The pro-choice movement in the United States is at a critical crossroads. A new reproductive justice movement is emerging from the hardships endured by women in this country, one that will challenge the heated, sometimes violent suppression of women's dignity and human rights.
This year, more legislation to limit women's access to abortion and to legally separate fetuses from the pregnant women who sustain them was introduced in state legislatures than ever before - over 350 bills. Less commonly known is the fact that these laws also undermine the rights and health of pregnant women who wish to continue their pregnancies. According to Amnesty International, the United States spends more than any other country on health care, yet women here have a higher risk of dying due to pregnancy-related complications than women in 40 other countries.
Poverty, geography, religion, politics all play a dominant role in determining who can and cannot get birth control, maternal health care and abortion services in the United States. Maternal care and abortion rights are intertwined--more than 60% of women who have abortions are already mothers. Despite this, a woman's human rights--her right to make medical decisions, right to religious freedom, right to personal dignity are all increasingly taking a back seat to efforts to re-criminalize abortion. It's harder to end a pregnancy than it was 20 years ago due to the barriers women must overcome and the fact that reproductive health clinics continue to close.
In states across the U.S., especially the Midwest and South, where women are earning less and less, the cost of an abortion is often out of reach. Add hours of travel, unpaid time off from work, childcare, and the obstacles to getting an abortion become significant. These same obstacles keep many women from getting the prenatal and postnatal care they deserve.
These states are also home to some of the most restrictive and punitive laws curtailing women's access to reproductive health care, and also claim some of the highest teen pregnancy and child poverty rates in the country. The Washington Post recently reported a rise in teen pregnancy rates, despite the $1.5 billion spent on abstinence-only programs
over the past decade.
Anti-abortion and anti-government activism is heated, high-profile, and often violent. This violence culminated in May 2009, when Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in Wichita, Kansas. His murder seems to have emboldened the anti-choice, anti-woman movement, while the women of these regions suffer the most.
This continuing campaign against women is unacceptable and un-American.
While state legislators push bills to penalize women who continue their pregnancies to term in spite of a drug problem, they do nothing to advocate for family and medical leave nor do they work to stop hospitals from banning women who have had previous cesarean surgery from delivering at their hospitals unless they agree to have another such surgery - whether they need it or not. The Federal outlook is no better. The new Congress is gearing up to host an unprecedented number of bills that go against women's dignity and
human rights. Unequivocally, we have more legislators who allow their opposition to abortion to trump the worth of women.
Following Roe in 1973, the U.S. saw an extraordinary improvement in public health and women's health with the legalization of abortion - but all this progress, access to maternity care and abortion care, is under increasing attack. This trend must be reversed and the rights of women must be respected. Doing so will result in more favorable health outcomes for women and their children.
What is emerging in 2010 is not our mothers' reproductive rights movement. This is a reproductive justice movement that addresses abortion care, maternity care, birthing rights and sex education in a holistic manner - each element part of a greater whole. This is a movement that recognizes that a woman's decision regarding pregnancy, no matter its outcome, is a moral and personal one.
The simple truth is that the same women who have abortions are already mothers or will most likely become mothers. It is imperative that we value these women, these mothers and ensure that they have full access to all of the maternal and reproductive health care services they need. America should do nothing less for the sake of women and their families.
I'm not the only woman in the country who once had a partner who took my paychecks and deposited them in an account that I had no access to; not by debit card, not by checkbook. That started the first year we were married, when I was 18 and I balanced our checkbook wrong. Did I get to revoke his bank privileges later on when he would be late with rent, didn't pay our utility bills, or threw money away on expensive outings and crazy schemes? No.
Years later, at 22, I still had to ask for lunch money every week to take to work, something he'd often conveniently forget about if he was in a bad mood. He was often in a bad mood. My workweek lunch money regularly came out of the change jar and only covered vending machine snacks.
If I'd had a child from that relationship, one way or another, it would have meant two decades of that creep still messing with my head on a daily basis--a fate I was saved from only by a miscarriage brought on by a 2 lb. ovarian cyst, which my Catholic hospital doctor told me couldn't be operated on unless I did miscarry on my own--so lucky me. And he only hit me once in five years, threatened and starved me, so I didn't have it nearly as bad as some of the women for whom the Senate abortion coverage restrictions might as well be a hand covering their mouths and holding them down.
Under the Senate system which makes abortion part of the initial purchasing decision, a woman's employer, male partner or parents can all potentially prevent her getting insurance coverage for it, whereas now, it usually doesn't come up because most private plans just cover it. Now, of the one in three women likely to need an abortion in her life, millions of women never have to have that conversation. Under the current wording of the health bill, that second check is the federal spousal and parental notification law that never managed to pass.
Then if the administrative expenses and familial approval weren't enough, the second check creates a stigmatizing paper trail for anyone worried about public pressure or vulnerable to retribution by disapproving superiors. Even people who might support abortion might be pressured into dropping plans that cover it and one way or another, abortion coverage will end. That's always been the point of both the Stupak amendment and Nelson's Senate compromise, which will simply work more slowly to eradicate insurance coverage of abortion.
And you might say, well, it's just writing another check for $1. Or you might say, hey, even if the insurance doesn't cover abortion, lots of women will still be able to afford it. And then I'll tell you, look, you don't get it, that's not the point.
Because he used to take my lunch money, and I had nothing, nothing, that he would not allow, no matter what our household income was.
Women, who earn less, who are commonly responsible for the most time-consuming parts of the parenting saga, who are discriminated against by their employers for being parents, who are more likely to be abused, who bear all the health risks of pregnancy and childbirth, can never be fully equal in a society that doesn't prioritize and normalize our access to all forms of reproductive health care. When our health care is stigmatized, we are stigmatized. When it seems normal that men we don't know get to decide if we'll be forced into a two decade commitment, it's only natural that men we do know might think they have the right to decide that for us, too.
If you still want to pass this health insurance reform bill, and I understand why so many people do, understand the cost. Somewhere, right now, he's taking her lunch money, and this bill will let him force her into motherhood, too.
It's been a long time since the days when it was common for middle-class, adult white women in the US to die from desperate, illegal abortions, so the nation forgets how bad it used to be. Stupak has capitalized on that, on the acceptability of misogyny, in order to turn himself from 'Bart who?' to the man that's helping Catholic Bishops all over the country change the subject away from their decades-long tolerance of pedophilia and towards their attempt to impose theocracy.
Though if you were looking, you'd be able to tell that banning abortion was a cruel, abuse-enabling, sometimes deadly thing to do to women. Stupak doesn't care about that, nor does much of the rest of Congress. The president doesn't seem very bothered by it, either.
But hey, most of them can't get pregnant, so why should they give a damn?
I really hate having to come back to this over and over again. Let's get our abortion-and-health-care basics down folks. The Senate bill does nothing to change the standard we have lived by that no federal funding shall be used for abortion.
(Footage purchased from Sam Sumner, originally posted by Will Urquhart at Sum of Change)
As you may be aware, this weekend (tomorrow to be exact) marks the 37th anniversary of the passage of Roe v Wade, the supreme court decision that effectively legalized abortion nationwide. We have been working on a documentary about clinic escorts for some time now (tomorrow we will be making a big announcement about the film, sign up for our emails and you will be one of first to hear about it), so this weekend is a big chance for us to get some footage.
When I got back home from volunteering at the clinic, I saw an email from Operation Rescue announcing a press conference at the White House today. Luckily, I was able to track down a freelance videographer who sold us some great exclusive footage of Operation Rescue's President, Troy Newman, failing several times to name a single part of the current health care bills that allows for federal funding of abortion (although he knows for a fact it does, he just cannot tell you how):
A few Saturdays ago, on November 7th, we were at the annual SisterSong meeting, a gathering of about 300 reproductive justice advocates. What was exhilarating and unusual about this meeting was that the vast majority of people attending were women of color who are focused on gender and sexuality issues. This was a fantastic event that showcased and harnessed the power of women of color, a group often portrayed as politically and socially marginalized.
At the same time, the House was considering and voting on the now-infamous Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the health care reform bill. Stupak-Pitts bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, whether through a public option, or through federal subsidies to private insurance plans offered through an insurance exchange. While that, in and of itself, is extremely limiting and dangerous, the amendment goes even further—it bars the use of federal funds to “cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion.” Essentially, the amendment bars any insurance plan operating in the health care exchange from offering abortion services.
Nancy Keenan, head of the national NARAL group (and most obedient of the obedient losers) was apparently personally promised before the health care battle by the Obama administration that they would look after the organization's constituency interests in the health care bill and preserve the status quo. In return, NARAL was asked to stand down its activism.
They did. So with all their colleagues, they got caught with their pants down when a floor vote on the Stupak amendment was imminent.
Today, I got a press release from the DNC, and their Organizing For America project, on their plan to drum up more support for the health care reform bill: targeting Republicans.
It says nothing about women's healthcare. Nothing. Like it isn't even at issue. OFA is still watching NARAL's back, women's backs, as well as they always have.
OFA is crowing about the 500,000 phone calls they've prompted on the health care issue. Were any of them centered around preserving reproductive health care when it mattered? Ha! As Femlaw says at the link, "The idea is to build organizational capacity, so when really critical moments in the campaign happened, OFA could deliver huge numbers."
Targeting Republicans is critical. Encouraging Democrats to stand together for women's health and rights, not critical.
Whee, Joseph Cao voted for the House bill! Too bad it contains the worst blow to women's rights in a generation, while Obama and his pet DNC's reactions continue to be tepid.
(Psst - Did you know that women are supposed to not only get a yearly physical through their family doctor, but have a separate ob-gyn well woman checkup every year from puberty onwards? That's where they check for cervical cancer, look for signs of domestic or sexual abuse, etc. You know, little stuff, but we're supposed to get it checked. Well, neither Obama, nor Congress, nor the DNC seems to know that nor cares. Medical care that all adult women are supposed to get every year won't be going in the required benefits package and there has been no organizing around it.)
The WhiteHouse.gov homepage says nothing about any of this right now. Their women's page says only this:
As the United States government prepares for further personnel shifts in the administration, Americans are anxious to know the nominees' priorities. How refreshing, then, to see health and justice for the American people trump politics. As Judge Sotomayor faces the scrutiny of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Obama has nominated Regina Benjamin to be the next Surgeon General-- America's "top doctor." Part of what will make, and has made, these women such phenomenal public servants is their refusal to be snagged by the issue of abortion. Instead, they recognize it as just one element of their respective jobs: a doctor working for health and a judge working for justice.
The President's new nominee for Surgeon General, Regina Benjamin, is a Catholic, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, and has been described as "an angel in a white coat." However, to her patients, she is a doctor first and foremost. A recent article in the Miami Herald addresses the fact that the Catholic nominee's clinic for low income communities offers referrals to abortion providers: "As a physician, she is deeply committed to the philosophy of putting her patients' needs first when it comes to providing care." Why does this sound so novel? A doctor's commitment to her patients' best interests should not be subject to ideology.
Similarly, as the Senate Judiciary Committee questions Judge Sotomayor, she unfailingly shows her commitment to justice above politics. The Los Angeles Times reports on a July 15th exchange between Senator John Cornyn (R- TX) and the nominee. He pressed her on a May Washington Post article purporting that she will undoubtedly support abortion rights and has "generally liberal instincts." Yet, she refuses to fall victim to politics; her response shows clarity: "I promote equal opportunity in America." The judge's words remind us that government, especially the judicial branch, should not play political games at the expense of serving the people and the laws of the United States.
We cannot know how Sotomayor's tenure on the Supreme Court might influence social justice in America, nor should we forget that, as NPR points out, "the surgeon general's entire operations budget, by comparison, is less than one-thousandth of the annual sales budget of Pfizer." However, both of these women's careers constitute an important reframing of the old abortion debate. They force us to address the bigger picture by refusing to allow politics and ideology to fence abortion out of its broader implications. Kudos to these women for talking about abortion in terms of the pursuit of health and justice, in which it can play an integral role.
We teach our kids to wash their hands during flu season, we teach them to wear a seat belt in the car, we teach them not to talk to strangers. We do these things in order to give our children the knowledge to protect themselves and achieve all that they are capable of. Part of ensuring that American children have access to the opportunity is ensuring their safety.
However, there is one kind of health about which parents are more reluctant to teach their kids-- sexual health. No parent wants to see his or her child "grow up too quickly." Even the thought of a sexually transmitted infection harming one's "little boy" or "little girl" can be overwhelming. However, the reality of the sexual health of America's youth suggests that action needs to be taken to provide the tools to keep America's children safe. For example, Lee Che Leong, Director of the Teen Health Initiative of the New York Civil Liberties Union made an official statement on the dire state of New York City's health education system in 2007:
In our work... we hear countless tales from students who are not receiving the basic knowledge necessary to understand, much less protect, their health. The questions we field from teens reveal the sad state of sexuality education in New York City public schools. We've heard sexually active teens ask what penetration is, if emergency contraception is abortion, and whether douching with Coke prevents pregnancy.
Not only is there a need for comprehensive sexual education, research shows that there is popular support. For example, the ACLU tells us:
A 1999 nationally representative survey of 7th-12th grade teachers in the five specialties most often responsible for sex education found that a strong majority believed that sexuality education courses should cover birth control methods (93.4%), factual information about abortion (89%), where to go for birth control (88.8%), the correct way to use a condom.
Such research shows that these educators understand the value and the need for keeping kids safe. In the nation where, according to Advocates for Youth and Public Health Reports the median age for engaging in sexual activity is 17, compared to a median age of marriage of 25.8 for women and 27.4 for men, abstinence-until-marriage programs are simply not realistic, nor do they reflect American culture.
All of America's children deserve to be healthy, and comprehensive sexual education is integral to this goal. Sexual health classes should respect cultural differences and religious beliefs while making health a top priority. This means teaching students about contraception and STD's, including HIV, and empowering students to talk to their partners and their parents about what can be life-altering decisions. In 2007, the CDC recorded 1,108,374 cases of Chlamydia in the United States, compared to 21,499 cases of H1N1, or Swine Flu. If we taught our kids as much about Chlamydia as we did about the Swine Flu, it might not continue to be more than 51 times as prevalent.
It is certainly an important time for America's discussions of health, but also an important time to talk about equality in America as it relates to access to reproductive health care.
University of Pennsylvania professor Salmishah Tillet wrote on June 4th about where reproductive justice fits into the broader discussion of civil rights. She argues that the threat to reproductive justice that George Tiller's murder constitutes is critically important to women of color, who often face particular challenges in obtaining comprehensive family planning materials. She says:
"While abortion is rarely seen as a civil rights issue, the dismantling of Roe v. Wade would have dire consequences for African-American women.... Today, reproductive injustice continues to adversely affect African-American women. Federal underfunding of adequate family-planning programs and lack of access to inexpensive, readily available contraceptives certainly play a role."
However, this civil right is being challenged for African-American women and women throughout the United States. Recent events remind us that legislation is only the beginning of what access means. Aside from financial barriers, abortion providers are increasingly terrorized out of serving American women. In many communities, violent extremist groups provide endless challenges to providers of women's health care. In a recent LA Times article, DeeDee Correll describes the safety concerns that Tiller's friend and colleague Warren Hern endures every day
"Hern has been familiar with the hazards for decades. After performing abortions for more than half of his life, the 70-year-old doctor has never been injured, but the constant threats with which he has lived since 1973 have transformed his life into a series of security measures: sleeping with a rifle, scanning rooftops for snipers, wearing a protective vest.
Obviously, this is a difficult issue to stand up for when the stakes are so high. This anonymously produced video, "Silenced," details the challenges faced by those who work at abortion clinics. It was released on May 26th, just five days before Tiller's death. Recent events make it painfully timely.
The abortion debate seems to be spiraling out of control, as evidenced by "pro-life" activist Bob Enyart's recent irresponsible statement in the LA Times: "If a Mafia hit man gets killed, people recognize it's an occupational hazard." Additionally, Sotomayor's nomination raises the stakes in the debate about reproductive justice. At such a defining moment, and with so many voices are chiming in about reproductive justice, it is important to come out strong and show support for the doctors that provide access to critical health procedures for all Americans.
Reproductive justice is about real choices-- not just passing laws, but also training health care providers and ensuring access to crucial reproductive health procedures. Keeping abortion providers safe, and ensuring that the provision of women's health remains a viable career is an issue of health and equal access to opportunity for all Americans.
Today is the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a decision that made a pregnant woman's life and health worth as much as a farm animal's, and put her autonomy in the law equal with the respect paid to the wishes a dead organ donor. How's that working out on the ground? Frederick Clarkson writes to tell us from RH Reality Check:
... In addition to the silence in the political arena, Zurek points to the silence in the health care system in which abortion is not integrated into the training of health care professionals; "because it is so stigmatized," she says. This same culture of stigmatization causes many patients to avoid even talking with their regular physicians about it, preferring instead "specialized settings" like Planned
Parenthood.
As a result, access to abortion care is a significant problem of health care delivery in the U.S. A major study by the Guttmacher Institute found that some 87% of counties in the U.S. lack a single abortion provider. ...
As Clarkson points out, increased access to abortion services isn't part of any of the healthcare plans floating around DC. It isn't in the Religious Industrial Complex's policy agenda. Thirty-six years later, women's right to comprehensive reproductive healthcare is the elephant. Either the white elephant it's clear some Democrats would love to get rid of, or the pink elephant they pretend not to see.
And that's a shame. Literally. It reinforces the idea that reproductive healthcare is shameful, something we should be afraid to talk about unless we're saying something negative. Whereas, all aspects of reproductive healthcare need to be recognized as necessary and normal. Even if some procedures are more like a triple bypass surgery or hip replacement, in that you hope they aren't needed but recognize that they must be available for those who require them.
On January 22, 2001, one of former President Bush's first acts of office, on one of his first full days in office, was to institute the global gag rule. This prohibited federal funds being used to support organizations that provided or spoke about abortion services, cutting off access to reproductive healthcare to some of the poorest women in the world. This reversal of Clinton's policy, itself a reversal of George H.W. Bush's policy, was a big news event in the Bush White House. They were proud of it and they wanted everyone to know.
Here's hoping, on this fine, anniversary morning, that when Obama signs the reversal of Bush's order, he's just as proud of that stance as his predecessor was of his.
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