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.

The line of argument being made here — that abortion providers target women of color, usually black women specifically, and are responsible for a genocide, and/or interested in ethnic cleansing — is not new. It’s an argument that has been advanced for some time. The thing is that while we may strongly disagree with the ideas and politics of anti-choice organizers, their methods aren’t usually irrational. Their messaging comes from somewhere, and is repeated because it has an effect on someone. In the case of this racial argument, the appeal to white, anti-choice leaning people is clear: it’s a way to make themselves look like do-gooders, through the guise of anti-racism. But the argument is seemingly more commonly advanced in communities of color. Folks with white guilt aren’t usually the target — black women usually are.

What I rarely see discussed in U.S. pro-choice communities, at the top levels still usually dominated by white activists, is why this messaging is seemingly effective enough to win continued use. The easy answer is that oppressed people are used to prejudice, and thus tend to find accusations of such prejudice compelling, sympathetic, and in line with their lived experiences. (For example, I am probably more likely to believe an accusation of sexism than an average man.) While this may indeed play a role, I’d argue that we’re foolish, as well as promoting racism ourselves, if we ignore that many people of color are suspicious towards pro-choice people because of the movement’s own history with racism.

Because while, no, it’s not true that Planned Parenthood wants to “kill black babies,” it is true that the mainstream U.S. reproductive rights movement has not always been friendly to black women, or had their best interests at heart. Margaret Sanger may not have been the militant eugenicist and racist that she is often portrayed as, but the fact is that she did support some forms of eugenics, which inevitably have a racist impact. While it’s not true that pro-choicers want to coerce certain women into abortion (that would be far from supporting choice), it is true that the more privileged and influential among us have traditionally ignored the rights that would allow many women to carry desired pregnancies to term, and the rights that would allow marginalized women to raise their own children. And while the mainstream reproductive rights movement has long championed access to birth control, it has less frequently promoted real informed choices and consent among anyone other than middle-class white women, as the 1990s Norplant debacle shows.¹

And as action alerts, blog posts, and protest marches tell us, the focus of the movement still is on abortion, rather than equally on the ways that women’s reproductive autonomy is similarly under attack in terms of birthing options, childcare options, healthcare, and social services. The focus of the mainstream reproductive rights movement is still on choice, with little recognition of the fact that in order for meaningful choice to exist, we have to have justice first. And while those who support reproductive rights are much more likely than opponents to care why it is that black women have so many more abortions than white women (working from the position that abortion is morally neutral, but it is always better for a woman who actually wants to continue a pregnancy to be able to do so, and that preventing an unplanned pregnancy is always more ideal than an otherwise unneeded medical procedure), it’s also typically considered a separate issue, a different aspect of being liberal or progressive, and not key to women’s health and reproductive agency.

The U.S. mainstream reproductive rights movement still fails to look at these issues from a holistic standpoint concerning all of women’s lives and the natural variance among them, and as a result those issues that have particular historical resonance among women of color are also left by the wayside.

Thankfully, there are amazing organizations like SisterSong that are not only run by women of color, but also use this framework and organize in communities based on local concerns and needs. But while I think it’d be a great world where they were, they’re still not the face of the pro-choice movement. Those white and middle-class run organizations that, for all of their other courage and important work, have historically excluded many groups explicitly and still gloss over issues today, are.

And until U.S. pro-chociers address this history and the many current problems that remain, not only are these attacks going to continue, we’re also going to be limited in our room for criticism. We can keep addressing individual arguments — and we should — or we can also start addressing the reasons why they may be effective, and start making those people of color who are not already a part of the movement, and who have good, rational reasons to be suspicious, feel as though they are welcome, and as though their issues matter just as much as anyone else’s. If we really care about reproductive justice, we shouldn’t even think about accepting any other kind of movement, anyway.

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.

The prime example, because it’s the most prominent, is the Newsweek article that has gotten everyone talking. Not having the time to even touch the comments (“what about teh (cis) menz???” — they’re not recommended), on the one hand, I commend Newsweek for giving the kind of issue usually brushed aside by mainstream media some significant exposure. On the other hand, I strongly lament passages like this:

The boundary between reproductive coercion and relationship violence—and whether there is, in fact, a boundary at all—is a difficult issue for health-care providers to address. In some cases, it can fit a spectrum of other abusive behaviors, from threatening to physical violence, that create an imbalance in a relationship’s power dynamic. “Just like violence, it’s a power thing,” says Walker, who has seen patients whose boyfriends monitor their periods to ensure they’re not taking Depo-Provera contraceptive shots (which often cause women to skip their period). “The man is taking away a woman’s power to decide she’s not going to have a child. Still, the line is unclear. Miller, for example, would be hesitant to categorize reproductive coercion as a form of partner violence, since many states have laws mandating reporting of such incidents. “I’m not sure that a young woman telling me that her partner flushed her birth control down the toilet necessitates me reporting that to the authorities,” says Miller.

Acknowledging the fact that mandated reporting laws cause significant ethical dilemmas and ought to be heavily reexamined by those actually interested in assisting victims is not even remotely the same as saying that reproductive coercion is not abusive — though it does help highlight another problem with mandated reporting, in that abusive behaviors might be categorized as such less often than they otherwise would be.

Yet, that is what Newsweek takes the above sentiments to mean, precisely:

While reproductive coercion is not necessarily an indicator of an abusive relationship, Miller says the possibility should at least be in the back of a clinician’s mind as a possible scenario. “

Can we be absolutely, 100% clear, for just a minute?

Yes, reproductive coercion is an indicator of an abusive relationship.

How can I say that with certainty? Because reproductive coercion is abuse. It’s abuse because taking control of another person’s body (without their free and enthusiastic consent) is always abuse. And the last time I checked, abuse within a relationship made that relationship abusive. Indeed, the last time I checked, abuse which took on a sexual nature was sexual violence.

Reproductive coercion = sexual violence
Sexual violence in a relationship = abusive relationship

This is breathtakingly obvious. But as per usual, obvious answers are obscured by cultural messages. And cultural messages tell us that if it happens often, it can’t be abuse! (Because then abuse would be common, and we would be culpable for not doing more about it and for not believing more survivors when they come forward.) They also tell us that coercion is not abuse, only outright force is — because, after all, if coercion is abuse, then abuse is really common, and … well, see above.

Acknowledging it as abuse also might make one feel a little bit guilty for implicitly blaming victims, as we see below (emphasis mine):

Particularly for teenagers in relationships with older men, the age difference “may have profound implications for perceived and actual reproductive choices for young adult women,” Miller wrote in a 2007 paper on the same subject. “Such factors may also lead to fewer adolescents reporting such reproductive control as abusive, forced, or coercive.” Put another way, teenage girls are at greater risk of not recognizing reproductive coercion as problematic, and allowing it to continue.

Now, I say “might” make one feel a little bit guilty, because a whole lot of people say a whole lot of similar things about someone who is being beaten to a bloody pulp by her husband every night, because, after all, she hasn’t left.

But framing an abused person as “allowing the abuse to continue” is always incredibly dangerous, no matter what the circumstances. I’ve been known to argue many, many times, that one of the reasons that we need to educate youth about abuse far more thoroughly than we do now is so that more victims recognize that they are being abused, even when it doesn’t fit into a TV movie. My point was not, “that way they will stop allowing it to happen.” Rather, the point of such a proposal is so that young people, women in particular, will recognize that their bodies have rights that no one else has the right to infringe upon, so that they will have greater information to recognize an abusive relationship when it’s in its earliest and less dangerous phases and have the safest opportunity to escape if they choose, and so that they can more easily identify their experiences, know that help is available to them, and understand that the abuse was not their fault.

The above framing regarding educating teenage girls is wholly different, and not at all helpful. Treating abused people as entirely free agents and co-conspirators in their own abuse only continues to the perpetuation shame, and therefore of more abuse.

And we’re not going to be effectively able to deal with this widespread problem until we’re able to recognize it as what it is: not a choice, not a personal problem, not a relationship “issue,” but as sexual violence, as intimate partner violence, and as abuse.

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.

In fact, as you’ll find buried deep in the segment, there is evidence that midwife-assisted home birth is actually safer than birth in a hospital. Though reporters immediately try to discredit such evidence as inaccurate due to the greater number of women with high-risk pregnancies who choose hospital birth rather than home birth, a recent study out of Ontario shows the same results when only low-risk pregnancy outcomes were examined.

The segment, unsurprisingly, also fails to address hospital birth in the same manner that it addresses home birth — in terms of worst possible outcomes. There aren’t women talking about complications from cesarean sections that were likely unnecessary, parents discussing medical intervention that may have resulted in the deaths of their babies, or anyone talking about how their partner died in a c-section. They certainly didn’t discuss the women who have been legally forced by hospitals to undergo c-sections. Which, if you’re going to compare home birth up against hospital birth by using an example of a particularly tragic home birth outcome, would have certainly seemed fair and relevant.

And still, it wasn’t enough to air statements from those who have a vested interest in hospital birth claiming that home birth has a good chance of killing your baby — they also aired statements (from a man) demonizing the women who actually choose home birth, comparing it to a spa treatment and calling it a frivolous choice, a decision based on reading too many celebrity magazines and having too much cash to throw around.

Could that possibly be any more patronizing? Obviously a woman who does something other than what she’s told must be out of her mind. She couldn’t have legitimate concerns, like those listed above, or seek a more intimate experience — or want to avoid doctors and nurses giving orders, an episiotomy, pressure to take unwanted medication, being expected or forced to give birth on her back, etc. And lord knows she couldn’t have actually looked at the research and determined that home birth was her safest option. (It’s also worth noting that while it’s true that women with larger incomes are more likely to choose midwife-assisted home birth, this is a result of women’s current lack of choices — insurance that includes maternity care generally does not cover anything other than hospital births.)

There are always risks associated with giving birth, for both woman and child. And women certainly deserve to know about them in order to make healthy and informed decisions. But they also deserve to have their choices respected, and to be provided with fact-based information — such as actual numbers, overview of various risks for both home birth and hospital birth, and information about different types of midwives — rather than skewed and biased fear-mongering that does nothing to substantially argue its point. The latter is what we see far more often than not when it comes to discussions of home birth, and it’s exactly what’s portrayed up above.

Choices in Childbirth have responded to “The Perils of Midwifery” with a petition demanding accurate reporting on all birthing options. You should read the full thing, but here is a short excerpt:

While empathizing deeply with the McKenzie family and their loss, we are shocked at the way in which NBC’s “Today Show” chose to portray homebirth as dangerous while choosing to ignore ample medical research that demonstrates its safety in the US and in other developed countries around the world. Not only did the producers of the Today Show ignore journalistic due diligence, they also chose to ignore basic rules of fairness by repeatedly citing doctors and the trade union that represents them while denying midwives and their proponents a voice.   This is simply irresponsible journalism, and misleading to your viewers. We expect more from such a well-respected program.

Click here to sign.

You can also read more timely posts on the segment over at Our Bodies Our Blog and Midwife Connection.

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.

It’s easy to tell women to seek prenatal care early when you assume that your audience is middle class and with insurance. It’s easy to give women tips on choosing their doctor or midwife and birthing facility when you assume that all women reading the tips have such a choice available to them at all. It’s pretty easy to tell them to have specific and expensive tests done, again, when you assume that there’s means to pay for them. It genuinely sucks to worry about what is going to happen if you lose your insurance, and such worry is evidence of an abusive system — but it’s also quite a comparative privilege to have it in the first place. And it’s really easy to tell women to disclose smoking and/or recreational drug use, when the women you’re speaking to are the kind of women (white, middle-class, citizens) who will be offered advice and help, rather than end up in a prison cell with their babies snatched from their arms.

I’m really fucking sick and tired of pretending that health concerns are individual problems. I’m so incredibly exhausted by pretending that privileged women are the ones at primary risk and that serious health concerns can be alleviated by just being smart. (Hmm, what does that call the women who don’t do the things up above because they can’t?) I’m sick of pretending that health problems can be fixed by all of us just being responsible and taking better care of ourselves when many of us just plain can’t take better care of ourselves because we live in a country where health care access — not to mention healthy food, shelter, even water — is treated like a commodity that none of us have a right to, unless we’re good, and moral, and middle class enough to be able to pay a high premium for it.

And while I believe that better prenatal care — for a lot of women, any prenatal care at all — would indeed result in fewer deaths, of both women and infants, telling women to just get up and go to the damn doctor already sure as hell won’t. Rugged individualism, turning the conversation yet again on what women are supposed to do for themselves to be considered “smart” and worthy, rather than what we can all do together to make life better for all women, isn’t going to do shit.

Give advice to women who are lucky enough to be able to follow it, certainly. But don’t frame it as a solution to a structural and institutional problem. Don’t point out that infant mortality rates in the U.S. are abysmally high and then follow up by indicating that individual women can change it one ultrasound at a time, by implying that their actions and choices are the problem.

Because there is no solution to this problem until we acknowledge that there’s a reason why it exists, and it’s not the result of individual people’s poor choices. We won’t have an impact until we agree to spend our efforts fighting against racism, classism and other prejudices, and fighting for universal health care, a wide range of accessible birthing options, and all women’s rights. We won’t get anywhere until we admit that the only real and lasting solutions to the problem are national and community ones rather than personal ones.

Until then, we’re going to stay right where we are — rights and access for privileged Americans, and invisiblity and scorn for everyone else.

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.

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.

via Abby Jean

A Tennessee non-profit organization is paying drug addicts and alcoholics to undergo sterilization or long-term contraception. Seriously.

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.

Of course, they want us to believe that this is about the babies and not about preventing “undesirable” women from having children.  Obviously we’re just supposed to forget the whole history of forcibly sterilizing women of color and poor women and women with disabilities.  This is different, you see.

Look, I think it’s pretty damn clear that no one wants babies to be born with fetal alcohol syndrome or other drug exposure related conditions.  No one thinks that taking drugs or drinking to excess during pregnancy is a good idea — though it is worth repeated reminding that the crack baby myth is just that, a myth.  As far as I’m aware, there’s no one out there who opposes finding ways to prevent negative effects from exposure to addictive substances in the womb — and quite often those looking at prevention do so not only because of concern over infants, but because of the fact that women taking the substances are experiencing negative effects, too.

This, however, is not even remotely the way to go about it.  In fact, I’d suggest that if you really want to knock the number of “substance exposed births” down to zero as their website says they do (a rather unlikely goal in my opinion, especially if you’re conflating light use and heavy use, as they seem to be), it seems that there are better places to start not only from an ethical standpoint, but from a practical one.  Drug rehabilitation would be a good place.  Drug addiction prevention would also work.  Even better, so would advocating for policies whereby the state provides treatment services instead of locking addicts up in jail!  This would not only reduce the number of addicted pregnant women, but the number of addicted people, period.

Strangely enough, though, they’re still going with the paying women to give up their fertility angle.  Project Prevention defends this on their website, saying there’s more than enough funding for drug prevention services, and, well, just not nearly enough for paying desperate women to give up their fertility rights!  They’re filling that gap, clearly.  They also seem to spend about half of their website defending themselves — which is rather telling, and also somewhat heartening, as it means there has likely been some kind of serious backlash.

The best part is when they co-opt pro-choice rhetoric, in response to the “frequently asked question” of whether these women are making an informed choice:

If you can not trust someone with their reproductive choices, how can you trust them with a child?

Ah, yes.  Because asking an anti-choice person how exactly a pregnant woman who they think was going to “murder” her child can be trusted to care for it if they force her against her will to carry to term, is exactly the same as pointing out that when it’s questionable whether or not someone is making an informed choice, it’s wrong to openly encourage and even pay them to make it.

This answer entirely ignores and attempts to distract from the question.  No one opposing what this organization is doing is saying that a woman with an addiction should not be allowed to make her own reproductive choices.  We’re saying that women, in fact, should be able to make their own reproductive choices.  And that they should be able to make them freely and without economic coercion.

h/t Jen LaBarbera

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.

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.

cross-posted at Feministe

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.)

Women traveled across the nation, often because they had nowhere else to go.  Now, women in Kansas who need later abortions will be forced to travel, too.  And we don’t know how many women will go without care as a result.  We don’t know how many lives will be risked.  We don’t know how many women will be forced to carry to term fetuses that will only die painfully at birth.  We don’t know, but even one is much too high.

But hey, let us think of those anti-choice protesters, hmm?

Anti-choicers did this.  And they can talk all day long about how they “don’t support violence” (my ass), but this is exactly what they wanted.  It is exactly what they always wanted.  Randall Terry, heartless, misogynistic asshole extraordinaire, says as much himself:

Randall Terry, the founder of the original Operation Rescue group, responded to news that Tiller’s clinic would remain closed with, “Good riddance.” He said history would remember Tiller’s clinic as it remembers Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.

“What set him apart is that he killed late-term babies,” Terry said. “If his replacement was going to continue to kill late-term children, the protests would continue, the investigations would continue, the indictments would continue.”

Current Operation Rescue president Troy Newman, who had condemned Tiller’s killing as vigilantism, called the announcement “a bittersweet moment.”

Beautiful, isn’t it?  This is your “non-violent” “pro-life” movement right here.

I am angry.  I am furious at what these people will go to in order to show women that they are nothing more than baby incubators, even if those women must die in that enforced role.  And I am enraged that those who have such extreme disregard for life are still allowed the privilege of the label “pro-life” by the vast majority of our society.

Women will have to pay more for care.  Many women may go without care.  And those who support the actions of Dr. Tiller’s assassin will also see that extreme violence works.  Harassment couldn’t shut Dr. Tiller’s clinic down.  Intimidation couldn’t shut it down.  Threats couldn’t shut it down.  Bombings, vandalism, and shooting Dr. Tiller couldn’t shut his clinic down.  But murdering him?  That’s what it took.  And that’s how they got what they wanted.

I don’t know what to say to that, except that the thought leaves me shaking and thinking to myself: god help us all.

cross-posted at Feministe