The process of turning abortion into a shameful act coincides with women trying to take some power for themselves. At the same time women openly agitated for voting rights, they were campaigning for legal birth control. Claiming ownership of our bodies shouldn't have to be a legal battle, yet long after Negroes gained legal status as full humans and voting rights, women were/are still legally less than whole.

It's appalling that race and gender have been and are used to determine status and worth, but there it is. Having the guts to make noise, to call attention to the distorted public focus on what should be a private matter is civil disobedience. Blogging about abortion is a way of normalizing the experience, of illustrating the commonality of unwanted pregnancy. It also shows the flaws in our thinking, our procedures and our policies.

The personal IS political, especially when politics attempts to define a person.

Aside from the false promise of a paperless office, computers are made from all sorts of toxic substances that end up in the groundwater and the air either during manufacture or upon disposal. If you take into account the pollution created in making paper and ink, then you have to consider the costs of making and disposing of computers and monitors as well.

Compartmentalizing is just another word for denial.

For many years I made excuses for my family. I kept saying things like,"Really, they're good people, but they just can't accept what lies beyond their experience." I was calm, non judgmental and being eaten up from the inside.

Finally it dawned on me that they were hateful. They hate lots of things and loads of people, people they work with, people they go to church with and family members who don't agree with them. I don't use the word "hate" lightly but I don't have another word for whatever motivates their behavior.

They go to church, pride themselves on being good Americans and great Catholics. They are also openly racist, sexist and crass enough to send and tell jokes that rely on laughing at a punchline that defines Hillary Clinton and/or Michelle Obama as a whore. The "jokes" about Barack Obama are worse.

People like this are willfully blind to the injury they cause and intentionally ignorant of a larger world.

These people are dismissive and mean...and they are my family. I have to deal with them, but I don't have to support them. I don't have to engage the adults but I can be polite. I can be kind to the children and well mannered with adults. Beyond that, I have nothing to give.

If the writer's other siblings are not contributing to the parents' financial situation, the only way to get them to step up is to simply not send money anymore. Get a loan agreement written up, but unless the writer intends to wait until the parents die and sue for money owed, what's the point? Money loaned is money given; love can't be purchased.

If after all this time, your family doesn't see how personal politics can be, how their decisions are affecting your life, then you are powerless to improve their insight. No amount of talk from someone inside the family will change their views. They will think what they think regardless of your actions. Maybe they have to see the same story told by someone else, at some distance to even consider their actions. Even then, they might shift their position only slightly and not enough or in time enough to help you.

Money is the substitute for and sign of love and devotion for some people. They don't recognize the difference between demanding fealty and asking for love. There's nothing to be done about that; you can't make someone love you anymore than you can make someone see you.

The writer's only power is in retreating to safety. In this case retreat means no longer giving money. Perhaps simply telling the parents and the siblings you can't afford it anymore or just stop mailing the checks. At some point we have to stand up for ourselves. We begin by not handing the people who injure us a blunt object to do just that.