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Michelle Goldberg Traces Women’s Rights to Global Issues
With Santa Barbara’s election season in full swing, local political royalty, human rights advocates and fashionistas alike gathered Sunday night to delve into the intricate concerns surrounding the battle for reproductive freedom.
This year, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo Counties’ annual Politics, Sex & Cocktails fundraiser featured journalist Michelle Goldberg as its keynote speaker. The nonprofit advocacy organization baited attendees at the Montecito Country Club with prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, white wine ... and colored condoms.
In her provocative new book, The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World, Goldberg addresses a wide range of human rights issues, exposes a global battle over women’s reproductive rights, and explains why addressing these issues could be the first step to overcoming many major international problems.
Interviewed by UCSB political science professor Gayle Binion, a researcher of principles for equality across lines of gender, race and class, Goldberg’s passionate lecture connected worldwide issues such as population control and national security, human rights and religious conflict.
Former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, helped raise several thousand dollars for the Action Fund by emceeing the abnormal auction of see-through satchels and cosmetic bags lined with rainbow-hued rubbers.
Joked Jackson, “Come on people, it could be a good conversation starter! Or in a good fundamentalist home, a conversation ender.”
Among those in attendance were several current and hopeful Santa Barbara politicians: City Council members Grant House, who is running for re-election, and Helene Schneider, who is running for mayor, along with council candidates Dianne Channing and Bendy White. Also in attendance was a cardboard cutout of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Although attendance was slightly lower this year, the Action Fund reached out to young people, offering students sponsored tickets to attend. Of the 170 people who turned out, organizers said about 25 were under age 30.
“We were very well supported by our founders, the sponsors, the donors and the community ... in spite of the economic downturn,” Christine Lyon, the Action Fund’s vice president, said Monday. “We are very pleased with the results.
“We want to give credit to the volunteers ... they’re the ones in charge of overseeing this event and worked very hard to make it a success,” she said.
Sponsors included Jackson, Nancy Brown and Betty Stevens.
Click here for more information on the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo Counties.
— Noozhawk intern Rachel Urbach can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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» on 10.13.09 @ 07:47 AM
When terminating a life is called a “right” and a “freedom, I get concerned. At what exact point in the development of a human being does it stop being a right and a freedom and changes to premeditated murder? the moment the uimbilical cord is cut it magically and instantly transforms into a viable child who’s life is worth protecting, but the instant before that it only has enough value to be washed down the sink in the name of “rights and freedom”? I hope your conscience is clear when you exercise your freedoms and rights. Or have you simple renamed the murder of a baby in order to relieve your collectives consciences and justify the horrendous decision of killing your own child? Would this same right and freedom apply to my 1 month old? What if I wanted to kill her for the sake of convenience, so I can sleep better at nite and go out and party more, am I exercising my rights in order to have more freedom??
» on 10.13.09 @ 07:52 AM
Hannah Beth Jackson, Helene Schneider, Grant House, Diane Channing, Bendy White are now proven to be life-disrespecting Nazis. Either that, or they have no principles and think this is a good way to kiss up for the woman’s vote. Unfortunately for them, not all women are into killing their young. Keep voting for communists like this and next it will be the elderly that they promote termination of.
» on 10.13.09 @ 08:04 AM
I wonder how much state sponsorship of abortion there would be? How many under-cover “donations” to Planned Parenthood Action Fund? I wonder how many there already are?
There would be a new department of “People Control” much like the current “Animal Control”. Their job would be to round up stray people off of State Street, have them neutered and if there is not enough room at the Homeless Shelter, have them euthanized. That would justify the subsidization of Planned Parenthood, abortion and birth control with your taxes, it’s part of the new vagrancy program and doing something about the homeless problem.
» on 10.13.09 @ 08:22 AM
Wow! Colored condoms! So edgy, so hip, so ground-breaking! Because, like, you know, nobody knows about condoms these days. So original! I’d bet this was a life-changing event!
» on 10.13.09 @ 08:45 AM
“Oh Lord you have searched me and you know me…For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my Mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful I know that full well.”
God’s wonderful, miraculously creation or woman’s disposable “reproductive right” worthy only of a trash dumpster? Aren’t you glad your mother didn’t exercise her “rights”?
» on 10.13.09 @ 08:52 AM
What about the baby’s rights? Why does the baby get no choices?
» on 10.13.09 @ 09:00 AM
Fans of woman’s rights need to be honest and stop trying to redefine the truth and rationalizing justify their horrendous choices. The truth is, they are selfish, want to be irresponsible without consequences, and don’t want the inconvenience of having to be responsible for the upbringing of a child. Just admit it.
And this is the kind of behavior and example that this crew of politicians (Hannah Beth, Helene, Bendy, House, Channing wants to give to our children? That being irresponsible is ok? How will this help the teen pregnancy issue? The message is go ahead follow whatever primal urge you have without thinking about the consequences or seriousness of them both personally and to society. Use a condom, and if that doesn’t work out we will kill the baby for you. No worries, just “do it”.
» on 10.13.09 @ 09:12 AM
The Bolsheviks and political elite celebrating the genocide of trillions of innocent potential human lives over “prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, white wine” and
“see-through satchels and cosmetic bags lined with rainbow-hued rubbers”. How fabulous and hip. I think I will throw up.
» on 10.13.09 @ 12:29 PM
What did they have for appetizers? Baby legs?
» on 10.13.09 @ 12:35 PM
What the heck is “poitical-erati”? Do I even want to know?
» on 10.13.09 @ 12:55 PM
Women are dying everyday throughout the world as a consequence of illegal abortions. It has been compared to an airliner crashing daily with passengers who are all pregnant women between the ages of 15 and 45. Michelle Goldberg spoke eloquently about the consequences of the “gag rule” , recently reversed by President Obama, which denied US international family planning funds to organizations that even counseled about abortion. I hope that all these concerned commenters will become active advocates for family planning programs and funds both in this country and abroad. Giving women the means to avoid unintended pregnancy is the way to reduce the need for abortion.
» on 10.13.09 @ 12:59 PM
...to be seen and heard at an abortion bash! I think if I was promoting, endorsing and celebrating taking away any possibility of potential of so many unborn human beings, I would at least make some attempt to keep it under my hat - especially if I was running for political office. This shows just how ideological and activist agenda- driven this group of politicos is, not to mention the poor judgment. How about some politicians who want to fix problems instead of re-engineer society? I hope that as mayor, Helene has many more opportunities to be praised for her anti-life pro-abortion stance and gets to enjoy many more prosciutto-wrapped asparagus dinners!
» on 10.13.09 @ 01:05 PM
I’ve always been more of a fan of castration than abortion. At least you’re just maiming a guilty human being instead of murdering an innocent one, and you’re closer to the source of the problem.
» on 10.13.09 @ 06:26 PM
it is sad that none of the commentors recognize the fact that Planned Parenthood is a health clinic focused on education and pregnancy prevention. it is due to people with minds like the commentors that women who have had to run and hide from people in their lives have to resort to abortion because no one allowed them the freedom of an education about their bodies and their sexuality, or access to safe and healthy pregnancy prevention like birth control pills. I guess you will all get it when your daughters and/or wives use the resources PP offers.
» on 10.13.09 @ 06:42 PM
So why can’t they resort to adoption?
» on 10.14.09 @ 04:33 PM
The comment of “narrow-minded sadness” truly takes the cake. After 50 years of “liberation,” education at schools, in the media, in homes, and in women’s social circles, whatever the age of the people girls and women associate with, it is laughable to believe that there is a North American female older than 10, whatever her economic or social or educational condition, that is uninformed about birth control and the risks of unprotected sex. That young and not-so-young women can’t control their urges, despite their knowledge, is easy to get. We live in a age when accountability for one’s actions is a vanishing constriction on behavior. If an act is not subject to criminal prosecution, there are few and weak voices warning us not to surrender to our appetites. Being narrow-minded as I am (and proud of it if to be broad-minded is to embrace the kind of thinking Sadness champions), I side with the other narrow-minded commentators who are in the majority of the responses to this article. If your comments are meant to address the global problem of sex “education,” or lack thereof, that is one thing. But if you’re trying to get us to believe that the girls and women in this country who are “victims” of an unplanned pregnancy got that way because they didn’t have enough information, spare us.
» on 10.15.09 @ 03:10 PM
It’s also a little tiring to keep using the plight of the young woman afraid to tell her parents as an excuse for people in entirely different situations to use abortion as birth control. I assure you that this young girl’s situation is a minority of the abortion cases. And if Planned Parenthood and their supporters can’t take the heat of this moral “dilemma” and education and birth control are their positive attributes and they want to be praised for it, they need to get out of the abortion business. Either that or give up the deceptive misleading name and call it an abortion clinic. Every agenda group has a cover, just like Pacific Pride is in place just to help AIDs victims and provide “education”. Yeah right. As if doing something right cancels out doing something wrong and morally reprehensible and unacceptable.
» on 11.29.09 @ 03:38 AM
Ms. Urbach did a commendable job on this story making a story that i would normally be completely disinterested in palatable congrats to her!!
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