Part-Time Pundit

The Right to Choose: Legalize Homebirth Midwives in Illinois

Senate Bill 385 is currently before the Illinois General Assembly. This bill directs the state to create a professional license for midwives to attend homebirths. Our current laws allow a woman to give birth at home, but make it illegal for midwives to attend those births. This essentially takes away a woman’s right to choose where she will birth her baby. Women should not only be allowed to but be supported in working with their bodies during birth. Illinois is one of the few states in our country that has outlawed qualified, licensed midwives who wish to perform this service.

I am familiar with this topic because my wife had a homebirth with our first son, Michael. My wife was quite adamant about having our child at home, and I wanted her have the birth any way she wanted. The medical literature shows that homebirth is a safe alternative for low-risk pregnancies, so my only concern was that I was not to be the one to catch.

My wife knew several midwives in the area who, despite the law, provide homebirths for women. Going to the meetings to prepare for the birth was an interesting experience. They were held in secret with instructions on confidentiality. The meetings seemed to me more like trying to get an underground abortion before Roe than an empowering and legitimate alternative to hospital childbirth.

The midwife made my wife feel comfortable throughout her pregnancy, and unlike the cold, clinical method of treating “patients”, the midwife empathized with my wife and treated her with respect. She worked with us to find the best way to accomplish what my wife wanted to do. We combined the homebirth meetings with classes in the Bradley method of natural childbirth (which I highly recommend even for women who choose a hospital birth). The result was the “wonderful” (my wife’s word) birth of our son that was joyous for both of us.

My wife went into labor around noon on January 7th. Even though she was having contractions she remained remarkably relaxed and followed the signals from her body as to what position she should be in. She labored briefly in a birthing pool, and ate and drank when she felt like it. She was so relaxed that neither the midwife nor I could sometimes tell when she was having contractions as she entered the transitional stage of labor. For someone with a pretty low tolerance for pain, she managed her contractions so well that she didn’t ever really appear to be in pain. She insists now that her relaxation and positions were the two reasons she never felt overwhelmed or in great pain during her labor.

The impact of stress on the body is a well-studied problem. Stress during childbirth is even more troublesome. My wife insists that because she was at home she was truly free to labor the way she was most comfortable and believes if people had been trying to interfere with what she wanted to do (she ended up wanting things very quiet during her labor) that she would not have been able to relax and would have been in much greater pain. Laboring in a hospital, for her, would have been very stressful and made the childbirth experience potentially more prone to complications.

This potential of unforeseen complications happened to my wife. After several hours of pushing, she failed to progress. Her body was fatigued and the midwife suggested she be taken to the hospital. So I drove her to the hospital where she received a C-section, and both mother and baby were fine. My wife says now that when we left for the hospital and she became stressed, she was then in “real pain.” Having a homebirth isn’t a license to be stupid. If problems develop, transporting the mother to a hospital is not a difficult operation.

One of the main objections to childbirth is a question of safety. No one is suggesting that untrained people simply do nothing during labor and blindly hope everything will go fine. Licensed midwives can be well-trained to identify problems early and respond appropriately.

My wife’s birth experience was a joyous and life-changing event. Even though we ended up having to go to the hospital, she is very pleased with laboring at home. In an era when a woman’s autonomy over her own body is considered a foundational right, it is unfathomable that the government deny her this truly empowering childbirth option.

The Illinois General Assembly should pass SB 385 so that women in Illinois can choose to have homebirth as a safe and available option. Homebirth is not for every mother, but for those who want to have one, they should have the right to make that choice.

March 29th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Illinois, Politics | 2 comments

A Constitutionally Protected Right to Market Pornography to Children?

A federal district judge has recently ruled that the Children’s Online Protection Act is an unconstitutional suppression of free speech. The law requires porn site operators to verify that patrons are 18 years old before giving them access to pornography. The lawsuit, brought by the ACLU on behalf of several sexual health sites and salon.com, states that this is a burdensome requirement and has a chilling effect on free speech. This position is absurd.

The law has been in effect now for 9 years. There is a clear track record to how the law is applied and to what content it applies to. If the law was signed 9 days ago, one could make a claim about a potential problem. However, after 9 years there have been apparently no cases in which a legitimate sexual health site has been prosecuted or that other speech has been curtailed.

More importantly, this law requires no change to the content of these websites. People remain as free before and after this law to peddle pornography. The law is only a regulatory requirement on how the content is accessed not on what content can be produced. It is a rather silly argument that sexual health sites would be blocked when they contain similar content as most comprehensive sexual education classes in public schools taught to 7th graders.

There is no apparent evidence that any sexual health site has been shut down because of this law. Even more apparent is that salon.com (a news and commentary site) has never been targeted by this law. It says something that salon.com is concerned about an on-line porn law, and I’m not sure it’s the message they want to convey. Apparently politically pornography is not limited to Rush Limbaugh anymore.

The ACLU, apparently, agrees that there is a legitimate interest in keeping minors from pornography. They simply argue it would be a better policy to have parents install internet filters on their computer. This would help if parents controlled every computer a child might access.

Considering that a majority of home computers on the internet don’t even have anti-virus installed, however, means that likely parents, as a rule, aren’t technically proficient to install and maintain these filters, much less keep their technically-savvy children from bypassing those filters. They do make a good point that parents should be responsible for what children see online, but that point should be made to the Legislature not the Judiciary.

The argument that the law is burdensome on websites is simply false. After a one-time installation of the software and arranging a credit-card verification system (that would likely have to be in place anyway considering most porn sites are in the business of making money), there is next to no maintenance on such software. The burden is on the consumer to enter their information. That burden is about 30 seconds. It is hard to see what the entire weight of the US Constitution needs to be brought to bear to save internet chat room perverts 30 seconds in getting to their porno.

The most dangerous thing about this lawsuit and those like it, is that it is an obvious usurpation of the Legislature. By taking this case to court there are only two parties who get to influence the outcome, one solitary lobbying group (the ACLU) and a government lawyer who is accountable to no voter. The ACLU could have lobbied Congress to change the law, they have not. Since the argument isn’t over the right of children to access porn, but for regulation on how a website distributes content, it is obviously a political question that has no place in the courts. No one seems to be arguing that children have an absolute right to pornography; it is simply the means by which their viewing can be restricted.

The constant running to a court to change democratically passed laws indicates contempt for the voters of this nation. Yet again, the ACLU has created another issue in which the voters cannot be trusted. The issue of how children should be restricted from access to pornography could easily be solved in the legislature, apparently voters and legislators can’t be trusted to act appropriately. So much for freedom.

After 9 years of this law being in place, there is no reason to strike it down for “chilling” free speech that is in no way regulated by this law. There is no legitimate fear that sexual health information will be restricted. There is certainly no fear that political pornographers will be taken offline. This is a brazen attempt by the ACLU to end-run the legislative process and the will of the voters to impose values on America that Americans obviously don’t want.

March 22nd, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, Freedom of Speech, Law / Legal Issues, Politics, StoptheACLU | 6 comments

Column: Sex Out Loud - Celebrating Tragedy as Triumph

The following appeared as a guest column in today’s Daily Illini:

Sexuality, by its very nature, is a vulnerable thing. It involves letting someone share the deepest parts of one’s body, heart, and soul. It has pride of place as an expression of romantic love. In its natural form, there is no better practice of intimacy.

March 14th will be the annual Sex Out Loud fair put on by the Feminist Majority. The general point of this fair, falsely dubbed a “sexual health fair”, is that as long as the physical consequences of sex can be controlled, nothing else matters. If it [physically] feels good, do it. But sex isn’t solely a physical matter and by treating it as such, grave harm is done to women particularly.

“Control”, “safe”, “protection”, these are the words that the “sexual health” groups use for sex. These attitudes are usually solely directed at controlling the physical aspects of sex.

The problem is that our sexuality cuts across all dimensions of our personhood. We are physical, emotional, and spiritual beings. Sexuality embraces all of these dimensions. By shrinking sexuality to a merely physical act and then bringing the full weight of science to control the physical consequences, we’ve adopted a sexual mentality based on impenetrability.

With the mainstreaming of contraception in the early part of the 20th century and the invention of the pill in the 60s, sexuality began to be divorced from the natural consequences of sex. With the “consequence” of conception out of the way, people were “free” to be with anyone they wanted.

Women were supposed to be empowered to finally love as equals and have sex with as much disregard as men supposedly did. Women were now free to be with anyone, yet get close to no one. The result is that the sexual revolution has delivered grave harm to women. A “revolution” that began in hedonism has bred a generation of cynics.

Instead of vulnerability, people approach sex trying to protect themselves. Instead of an experience of a person at their deepest levels, it’s an experience of mere gratification. “Protected sex” is sex that satiates but does not satisfy. The human wreckage from this idea is vast and is felt most by women.

Since men are brought up in the “bottle it up” school of emotional development, they are better equipped to handle the isolation that is a result of this sexual pathology. Women, on the other hand, are unable to escape the inevitable loneliness, depression, and isolation that results from this disconnected sex.

One only needs to look at adultery to see the emotional consequences that can result from sex. Even in a “free sex” world, something about cheating on a partner still registers as one of the greatest betrayals possible.

After having experienced the empty promises of sexual freedom for two generations, people are rediscovering chastity and the promises it holds. Chastity isn’t a new concept, it is what we already know in our hearts but refuse to acknowledge with our lips. We want to be fully and deeply accepted by another person on all levels of our being and that is only possible be reserving oneself for that “special someone.”

In books such as “The Thrill of the Chaste” by Dawn Eden, women retell their conversion from “sexually liberated” to “chaste” and show through their own experience that “protected sex” does not lead to the fulfillment we really desire. In embracing the true meaning of our sexual desires, we are free to approach others in a way where we can truly be connected and not objectified. It requires vulnerability not impenetrability.

The voices of chastity are increasing as more and more people see the broken marriages, broken homes, and broken hearts that are a result of “liberated sexuality”. Only in vulnerability and chastity can we truly find sexual fulfillment and the intimacy our hearts desire.

Author Dawn Eden will be giving a talk at 7:30pm, March 13th in Newman Hall’s Lewis Lounge. She will also be at the chastity booth during Sex Out Loud on March 14th.

March 12th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Columns, DailyIllini, Sex | 3 comments

Daily Show Clip - Aclockalypse Now!

Someone uploaded the clip on YouTube. You can also view the clip at the Daily Show website.

March 9th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Misc | no comments

I’m on the Daily Show Thursday Night (Mar. 8th).

The rumors are true, I was interviewed for the Daily Show and the segment will air Thursday night. The interview was on the daylight savings time change and the drama some have made about it breaking computers. It’s a pain, yes, but hardly chaos. Anyway, they flew me out Monday, taped Tuesday and went home that day. Was a fun time. It’s on at 10pm on Thursday (with reruns on Friday). I won’t ruin the punchlines of the jokes.

March 8th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Misc | one comment

Does the University of Illinois MBA Program Hate the Troops?

Breaking News: This will be updated in this post as more information comes in. (Hat Tip to Marathon Pundit.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has established an innovative program specifically targetted to Illinois veterans of the War on Terror. Basically, the state and the University will allow them to get a FREE executive MBA from UIUC (in there Chicago office) or attend the MBA program in the Champaign campus by having the state pay for the program with Illinois Veterans Grants (IVG) and the College of Business picking up the rest (about 54% of the total yearly tuition). The program was touted far and wide by Rumsfeld, Congressmen, and the State of Illinois. There were 110 slots for veterans. In the end, according to varying reports, 46 were accepted. The details of the program can still be viewed on the College of Business website.

The architect of the program has left the University and has filed a lawsuit, alleging anti-military bias and discrimination. The University of Illinois system is the same system that employs William Ayers as a distinguished professor of education. That’s the same Bill Ayers that tried to blow up government buildings and infamously quipped that people should kill their parents.

According to Robert Van Der Hooning, the architect of this program, the University (specifically Dean Ghosh) tried to scale back the amount of “jarheads” in the program. He alleges that the criteria for acceptance was changed after the vets were promised slots. That is why only 46 of the 110 slots are currently taken by students. According to anonymous sources, the reason that the number is so low is that the remaining applicants did not meet the criteria for acceptance by the appropriate deadlines. One would assume that a free executive MBA would draw more than 110 applications and that applications denied for cause would not have lead to a high-profile administrator in the College of Business not only leaving the University but filing a lawsuit.

Currently, Dean Ghosh is referring all questions to the University Public Relations office and Lt. Gov. Quinn is unavailable as of this writing to comment further.

According the University spokesperson Robin Kaler, the EMBA program only has a capacity of 60 students. The room will only accomodate that many students and there is only enough faculty to handle one class of those 60 students. The program has cost the College of Business $650,000 and according to Kaler, “all commitments were honored regardless of whether they were authorized or not.”

At present, the facts on hand don’t warrant the kind of article that Marathon Pundit put up (and Pajamas Media linked to). I’m not saying the University is in the right, I’d like to see more information.

Possibility 1: That Ghosh and company did in fact have a problem with too many jarheads in the program. This, after having supported the creation of a program almost exclusively for jarheads.

Possibility 2: Miscommunication about what can and cannot be done with Van Der Hooning over-extending the University.

Possibility 3: Van Der Hooning is engaging in a press push to keep the heat on the University while his lawsuit is working his way through the court of claims in Illinois.

Kaler made some pretty good and fatal points to Van Der Hooning’s claims. One of them is lying, the facts will determine which one.

More facts need to be had before condemning the University, or at least Dean Ghosh, of being on an anti-military crusade. There are more questions to ask, and the downside of blogging, is that people want to rush their stories to the web without doing all the footwork to get the facts straight. Will update with more information when I get it.

(Waiting on calls back from others in the know, will update as I get it).

Learn More Online

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March 5th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Chambana, Education, Military / War, Politics, University of Illinois | 12 comments

Response to Candidate Questionnaire from Campaign for Comprehensive Sex Education / Planned Parenthood

The conventional political wisdom is not to respond to candidate questionnaires from “hostile” political organizations. It just doesn’t sit well with me not telling voters or political groups where I stand though. So this is what I sent Planned Parenthood in response to whether I would support a standardized comprehensive sex ed program for Unit 4.

The question of sexuality, particularly sex education, is invariably tied into a question of values and value systems. As such, any discussion immediately becomes polarized between right and left. The options are either abstinence-only or comprehensive-only sex education. This is a false dichotomy, but also makes a dangerous assumption about the role of schools and government.

The United States is a values-pluralistic society. With rare exceptions (e.g. crime) all values should be respected and the government should not try to mandate one set of values over another. Many players in this debate are encouraging exactly that: a mandating of a particular set of values.

It is my belief that parents present the value system of their choice to their children, and the schools and government should respect that. I do not support a standardized sexual health curriculum for Unit 4 because that would entail me making a decision on what values are important for someone else’s child, a decision I would not want imposed on myself as a parent.

I believe the policy of the Board should be to, as far as practical, handle the issue as the parents decide they want it handled. If they wish to have comprehensive sex education taught to their child, that is there choice and it should be available to them. If they wish only abstinence education be presented, that is likewise their choice. If they wish to handle the matter themselves in private with no interference from the schools, that should also be respected.

It is my firm and unwavering belief that the schools are not a tool to be used by government to prescribe value systems to our children aside of what is necessary to be a good citizen. The diversity of our nation and community requires that governmental leaders allow these value system choices be made by individuals and parents, not by elected officials.

Learn More Online

No matter what your views are on sex education everyone can agree that education is an important part of modern life. That’s why there’s a great online college out there for you. There are many benefits to doing your bachelors degree but the best part is the flexibility to do what you want! Find a great online university today!

March 4th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | Chambana, Education, Elections, Politics, Unit 4 Race | one comment