Abortion Gang

Having taken the summer off from school and all of the required reading it entails, I am knee-deep in books for fun this summer. By far the most poignant and touching to me personally – and I can’t recommend it enough to everyone on, basically, the entire planet – is Sara Marcus’ Girls to the Front, her history of the Riot Grrrl revolution that shook punk and politics in the 90s. I promise, if you read this book, you will be shocked at how little has changed, how 20 years, two decades (and yes, friends in their 20′s and 30′s, that does make me feel old too) after the events took place, we are right back in the same position, with a far-right supreme court in place, a pervasive fear that Roe will be overturned, and women’s rights and very lives under attack. (If you think that’s an overstatement, I fucking beg you to remember Congresswoman Giffords. Every day, please. I do.)

This book makes me angry, and as a very practical girl who has been working in progressive politics in very practical capacities for a very long time, those who know me only from my writing, particularly on this blog, would be shocked at how rarely I get angry. My 18-year-old-self was furious, consumed, driven, with a passion I can barely recall. But that burns out, it eats you up from the inside – you either find a way to live with the anger and bury a lot of it, or, in my experience, you go a little crazy. The kind of anger and passion the Riot Grrrls story inspires within me is invigorating, and I have been thinking about how to incorporate that movement, its history and its meaning, into my work.

At the same time, here in the present, I work in a movement that has roots in both traditional and radical feminism, and I wonder where we will go, what we will do, what we will have the courage to demand, what we will fight for and what we will compromise. With that in mind, a quote from the book struck me particularly in relation to Abortion Gang:

“Riot Grrrl is about destroying boundaries, not creating them.” (198)

What I love about this blog is that I do not agree with everything everyone writes, nor does every writer on this blog always or necessarily even EVER agree with me. That doesn’t mean my posts don’t go up; that means I get edited into a place where my opinions are 1) clear and 2) mine and only mine. We speak from the “I” here at Abortion Gang. We do not, as individuals, speak for the whole movement or often for anyone but ourselves, yet our collection of experiences IS the movement.

Which brings me to the first thing my Riot Grrrl history has given me to move forward with in my work: consider how you speak and where you speak from. Writers on this blog share intensely personal experiences. Don’t judge. Not, “Hey, try not to judge!” or “Be accepting and open!” Fuck that. Don’t judge. Disagree. Share your experiences. Support. Argue from the “I.” But understand that everyone who writes here – everyone being commentors as well as bloggers, THNX – has a valid experience, a personal experience, that they are sharing. YOUR EXPERIENCE IS NOT THE ONLY EXPERIENCE. YOUR EXPERIENCE IS NOT THE RIGHT EXPERIENCE. The prochoice movement is the sum of its parts, and we are, all of us, those moving pieces of which this great and, I believe, extremely powerful thing is made.

For supporters and antis alike, remember that you are not here to persuade – and if you are, you’re in the wrong damn place. Adults write for and into this site, people with more varied and dynamic backgrounds than you can imagine. We are mothers, daughters, sons, husbands, wives, broke-ass kids, kinksters, prudes, trust-fund recipients, students, sexual deviants, queers, and allthecolors. Come here to tell us what you think, come here to argue your point, but don’t come here to proselytize – and if you don’t know the difference, come back and see us when you do. I think our fearless leader Steph summed it up best in a comment recently, and I want to make sure her extremely well-phrased words get their due, so allow me to include them here:

“I want to let you know that I’m the moderator of this blog, and the only reason I don’t approve comments is when they are disrespectful or hateful. If the comment seems borderline offensive, I ask the blogger if they want me to publish it.”

This is a place for civility, openness, and understanding. We want to engage with you, and we want you to engage with each other. In exchange for this space, we ask for your gracious understanding that we spill our guts out on this page, we tell you so many deep things that hurt and heal, and we can’t always go to bat for them relentlessly, day upon day, just because you like to argue or want to persuade. Come here with an open mind and heart and we will give you ours. It’s a good way to live. And I think it’s an amazing way to live a movement.

Herding activists closely resembles herding cats, or Members of Congress, except that activists are generally hungrier, more distracted, and less likely to be on drugs that help them maintain focus. As a result, our fearless leader and editor will frequently send us prompts for posts, with enthusiastic exclamation points and a spritely tone. We don’t always use them, but one has come up a few times and been gnawing at my edges lately: why do we stay in the movement?

The sidelines, where most Americans and many readers of this blog reside on the abortion issue, is both a perfectly fine and completely understandable place to be. Activists need and are grateful for your research, your thoughtfulness, your support and your engagement. For those of you who don’t know what it’s like to work actively in the prochoice and reproductive justice movements, let me tell you. It’s fucking exhausting.

On a personal level, we are frequently berated and disagreed with, politely and less politely. We receive hate mail. We get called terrible things and enthusiastically consigned to the depths of the belly of hell by sweet looking grandmothers. Even when people are polite, they frequently treat us as though we are simply misguided, and just looking to be saved. Many people stand in a middle-of-the-road place on the abortion issue – call it the safe-legal-rare place – and like to engage in what they think of as “interesting debate” and I have come to think of as “totally unnecessary haranguing by people with bare minimum information who think it is my damn job to educate them because they are too lazy to educate themselves and anyway they almost always want to bring God into it when the discussion doesn’t go their way.” The people who argue with us rarely feel the investment in their own cause that we feel in ours, and so are not worn out from endlessly repeating the same fucking arguments over. and over. again. The arguments are all new and fun to them; they think this is an interesting political game.

We don’t think this is a fucking game.

We are in this movement because we know – not believe, know, and have experienced firsthand – that people’s lives depend on it. Really, I can’t be any clearer: without access to abortion and comprehensive reproductive care, people die. People die from this lack every day, and we watch, and we can’t save them, and we hate ourselves, and then we turn back around and keep trying to save the ones we can. Lately, it’s been a losing battle. It sucks.

We are in this movement because we don’t need a weatherman to tell us which way the wind is blowing. Because many of our mainstream feminist forebearers thought that a little ground given was a compromise, a way to hang on to our basic rights, and we have seen that this is not the case. Every time we compromise we just draw a new line in the sand for governments and churches and antichoice crazy people to dance across, erase daintily behind them, and proceed on their merry way towards taking every single thing we have fought for. Five years ago it was absolutely inconceivable that abortion could be completely inaccessible in this great nation. Today that possibility is very real. And after abortion, they will come for birth control. And after birth control, well… “first, they came for abortion, and I said nothing, because I did not want an abortion…”

I stay in the movement because I believe the work I do every day makes it possible to get up in the morning. Because if I don’t, I failed.

I stay in the movement because if I don’t, one day I will wake up and I will need something – a pill, an abortion, a doctor who is adequately trained to provide comprehensive health care for women – and I will simply not be able to get it. I’m not rich and the work I do is never going to make me rich, and it is completely conceivable that if we fail, within the next decade, these things we think of as so basic will be available only to the very wealthy, the people the rules and regulations don’t apply to.

I stay in the movement because I believe, really believe, in freedom and independence and small government. These are things antichoicers think they have the market cornered on, but that’s just not true. They have the messaging down to a science, but much like squirrels are just rats with better PR, antichoice crap is just big government sitting in your damn medicine cabinet, walking you to your doctor’s office and telling you what you can and cannot do. And that is bullshit. My country, my body, my womb, bitch, and I will make what I believe are the best decisions for all three without your invasive surveillance, THANKS.

And then, probably most importantly, I stay in the movement for personal reasons. I stay in the movement because even when I don’t like the people I am working with, I respect them, and they almost always respect me. I stay in the movement because I am queer and loud and independent and frankly the religious right won’t have me. I stay in the movement because we drink and we laugh a lot and we create safe spaces that are also really a lot of fun, and they make me think that maybe people hate us because they’re just jealous that we’re so awesome.

My brilliant, wonderful father, who is my hero in so many things, is anti-choice. He’s also opposed to gay marriage; there are a number of social issues on which we disagree. Over breakfast the other day (an excellent time to discuss polarizing politics if ever there was one!) he brought up the problem of sex-selective abortion and asked me if, given that a severely disproportionate number of females are aborted over males, I would re-think my pro-choice stance. I said no.

The question everyone keeps asking and saying we need to address – the question of whether abortion, and the right to choose, is causing what the Economist identified last year as a “gendercide” – is, to my mind, absolutely the wrong question.

Parents in many countries are clearly deciding they do not want baby girls. Baby girls do not hold the same value as baby boys, and young girls and women do not have the value of the men those baby boys will grow up to be.

Let me be explicit: eliminating abortion access does not make this problem stop. It does not save women. When parents who are pregnant with a girl cannot abort but do not wish to keep her, they often kill or abandon her. And despite the extremely popular contrary opinion we hear so often on this blog, those of us in the pro-choice movement are not also pro-murder. Once a baby is born, it’s born. Once a baby is born, it is an independent, breathing, living being that deserves every support we as a society can offer it, and drowning it in a well or leaving it on the side of a road to die is murder. And we are against murder here! I repeat that point only because there frequently seems to be so much confusion.

So the real question is, why do parents feel the need to abort based solely on the child’s sex? I believe it is because every society in existence, at present, goes to great lengths to devalue women as a gender. We are objectified, patronized, controlled. People – generally men, with the support of a small handful of women with power and internalized sexism – decide what is best for us without our input. Women make up 51% of the population in America, and more than half of college graduates, but still comprise 10% or less of Congress. The Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy reported in May that women comprise 23% of federal and 27% of state-level judgeships (yes, they also claim “judgeships” is a word). This means in the courts, where an overwhelming number of questions on women’s rights stand to be decided in the near future, women themselves are desperately outnumbered at almost 5 to 1.

And then there’s that internalized bit I mentioned. When the women given the highest pedestals and the most attention in our nation are generally white, thin, apolitical reality TV stars, while politically conscious women are derided as bitches and “feminist” has become a four-letter word, it is hard for little girls to value themselves or want to make a difference. To hear people tell it, these days, they mostly want plastic surgery and a very large sweet sixteen party, ideally attended by Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. And if we don’t value ourselves, why should men? Why should anyone listen to us if we’re afraid to speak because it will make us look bad, or if we’re never taught how, for largely the same reasons?

And that is just in America which, in my entirely biased opinion, actually is the most phenomenal place in the world to live (sorry, fellow Canadian bloggers). In poorer countries, where more of the population is rural, the problems are more numerous and considerably worse.

Ironically, the question of whether women should have access to abortion plays into the very same mentality that contributes to the sex-selective abortions so many concerned citizens seem to want to try and combat (and I do genuinely believe many people of the people expressing concern really do want to stop sex-selective abortions and not just control women’s reproductive choices – frankly the subject makes me want to give up, curl in a ball and cry). But that concern would be much more helpful if it were directed at the cause of gender-specific abortions – namely, the lack of value placed on women in so many societies – and perpetuating the idea that women aren’t capable of, or shouldn’t be allowed to, make their own reproductive choices only exacerbates that very problem.

When someone tells you parents abort female children more readily than male children in many countries, tell them this is not news. Ask them why they think parents value a boy more than a girl. And ask them if eliminating access to abortion and thereby once again demonstrating that women cannot be trusted to make reproductive choices for themselves but require the state to prescribe them will help address that problem of value. I am absolutely certain that it will not.

David Katz, who has M.D. in his title so you know his words carry the weight of the medical profession, has an essay up on Huffington Post, “Abortion, on Middle Ground.” And I’m sure you’ll be shocked, absolutely shocked to hear it’s the same shit, different day. Dr. Katz is a progressive who thinks abortion is a necessary evil! He is “emphatically pro-choice” but he is “just as emphatically anti-abortion.” Because, as I am sure everyone on the planet is aware and can agree completely on, “No one is ‘for’ abortion, least of all the women who resort to it.” Dr. Katz knows these women, you see. He knows them personally and understands their inner hearts. He is a listener, this Dr. Katz! He understands the hardships, what that the ladies have,  and how we need abortions even though obviously no one ever wants to have one, and also says some stuff about how our society is really violent and education is the answer.

For the progressives who feel the need to tread this middle ground out there, let me just clear something up: you cannot be both prochoice and anti-abortion. Please don’t mistake this for a “you are with us or against us” ultimatum. I hope you will instead see it for what it is intended to be: a completely rational statement meant to absolve people of the apparent epic confusion raging in their hearts as they try to reconcile conflicting personal and political beliefs. And I don’t mean that simply the personal and political are at odds; in these cases often the personal and the personal are at odds. For instance, perhaps you believe that abortion is really quite awful, but women should be allowed to have them. In this case, congratulations! You are not actually anti-abortion.

Just take a deep breath and say it with me now: I am not anti-abortion.

I am not anti-abortion, because I know it is a necessary medical procedure that people sometimes need to undergo for physical and mental reasons. I am not anti-abortion, because I know abortions save lives. I am not anti-abortion, because I have had an abortion. Yes, I’m sorry to put you in this position, but 46% of women in this country, almost fully half, will have an abortion in their lifetime. You’re allowed to be the person who says “I am anti-abortion” even though you’ve had one yourself, but that will also make you a hypocrite who took advantage of the hard work other people do when they say “I am not anti-abortion” and then disavowed that work. And I don’t think you want to be that person.

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It’s not exactly a secret anymore that “conservative” has become a tragic code word for “hypocritical.” Conservatives want small government, low taxes, and no regulation – on banks, insurance companies, and Wall Street financial institutions (incidentally, these are the people who fund their campaigns). Conservatives want to regulate the ever-loving crap out of the most private, personal matters that concern women and queers, including marriage and healthcare, no matter what it costs - and it just cost Indiana $4 million.

Did you ever hear the joke about the Jewish dilemma? Free bacon.* The conservative dilemma is similar – what to do when regulating bodies requires regulating businesses? What will win out? Will the conservative need to fiercely protect the freedoms of billion-dollar private corporations take precedence, or will the desire to tell people what they can and cannot do with their bodies based on an entirely arbitrary set of “moral” principles prove to be too strong.

The decision in Kansas would seem to indicate which way the wind is blowing, and like everything else these days, it doesn’t look good for uteri.

Kansas legislators have decided to tell insurance companies what kind of medical procedures they can and cannot cover. And they’re not looking to legislate the sale of viagra, or plastic surgery, or non-FDA approved medications – no, they’re coming right for the abortions, which are, obviously, the scourge of American society. Health insurance companies are posting unheard-of record profits while raising premiums, but the government will have no comment on that, THANKS – commenting on the fact that American consumers are getting royally screwed would be interfering with business, and you know America is built on the totally unregulated success of businesses screwing over consumers! So they’re gonna let that slide, for the good of the nation – but not abortion. Offering to cover a necessary, legal medical procedure – now that is just a bridge too far.

*Don’t worry, you can laugh – this moment brought to you by a Jew.

Men are often, historically and in the history of the present moment, great allies for women’s rights and reproductive justice. White people, men and women alike, have been great allies in the fight against racism. Straight people have been responsible for amazing gains made by the LGBTQ movement. Throughout the discourses around our nation’s most fraught issues, people at the intersection of many identities have commented thoughtfully, opening and expanding the conversation, weaving together the threads of communities to create these fragile but precious things we call “movements.”

The Chicago Tribune’s Dennis Byrne is not one of these people.

Posted on April 25th, Byrne’s article “Exploring blacks’ high rate of abortion” makes a pretty perfect outline for “How Not to Be a White Dude Talkin’ Bout Women and Race,” and how. You probably gathered that from the title, Byrne will be exploring “blacks’” high rate of abortion. Oh yeah. That’s sensitively handled. A good tip is to always try it in reverse, Mr. Byrne. How about “exploring whites’ high rate of abortion?” Oh, something sounds funny about that, doesn’t it? You might not phrase it that way. You might write, “Exploring the high rates of abortion among white women,” or something to that effect, yes? Call me crazy, but jumping off with that title does not suggest good things for the piece to follow. And yes – it does get worse.

According to Byrne,

“The rate of African-American abortions should trouble everyone and call for a calm, intelligent exploration of the causes. Not so was the response of the wedge-driving Planned Parenthood. It called the billboards an ‘offensive and condescending effort to stigmatize and shame African-American women while attempting to limit their ability to make private, personal medical decisions.’”

I would argue that Planned Parenthood called the billboards what they are – an offensive and condescending effort to stigmatize and shame African-American women. The billboards do not call for a “calm” or “intelligent” exploration – they make black women out to be baby-killers responsible for the extinction of a species (And in a country with a racially loaded history of equating black men and women to animals, that’s definitely not problematic, at all!). In Chicago, they hold black women responsible for aborting “the next world leader” – because the fate of the world hangs on your shoulders, mothers-to-be, since most children who are not aborted go on to be leaders of the free world. Don’t think of it as an unwanted pregnancy that will cost time you don’t have, money you don’t have, an education you can’t provide for it, food you can’t give it, and will require help the father and the government will not be giving you – think of it as the next world leader. Let’s not even address the guilt that might incur if the pregnant woman in question was raped, or if an abortion is a medical necessity.

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According to Reuters, the number of women who say they have used emergency contraception has more than doubled – from about 4% in 2002 to 10% in less than 10 years. This is likely due to the decision to make the “morning after pill” available over the counter. In other words, when you make contraception safe, accessible, and affordable*, people will use it, thereby preventing the unintended pregnancies that often result in termination.

If you are under 17, you must have a prescription, which requires a doctor’s note, which in many cases requires involving a parent. EC also needs to be taken within 120 hours (5 days), and the sooner, the better. If you’ve ever tried to get an appointment with your doctor in a timely manner, you know how difficult that can be unless you show up at the emergency room having been both stabbed and shot – and even then, you’re probably behind a guy with a tree trunk through his torso. This arbitrary rule would seem to indicate that teenagers’ contraceptive needs are not as important to lawmakers as the ongoing desire to (inadequately) police their morals and values.

Let us be clear: emergency contraception is called that for a reason. It is contraception. If you are pregnant, it will not terminate the pregnancy. It is the equivalent of a condom, or the pill – but it can work after those have failed, preventing sperm from fertilizing the egg. It is the “oops the condom broke” answer we never used to have. It is the “crap – did I take my pill this morning??” you may not need to panic about the answer to. Emergency contraception is a lovely solution to the impasse between “I don’t want to get pregnant” and “I got pregnant and don’t want to be pregnant.” If the goal is really to lower the number of abortions people have, the simplest, most graceful solution is to lower the number of unintended pregnancies. Lawmakers, take note: promoting the availability, accessibility, and affordability of contraception serves to prove that people want to make the best decisions for themselves. Catch your policy up to our reality.

*According to Planned Parenthood, the pill can cost $10-$70. Imagine how helpful it is to have it covered by insurance or a co-pay. It can cost up to $250 if you’re under 17 and need a doctor’s visit and a prescription – imagine how many young people could prevent a pregnancy and avoid an abortion entirely if some strange moral social code decided that access was better for them than an unintended pregnancy!

This past weekend at the CLPP conference, Amanda Allen, a Legal Fellow from the Center for Reproductive Rights, gave a quick-and-dirty breakdown of the legislative shenanigans no reproductive rights activist could possibly have failed to notice. Amanda tracks these bills at the state and federal level as part of her fellowship. In addition to the kind of anecdotal evidence we’ve all been tossing around – she mentioned that no one at the Center can remember a legislative season which so clearly had it in for the health and choice of female-bodied persons – she’s got cold hard numbers that speak volumes; this amazing woman is tracking hundreds of anti-choice bills right now.

The hundreds of anti-choice bills, however, aren’t the big problem. There have always been anti-choice bills, if the numbers have perhaps been less staggering. The real problem, as Amanda noted, is that the last election cycle brought changes in state legislatures and, even more importantly, governorships, which means that bucket-o-crazy bills like the Ohio “heartbeat” legislation can now pass the state House and Senate and be signed into law. It’s that last bit – the actually-a-snowball’s-chance-in-hell-of-being-signed-into-law bit – that is relatively new, unusual, and highly alarming.

The Indiana state House has officially passed some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. This is not a rallying cry that you hear at night, and it is not someone who is going to see the light – we have come to a cold and broken hallelujah. Something similar has already passed the state Senate, and the governor is going to sign this. It’s also unchallengeable at the federal level. Women of Indiana, I am so sorry. I feel like the movement failed you. I feel on some personal level like I failed you.

In Indiana:

• Most abortions will now be illegal after 20 weeks. This is 4 weeks – one month – before most laws, as the fetus is not considered medically viable until 24 weeks. You have one month less to make one of the biggest decisions of your life. Many women don’t realize they’re pregnant for a few months – those women are now SOL. It is also important to note here, as one of Abortion Gang’s brilliant MDs pointed out, that 20 weeks is often when women find out their fetus – in many cases, often a child they wanted and planned for who would be a sibling to other children – “has a devastating diagnosis, like anencephaly (no brain).” Yes, you’re reading this correctly – in Indiana, if you find out you are carrying a fetus with no brain, you WILL bring that fetus to term and give birth to it, knowing it will never survive, and you WILL suffer through months of the knowledge that what you are carrying inside you will never be your child, unless you have the time and the resources to travel to another state in the union for as long as we still HAVE states in the union where access to the medical care women need is legal.
• Abortion providers are now obligated to lie to patients, including telling them that abortion carries an increased risk of breast cancer. One of the co-sponsors of the bill objected to this language, saying that she knows this is flat-out untrue. It’s being written into law anyway.
• “The House also voted against an amendment by Rep. Gail Riecken, D-Evansville, that would have exempted women who became pregnant through rape or incest, or women whose pregnancy threatens their life or could cause serious and irreversible physical harm.” A Republican fought that language because he felt it, “created ‘a giant loophole’ because a woman might ‘simply say (she’d) been raped.’”

That last objection left one member of the House who had worked for six years as a sex crimes investigator in tears, trying to explain to the other members – most of whom are men – that “women don’t make this up.” And I feel for her. I want to cry to.

I tend to cling to hope, to the small rays of sunshine that say we are making progress or, at least, not losing ground at a rapid pace. I can’t find hope here. I can’t draw any conclusions from this bill except that: our elected officials do not trust women/female-bodied individuals and do not believe we are remotely capable of making vital medical decisions for ourselves; women’s lives and the lives of female-bodied individuals are thought of as so disposable that when they are at risk vital medical care will be denied in the name of obscure moral judgments that often prove totally hypocritical; and our every word and claim to experiences can be called into question at any time.

The part of me that’s in tears just wants to quietly say, “I want my country back.” But there is a better part of me I would like to call forth now, and that part says, “Fuck you. Watch out. Because we are coming for our country, and when we take it back, we will have no mercy.”

And as a great and terrible being once said, “As it is written, so shall it be.”

Since becoming more involved in the pro-choice movement, a startling trend has come to my attention: the tendency on the part of the antichoice movement and its members to assume that the prochoice movement is without God. In many cases, not only is it assumed, with no evidence provided, that we are without God, it is also assumed, and stated as fact, that we are, as a uniform whole, anti-God, and anti-religion. This came to my doorstep when an antichoice blog made the following analysis of my belief system based on one of my previous posts:

Nevertheless, at the end of her last paragraph Kaitlyn unknowingly paraphrased Scripture, which I’m sure would horrify her. And that is Proverbs 24:16, quoting the Message Translation: No matter how many times you trip them up, God-loyal people don’t stay down long; Soon they’re up on their feet…

Blogger in question was referring to this quote about the anti-choice movement: “Whatever fights they lost this round, they will be back to fight again.”

Upon reading that I wondered, who says I “unknowingly” paraphrased scripture? And if I had done so “unknowingly,” why would that horrify me? I find Scripture quite beautiful. And as someone who loves books – and I realize here Scripture, the sacred writings, are different than the Bible itself, but the point remains – I have a great deal of love and respect for the Bible. For one thing, it contains some of the coolest stories ever told; for another, it was the first book ever printed on a printing press, the invention I feel most shaped our society and certainly, my life.

Then I wondered, should someone tell them I’m Jewish?

I understand that the blogger in question and I would probably disagree, intensely, on many aspects of and questions around religion, and I have no problem with that. Within the prochoice movement itself there are a million views on these questions, and those open discussions are one of the reasons I feel so blessed to work within it. My question is, from whence comes this assumption that I, as a pro-choicer, would be horrified to be associated with religion, or, more to the point, God (the fact that the two are not to be conflated is VERY relevant to the prochoice movement and, you know, everything, I think, in the world)? Since I am not, personally, at all horrified, it is certainly not because I ever gave any indication that this is the case. One of the things I see at play here is righteousness. If we do, as prochoicers, believe in God, it is not THE God, not the RIGHT God, not the REAL God, because OBVIOUSLY the one true God does not look kindly on abortion. But I take issue with this. I do not know what lies in this life or the next, whether there is or is not a higher power which guides us, and if there is, what that higher power believes or holds to. The reason I do not know is that to know would be to assert, unequivocably, that what I believe as a fallible human being is correct. Being certain of one’s correctness, in matters waaaaay the eff over the heads of us mere mortals, is known as pride, and I don’t think I need to quote Scripture here to remind us all what pride goeth before.

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