You know the rules. Here’s the quote. This is a passage, parts of which are famous, from the short essay that Vladimir Nabokov wrote on his novel Lolita the year after it was published. I read this at home, after having spent the past couple weeks reading Lolita on the bus, on my way to and from work.

At first, on the advice of a wary old friend, I was meek enough to stipulate that the book be brought out anonymously. I doubt that I shall ever regret that soon afterwards, realizing how likely a mask was to betray my own cause, I decided to sign Lolita. The four American publishers, W, X, Y, Z, who in turn were offered the typescript and had their readers glance at it, were shocked by Lolita to a degree that even my wary old friend F.P. had not expected.

While it is true that in ancient Europe, and well into the eighteenth century (obvious examples come from France), deliberate lewdness was not inconsistent with flashes of comedy, or vigorous satire, or even the verbe of a fine poet in a wanton mood, it is also true that in modern times the term pornography connotes mediocrity, commercialism, and certain strict rules of narration. Obscenity must be mated with banality because every kind of aesthetic enjoyment has to be entirely replaced by simple sexual stimulation which demands the traditional word for direct action upon the patient. Old rigid rules must be followed by the pornographer in order to have his patient feel the same security of satisfaction as, for example, fans of detective stories feel–stories where, if you do not watch out, the real murderer may turn out to be, to the fan’s disgust, artistic originality (who for instance would want a detective story without a single dialogue in it?). Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés. Style, structure, imagery should never distract the reader from his tepid lust. The novel must consist of an alternation of sexual scenes. The passages in between must be reduced to sutures of sense, logical bridges of the simplest design, brief expositions and explanations, which the reader will probably skip but must know they exist in order not to feel cheated (a mentality stemming from the routine of true fairy tales in childhood). Moreover, the sexual scenes in the book must follow a crescendo line, with new variations, new combinations, new sexes, and a steady increase in the number of participants (in a Sade play they call the gardener in), and therefore the end of the book must be more replete with lewd lore than the first chapters.

Certain techniques in the beginning of Lolita (Humbert’s Journal, for example) misled some of my first readers into assuming that this was going to be a lewd book. They expected the rising succession of erotic scenes; when these stopped, the readers stopped, too, and felt bored and let down. This, I suspect, is one of the reasons why not all the four firms read the typescript to the end. Whether they found it pornographic or not did not interest me. Their refusal to buy the book was based not on my treatment of the theme but on the theme itself, for there are at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned. The two others are: a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106.

Some of the reactions were very amusing: one reader suggested that the firm might consider publication if I turned my Lolita into a twelve-year-old lad and had him seduced by Humbert, a farmer, in a barn, amidst gaunt and arid surroundings, all this set forth in short, strong, realistic sentences. (He acts crazy. We all act crazy, I guess. I guess God acts crazy. Etc.) Although everybody should know that I detest symbols and allegories (which is due partly to my old feud with Freudian voodooism and partly to my loathing of generalizations devised by literary mythists and sociologists), an otherwise intelligent reader who flipped through the first part described Lolita as Old Europe debauching young America, while another flipper saw it as Young America debauching old Europe. Publisher X, whose advisers got so bored with Humbert that they never got beyond page 188 [where Lo suggests the second road trip –R.G.], had the naïveté to write me that Part Two was too long. Publisher Y, on the other hand, regretted that there were no good people in the book. Publisher Z said if he printed Lolita, he and I would go to jail.

No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master’s chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown. I presume there exist readers who find titillating the display of mural words in those hopelessly banal and enormous novels which are typed out by the thumbs of tense mediocrities and called powerful and stark by the reviewing hack. There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray’s assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann.

–Vladimir Nabokov (November 12, 1956), On a book entitled Lolita, from Lolita (ISBN 0-425-04680-X), pp. 284–286.

Over at Positive Liberty, Timothy Sandefur and Jason Kuznicki seem intent on retreading an argument over immigration that I last saw in the clash of the fascists between Sam Huntington and David Brooks almost exactly two years ago. Here’s Sandefur, who apparently believes that he’s explaining a problem:

The illegal immigration problem is so severe in Southern California that it is difficult for people elsewhere in the country, including even Northern Californians, to really understand what's going on. Whole areas of Southern California are now virtually Mexico. The population of illegal immigrants is enormous, and climbing steadily, at the rates of at least hundreds per day.

— Timothy Sandefur, Positive Liberty (2006-03-30): Illegal Alienation

I’m still waiting to find out what the problem is, but Sandefur apparently believes he’s intimated at least part of it just by telling us that parts of Southern California are now, in some unspecified sense, like Mexico. (Well, so?)

Here’s what Sandefur takes to be the most serious objection to Mexicans moving in without permission slips from the federal government:

The most serious, to me, is philosophical. You cannot have a free society among people who do not understand the cultural and philosophical framework of freedom. Allowing people into a nation who do not identify themselves as part of that nation–who do not speak the language, who do not observe the holidays, who do not know or care about the history and ideals and cultural icons–is simply suicidal.

— Timothy Sandefur, Positive Liberty (2006-03-30): Illegal Alienation

Of course, it is almost certainly true that freedom requires a certain cultural and philosophical framework, and it would be good if everybody adhered to it. But I’m baffled by the suggestion that speaking the prevalent language, observing the prevalent holidays, or knowing or caring about the history and ideals and cultural icons of whatever country you intend to move to are essential parts of that cultural and philosophical framework. There’s no special affinity between liberty and monolinguism, between freedom and observing any particular theo-nationalist liturgical calendar, or between autonomy and being interested or well-versed in any particular part of the history of the foreign land that you are moving to. (I’d suggest, if anything, that having to negotiate many different languages, many different cultures, many different understandings of history and pop culture, can be just as conducive to freedom, if not more conducive to freedom, as any sort of constructed nationalism.)

But this is ultimately beside the point anyway. Even if failing to learn English was a dreadful threat to the prospects of liberty; even if not celebrating Veterans’ Day or Flag Day or Arbor Day were an ominous step towards totalitarianism, it would provide absolutely no justification whatever for using force to stop people from traveling to property where they are welcomed by the owner (either out of hospitality, or because they pay rent, or because they are prepared to buy it for themselves). Certain kinds of bad thoughts may very well be corrosive to liberty, but there’s no libertarian justification in restraining, beating, shooting, detaining, jailing, or exiling somebody just for having bad thoughts. Neither you nor the government has any right to force people off of property onto which they have been invited, even if you think that their presence is a looming danger to the future of liberty in America, unless they have actually done or threatened real violence to somebody else. Vices are not crimes, and only crimes can justly be resisted by force.

That argument seems simple, and obvious. So why don’t more advocates of immigration just stick to their guns and make it? Perhaps it’s understandable that non-libertarians don’t make it, but what about libertarians? Why does Kuznicki take this to be the most natural line of response to Sandefur?

Subsequent evidence runs against Jefferson's prediction. The United States has absorbed substantial waves of Irish, East European, and East Asian immigrants, none of whom came from countries or cultures that habituated them to freedom. Many spoke little or no English and were almost wholly ignorant of the American system. Yet after a generation or two — and often much sooner — they turned out pretty much like any other group of Americans.

What we are experiencing now is entirely within the bounds of the demographic precedents set by these other groups: As a proportion of the general population, the number of immigrants today is roughly on par with levels that we have experienced in the past, as this (intentionally?) misleading graph actually demonstrates quite well (hint: look at the percentages).

Given the demographic similarities and historical precedents, I have little reason to fear that Latinos will somehow be different — unless, that is, we give them incentives not to assimilate.

— Jason Kuznicki, Positive Liberty (2006-03-30): How I’d Reform Immigration

What legitimate reason has the United States government to care whether or not Latin@s assimilate or don’t assimilate? What legitimate reason have we got to make the decision whether or not to use force to stop immigrants (or to exile them from their current homes) on the basis of whether or not they are willing to assimilate to the surrounding culture? Maybe they will and maybe they won’t; but whatever the virtues or vices of declining to assimilate, it’s not a hanging crime, and neither you nor anybody else has the person to destroy a person’s livelihood, clap them into irons, and force them back out of the country over it. Neither you, nor anybody else, has the right to harass, shove, restrain, beat, or shoot people to stop them from entering the country over it. The only issue here is the freedom of movement of the immigrant, and the property rights of whoever owns the property where the immigrant is staying. (If the immigrant is trespassing, of course, there are already laws against that; it has nothing in particular to do with immigration.) Sandefur, for his part, thinks he has a reply to this. Here it is:

First, it must be kept very clear that no person has a natural right to enter another country against the will of those citizens. A person has a natural right to leave his [sic] own country, no doubt. But a political society is an agreement among people for purposes of the common defense, and the people therefore have the right to decide whether or not to allow others in. So long as they do not make that decision on an arbitrary basis, they have the right to refuse to extend citizenship or entry to others if they wish. So no person has the right to force his [sic] way into the another nation and demand to be accepted.

— Timothy Sandefur, Positive Liberty (2006-03-30): Illegal Alienation

If Sandefur were right about this, it would provide a basis for taking things like assimilation into account when you’re setting immigration policy. If it were a matter of resisting people trying to force her way in against the will of people who have a right to keep them out, then you might very well think that any number of factors might be good reasons for stopping them rather than letting them in.

But he’s not right; that’s not what this is about. The appeal is nothing more than overt, garden-variety political collectivism, which tricks itself out in a few of the rhetorical cadences of property rights while actually assaulting those property rights in the name of collective coercion of innocent individual people. Sandefur would have The People decide whether or not to allow others in, but in a way that systematically denies individual people the right to decide whether or not to allow others in to their own property. Of course, there is no natural right to enter another person’s land against the will of that person (that’s just trespassing). But I take it we’re not talking about trespassing law here. We’re talking about an immigrant who’s made arrangements for a place to stay with a willing landlord — through the hospitality of people she knows, or by paying rent for the space, or by buying it for herself from the previous owner. Who is, therefore, welcomed by the owners of the property. The only people deciding not to allow her in are, ex hypothesi, people other than the owners, third parties — nativist voters, opportunistic legislators, La Migra, or whoever else — who think that force of numbers or the writ of The Law gives them some kind of right to impose their decisions on other people’s property.

There are political theories that would approve of this kind of bullying and coercion — as long as it had the right majoritarian or authoritarian backing. But libertarianism is not one of them. If I invite a Mexican worker into my home, she or he has got a right to stay there as long as I (and my landlord) permit it. If a local factory gives her a job, she’s got a right to work there as long as she and the employer want her to continue. If she’s happy to keep speaking Spanish and I’m happy to let her stay without speaking English, then she still has a right to stay. If she’ll work on Dead Prez Day and the factory is happy for her to work on it, then she still has a right to stay. There is no way for La Migra to butt in, whether she is willing to assimilate or not, without mounting an assault on both her and on my rights to do as I please with my own home, or the factory’s rights to hire whom they please. Whether or not Mexican workers are interested in assimilating to any particular local culture is interesting only as an empirical question, a matter of idle sociological curiosity. It has absolutely no bearing on the question of right, because your ideas about culture don’t trump my right to my own land, and they don’t trump her life, liberty, or livelihood. Period.

When the topic is immigration policy, please just shut up about cultural assimilation. Whether it is happening or not, and whether it ought to happen or not, it is completely irrelevant to the course of (in)action that the government ought to pursue.

Further reading:

• GT 2004-03-22: Freedom is irrelevant. Assimilation is inevitable.
• Comment (2006-03-27) on Wizbang: Criminals threaten to strike: why is this considered bad?, on the fundamental issue in all this.

There’s no real way to reply seriously to the kind of deliberate political sadism suggested by nativist creeps like those commenting on Wizbang’s latest on the Evil Alien Invasion. So, instead, I’ll limit myself to a couple questions and a remark. Here’s Linoge, suggesting massive new layers of government regulation in order to make undocumented immigrants suffer as much as it’s feasible to make them:

The word illegal sums it up entirely… I would not go so far as to say they should be arrested on sight (though I am close), but their presence illegally in another nation should be heavily discouraged. That means, no health care, no driver’s licenses, no jobs, no nothing. At all. Ever. —Linoge

Well, at least you’re not going so far as to say they should be arrested on sight. That’s mighty white of you.

Now, here’s the question for the day. How would immigration cops looking to make an arrest determine somebody’s immigration status on sight in the first place?

Meanwhile, here’s a small-government conservative who’s a fan of the East Berlin immigration policy:

At any rate, I don’t see why the States don’t take matters into their own hands. Why do we have to wait for the feds to take action? Is there some reason that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California can’t start building walls and fences along their borders with Mexico? What prevents the States from using their state police forces to find, arrest and detain for later deportation illegal aliens? I’m not suggesting roadblocks, house-to-house searches, or Ihre Papiere, bitte, but I don’t see why a state trooper who stops a Hispanic driver can’t do a quick computer check to see if the person is in the country legally.

— docjim505

Here’s the second question for the day: what is the difference, if any, between (1) a cop stopping you and — solely on the basis of your race, by the way — demanding your ID for a check of your immigration status, and (2) a uniformed goon demanding Ihre Papiere, bitte? Because he, what … demands your papers in English rather than in German?

SJBill, for his part, didn’t feel threatened by undocumented Mexican immigrants until they scared him by … exercised freedom of speech and assembly:

Before these protests, I was pretty ambivalent on the issue — meaning I wasn’t directly threatened by illegal Mexicans. I see them all the time at local Home Depots, etc., but they are looking for work and trying to grind out a living. So, with the protests, the lights in the kitchen came on and we see millions of Mexicans (presuming most have other than legal status) marching in our cities and streets — all of a sudden I’m not quite so comfy. It’s pretty scary.

… I see a credible threat to our nation’s security, and we should do what we can to send these folks back home if they cannot abide the law of our land. That’s not being a xenophobe.

— SJBill

Maybe not. But suggesting that people be threatened, beaten, restrained, arrested, detained, imprisoned, exiled, etc. simply on the basis of their nationality, for having done nothing more than tried to work for a living for a willing employer, is.

You know the rules. Here’s the quote. This is another passage from from Chapter 4 (Race and Slavery) of Michael Fellman's The Making of Robert E. Lee (2000) (see also GT 2006-02-24: Over My Shoulder #12). Here’s some more on the Lees, slavery, and the slaves at Arlington. It’s mostly about Robert E. Lee’s wife Mary, but be sure to note Robert’s sanctimonious attempts to dissuade her from even taking the modest step of ransoming a slave from an especially cruel slave-driver. (In this matter is everything to be yielded to the servant, & nothing allowed to the master? Well…) It would be interesting to know whether the two white strangers were connected at all with the Norrises’ attempted escape the following year or the anonymous letters to the New York Tribune about their capture (which were, like most 19th century letters to the editor, published anonymously). In any case:

Lee’s views on slavery were considerably influenced by the opinions and activities of his wife and his mother-in-law, both of whom were deeply involved in the American Colonization Society, an early form of ambiguous antislavery activism, which sought to free the slaves by sending them back [sic] to Africa. As a young married woman, this project was a commitment of Mary’s heart and nost just her head. She wished to nurture, educate, and catechize the family slaves right away, in preparationfor eventual manumission and export. She wrote her mother in 1831, I hope that we may be able to do something in time for the spiritual benefit of those neglected slaves and for their eventual freedom. Because on these terms liberty meant expulsion of the entire inferior black race with whom whites could never imagine cohabiting on an equal footing, such colonizationism was racist antislavery doctrine.

In her diary for the 1850s, Mary frequently discussed the project. She joined her mother, she wrote, in the hope that one day all their slaves would be able to emigrate to Africa, so that they could carry light & Christianity to that dark heathen country. Nevertheless, admitting to a presentiment that she would not live long enough to carry out this grand scheme, she proposed to try it gradually. She picked her slave William and his family to act as pioneers, a kind of pilot project. And then she stated the larger purpose of the heart that lay behind her social project: What is life worth unless you can accomplish in it something for the benefit of others, especially of those so entirely dependent upon one’s will and pleasure.

Mary’s body servant, Eliza, was another pet project. I have always promised Eliza her freedom to emigrate to Africa in a few years. … If she will go to Africa she can have her freedom, Mary Lee wrote in her diary in 1853. She feared, however, that Eliza might marry here and be unwilling to go, especially if she should marry a free man. In the event, Mary Lee noted in 1860 that Eliza had her freedom and that she now lived in Newport with her husband. Somehow, Eliza had secured her freedom while avoiding being shipped back [sic] to Afirca. Such was the outcome favored by the vast majority of manumitted slaves, whatever the desires of their former masters.

As an interim measure on her slaves’ path to freedom and repatriation, Mary Lee, with the help of her daughters, set up a school for slaves, almost certainly a Sunday school, on the Arlington plantation. This was an unusual move, because the overwhelming majority of slave owners feared rightly that literacy would give slaves acces to seditious abolitionist materials, which would lead them to demand or seize their freedom. In 1819, this concern had led the Virginia legislature to outlaw education for blacks, but several of Virginia’s clergymen continued to encourage Sunday schools, arguing that the gentry class would answer to God, not to the legislature. It is not clear how many slaveholders in addition to the Lees followed this path of circumspect lawbreaking.

At least occasionally, Agnes Lee taught in this school for slaves in the mid-1850s. In her journal, she expressed her attitude and that of her father toward her students. I must put down my pen … & go teach my little scholars. We have a considerable number of ebony mites as Papa calls them & as no one knows as much as another it makes their instruction very tedious. Off to school she went, only to find an empty room. Well! I have gone down, I insist upon teaching them in classes & yet only one of my class ever arrived [in] time so I have employed this odd moment in writing.

Agnes’s pen dripped racial condescension even as she earnestly broke the law. Her view on her pupils’ tardiness reflected the Southern white contempt for slaves’ perceived lack of punctuality (although it must be noted that Northern factory managers had the same complaints about their workers, who also thus resisted discipline and set their own work schedules). The amused phrase ebony mites also demonstrated her father’s doubts about a project in which he disbelieved, although he did nothing to stop it, probably regarding it as harmless. While influenced by Mary’s colonizationist project, he was generally rather skeptical of its value, and sometimes he doubted whether Mary’s do-goodism was a very wise course. In one rather complex case in 1841, Robert attempted to dissuade Mary’s project of buying a slave off an unkind master in order to free him. In judging of results you must endeavour to lay aside your feelings & prejudices & examine the question as thus exposed. In this matter is everything to be yielded to the servant, & nothing allowed to the master? What will the effect of the precedent be on the rest [of the slaves and on] your father and his authority? Lee promised that he would comply with her wishes, but he urged her to consider well upon the matter & act for yourself.

After her father’s slaves became hers and Robert’s, Mary hardened her attitude toward them. On February 10, 1858, when Robert was trying to sort out the chaos on the other Custis plantations, Mary wrote an old friend about his efforts in trying to reduce these very complicated affairs into some order: It is very unsatisfactory work for the servants here have been so long accustomed to do little or nothing that they cannot be convinced of the necessity now of exerting themselves, in order to speed up the accomplishment of the promise of freedom in the will. Actually, Mary was being illogical, as the promise had been given unconditionally, albeit for five years down the line. Then Mary continued, unless there is a mighty change wrought in them I do not know what good they will do themselves, but at any rate we shall be relieved from the care of them which will be an immense burden taken from our shoulders. Actual experience in manumission was hardly proving to be the fulfillment of the colonizationist dreams of years past.

Over the next week, Mary continued to brood. On February 17, she wrote to W. G. Webster that two white men had been constantly lurking about with the servants & telling them that they had a right to their freedom immediately & that if they would unite & demand it they would obtain it. Only the merciful hand of a kind Providence … prevented an outbreak. Their freedom is a very questionable advantage to any but ourselves who will be relieved from a host of idle & their useless dependents. Of course, colonization had always promised masters relief from their slaves, but here Mary Lee dropped the charitable aspect of the project–the rationalization that it was intended for the good of blacks–and treated manumission as a racial safety valve for white masters.

Not colonization but her father’s will had freed these slaves, and Mary was retrospectively exasperated with him. My dear father in his usual entire ignorance of the state of his affairs has left provision in his will which it will be almost impossible to fulfill even in double 5 years. Just sending them out of the state, which Virginians freeing their slaves were required to do, would be prohibitively expensive, she believed. She then drew the sarcastic conclusion that we should be most deeply indebted to their kind friends the abolitionists if they would come forward [and purchase their] freedom at once.

It even gave Mary Lee a certain perverse satisfaction to note the virulent racism in Canada, that land of freedom to which thousands of slaves had fled, when she visited some hot springs there in 1860. There are a great number of runaways here, but I have not met with any acquaintances, Mary Lee wrote her daughter Annie. The white people say that before long they will be obliged to make laws to send them all out of Canada, so I see no place for them but Africa. I am told they suffer a great deal here in the long cold winters. After enticing them over here the white people will not let their children go to the same schools or treat them as equals in any way. Amalgamation–interracial marriage–is out of the question tho occasionally a very low white woman marries a black man. Either blacks had to be dominated by kind masters within slavery, or else they had to be returned to Africa. They could never live in equality with whites anywhere in North America, and freedom would bring them only into a condition worse than slavery. The Canadian racism she observed confirmed Mary’s beliefs in white supremacy and black degradation.

As the Civil War approached, given their experiences, both the Lees were disgusted with slavery. At the same time, they were prepared to defend it as the only viable safeguard of white control over blacks until that distant day when the South might be whitened through complete African repatriation [sic].

–Michael Fellman (2000), The Making of Robert E. Lee. New York: Random House, ISBN 0679456503. 67–72.

From GT 2006-03-08: Abortion on demand and without apology (Dakota Remix):

What you need to realize is that we are facing off with people (and, let’s be clear, most of them are men) who have absolutely no compunction with commandeering real women’s lives, livelihoods, and bodies in the name of their theologico-political power trips, because their victims are women and women are (in the minds of the bellowing blowhard brigade) made for the Culture of Life’s use, even if that means involuntary servitude enforced at the point of a pro-life bayonet. Meanwhile the sanctimonious politicos (and, let’s be clear, most of them are men, too) supposedly on our side bite their lips and palaver about [the tragedy of necessary gynaecological surgery][Pollitt] and generally act as though their brothers’ claims of dominion over other women’s bodies deserved something less than contempt and resistance. We are the new abolitionists, and it is long past time for the Clintonian hand-wringers and the take-one-for-the-party doughfaces who claim to be part of this movement to shut the hell up and get to the back. If they refuse to, I suggest that it’s our duty to jeer them into silence until they do. Can we get some moral outrage here? Some feminism? Some creative extremism?

A couple days later, Dain commented:

So just what is the decentralist and libertarian response to this move by South Dakota?

Well, here you go. First:

In the 1960s and early 1970s, when abortions were illegal in many places and expensive to get, an organization called Jane stepped up to the plate in the Chicago area. Jane initially hired an abortion doctor, but later they did the abortions themselves. They lost only one patient in 13,000 — a lower death rate than that of giving live birth. The biggest obstacle they had, though, was the fact that until years into the operation, they thought of abortion as something only a doctor could do, something only the most trained specialist could perform without endangering the life of the woman.

They were deceived — much like you have probably been deceived. An abortion, especially for an early pregnancy, is a relatively easy procedure to perform. And while I know, women of South Dakota, that you never asked for this, now is the time to learn how it is done. There is no reason you should be beholden to doctors — especially in a state where doctors have been refusing to perform them, forcing the state’s only abortion clinic to fly doctors in from elsewhere.

No textbooks or guides existed at that time to help them, and the equipment was hard to find. This is no longer true. For under $2000, any person with the inclination to learn could create a fully functioning abortion setup allowing for both vacuum aspiration and dilation/curettage abortions. If you are careful and diligent, and have a good grasp of a woman’s anatomy you will not put anyone’s health or life in danger, even if you have not seen one of these procedures performed.

Today, I will discuss dilation and curettage — what used to be the most common abortion procedure before vacuum aspiration took its place. Vacuum aspiration is an easier method, but sometimes remaining fetal/placental material necessitates doing a cleanup D&C anyway, so you should know how to do this procedure first. …

— Molly Saves the Day (2006-02-23): For the women of South Dakota: an abortion manual

And reader, she does. Read the whole thing. Save a copy on your own computer. I hope you never need it, but do it anyway.

Secondly, here’s another good suggestion, and some even better news:

This might be the time non-Indian South Dakotans might want to carefully and respectfully approach their neighbors on sovereign Indian reservations and discuss funding good quality private health clinics which also include access, for tribal members as well as reservations visitors, to reproductive services. … However, since Indian reservations are not subject to state regulations and since abortion, according to the federal government, is still legal nationally, South Dakota could not regulate such private, Indian-owned clinics on tribal land.

— MB, commenting at Pandagon (2006-02-23)

And:

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

To me, it is now a question of sovereignty, she said to me last week. I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.

Strong words from a very strong lady. I hope Ms. Fire Thunder challenges Gov. Rounds and the state legislators on this law that is an affront to all independent women.

— Tim Giago at Indianz.com (2006-03-21): Oglala Sioux president on state abortion law

The story is thanks to Hopelessly Midwestern (2006-03-22), who also relays this:

If you want to mail donations to the reservation, you may do so at:

Oglala Sioux Tribe
ATTN: President Fire Thunder
P. O. Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770

OR: and this may be preferred, due to mail volume:

ATTN: PRESIDENT FIRE THUNDER
PO BOX 990
Martin, SD 57751

Enclose a letter voicing your support and explaining the purpose of the donation. Bear in mind, the Pine Ridge Res is not exactly dripping with disposeable income, so do consider donating funds directly to the tribe as well as specifically for this effort.

ETA: Make checks out to OST Planned Parenthood Cecelia Fire Thunder. This will ensure that the funds get routed properly.

For email contact, you can contact the president at:

firethunder_president@yahoo.com
cc: vbush@oglala.org

For the sake of record keeping, do cc: the listed address on all correspondence; that’s her official secretary.

— Hopelessly Midwestern (2006-03-22): Quick post: Show love!

Do it. Seriously. Now.

I can’t think of a better direction for the pro-choice movement than this: defiance, direct action, and polycentric law. These are grim times that we face, but this is the way that hope lies.