...and more

in just a few days, i've gotten 70 clicks on these. pretty amazing. stay tuned.

re-branding abortion rights

i've tried a number of times to get this op-ed published, but since that's looking less and less likely, i'm finally going to post it on the interwebs. i still think it's timely. please share if so moved.

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In the wake of Dr. George Tiller’s murder, abortion rights are back in the public eye. Though his death saddens me, I hope reproductive rights groups will seize upon this opportunity to reinvigorate the movement. Because as an advertising professional, and perhaps even more as a 29-year-old woman, I can see nothing in more desperate need of a branding overhaul than the pro-choice cause. It’s dated. Off the radar. And out of touch with young people.

Like so many consumer products, reproductive rights groups must re-package and re-present themselves to stay relevant to that ever-elusive young target. That’s not to say they aren’t trying. Every major abortion rights group has online presence on Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube. They still have pockets of young activists, as seen recently on the campus of Notre Dame. Pro-choice groups are even getting provocative by sponsoring college events like the Vagina Monologues. And by piggybacking onto less controversial issues such as affordable birth control and comprehensive sex education, they’re aiming to broaden their support base.

But these efforts have done little to evoke the same passion in protecting reproductive rights that opposition groups have evoked in shutting them down. Anti-choicers have figured out how to connect on a deeply visceral level to galvanize young people towards restricting and eventually outlawing abortion. Through activist summer camps, political internships, and organized youth groups, a growing number of minds are being won over. In 2008, a Pew survey found that 22% of young adults support a total ban on abortion, compared with only 15% of their parents’ generation.

Unlike their parents’ generation, who remember the struggles surrounding Roe v. Wade, these so-called “millenials” have never lived in a time when abortion was illegal. So even if support for legal abortion in some or all circumstances still sits in the majority, the sentiment is latent at best.

On the other hand, anti-choicers see themselves as heroic crusaders, saving lives against the bastion of an immoral practice. George Tiller “was a mass murderer” who “reaped what he sowed,” said Randall Terry, founder of anti-choice Operation Rescue. "The thought of him leaving this life with blood on his hands for having killed so many thousands of children and not having been prepared to meet his maker is a dreadful, terrifying thought."

Yikes. How do you compete with a damning sentiment like that? You don’t.

Every movement needs a villain. The pro-lifers have theirs, and they’re well-funded and mobilized to fight it. Where’s the pro-choice villain? Something young women like me can rally against? Something to get us mad, and get us moving?

It may not be as obvious, but it’s just as potent. Our villain is hypocrisy. My generation can’t stand bullshit. In our young lives, we’ve seen an election stolen, a war started under false pretenses, and ridiculous cases of corporate greed. It’s hardened us. We like calling people’s bluffs. We take nothing at face value. And understanding how we think is the key to winning us over.

One of the most successful public service efforts of our lifetime is the anti-smoking truth® campaign. Its genius was not in getting moralistic about whether smoking was or wasn’t bad, but in bringing the tobacco industry and its underhanded lobbying, marketing, and pseudo-scientific research practices to light.

Reproductive rights groups have an even bigger opportunity to expose ugly truths about their supposedly morally-driven opposition. Pro-life organizations habitually spread unfounded or over-exaggerated health myths, claiming abortions contribute to breast cancer, psychological damage, and infertility. They set up “crisis pregnancy centers,” which use misleading and intimidating tactics, including agenda-driven movies, slideshows, and lectures, under the guise of legitimate health information. Worse yet, these pregnancy centers often receive state and federal funding.

NARAL Pro-Choice America reports that some of these crisis pregnancy centers do not have any medically trained or medically supervised personnel at all. And even in cases where centers are overseen by medical professionals, there are no regulations to ensure women receive complete and medically accurate information. According to the Pearson Foundation’s How to Start and Operate Your Own Pro-Life Outreach Crisis Pregnancy Center manual, staffers should “[b]e put off by nothing… Let nothing stop you. The stakes are life or death.” Said its author, Robert Pearson, in 1994, “[o]bviously, we’re fighting Satan… A killer, who in this case is the girl who wants to kill her baby, has no right to information that will help kill her baby.”

More women need to know about the underhanded tactics that threaten their reproductive health. Do they need to know the full picture, the ethically complex, medically accurate, and unbiased health facts as well? Of course. But they’ll never seek that information without a much more pointed motivation.

Here’s one way to point them. Go into any Planned Parenthood. Sit by a phone, regardless if it’s the most senior doctor’s or the lowliest intern’s. As a former volunteer, I can almost guarantee that right above that phone is a protocol for when a bomb threat is called in. Run a picture of that protocol with the headline, “Still think women’s rights aren’t under attack?” Even before the Tiller murder, the Guttmacher Institute reported that 82% of large abortion providers experience some kind of harrassment, vandalism, or threats, sometimes at staff members’ homes.

This kind of simple but poignant messaging gives young people a reason to give a damn, not only to save reproductive rights, but to shine a light on the hypocrisy of a movement whose extremists will kill in the name of “saving life.” Because if there’s anything my generation hates, it’s bullshit. And in the anti-choice camp, there’s plenty of it.

sex ed for kindergarteners

John McCain and Sarah Palin are pro-choice—at least when it comes to schools. They say that “parents should be able to decide the learning environment that is best for their child.”

But a recently released McCain ad lambasts Barack Obama’s achievements in comprehensive sex education, scoffing at the idea of “learning about sex before learning to read” and concluding that Obama is “wrong on education… wrong for your family.”

Excuse me, but shouldn’t parents be able to decide?

After all, every parent is a sexual being. But more than likely, their sexual activity didn’t begin with a marriage vow. Government data show that not only do 9 out of 10 people engage in premarital sex, but that the rate of premarital sex has been consistent for over 50 years. Even Sarah Palin can’t claim she saved herself for marriage; she gave birth to her eldest son only 8 months after eloping.

Parents understand that just as babies discover their fingers and toes, they also discover their genitals. They know that on every playground, toddlers are aware of the biological differences between boys and girls.

Age-appropriate sex ed helps shape healthy attitudes about gender roles, teach communication, and heighten capacity to build relationships. And as children progress into adolescence, they need complete, medically accurate information on the values of abstinence, the use of contraception, and the risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STI).

But even though only 10% of the nation’s school districts teach comprehensive sex ed, McCain wants to rob parents of that choice completely. Since the 1980s, McCain and his cronies have forced abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) programs on parents, students, and public schools, spending $1.5 billion in the process. Palin has echoed these sentiments, writing “The explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.”

Of course, we all know how well that turned out. Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is national news, and her boyfriend Levi Johnston had to shut down his Myspace page because it stated “I don’t want kids.” No matter how the McCain camp spins it, if Alaska’s school system had encouraged safer sex practices, Bristol and Levi might not be expecting one.

But if Bristol Palin isn’t evidence enough that abstinence-only doesn’t work, try a 2007 Health and Human Services study that says just that. Of the more than 700 federally funded AOUM programs, the evaluation looked at only four. These four programs were handpicked to show positive results—and still failed.

If McCain hopes to overturn Roe v. Wade, and remove a patient’s choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, then he needs to do more to ensure young people never have to face that choice. He needs to advocate real efforts to curb teen pregnancy and reduce the number of teens who have an STI (currently 1 in 4).

Instead, when a reporter asked McCain whether he thought contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV, he replied, after a long pause, “You’ve stumped me.”

And if McCain is stumped, then the choice for parents who want real sex education for their kids should be crystal clear.

rest in peace, sean taylor.

i've been very saddened today from the news of sean taylor's tragic homicide. i think some people may think i am overreacting. after all, sean taylor isn't someone i knew personally. he was just a football player. but, just as they said on tonight's sportscenter, the importance of the washington redskins to dc and its surrounding suburbs cannot be understated. and i can say firsthand that that is absolutely true.

i was at the last game sean taylor ever got to play. i'm glad that it was at home at fedex field. and i hope whoever brought what could have been a long, much more productive and extremely successful life to an end is eventually brought to justice.

more than anything, though, i hope sean taylor's death does not pass us in vain. i hope it serves as a wakeup call in how we look at violence and guns. jemele hill does a good job delineating her outrage in an espn article. but while she is justifiably outraged about race and violence, i wonder, when are we going to get serious about gun control in this country?

i understand that the gun lobby is a formidable force in this country. and i also understand that our founding fathers wanted americans to have the right to protect themselves. but while "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," i believe that we must ask ourselves, when are we fighting oppression, and when are we gunning down 24-year-old men in their sleep? when will we institute real reforms, which can be enforced state to state, in a singular, reliable fashion so that people don't fall through the cracks? and when are we finally going to say, no hunter or law-abiding person need own certain classifications of weapons?

i don't know what the answers to any of these questions are. but i hope that as they heal, sean taylor's family, and especially his father, a former chief of police, can become advocates for real change.

sean taylor, rest in peace.

more brilliance from thomas friedman.

i'm not going to post the whole editorial here, because times select is gone [ hooray! ]

however, i will say that thomas friedman is, once again, the voice of reason. it's not that what he's saying today is anything particularly new, but i do think he brings up some interesting points as far as globalization, terrorism, and travel are concerned. i'm interested to see what my experience coming back from london will be.

how to change iraq, by madeleine albright.

in today's washington post

How To Change Iraq
Bush Should Start By Admitting Fault
By Madeleine K. Albright
Thursday, September 6, 2007; Page A21


The threshold question in any war is: What are we fighting for? Our troops, especially, deserve a convincing answer.

In Iraq, the list of missions that were tried on but didn't fit includes: protection from weapons of mass destruction, creating a model democracy in the Arab world, punishing those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and stopping terrorists from catching the next plane to New York. The latest mission, linked to the "surge" of troops this year, was to give Iraqi leaders the security and maneuvering room needed to make stabilizing political arrangements -- which they have thus far shown little interest in doing.

A cynic might suggest that the military's real mission is to enable President Bush to continue denying that his invasion has evolved into disaster. A less jaded view might identify three goals: to prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for al-Qaeda, a client state of Iran or a spark that inflames regionwide war. These goals respond not to dangers that prompted the invasion but to those that resulted from it. Our troops are being asked to risk their lives to solve problems our civilian leaders created. The president is beseeching us to fear failure, but he has yet to explain how our military can succeed given Iraq's tangled politics and his administration's lack of credibility.

This disconnect between mission and capabilities should be at the center of debate as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker report on the war's status and congressional leaders prepare their fall strategies. Despite the hopes of many, this debate is unlikely to end the war soon; nor will it produce fresh support for our present dismal course. Although U.S. troop levels will surely start to come down, big decisions about whether and under what circumstances to complete the withdrawal seem certain to remain for the next president, when he or she takes office. Yet this should not preclude Democrats and Republicans from trying to agree on ways to minimize the damage before then.

According to the National Intelligence Estimate released last month, the recent modest but extremely hard-won military gains will mean little "unless there is a fundamental shift in the factors driving Iraqi political and security developments."

Given the depth of the sectarian divisions within Iraq, such a fundamental shift will not occur through Iraqi actions alone. Given America's lack of leverage, it will not result from our patrols, benchmarks, speeches or "surprise" presidential visits to Anbar province. That leaves coordinated international assistance as the only option.

The Balkans are at peace today through the joint efforts of the United States, the European Union and the United Nations -- all of which worked to help moderate leaders inside the region. A similar strategy should have been part of our Iraq policy from the outset but has never been seriously attempted.

Is such an initiative still viable? Perhaps. The United Nations has pledged to become more involved. Europe's new leaders -- led by Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown -- understand their region's stake in Iraq's future and seem willing to assist. The Saudi, Jordanian and Syrian governments all view Iraqi instability as a profound security threat. Turkish and Kurdish representatives recently signed an agreement to cooperate along their troubled border. Iran is the wildest of cards, but it would be unlikely to isolate itself from a broad international program aimed at reconciliation. If it does, it would only hand a political victory to us and to the many Iraqi leaders, Shiite and Sunni alike, who would prefer to minimize Iranian influence.

President Bush could do his part by admitting what the world knows -- that many prewar criticisms of the invasion were on target. Such an admission would be just the shock a serious diplomatic project would need. It would make it easier for European and Arab leaders to help, as their constituents are reluctant to bail out a president who still insists that he was right and they were wrong. Our troops face death every day; the least the president can do is face the truth.

A coordinated international effort could help Iraq by patrolling borders, aiding reconstruction, further training its army and police, and strengthening legislative and judicial institutions. It could also send a unified message to Iraq's sectarian leaders that a political power-sharing arrangement that recognizes majority rule and protects minority rights is the only solution and is also attainable.

If there is a chance to avoid deeper disaster in Iraq, it depends on a psychological transformation so people begin preparing to compete for power peacefully instead of plotting how to survive amid anarchy. The international community cannot ensure such a shift, but we can and should do more to encourage it.

The writer was secretary of state from 1997 to 2001. She is principal of theAlbright Group LLC.