Trigger Warning for descriptions of police violence and forcible miscarriage, as well as discussions of racism and victim-blaming.

LaDonna Dixon claims that last June, an Indianapolis police officer beat her severely after she argued with him — even though she was in handcuffs, and even though she says that she told him she was pregnant at the time. As a result, she received two black eyes, numerous other bruises, and miscarried her pregnancy shortly thereafter at the jail processing center, after being refused medical treatment. (Note: links contain graphic images of Dixon’s injuries.) Local NBC affiliate WTHR reported on the alleged assault a month and a half ago, but wider dissemination of a local television report has produced new interest. From the WTHR report:

An Indianapolis woman is suing the city in federal court. LaDonna Dixon claims the officer beat her so severely during an arrest that she had a miscarriage.

“[He was] punching me, kicking me, after he maced me,” Dixon said.

“This person was angry, was enraged and just beat her,” said Dixon’s attorney, Everett Powell. “I would say it’s a crime.”

LaDonna Dixon is suing the city over what she claims happened in her yard last June. She says she was helping a friend who collapsed from a seizure and needed medicine.

When police arrived, the complaint says Officer Scott Childers told Dixon she was disrupting emergency crews and that she needed to get in her house.

Dixon admits she argued with Childers, but says that’s when the officer turned violent.

“He says I was resisting arrest, but I don’t see how I’m resisting when I’m already handcuffed and maced,” Dixon said.

Dixon claims that the beating continued even after she told the officer she was three months pregnant. She says she miscarried at Marion County’s arrestee processing center, just hours after her arrest.

“She was beaten so bad that she passed out,” Powell said. “She was hemorrhaging directly after getting beaten like this.”

Dixon says she was refused medical attention at the jail.

Police officers should never enact violent assaults against the citizens they are hired to protect. They certainly shouldn’t enact them as a response to a citizen’s supposed audacity to verbally disagree with them. That “talking back” is what apparently prompted the officer’s outrage and beating shows the extent not only of police authority and power, but also of the expectation that this authority and power will not ever be questioned.

It’s unclear what, exactly, Dixon was being arrested for, but it’s only relevant inasmuch as the arrest itself may have been another act of corruption. What is known is that the kind of beating Dixon endured is never acceptable, and especially not once it is taken into consideration that Dixon was handcuffed and on the ground at the time of the beating. Even if Dixon had been neither restrained nor pregnant at the time of the assault, it would have still been monstrous. That she was apparently both only makes the facts all the more egregious. The assault was not only an act of violence against a woman, it was an act that also showed a deliberate and specific disregard for her health as a woman.

The video makes clear that Dixon is still deeply mourning the loss of her pregnancy. The miscarriage of a wanted pregnancy is always a tragedy, but a violent, forcible miscarriage is an even more profound trauma. With his alleged actions, Officer Scott Childers decided to override LaDonna Dixon’s bodily autonomy and make her reproductive decisions for her. With his fists, he took control not just of her body but also of her reproductive life.

Dixon is a black women, and so there is little doubt regarding the perpetuation of racist state violence in this case. The fact is that there is a long, continuing history of police violence against communities of color, especially black communities. I do not doubt for a second that a white women — and especially, a white middle-class woman — would not have suffered the same fate under otherwise identical circumstances.

I do not need to know the alleged assailant’s race (which is currently unknown) to make that assertion. As I’ve said before (and as many others have said before me), racism isn’t just white people being mean, or even cruel or violent, to people of color. Racism is bigger than that. It’s the structures that makes such violence easy and acceptable. It’s the structures that keep non-white people disproportionately poor. It’s the social attitudes and structures that keep reinforcing that people of color are lesser people than white people. Structures like the law enforcement system as a whole. Racism is bigger than any individual person. And while white people are the most culpable for upholding racist systems, they’re not the only ones who can and do actively participate in them.

In response to all of her claims and their wider implications, LaDonna Dixon is not exactly receiving unconditional sympathy from the pubic. She is, largely, being treated like a rape victim. No, I don’t mean that she’s being treated with sensitivity and compassion and tenderness. I mean that in comment sections across the interent (trigger warning) she’s being treated like a liar who made the whole thing up. A liar who should have come forward sooner if all of this really happened. A liar who just wants money. A liar who was never even pregnant, and certainly never really believed she was one way or the other. A liar who is black, and therefore deserving of racialized scorn, slurs, and stereotypes, who must be a liar, because just look at the color of her skin. A liar whose boyfriend probably beat her up, anyway, and yet is still not a victim. A liar who is incapable of being genuinely victimized.

I’ve written before about how many women — all women, really, but marginalized women most of all — are viewed in our culture as unrapeable. Women like LaDonna Dixon — and women like Duanna Johnson, for that matter, whose on-duty assailant just pleaded guilty after his first trial resulted in a hung jury and is likely to receive less time than lots of individuals do for drug possession — are apparently similarly unbeatable. So repulsive just by being who she is that she is seen as not worth anybody’s time to beat, and certainly not worth getting all upset about if she was. She’s perceived by countless misogynistic, racist bigots as simply unable to be abused, because any abuse committed at her doesn’t matter.

It’s these attitudes that make assaults like this alleged one possible. It’s these attitudes that makes them absolutely guaranteed to be committed again.

via radicallyhottoff

Just last week, I was defending the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the UK for its recommendations regarding age-appropriate sex education. This week, I find myself needing to ask what in the hell they’re thinking.

NICE has recommended that all pregnant women should be given carbon monoxide tests in order to determine whether or not they’re smoking, so that they can be given advice on quitting. Instead of, you know, asking them.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said carbon monoxide tests should be carried out on every expectant mother.

If implemented, every woman would have the breath test at her first ante-natal appointment.

Midwives criticised the test, saying it could make the women feel “guilty”.

NICE said the guidelines were not aimed at penalising smokers but were designed to help women and their families give up smoking during and after pregnancy.

“During pregnancy, smoking puts the health of the women and her unborn baby at great risk both in the short and long-term, and small children who are exposed to second-hand smoke are more likely to suffer from respiratory problems,” Professor Mike Kelly, Nice director of the centre of public health excellence, said.

“One of our recommendations is for midwives to encourage all pregnant women to have their carbon monoxide levels tested and discuss the results with them.

“This isn’t to penalise them if they have been smoking, but instead will be a useful way to show women that both smoking and passive smoking can lead to having high levels of carbon monoxide in their systems.”

The guidelines were welcomed by the Royal College of Midwives, but it urged “non-judgemental” support for women smokers.

Right. Except that the way to be “non-judgmental” isn’t by telling women up front that they can’t be trusted. And by telling them that they can’t be trusted specifically once they’ve become pregnant — thus indicating that their bodies are no longer their own. Paternalism, misogyny, and policing of women’s bodies don’t have great track records.

Look, absolutely no one is saying that smoking while you’re pregnant is a good idea. While it’s hardly the automatic death sentence for fetuses that a lot of people make it out to be, evidence suggests that it’s not a great idea for either the woman or future baby. And lots of women do smoke during pregnancy. But it’s rarely because they don’t know the risks (at least in most Western countries), or because they’re careless, stupid women who hate their babies and want bad things to happen.

Women smoke during pregnancy usually because they’re unable to stop. There’s currently a culture in a lot of places that suggests one can drop smoking whenever she wants — that it’s a question of personal choice. We have a tendency to not treat nicotine addiction as a real, serious addiction just like any other. And that’s saying an awful lot, as addictions to other substances are also frequently treated like issues of willpower rather than of physiological and psychological dependency.

It’s also true that a lack of support also tends to factor into why many smokers, pregnant or not, are unable to quit. Clearly, more support is needed. But the way to provide more support isn’t through coerced tests and humiliation. Right now, many pregnant women don’t tell their doctors if they smoke or use other substances. Again, the reason is rarely malicious or negligent, but concern over being judged, guilted, shamed, and/or even punished. The issue is that many women can’t trust their health care providers to react with compassion and care rather than blame and disapproval. And trust is not built by a person in a position of authority expressing a lack of trust in the person in a subordinate position. One would imagine that empathy would go a lot farther than a carbon monoxide test, any day.

While the guidelines don’t seem to make the test mandatory, it’s unlikely to be easy to opt out. Any woman who refuses to take the test, regardless of whether she does so based on principle or any other reason, is likely to be highly suspected of “hiding” something, and lectured by precisely the kind of judgmental health provider that is causing the problem to begin with.

Here’s the thing. People smoke. Some of them do it during pregnancy, and of them, few actually want to. The problem isn’t a lack of “detection,” it’s a culture that shames women as bad mothers and bad people for smoking, and treats addiction as a crime that needs to be “detected” and stamped out by society for the greater good, in the first place.

As much as it generally pains me to say these words, the Daily Telegraph has it right. Rosie Murray-West writes:

Even the Royal College of Midwives seems a little dubious about the plans, worrying that women will feel judged and as if they aren’t being believed. “Use of the monitor has the potential to make women feel guilty and not engaged,” says Royal College education manager Sue MacDonald.  “It is crucial that health practitioners, including midwives, focus on being supportive rather than making women feeling guilty.”

I’m looking forward to the supplementary barrage of tests that NICE will be bringing out later. Perhaps the sniff test to check we haven’t been eating unpasteurised cheeses, or the credit card statement test to check for illegal indulgence in sushi?  Or they could just focus on supporting people who are trying to get through one of the most testing periods in their lives – without unnecessary testing.

Women are people. Even when they’re pregnant. Let’s start treating them that way, hmm?

A new report has been released on the reproductive health of American Indian and Alaska Native women (referred to in the report as AI/AN women, a term I will thus also use here). The full report, Reproductive Health of Urban American Indian and Alaska Native Women, can be found here (pdf) and the executive summary is here (pdf). The report details some disturbing if unsurprising findings about the differences in reproductive health care between AI/AN women and white women in the U.S., including on the subject of sexual violence. Presented below is a hodgepodge look at the report and its key findings.

The section of the report dealing with what is alternately referred to as “non-voluntary sexual intercourse” and “forced sex” begins on page 26 of the report, and presents the following information:

There are two questions about the voluntariness or wantedness of first sexual intercourse. The first one asked how much the first intercourse was wanted with responses as:

• I really didn’t want it to happen at the time,
• I had mixed feelings-part of me wanted it to happen at the time and part of me didn’t,
• I really wanted it to happen at the time.

The second question asked was: “Would you say then that this first vaginal intercourse was voluntary or not voluntary, that is, did you choose to have sex of your own free will or not?”

More than two times the number of urban AI/AN report their first sex was non-voluntary compared to NH-whites (17% vs. 8%; p= 0.00) (See Graph 7).

Respondents who reported having experienced forced sexual intercourse were asked about the type(s) of force used. Women could report more than one type of force and each of seven types were asked as a separate “yes” or “no” question.

• Among urban AI/AN women whose first sex was not voluntary, 85% specified the type(s) of force used.
• The most common reported type of force at first sex for both urban AI/AN and NH-whites was being “pressured into it by his words or actions, but without threats of harm” (63% and 62%).
• The second and third most common types of force were, “Did what he said because he was bigger or grownup, and you were young,” and being “physically held down”.

On the one hand, I have to say that I’m really glad to see that coercion is included among definitions of forced sex (rape). That is absolutely spectacular, and all too rare. Though, at the same time I’m really dismayed and disturbed to see that coerced sex is accepted as somehow different from rape:

In a study of ethnic differences in the impact of sexual abuse on teen pregnancy rates, racial minority teens, including AI, were more likely than whites to have a teenage pregnancy and to have been coerced into having sex, rather than raped, prior to teenage pregnancy (Kenney, 1997).

Something similar is suggested here in the AP report:

The 2002 survey didn’t ask women outright if they had been sexually assaulted in their first encounter or any other time, and researchers say it’s another area that should be examined more closely.

While I have no problem with the wording used in the questions — it’s important, when gathering statistics about sexual violence, to use descriptive language rather than loaded terms like “rape,” since far too few victims realize that their experiences meet that criteria — suggesting that failing to use the term sexual assault therefore means that rates of sexual assault were not tracked is altogether a different beast. And it’s a huge erasure of many women’s experiences, something that is sadly very common, but which I still find unconscionable.

Back to the actual numbers at hand, the statistics presented here are terrifying. Eight percent of women experiencing first sexual intercourse as rape is utterly atrocious. Ideally that number should be zero, but close to 1 in 10 should be astonishingly high by any standard. And again: that’s for white women. American Indian and Alaska Native women are experiencing a 17% rate of experiencing first intercourse as rape. Closer to 1 in 5, than 1 in 10.

The precise reasons why these rates are so much higher among AI/AN women are not determined, nor likely could they have been. Those reasons are almost certainly far too layered and complex for that, though they undoubtedly do hold ties to the continuing consequences of colonization and genocide, such as poverty, lost cultural ties, and ongoing racism. The report also sadly does not seem to contain much information about who the perpetrators of these rapes were. Among AI/AN women generally, a vast majority of perpetrators in reported rapes are non-Native men. How much this holds true for rapes that are not reported, and for rapes that account for a victim’s first experience of intercourse specifically, is currently unknown. But it is important information to have with regards to addressing the problem.

The report does, however, explicitly connect sexual violence to unintended pregnancy and other reproductive health issues, by including a discussion of sexual violence in a report that is explicitly about reproductive health. (And as I adamantly believe that sexual violence is a reproductive health issue, I of course think this was an excellent move.)

The study found that AI/AN women were more likely to have unintended pregnancies than white women and also had more births — though whether and/or how much these two points directly correlate is unclear. After all, a higher number of births may be neutral or even positive, if for whatever reason AI/AN women actually desire more children than white women, or if white women actually desire more children than they have.

More pregnancies and/or more births is not necessarily a problem in the least. Unintended pregnancy, on the other hand, is an issue — because while unintended does not automatically translate to unwanted, most of the unintended pregnancies found in this study were classified as “mistimed” or sooner than the respondents had desired. While many women have and will continue to make mistimed births work, it does also frequently come at a personal and/or economic cost. And for women who are already economically vulnerable, the ability to control one’s fertility can be vital.

The discussion of the reasons behind the differences in rates of unintended pregnancies between AI/AN women and white women is limited, though class and the higher rates of poverty among AI/AN women is implied to likely be a huge factor. With reproductive coercion being generally common among teens and young women, women who endure reproductive coercion frequently being subjected to other forms of abuse, and AI/AN women being particularly likely to have been forced into first sexual intercourse, could reproductive coercion account for at least part of the higher rates of pregnancy? I certainly don’t know, but I do think that it’s a possibility. Other possibilities also abound, including but not limited to contraceptive availability and choices.

Indeed, the study also found that AI/AN women who had never given birth were significantly less likely than white women who had never given birth to use contraceptives. AI/AN women were also significantly less likely to use contraception during first intercourse, quite likely in at least part to the higher rates of non-voluntary intercourse.

Further,  much higher rates of AI/AN women were using Depo-Provera and sterilization as their methods of contraception as compared to white women. And while sterilization, at least, is highly unlikely to result in more unplanned pregnancies, the question of coercive practices regarding contraception is certainly raised — especially since histories of coercive Depo-Provera and sterilization are prevalent for women of color, including AI/AN women, and especially since “a higher percentage of urban AI/AN with public insurance or Medicaid ever used Depo-Provera compared to NH-whites with the same insurance type.” It is far within the realm of possibility, more likely than not, that coercive contraceptive practices against AI/AN women are continuing. And those practices are racist, colonizationalist, a continuation of genocidal efforts, and blatantly unacceptable.

The full report contains many more details. Be sure to check it out, and discuss both those points that I’ve raised and those that I’ve missed in comments.

Trigger Warning for this post and the links within.

A new study has been released by the Guttmacher Institute on the subject of reproductive coercion. While a larger study on the same topic was released back in January, this one focuses specifically on cis women who are the victims of other forms of intimate partner violence at the hands of cis men. From a press release by the Family Violence Prevention Fund:

Three in four respondents (74 percent) in the new study – of 71 domestic violence victims seeking services at a family planning clinic, an abortion clinic and a domestic violence shelter – reported that their partners had threatened to get them pregnant, forced them to have unprotected sex, sabotaged or interfered with their contraception, threatened them with sexual intercourse, tried to control the outcome of their pregnancies if they became pregnant, or in other ways tried to coerce their reproductive outcomes.  These abusive behaviors can lead to unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and a host of other problems.

As with the previous study, the coercion took many forms, from refusing to use condoms, removing the condom partway through intercourse, sabotaging a partner’s own birth control method, promising to withdraw and then refusing, threats and other verbal coercion, and rape.

An excerpt from the full report (pdf) explains:

Threatening women with pregnancy during sex ran a gamut of behaviors ranging from surreptitiously deceptive to violent. Forced sex, as a form of physical violence, has been well documented (Coker, 2007), but forced sex which took place either with the explicit intention of impregnating the woman or with complete indifference to whether the woman was protected from pregnancy, has not been documented. Respondents’ experiences of unwanted sex ranged from violent rape to engaging in unwanted sexual intercourse, sometimes only unwanted because it was unprotected.

As per usual, I find the definition of rape used here to be far too narrow — and the reason I continually digress on the subject is because I’m tired of seeing experiences erased, and because I find it especially frustrating when those who purport to be raising awareness about a type of abuse still refuse to call other types of abuse what they are.

It doesn’t matter the reason that intercourse (or any other kind of sex, for that matter) is unwanted — what matters is that there was no consent. Indeed, the respondent quoted below this section speaks of knowing that she “can’t say no” to her abusive partner. Presumably this is because he will enact other types of abuse if she does, but regardless of the reason, a situation in which one party cannot say no is a situation where there is no consent. Failing to say no because you fear that doing so will, for example, result in a more violent rape, is not the same as giving consent. All rape is violent, so there is no difference between “violent rape” and “engaging in unwanted sexual intercourse,” and I would really, really love to see the phrase “violent rape” replaced with what is usually meant: rape that utilizes physical violence.

In any case, the point remains that while reproductive coercion is sexual violence, it’s important to note that sexual violence in cases where pregnancy is possible is also reproductive coercion.

This report also makes substantive note of the important point that reproductive coercion doesn’t end once a coerced/unwanted pregnancy has begun. It also frequently occurs in terms of whether or not a woman continues or terminates a pregnancy, and abuse with the intent of either outcome is common:

Other men refused to allow their partners to have abortions, denying her access to an abortion. Sometimes this was through men withholding the money to pay for an abortion; some partners sabotaged appointments for abortions by doing things such as making the respondent eat, which prevented her from being able to have the general aesthesia she needed for the abortion; coming into the clinic and “breaking things up” so that the woman left with the man to stop him from making more of a scene; and withholding transportation including bus fare so that she could not get to the clinic for the procedure.

…

Among women who wanted to have the child, some described experiencing pressure and coercion to terminate a pregnancy. Even when men had not used contraception to avoid an unintended pregnancy, there were situations in which men demanded abortions once their partners became pregnant. Some men threatened to hurt the woman with the intention of bringing about the end of the pregnancy.

…

Not all women did what their partners wanted them to do—some had abortions when their partners wanted them to have the child; some had children that their partners wanted them to abort. These acts of resistance occurred much less frequently than adherence to partner’s demands and in a number of cases led to a high number of abortions: One woman whose partner wanted her to have children, refused condom use, and refused to let her use contraception, had had eight abortions at the time of the interview, all had been pregnancies with this same partner.

The point of all of this is that “access” to reproductive health care as we generally think of it still isn’t necessarily resulting in genuine access for all women. We can make contraception, abortion, and parenting affordable options — and we should, and there is still far more work to be done in those areas. We can increase education about contraception, how it works, and where to access it — and that’s a fight that needs to be continued, as well. But that’s not going to help the woman whose partner throws out her birth control pills, prevents her from going to the clinic to get her Depo shot, pulls the Nuvaring out of her vagina, or slips off the condom when she’s not looking. And pretending like it is, and that more education and more clinics with less expensive care are all that’s needed to solve the problem of unplanned pregnancy, is leaving the most vulnerable women even more vulnerable.

Going back to FVP’s press release:

“This study adds to the growing body of evidence that partner violence often  includes reproductive coercion and control, which can lead to unplanned pregnancy,” said Family Violence Prevention Fund President Esta Soler.  “We make a mistake by putting these issues in silos and promoting solutions that ignore the connection.  If we are serious about stopping unplanned pregnancy in this country, we simply must address the sexual violence and reproductive control that often cause it.  If we are serious about stopping dating and domestic violence, we must recognize that many victims grapple daily with sexual violence and reproductive coercion.  And if we are serious about improving women’s health, we must address the violence that too many young women experience.”

Just like how those who promote abstinence as the only way to prevent pregnancy are irresponsible for ignoring the fact that everyone does not have the option of abstinence (among other reasons), those of us who promote making information about contraception options available are irresponsible for so frequently ignoring that not everyone has the option to utilize it. The fact that not all women can freely use contraception is one of many, many reasons why it’s so important to ensure that abortions is affordable, readily available, and confidential (though as discussed above, even that is not enough). But it’s also one of many, many reasons why we need to work to eliminate intimate partner violence in all its forms, and why we can’t keep acting like reproductive health is not dependent on reproductive justice.

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