Just wanted to say I love Broadsheet. It's funny and timely and clever and a great way of collecting all those stories about women/sex/gender that just make one want to laugh,scream, or weep. I'm so jealous. But not in a cat-fighty way.

your constant reader, Katha

It was a great article, but why was it in the Sunday Styles section? If it were about the day-to-day tribulations of wartime for any kind of male soldier it would be in the news section.

Okay, Anonymous," pc" parents can be a pain, but how happy would most non-pc parents be to let their little boy "play the way he likes" if it meant putting on Mommy's dress or playing with his sister's dolls? What if he wanted to practice the piano instead of doing sports? If his best friends were girls? There is a ton of social/family effort that goes into making boys into the muscular lunks we think of as normal (ie non-gay) boys. And into making girls "girly." You can see it in the way 99% of America regards non-stereotypical behavior. Kids are allowed to chose 'what they like' as long as it is also what society wants for them. If they choose the toys and games of the other sex, parents start worrying. Girls actually have a little more freedom to cross the line -- the "tomboy" is an accepted social role until puberty.

The whole scenario is ridiculous. Individual men have no more right to force women to bear them children than they have to force a woman to give them a piece of their liver. Whether or not you believe the fetus is a person etc, and whatever you believe are the respective rights and duties of the parents of born children, pregnancy is an event that happens in a woman's body and has a lot of physical consequences, including serious injury and death. It is not at all like having to pay child support. A society that does not force us to even donate blood against our will cannot logically force a woman to lend her body and risk her health and wellbeing to create a child for another person.

If men got pregnant, they would understand that.

I belong to Haven and recommend it to NYC readers who want to do something direct and positive for women who don't get a lot of sympathy or help in our society-- just lots and lots of judgment. I haven't looked into this, but there must be other places that could use a Haven of their own. Towns with abortion clinics in states with mandatory waiting periods, for example, or that have the only abortion clinic serving a huge region. Missisippi and South Dakota each have only one clinic -- women drive for hours and sleep in their cars. It would be great if people in those places started something like Haven!

Another way people can help is to donate/raise money for their local abortion fund. These are organized under the umbrella of the National Network of Abortion Funds (www.nnaf.org). There may be one in your area, and there are two that are national. You can find out all about them, and make an online donation at www.nnaf.org. (specify "for patient care" ) or donate directly to your local fund. If there isn't one, you can start your own -- NNAF will help you. The funds work with the clinic social workers -- they not only help pay for abortions but negotiate lower prices-- and connect desperate women with clinics that can help them. I hosted a woman who came all the way from Washington DC for her abortion. The Washington fund made the arrangements and paid for the whole thing. ( That is rare, though -- usually the fund can only give a little bit. ) My guest said the woman at the fund was the only person who helped her and was kind to her, and said she saved her life. She was a nice person, a low-income single mother -- 25 years old with three children, this would have been her fourth and that was just too much. She wanted to go to work and make a better life for herself and her kids. I learned a lot from her about how these late-term pregnancies happen -- the confluence of insufficient health care, not very good birth control, personal problems and NO MONEY. A lot of women end up chasing the clinic fee -- while you are raising the $400 for the first-trimester abortion, you go over, and suddenly it's a lot more, plus travel.

If every woman who had an abortion--about one in three american women-- gave a little money every year to help other women in the same situation, there would many fewer of these late-term abortions and there would also be so much less suffering. That would be true sisterhood.

Just wanted to say thank you for the kind words. My friends are very impressed that I made Broadsheet!

I knew there was a reason I never go there. Maybe Saks should just give up on women customers entirely and turn itself into a high-end bordello. It could fancy sex with revirginated bunnies, and give the customers free Hermes scarves to take home to their wives.

it could SELL fancy sex with etc.