More Anticpation

Now, I have something to look forward to after the new Byatt is published in May. Margaret Atwood's new book is coming out in September (unless they move the publication date).

Here's some scoop I found out, (thanks Fantastic Fiction)

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

"An epic of biblical proportions, The Year of the Flood is a feast of imagination and a journey to the end of the world. Adam One is the leader of the God's Gardeners, a religious group devoted to living under the command of the natural world. They wear beige cloth-sacks, cultivate mushrooms, harvest honey and curse each other by shouting: Pig-Eater! Their community is only tolerated by the CorpSeCorps, the ruling power, because they are not perceived as threatening. But, this is a world where gene-splicing is the norm; where lions and lambs have become Liobams and pigs have human DNA. The times, and species, are changing at a rapid rate, and with loyalites as thin as environmental stability, the future is a dangerous place. And, if the Waterless Flood does indeed arrive, as predicted by the Gardeners, will there even be a future to contemplate? Ren is a trapeze dancer at Scales and Tails, and can work a plank just as well. After a rip in her biofilm she is placed in solitary confinement until they can guarantee she is without disease. Her story is one part of our gateway into this uniquely constructed world. The other is Toby, an ex-counter-girl at SecretBurger ('Because we all love a Secret'), a natural cynic and source of extensive homeopathic knowledge; she knows her aminatas from her puffballs. Their stories weave beneath the holy teachings and saintly-songs of Adam One to create a truly apocalyptic vision, a world that harnesses Atwood's wit, dystopic imagination and sharp insight. The result is a collective blast of a novel and one that will remain with you until the Waterless Flood comes."

I love Atwood's novel. If you haven't read anything by her, I would recommend starting with The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake. Check her out when you get some time.

Welcome to Gilead....

At first I wasn't going to write about this until a friend of mine made a Facebook post with her own personal take. Let's just say my blood curdled when I was checking the news on CNN and came across this interesting headline: "Plan calls Pill, IUD abortions." It had the little camera icon next to it, which means that it was a video. Usually, I don't watch their videos because you have to let them load and sit through some cheesy commercial, however, with a headline like that, how could I possibly pass up some fervent discussion I knew was going to stem from this already controversial headline and amazingly interesting (and quite horrifying possible) subject at hand.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/08/01/todd.defining.abortion.cnn

What? Are you serious? So supposedly in some final act of Republican hoo-haa, the Bush administration is trying to push some bill/act through Congress that would question the scientific stances on birth--conception or implantation? To back up my already growing astonishment, I raked some other news sources and came across this article by The Wall Street Journal (thanks Callan).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121745387879898315.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

After just talking to Fink about how her Catholic college doesn't cover birth control, I realized that she could potentially be buying abortions under the new regime if this legislation is being passed. Yet again, I recall conversations in Scholars', of course all in Stave's classes, about abortion and what women go through to get them. I mean, do we really want to start having hanger-wire abortions and coke-a-cola douches again? Hell no. I still am just incredibly shocked by the hubris of man, thinking that he has the right to tell a woman what she can do with her body. Really.

All of this for me is just foreshadowing many conversations to come in my 1033 class. I've already printed out several articles, and I can't wait to start presenting some of this information to students to start getting them all riled up about personal and political issues. Of course, as the title of this blog alludes to, this is nothing more than a Atwood's dystopia coming to life before our very eyes. She warned us all, and unfortunately, a lot of us aren't taking her seriously.

The WSJ articles states, "A draft regulation, still being revised and debated, treats most birth-control pills and intrauterine devices as abortion because they can work by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. The regulation considers that destroying 'the life of a human being.'" ... The article goes on a bit later, "If the draft regulation were to prompt some insurance companies to drop coverage for prescription birth control, 'that would be fantastic,' said Tom McClusky, a strategist with the conservative Family Research Council." OMG!? Are you serious? (I must hand it back over to Callan who ingeniously in her response to this posted a picture of the Duggar family, asking the question, "Is this what the American family should be like?" It wasn't framed that way, but it was along the lines of, is this what's going to happen without birth control. Of course, I don't think it would because we would still have under the counter abortions and new, ingenuous ways of aborting.)

So of course my own personal response to this issue is to want to go out and protest any possibility of this happening in our country. However, I realize that I'm probably part of a growing minority when it comes to this issues. Trying not be defeatist and wanting to flee America is not going to change the fact that continually this country is moving slowly towards fundamentalism. Sure, we haven't started bombing each other, segregating the nation, and taking away women's bank accounts, but with the way the environments keeps deteriorating, the economy weakens, and religious indoctrination continues...I just don't see any other possibility for this country. I mean I remember being in Ecofem and talking about the wars that America is going to be fighting 50 years from now over water. I mean I just can't handle it. Why do we have to impose religious beliefs, fuck even scientinfic beliefs onto others. I don't remember there being all of this hoo-haa when Lamarck (I think that's his name) was fucking up the agricultural life of Russia. Sorry for the mini-rant.

So what can we do? Callan says we should wish that Stevens doesn't drop dead and that Obama wins so that he can put more Democrats on the bench, but is that all we can do? No. We have to continue to educate others and show that having an abortion is not evil. Abortion is an option, and let's face it, sometimes it can be the best option. Should we keep bring babies into a world that would rather rip itself apart than live in harmony? Why is it that people feel the need to have their own biological offspring, is it some biological imperative or is it a hegemony that we have already bought into for so long we can see our way out of it?