Month: July 2009

burned on the Fourth of July

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The good news about the Fourth of July is that, as I did last year, I made another delicious cherry pie and shared it with my friends. I’m stocking up on fresh sour cherries at the farmers’ market while they’re in season; most of them are going into the freezer, but a goodly number are going into things we can eat right away. Being, you know, from the north and all, I grew up on cherry pie and am more than happy to bake pies myself just so I can have my favorite dessert whenever I want. This year, I used Gourmet‘s recipe and didn’t bother to make a lattice top as I did last year with the Bon Appétit version. (Both can be found on Tastebook or Epicurious; I prefer Tastebook but not every likes to create a login in order to search.) So, cherry pie, that was good.

The bad news about the Fourth of July is that I went to the College Park fireworks on the University of Maryland’s campus and got hot ash in my eye. We had already moved our blankets farther away from the barrier because a flaming piece of debris caught our bag on fire after nearly landing on my partner’s upturned face. (Not that we were particularly close to start, as I don’t really enjoy fireworks that much; I’m with the eight year old who walked by and said, ‘Mommy, that sounds like guns!’) Anyway, when the ash blew into my eye I poured half my water bottle over my face to try to flush it, but it was still burning and stinging so we went to the paramedics (or EMTs, whichever are the firefighter ambulances rather than the hospital ambulances). A very nice firefighter named Lauren and an older guy whose name I didn’t catch flushed my eye with the official eye-flushing stuff and it went from burning to just feeling like I’d gotten a stick in my eye. Once home—at this point we left, as you might imagine I wasn’t in the most nationalistic of moods anymore—I called our medical advice nurse and she told me that I would be fine since I didn’t have either searing pain or loss of vision, but just to be safe I should stand in the shower and let the water run into my eye while blinking for five minutes. Five minutes is a crazy long time to have water running over your eyeball; I managed two. The first minute I was distracted by the burning in my previously non-flushed eye, which was parched from the smoke at the fireworks and the chlorine at the pool earlier. After that, it was just a matter of white-knuckling it through the creepy feeling for as long as possible, which wasn’t very long in my case.

Happily, my fear that I would wake up the next day not able to see did not come to pass. I can see, and my eye feels no worse than when a twig of a low-bridge town tree gets me in the eye in the dark. (You would think glasses would provide a tad more protection, but apparently not.) However, attending local fireworks displays will now join driving on the Garden State in the category of Never Doing That Again As Long As I Live So Help Me God.

burned on the Fourth of July

Freedom (of Choice) Day

girl,

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Webster decision, in which the Supreme Court allowed states to legislate restrictions to women’s access to abortion. Prior to Webster, it was believed that Roe prohibited such laws. While Casey was the later decision wherein the Supreme Court began the practice of evaluating the content of such restrictions—24 hour waiting periods, parental consent laws, mandatory viewing of videos or reading of pamphlets—it was really Webster that started it all.

Now, twenty years later, we live in a country where many states do not make any provision for abortions in the third trimester. We live in a country where old doctors go to work in bullet-proof vests, young doctors are able to decline to learn these surgical procedures, and some medical schools refuse to teach them at all. We have created a situation where couples who learn their very much wanted baby has a terminal illness must not only make a terribly difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy, but must then fly halfway across the country in order to see a doctor who is legally able to help them.

It’s hard to believe we’ve been dealing with this nonsense for twenty years. Twenty years of making it harder and harder for poor women, young women, and women farther along in their pregnancies to get access to medical care. Twenty years of plastic fetuses and blocking of clinics. Twenty years of terrorist bombings and shootings of doctors. Twenty years: two decades.

Let’s not let this go on for another twenty years. Donate to The George Tiller Memorial Fund, to help women facing ‘extreme obstacles’ to abortion, or donate generally to the National Network of Abortion Funds to help women all across the country to pay for abortions. Donate to your local Planned Parenthood, to help provide abortion, contraceptive, and general reproductive health services primarily to young and poor women. Or, donate to the Center for Reproductive Rights to help fund national and international legal actions to protect women’s reproductive rights. Finally, take a minute to help ensure that when health care reform happens, women’s reproductive rights and ability to access health care are protected.

Together we can make abortion what it should be, for our daughters and sisters and granddaughters and friends: a private medical decision between a woman—of any age or income—and her doctor. When needed, and without shame.

Freedom (of Choice) Day