CARNAL NATION

We always thought that the ability to confuse pictures of naked babies with the latest all-anal Sasha Grey extravaganza was a uniquely American trait. Apparently not. In Zambia, Chansa Kabwela, news editor of independent newspaper The Post, is facing charges of obscenity for two photographs showing a woman trying to give birth without medical assistance. She sent the photos as part of a mailing to the Zambian vice-president, the health minister and several human rights organizations, to call attention to problems with the health-care system.

In particular, Kabwela was calling for a speedy resolution to a nurses' strike. Because of the strike, the woman in the photographs had been turned away from two clinics by the time she gave birth. The baby was a breech birth; its shoulders, arms and legs are visible in the photograph, with the head still inside the mother. It suffocated before the woman was able to see a doctor.

President Rupiah Banda called the photographs "pornographic" at a news conference. Kabwela has been charged with distributing obscene material with intent to corrupt public morals. If convicted, she could get five years in prison. "The government deliberately decided to misunderstand my intention," Kabwela said. "I wanted them to see the suffering of the mother. Instead they called it pornography."

One of the questions that the defense is bringing up at the trial—and it's a blindingly obvious one—is if these pictures are pornography, who exactly is it that's going to be aroused by a photograph of a traumatic, tragic birth? The question was already put to the vice president's senior private secretary, who first opened the letter with the photographs, in court. The BBC says that the secretary "was roundly embarrassed by having to describe arousal."