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“A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream together is reality.” — Yoko Ono
Feb
23
Anti-Choicers Target Women of Color: How Should Pro-Choicers Respond?
Filed Under abortion, activism, anti-choice extremism, class and economics, feminism, legislation, misogyny, paternalism, patriarchy, pregnancy, race and racism, reproductive justice, social conservatives, women’s health | 7 Comments
Earlier this month, Renee wrote a post about an Atlanta billboard targeting black women’s reproductive rights by pointing to the higher rates of abortion among black women, and claiming that abortion clinics are attempting to abort black children out of existence. It’s a great post, touching on many things that will come up here, and you should go read it.
It turns out this issue is about more than a billboard campaign — SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective clues us in to the fact that it’s also turning into an issue of legislation and public policy. Anti-choice legislators in Georgia have introduced HB 1155 – The Sex and Race Selection Bill, and while it sounds warm and fuzzy on the outside, SisterSong assures us that it’s not (pdf):
This bill seeks to ban the solicitation and targeting of women of color by abortion providers throughout the state.
This misleading issue of abortions for sex- and race-selection in Georgia means that we have to use facts and science to stand up for women of color without undermining our support for abortion rights or without enforcing racial stereotypes about women of color. Intent on driving a wedge between reproductive justice and racial justice organizations, and pro-choice advocates, the bill reflects the false assumption that abortion providers throughout the state “solicit” women of color. If implemented, this bill will adversely impact abortion providers by requiring them to prove that they are not targeting women of a certain race or ethnicity. This burden could result in delayed medical services, particularly for women of color. Additionally, this legislation would alter the racketeering laws of the Georgia Code to include abortion providers. This is unacceptable as abortion is legal in the State of Georgia, and the alleged abuses of this medical procedure are unfounded. Such a bill would have a terrible effect on women’s ability to access reproductive health care services throughout the state.
While explicitly targeting women of color and attempting to coerce them into abortions would obviously be a horrific, racist thing, as the press release states, there’s no indication that it’s an issue requiring legislation. Further, the legislation is not a benign preventative measure, but an effort to restrict abortion access further than it is already restricted. The women who would be impacted, as is always the case, are those who are already marginalized. It’s clear that proponents of this bill, and those behind the billboard, do not have black women or children’s best interests in mind. They are rather simply opposed to any and all abortions, and find that non-white targets are easy to hit, for a myriad of reasons.
For all of the above reasons, and because I always trust people on the ground to know what is best for their communities much better than I ever could, I strongly support SisterSong in their campaign to defeat HB 1155. As of yesterday, the bill was approved through sub-committee, but the full Judiciary Committee has suspended consideration and not yet voted. SisterSong is urging Georgia residents to call Chairman Rich Golick of the Non-Civil Judiciary Committee TODAY and urge him to VOTE NO TO HB 1155. His office number is 404.656.5943, and his email address is rich.golick@house.ga.gov. If you are someone who can take action, SisterSong has also prepared a list of talking points for your email or phone call (pdf).
But while we are on the topic, I’d also like to discuss the subject of these types of anti-choice attacks a little more closely.
Jan
29
Reproductive Coercion is Sexual Violence
Filed Under misogyny, patriarchy, pregnancy, rape and sexual assault, reproductive justice, violence against women and girls | 9 Comments
There is a new study which discusses a horribly prevalent but rarely discussed form of intimate partner violence: reproductive coercion. From a press release by The Family Violence Prevention Fund:
“Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy” is the first quantitative examination of the relationship between intimate partner violence, reproductive coercion and unintended pregnancy. It finds that young women and teenage girls often face efforts by male partners to sabotage their birth control or coerce or pressure them to become pregnant – including by damaging condoms and destroying contraceptives. These behaviors, defined as “reproductive coercion,” are often associated with physical or sexual violence. Conducted by researchers at the University of California Davis School of Medicine and the Harvard School of Pubic Health, the study also finds that among women who experienced both reproductive coercion and partner violence, the risk of unintended pregnancy doubled.
From August 2008 to March 2009, researchers worked at five reproductive health clinics in Northern California, querying some 1,300 English- and Spanish-speaking 16- to 29-year-old women who agreed to respond to a survey about their experiences. They were asked about birth-control sabotage, pregnancy coercion and intimate partner violence. Approximately one in five young women said they experienced pregnancy coercion and 15 percent said they experienced birth control sabotage. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they had experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner. Thirty-five percent of the women who reported partner violence also reported either pregnancy coercion or birth control sabotage.
For many who have been in abusive relationships, the findings here will come as little surprise. But they are incredibly important, in that they prove the simple fact, for those who still needed proof, that teaching about how to use contraception isn’t always enough to prevent unwanted pregnancy. When a partner is sabotaging one’s birth control — whether it be through secretive tampering or open destruction, threats or outright force — knowing how to use contraception is can mean exceedingly little. Information is nothing without access, and in an abusive relationship that involves reproductive coercion, access has been denied. Awareness and resources about what abuse actually is, how it works, and how to handle it once it has already begun — both for medical professionals who need to screen for it, and those at risk of being victims — are absolutely vital.
But what the study also unintentionally shows is just how ill-equipped our society is to deal with the kind of abuse that does not begin and end with a fist.
Sep
30
The Today Show Uses Fear-Mongering to Demonize Midwives and Home Births
Filed Under media, misogyny, parenthood, paternalism, patriarchy, pregnancy, reproductive justice, women’s health | 7 Comments
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
The embedded video above is a fairly recent segment from The Today Show on the rise in midwife-assisted home births. It’s called “The Perils of Midwifery,” and it’s a segment which, it should be noted, uses almost entirely men as reporters and experts. And as you can likely tell from the title, it’s a segment which demonizes home births and midwives as much as feasibly possible.
The segment features the McKenzie family, who have suffered a horrific tragedy — their baby, who was delivered at home with midwife assistance, did not survive. Their story is clearly a heartbreaking one, and there’s absolutely no reason that it shouldn’t be told. At the same time, though, it’s also incredibly unfair for their story to be used in place of facts, or held up as an example of common home birth outcomes. Because while it is in fact one outcome that actually occurred, it’s far from a representative one.
Sep
11
Pretending That Individual Choices Will Help Correct Structural Problems
Filed Under class and economics, pregnancy, race and racism, reproductive justice, women’s health | 17 Comments
The other day, I received a press release titled “It’s Riskier to Have a Baby in the U.S. Than in Cuba or the Czech Republic.”
This, actually, I knew. The U.S. has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the industrialized world — and one of the worst maternal mortality rates as well. And the black infant mortality rate is twice that of the white infant mortality rate, with Native American infant mortality rates and some Latino mortality rates being significantly higher than the rates among whites as well.
Given the current climate, when this press release arrived in my inbox, I expected that it was going to be a call from a women’s organization in favor of universal health care, and a comparison against other countries that do in fact have such systems. (The fact that countries we tend to look down on are so regularly used as the point of comparison, and what that suggests, is a whole other can of worms I’m not going to get into today.) Indeed, quick google searches indicate that every country listed in the press release has some sort of public health care system in place. There’d seem to be a pretty strong correlation, especially with so many up-to-date facilities in the United States, that we’re always hearing these countries with universal health care don’t have.
The press release, though, was actually promoting a book about pregnancy. And it provided “tips” — tips which use the acronym SMART — for how pregnant American women can “improve their chances of having a healthy baby”:
S = Seek prenatal care early. Tests for potential chromosome problems, including mental retardation and spina bifida (a condition that causes paralysis) can be conducted only in the first and second trimesters. A first trimester ultrasound is also the most accurate in terms of determining a due date.
M = Mention all risk factors such as a family history of diabetes, high blood pressure, Rh negative blood, premature labor, bleeding problems or genetic conditions to your healthcare professional as soon as possible. Do not omit information such as smoking or using “recreational” drugs because such activities can affect your baby.
A = Ask to have your cervix measured during your ultrasound if you have a history of premature contractions or delivery. A cervical length of 2.5 centimeters or less is a risk factor for preterm labor. If you are at risk for delivering before 37 weeks, ask your healthcare provider about receiving steroids to help your baby’s lungs develop.
R = Research your hospital and prospective physician or midwife carefully. Is the physician or midwife skilled in managing high-risk conditions? Will your care continue if you lose your insurance? Has the newborn nursery had any recent outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections? Is the hospital a level-three facility?
T = Test for potential problems such as gestational diabetes, sickle cell trait and cystic fibrosis, and check for appropriate fetal growth with an ultrasound.
I imagine that this might pretty solid advice (though I don’t actually know one way or the other) — if you’re actually able to follow it.
But considering the email’s opening, and the highly relevant fact that tens of millions of Americans do not have health care access, I was basically blown away by the “advice” and the necessary level of privilege that it involves — even if this kind of thing is an incredibly and increasingly common sight. And its frequency is a big part of the reason why it’s worth discussing.
Aug
31
Crisis Pregnancy Centers Regularly Engage in Coercive Adoption Practices
Filed Under anti-choice extremism, assholes, human rights, misogyny, patriarchy, pregnancy, religious fanaticism, reproductive justice, slut-shaming, women’s health | 14 Comments
Almost two years ago, I wrote about a distressing and eye-opening book called The Girls Who Went Away, which is about the women who surrendered their children for adoption under coercion in the years before legal abortion and when single or unwed parenting was ostracized. Most of the women who surrendered their children were threatened, taunted, scolded and otherwise coerced by Catholic or otherwise Christian-affiliated adoption agencies and maternity homes. It’s an absolutely heartbreaking read, and an important one on the subject of reproductive justice that I couldn’t more highly recommend.
Now there’s a terrifying and depressing article in the Nation about how the period of coercive adoptions is not one merely relegated to our history. It’s happening today, and it’s happening via the ever-infamous, deceptive and also Christian-affiliated crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). If you thought that pretending they were abortion clinics and then admonishing women to not kill their babies was bad — and how could you not? — you ain’t seen nothing yet:
Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), the nonprofit pregnancy-testing facilities set up by antiabortion groups to dissuade women from having abortions, have become fixtures of the antiabortion landscape, buttressed by an estimated $60 million in federal abstinence and marriage-promotion funds. The National Abortion Federation estimates that as many as 4,000 CPCs operate in the United States, often using deceptive tactics like posing as abortion providers and showing women graphic antiabortion films. While there is growing awareness of how CPCs hinder abortion access, the centers have a broader agenda that is less well known: they seek not only to induce women to “choose life” but to choose adoption, either by offering adoption services themselves, as in Bethany’s case, or by referring women to Christian adoption agencies. Far more than other adoption agencies, conservative Christian agencies demonstrate a pattern and history of coercing women to relinquish their children.
Bethany guided Jordan through the Medicaid application process and in April moved her in with home-schooling parents outside Myrtle Beach. There, according to Jordan, the family referred to her as one of the agency’s “birth mothers”–a term adoption agencies use for relinquishing mothers that many adoption reform advocates reject–although she hadn’t yet agreed to adoption. “I felt like a walking uterus for the agency,” says Jordan.
Jordan was isolated in the shepherding family’s house; her only social contact was with the agency, which called her a “saint” for continuing her pregnancy but asked her to consider “what’s best for the baby.” “They come on really prolife: look at the baby, look at its heartbeat, don’t kill it. Then, once you say you won’t kill it, they ask, What can you give it? You have nothing to offer, but here’s a family that goes on a cruise every year.”
There is not much more to say other than go read the rest. Go read Jordan’s story, the story of other women like her, and the ways in which our government is supporting this absolute horror. And then share it with others. I did merely want to specifically highlight one more point:
Even as women have gained better reproductive healthcare access, adoption laws have become less favorable for birth mothers, advancing the time after birth when a mother can relinquish–in some states now within twenty-four hours–and cutting the period to revoke consent drastically or completely. Adoption organizations have published comparative lists of state laws, almost as a catalog for prospective adopters seeking states that restrict birth parent rights.
It’s desperately important to remember that when our government officials, including those who call themselves “pro-choice,” talk openly about “promoting” adoption, this, inadvertently or not, is precisely what they are supporting. “Promoting” one pregnancy option, any option, above another is not allowing women to make an objective decision based on unbiased facts and personal beliefs and circumstances. And I fervently believe that supporting adoption, the women who make the choice to put their children up for adoption, the families that adopt children, and the children who have been adopted, is a vastly different thing from promoting adoption to pregnant women as a more beneficial choice than abortion or parenting. The former is pro-choice and compassionate. The latter is anything but, and ought to be considered the nightmare that it is.
Jul
14
Women Who Would Have Medicaid-Funded Abortions Instead Often Give Birth
Filed Under abortion, anti-choice extremism, class and economics, misogyny, patriarchy, politics, pregnancy, reproductive justice, women’s health | 3 Comments
A new study just released by the Guttmacher Institute (pdf; news release here) determined that “approximately one-fourth of women who would have Medicaid-funded abortions instead give birth when this funding is unavailable.”
Whatever the actual number of women who are essentially forced to give birth due to a lack of funding for abortion is, as a percentage it’s a gigantic and terrifying figure.
Of course, such news is likely to be cheered by advocates of the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal dollars from funding abortion, and similar state funding restrictions. The results, after all, were incredibly easy to predict, and while they are indeed shocking they’re not hugely surprising.
What it goes to prove that restrictions on abortion funding aren’t really about ensuring that a woman’s reproductive choices aren’t funded by those who may disagree with them. (After all, there are assholes out there who think that it’s “wrong” for women to give birth under “certain” circumstances, but we still fund prenatal and birth care.) It’s about ensuring that women without their own funds don’t get to actually make a choice at all. It’s about forcing women to give birth because they have no other option.
Since anti-choicers have been unable to institute an outright ban, they go the way of restrictions which, as all abortion-related restrictions do, only impact economically disadvantaged women. They’re the only ones for whom a few hundred dollars in the way can make such a life-altering decision. And since the class system is still structured rather strongly along racial lines, it’s also having a disproportionate impact on women of color. Indeed, a North Carolina study cited in this same Guttmacher paper showed that when public funding for abortions was made available, there was a 10% increase in abortions among black women, compared to a 1% increase among white women.
Currently, only 17 states fund all or most medically necessary abortions. The rest (with the exception of South Dakota, which is in breach of federal law), only cover abortions in the case of rape/incest or life endangerment. So, as the ACLU blog astutely notes, the women mentioned above who would have had Medicaid funded abortions given the option but instead gave birth also includes women with health-threatening conditions (such as cancer or heart disease, to name only two of many) that pregnancy poses an increased risk to.
Last week, I posted about anti-choice efforts to exclude abortion funding from proposed health care reform legislation. The good news is that some of those efforts just failed in committee — hopefully indicating a willingness of all but the most anti-choice Democrats to stand up for women’s rights and health. The bad news is that anti-choice legislators will have plenty of opportunities left to try to reinsert such provisions. And they likely will. After all, as the information above proves, such efforts have served their goals quite well.
Jul
2
Organization Pays Addicted Women to Undergo Permanent Sterilization
Filed Under anti-choice extremism, assholes, bigotry, class and economics, human rights, misogyny, patriarchy, pregnancy, reproductive justice, women’s health | 18 Comments
Cash for birth control may sound unusual, but it’s one woman’s crusade to stop drug addicts and alcoholics from giving birth.
Barbara Harris started “Project Prevention” after watching her four adopted children struggle with drug addiction at birth. Now teens, they’re helping spread her message across the United States.
Parked under a downtown Knoxville overpass Wednesday night sat a 30-foot RV with bold pictures on the outside of it.
The same people who drove it here passed out flyers and talked to anyone who would listen.
“My heart is for the children. These women have a choice, but children don’t,” Harris explains.
The organization pays women who are drug addicts or alcoholics a one time amount of $300 to get permanent birth control.
If they choose to get long-term birth control, $300 is paid out each year they use it.
Men can also get involved and get a one time amount of $300 for having a vasectomy.
Documented proof of a drug addiction or alcohol problem is mandatory to qualify.
What we’re looking at here is the exploitation of a vulnerable population of women. (While the program is open to men, less than 1% of those who have taken the deal have actually been men.) Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t know a whole lot of people who aren’t currently interested in permanent birth control who would suddenly become interested for a rather lousy $300. I can only imagine, in fact, that someone would take such a deal only if they were incredibly desperate for money (and not only because of addiction, but also because of unbearable living expenses, etc.).
And so when Harris dismisses the question of women using their $300 to buy drugs with “it’s their choice,” I really feel nothing but revulsion for her. When we’re talking about handing money to someone on the street, I agree with her — moralizing your decision to not give someone $5 as because they might spend it in ways you don’t like is pretty wrong. But taking something — something serious — from a person for a fairly small amount of money, knowing that they’re likely only doing it because they lack other options, and then doing it anyway? That’s an entirely different ballgame altogether.
Jun
29
Pregnancy As a Sign of Intimate Partner Abuse
Filed Under education and schools, pregnancy, rape and sexual assault, reproductive justice, violence against women and girls, women’s health | 9 Comments
There is a truly excellent article by Lynn Harris up right now at Alternet called When Partner Abuse Isn’t a Bruise But a Pregnant Belly. It’s about the way that intimate partner violence often takes the form of rape and other sexual coercion, and the dangerous implications of a failure to recognize as much.
I strongly recommend that you go and read it, because this is a major problem in our movements. So often, people supporting access to sex education and contraception also support measures to reduce intimate partner violence, and vice versa. But far too regularly, we also fail to tie those two movements together, and the connection is dangerously overlooked in many if not most pregnancy prevention efforts and intimate partner violence prevention efforts.
It’s a part of the reason why I so strongly feel and regularly advocate that anti-rape education needs to be a part of sexual health education. Of course, sexual violence is a sexual health issue. But from a strictly practical level, you can’t teach kids how to use condoms and expect that to be enough to prevent pregnancy and STDs on the whole. The current model, the way in which we teach teens (and adults!) how to use condoms and other contraception, almost always supposes that consensual sex makes up for all of the STDs and pregnancies they’re attempting to prevent. And it just plain doesn’t, as much as we wish it did.
And so we need to treat education about abuse — both proven programs that reduce the rates of abuse, but also lessons in how to identify and recognize abuse and to get help when it occurs — not as some kind of bonus aspect of sex education, or something to do if we can fit it in past the really important pregnancy prevention stuff. Rather, it’s necessary and integral part of sex education, just as much as condom use and the rest.
It’s something we need to address it in classrooms. And we also, as the article quite clearly proves, need to make sure to get the message out to doctors and nurses, as well. Otherwise, we’re only going to spend too much time poorly attempting to treat the symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself. We’re going to keep on using tactics that in too many cases, just aren’t going to work.
Thanks to KaeLyn for the link.
Jun
11
Late Abortion Care Will Return to Kansas
Filed Under abortion, anti-choice extremism, pregnancy, reproductive justice, women’s health | 4 Comments
When I learned the other day that Dr. Tiller’s clinic Women’s Health Care Services would not reopen with new providers, I found the news extremely depressing and lamented the significantly reduced access to much-needed, and sometimes life-saving, abortion care.
Now, against the odds, it turns out that another brave abortion provider is stepping in to take Dr. Tiller’s place, and provide late abortions in Kansas (h/t):
A Nebraska doctor said Wednesday that he will perform third-term abortions in Kansas after the slaying of abortion provider George Tiller, but would not say whether he will open a new facility or offer the procedure at an existing practice.
Dr. LeRoy Carhart declined to discuss his plans in detail during a telephone interview with The Associated Press, but insisted “there will be a place in Kansas for the later second- and the medically indicated third-trimester patients very soon.”
“I just think that until everything is in place, it’s something that doesn’t need to be talked about” in detail, Carhart said a day after Tiller’s family announced his Wichita clinic was permanently shutting its doors.
Tiller’s clinic was one of the only facilities in the country that performed third-trimester abortions. Carhart has run his own clinic in Bellevue, Neb., since 1985, but had performed late-term abortions at Tiller’s clinic because of Nebraska’s more restrictive abortion laws.
Dr. Carhart was a long-term friend and colleague of Dr. Tiller, and had worked with him on past occasions. He had also previously been a part of plans to reopen Dr. Tiller’s clinic and provide services there along with two other doctors, before Dr. Tiller’s family ultimately decided that the facility would not reopen. Apparently determined to ensure that late abortions are still available in the state (which has significantly less restrictive late abortion laws than many others), he has now developed alternate plans. And I know that I, surely along with countless other advocates, am breathing a huge sigh of relief. The women and otherwise identifying people (some intersex and genderqueer individuals and trans men, for example) who will unfortunately need late abortion services have likely just been spared a lot of additional pain and/or health risk.
Dr. Carhart also has a long history as a reproductive rights hero. He has been an abortion provider since 1985, has long provided late abortions himself, and reports an increase in patients at his clinic since Dr. Tiller’s murder less than two weeks ago. And you may recognize his name from the infamous Gonzales v. Carhart Supreme Court case, which upheld the ban on so-called “partial birth” abortions. Dr. Carhart had challenged the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act on the basis that it provided no exception for a patient’s health. Though the case was lost at the highest level, it was a correct and absolutely necessary challenge. Now, he is stepping in to fill Dr. Tiller’s shoes, knowing full well the kind of terror that is almost certainly awaiting him, merely for his determination to provide a legal medical service.
So, thank you Dr. Carhart. I am beyond grateful for your strong commitment to reproductive health and rights. And I can only believe that Dr. Tiller would be extremely pleased.
Jun
9
Dr. Tiller’s Clinic Will Remain Closed
Filed Under abortion, anti-choice extremism, assholes, misogyny, patriarchy, pregnancy, religious fanaticism, reproductive justice, social conservatives, women’s health | 7 Comments
Oh god. This twists both my heart and my stomach up into tight, hard knots.The family of slain abortion provider George Tiller said Tuesday that his Wichita clinic will be “permanently closed,” effective immediately.
In a statement released by Tiller’s attorneys, his family said it is ceasing operation of Women’s Health Care Services Inc. and any involvement by family members in any other similar clinic.
“We are proud of the service and courage shown by our husband and father and know that women’s health care needs have been met because of his dedication and service,” the family said.
This is awful. Just awful. I feel quite literally ill and nauseous at the moment.
I can’t blame Dr. Tiller’s family. I don’t blame his family. I understand that they have risked, and lost, far more than enough. No one could have ever blamed Dr. Tiller if he had decided, after the years of harassment and threats on his life, to give up practicing at his clinic. And so we certainly can’t blame his family now for shutting the clinic doors, once those threats were actually carried out. And I also hear what Dr. Hern, who provides the same type of late abortions that Dr. Tiller did, is saying. Who would want to work there? We can talk about principle all day long, but when it comes down to it — a man was murdered because he worked there. How many of us would be willing to take is place? Exceedingly few.
But that doesn’t change the loss, and that loss is huge. The nation has now not only lost one of its bravest, most compassionate abortion providers. It has also lost one of only three clinics that performed life-saving and therapeutic abortions this late. (Please note: dozens of clinics perform abortions that would be considered “late.” Dr. Tiller’s, however, was one of only three that provided abortions as late as they did.)
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“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” — Susan B. Anthony
