Posts Tagged ‘abortion’

It was enough to stop me in my tracks. Opening the mailbox yesterday to find Sarah Palin on the cover of Newsweek with a glowing halo radiating from her head and the words “Saint Sarah” inscribed below.

I searched the cover for clues, trying to figure out why anyone would call Palin a saint. Then I saw “feminism” in smaller print. Please, no, not another story about a woman being a feminist simply by virtue of her gender. 

In a masochistic move, I flipped to the cover story. I didn’t think it could be worse than “Saint Sarah,” but there it was. The story began with Palin’s recounting of the night she found out she was pregnant with her fifth child. Already the governor of Alaska and mother of four children, Palin wrestled alone in a hotel with the mixed emotions of an unplanned pregnancy. She admits to thinking about her alternatives. 

Then the story fast-forwards to Palin’s son Trig, “the best thing that ever happened to [her] family.” Yes, it worked out for Sarah. Shortly after giving birth, she was catapulted into the national political scene and subsequently made millions. A tidy ending to a story that Palin shares to inspire evangelical women across the country.

The story of Trig is Palin’s parable. She uses it to connect with women and teach a lesson. Like a typical woman in America, she faced an unintended pregnancy. Roughly half of the pregnancies in the US are not planned. Palin considered her options and chose to continue the pregnancy.

Apparently, at this point in the tale, ballrooms filled with evangelical women burst into clapping, stomping and whooping it up. Saint Sarah did the right thing. She’s their heroine, strong and strong willed, their “feminist” role model if only they could stomach the word. 

Sarah Palin’s heartfelt recounting of wrestling alone in a hotel with the mixed emotions of an unplanned pregnancy exemplifies what feminists have been saying for decades. Reproductive health decisions are deeply personal and a woman should be able to make them in accordance with her life and values, which is exactly what Palin did.

For those of us who believe in women’s real equality, Palin’s parable reads a little differently. Her refusal to trust other women to make reproductive health decisions for themselves shows that Palin is no saint much less a feminist.

Recently the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to lift a discriminatory and dangerous ban on privately funded abortion care for women serving in the military overseas.

This was a huge victory for America’s servicewomen and for women’s health. Since 1995, this ban prohibited a woman serving overseas from receiving abortion care in the military hospital on base where she would normally access health care services. As a result, the ban meant that a servicewoman was forced to venture out to a local medical facility in the foreign country where she is stationed to obtain an abortion. In many countries where U.S. servicewomen are stationed, abortion care is inadequate, unsafe or altogether unavailable.

The amendment passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee overturns this dangerous and unjust ban and simply allows a servicewoman to use her private dollars to pay for an abortion at the secure military hospital where she currently receives care.

Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) proposed the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that repealed the ban on privately funded abortion services for U.S. servicewomen serving overseas.

Senator Kay Hagan serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee and voted in favor of the amendment that lifted the long-standing ban on privately funded abortion care for servicewomen.

Senator Hagan needs to hear that her constituents are behind her and that we want her to continue to stand up to protect women’s health. Take action and let her know that you appreciate her vote!

Recently, I’ve written a fair amount on various pieces of statewide legislation that are aimed at limiting a woman’s access to abortion. One of the most common approaches for anti-choice legislators to take is legislation mandating that a woman must have, and be offered a chance to view, an ultrasound before having an abortion procedure. Many states have even taken up legislation that would require a woman to view the ultrasound before she can have her procedure… whether she wants to or not.

The Guttmacher Institute has a complete overview of all the states that have introduced ultrasound bills this year. The New York Times also recently published a really interesting article on this type of bill, which you can see here.

The article includes a few choice tidbits, including the fact that many abortion providers already require ultrasounds on their own for medical reasons (including Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina), and that both studies and anecdotal evidence suggest that having a chance to view an ultrasound (or being required to) almost never changes a woman’s mind in whether to have the procedure… and, in fact, it occasionally solidifies a woman’s decision to have an abortion. Like I said interesting stuff, and well worth reading.

But I wanted to focus on one quote in particular, because I think it strikes at the heart of what’s really behind these enacted and proposed bills.

“Like other patients, Laura, who has a 17-year-old son, said she took offense at the state’s implicit suggestion that she had not fully considered her choice.

‘You don’t just walk into one of these places like you’re getting your nails done,” she said. “I think we’re armed with enough information to make adult decisions without being emotionally tortured.’”

As this quote gets at, and as the article itself also alludes to, these types of bills do nothing but infringe on a doctor-patient relationship, and also assume that a woman isn’t smart enough or well enough informed, to make her own decision. I can’t think of any other scenario in which legislators could require a doctor to perform a medical procedure on a person, regardless of the patient’s needs or desires.

Can you imagine the outcry from the “big government is bad government” crowd if they were being forced to undergo a particular medical procedure that they didn’t want (or possibly even need)? If you recall the hysteria that occurred by the Tea Partiers and others during the recent federal health care debate, I think it’s pretty easy to get an idea as to what would happen. But because these groups are generally anti-abortion, there’s nary a word about patients’ rights or individual freedoms when it comes to these bills. Yet another example of hypocrisy in action with this group of people.

I’ve said it in previous blog posts (and I’m sure I’ll say it again) but the continual insistence by legislators that women aren’t smart or strong enough to make this decision on their own is both incredibly misogynistic and insulting. As the quote above indicates, this is not a decision that women take lightly.

I spent over two years working in a clinic that provided abortion services, and I am extremely confident in stating that, to an enormous degree, the women who were seeking abortions had given the matter a huge amount of thought and consideration. And anyone who doesn’t think that to be true has probably never met someone who’s had an abortion… or is so consumed by an agenda that they are completely blinded to the reality of the situation.

So what’s your take on ultrasound laws? Are they meant to be barriers to service, or are they, as I think, a larger insult to women? Or are they something else entirely? Sound off in the comments!

As part of the recent rash of anti-choice bills making their way through state legislatures around the country, our neighbor to the south is attempting to pass legislation that would tighten abortion restrictions in the state. The South Carolina bill, currently in two versions, would expand the waiting period for getting an abortion from one hour to one day. The state House’s version would also require two office visits, while the state Senate’s bill forces a woman to download time-stamped information about abortion from a state website before she can have the procedure.

As critics of the bill point out, the proposed statute has its largest effect on women who live in rural areas and those who are poor. It’s much harder for these women to get to clinics once, let alone twice… and the Senate bill supposes that everyone has access to the Internet. Which is not the case, especially for people of lower socioeconomic status. But it seems that some South Carolina legislators don’t mind passing a bill that disproportionately effects some of its citizens.

In fact, one legislator who’s leading the charge for the tighter restrictions said that “this is the most serious issue this Legislature could deal with, if not this year, this session.” Really? Making access to a legal medical procedure much more difficult for poor and rural women is the most important issue facing South Carolina today? Not, say, the budget problems that the state is facing, which are causing a 44% funding cut to colleges and universities in the state? And are also causing K-12 funding to be rolled back to its 1994 level? And are going to make it extraordinarily difficult for the state to keep paying for Medicaid? Those issues don’t rank near the top?

Proponents for the legislation say that it’s intended to make a woman think about her decision before having an abortion. Well, I have news for the legislators of South Carolina. In the two and a half years I spent working in a clinic that provided abortions, I never met a single woman who hadn’t thought about her decision. And to imply that women aren’t thinking “enough” about this procedure (whatever that means) is disingenuous at best and downright offensive and misogynistic at worst. Might I suggest that the “most serious issue” facing South Carolina voters this fall is to elect legislators who won’t ignore real problems to simultaneously pander to a base of support and throw poor and rural women under the bus?

Like many states, Kansas is having trouble making ends meet because our country’s ongoing economic rollercoaster. The state legislature has been debating a few different options to raise revenues, most of which are ideas that have been considered in many states facing the economic crunch: raising court fees, privatizing services, and increasing the state sales tax. However, one state Senator, Mary Pilcher Cook, took it upon herself to think a bit outside the box. Her idea? Start taxing abortions.

Yes, you read that correctly. Pilcher Cook wants to impose a sales tax on abortion procedures. Her rationale?

She noted that governments routinely use tax policy to effect behavior – cigarette and liquor taxes, for example, or tax breaks designed to spur economic activity. “If you want less of something, you tax it,” Pilcher Cook said.

Her amendment ultimately failed (narrowly), but this seems to represent a dangerous new frontier in the fight for access to abortion services. With town councils and legislators imposing restriction on insurance coverage of abortion (not to mention the millions of women who have no insurance coverage whatsoever), this kind of legislation has the very real possibility of making the burden of payment for an abortion too much for many women. And, as is usually the case in these situations, the hypocrisy here is amazing. On Pilcher Cook’s website, she touts her strong belief in limited government. And says this:

Kansas leadership has been relying on a disturbing trend recently of using governmental control as solutions to issues.

Ms. Pilcher Cook: How is this not an example of “governmental control?” You’re admitting that you’re trying to impose a tax to limit abortions! It’s just unbelievable to me.

So what do you think? Is this an example of one lone, hypocritical legislator? Or do you think we’re going to start seeing legislation like this popping up elsewhere?

Former first lady Laura Bush has been quite busy lately. She’s promoting her new memoir, appearing on talk shows, and expressing her support for both gay marriage and abortion. That’s right. Laura Bush evidently is in favor of both gay marriage and abortion.

Yes, this actually happened. Let’s go the transcript, shall we? Appearing on Larry King Live, Mrs. Bush was first questioned about her views on gay marriage (a perfectly legitimate question, considering how much her husband and his cronies made same-sex marriage an issue in the 2004 election). Her response:

“I think there are a lot of people who have trouble coming to terms with that because they see marriage as traditionally between a man and a woman, but I also know that when couples are committed to each other and love each other that they ought to have the same sort of rights that everyone has.”

That’s right. Laura Bush, Republican, wife of George “I believe that God wants me to president” Bush, is more progressive on same-sex marriage than our current “progressive” president.

And on abortion? Mrs. Bush says this:

“I think it’s important that it remain legal, because I think its important for people for medical reasons and other reasons.”

Sigh.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s great that Mrs. Bush holds these views, and that she’s speaking about them. But it also frustrates me greatly, for a couple of reasons.

Look, I get it. George Bush and friends were trying to appeal to a very specific segment of the U.S. population, and to have the first lady speaking out in favor of the gays marrying and abortion would have been contradictory to that goal. Mr. Bush had an agenda, and Mrs. Bush’s views simply didn’t fit. So she chose silence.

But she didn’t have to. She didn’t have to offer up tacit support for the policies of her husband if she didn’t want to. She didn’t have to stand idly by and watch as her husband did an enormous amount of damage to adults and children as he spread misinformation and lies about LGBT individuals in an effort to win an election (and, to a lesser extent, stop same-sex marriage). She didn’t have to stay in the background while her husband was trying to allow health professionals to refuse to help patients who wanted an abortion or emergency contraception. While he set back scientific research by who knows how many years by preventing stem cell research in the name of being “pro-life.” While he, consistently and constantly, set out to find ways to impose more and more barriers on abortion services. She had more access to an incredibly homophobic and anti-choice president than probably anyone else. And she did nothing. Is this the lesson that Mrs. Bush wants to teach young girl and women everywhere? That it’s ok to have your own opinions, but if they differ from your husbands, it’s best to not express them? What kind of message is that?

So, welcome Mrs. Bush. Welcome to our side. I just wish I could have said those words years ago, back when the impact of you stating your positions could have been more than just of symbolic importance.

A new anti-choice law has gone into effect in Oklahoma, after the Republican-controlled state legislature overrode Governor Brad Henry’s veto of the proposed bill. The law, considered by some to be one of the strongest anti-abortion measures in the country, requires women seeking to have an abortion to hear a description of “the dimensions of the fetus, whether arms, legs and internal organs are visible and whether there is cardiac activity.” Additionally, the individual performing the ultrasound must also “turn the “screen depicting the ultrasound images toward the woman to see them.”

As one might guess, lawsuits have already been filed in an attempt to overturn the law, though until a judge issues an initial ruling, clinics must conform to the statute. Beyond the rather abhorrent intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship by the Oklahoma state legislature, the bill also compels patients to hear information that may have no relevance to their medical care and, extremely troublingly, offers no exemptions for incidences of rape and incest… meaning that a survivor of sexual assault would also be forced to hear this information. Which seems to me to be beyond insensitive, and firmly into the territory of outright cruelty.

According to a provider of abortion services in the state, women have already been leaving the ultrasound room in tears because of the new law. Tony Lauinger, state chairman for Oklahomans for Life, said that he hoped that the bill would help to “prevent psychological trauma to pregnant woman.” Which is, of course, laughable.

The Oklahoma legislature should not be making medical decisions for its constituents. It shouldn’t be forcing survivors of sexual assault to hear information that could be damaging to them. And it shouldn’t be hiding behind the notion of protecting women from trauma, when it really seems like they’re much more interested in inflicting it.

When I worked at Planned Parenthood, one of my job duties was to talk to patients about abortion. And one thing that I was always struck by was how seriously the women to whom I spoke took the decision. It was never impetuous or hasty, but a hard choice. The choice that these women decided was best for them.

These experiences are probably the reason why this recent story caught my eye: a woman in Florida, Angie Jackson, made the decision to have a medication abortion (also known as the abortion pill), for a few reasons that are outlined in this article. Then she decided to tweet it, in real-time.

Jackson’s reasons for tweeting her abortion are twofold: first, she aimed to demystify the abortion process. Second, she felt that using Twitter was the only way for her to “get the support she needed.” I can understand both of these reasons. The concept of abortion is discussed so often in our culture, but almost always as a controversy, and very rarely as an actual medical procedure. As a result, it seems that women can think of abortion in frightening or macabre terms. And, again in my experiences, it can be hard for individuals to see through all the misinformation and view the procedure for what it actually is. In regards to Jackson’s second reason, having a support system is an extremely important part of the process of having an abortion… just like it is with any medical procedure. And I am glad that Jackson was able to get the support that she needed.

As you can probably imagine, Jackson received quite the backlash from her decision. After creating a Twitter hashtag (#livetweetingabortion), individuals outside of her followers could begin tracking Jackson’s tweets. And some of them had incredibly harsh things to say to her. According to the linked article (and not correcting for spelling or grammar), one user wrote: “Scorpion mothers will grab one of their children from their backs and eat it if she gets hungry. So u’re @ the same level?” Another simply told Jackson: “u’ve been an advocate 4death 4 aLongTime.”

While I will admit to having mixed feelings about Jackson’s decision to tweet her experiences (mainly because I’m not convinced that controversial types of advocacy are always worth the backlash that typically ensues), I remain, as always, somewhat amazed by the level of vitriol that anti-choicers direct towards women who choose to have abortions. For a group of people who talk about being open to and welcoming humans in all “forms,” they sure can have a difficult time practicing what they preach. And as I said above, while I do understand that abortion by its very nature tends to be controversial, such vindictiveness aimed towards a woman who is undergoing a legal medical procedure is disturbing. And it’s always a slippery slope. What’s next? Are anti-choicers going to begin to violently attack women who speak about their birth control use? Or men who openly discuss getting a vasectomy?

The anonymity of the Internet generally brings out the worst in people, as the odds of someone being held accountable for their words are low. Even with that in mind however, whenever I see or hear people verbally attack a woman for her choice to have an abortion… I can’t help but think of those women I used to talk to when I worked at Planned Parenthood. The women who struggled to make the best choice they could. They didn’t deserve that kind of abuse. And, despite possible disagreements about her method of advocacy… neither does Angie Jackson.

A 15-year-old girl in Seattle suddenly finds herself at the center of a controversy after choosing to have an abortion. The girl, who visited a high school school-based health clinic and was referred to a clinic who ultimately performed the abortion, is being held up by the anti-choice movement as an example of the “insidious” pro-choice movement’s willingness to manipulate impressionable young women into ending their pregnancies (I’m paraphrasing here).

To make matters worse, the person doing the most shouting and complaining is the girl’s mother. Incredibly, she’s the one who started all of this, speaking to members of the press about the situation and even, it seems, publicizing the story on her MySpace page.

As you might imagine, the anti-choicers have run with the story, utilizing headlines like “Secret Abortion on Seattle Teenager Draws Pro-Life Condemnation, Outrage” and saying that “what the school did was unconscionable.”

Except that the school didn’t really do anything. The staff who work at the school’s health center made a referral. That’s all. Washington state has no parental notification laws, so neither the clinic nor the girl herself were legally obligated to tell anyone of the decision. And of course the abortion was “secret,” even though I’m not altogether fond of using that word in this situation. Privacy laws for medical records exist for a reason.

More than anything else, I’m somewhat outraged that the girl’s mother has decided to use her daughter’s abortion as a springboard for a media campaign. The girl in question obviously wanted to keep her procedure as private as possible. That’s no longer the case. In one of the above linked articles, a student who goes to the same school as the girl remarked that everyone was now trying to guess the identity of the girl. This is nothing but conjecture, but if she felt isolated before, I can only imagine how she feels now. And I would bet that her relationship with her mom will never be the same. And for what? To play politics with this girl’s choice? That’s a new low, even for the anti-choicers.

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.