{"id":3453,"date":"2015-10-02T09:23:50","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T16:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=3453"},"modified":"2015-10-02T09:23:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T16:23:50","slug":"dirty-dancing-and-planned-parenthood-a-perfect-history-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/02\/dirty-dancing-and-planned-parenthood-a-perfect-history-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"Dirty Dancing and Planned Parenthood: a Perfect History Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dirty<\/a>
\nThis showed up in my Facebook feed Thursday night and\u00a0blew me away. \u00a0It may have been\u00a0funny to many, but it left me breathless.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if it’s possible for younger people today to know how terrible that time before Roe was for so many young women like Penny,\u00a0who\u00a0faced the terror and hopelessness of an unwanted pregnancy, or what a real miracle it was that she was rescued.<\/p>\n

Dirty Dancing<\/a> is set in the summer of 1963, just before Francis “Baby” Houseman is about to leave for Mt Holyoke. \u00a0I left only a year later, for Smith. \u00a0So she and I are cousins, if not sisters. \u00a0Each wanting to change the world, each with a wonderful, trusting father, each falling for a bad boy with such a different history from our own … and each inexperienced in realities such as those faced by a pregnant dancer with no money whose\u00a0illegal abortion goes terribly wrong.<\/p>\n

She nearly dies — saved only by the skill of Francis’ doctor father. \u00a0The film is a fairy tale – in the love story for sure, but also in the story of the damsel\u00a0in distress rescued by a fatherly wizard who brings her back from the brink. \u00a0Most women in those pre-Roe days – and many again now,\u00a0in states where abortion rights are savaged every day — faced real back alleys and unskilled procedures on kitchen tables\u00a0with no wizard, or anyone else, to save them. \u00a0Penny’s story was as real as they come, and it’s no joke to remind us that her\u00a0fairy tale is in real danger of once\u00a0again\u00a0becoming the\u00a0dark horror story\u00a0it used to be.<\/p>\n

So yes – it’s always fun when cultural references inform reality. \u00a0But it’s hard to enjoy even this clever comparison when the lives of so many Pennys and her sisters are in such terrible jeopardy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This showed up in my Facebook feed Thursday night and\u00a0blew me away. \u00a0It may have been\u00a0funny to many, but it left me breathless. I don’t know if it’s possible for younger people today to know how terrible that time before Roe was for so many young women like Penny,\u00a0who\u00a0faced the terror and hopelessness of an … Continue reading Dirty Dancing and Planned Parenthood: a Perfect History Lesson<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4,27,28,7,8,9,29],"tags":[3447,3446,16,1125,3445,207,3450,3440,406,3444,3441,3437,3439,3438,3451,3449,405,348,3214,1268,3442,3443,392,3448],"class_list":["post-3453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-baby-boom","category-current-affairs","category-film","category-life","category-music","category-politics","category-women","tag-standwithplannedparenthood","tag-standwithpp","tag-1960s","tag-abortion","tag-abortion-rights","tag-baby","tag-back-alley-abortion","tag-catskills","tag-dirty-dancing","tag-francis-perkins","tag-got-in-trouble","tag-grey","tag-i-had-the-time-of-my-life","tag-jerry-orbach","tag-kitchen-table","tag-mt-holyoke","tag-patrick-swayze","tag-planned-parenthood","tag-pregnancy","tag-pregnant","tag-roe","tag-roe-v-wade","tag-smith-college","tag-stand-with-planned-parenthood"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-TH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3453"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3461,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453\/revisions\/3461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}