I think I have late-stage ADD--I have missed many more Our Word members who have been nominated for Koufax awards, whether at Our Word, their own blogs, or other blogs. I apologize to any of you I missed. We should just make it a temporary thread--who has been nominated, and who should have been nominated. So hat tips to (so far) Our Word, Bayprairie, Moiv, Caliberal, myself, and if I missed you, please let us know. I think it would be great if as many Our Word members as possible get at least to the next stage--what a feather in our caps!

Voting is finally open for the Koufax awards. Our Word has been nominated for Best New Blog, Bayprairie's Reproductive Rights in Review has been nominated for Best Series, caliliberal has nominations for Best Writing and Best Commenter, and one of my posts, Monday Afternoon at the Welfare Office, has been nominated for best post.

Belldame at Fetch Me My Ax puts her finger on an irritating aspect of the South Dakota (and now Mississippi) anti initiatives: the salivating glee of the right at the possiblity of overturning Roe/Wade vs the jaw-popping glee (though they wouldn't call it that) of some on the left at the idea that Roe could be our turning point. The birth of some kind of movement. From the right:

Anyway, as you know, the point now is to not so much about Mississippi or South Dakota but to seize the day and push for a court case that will lead to a wholesale overturn of Roe v. Wade; enough of this hole-and-corner chipping away.

The first thing I learned (am learning) is that I really had a lot of stupid white liberal expectations. Boy was I dumb.

I thought that by giving my daughter an African name and raising her in a mostly-black neighborhood that the delicate racial issues would be pretty much ingrained in her. I thought she'd have a jump because what little white girl is called Ashanti? (Can I mention that I named her that before that singer what's-her-name ever came around?) I wanted to give her a sense of her black-ness but I completely bypassed her African-American-ness and concentrated on her African-ness.

When talking to your daughters about their vaginas, what do you call them? I'm curious from reading a thread over at feministe about the Vagina Monologues and there just seems to be so much anxiety about one simple word.

I've used various euphemisms and I've used the word vagina when talking to Ashanti. Some of the euphemisms: privates, booty, chocha, chochita, cooch, cat. Does that seem silly? I should mention that she doesn't respond negatively or positively to one word over the other. I'm just glad that she's not at the age yet where hearing her mom talk about body parts makes her go "ick!"

Moiv's incredible post, God Forbid, got me thinking about the Chicago Janes, a group of women who provided safe, illegal abortions during a four-year period before Roe v. Wade.

(This article originally appeared in the WomanNews section of the Chicago Tribune Online in September 1999, and is reprinted on the Chicago Women's Liberation Union Herstory website)

In 1971, Susan was 21, in a dead-end job and a dead-end relationship, and she had just discovered her IUD birth control had failed her.