| Faminsiting Lays It Out
Ann's post at Feministing continues:
Before this year's National Right to Life conference, which several Republican frontrunners attended, NARAL issued a list of questions for the candidates, and made sure to ask about their position on access to emergency contraception.
While the questions were predictably ignored, at the conference Romney declared, "I fought to define life as beginning at conception rather than at the time of implantation." He's essentially saying he opposes hormonal contraception methods, because they could prevent implantation. Which -- newsflash! -- isn't just emergency contraception. It's the Pill, the NuvaRing, the IUD -- a slew of birth-control methods. Page explains,
Mr. Romney's code, deciphered, meant, "I, like you, hope to reclassify the most commonly used forms of contraceptives as abortions." In fact, he told the crowd, he already had some practice redefining contraception: "I vetoed a so-called emergency contraception bill that gave young girls abortive drugs without prescription or parental consent."
And it's not just Romney. The other Republican candidates are also working to deny women birth control: Presidential hopeful Sen. Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, beefed up his anti-contraception resume by co-sponsoring a bill to de-fund the nation's largest contraception provider, Planned Parenthood, by excluding it from Title X family planning for the poor. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's campaign officials boast he has "consistently voted against taxpayer-funded contraception programs." And Mr. McCain reports that his adviser on sexual-health matters is Sen. Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who leads campaigns claiming condoms are unsafe and opposing emergency contraception.
But Page and the repro-rights groups seem to be the only one talking about this issue. (Even the National Right to Life's crib sheet on the candidates doesn't feature their stance on contraception.)
The reason for keeping mum on the subject is pretty clear. What woman is going to vote for a party and a candidate that is adamantly anti-birth control? Well, how many women do you know who have ten kids? That leaves the "that's for other people crowd," which is always large, but by no means a strong foundation for a national majority. Not when it comes to something that strikes at your body, not just your pocketbook. Denial is much harder when it strikes at the core of your physical being.
Forced Childbirth: The Background
In January, 2006, I wrote a diary at MyDD, "Forced Childbirth--What The Data Says", following a short diary by Matt Stoller simply titled "The Forced Childbirth Movement". Matt's post was so short, I quote it here in its entirety:
The right to choose is essential to a progressive society, because it really equals the right for all women to be free. If women cannot control their own medical decisions, that is not liberty. And if women cannot control when they become mothers, and must massively change their lives because of the political needs of old white men, that is not liberty. Under such a regime, where women are forced to give birth, family and individual suffer. In other words, there is no such thing as a pro-life movement.
It is the Forced Childbirth movement.
I long ago learned about anthropological data showing that warlike societies tended to have strict taboos on abortion, while less warlike societies were more permissive. The connection was straightforward: in warlike societies, neither young men nor young women controlled their own bodies. Their bodies were instruments for their societies to use. So Matt's diary didn't strike me as anything new. But it did prompt me to look for a slightly different kind of confirmatory data closer to home.
I looked at birth control and sex education attitudes in relationship to abortion attitudes, measured by the General Social Survey, the most cited source of public opinion data. My thesis was simple: If anti-choice activists and voters really are sincerely trying to stop abortions, then they ought to disproportionately favor sex ed and contraception. But if controlling women's bodies is the agenda, then they ought to disproportionately oppose sex ed and contraception. Not surprisingly, the latter turned out to be the case.
I tested four questions about the availability of birth control, birth control information and sex education (PILL, TEENPILL, PILLOK, and SEXEDUC) and two combined measures of abortion attitudes, AbThreat and AbAutonomy:
AbThreat measures support for abortion in the cases of "STRONG CHANCE OF SERIOUS DEFECT," "WOMANS HEALTH SERIOUSLY ENDANGERED," or "PREGNANT AS RESULT OF RAPE."
AbAutonomy measures support for abortion in the cases of "ABORTION IF WOMAN WANTS FOR ANY REASON," "MARRIED--WANTS NO MORE CHILDREN," "LOW INCOME--CANT AFFORD MORE CHILDREN," or "NOT MARRIED."
I then ran correlations using the online data tool at the above GSS url, and reported the following:
The R values for the remaining cross-tabs are as follows: ABTHREAT/ PILL: R = .24
ABTHREAT/TEENPILL: R = .24
ABTHREAT/PILLOK: R = .26
ABTHREAT/SEXEDUC: R = .25 ABAUTONOMY/PILL: R = .20
ABAUTONOMY/TEENPILL: R = .24
ABAUTONOMY/PILLOK: R = .31
ABAUTONOMY/SEXEDUC: R = .21
R is the most common measure of correlation. The values above are all in the range considered significant, even strong in the social sciences. There is simply no question that the anti-choice movement as a movement is about forced childbirth and state control of women's bodies, regardless of what any particular individual might believe.
But what good does this knowledge do us in fighting back against the movmeent?
Not much, unless we make an issue of it. And one way to make an issue of something is to ask about it-particularly during a political campaign.
Asking The Questions
First, let's consider some questions others have posed.
In her post at Feministing, Ann points to five questions for the candidates from NARAL. These aren't all about contraception, but they do set the stage:
1. You support overturning Roe v. Wade. Doesn't that mean you support government
interference in personal, private medical decisions that should be made between a woman,
her family, and her doctor?
2. If you believe abortion should be outlawed and that doctors who provide abortion care
should face criminal charges, then do you also believe women should be sent to prison for
terminating a pregnancy?
3. Ninety-nine percent of Americans believe it is appropriate for young people to have
information about STDs, and 94 percent of Americans think it is appropriate to teach young
people about birth control. Do you support honest, realistic, age-appropriate sex education?
4. Do you think it's okay for a pharmacy to refuse to fill a woman's prescription for birth
control based on an employee's personal views against contraception?
5. Do you believe hospital emergency rooms should be allowed to withhold information from
a rape survivor about emergency contraception - which can prevent a pregnancy if taken
soon after the assault?
Cristina Page, who wrote the Baltimore Sun op-ed, is author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex and spokeswoman for Birth Control Watch. They offer seven questions to ask representatives:
1. Do you support couples having access to safe and effective birth control options, including emergency contraception?
2. Do you agree that for women to achieve equality, they must have access to family planning services, including birth control and contraception?
3. Do you support requiring health insurance plans that cover prescription drugs to cover birth control and contraception?
4. Do you support expanding current federal funding for Title X and Medicaid so that women with low incomes have more access to birth control options?
5. Do you support requiring pharmacies to dispense birth control to patients without discrimination or delay?
6. Do you support comprehensive sex education being taught in schools that includes information about abstinence, contraception and how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS?
7. Do you support the Prevention First and Access to Birth Control (ABC) Acts? *
* The Prevention First Act, sponsored by Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, includes Title X funding, health insurance coverage, access to emergency contraception, comprehensive sex education and Medicaid funding for family planning. The Access to Birth Control (ABC) Act, sponsored by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, would make it illegal for a pharmacy to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and require pharmacies to help, not hinder a woman's ability to access contraception.
These are questions framed for lawmakers. Fielding a poll provides us with the opportunity to frame questions for the general public, and then use the results as part of a lobbying effort and/or a political campaign in which questions are put to politicians. In some cases this is very straightforward. For example:
(Q1): Do you support requiring health insurance plans that cover prescription drugs to cover birth control and contraception?
(Q1a): If a politician running for office took the opposite position would this affect your willingness to vote for them (a) definitely, (b) probably, (c) possibly, (d) probably not, (e) definitely not.
(Q2): Do you support comprehensive sex education being taught in schools that includes information about abstinence, contraception and how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS?
(Q2a): If a politician running for office took the opposite position would this affect your willingness to vote for them (a) definitely, (b) probably, (c) possibly, (d) probably not, (e) definitely not.
If I were to make a preliminary suggestion for a set of questions to ask on a battleground district poll-keeping in mind that we need to cover a range of different issues--I think the above would be a good starting point. I also favor asking the NARAL question #2 in some form or other:
(Q3) If you believe abortion should be outlawed and that doctors who provide abortion care should face criminal charges, then do you also believe women should be sent to prison for terminating a pregnancy?
Whatever set of questions we do ask, I would argue that it's important to touch on different facets (one on access, the other on sex ed, for example), and to ask one abortion-related question that puts the anti-choice side on the defensive. |
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