When I write about Parker, it's almost always hard for me to choose which inflammatory quote to begin with — and indeed, today I'll start with two.

When a happily pregnant woman loses her pregnancy, she says she has lost her baby. Casting that painful episode as of no greater consequence than missing a lunch date should repel any beating heart.

And:

Regardless of one's moral position, it can't be convincingly argued that abortion and miscarriage are mere medical conditions like any other, as Trunk asserts. They both can involve medical procedures, but there's a life force at work that no woman who aims to give birth will deny.

From these lines, it appears that Parker is either being completely disingenuous or has not done as much research into her subject as I did to write a snarky blog post about it. Because if you read what Penelope Trunk has to say on the matter, you will learn that she has herself had:

• 2 miscarriages
• 2 abortions
• 2 children

Imagine if Kathleen Parker had read those two old posts — one about the painful and tragic miscarriage of a wanted pregnancy, one about Trunk's belief that her reasons for having abortions were ill-considered — without knowing about the infamous tweet. Except for the fact that Trunk expresses no shame about her abortions (or even regret, precisely), Parker probably would have approved. Trunk believes miscarriage is a tragedy! She's advised her numerous working female readers that career concerns are no reason to have an abortion! Two for two!

So here's what Penelope Trunk really did "wrong": She had the nerve to feel different about each one of her six pregnancies. She didn't automatically regard each embryo as a wanted child, as a blessing from a god she may or may not believe in, as a lifetime obligation she contracted to fulfill by choosing to have sex. She looked at each pregnancy in the context of her own body and her own life at the time it occurred, and made the decision that felt best for her. Three times, she chose to continue the pregnancy, and when one of those ended in miscarriage, she grieved. Three times, she chose to end the pregnancy, and when one of those ended in miscarriage, she was relieved. And tweeted about it.

The possibility that the same woman could have different feelings about being pregnant at different times in her life — that this is one of the reasons why so many people are pro-choice — is not something Parker allows for, even as she's writing about a woman who has experienced the joys of motherhood and the grief of a lost wanted pregnancy as well as the relief of terminating and losing unwanted ones. In Parker's universe, it seems, there is only one way to feel about pregnancy (happy), one way to feel about miscarriage (bereaved), and one way to feel about abortion (appalled). If you have what she considers the correct feelings about only 50% of your pregnancies, screw you. There is no partial credit.

According to the Guttmacher Institute (PDF), "About 60% of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children." And that's not even counting the ones who, like Trunk, will later go on to have children when they feel ready. Which means, as reproductive rights activists have been saying forever, the majority of women who choose to end pregnancies at some point will also choose to continue them at other points. Now, take this with a grain of salt, since it's well-known that I'm a murderous, baby-hating feminist, but to me, that suggests that a hell of a lot of women feel different about different pregnancies at different times.

Parker's having none of it: "One might wish that Trunk were an anomaly, but one would be disappointed. To those for whom abortion is a correction, miscarriage is just a messier month."

Penelope Trunk is a woman for whom abortion has been "a correction," a woman who publicly tweeted that miscarriage was a relief. Penelope Trunk is also the woman who wrote this:

I am four months pregnant. But the baby is dead, inside me, and must be removed. I am devastated. I always knew this could happen, in the back of my mind. But you are never prepared for something like this to happen.

When I first heard the news, I did nothing. Cancelled every plan I had. Sat in chairs staring at walls, laid in bed hoping for sleep, and cried.

Unable to reconcile those two things, Parker simply leaves out the second part, placing Trunk squarely in the category of those too selfish and heartless to appreciate the "life force at work that no woman who aims to give birth will deny." Never mind that Trunk did indeed aim to give birth three times. And never mind that when her body had a different idea one of those times, she wrote publicly about her devastation. Penelope Trunk is the self-styled "brazen hussy careerist" whose tweet trivialized "not only the miscarriage but what little remains of our humanity" — ergo she could not possibly be the same woman who wrote, "On the day I found out the baby was dead... at the doctor's office, when I was crying so loudly that I was taken to a room farthest away from the waiting area so as not to scare already jittery expectant mothers, I didn't care if the interviews got done." That would suggest that women are complex human beings who feel different things at different times or something. The facts just don't fit!

And yet, they are the facts. Facts that take about 30 seconds to find if you ask yourself one question: "What does Penelope Trunk have to say on the matter of her own body, choices and feelings, in more than 140 characters?" Kathleen Parker, to her credit, must have asked that question, since she links to Trunk's blog more than once, including to the post that refers back to the previous miscarriage story. Nevertheless, she completely ignores the answer, because it doesn't support her casting of Trunk as the other kind of woman, the kind for whom "miscarriage is just a messier month." If you can only be one kind or the other — and clearly, that's the prevailing wisdom on Parker's planet — then any woman who's ever felt relief after a miscarriage, or after an abortion, is that kind of woman. The kind who doesn't get motherhood, who doesn't get loss, who doesn't get humanity — no matter how much personal experience she has with all three.

Regardless of how you'd characterize The Tweet, condemning Trunk as a woman who simply can't grasp the gravity of a lost pregnancy, some "grotesque" and "freakish" monster who misrepresents how real women feel about miscarriage, is the height of intellectual dishonesty. And it does a disservice to the millions of real women who have felt conflicted about unintended pregnancies (which about half of us will have before we're 45) and/or felt different about one pregnancy than another, by propagating the myth that wanting or not wanting children is a constant in each woman's life, never subject to her particular circumstances at the time. That there are "bad" women who choose abortion and "good" women who choose to be mommies; "bad" women who are grateful to miscarry, especially in states where obtaining an abortion is difficult, and "good" women who grieve for their lost pregnancies. It's pure bullshit to discuss Penelope Trunk's body, life and use of social media without acknowledging that she is all of those women in one. And she's far from alone.

Image from Penelope Trunk's blog.

A Miscarriage Of Propriety [Washington Post]
You Can't Manage Your Work Life If You Can't Talk About It [Penelope Trunk]
Sometimes Work Is A Welcome Distraction [Penelope Trunk]
What's The Connection Between Abortion And Careers? [Penelope Trunk]

Earlier: What Was Penelope Trunk Thinking Twittering About Her Miscarriage?
A Reconsideration Of Penelope Trunk, The Miscarriage-Tweeting Career Advisor

Today Penelope Trunk, CEO of brazencareerist.com and self-styled career advice expert, posted the video of her appearance on CNN on Tuesday, in which she defended her controversial decision to tweet about her miscarriage in a board meeting last week. While I haven't changed my mind (even a little) about the wisdom of announcing such private information in a professional setting (and, yes, her particular Twitter account was a professional setting and she framed it as career advice from an expert — this was not a woman venting to her friends; this was, essentially, a press release), I now believe that if this highly unusual exchange is what resulted, maybe the whole weird thing was worth it.

Aside from the entertainment aspect of watching Rick Sanchez basically throw up his hands in defeat here, Trunk's matter-of-fact way of talking about abortion is so unheard of that it's jarring even to the ears of a die-hard pro-choicer. I've heard women talk about abortions this way with their friends, of course, but never on national television. And honestly, it's refreshing. Sanchez starts the interview by calling Trunk "young lady" and asking if she has any shame. Trunk takes it from there:

"Whether or not you believe women should have the right to abortion, they do in this country." Wow. While I still think I would find it difficult to respect a boss, male or female, who announced the details of his or her bodily functions in the workplace, and while I firmly believe that it was terrible career advice, if Penelope Trunk had to lose some people's respect to get us talking openly about abortion access on national news, then more power to her.

My Miscarriage - On CNN, ABC And AOL [CNN]

Earlier: What Was Penelope Trunk Thinking Twittering About Her Miscarriage?

When a friend told a group over drinks this past weekend that Penelope Trunk had "tweeted about having a miscarriage in a board meeting," everyone's first response was to ask if she meant it as a metaphor. I mean, we've all been in those kinds of meetings, right? But no, she sent this tweet last week:

"I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin."

It seemed like a joke, but apparently it wasn't, because when people started blogging and emailing about it, Trunk took to her blog to defend it...or try to. After claiming that "most miscarriages happen at work" (based on the number of miscarriages, the number of working women, and the length of the average miscarriage), she gets into, uh, this?:

"To all of you who said a miscarriage is gross: Are you unaware that the same blood you expel from a miscarriage is what you expel during menstruation? Are you aware that many people are having sex during menstruation and getting it on the sheets? Are you aware that many women actually like period sex?"

Trunk ultimately tries to put herself in some kind of martyr role, arguing that we should be talking about this because women will never be truly equal until we can talk about our miscarriages in the workplace. Except, no, because do you want to hear about your male co-worker's hemorrhoids in the workplace? Or the details of his wife's miscarriage? And, unfortunately for everyone, now that this has gone national, the context and way in which Trunk framed this confirms the worst and most fantastical ideas of the anti-choice movement: that women (especially career women!) who have abortions all do so casually and callously on their lunch breaks, the way one might get a manicure. If Trunk thinks she's done anything to help women in Wisconsin get better access to abortions (her defensive post asks readers to donate to Planned Parenthood), she obviously doesn't know anything about how the anti-choice movement works.

I'm trying to be sensitive here, because it seems like she's is going through a difficult time, but I don't think most people have a problem with Penelope Trunk's inner thoughts and complicated feelings about her miscarriage. We just can't fucking believe she fucking Twittered them.

• Almost 90% of the South Korean teachers surveyed in a recent study said that there needs to be something done to keep the gender imbalance of female-to-male teachers in check. The respondents (which were, strangely enough, mostly male) felt that the lack of male teachers is leading to problems in teaching and counseling students. • A teacher from Maine has officially apologized after he played the groom in a mock wedding with a fourth grade student. Having nothing better to complain about, parents called the school to express their distress over the playground game. • The online journal PLoS Medicine has released a report on the Centre for Vulnerable Women and Children in Mumbai, which offers service to women and children in crisis. The article can be viewed in its entirety here. •  A large scale study found that pregnant woman who undergo certain invasive tests may lower their risk of miscarriage. Although researchers believe that the tests affect the rate of miscarriage, there is no evidence about women who have not undergone the procedures. • According to the ladies over at Feministing, the first ever women-run pharmacy in North America (located in Vancouver) has an unfortunate policy of excluding transwomen, a decision it justifies by the presence of a nearby health clinic for trans people. •  The New York Times reports that although congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a hormonal disorder that can cause infertility, is easy to treat, many fertility centers do not perform the simple blood test for the disease, and some doctors are unaware of its effects on fertility. •  Snuggie, the backwards bathrobe that became a pop cultural phenomenon last winter, will be back in September with more sizes and colors. How long do you think they can ride the popularity wave born from almost incessant parodying? • Tyler Weinman, the 18-year-old accused of killing 19 cats in Florida, reportedly laughed at police during questioning, before he proceeded to excitedly describe the process of dissecting cats for class. Police also said that he was eager to show off the scratches on his body, which he said he got from his neighbor's cat. More horrible details here. •

• A Saudi man has reportedly divorced his wife by text message. Under Saudi law, a man may divorce his wife if he says (or, I guess, texts) "I divorce you" three times. • A seven-year-old girl with with a Y chromosome but not other signs of "maleness" usually associated with the genetic abnormality (shriveled testes, ambiguous gonads) is providing scientists with new clues about the "master switch" of gender. • A couple from Seattle have discovered the newest trend in the wedding industry: outsourcing vows. • Washington State passed a bill yesterday that protects transgender people under the current hate crime legislation. • A report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission reveals this "shocking" fact about the pay gap in London: women working in finance make 55% less a year than their male counterparts. • Actress Virginia Madsen is currently working on a documentary about women ski jumpers and their campaign to be allowed to compete in the 2010 Winter Olympics. • Sociological Images has posted a very interesting video on female sex tourism, followed by a discussion of the way we think about the role of the "victim" in sex. • Researchers at St Andrews have found that people do judge you by the color of your skin, and that certain (pale) skin tones are still associated with illness. • Despite certain high-profile celebrity adoptions, Americas are actually adopting fewer foreign children than we did five years ago. • This Easter, a new line of nonedible Peeps branded products (think china and stuffed animals) will appear in stores. No word yet on whether they will also explode in the microwave. •  Click here to watch a depressing video about the sale and use of skin-bleaching products in Jamaica. Skin-bleaching was once practiced only by women, but has now spread to men and children. • Oh dear: "Teen pregnancy boosts girls' risk of getting fat," reads a headline on Reuters. • After being groped by a stranger on the subway, a quick-thinking woman snapped a cellphone picture of her attacker, which eventually led to his arrest. • Another lawsuit against the "Hot Chicks with Douchebags" people has been dropped. • 

According to a profile in the Los Angeles Times, freelance writer Jessica Tebow and her psychologist husband Michael Ohlde were deeply saddened when they learned the fetus' heart had stopped, and Tebow opted to miscarry naturally. After doing so, she was told by a doctor she could freeze the remains until deciding what to do with them. Ultimately, Tebow and Ohlde decided to have the remains cremated.

Then things got farcically horrible. The mortuary said they'd need a death certificate.

Police immediately swarmed and searched the apartment. They found the fetus' remains in the freezer and took them away for investigation; the couple, needless to say, was shocked.When, later, the cops sheepishly allowed Ohlde and Tebow to cremate the remains, there was vague talk of "Exigent circumstances," and it became clear that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, from the doctors to the coroners on down.

The truth is, though, that there really isn't much procedure in place for this sort of thing...while it's standard to give a stillborn or late-term baby a burial or cremation, it apparently doesn't come up much this early in the pregnancy. But when someone miscarries at home, it's not as straightforward as in a hospital: quite simply, Tebow didn't want to throw the remains away. And to help other women with a similar dilemma, she's called upon a local legislator to help get some guidelines in place. For instance, if a doctor had given better instructions they could have avoided the situation, and the mortuary should have known that before 20 weeks, a death certificate isn't necessary. There's also a newly-formed Miscarriage Support Group of Southern California, which will serve as a resource for exactly this sort of situation.

It's a tricky one in some ways because of course it touches on a lot of issues that can easily become political - but if ever there were a time for "choice" in the true sense, it seems like this is it. While such treatment of early miscarriage is probably uncommon, Tebow's dilemma sound genuinely troubling. And however one might personally deal with such a situation, it does seem like police involvement probably shouldn't be a part of that solution.

Couple's attempt to do the right thing brings more grief [LA Times]

Specifically, Gina says this:

If you believe that pregnancy doesn't produce a baby until some magic number (13 weeks? 20 weeks? 40?), then you must also agree that it's ridiculous to break down in hysterics, set up a memorial website for your "angel," and seek out a grief counselor when you start bleeding in your first trimester. After all, you're simply talking about the loss of a conglomeration of microscopic cells, right?! That's hardly something to cry about.

That sounds exceedingly pro-choice, no? So does her sign-off:

Advocate all you want, but don't come crying to me when your hypocrisy hits you like a ton of bricks. If you are going to defend the right to abort babies, you don't have the right to be upset when yours dies.

I would like Gina, too, to shut the fuck up. Pro-choice doesn't mean "let me go have another fun-fun abortion." Maybe the pro-choice women grieving over the loss of a wanted pregnancy do believe that life begins at conception but don't believe the government has the right to impose their religious views on others. Maybe they learned something between the time they "put pro-choice buttons on their backpacks in college and ridiculed pro-lifers for being backward, repressive religious freaks who want to control the world's uteruses," — not that you, personally, sound remotely bitter there — and they got pregnant about things like tolerance for other people's view points and that the world is filled with grey areas (and, maybe, you might want to think about doing the same). Maybe they're grieving the loss of pregnancy or the potential life and potential child that was taken from them. So Gina, STFU and peddle your bitter elsewhere.

Pro-Choice? Quit Crying About Your Miscarriage [Momlogic]

• Abortion will cause you eternal damnation, unless you are Catholic and feel really bad, promise your priest not to do it again and say a gazillion Hail Marys.
• Abortion — and particularly multiple abortions, you libidinous, unfeeling slut — will render you infertile. It could be medical, it could be karmic retribution, no one really knows.
• Every woman that has an abortion gets breast cancer. The mere act of sucking a human baby out of your uterus causes cancer cells to start forming in your breasts and there's nothing that can be done.
• If you manage to escape God's retribution for your immoral acts and do get pregnant after an abortion, you'll likely just miscarry or have an ectopic pregnancy. If you actually manage to carry the child to term, having aborted another child, God will visit upon your new baby birth defects or low birth weight, if He doesn't just kill your baby entirely.
• You'll basically want to kill yourself from the guilt after an abortion, and will definitely have a mental breakdown from realizing the consequences of your actions. This will manifest as depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or Leslee Unruh.
• Abortion will cause every woman who has one to end up not pregnant.

It's so hard to separate the myths from reality sometimes, I know.

Photo via Amelee/Deviant Art

Abortion Not Seen Linked With Depression [Reuters]

Related: Abortion Myths [National Abortion Federation]
Top 10 Anti-Abortion Myths [Ask.com]
courtesy of Amelee
Abortion Myths: Fact vs. Fiction [TeenWire]
Post Abortion Syndrome [National Abortion Federation]

Earlier: Abortion In New Zealand
The Many Contradictions Of Leslee Unruh, Anti-Abortion And "Purity" Advocate

"It starts when you feel that first unmistakable twinge that something is totally wrong. It continues through the rough days of sorrow and deep cramps, and then it meanders through every single day of the rest of your whole stupid life. I will probably mourn about this miscarriage in some outwardly unremarkable way until I either have a healthy baby or die," Moss bravely admits.

Mom blogger Dooce linked to another mom blog called Flotsam, where a woman named Alexa talks about the baby she had who died at 22 weeks. "If McCain had his so-called 'culture of life,' and if my condition had progressed just a bit earlier, I would at least have lost my uterus, and I might very well be dead. All this in the interest of a baby who could not possibly have lived, because while an extremely few 23-weekers do survive, a by-then-severely-infected 23-weeker would certainly not. 'Culture of life,' indeed," Alexa rages.

"I can tell you that I want people to know. I don’t want it to be a secret or a shadow or something that is endured only alone," Moss writes, "I want people to know that I have been through something, that I am tired but optimistic, that I’ve been knocked down but don’t help me up because I can get up myself." And these stories are precisely the brutal and vivid things we need to hear so that people like John McCain will never dismiss the idea of women's heath with soulless air quotes ever again.

[Image via Ulla Pugaard, NYT]

A Planet of Pain, Where No Words Are Quite Right [NY Times]
Why Any Woman Who Intends To Vote McCain Should Reconsider [Dooce]
More Wounded Than Eloquent, I'm Afraid [Flotsam]

Earlier: Memo To Senator McCain: My Health Is Not An Extreme Position

The foundation of Aliza's outfit is, naturally, built upon the shopping mecca of aspiring hipster poseurs everywhere: American Apparel. Below, the leggings, scoop-neck leotard and black hoody.

(Unisex flex fleece zip hoody, $40; cotton spandex jersey legging, $26; jersey short sleeve t-shirt leotard, $28.)

And her boots? White fringe stylings are something that could only be found at a place called the Boot Barn.

(Oak Tree Farm "Oasis" fringe boot, $89.99)

And don't forget the hair! This Beverly Johnson wig in Shade 4 ought to do the trick.

(H-214 by Beverly Johnson wig, $45.90)

But to really encapsulate Aliza-style, you've gotta rock the baggy leopard-print short. Where to go? The men's underwear section of WildFree, naturally.

(Wild Free men's lingerie silk leopard-print boxer shorts, $24)

Related: Shvarts Explains Her 'Repeated Self-Induced Miscarriages [Yale Daily News]

Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University's statement "ultimately inaccurate."...But Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly used a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant. "No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen," Shvarts said, "because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties."

University Calls Art Project A Fiction; Shvarts '08 Disputes Yale's Claim [Yale Daily News]

Actually, "gullible weenies" isn't the term that was used, but that's pretty much what it amounted to. Here's the full statement from Klasky:

Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body.

She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.

Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.

Yale Press Release [Yale]

Earlier: Yale Senior Undergoes Multiple Self-Induced Miscarriages In The Name Of Art
Just How Do You Give Yourself An Herbal Abortion?

We've all met young men and women like Aliza Shvarts: They come from relatively happy, upper-middle-class families, and are so desperate to be "edgy" and "crazy" that they perform a series of stunts — whether through drug experimentation, sexual exploration, or bad performance art — to differentiate themselves from their hopelessly bourgie peers and parents. The problem with Shvarts' little art project, however, is that her need to rebel has potentially big ramifications outside her ivory tower of academia. (One assumes that Shvarts used, at least in part, the abortifacient RU-486, a prescription-only drug that some politicians want added to the list of Schedule I controlled substances.) Plus, conservative bloggers are already up in arms and using Aliza's capriciousness to support their anti-abortion agendas. (At 9:00am this morning Shvarts' name had 53 hits on Google; as of 11:52am, it had 291.) And though the Buckley School valedictorian claims that she wants her piece to be a medium for "politics and ideologies," it's not like she's shedding light on an obscure subject. People debate the ethics of abortion constantly, and possibly harming your body by forcing it to miscarry repeatedly? Yeah, that's not helping the discourse.

Molly Clark-Barol, a Yale student and commenter on the YDH's website, sums up Shvarts's egocentrism better than I could: "Congratulations, Aliza Shvarts '08: you have single-handedly trivialized not only an entire generation and a half's fight to gain and retain the right to choose, through harassment and against massive odds, but also history of women's struggles, not only politically, but with the emotional, moral, and spiritual impacts of the choice to terminate a pregnancy. You also spit upon every couple who has tried, and failed, sometimes repeatedly, to have children. it is the emotional impact of these struggles, emotional impact that you shamelessly exploit, not explore, in your senior project."

[Image via Soapbox Event]

Related: Absolutely Fascinating [Bitch, PhD]

And you know what happens following all that coffee-related weight-gain? Rates of miscarriage and ovarian cancer fatalities increase! But! Coffee helps prevent gallstones and decrease asthma attacks! But it can also increase fibrocystic changes in the breasts and cause acid reflux! Oh my god we're all going to DIEEEEEEEEEEEE. (Though, have you tried those new $1 cups of Joe at Starbucks. So cute and small!)

Coffee: The Good, The Cheap And The Fattening [Guardian]
Women And Coffee: How Many Cups A Day? [MSNBC]

Earlier: Coffeee Causes Miscarriage, Except When It Doesn't
Coffeee Causes Miscarriage But Prevents Ovarian Cancer
Why Coffee Shops Should Discriminate Against Women

"I am not persuaded [caffeine] poses a health hazard," says epidemiologist David Savitz, who, Newsweek reports, considers caffeine "among the long list of things you should think about." "We don't really know the truth." And Dr. Alan Peaceman, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University cautions against "creating hysteria": "I tell women not to be guilty about a cup of coffee if that's what they really need. There are a lot of people who are hooked on caffeine, including myself. there is so much guilt out there that women have to deal with when they have a bad outcome in pregnancy. The vast majority is not within their control."

Caffeine Doubles Miscarriage Risk, Study Finds [Reuters]
Cup Of Contradictions [Newsweek]
New Kaiser Permanente Study Fortifies Caffeine's Link To Miscarriage [Eureka Alert]

Related: Starbucks Beverages [Starbucks]