"It makes me sad that we use our freedom to make sure we have a morning after pill instead working for women in the world. " -Lilian Barger

Making sure that American women have control over their own bodies is an excellent use of our freedom. We can't ignore one problem just to work on another that seems more important. Should the people who are trying to improve health care for American children, for instance, drop what they're doing and all go work on helping HIV-infected orphans in Africa? Maybe we should all stop worrying corporate dishonesty until the violent crime rate is lower? Everyone should just shut up about global warming until cancer is cured, etc. etc. etc. There's always a "more worthy" cause that can be used to distract people from working on the problem at hand.

BTW, think about the sentence quoted above would have sounded if it had been written by an Iraqi women: "It makes me sad that we use our limited resources to worry about one foolish teenager instead of working to help our injured soldiers and all the children left homeless by this war."

She does a short "A Page From Katie's Notebook" segment during the noon news. It's meant to be a teaser for what she's going to talk about that evening. EVERY time I've seen the teaser segment it's been either "See how [blah blah blah] may be damaging your kids," or "is [porn/the Internet/Internet porn] hurting your marriage?" If I wanted to hear pointless whining like that I'd pick up one of the checkout line housekeeping magazines.

Is there anything in that notebook of hers about politics, the enviroment, or the economy? No, of course not. She's made that quite clear by calling it by a cutesy name, "Katie's Notebook," rather than something strong and declarative such as "The Couric Dispatch/Declaration/Record." Names and words matter! Of course, I'm responding to an article in Salon's pink ghetto, so maybe Katsie-poo's diary should appeal to me :(

I worried that I'd generalized too much in my last post, until today's noon news when Ms. Couric announced her topic for this evening: "It's called advertgaming, using online games to sell products to our kids."

I hope that tomorrow she does a hard-hitting report called, "Television news shows: real news interspersed with commercials, are they confusing our kids?"

Cary's advice is her best option. It shouldn't be too difficult, as long as she just thinks of herself as the dad and her husband as the mom. They can "bring up the kid together" as one poster said, in the way that families usually do but with the genders reversed.

Her husband probably had visions of "Kodak moments," where she'll hand the kid to him (fed, burped, diapered, and happy) and he'll coo at it and hug it before handing it back to her. She should explain to him that that's not going to happen and tell him to buy several books on parenting. Then, when the baby cries, she should look at him expectantly. It won't kill the baby to cry for a few extra minutes those first few times as it sinks into the guy's head that he really has to do the tedious gruntwork of motherhood. When the kid is a bit older and barfs all over the place from its first bad cold, she should be certain that she's not the one who cleans it up. She can be a perfectly good parent to the kid without ever touching the shit, piss, vomit, drool, etc. that makes up so much of the first ten years. The key is for her to NEVER do any of the crapwork that women usually silently take on, no matter how exhausted her husband looks or how helpless he seems to be. He'll learn the ropes the same way a first-time mother would.

I'd rather have my abdomen "sliced open and gutted like the Christmas goose" than allow the same thing to happen to my vagina. Nor do I care how long it takes my stomach to heal or how comparatively short the healing time for the episiotomy would be. You know that face and instinctive protective crotch-grab that men make when they hear about a guy getting kicked in the balls? I do the same thing when I hear about a vaginal delivery. I can't imagine ever risking my sexual organs and future sexual pleasure unnecessarily.

Btw, the last time this topic came up I said pretty much the same thing and there were some obnoxious replies such as, "now dear, don't let your doctor talk you into doing something foolish." I'd like to make clear that this is my decision, one that I made in my early teens when I first heard that horrible word: episiotomy.

an episiotomy or tearing is not completely avoidable except by c-section. There are things that can decrease the risk, of course. If, for some horrible reason like all the surgeons in the country suddenly disappearing, if I had to have a vaginal birth I'd do it squatting in a birthing pool after having had a perineal massage. That reduces the risk of tearing but doesn't guarantee it won't happen. I want a guarantee.

As for the other changes, such as stretch marks, extra weight, saggy breasts, I don't care in the slightest. That's just my body looking different, it doesn't affect me.

I get in touch with my "animal nature" by lifting weights. Different people have different ways of connecting with their inner strength. I don't want to go through labor in the same way that I don't want to run a marathon.

Of course there will be pain with either a vaginal or c-section birth. I would prefer the certainty of a few weeks of abdominal pain over the possibility of any vaginal pain or damage.

An elective c-section is a guarantee that there will be no vaginal tearing.