TOMORROW MARKS THE 38th ANNIVERSARY of the supreme court’s Roe v. Wade decision. I’m so grateful to have been born into a country where sisters (and brothers, too, of course) before me fought for women’s right to choose! So how are you celebrating? Need ideas?

The website Feminists for Choice has several events listed (in Texas and NYC) and here’s a post from feministing with the lowdown on other NYC-based celebrations.

P.S. Another happy birthday to my favorite feminist and fantastic boyfriend, Dreux! (photo by christine)

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M ONDAY NIGHT during Fresh Air, I found myself completely caught up in Terry Gross’s interview with Liza Mundy, a longtime staff writer for The Washington Post and author of the book Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Our World. I think you will be, too, and here’s why:

This particular interview was a rerun from last spring, appropriately timed to join the chatter surrounding the recent controversial birth of octuplets to a California mom. The debate (if it can even be classified as such, seeing as there are so many perspectives) on assisted reproduction brings up such complex questions about the role of genetics and the definition of choice (and thereby bringing into question the entire shape of the contemporary feminist indentity) that it’s mind boggling to even consider. That’s why I sat at the edge of a kitchen stool for 40 minutes on Monday night, worrying if I picked up my dinner plate I’d miss a word of Mundy’s interview. (Never fear, you can listen to the whole thing here.) On a second listen, I took down this quote that seems to lie at the crux of this modern conundrum. On describing the choices parents face after they’ve gone through IVF and still have frozen embryos left over, Mundy explains:

When [patients] get to the end of their cycle, if in fact, they’ve had a child, or more than one child, they realize that these embryos, if born, would be the full siblings of their existing children. And it becomes much harder to give them away—to donate them to be raised in a completely different family. There are some agencies that are almost like adoption agencies that exist, trying to facilitate these transactions. But studies have shown that patients almost always change their mind while they’re going through this process about what is the right thing to do about their embryos, and even how to think about their embryos. You know, do they think about them as just little pieces of tissue? Or do they think about them as property? Or do they think about them as potential children? Even if you go into the process thinking about yourself as, say, pro-choice, you might at the end still have a hard time thawing [thereby destroying] those embryos.

How does this complicate our view of sibling relationships as a culture? In an earlier segment of the interview, Mundy describes cases where a woman pregnant with extreme multiples may opt to have her pregnancy selectively reduced (a pregnancy of, say, six embryos would be reduced to two). At this point, gender selection may come into play—and more ideal siblings (and I use the term “ideal” in a very broad sense) are made to the tune of thousands of dollars. Is it less acceptable when a woman pregnant with twins, selectively reduces the embryos to a singleton?

Just confronting such questions is enough to give me goose-bumps. We’re at the frontier, as a culture, of sibling morality and science—what a great opportunity to soak up the view.

Also, check out this week’s Momversation (a video conversation among popular mom-bloggers) about the ethics of planned multiple births, for even more perspectives on this juicy topic.

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W HETHER YOU’VE HAD an abortion, or read a pregnancy test while your friend covered her eyes, or sat for hours in a waiting room watching women come and go, or simply believe in the right to choose, you know that facing the decision to terminate a pregnancy is devastating. There are few other times when we need our sisters more. And not just sisters to hold hands and to drive to clinics, but sisters who meet us at the door of those clinics and sisters who fight to lower the cost of procedures, and sisters who educate us on how to take care of ourselves after abortions. For women around the world, their network of sisters has just grown.

President Obama signed a bill Friday, overturning a rule instated by George W. Bush banning federal funding to any foreign family-planning agencies that promoted or provided information about abortions. After the ban was lifted, the women’s health organization, Planned Parenthood, released a statement declaring: “No longer will health-care providers be forced to choose between receiving family-planning funding and restricting the health care services they provide to women.”

We rejoice with our sisters and for our sisters in this small victory of global women’s rights.

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