The Star-Tribune recently published an interesting article profiling Dr. Carol Ball, a doctor in Minnesota who travels to South Dakota at least once a week to provide abortions. If you’re not aware, South Dakota is home to only one abortion clinic, and there are no doctors in the state who perform the procedure. As a result, the Planned Parenthood clinic flies in a rotation of four doctors, three from Minnesota and one from Colorado. The article covers a wide range of details concerning the situation, including Dr. Ball’s reaction to protestors and the murder of George Tiller. Dr. Ball, it should be noted, travels to South Dakota anonymously and is transported with a security detail.

One of the things that I find most interesting about the article is Dr. Ball discussing her decision to “come out” (so to speak) as an abortion provider. She mentions that, in the past, when asked what she did for a living, she would reply “obstetrician and gynecologist.” Now, she tells people: “I work for Planned Parenthood.”

It’s an interesting dilemma, and one that I can identify with. There have been times in my life in which I’ve had an internal struggle over whether to reveal that I worked at Planned Parenthood… or if, instead, I should simply say something generic, like “I work at a clinic.” For better or worse, telling someone that you work for Planned Parenthood is going to shape their opinion about you… and I’ve heard both positive and negative reactions.

But I agree with Dr. Ball that it’s important to be upfront and honest about this. She says that it’s so she can show her children that it’s important to stand up “for what you believe.” But I would also wager that it’s important to those South Dakota women, those patients who travel upwards of five hours to see her… it’s important for them to know that they have an ally who will stand up for them.

The state of Utah is on the brink of enacting a dangerous piece of legislation, as a bill that would criminalize women for having miscarriages has now passed both the state House and Senate and is heading to the governor for his signature. The bill, which was inspired by an incident in which a woman who was seven months pregnant paid a man $150 to assault her in the hopes of causing a miscarriage, would allow murder charges to be brought against a woman who arranges to have an illegal abortion. As troubling as that is, it just gets worse. Though the bill does include language that protects a woman from prosecution if she secures a legal abortion, it also allows charges to be brought against women who have a miscarriage through an “intentional, knowing, or reckless” act.

Of course, “reckless act” is not defined, leading it open to any number of interpretations. As commentators on the linked article point out, could a woman who has a miscarriage after going skiing or biking be charged with murder? How about one who neglects to wear a seatbelt and gets in a car accident? Will a pregnant woman who falls down a flight of stairs be under a cloud of suspicion, as police attempt to ascertain if it truly was an accident? (Not to mention the domestic abuse and substance abuse issue that this fine article points out.) The fact that this bill allows prosecutions for miscarriages in the first trimester could also means that a woman could be charged with a crime for engaging in “reckless” behavior and causing a miscarriage for a pregnancy she didn’t even know she had.

There is still hope that the governor of Utah won’t sign the bill, but I’m not especially optimistic. The end result is a law that both severely punishes women and acts as a vote of tacit approval for the more chilling pieces of anti-choice legislation. What do you think? Is this bill’s success the start of more extreme anti-choice bills?

Former president George W. Bush was recently honored by a Catholic organization, Legatus, for “eight years of pro-life policies” while in office. Among other things, the group notes his opposition to stem cell research and his appointment of anti-choice Supreme Court judges as among his qualifications for the award. Perhaps surprisingly, this decision has not been without some controversy, even in “pro-life” circles.

In a brief piece in the Washington Post, one writer lays out a few thoughts, which boil down to this: How can Bush be “pro-life” when he was incredibly eager to start wars and when he tacitly signed off on myriad executions as governor of Texas? Another author (this one from a more moderate Catholic organization) wonders the same thing, and adds Bush’s opposition to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) as more evidence of his lack of “pro-life” credentials.

While I know that these views are most likely not the majority opinion in the anti-choice movement, it is nice to see some individuals who identify as “pro-life” examine these issues so closely and rationally. So often, it seems like there’s absolutely no room for agreement between pro-choice and anti-choice individuals; in fact, most of the time, it seems that the gulf between the two groups is expanding exponentially. But it’s helpful and reassuring to see a “pro-life” organization call Bush (a hero to many in that movement) out for his hypocrisy… as well as express support for health care policies that can reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. As our current president has said, this is something that everyone should be able to agree is important… and it’s rather encouraging to me to see individuals on the other side of things, generally so hyperbolic (with their birth control=abortion rantings), begin to take some steps towards a common ground. What do you think?

In case you missed the bipartisan Health Care Reform Summit yesterday, coverage of the six hour event made it seem that the Summit lived down to low expectations. You have to respect President Obama for trying and at least the conversation was civil. Still, it’s pretty difficult to see room for much progress to be made. This lack of progress has never been more evident than in women’s access to reproductive health care under the proposed legislation.

We recently learned that the President has joined Congress (including Congressional allies) in putting Women’s Health at stake in the name of Health Care Reform. President Obama’s Health Care Reform proposal accepts the Nelson Check Provision which contains extremely restrictive language around abortion from the Senate version of the bill which passed that chamber back in December.

See our post on the Nelson Provision for the details but, in a nutshell, the “Nelson Abortion Check Provision” effectively creates an abortion rider system where all individuals who purchase their health care coverage will be forced to write two premiums checks—one for their abortion coverage and one for everything else. This includes coverage of any abortion that is medically necessary.

Basically, if you want abortion coverage, the Nelson provision requires you pay for it separately from all other components of your health care coverage.

Read the rest of this entry »

By now, you’ve likely heard about the Apex Town Council’s January 19^th decision to strip abortion coverage from their town employees’ health plan.

What you may not have heard about was their follow up meeting last week.

The Apex vote in January was unanimous because Mayor Keith Weatherly presented it as settled legal matter. (Check out our previous post for background on Mayor Weatherly.)

Of course, the truth came out immediately following the vote.  Within days, lawyers from the ACLU, the NC League of Municipalities and the NC Association of County Commissioners all issued statements or opinions defending a county or town’s authority to determine which benefits are appropriate for their employees.

As soon as Apex Town Council Member Bill Jensen found out the issue was driven by politics rather than settled law, he called on the Apex Town Council to take it up again. Last week at their February meeting, Councilman Jensen moved to have abortion coverage placed on the agenda. The lone Democrat couldn’t get a second to his motion. Not a single other Apex Town Council member had the courage to debate the merits of taking comprehensive healthcare coverage away from town employees.  

During the meeting, Mayor Weatherly admitted publicly that Apex has the authority to provide abortion coverage to its employees. He also admitted it was a moral issue rather than a legal one.

The truth is the Apex decision was purely political.

Mayor Keith Weatherly is the legislative assistant to NC Representative Paul Stam who filed the original court case being trotted out as the rationale for denying women reproductive health coverage.

Back in the late 80s when Stam first served in the NC House, he was referred to as the “prince of pelvic politics” because of his relentless crusade against reproductive freedom.

When Mayor Weatherly told the Town Council this was a legal decision, he must have known he had the backing of Apex Town Attorney Hank Fordham–Paul Stam’s law partner.

It would be bad enough if the small town politics of Apex were confined to Apex. But since the Apex vote, several counties have moved to deny their employees abortion coverage because they fell for the settled law ruse.

It’s hard to believe its 2010 when an all-male town council led by a politically-connected mayor can deny thousands of women reproductive health coverage and get away with it. It’s hard to believe but it’s happening right here in North Carolina.  Please help us fight back.

A few weeks ago, I posted a piece about a woman in Bangladesh who was lashed for having committed the “grievous crime” of getting pregnant as the result of a rape. And while I take absolutely no pleasure in writing about violence against women (or violence in general), I stand by my statement that events like these need to be discussed… as otherwise, the appalling treatment of women in some parts of the world will forever be swept under the rug. That being said, I find this story especially hard to take… so fair warning.

In Turkey, the body of a 16-year-old girl was found recently, buried under a chicken pen near her family’s home. It is thought that she was the victim of a so-called “honor killing.” Every aspect of this story would be awful in its own right… but all together, it’s almost unbearably sad. The victim was allegedly murdered by her father and grandfather. The “crime” that led to the honor killing? The “grave sin” of talking to boys. And possibly the most horrific part: the victim was killed by being buried alive. An autopsy revealed a “large amount of soil in her stomach and lungs,” meaning she had been alive when buried. No narcotics were found in her system… meaning she had been fully conscious and aware as well.

I can’t stop thinking about how scared this girl must have been… and how horrible her final moments probably were. The father and the grandfather have been arrested and are likely to be charged with murder… but it says a lot about notions of patriarchy and male dominance that these murders are condoned by some. Without the idea that women are somehow “less than” men, and therefore must bend to the will and whims of men, despicable incidents like this and the aforementioned rape case wouldn’t exist, much less be tolerated in some circles. If you’re interested in learning more about the plight of women and girls across the world, check out Amnesty International’s Violence Against Women program here. And leave your thoughts in the comments section!

At the very least the elected leaders who are stripping coverage should get their stories straight on why they thought it appropriate to force their personal belief systems on the rest of us at the detriment of their female employees.

As coverage from Cary News points out, the issue was initially cast by Weatherly as one that would protect the taxpayer from lawsuits.  But, after the decision was passed, Mayor Weatherly proclaimed, “The issue is the protection of the unborn.”  

But wait, didn’t you tell us that it was about protecting the town from lawsuits? The N&O quotes Wake County Board of Commissioners chair, Tony Gurley spoke on this theme saying, “As soon as we were made aware it [abortion coverage] was illegal, we stopped doing it.”

Except that it’s not. Turns out the only legal precedent that statement is founded on is a case brought by Representative Paul Stam in Stam vs. State of NC.  Also turns out, the 1991 precedent does NOT apply in this case as it does not address health insurance coverage.

The bottom line here is that city and county employees deserve full insurance coverage and that council members don’t get to decide who has access to legal medical procedures based on their political agendas.

Are city councilpersons and county commisioners elected as morality police?  You might think so if you’re following the news out of Wake County.

Last month’s decision by the Apex Town Council to strip abortion coverage from their town employee’s insurance coverage was initiated by Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly.  Mayor Weatherly, as noted in a previous post, works as a legislative assistant to Representative Paul Stam, a longtime crusader against a woman’s right to make child-bearing decisions.

The Apex abortion coverage ban triggered the Wake County Commissioners to consider stripping abortion coverage from county employees’ benefits. That proposal was added to the Commissioners’ agenda for their February 15 meeting… That is, until today.

The News and Observer reports that Wake County has followed Apex’s lead in cherry picking what health insurance benefits they deem “acceptable” and what they do not.

In case you were wondering, Wake County Government leaders determined that abortion coverage (which is covered by more than 80% of private insurance plans) falls into the latter category and, therefore, is out. The change has already been made administratively by the County Manager

It was just that simple. No public comment. Not a single vote on the matter. Is this our democracy at work? Now our local government is stepping into the role of “morality police”? Is this what anyone elected their County Commissioner or Town Council member to do?

Wake County residents: tell your Commissioners that you are outraged that the decision to cut comprehensive employee health coverage was brought about with no public comment and that you are strongly opposed to the change.

So now that we’ve had a chance to see what all the controversy has been about, I’ve started wondering: was the outcry over the Tim Tebow Super Bowl commercial worth it? Or was it much ado about nothing?

As it turned out, there were actually two ads… one that aired before the game, and one that aired during…. and you can see both here. In my opinion, the commercials were fairly innocuous… if you hadn’t heard of the controversy beforehand, you might not even know what the ads were about. And this is one of the rare instances where I take great comfort in the general apathy of Americans, as I would imagine few took the time to get off their couches and visit the Focus on the Family website before their collective attention spans were drawn to the latest Doritos commercial.

And thank goodness for that, because the Tebows seemed to have saved all the crazy for their interview at the Focus on the Family website. (I really wanted to embed the video of the interview here, but Focus on the Family isn’t allowing it as of right now… so, unfortunately, you have to visit the website to see it. If you do, stick around until the end… that’s when it starts getting good. Or, more accurately, “good.”)

Look… whether you believe it or not, I don’t begrudge the Tebows their religious beliefs. Their beliefs aren’t anywhere close to mine, but they’re entitled to them. When I’m writing these blogs, I generally try to make a pretty sincere effort to attack arguments, not beliefs, mainly because I don’t like the idea of telling someone not to believe in Jesus any more than the thought of someone telling me that I should.

But the Tebows kind of went a tad overboard during this interview. When asked what they’d say to a woman who was experiencing an unexpected pregnancy, Mr. Tebow actually turns to the camera and says, “Don’t kill your baby.” And while that flair for the dramatic may be offensive and simplistic, it’s Mrs. Tebow’s response that bothers me a bit more. She tells these women that they have a choice… with the implicit connotation, of course, that they should “choose life.”

Yes, Mrs. Tebow… women do have a choice. And that’s a great thing. But the reason why they have that choice is because of the tireless work of pro-choice advocates, who have devoted their lives to ensuring access to all choices. One of the things that always irritates me is the extremely false notion that pro-choice advocates want every pregnant woman to have an abortion. While a ridiculous argument, it actually works… for whatever reason, some people actually believe it. But I’d like to remind Mrs. Tebow that it’s not us who are wishing to limit options… it’s people like her. People who fool women into believing that their at-risk pregnancies will end in a fairy tale. People who say to other women: “You have to do this, no matter how you feel about the matter.”

So, at the end of the day, I’m glad that Mrs. Tebow chose to continue her pregnancy, as it’s a decision that she seems comfortable with. But I’m even happier that we can still use the word “choice” to describe this decision… that those choices exist… no matter how hard people like the Tebows fight against them.

We’ve written twice about the anti-choice ad that CBS will air during Sunday’s Super Bowl that is being bankrolled by the ultra-conservative evangelical organization, Focus on the Family. The ad will feature University of Florida player Tim Tebow and his mom, Pam. If you’ve managed to miss the background on the controversy so far, get caught up here and here.

It’s too bad that so many people are missing the point when it comes to the content of this ad and the difficult situation that Pam Tebow found herself in. In fact, her story is a powerful one, and it rests on the fact that a woman, Pam Tebow, made an important personal and medical decision on her own, after receiving counsel from medical professionals. She made the right decision for herself and her family.

The Tebows’ story is compelling, and central to it is the fact that we must respect the ability of each woman to make important medical decisions for herself and her family.  Fortunately, this point has not been lost on everyone.

This week, a powerful video produced by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America was release on Youtube featuring college and pro football player, Sean James, and Olympic Gold Medalist, Al Joyner.

I consider this a “must-see” because it’s just so powerful to hear these two amazing athletes talk about the world they want to see for their daughters. That world is a place where everyone’s decisions are respected and where everyone believes that (to quote Sean James) “women are strong and wise” and that “only women can make the best decisions about their health and their future.” Am I the only one tearing up?

In a just a little over a minute James and Joyner really sum up the major reasons that so many of us are pro-choice. When (or if) you see the Tim Tebow ad this Super Bowl Sunday just think back to this video and remember that Pam Tebow had the ability to make the best decision for her and her family… and so too should the rest of us.

In other news, I think the Saints have won over my support in this Super Bowl. Not being a big sports fan, here’s why.