so hey, it may be your uterus, but legally, it could belong to your ex-boyfriend

A quick snapshot: seeking a first-time abortion? Well, if a new Ohio law passes (H.B. No. 207), women in the state will have to provide their abortion providers with "written, informed consent" of the father. Additionally, women will have to provide paternity tests to prove that the written, informed consent is actually from the father. So, not sure who the father is? Pay for paternity tests! And if you lie about it? It's now called "abortion fraud," and that's a first degree misdemeanor. Commit "abortion fraud" twice, and it's a felony. And the icing on the cake? If you've been raped, you have to prove it. No, really, you have to provide your abortion provider with proof you've been raped.

It all just strikes me as terribly wrong.

Today my Danish Politics and Society class went to visit the headquarters of Denmark's largest political party, Venstrade. They currently hold the most political power in Denmark (which is ruled by a negative majority thing, so they don't actually have most of the vote, they just have less opposition than a majority of votes against them), and the seat of the Prime Minister (who happens to be the longest governing minister to come from Venstrade). The trip was relatively boring and uneventful. I say uneventful, not boring, and by uneventful, I simply mean not worth writing about.
However, my Danish Politics and Society professor IS worth a few lines of blog: the man is basically the love child that Sean Connery and Denmark would produce, if the two could sire offspring. Same vocal timbre, same posture and hand motions...the man has got the Connery thing DOWN. It's bizzare. He even looks like an older Sean Connery, from his clothes to his hair. It is decidedly unnatural. I am completely in love with the man. He's almost ridiculously funny. While at his former rival's headquarters (he used to be the speaker for the Social Democrats), he constantly made polite but funny/off color remarks about Denmark's "Liberal" party. I put Liberal in quotes because here the liberal party is actually the conserative party, and just right of the center of the seven Danish political parties. Another miscellaneous story about this professor: he continually makes the mistake of calling America's "melting pot" the "melting pox." I think he's done that too many times for me to really think it is always an accident.


After Venstrade Party headquarters, I met up with some students in my Jews in Europe class to visit the Danish Jew Museum. It took us about an hour and a half of tramping around downtown Copenhagen to find the museum, which turned out to have only one door which can only be accessed by going into a branch of the Royal Gardens. Unfortunately, as we discovered all too late, it is in fact a mere 15 minute walk from where we started. Oh, if we had only known!
The museum itself was interesting. As one boy said, "the walls are making me nauseous." Indeed, all the walls of the tiny, tiny museum are slanted towards a section named, 'THE PROMISED LAND.' I personally found this to be a little over the top, as they suggested that we are moving towards a golden age of enlightenment (especially concerning the Jews). Just what this golden enlightenment will really contain was never really specified. I am skeptical. I also felt that the whole wall thing was a bit over the top, and slanting all of the floors in a the 20 ft area towards this mythical creation kind of pushed the experience over the edge for me. I will not enjoy writing the required 3,000* word essay on those 20 square feet.

*READ: exactly 3,000 words. Large variations in word count not tolerated.