Sarah Fister Gale's Open Salon Blog

I'm incorporating my ovaries as cities in Arizona

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:05:13 -0400

As many of you may have read recently (while gasping in shock), Arizona’s woman-hating Republican governor, Jan Brewer, signed into law a new “20 week ban” on abortions.

Why should you be shocked you ask, when so many other states have similar laws? Because, this law is the only one in the entire country that defines pregnancy as beginning two weeks before a woman actually conceives, on the first day of her last period. So in other words, before a woman even has a chance to get over the bloating, wash out her period panties, and pour herself enough chardonnay to consider having unprotected sex, in the eyes of ~~Satan~~ the governor of Arizona, she’s already pregnant.

This 20 week date is especially critical because it is the first point in a pregnancy when a doctor can identify the most serious birth defects through ultrasound. These ultrasounds may alert an eager young mother to the fact that her baby has Anencephaly, for example, and will be born with a fully functioning heart and lungs – but no brain; or Tay Sachs disease, in which that innocent child will develop painful seizures before it turns six months old, and will shortly become blind, deaf, paralyzed, and eventually die a painful terrifying death at the tender age of four.

Imagine being told your unborn baby has one of these horrible conditions, then a moment later being told you have until dinnertime to decide if you want to continue with the pregnancy… By starting the pregnancy clock on the first day of a woman’s last period as part of the 20-week ban on abortions, that’s exactly what this law does.

But, as with most poorly thought-through decisions, it does something else that could ultimately change the lives and fortunes of women across the state.

If this law insists that a woman, any woman, is pregnant two weeks before she conceives -- and inconceivably it does -- then every egg in our ovaries is by default, a person, at least in the eyes of Ms. Brewer and her kowtowing band of Arizonian legislators.

And if I am home to hundreds of thousands of ‘people’, then it seems only fair that I make their existence legitimate, and take responsibility for securing them the rights they so richly deserve. Which is why I am officially incorporating both of my ovaries as cities in the sunny state of Arizona.

Welcome to Ovaria (and West Ovaria)

These delightful new communities are bursting with opportunity. Admittedly, our square mileage is small, and infrastructure is limited to a single one-way road directly out of town -- don’t forget to turn your headlights on when you enter Fallopian Parkway. But despite these limitations, we boast a huge community of eager residents, anxiously awaiting the journeys that their newly defined life has in store for them.

While the census has yet to be taken, I estimate we have a combined population of 367,000, give or take a few hundred, which makes us substantially larger than Scottsdale, Tempe or Yuma.

And unlike our neighbors, who derive most of their income from tourism, corporate conferences, and plastic surgery for aging debutants, we rely almost solely on pharma production for our bread and butter. Both Ovaria and West Ovaria produce a steady supply of estrogen and progesterone, while a few smaller manufacturers dabble in testosterone. However, the boom times ended several years back, and the lack of job training among residents is reeking havoc on our current economy.

Despite the fact that the age of the average Ovarian is the mid-40s – they have all been here since before I was born after all – job experience is shockingly low, and jobless rates are staggering. I blame the public school system. Arizona’s educational administration invests so much time and funding into abstinence programs and terrorizing any child who looks remotely Hispanic, that they really fall short on the three Rs.

And while I wouldn’t technically call anyone in Ovaria homeless, quarters are cramped. Tucking 367,000 people into two small municipalities the size of a pair of cocktail olives is no small feat. And despite the fact that someone moves out about once a month, I anticipate that our numbers will hold steady for at least another decade.

As the mayor of these struggling young cities – that’s right, I’m the mayor, I won the elections by default as I am the only member of either town with a fully developed brain or the functioning fingers necessary to sign important municipal paperwork – I will immediately petition the governor of our fair state for unemployment funds, state grants for capital improvements, and student financial assistance for all. Because if the state of Arizona is going to go to the trouble of declaring the contents of my ovaries ‘people’ then they must also be willing to support these people for the rest of their tiny lives.

Granted, even with state aid, many of them will end up alone, floating down some sewer after being kicked out of town by a bloody mob – it’s become monthly tradition. And the rest will eventually shrivel up and die, right there in their own homes, when the estrogen and progesterone mills finally shut down.

But still, as citizens of the proud State of Arizona they have rights, and I as their mayor will fight for those rights.

Governor Brewer, you created these people. Your small-minded laws made it possible for Ovaria to exist, so what are you going to do to enable your new citizens to prosper?

And more importantly, how will you be addressing the needs of the billions of other young citizens who you’ve recently brought to personhood? Every woman in your state is the potential mayor of her own Ovaria (though they’ll have to choose another name).

Sure this may all sound ridiculous, and (thankfully) I don’t actually reside in the backward state of Arizona. But when leaders enact crazy laws to force people to bow to their will, the world quickly becomes just this absurd. I get what Ms. Brewer is trying to do. She’s anti-choice, and she’s twisting the law to make it as difficult as possible for women to make an already horrible decision. But in doing so, she turned my ovaries into metropoli.

Arizona, stop making asinine laws intended to crush our reproductive rights. It’s ugly, it’s stupid, and the poorly considered consequences of these actions could eventually bankrupt you all.

Planned Parenthood Changed My Life

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:03:44 -0400

When I was a child, if I needed a doctor I always went to the same guy. Dr. Horton was my pediatrician from the day I was born. He was an old man, tall and stern, and bald as an egg. He wore a white lab coat and steel rimmed glasses low on his nose, and he always smelled strongly of antiseptic and Vicks Vapor rub.

He was a nice enough doctor but he always made me a little uncomfortable. As a result, I never viewed him as a valuable source of healthcare information. He was the guy who stuck cotton swabs down my throat, and checked my spine for scoliosis -- not someone I would talk to about menstruation or how you catch a sexually transmitted disease.

So when I turned 18 and was heading off to college, it’s not surprising that I was woefully under-educated about my reproductive health. Except for a few embarrassing sex ed discussions in middle school, and a lot of inconsistent information from my peers, I was given few hard facts about the inner workings of my ladyparts, or what I needed to do to keep myself healthy and safe.

It didn’t seem all that important however. I was a young woman and reproductive health issues were pretty low on my list of things to worry about.

Then, about halfway through my freshman year at Madison, I decided I wanted to go on the pill. A lot of my friends used birth control pills and it seemed like a smart choice for a woman on the verge of adulthood. I was sexually active, and not at all interested in having children.

But I didn’t have a doctor in Madison, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask Dr. Horton for birth control pills. (I cringe even now when I picture that conversation). So I did what every normal teen-aged girl does when she wants answers. I asked my friends what I should do.

Every one of them gave me the same answer: Go to Planned Parenthood. I quickly learned that for a young woman in a new city with no established medical network, Planned Parenthood could always be counted on to offer friendly affordable healthcare services.

So I called them up.

In order to get a prescription for birth control pills, you need to have a full gynecological check up – something I’d never had done before. So I was understandably nervous when I arrived for my appointment the following week. But the Planned Parenthood office in Madison immediately put me at ease. It was a small building on Mifflin Street, just down the block from the co-op where we bought fresh fruit, and a house that I would later rent with five other girls my sophomore year.

Unlike my pediatrician’s stark office with its slippery plastic couches and glaring florescent lights, this office was warm, and comfortable, and friendly. In place of the outdated Highlights magazines, were fitness publications and colorful pamphlets with information on every woman’s health issue I might want answers about – and several I’d never even heard of.

When I was called to my appointment, the doctor I met was equally warm and friendly. She spoke to me in an easy fashion. There was no judgment about my sexual choices or demands to know why I wanted birth control. Instead she gave me answers. While she performed my first and surprisingly not mortifying gynecological exam, she talked to me about what she was doing and why it was so important.

That single appointment changed the way I thought about my body and my role in keeping myself healthy. She educated me for the first time about why I needed to get an annual pap smear – it is the best way to catch cervical cancer, which affects an estimated 500,000 women every year.

According to the American Cancer Society, both the incidence and deaths from cervical cancer have declined markedly over the last several decade due to increased Pap test screening.

She also taught me how to do a proper self breast exam – don’t forget your arm pits – and explained how this simple step could help me catch breast cancer early enough to wipe it out. This was vital information considering breast cancer effects one out of every woman in the US at some point in their lives.

She also talked to me about safe sex, and STDs, and what I needed to be thinking about as a sexually active woman to keep myself healthy and to make sure I was in control of my own reproductive choices.

When I went to pay the nominal fee for that valuable service, I found a glass jar full of colorful condoms sitting on the counter. “Take a handful,” the woman behind the desk encouraged me. Again, there was no judgment or leering looks, because she was simply one more person on the Planned Parenthood staff who wanted me, and every other woman who came through their doors, to have the tools and information we needed to make healthy choices.

I left that appointment feeling empowered, because that Planned Parenthood doctor had taken the time to arm me with information that would become the foundation for my own journey of reproductive health.

I continued to go back to Planned Parenthood for years -- for the cancer screenings, for birth control pills, and for advice. Even after college, I drove 45 minutes out of my way to see doctors at the Planned Parenthood office in Chicago. Not because there were no gynecologists in my neighborhood, but because I trusted this institution to guide me, and educate me, and provide me with the care and information I needed to make the best choices for my body and for my life.

It’s been 25 years since that first appointment and I’m happy to report that I’ve never developed cervical cancer or found a lump in my breast. But I know that if some day I do end up with one of these terrible diseases, I’ll find it early because of what Planned Parenthood taught me.

In a time when people can barely afford healthcare, it’s shocking that Republicans would focus so much of their time, attention and venom on doing away with an organization that has provided low cost cancer screenings and healthcare information to young women for decades.

Mitt Romney proudly declared last week that he’d “get rid of” Planned Parenthood if he becomes president. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have made similarly aggressive statements.

I suppose it shouldn’t be astounding that in the midst of the current Republican war on women, its leaders would be determined to destroy an organization that educates and empowers young women. Still it is deeply discouraging, particularly as I think about my daughter and her future.

Planned Parenthood did more than give me birth control. It gave me knowledge, and that knowledge gave me the power to be healthy, and strong, and confidant that the choices I make for my body are the right ones for me. And I was not alone.

Planned Parenthood has become a vital resource for young women trying to navigate the complex world of adulthood and their own sexual identify. To destroy it would put millions of these women at risk.

I like to think that when my daughter grows up she will come to me for information about sex and her reproductive health, but if she is like most girls, she probably won’t want to talk to her mother about sexually transmitted diseases or cervical screenings. So I hope that when she’s ready to get that information, Planned Parenthood will still be around. To do for her what it did for me.

How dare the Republican Party try to take that away from her and from every other young woman who deserves the right to affordable reproductive health care? You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

The right wing found its soul mate -- Pakistan

Thu, 8 Mar 2012 20:03:11 -0500

This morning after driving my son to school I turned on a news radio program in the middle of a story.

“…The letter stated that ‘LGBT rights are not human rights’, and they have ‘nothing to do with fundamental human rights,’” the newscaster read. “The letter further denounces same-sex relationships as ‘abnormal sexual behavior.’”

As I heard this latest anti-gay outcry, I thought, ‘here we go again. Another conservative, right-wing politician spewing hate speech against lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered people.’

But I was wrong. It turned out that while the rhetoric was eerily similar to the Republican Party’s -- and Kirk Cameron’s -- stance on gay rights, the quote was in fact written by Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Pakistan, speaking on behalf of 57 Islamic nations, declared its opposition to a UN Human Rights Council panel on ending discrimination and violence against people based on their gender identity or sexual orientation. In other words these countries were opposed to taking part in any effort to end violence and bigotry against an entire class of people because they don’t like the sexual choices those people make.

Sound familiar? It should, because it’s nearly identical to the anti-gay hate speech that has been churned out by Republicans and their right wing supporters for years. And some surprising research shows that the Republican party’s war on LGBT people is striking in it’s alignment with Pakistani values and Sharia law.

The Republican Party in Texas actually states in its 2010 State Republican Platform, “We believe that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases.” It goes on to insist that “homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God.”

In frighteningly similar language, Pakistani representative Saeed Sarwar shared a nearly identical opinion at the UN convention in Geneva. He argued that "licentious behavior promoted under the so-called concept of sexual orientation is against the fundamental teachings of various religions, including Islam,” and thus “legitimizing homosexuality and other personal sexual behaviors in the name of sexual orientation is unacceptable."

It's as if Pakistan and the Republicans are reading off the same cue card.

The Montana branch of the Republican Party nestles even closer to Islamic law and the values upheld by the Pakistani government. Homosexuality is illegal in Pakistan, and according to the Montana Republican Party it should be in Montana as well. According to the Party platform adopted in June 2010, Montana's members “support the clear will of the people of Montana,” to “keep homosexual acts illegal.”

Both Montana and Pakistan also have similarly archaic laws criminalizing sodomy, and while Texas struck down its anti-sodomy law in 2003, the Texas Republican Party thinks it should be reinstated. (And I quote): “We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.”

Even in the notoriously open-minded state of California, the Republican Party believes that “public policy and education should not be exploited to present or teach homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.” The California faction of the Republican Party also opposes same-sex partner benefits, child custody and adoption – all ideas that wouldn’t go over well in Pakistan either.

And apparently it's not enough for them to just believe in these hateful homophobic ideals. Republicans have been hell bent lately on using every public platform they can find to gleefully demean, degrade, and encourage hate and bigotry against gay people, as well as fighting any policy or mindset that might protect their rights and safety – much like those Islamic leaders who stormed out of the recent UN meeting.

And the similarities go on.

Rick Santorum righteously declared last summer that “gay marriage is going to have a devastating impact on our children, it's going to have a devastating impact on families, and it's going to have a profound impact on religious liberties."

In a similar statement, Pakistani leaders arguing against a UN measure advocating global gay rights, insisted the resolution, “directly contradicts the tenets of Islam and other religions," and its approval would be "a direct insult to the 1.2 billion Muslims around the world."

And last summer, when the US embassy in Islamabad held a meeting in support of gay rights, the Pakistani political group Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), protested the event, saying it was "the worst social and cultural terrorism against Pakistan."

Perhaps JI borrowed an old press release from Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern (R) who on more than one occasion has publically declared that homosexuality is “the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism.”

When I hear news stories about the Pakistani government defending hate crimes and promoting archaic laws, I’m saddened but not surprised. These are after all the same people who bring us burqas, and acid burning, and stoning as a punishment for adultery.

But seeing the values of the country that gave sanctuary to Osama Bin Laden reflected in the words of one of our country’s most powerful political parties is terrifying. The Republican Party used to stand for small government and fiscal responsibility, but now its platform is built atop a pile of religious zealotry, anti-women rhetoric, and abhorrence of all those who hold differing opinions or lifestyle.

Hatred is not a family value -- at least not in the United States. So I say this to every Republican Party supporter and right wing whack job who’s managed to read this far without declaring a jihad on my head -- if you want to keep spewing your vitriolic anti-gay anti-women rhetoric, take it to Pakistan, and maybe you will finally find a culture where your value system fits in.

Why Rick Santorum would have killed my daughter

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:02:02 -0500

Next month, my daughter Ella will turn 11-years-old. She’s a beautiful girl, with blond hair and green eyes. She’s an amazing artist, a brilliant writer, and she can do the splits without even warming up.

And if I hadn’t had an amniocentesis, she would have died the day she was born.

Just over 11 years ago, I received a call from my obstetrician’s assistant to let me know that there was an anomaly in my recent blood test. “It’s probably just a testing error,” she assured me.

But when I returned the following week to have the blood test redone, the anomaly showed up again. There was a foreign antibody in my blood stream that shouldn’t have been there. I was six months pregnant, and up to that point my pregnancy had been completely normal.

Rather than turning to my local politician for prenatal advice, I followed the guidance of my obstetrician, who sent me to a perinatologist, who recommended I have an amniocentesis. Because he had a medical degree and years of experience treating pregnant women, I followed his recommendation.

That day, he stuck an alarmingly long needle directly into my growing belly to sample the amniotic fluid around my baby. The results weren’t good. She had Rh negative disease.

Rh negative disease occurs when a mother has a negative blood type and a baby has a positive blood type. My negative blood perceived Ella’s positive blood as a foreign body that it needed to destroy. And that’s what it was doing. Every day, little by little, my body was wiping out every one of her red blood cells.

Before the 1960s, Rh negative disease was responsible for the deaths of thousands of babies whose mothers, like me, had negative blood. They usually carried their babies to term and gave birth to them, only to have them die or suffer extreme brain damage as a result of the anemia and jaundice that occurs with this illness.

In the 60s, a drug called RhoGAM was approved by the FDA to prevent this disease, and it has since saved hundreds of thousands of lives. In almost every case when it is administered in time it is effective. But in my case, it wasn’t.

Amniocentesis is the recommended test to diagnose this disease, and it enables doctors to define a course of action to treat and monitor these babies for the best possible medical outcome. Had I not had that amniocentesis I likely would not have discovered that she had this illness. I would have carried her to term, given birth to her, and watched her die in my arms.

Instead, thanks to the amniocentesis, my doctor tracked her progress relentlessly. Every week after that I had another (expensive) prenatal screening test, called a serial ultrasound, through which he was able to monitor the anemia that grew steadily worse as more of her blood cells were destroyed -- and track the development of her lungs so that she could be delivered at the best possible moment for her safety. The day he saw that her lungs could function on their own, he delivered her.

Ella was born four weeks premature, a tiny five-pound bag of bones, with bright yellow hair and eerily orange skin from the jaundice. Within hours of her birth she was given a full blood transfusion – they replaced every single drop of her damaged blood with new blood that would save her life. Then she spent the next five days in the NICU with cotton blinders taped over her eyes and five bilirubin lights shining on her to reduce the jaundice, while my husband and I took turns sitting at her side round the clock, watching her struggle to survive.

For months after she came home, she had to have weekly blood tests to make sure the anemia was in control. They had to draw the blood from her heel because her fingers were too tiny to prick. Finally, at three months her own defenses kicked in and she started producing her own red blood cells.

Happily, she made a full recovery and has no lingering effects from the disease. And it’s all thanks to that one medical test.

If Rick Santorum had his way, I wouldn’t have been able to get that test, and she most likely would have died. Because according to him, tests that give parents vital information about the health of their unborn children are morally wrong. Though he has no medical training, and no business commenting on the medical decisions that women and their doctors make, he argues that such tests shouldn’t be provided, or that employers at least should be allowed to opt out of paying for them on “moral grounds.”

Eleven years ago, my husband and I had two kids and a mortgage, and like most young families we didn’t have $2,000 to pay for a test that my husband’s employer might object to on moral grounds.

So, while Mr. Santorum may think that his blowhard opinions about when and where women should be allowed to have medical tests is righteous, I say it’s ignorance.

In the Catholic church where I was raised, pride, arrogance and an overinflated sense of oneself were considered sins. But in Rick Santorum’s world they are virtues, and they make up the foundation from which he proclaims how other people should live their lives.

When I read stories in the news about countries where women are prevented access to birth control, or the freedom to work, or the right to make choices about their bodies and their lives, I wonder how a leadership with such crazy ideals could ever gain power. But as I look at what’s happening in the debates leading up to this presidential election in our own country, it has become chillingly evident.

As a nation, we are at the precipice of a slippery slope where men in power are arguing about how to take basic rights away from women. I shudder to think what lays at the bottom of that slope, but if Rick Santorum has his way we will all soon find out.

I quit crying, when my dead friend asked me nicely to stop

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:08:00 -0400

When I was 22-years-old, my friend Caroline was killed. It was five o’clock in the afternoon on a sunny street in San Diego. She was driving home from work and a drunk tow-truck driver blew a red light and slammed into the driver’s side door of her car. She died instantly.

A few months later, she returned to me, to share a message from the beyond.

I met Caroline in college, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was a tiny happy girl, who wore homemade tie-dyed t-shirts, didn’t eat meat, and refused to use electric blankets, even on the coldest Wisconsin nights, because she thought they “put negative energy into the world.”

Caroline had attended an alternative high school in New York where she was encouraged to follow her heart and work at her own pace, so she could never figure out why all of her college professors insisted she turn assignments in on time. “I didn’t feel ready to finish it,” she would tell me in frustration when I asked her why she neglected to turn something in. Her professors were unimpressed but I thought it was charming.

My junior year in college, Caroline and I decided on the spur of the moment, to spend winter break driving to New Mexico to see the sights and look at grad schools. We hiked in state parks, wore leather moccasins, and ate the best Mexican food in the world at tiny road side stands.

Then in our last year of college, while most of us spent our afternoons drinking pints of beer and blowing off our homework, she spent a semester abroad in Colombia where she studied urban planning in emerging markets. She wasn’t afraid of the political unrest or the drug trafficking that pervaded every news story about the country at that time. She just wanted to experience the world.

When it was time for her to come home, I remember her telling me a story of how she got into a screaming match with an armed Colombian official who claimed her visa was out of order and wouldn’t let her leave the country. She slammed her tiny American hand down on the table in front of him and demanded that her let her by or she would call the American consulate. Miraculously, instead of throwing her in jail he let her pass.

She laughed about the experience, but it made me shiver. She could have been hurt or worse, I thought.

A year later she was dead. I remember thinking how ironic it was, that after surviving on her own in one of the most dangerous countries in the world, she was killed in California, driving home from a boring job in a municipal city planning office, minding her own business.

The week she was killed, my roommate Jennifer and I were planning a road trip to go see her in California. When we got the call that she had been killed I didn’t believe it. How could she be dead when we had plans to see her just a few days later? I couldn’t make sense of it.

I went to work that day, as a waitress at California Pizza Kitchen. Still in a daze, unfamiliar with how one reacts when their 22-year-old friend is suddenly dead, I didn’t know what else to do.

My manager found me an hour later, curled in a ball under the sink in the employee bathroom sobbing into my canvas apron. That was the first time I cried about Caroline, but it wouldn’t be the last. I told him what had happened and he took me by the hand, walked me home, and told me to take as much time as I needed.

The next day Jennifer, two other friends, and I piled into my car and drove to Georgia where her parents now lived, to attend Caroline’s funeral.

“We should be here for her wedding,” I thought as we gathered at the somber event. I remember watching her mother, who spoke little English, looking helpless and terrified as we filed past her trying to think of something to say that might ease her sorrow. I told her parents stories about our days in New Mexico, and the stories she had told me on that trip about her youth which made them smile. Her father saw me as a link to his lost daughter, and when it was time for us to leave, he held my hand so tightly as though he didn’t want me to go.

I cried for days; all through the funeral, and those nights in the cheap motel where my friends and I slept two to a bed. Then for months after we returned, I would break into sobs, often late at night while sharing drinks at a bar, or sitting home alone with sad music playing in the background. Anything that reminded me of her – a song, a story, a reference to college, or Colombia or butterflies -- they all made me cry. I felt the loss of Caroline like it was a hole in my chest and nothing would ever fill it back up.

One night, after a very public, bleary crying jag in front of a group of relative strangers at the bar where I had recently gotten a job, I went home early feeling hollow and drained. Falling into a heavy sleep I had a dream about college. A large group of my friends were sitting together around a vast oak table in a sunny lodge, laughing and drinking beer and telling stories.

Then I looked over their heads and realized Caroline was there watching me. She wasn’t a part of the dream. It was as if the dream was a movie screen and she was standing just outside of it. She reached toward me, her hand passing through the bodies of the people sitting beside me. She took my hand and pulled me away from the table and to her side.

“Sarah,” she said to me. “You’ve got to stop crying. It’s all right. I’m okay. And you need to let me go.”

Then I woke up.

That was 21 years ago and I still remember her face and those words as vividly as if it had happened last night.

I know that a lot of people dream about the people they’ve lost, and perhaps that is all this was. But I believe it wasn’t just a dream. I believe that Caroline came to me. That she saw my grief and she wanted it to stop.

I also believe what she said was true -- that she is okay, wherever she is. And while I still occasionally get teary when I think of who she might have become, I stopped crying about her after that night. I felt peace for the first time over her death and I knew I had to let her go.

Besides, she came all that way to see me, so I figured it was the least that I could do.