This Valentine’s Day greeting is late, and I apologize. No matter how you spent yesterday, how many chocolates or roses you received or sent, how many delightful cards arrived in your mailbox, and whether or not you awoke this morning with your heart’s desire, there’s more to be done.

Romantic love is one of life’s greatest gifts.

Follow up:

It may result in temporary insanity, but few of us would choose to forgo it. As the psychotherapist and former monk Thomas Moore says, “What we seek in sex is not only bodily satisfaction, but a response to the soul’s need for all that eros offers, for a world that holds together and a whole life that is creative and motivated by love.”

And, of course, without it, the human species would die out. In a world filled with nearly seven billion people, that hardly seems like a serious threat. But if you hold with the belief of the religious right that the creation of new human life is the highest and only purpose of sexual activity, then we are at odds.

The new Congress ushered in by the 2010 elections is weighted with people who share this view. At the very least, they want sex confined to married heterosexual couples, and they are intent upon creating penalties upon every obstacle to that. Chief in my mind today, is Title 10 which affects women’s health: regular checkups for cancer and sexually transmitted disease (including HIV), pregnancy testing and prenatal care.

Right now, the chief target of the religious right is the organization Planned Parenthood, which grew out of Margaret Sanger’s attempts beginning in 1916 to make birth control available. Since 1942, when her organization became Planned Parenthood, it has been providing these services for women regardless of their age, ethnicity or ability to pay. Abortions are a tiny fraction of the many services they provide.

Few issues are more polarizing that abortion, of course. The right has made a fetish out of the sanctity of unborn souls, but, oddly, it demonstrates little compassion toward infants and children. The Roman Catholic Church (which is by no means the only opponent of abortion) adamantly turned its back on young people who experienced sexual abuse within the religious community. Recently, the right tried to downgrade the definition of rape to make sure the coercion was sufficiently brutal. It also opposes the new health care legislation which would deny insurance companies to turn away families whose children have preexisting chronic or catastrophic illnesses. Under the guise of fiscal responsibility, families will face reduced Medicaid funding imposed by the various states.

Perhaps you have seen set-up videos of a visit by right-wingers who convinced a Planned Parenthood employee (since fired) to tell them how they might obtain abortions for under-age women in the sex trade. Or, worse, you know of murder charges brought against a Pennsylvania doctor for the death of a woman in a late-term abortion and other offenses. These are serious charges which must be addressed, but they are by no means the whole picture.

What they leave out is that if routine abortions could be performed in hospitals, they would be far easier to monitor, but the right has made that nearly impossible. Statistics show that one in three American women will have an abortion before the age of 40. Surely, we can find a way to make that less likely by making birth control available and promoting its use.

No matter what your post-Valentine’s Day status, I hope you will pick up the phone and urge your Representative to put a stop to the war on women and on Planned Parenthood. If you call 202-730-9001, your call will be put through.