I'm tired because I couldn't sleep last night. I kept waking up and staring at my scars which were barely visible in the light of the lamp on the nightstand next to my bed. I kept the light on because I couldn't bear to be in the dark again.

As I watched the Olympics last night I couldn't concentrate. My eyes invariably went back, time and again, to the scars.

I remember so clearly what the doctor said to me when I woke up in the hospital. He told me the scars would never go away, that when I looked at them they would remind me how close I had come to the end of my life.

He was wrong, when I look at the scars it never crosses my mind how close I had come to death. When I look at the scars I'm reminded of the end of my childhood dreams. I'm reminded of how many things ended in those days and months. I'm reminded of the terror I felt, the horror of not being in charge, the outrage felt by others shaping my future.

A woman I know was recently diagnosed with an STD, Human Papilloma Virus to be exact. Not that unusual I know. But here's the thing. She's in her late 70s and hasn't been sexually active in over 35 years. It seems that her abusive ex-husband gave her the disease sometime prior to the early 1970s. It lay dormant in her system for all that time, until last year, when she received radiation treatment for breast cancer. The radiation apparently compromised her immune system, and the long dormant HPV took advantage. Her ex-husband died about 6 years ago. But he's managed to reach out from the grave to abuse her yet again.

Last week was an exhausting week for most of us. With a one week delay to give the Democratic senators time to do what they didn't do during the hearings, namely prepare for the biggest fight yet for women's rights, it gives us a chance to evaluate where we are as Democrats and how commited we are or are not to the party that seemingly has left many of us behind. It says a lot that the spat between Specter and Kennedy, that the crying jag of Martha Alito, were what made the headlines, it speaks not just to our media but also to the job the Democratic senators did or rather did not do.

When we hear on the Sunday talk shows that half of the senators didn't know what `unitary executive power' was it's like a slap in the face. When executive powers became as hot a button issue as abortion has been since Alito was nominated, I felt a rush of hope. If the Democratic and Republican senators didn't have what it takes to protect a woman's right to choose surely they would care about the place Congress has in governing this great nation of ours. Or as we saw, would they?

From Talk to Action:

Focus on the Family has announced its new target in the culture wars: the many women inside evangelical churches who get abortions. Now that the fake war on Christmas is over, Focus on the Family is returning to its tried and true real war on women. January is a big month for attacking abortion, and this year all the more so because of Supreme Court nomination hearings. In its first post-holiday release, Focus on the Family slung its first arrow: Focus on the Family Challenges Christians on Abortion in the Church.

Amanda over at Pandagon has a very interesting post up about mail order brides and recent changes in law that offer some new protections against domestic violence. Well worth a read.