Malefaction

Malefaction means “wrongdoing.” The word relates to Middle English and Latin words meaning “to perform badly.” Which leads to another sense of the word: “impotence.”

Republican Congressman Darrell Issa might know the meaning of the word.

On February 16, he blocked testimony from a woman who favors President Obama’s move to require health insurance plans, including those available to women at Catholic-affiliated hospitals and universities, to offer birth control for free.

We might wonder just how impotent Congressman Issa considers himself to be if he’s afraid of the power of one woman’s words.

The panel of witnesses this committee Chairman deemed “eligible” to speak? All men.

The elected representatives conducting the hearing? All men.

A male faction.

We might ask, of course, how these guys feel about health insurance coverage for Viagra.

Before walking out of the hearing in protest, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York said to the committee members:

What I want to know is: where are the women? When I look at this panel, I don’t see one single woman representing the tens of millions of women across the country who want and need insurance coverage for basic preventive healthcare services, including family planning. Where are the women?

DemocracyNow.org has posted clips from the committee meeting. You can also see (and read transcripts of) interviews with Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who also walked out of the hearing, and the witness who was barred from testifying.

The silenced woman? That’s Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke. Ms. Fluke is a third-year law student and past president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice. Georgetown is a Catholic university; its health plan does not cover contraception.

Ms. Fluke tells the harrowing story of a woman whose lack of access to birth control pills — which at times are medically necessary for treating hormonal imbalances — led to surgical removal of an ovary.

“She has polycystic ovarian syndrome,” Fluke says. “And as a result of that, the doctors are very concerned that she’s going into early menopause at the age of 32. And, of course, this will cause complications for her ever trying to conceive a child and puts her at increased risk for heart disease, osteoporosis and cancer.”

The bonus is a clip of  Andrea Mitchell’s interview on MSNBC with Foster Friess, the most generous donor to Rick Santorum’s super PAC. Here’s his take on health insurance coverage for the relative expense of various methods of birth control:

And this contraceptive thing — my gosh, it’s so — it’s such inexpensive. You know, back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.

Now there’s some malefaction for ya’.

For counterpoint, here’s an edited excerpt from The Woman’s Belly Book, Appendix One, “Women’s’ Bellies in History and Culture”:

As the Inquisition massacred hundreds of thousands of European midwives, herbalists, and healers, the Church eliminated women’s knowledge of methods for contraception. Unlimited reproduction served to populate congregations, colonies, armies, factories, and markets.

In the United States, from the 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, information about preventing conception—even about preventing venereal disease—was deemed to be obscene. Making such information available was punishable by a thirty-year prison sentence.

Nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are accidental, including more than 30% of pregnancies occurring among married couples. Yet organizations of church and state attempt to reduce access to contraception.

Organizations of state, that is, such as the House of Representatives.

I restrained myself from including the word “patriarchy” in the title of this post. I really don’t want to say that the patriarchy is alive and well. Perhaps in this case we’re seeing some of its many last gasps in a long process of demise.

I’ve been doing my best, these past several years, to shrug the gender-oppression chip off my shoulder. But Foster Friess, Rick Santorum, and you boys in Congress: you’re sure not helping.