What was supposed to be a run-of-the-mill confirmation of an interim police chief in Fargo, North Dakota turned into a pretty gross display of anti-choice wackiness recently.
Before Assistant Police Chief Keither Ternes was confirmed as interim chief on Monday, anti-choice activist Martin Wishnatsky asked the commission to reject Ternes because 15 years earlier his girlfriend decided to terminate her pregnancy.
Thankfully the commission confirmed Ternes unanimously, but what kills me is that city officials--including Ternes--felt the need to respond to this ridiculous shit.
Ternes, a 19-year veteran of the police department, said “Although it's the issue in my personal life that I regret more than anything else and am ashamed of more than anything else, I would hope that my professional track record and the things that I've done within the community since that time certainly speak for themselves.”
Perhaps it is something Ternes regrets--but why give credence to the idea that he somehow did something wrong?!
Even worse was what Fargo Mayor Bruce Furness had to say: “It was an error in judgment, and he has expressed contrition.”
So rest easy, folks. Ternes won’t be aborting any fetuses on Furness’ watch. Sigh.
Via Broadsheet.
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"Perhaps it is something Ternes regrets--but why give credence to the idea that he somehow did something wrong?!"
Because he did. In 1990, there was no reason to get pregnant by accident. Condoms, pills, foams, diaphragms, IUDs -- all of that existed. This post fits interestingly with your earlier post that the latest spermicide is tootoo icky, really. Abortion should never be thought of as a grand old form of birth control. It's not less icky than spermicides, in my book.
Jami, no method of contraception has a 100% effectiveness rate, even when used exactly perfectly. (Also, FWIW, in 1990, I believe IUD's weren't widely available, because of fallout from the Dalkon sheild case.)
The only way I see Ternes may have done something wrong is if he actually pressured his girlfriend into having the abortion against her wishes. That goes against the idea of choice. If he simply enabled the girlfriend to abort and supported her decision, however, that is nothing to be ashamed of, IMO.
What I think is interesting is the way he's being credited with the decision to abort - it wasn't his pregnancy, as far as I know. It's such a clear example of how people don't even consider a woman's role in her own pregnancy.
Her body her choice. It's not like he should have had any say in the matter anyway.
Unfortunately, this stuff is all to common up here in the fridgid north. It is functionally imposible to get an abortion here: all of the Planned Parenthoods have been picket, legislated, and insuranced away. *sigh*
Too bad they have the number one avation school in the country.
Antigone, maybe then women can fly to places where they can get abortions. Or you could open a mile-high reproductive health clinic.
I don't understand why he was criticized for something his girlfriend did. It's not like he had any say in the matter.
Jami, you'd think so, but...
There ARE failure rates. Some people don't respond the same way to hormonal birth control, and barrier methods can be iffy.
Oh my god! Accidents, you know, HAPPEN.
Woolf’s choice of the private home of a wealthy plutocrat, renovated to serve liberal causes, adds to the politics of this address by calling attention to the history of the home as a site of women’s work. Mary’s home is a place where she works, and her place of work was formerly a home. Katharine is also engaged in work at her home, helping her mother prepare a biography of Katherine’s dead grandfather, but this is not paid work. Worse, in the befogged atmosphere of her home, the project has stalled, and Katharine doubts it will ever be finished. Katharine’s flânerie grows out of a need to escape her stifling home and find a diversion, but for Mary the city is a part of her home and as a result her interior life is co-extensive from work to the street to her house in Grenoble. As she sits in her flat working, the noises of the city fill her ears: a paperboy shouts his rounds, a bus grinds to a stop and moves on, a fog arises with its own indefinable sound.
Walking toward the Strand while considering her feelings toward Ralph, Mary finds the city shaping her thoughts: her self-reflections “seemed even to take their color from the street she happened to be in. Thus the vision of humanity appeared to be in some way connected with Bloomsbury, and faded distinctly by the time she crossed the main road; then a belated organ-grinder in Holborn set her thoughts dancing incongruously”. Vision and hearing, both invoked in this passage, are the two senses most activated by the city in Woolf’s work. Mary’s interior life flows into her experience of the city with none of the predicted loss of individuality or trauma. The different locations she visits create the channels in which her thoughts circulate.
Unlike Mrs. Dalloway or the narrator in “Street-Haunting,” who must devise pretexts for their urban ventures, or Katharine, who needs the city to help her escape the claustrophobia of her life, Mary simply goes in to the city—and at the same time finds that the city comes into her.