Dear Friend and Reader,<\/p>\n
AMIDST THE POST-ELECTION OUTRAGE over Proposition 8 in California and decisions to discriminate against the LGBT community in Florida, Arizona and Arkansas, we neglected to mention the reproductive rights wins in South Dakota, Colorado and California: South Dakota struck down a state-wide abortion ban; Colorado refused to define a fertilized egg as a “person”; and California said “thanks, but no thanks” to both requiring parental notification for underage girls seeking abortions and<\/em>\u0412\u00a0to a 48-hour waiting period before the procedure.<\/p>\n The US is sticking together, with a unified decision to let women choose<\/em> to have children.<\/p>\n I discovered Jean Jacques Gaudel’s website<\/a> over the summer and was completely sucked in by his vibrant, surrealist paintings, his sculptures, book binding series and photographs. I don’t know much about him, other than he lives in Birmingham, Alabama and used to be an engineer, but I hope to one day have the opportunity to meet him and tell you more.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Revisiting his website months later, in a colder season and a different country, I found the above photograph from his Magic Books of Learning<\/em> series. All I know is the title, “Leda’s Abortion,” so I can’t elaborate on whose fetus this was: if it’s human or otherwise, but the image certainly evoked deep feelings and thoughts for me.<\/p>\n There seems to be a dissociation, for me anyway, from the physical reality of an abortion and the conceptual, political side of it. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fetus before, outside of a sonogram or that annoying anti-choice poster with the pink alien fetus sucking its thumb. The juxtaposition of the medical instruments, the scientific drawings, and the shriveled fetus in Gaudel’s piece is shocking to me.<\/p>\n I suppose we remove ourselves from this graphic level, not because it’s too personal, but because it’s too focused on the individual. When we concentrate on a graphic image, it’s easy to use that visceral reaction with our voting arm and forget about the meaning behind it. We make a choice for millions of women when we react to a photograph of one fetus, or of one woman who died from a back alley abortion. The saying that a picture is worth 1000 words is true, but we also use that as an excuse not to think about the details.<\/p>\n Anyway, that’s my short take on things: I’d love to hear your reactions, both on Gaudel’s work and on our relationship between the fetus and the politics.<\/p>\n Yours & truly, Dear Friend and Reader, AMIDST THE POST-ELECTION OUTRAGE over Proposition 8 in California and decisions to discriminate against the LGBT community in Florida, Arizona and Arkansas, we neglected to mention the reproductive rights wins in South Dakota, Colorado and California: South Dakota struck down a state-wide abortion ban; Colorado refused to define a fertilized egg … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[392],"tags":[480,36,52,117,1791],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nRachel Asher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"