The woman waiting for her abortion is 20 years old, a college student, wan and pretty, with long black hair and glasses. She arrives for her appointment promptly at 10 A.M., neatly dressed in pressed jeans and loafers, but her voice is shaking a little when she signs in at the front desk and her shoulders stay hunched, in what might be shyness or self-protection. She follows the nurse-practitioner into the examining room and lies down without being asked. During… more
Whatever else Germaine Greer's new book will be called, it will almost certainly
be called a work of feminism. There are reasons for this, but they have almost
nothing to do with the book itself, which is a sour and undiscriminating litany
of charges agai nst men--all men, men as nature created them--wrapped around
the willfully obtuse argument that little or nothing has improved for American
and European women over… more
Once
upon a time, a year ago, a woman named Donna Fasano sought high-tech help in conceiving a
baby. By accident, her fertility doctor implanted in her womb not only Mr. and Mrs.
Fasano's own fertilized embryo, but that of another couple as well. And this past
December, Donna Fasano gave birth… more
Remember the Year of the Woman? Well, it's beginning to look as
if 2000 will be the Year of the Wife. Elizabeth Dole is nearing a run for the Presidency,
to the delight of many Republican strategists. And Hillary Clinton is -- famously,
teasingly -- thinking about the Senate. The part of me that relishes a cinematic plot turn
in real life loves the very idea.… more
The journalist who writes out of devotion to an idea -- not a political program
but a philosophical conceit -- is a rare animal. There are journalists who cover
the world of ideas, which is to say they report on the lives and work of people
who have them. There are scholarly essayists and social critics who write for
magazines, but it's hard to imagine them engaged in the daily labor of… more
