown and that as a result, “Jerry will get it on the ballot for us.” Another SSG member pointed out that such a move was illegal, that the Governor had no such power and that it would require a supermajority 2/3 vote of the Legislature to move it to voters because of the fiscal implications. Either that or they had to find $2-3 million for a signature campaign to put it on the ballot themselves. That wet- blanket assessment did not sit well with SSG.

After continuing for several months to insist “Jerry can do it” the SSG finally realized that Brown either couldn’t or wouldn’t get the proposition on the ballot. The SSG shifted focus to the very expensive signature campaign and full-tilt election battle towards which all fund raising efforts were directed.

By late summer 2011, the diversion of attention to the ballot meant that not one dime was allocated to the promised fiscal analysis. Despite having created an impressive panel of health economics experts, no study was ever produced. Ultimately the SSG raised no money for the ballot either, and the group angrily and grudgingly refocused again on passing the bill.

That anger at discovering there was no instant gratification spilled over into a corrosive and suspicious hostility toward Senator Leno. The SSG members suddenly developed amnesia about the fiscal study they had promised to fund, and relations between these now-grudging backers and the Senator’s office got increasingly tense. Supporters showed up unannounced demanding explanations of plans, abused the staff right down to the receptionist, and made clear they did not trust the Senator to keep the focus.

Despite the bombardment of hostility from supposed allies, Senator Leno continued to push the bill. When it predictably bogged down over lack of fiscal clarity, both the senator and Senate leadership used up political capital still getting it onto the Senate floor. However, at the floor vote, five members abstained, and the bill did not pass. Abstentions came from mostly newer senators who could not ascertain the fiscal implications of this massive health care realignment and were highly dubious the state or individuals could afford this extensive new program.

As a favor to the author and supporters, SB 810 remained “on call” for reconsideration of the floor vote to buy time for further negotiations. Senators and staff worked on getting a “courtesy vote” when a member with doubts still votes “yes” to keep it going. At least two courtesy votes were in the works – all that were needed to pass the bill – when the progressive bully machine cranked up, and the shit hit the fan.

Furious single payer supporters claimed that senate leadership had “sold out” and a massive wave of phone calls was unleashed on an unprepared senate – members, staff, and again, even receptionists.

They were inundated with screaming, threatening, angry demands that they vote for the bill. Staff were not spared. No calls were polite – they were angry and snide, shattering one young intern unprepared for personal assaults on her character and politics. Other, older staff were also unnerved by how incredibly rude the supporters of the bill were to the very people they wanted to have vote for it.

Net result? The courtesy votes quickly withered away, the bill had to be pulled to prevent its being killed. Worse, staffers said it was highly doubtful that anyone in the Capitol who knew this story would ever put themselves in a position to work with these single-payer groups again.

After almost a decade of work, single payer seems dead legislatively in California, not just as a bill but as an issue. It died not due to insurance industry or business opposition but due to the obnoxious and outrageously bullying actions of its supporters. Nice job, BullyProgs. Nice job.

God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.
~Stephen Hawking

In this particular post we will be discussing one of my favorite universal phenomena, black holes. They are the most powerful force in the cosmos, able to wreak havoc and destruction on an incomprehensible scale. Yet they also seem to be a major key to the formation of galaxies and a big reason why any of us are even here to talk about it. We’ll discuss this, what we think black holes are and what they may do, and end with a scenario involving a black hole near Earth. This is not a scientific text. I’m just a pop-science junkie and I am fascinated by the mysteries of the universe.  So let’s begin at the beginning.

In the late 18th century cosmology was still very much in its infancy. We had  a pretty good picture of the solar system and how it operated, but the distant stars still eluded us. There were many theories for how the universe was constructed and mos tall of them came back to a steady state model.  This theory proposed that the universe was always here just as it is. It is infinite, eternal, and unchanging. This included theories about the spontaneous creation of matter to fill this infinite, eternal space. And if you were  a physicist alive at the time, it would make perfect sense to you. The technology was limited so the theories had to be as well.  The “discovery” of black holes came about during an experiment to test the effects of gravity by John Mitchell. Mitchell, a geologist by trade, dabbled in various arenas of science. And by dabbled I mean made revolutionary discoveries that would have made Einstein tip his hat.

During his various tests he attempted to measure the effects of gravity on light. Again the science was limited by the technology but in 1783 he wrote a letter to the Royal Society in London detailing what he called, “dark stars”. Bodies containing an absurd amount of density that “trap” everything near it, including light. he lamented that he didn’t have the tools necessary to further study this possible phenomena but he hoped his efforts would help future generations discover the truth. A true scientist in every sense of the word. But his work didn’t get many looks. It didn’t fit well with the steady state model that dominated science and it would be more than a century before that model changed. Light was seen as  a wave. A wave without mass. So very few people could be convinced that gravity could so strongly effect something with no mass. So Mitchell’s study sat unnoticed until a patent official from Zurich changed everything.

In the early 20th century the steady state model was coming to an end. The technology was beginning to catch up to the science and people were viewing the universe in a different way. Followed closely together was Albert Einstein’s theory of relatively in 1915, and Edwin Hubble’s 1925 paper detailing stars beyond our own galaxy. Yes, at this time we still assumed our galaxy was it. Nothing beyond it but empty space. Hubble proved otherwise with a telescope large than any that had come before it. But the big discovery relevant to our issue was Einsteins ‘s theory. It changed the concept of space, time, and gravity. Now they were all linked. Einstein’s theory proposed that sufficient mass curves spacetime significantly, and nearby objects fall in toward it. Given the speed of the object, it will either crash into the mass or “fall” into an orbit around  it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbhuRcmSkMg

It also became apparent that light had a dual property as both a wave and particles. This reopened discussion on “dark stars”. If a dense mass curved space enough, and light was a series of particles following a definite path in space, the mass could indeed “trap light”. All paths the light would travel are now bent back in toward the object and light cannot escape from it. But the objects being discussed now were no longer dark stars. If gravity could have such an effect, what would be its limit? How far could it collapse an object?   Karl Schwarzschild was at the forefront of this study. His work, also released in 1915, proved that a star of sufficient mass would collapse in on itself to a point that it literally falls in on itself.  Many were skeptical. They felt some device was in place preventing such a catastrophic ripping of spacetime. And indeed there was. But only for certain stars who did not have enough mass to fully collapse. They would reach a point then settle into what we call a neutron star.

Schwarzschild black hole model

But now it was almost accepted that black hoes were a possibility. It was still very much theory though. Mostly because it was insanely difficult to actually find and catalog a black hole. Well, the absurdity of it all was a turn off to many as well. A “hole” in space? Where does it go? What happens to the material sucked into it? Gravity was and is one of the big mysteries of the cosmos. Gravity is weak. It can be overcome with a tiny magnet. But it is constant. It wins in the end through sheer attrition. It takes a great amount of energy to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. It extends all the way out past the moon but lessens as you move further away. With a black hole we are talking about an object with a mass thousands or even millions of times greater than the Earth. There was also the argument about whether black holes were actual physical objects or not. A small group of physicists believed strongly that they were but most of the community had already brushed them off as unfounded speculation on Einstein’s equations.

For decades researchers on black holes was relegated to the basement of physics, like  a zoologist looking for Bigfoot. But important people still took interest. In 1939, a team of physicists led by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, determined that black holes were indeed a possibility. If  a star of sufficient mass began to collapse, no known force was available to stop it.  In the late 50′s the black hole picture began to morph into what we know today. Schwarzschild’s model was studied relentlessly and a  new term, event horizon, was invented for the  “flat surface” framing his models. The event horizon is the point of no return. Once you cross into it there is no going back.  A black hole’s gravitational pull actually isn’t that strong outside the event horizon. But once across it the pull is tremendous and nothing, not even light, can escape. And this is also where physics starts getting real weird. Imagine for a moment you are in a space shuttle orbiting a black hole. You’re watching a fellow astronaut move toward the event horizon. He’s moving, and moving, and moving, then all of a sudden he stops. Frozen motionless in time.

But the other astronaut is still moving. To them time is still moving along just as it should. This is gravitational time dilation.  As you move closer to massive objects, time slows down. As Einstein’s theory shows, space and time are one. So a significant warping of space will result in a like warping of time. The astronaut in the ship will also see his comrade redshifting  as he or she approached the event horizon and the visible light reflected from them becomes less and less. Eventually it will become so dim you can no longer see them even though they are there. Then our astronaut friend becomes one with the black hole. But what exactly does that mean? This would be the next big battle in black hole research. Where does everything go and does it just disappear? And do things actually “escape” them?

Artistic rendering of a black hole "feeding", provided by NASA.

In the mid 20th century talk began about what a black hole is exactly. It is all still just theory after all. Even though research on them is taken more seriously, there is still a school of physicists who insist they don’t even exist. And even if they did it would be under exotic conditions they had yet to find in the universe. But, the “known universe” was only  a few decades old at this time so no one should have been so absolute about something they just discovered. What boosted interest in black holes was the confirmation of the existence of neutron stars when scientists observed  a pulsar in 1967. The same theories that led to neutron stars also led to black holes. More great young minds began taking black hole research more seriously and the field increased significantly. It was also around this time that the term ‘black hole’ actually began to be used.

Over the next few decades equations were produced to define and describe the structure of black holes and the concept of the singularity. A singularity is a point where things merge and become one. It was theorized that every black hole contained a singularity at its center. Singularities were, and in some places still are, the most controversial part of black hole physics. Number one, physics was incapable of describing it. In a singularity the laws of physics we understand do not exist. Up is left, right is purple, and the trees sleep with the  moonlight. Gravity becomes infinite.  Infinite is a tricky word that many mathematicians and physicists dislike. It’s not a real number.  You get into the concept of “imaginary numbers” and other voodoo tricks we use to try to grasp what we can’t grasp. Just take  a moment to think about infinity. Think about infinite gravity. An endless pressure forever increasing.

Still, theories were produced that proved to be mathematically sound. But science needs observation and it’s currently impossible to observe a singularity. The next big point of contention is what happens to matter drawn into that singularity. Early theories suggested that the information of an object, it’s essential quantum make-up, was lost or destroyed inside the black hole. This caused an uproar in the scientific community. One of the basic tenets of physics is that this cannot happen. You’ve probably heard it simplified in the phrase “matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed”. Matter just becomes energy and vice versa. The conservation theory. All energy in a system is constant. You just can’t up and remove it from the universe. A major supporter of this theory was Stephen Hawking, probably the most famous scientist since Einstein. He believed the information crossing the event horizon  was lost to the universe forever and that every black hole was essentially the same regardless of what information it consumed.

With the dawn of quantum mechanics,  many of Hawking’s previous theories began to crumble. In quantum mechanics all information stays the same at the quantum level no matter what happens. It’s make up now determines its makeup in the future. But Hawking was suggesting that the radiation patterns in every black hole would be the same and so different quantum makeups would conform into the same type. Quantum mechanics proved this was pretty much impossible.  Even inside  a black hole. Not only was information not lost, stuff actually “escapes” black holes in the form of radiation and various cosmic rays. Black holes emit jets of gas and energy away from them as they feed, stretching light years into space. Some longer than entire galaxies. In 2004 Hawking was forced to admit he had made an error and gladly accepted the new findings.

By the mid 70′s observational data was beginning to leak in on black holes. Black holes can’t actually be observed.  Thus the name. However you can study the area around it to see signs of its existence. Most notably it’s effect on the gravitational fields of nearby objects. Scientists began observing gravitational abnormalities in various areas of space and cold only come to one conclusion. An object of incredible density was nearby. But they couldn’t see it. Still it was the most reasonable conclusion. Nothing they had discovered could even come close to producing the effects seen. This research led to another shocking discovery in the last decade or so. It seems that almost every galaxy in the universe, especially ones like our own, contains a supermassive black hole at its center.   Supermassive black holes are just that. Black holes of an inconceivable size. It is accepted fact that stellar(normal) black holes are created from collapsing stars. But the star that forms a supermassive black hole would have to be so colossal that it seems impossible to think it could even pull its self together let alone sustain the processes necessary to form a black hole. They could have possibly formed when a proto-galaxy collapsed in on itself.

A possibly more believable theory is that they began as stellar black holes long ago and absorbed enough matter over time to reach this titanic size. Or that they were created during the turbulent moments following the Big Bang. No matter the reason they seem to be tied to galaxies in some ways. And just how remains unclear. For the longest time we felt the size of a supermassive black hole and  it’s galaxy were tied together. That theory went out the window in December of this year. Scientists discovered two black holes of colossal size. One black hole ten million solar masses in size and the other almost double that. A solar mass is the size of our sun. It’s 20 million times larger than our sun. And they are far too big to be in the galaxies they are in. Or so we had thought. And how do they get there? Scientists believe the galaxy forms around the black hole. As the black hole feeds, the energy it emits pushes the bulk of the galaxy back out of its reach and gives it room to grow. Another discovery was made earlier in March and for the first time scientists caught a black hole feeding.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Z5AS3TTS4

But we’re still no closer to figuring out exactly what they are. Again, we love observations, and gamma bursts on a satellite just don’t give us enough to paint a clear picture. And everything about the singularity contained within is pure conjecture. As OI said before, many people are not comfortable with the word infinite. So many physicists feel there is a limit to what can be packed into a black hole. So when it reaches its limit does it just “throw up” the excess? But, of course, some physicists think there is no theoretical limit. Because some people think black holes are more than just a collection of densely packed matter. Some theorists believe black holes are actually gateways to other dimensions.

Yeah it's getting crazy

There is science behind this though. Real science. A few decades ago talk of other dimensions was best left to science fiction writers.  Now it’s one of the most popular subjects in labs and classrooms around the world. ‘Cause who ever said there were only 3 dimensions? Einstein’s equations produced a lot of things he never thought they would. That any scientist ever thought they would. One of the most interesting and compelling is the possibility of other dimensions.

As I stated before, gravity is a weird thing we are still very much trying to figure out. It’s distribution across the universe seems, uneven. One of the biggest discoveries of the 20th century was Hubble’s discovery of the expanding universe. What we found out decades later is not only is it expanding, the expansion is speeding up. An incredibly surprising revelation considering that, given the amount of observable matter in the universe, it should be physically impossible for it to still be gaining speed. It’s like something we can’t see is accelerating the expansion of the universe. One possibility thrown out early on was “dark energy/matter”. Another clever trick to explain what we don’t understand. According to physicists about 90% of the matter that make sup the universe is missing or can’t be seen. Hence the term, dark matter.  A way to explain the expansion and why stars at the edges of galaxies move as fast as those further in. Another thing that just shouldn’t happen.

But some physicists are contesting the notion of dark matter. They believe the extra gravity is coming from other dimensions. Some believe there is a whole universe right next to ours, and it exerts its gravity on us and we on them. Maybe the reason gravity isn’t as strong as other universal forces is because some of it is lost to these other dimensions. And black holes are just gravity wells connecting two universes. But how messed up is it if every black hole contains a universe? Including ours. And gravity just flows freely between them all. Connects us to them. Plans are already underway to test these theories. I look forward to the results.

The following is highly theoretical and extremely implausible.  But, not impossible.

It is morning(eastern time), February 12, 2012. All around the globe people are beginning and ending their days. Not knowing this will be the last one ever on Earth. At 10:00 a.m. EST, a huge deviation in the orbit of the moon is detected. Almost as if something is pulling it off course, closer to the Earth. Confident it’s a calibration era, machines are reset and the test is run again. The results are the same only now the orbit is further degraded. Hours later reports come in all around the globe of huge seismic activity. As though every plate on earth were going off simultaneously.  And some creepy data suggesting that mountains are shrinking. Falling back into the earth.

Then the sinkholes begin.  Enormous chunks of earth, some the size of a state, begin falling away. Officials are at a loss to explain what is going on. Then 7 hours after the initial reading on the moon, the news come in. And it is grim. Experiments at the large hadron collider have produced an until now unknown side effect. A black hole. It has sunk to the center of the Earth and is now eating it away piece by piece. In less than 24 hours there will be very little left of the planet that is once our home. The black hole’s modest size has only increased its hunger and it devours the earth at a rate far greater than some of its larger brethren.

Panic and chaos erupts across the globe as everyone realizes this is it. Some find peace with what is happening while most lose their fucking minds. Coastal areas are destroyed as the steadily approaching moon wreaks havoc on the oceans. Oceans that soon fall away to be eaten by the beast at the center of our globe. As the earth begins to fracture and distort the core ceases to produce a magnetic field. Remaining plant and animal life slowly begin to suffocate as the Earth’s atmosphere is pulled away. 15 hours after the initial discovery there is nothign left living on Earth. And the planet is barley recognizable. Looking almost like  a dented tin can it continues to fall in on itself toward the awaiting black hole. Any human who may have fallen toward the black hole Earth on would have experienced something freaky. If they go in feet first that is where they will first feel it. And it won’t be all at once. The black hole will exert a constant even pull that stretches the very molecular fiber of your body as you are unraveled like an old sweater. A spaghetti string slurped up by the black hole. Not a bad way to go.   Painful? Oh I’d have to think it’s unbearable. But its gotta look pretty cool.

20 hours in and the Earth is gone. Replaced by the cosmic entity that devoured it. But it’s not over. Soon the moon reaches the event horizon and joins us in the singularity. All becomes one at the center of the black hole. No trace that the Earth ever existed. That humanity was ever here. And then it turns to look at Mars.

So I hope you enjoyed this highly unscientific discussion of a strange scientific phenomena. And don’t worry, the odds of the LHC producing a sustainable black hole are so tiny they aren’t even worth considering. And if one got anywhere near us, cosmically speaking, we’d know well ahead of time. Which would just wind up being torture since there isn’t anything we can do about it. But, maybe in the thousand years it takes to get here, we can figure out how to get the fuck outta here.

Linda Weber, whose courage I greatly admire in tackling this controversial subject and writing a book about it, has kindly answered a series of questions about “Life Choices.”

Planet POV: Could you talk a little bit about your career and how you came to write “Life Choices?” The second part of this question is, Who do you envision as your audience?

LW:  I live and work in Boulder as a private psychotherapist, spiritual counselor, and rites of passage guide for women. I run a summer wilderness vision quest program. I have a masters in psychology and women’s studies, though I didn’t get the degree until after I had been counseling for twenty years. I see the interconnection between personal psychology, society, and spirituality, so my orientation is naturally holistic. I wrote the core of what was to become Life Choices for my masters thesis. The writing happened because of my desire to record what I was experiencing with the abortion work. As I followed it through the years, it led me to a deeper synthesis. The funny thing about books is that they know what they are before you do. I spent a lot of time catching up to what this book is. Over twenty years passed before I was ready to bring it into the world, and it was only then that a publisher appeared to make this happen.

I began my work in a New York City abortion clinic, one of the first to appear after legalization in 1970. My initial training was more like a trial by fire than a professional training. I was learning on the go, in an atmosphere of intense need. They showed us how to explain medical procedures and how to assist the physicians with the abortions, but not so much about counseling itself. I was deeply moved by the stories I was hearing from the women who were my patients. They came from all over the country, referred to the clinic by an underground clergy service that referred for safe though not always legal abortions. I thought that that in and of itself was amazing. Counseling came easily for me because I have a natural intuitive ability, so I’m self-trained for the most part. Even my masters degree was an independent study degree. I was a history major in college and an activist organizer by nature. I was interested in the flow of history and how it affected people. Those things came together in abortion counseling because both the historical and personal changes that were happening were profound. The work continued in earnest after I set up the counseling program at the women’s health center in Boulder in 1973.

As I approached the age of forty, I turned towards spiritual study and fell in love with the mountains and my sense of the spirit that moves in all beings and things. I wondered how to relate this to my feminism and my understanding of women’s issues, in particular abortion.

The writing of Life Choices, began as a reaction to what I was seeing in my counseling sessions. At first, I thought I might be writing a counseling manual or a how-to book about abortion, or maybe a historical study. But once I accumulated enough spiritual experiences of my own, I knew that the statement of Life Choices had to be much more than just about abortion. The perspective got bigger and bigger as the years passed.

The audience for Life Choices consists of anyone concerned about the issue of abortion, in addition to women who have had abortions. In particular, the book is for those who seek a multi-faceted understanding about how social issues affect us personally and what their role is in the growth and development of society.

Planet POV: You say in your book that you “believe abortion is essentially pro-life” and that you arrived at this conclusion because you’ve seen how the experience “can enrich women’s lives.” Can you address this idea and perhaps give us an example?

 LW:  The simplest answer to this is to just look around and see how many women have created successful careers that they would not have been able to have if they had been forced to give birth to every unwanted pregnancy. But the more complicated answer is more interesting to me. Abortion is part of nature. We see this most clearly when miscarriages happen. The medical term for a miscarriage is spontaneous abortion. What I am saying in Life Choices is that human consciousness—our ability to think and feel and intuit is also part of nature. We apply this consciousness to our bodily experience in order to better negotiate our lives. For women, this includes making choices about pregnancy. Thus, intentional abortion is also part of nature, and in my experience these choices are overwhelmingly on the side of improving lives—the woman’s life and the other lives that are directly affected by a pregnancy. Abortion is an essential part of creativity. This is easy to see when we think about a writer writing something and then crumpling up the paper and throwing it away or deleting it; or a painter painting, or a musician composing, and so on. When we say no to something in our lives and choose to go in another direction, we are aborting the other choice. Without the no the yes would not happen. It’s the same with pregnancy, it’s just that the stakes are high and intensely heart directed.

Planet POV:  You have a wonderful sentence in your book: “Pregnancy decision making is more basic than beautiful, more like a mudslide than a meadow.” Yet it struck me that the attitude throughout “Life Choices” is that these “mudslides” are just another part of life and not necessarily good or bad. Does this sound accurate to you and if so, how did you arrive at the conclusion that having an abortion is not necessarily a negative experience?

LW:  Yes, that’s right, that’s what I’m saying. The mudslides are definitely just another part of life and are morally neutral. They are simply experiences. Unfortunately in our culture there is a tendency to divide experiences between “good” and “bad.” I think this contributes to the denial of the important things we learn from difficult and painful experiences. As for abortion, most of the women I have met in my counseling work were overwhelmingly relieved that they could have an abortion, and because it was one of the most serious decisions they had ever made in their lives, they often grew in their understanding of what really mattered to them and became clearer about how they wanted to conduct themselves in their lives. I think that’s positive, don’t you?

Planet POV:  Another striking quote in your book is from one of your clients: “For me, abortion is like pinching the leaves off the mother plant to let it grow.” Can you explain what your client meant by this statement and what it meant to you?

LW:  That woman’s statement—the pinching of the leaves—was the main impetus for this book. I met her a long time ago, and her perceptions and point of view about her abortion had a huge impact on me. It showed me the essential creativity of life choices. I wanted to honor her and her forward thinking way. I thought it was beautiful. As for the meaning of it, that took me years to fully understand. I had to spend concerted time alone in the wilderness and a lot of time studying and practicing surrender to life processes, both my own and the manner in which the world conducts itself. What I came to understand is that life does as life does and we humans are responsible for stepping into our awareness of that and engaging with the truth of our lives in a manner that fits with the rest of nature and the earth as a whole. We need to be awake. This means different things to different people, but the truth of the movement of life into death and back into life is central. We die into ourselves in one way or another throughout our lives. It is the way life creates itself. Abortion can be a great teacher about this both on the level of personal experience and for humanity’s relationship with the earth as a whole.

Planet POV:  You frequently use the term “crisis pregnancy.” Can you explain what this is?

LW:  A crisis pregnancy usually occurs unexpectedly and causes an upheaval in a woman’s life. It is characterized by high levels of tension and uncertainty and often includes anxiety and fear. If the pregnancy is unwanted or a problem in some other way, the intensity of the crisis may be driven by a sense of not having enough time to make a decision, or in some cases, feeling unable to make a decision because no option is attractive or acceptable. Internal or external pressure to make a decision quickly can sometimes feel overwhelming. A crisis often opens the door to other problematic or difficult issues, which can further exacerbate the situation. This kind of pregnancy can be a critical turning point in a person’s life.

 Planet POV:  You describe a debate you once had with a pro-life activist who ended her arguments with the assertion: “Death is death.” You then go into a discussion about the context of death. Could you talk about this?

 LW:  The anti-abortion movement has been screaming murder about women’s choices to have abortions for some time now. They play upon the discomfort most of us feel about death and the way our society denies and denigrates the subject. They oversimplify and try to reduce complicated concepts to simple ones. Even murder when you think about it, is complicated and contextual from the law’s point of view. There are different kinds of murder that involve different circumstances; there are different levels of motivation; and there are different levels of punishment. But that’s a digression. Abortion isn’t murder. The death that occurs in abortion is tied to the relationship between the pregnant woman and her awareness of the nature of her pregnancy. Her consciousness about her body and about pregnancy is an aspect of her nature, which is part of nature. She is the responsible party when it comes to bringing life through her body or not. The or not is of course the big issue, because when she decides not to continue a pregnancy, she is causing the death of the part of her that is developing into another being. But the death can’t be compared to any other death. Because it happens in the context of her life process, her body, her relationships, and her power. No death happens in a vacuum. There is always a circumstance and situation—a context. There are always relationships that create the container for whatever the death process is, and these need to be respected.

Planet POV:  Again on the subject of death, you say, “Our personal and societal fear of the end of life makes us label any kind of death bad. A walk in Nature will quickly correct this notion.” What is it about nature that leads you to question the idea that “any kind of death is bad?”

 LW:  Death is essential to life on planet Earth. All of nature exists in cycles of coming into being and going away. Stand in a forest and you will see trees in various stages of living and dying. Same with all plants and other animals. We humans have lost touch with this and live in ways that try to separate death from life when really there is no separation. Western society has attempted to substitute technology for nature and to pretend that humans are not part of nature. One of my teachers calls this the big lie. When we remember our true nature as part of nature, we can embrace the endings and losses as part of the great mystery of life, and pay tribute to the meaning of those losses through ceremonies and relationships that honor the changes.

Planet POV:  Another phrase that jumped out at me as I read the book was “the ideology of self-sacrifice.” It seems to go hand-in-hand with another concept you discuss – the “Ideal of the All-Loving Mother.” Could you explain what these concepts mean and how they relate to abortion?

 LW:  Women often find themselves in a painful internal tug of war and feeling selfish if they put themselves first. But what feels like a personal psychological pattern is actually an expression of an old and deeply entrenched societal and historical way of meeting the world. Under patriarchy, which has been around for many thousands of years, women are expected to sacrifice themselves to care for their children and for the men in their lives. It is considered unfeminine and unwomanly not to do this. Moreover, women are expected to plan their lives this way—to marry, have children, and never put themselves first. This is changing. The pushback against patriarchal ways all over the world is about women wanting to make choices about all aspects of their lives. The choice to not carry a pregnancy to term flies in the face of the idea that it is good to sacrifice yourself. Legal abortion goes against the ideology of self-sacrifice because it suggests that being a woman is about more than having children. Along with this, it challenges the idea that any woman anywhere at anytime will be a loving and caring mother. Abortion breaks through the idealization of mothers, and suggests that in real life women are complicated and capable of creating in myriad ways, and that reproduction is just one facet of being a woman and that this is normal.

 Planet POV:  One concept that comes up repeatedly in “Life Choices” is the idea of female power. You say, “We actively express female power when we choose whether to bring pregnancy through or turn it back.” Can you explain how abortion and female power are related?

 LW:  It’s intrinsic power I’m talking about, not power over anything or anyone, but rather power within. Bringing life through the body is a female function. It’s an innate power. Part of expressing this power is to say no to pregnancies that feel like intrusions or that we know can’t be supported by our life circumstances. Saying no can sometimes be more life affirming and powerful because it requires the strength to honestly face and assess difficult feelings and circumstances and stand up to the pressures of society. Most importantly, saying no to a pregnancy is sometimes a necessary step to saying yes to stepping into responsibility for your life.

 Planet POV:  How can abortion be an act of love?

 LW:  Having an abortion is almost always an act of love. A woman has an abortion because she cares about what would happen to a baby born of that pregnancy, and because she cares about herself and others in her close circle of love relations. She may be young and not completely clear about these things, but her heart is at the center of her decision making and her mind grapples with all that is involved. She does the best she can.

 Planet POV:  You go into some discussion about the history of abortion in the United States. You mention that Colorado was the first state to liberalize abortion laws, sometime between 1967 and 1972. Roe v Wade was in 1973. You were involved in an early clinic in Boulder – can you talk a little about the founding of that clinic?

 LW:  I moved to Boulder from New York City in 1972. After Roe in 1973, I expected that clinics would form locally. The people who were organizing the Boulder Valley Clinic, which is now the Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center, were community minded men and women, and skilled in different areas including medical and community organizing. They were driven by the desire to normalize and legitimize women’s experiences with abortion because they all knew how horrible it had been when abortion was illegal. They needed someone to head up the counseling program and I was someone, maybe the only one in the area, who had experience with this. Plus, I was passionate about helping women with what I had learned at the New York clinic. We had some opposition from a right-to-life doctor who kept us out of a medical building, but other than that there was no serious trouble. We found a house on Broadway near downtown and set about renovating it to suit the needs of a women’s clinic. It was an incredibly exciting and creative time. I hired 18 volunteers and trained them to be abortion counselors. They each had one patient in the first week we were open. We met incessantly to talk about our personal experiences and how best to do the counseling work with the patients. The whole thing felt more like a cause than a job and everyone was highly devoted to the work.

 Planet POV:  On the same topic as above, you mention that Roe v. Wade was a result of the pressure that mounted as more women obtained illegal abortions in the two decades before it passed. Can you talk a bit about this history?

 LW:  Illegal abortion is a truly horrible thing. It’s terribly dangerous for families as well as for women. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the laws against abortion were increasingly difficult to enforce. There were reputable physicians performing illegal abortions and clergy in all parts of the country who were counseling and referring women to these physicians. Population control advocates were actively lobbying legislators, and the women’s movement was growing in size and influence. The coalition to repeal the laws against abortion became strong enough to pressure successfully for the changes that led to the Roe v Wade decision.

 Planet POV:  You express your objection to the term “family planning clinics.” Can you explain why?

 LW:  I don’t object to the term family planning clinics or family planning, I just think it’s an incomplete term. Most people, especially young people, are not thinking about planning a family when they seek out birth control. They are thinking about and planning sex. I discuss this in the chapter in my book called Sexual Planning. By coining this term I’m encouraging people to think as realistically as possible. One of the results of legal birth control and legal abortion is the emergence of more awareness about sexual matters and a greater willingness to discuss sex and sexuality. But it’s a long road, and there is still a great deal of fear and avoidance when it comes to these issues. Family planning programs raise people’s awareness about sexual health, which I believe is the main reason they are in the crosshairs of conservative political movements.

Recently, the fact that gay people are born with their orientation has taken off in the media. It’s increased prominence can be seen in the popularity of the song “Born this Way” by the singer-songwriter, Lady Gaga, and the rise in the number of articles and blog-posts dealing with the subject. In many ways, this is a good thing. It can be seen as an affirmation of the fact that there’s nothing wrong with being gay and as a celebration of gay identity. However, as a defence against conservative attacks, I think that it is a rather weak argument.

Stating that gay people were born with their orientation seems like the perfect counter to the conservative argument that being gay is a choice, but this life-affirming rebuttal opens the door to other attacks. Following this exchange conservatives will rightly point out, though rarely eloquently, that paedophiles are most likely born with their “orientation”, but that being born so doesn’t make their behaviour justifiable. The most common response to this is that the the two orientations aren’t equatable. The problem is this: If you base your argument that being gay is perfectly acceptable on premise that gay people are born with their orientation, then these two orientations do become equatable. In fact, if you base your argument on such a premise, then heterosexuality and paedophilia also become equatable. After all, anyone of either orientation were born the way they are.

Fortunately, there is a simple way to eliminate this problem: Unlike paedophilia, neither being gay or being straight are intrinsically harmful. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with being either gay or straight as there is with engaging in paedophilia. I hope that this analogy will expand this line of thinking:

 Both baseball and war involve tactics and strategy. However, unlike war, baseball is not intrinsically harmful. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with playing baseball.

 The beauty of this argument is threefold. Firstly, it neatly side-steps any unfortunate comparisons. Secondly, it’s a rather libertarian argument, which conservatives purport to support in other matters. Thirdly, it eliminates the choice argument that conservatives put forward by making it irrelevant if being gay is a choice or not. It boils the whole think down into a debate about freedom. Something that conservatives, if they believe their own rhetoric, should support.

Frankly, I think that this is a far superior argument than simply stating that gay people are born that way.

I received this in my email this morning.  We all get these emails from well-intentioned friends and I usually skim through to see what the emailee wants me to do with his/her email after I have read it.  This one was different, I started reading and kept on it all the way to the end.  Corporations aside, we really were pretty green growing up.  It does not matter if this story really happened or the writer just made it up, the point is it made me think about our planet and how while our intentions are admirable in this new generation, we would be wise to learn how the older generation did things before we make fun of them.

The Green Thing

At Raley’s the other day, the young cashier suggested that I bring my own grocery bag because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.I apologized to her and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. The former generation did not care enough to save our environment.”She was right, our generation didn’t have the green thing in our day . . .Back then, we returned our milk bottles, soda bottles, and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled .. . . but we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

In our day, we walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right . . . we didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But, yeah. . . we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one radio (or some a TV) in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a 19 inch or smaller screen, not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.  Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But, yeah . . . we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.We replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull . . . But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. Mama was sometimes seen walking the 2-mile round trip “downtown.”

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.  But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful the old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Progress is usually a good thing but in reading this email I thought about how progress sometimes is not always new, just a different, better or faster way of doing things.  Some people still recycle their soda cans and plastic bottles and recycling is still an industry but it is now voluntary and if you don’t recycle you just pay the CRV anew everytime you buy merchandise in that kind of packaging.  But we were recyling back then because we got our money back on those bottles we returned an very few people would imagine buying a new six pack of coke without returning the emplty bottles.  I mean, who wanted those bottles cluttering up their homes?  Some people still use a push mower but usually only because they have such a small patch of lawn to mow.  Usually they power up the big machine and some even think they need the big John Deere riding mower because their neighbor has one and look how much easier it is to ride while working.  Some of these activities were beginning to change even while I was growing up and I am 58 but I can remember most of them.

So, did we really progress that far in green thinking or did we really just change the method?  I know we have not started holding corporations responsible for what they are doing.  We certainly have not extended our green technology in a big way.  Maybe because it takes us longer to get corporations to take their share of the responsibility?  And now the Republicans and Tea Party or should I say RepubicTeas want to reduce EPA and other regulations even more.  If we cannot get Corporations to stop polluting with regulations, how on earth will we be able to do so with weakened regulations?  Part of the problem is the RepublicTeas and their religous philosophy feel man has dominion over  the world and man will do on his own what is right.  Well I think we have plenty of proof that is a foolish notion because they have regulation now and how many companies could each of you name who have poisoned our earth?

Related articles

• The Green Thing (spokelement.wordpress.com)
• How The Older Generation Destroyed The Environment… They Didn’t Have The ‘Green Thing’ Back Then (aleksandreia.wordpress.com)
• Should be required reading (junksciencesidebar.com)