This is Not the Northeast

My friend Ivana invited me to the Black Men of Labor Second Line parade yesterday. The group is a centuries old Social Aid and Pleasure Club, one of the mutual aid societies formed by African-Americans. The day was sunny and, as always, humid. The parade started in front of Sweet Lorraine's, a renowned jazz club. The street was packed, and the music was hot. After following the procession along up and down St. Claude Avenue, running into a variety of people I know along the way, I peeled off as it wound through Treme' and headed home.
These parades are one of the traditions that make clear the distinct cultural history in New Orleans. For anyone interested in how African, French and Spanish influences came together to create a very different culture from the rest of the Eastern US, check out Ned Sublette's, The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square. I read it earlier this summer, and I can't recommend it enough.
You all know that this is a different world in many ways, and I continue to get an education about that. One of the things that I am encountering here that really gets under my skin is the sexist and conservative attitude towards women's reproductive issues. A couple of months ago I had a heated discussion with a group of tween boys who were in a public square trying to proselytize support for anti-abortion measures. The fact that I identified as an agnostic and not as a believer in God was probably a wrench in their script. As was the fact that I mentioned to them something they had probably never heard: that one reason abortion was legalized in this country was to stop the death and serious injury to women having backroom abortions.
So, one of the things that I have learned is that anesthesia is not allowed during abortions performed in Louisiana. Knowing this, when I found this article at the start of the weekend, I was disgusted. What the article does not make clear is that the reason this clinic's license was revoked is that, presumably, someone chose to permit the use of anesthesia during an abortion. To me, this seems only humane. Clearly, to the lawmakers of the state, most of whom will never run the risk of being pregnant, the choice of terminating a pregnancy must be accompanied with pain. This strikes me not only as misogynistic, but also in line with the sort of backward religious views that see the pain associated with menstruation and childbirth as God's punishment to women for Eve's desire for knowledge, and, consequently, as pain that should be left unmedicated.
For those interested in this topic, I learned fairly recently that the Catholic Church, and others, generally accepted that pregnancy did not begin until "quickening," the point when the fetus begins to make itself felt moving. If this doctrine were brought back, what a revolution it would be.