Compare these two news reports from October 26.  The first, from France:

The lower house of the French parliament voted on Friday to fully reimburse all abortions and to make contraception free for minors from the age of 15 to 18.  France’s national medical insurance pays for abortions for minors and the poor, while other women are reimbursed for up to 80 percent of the procedure’s cost…  Contraception is partly reimbursed.  The bill now goes to the Senate, where it is likely to pass. [AP]

A safe bet:  with free and easily available contraception, there’ll be far fewer abortions in France.  And with free and safe abortions, there’ll be far fewer unwanted children born into poverty and negligence.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Republican party sees any form of national health insurance as some kind of dire Communist plot against America, and plans to scrap Medicare.  Its official platform calls for a ban on all abortion except in cases of incest and armed rape (and there are a ton of Republicans who want to ban it even then), and it is intent on shutting down the country’s largest provider of contraceptive advice and services:

Planned Parenthood filed a new lawsuit on Friday over a Texas rule that bars its clinics from a state health program for low-income women because the organization performs abortions…  In the past two years, conservative Republicans in more than a dozen states have taken steps to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood. [UPI]

What puzzles me about the French bill:  why it seems to exclude girls under the age of 15.

What puzzles me about the American elections:  how any self-respecting woman could even conceive of voting Republican.  Or any man with a conscience.

Since Joe Nocera in today’s NYT puts it better than I can right now, I’m running (below) part of his response to the egregious Bernard Henri-Levy‘s hysterical crowing about l’affaire DSK (Strauss-Kahn was dragged “lower than the gutter,” his treatment was “pornographic,” perfidious America etc).   Ironically, BHL’s screed was published the same day his dear, maligned, noble friend DSK was charged with another count of attempted rape in France, where his accuser, indisputably white and part of the same privileged upper-class elite, described his behavior as that of “a chimpanzee in rut.”

BHL is outraged — outraged! — that New York District Attorney Vance took the word of a mere hotel maid over that of an esteemed member of the French establishment.  He also blithely ignores the DNA evidence and the maid’s injuries, assuming that if she had lied in the past, on her asylum application, she must of necessity be lying now.

(Word of warning to all women:  never tell a lie in case you get raped, because we all know that it’s impossible for women who lie to be raped.)

Nocera rightly calls out BHL on his elitism.  And takes pride in the fact that the case is in jeopardy not because of DSK’s multi-millionaire lawyers, but because of  the hard work of DA Vance’s horribly underpaid team.

It’s just a pity Nocera’s piece didn’t run yesterday, Independence Day:

I can’t see what Vance did wrong. Quite the contrary. The woman alleged rape, for crying out loud, which was backed up by physical (and other) evidence. She had no criminal record. Her employer vouched for her. The quick decision to indict made a lot of sense, both for legal and practical reasons. Then, as the victim’s credibility crumbled, Vance didn’t try to pretend that he still had a slam dunk, something far too many prosecutors do. He acknowledged the problems.

Lévy, himself a member of the French elite, seems particularly incensed that Vance wouldn’t automatically give Strauss-Kahn a pass, given his extraordinary social status. Especially since his accuser had no status at all.

But that is exactly why Vance should be applauded: a woman with no power made a credible accusation against a man with enormous power. He acted without fear or favor. To have done otherwise would have been to violate everything we believe in this country about no one being above the law.

As for Strauss-Kahn’s humiliation, clearly something very bad happened in that hotel room. Quite possibly a crime was committed. Strauss-Kahn’s sordid sexual history makes it likely that he was the instigator. If the worst he suffers is a perp walk, a few days in Rikers Island and some nasty headlines, one’s heart ought not bleed. Ah, yes, and he had to resign as the chief of an institution where sexual harassment was allegedly rampant, thanks, in part, to a culture he helped perpetuate. Gee, isn’t that awful?

The point is this: We live in a country that professes to treat everyone equally under the law. So often we fall short. The poor may go unheard; the rich walk. Yet here is a case that actually lives up to our ideal of who we like to think we are. Even the way the case appears to be ending speaks to our more noble impulses. Vance didn’t dissemble or delay or hide the truth about the victim’s past. He did the right thing, painful though it surely must have been.

To judge by his recent writings, Bernard-Henri Lévy prefers to live in a country where the elites are rarely held to account, where crimes against women are routinely excused with a wink and a nod and where people without money or status are treated like the nonentities that the French moneyed class believe they are.

I’d rather live here.

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Making the same point:  Peter Beinart in today’s Daily Beast.

What happens now that IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn (as of today, make that former director) has posted $1,000,000 bail while hiring the world’s most expensive defense lawyers for his rape trial?

Now the victim gets pilloried.

Her name has been published in France and on the web, where fantasies of her being a whore are rampant (apparently it’s okay to rape a prostitute).  The French gang of good ole boys (and, doubly shamefully, gals) have proclaimed themselves in shock — shock! — that a pillar of society like DSK could be treated by the NYPD like a common criminal.  So what if rape is criminal assault?   Handcuffs are fine for the lower classes, but for the privileged few?  How dare those Americans!  Can’t they see she’s just a maid?

Once again, as DSK’s lawyers dig up every detail of the victim’s life and twist it to make it appear slutty, it’ll be clear why rape is so drastically under-reported.  This woman has real courage.  Most victims simply can’t face the idea of being picked apart and violated again and again in the press and by the defense, who will do everything they can to “prove” that she is a lying, vengeful, publicity-seeking slut.  Like the mob that raped CBS reporter Lara Logan in Tahrir Square, they will do their best to pull her apart.

Could you pass the slut test?

Imagine it:  every detail of your personal and work life put on public view and twisted into leering ‘significance.’  Every date, every drink, every tittle and every tattle of gossip or innuendo, every misstep you ever made will be paraded as “proof.”  Only a hermit could pass this test.

You’ve had sex before — guilty.

You are poor — guilty.

You are black — guilty.

You are a single mother — guilty.

You have breasts and a vagina — guilty.

You are human — guilty.

How did you even dream of daring to bring such a charge against a wealthy, powerful, white man?  Who do you think you are?  You’re just a cleaning woman.  Just a nobody.  Just another lying slut.

This sentence really struck me in President Obama’s Middle East speech this morning:

We have a chance to show that the US values a street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of a dictator.

And now we have a chance to show that we value the dignity of an immigrant maid more than the assumed privilege and entitlement of wealth and power.  How dare they treat him like a common criminal?  Because if he is indeed found guilty — and for the NYPD to act with such alacrity in a rape case, you can be sure the evidence is very solid — then that is exactly what he is.  A criminal.  And all too common.

Sex and religion are at it again.  French president Nicolas Sarkozy is proposing to ban women from wearing the full Islamic veil because it “hurts the dignity of women and is unacceptable in French society.”

But this is no more about women’s dignity than the invasion of Iraq was about liberating Iraqi women (though the Bush administration didn’t hesitate to use that as one of their many false rationales for war).

Sarkozy’s logic is so badly skewed that it looks like yet another fit of Islamophobia, cynically using women’s rights as the excuse.

Any woman who’s ever tried on a vintage hat with a veil falling from the brim knows the sexy feeling that comes from being half hidden.  But that’s a far lipstick-feminist cry from the full ultra-orthodox Islamic veil — the niqab, which leaves only the eyes uncovered, or the burqa, which has a mesh screen over the eye slit.  These literally make women invisible.  Or in France, it seems, all too visible.

Yet why exactly is such veiling so abhorrent it requires a law to ban it?

Veiling has been used throughout the centuries as a means of keeping women second-class citizens, and not solely in Islam.  It was only narrowly avoided in Christianity — Saint Paul wanted it adopted for all early Christian women.  And women hiding their hair with variants on headscarves is a sign of piety in orthodox Judaism and Christianity (think nuns) as well as in Islam.

Yet the Bible doesn’t call for veiling.   And neither does the Quran.  What it actually says, in Sura 24, verses 30-31, is as follows: “Tell believing men to lower their glances and guard their private parts… And tell believing women to lower their glances and guard their private parts… and let their headscarves fall to cover their necklines.”  Basically, if you’ve got it, don’t flaunt it.

It takes centuries of ultra-conservative clerics to turn a call for bisexual modesty into a sexist straitjacket.

But does that mean a western government should punish women for refusing to conform to social norms?  How is that different from punishing women for refusing to wear the veil in authoritarian Islamic regimes like Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan under the Taliban?

Does this mean France might consider banning other items of women’s clothing?   Ban women from wearing pants, for instance?  Where exactly do “dignity” and “acceptability” start and end, and in whose eyes?  If a woman chooses to cover her face, that’s her decision to make, just as it is if she chooses to bare her midriff.   Either way, government intrusion is objectionable.

Ah, but there’s also a security reason for the proposed new ban, adds Sarkozy’s spokesman.  We need to be able to see people’s faces at airport security checkpoints. But then why not simply require that people uncover their faces for security screening? Why go full tilt at the full veil?

By adopting such legislation, France will only move itself toward a mirror image of Saudi Arabia.  Bare midriffs banned here, full veils banned there.   And women, once again, just pawns in the game.