Abortion Gang

Guest post from Rachel

My thanks for the information and advocacy of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, Trust Black Women, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the grassroots activism of  SisterSong NYC who’s listserv provided the information to present this action, and those unidentified warriors whose words and wisdom I am drawing on for this post.

I’m writing today to ask my fellow women of colour reproductive justice activists and our allies to take a united stand against the “Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act,” a race and sex selection bill that goes before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution on Tuesday, December 6, 2011. I cannot repeat enough times the urgency of moving quickly to act in solidarity.

This is a federal version of that legislation that a coalition of Asian, Black, and women of colour organizations fought at the local level in Georgia, which attempts to portray the restriction of women of colour’s access to abortion and prenatal care as serving a ‘nobler’ human rights cause. This bill, like others before it, seeks to protect the “civil rights” of unborn fetuses by banning race- and sex-selection abortions. However, the underlying motivations are racist characterizations of entire communities:

• First, that Black women are selfish, irresponsible, and incapable of making reproductive decisions on their own behalf;
• Second, that Asian women mindlessly reproduce “son preference” and bring ‘dangerous values’ into the country.

This is patently untrue, and Black and Asian/Pacific Islander (API) women have consistently fought for the right to make decisions on if and when they will have children, based on the support networks and resources that are available in their communities. This bill attempts to drive another wedge between women and abortion and reproductive health practitioners. It will exacerbate many of the already-existing structural barriers to access that we must overcome to receive reproductive healthcare. It will put pressure our abortion care providers to conduct racial profiling on us, requiring them to second-guess our motivations in seeking abortions. It will do nothing to address the entrenched disparities that low-income women of color must navigate every day in seeking reproductive care. It does not contribute to or encourage cultural, grassroots-level change in Asian communities where we are already working to address the sexist roots of son preference.

This is a bill being put forward by members of Congress who consistently vote to decimate funding for reproductive health services and family support programs (see footnote below). This bill is funded by anti-abortion groups that have ties to racist billboard campaigns targeting Black and API communities.

The result of this bill is increased scrutiny of the reproductive decision-making of Black, Latina, and API women. This is being rushed through Congress on the back of a twisted appeal to “fetal civil rights,” even though the motivations for this legislation rest on racist and sexist characterizations of our communities. Again, this is a bill that seeks to mobilize arguments about the incapacity and dangerousness of women of colour making reproductive choices on their own behalf. It is an affront our rights to privacy, to bodily autonomy, and to mobilize in concert to create change and solidarity in our communities—based on our priorities and experiences, our visions for the future, and our agency.

If your organization is willing to stand in solidarity with us, please write to [sjorawar] @ [napawf.org] to have your name added to the written testimony against this disastrous bill. We need your signature by the end of today, December 5, so that it can be assembled and submitted for the Congressional Record. We have seen state versions of this bill and are still being targeted by the insulting media campaign attached to it. We have fought these efforts in the past and will continue to do so at the federal level. We represent the women and people of color this bill purports to protect, and we are announcing our unequivocal condemnation of it.

A guest post by ninersgal.

A recent article over at Daily Kos slammed mainstream feminist organizations, such as NOW and NARAL, for constantly asking their supporters for money. The author, Kaili Joy Gray, also criticized these groups for swooping in at the last minute and claiming victory for the defeat of Initiative 26 in Mississippi, when grassroots groups had been doing the mobilizing all along.

I agree with Gray’s critique, but I think she may have been a bit too kind with her criticism. There are several other big name feminist organizations that should have been called out in her post – and I think you know exactly who has the finger pointed at them when I say that.

I have been volunteering for Planned Parenthood for the past three years. At first I was a clinic escort, but that role has shifted over to their advocacy department since the clinic escort program has been eliminated in our state. I volunteer because I want to give back for the health care that I have received over the last ten years. I cannot afford to attend $85 luncheons, let alone write a $250 check. The core volunteer group that I work with has similar motivations – we love Planned Parenthood, but sometimes it feels like our contributions are completely overlooked, especially when we constantly get emails from PPFA asking for more and more money.

My problem doesn’t just reside with Planned Parenthood. Every nonprofit that I have ever worked for, either as a volunteer or a staff member, seems to discount the donor who can only afford to give $5 or $10. Volunteer hours are never calculated in terms of their economic value to the organization. And staff who already contribute to the organization by working long hours for very little pay are also disrespected when they are hit up for money by the development officers. When you’re only making $27,000 a year, how in the hell are you supposed to afford spending $250 a month in financial contributions to your employer?

Here’s the scoop: if PPFA didn’t spend so much money on fancy pink posters and snazzy T-shirts, they might not need to shake the money tree so often. How about asking for money to fund abortions, rather than political lobbying? Oh wait . . . that’s the job of your local abortion fund.

My tenure as a Planned Parenthood volunteer is rapidly coming to a close. I will be shifting my efforts over to my state’s abortion fund for many reasons. The main reason is that I want to know that my efforts are actually contributing to the ability of patients to access care. When the abortion fund asks for money, it’s very happy to accept those $5 and $10 donations – and I know that every penny of it is going directly towards patients’ health care costs. Every hour that I donate of my time goes towards the same goal.

So click on over to Gray’s article and see if you agree or disagree with her criticism of mainstream feminism. I’d love to get your take on the situation.

A guest post from  Jane Cawthorne.

Cristina Yang had an abortion. In Prime Time. Yes, it’s true.

The Grey’s Anatomy character, super whiz-kid, tough-as-nails with a hidden heart-of-gold cardiac surgeon-in-training, got pregnant, and told her husband, Owen, she wanted an abortion. They had a big fight. Owen wanted to have a baby (or more correctly, wanted Cristina to have a baby), got all “lifey” on her (Cristina’s word) and threw her out. Then Cristina stayed over at Meredith’s house and helped Meredith with her new baby, the one she was adopting from Malawi with McDreamy, demonstrating that she, indeed, could (if she wanted to) look after a baby and even smile at it and kiss it on the cheek, all the while affirming her desire to have an abortion. Cristina convinces Meredith that she really really really doesn’t want to have a baby and that she wants to concentrate on being a surgeon. She says she needs Meredith to be supportive because Meredith is her “person” which is “Grey’s-speak” for bigger than best friends or kind of soul-mates without sex. Meredith in turn convinces Owen that indeed, Cristina does not want a baby and says he should not pressure her. She boosts Cristina’s case by adding that she, Meredith, knows what it’s like to be the child of a woman who didn’t want you. And anyway, Owen knew who Cristina was when they married, and shouldn’t expect her to change her stripes or something like that.

In the end, Owen goes with her to the appointment and Cristina actually has the abortion, but not before the doctor performing the procedure says very sternly, “I’m going to ask you one more time, are you absolutely sure this is what you want to do?” It is. She does. Surprisingly, the writers didn’t get out of the story line by making her have a miscarriage, a change of heart or an ectopic pregnancy like she did in an earlier season. Let the chips fall where they may. There has been a Prime Time abortion.

Wow.

What will happen to Cristina now? This is the most interesting question in TV, as far as I’m concerned. Will she just move on with her life guilt free, possibly expressing feelings of relief as most women do who have abortions? Or, will she be made to suffer? Well, it is Grey’s Anatomy, so we can assume there will be some suffering, but will the cause of it be the abortion?

This is what should happen. Cristina goes on to have the life she is planning and has worked so hard to get. She feels relief. She finishes all of her training and becomes a world renowned cardiac surgeon, unencumbered by offspring she did not want. She has a good marriage with Owen, with no more than the normal ups and downs that any relationship faces. She is a fun Aunt to Meredith’s new baby, assuming social services does not take that baby away, which is currently a possibility.

In a future episode, Cristina considers what birth control is best for her. Meredith and Cristina have a long discussion about the relative merits of everything from birth control pills to IUDs. Cristina, never one to do anything in half measures, decides to have a tubal ligation. Meredith is aghast and says, “Seriously?” She tries to talk her out of it, saying there are effective non-surgical options to control fertility. But Cristina says, “Mer, I’m some kind of pregnancy magnet. Please, respect my decision.” Then Owen dramatically intervenes just as the nurses are prepping her for surgery and announces that, out of love for his wife and his new understanding that she will never want children, he will have a vasectomy. America is informed about this safe and viable option. Owen gets snipped and goes back to work the next day.

A further series of episodes involves Cristina and Owen creating an abortion clinic when they realize a lot of women have trouble accessing services.

Episodes that we should not see include Cristina being plagued by guilt, Owen resenting her, Cristina second guessing her decision the next time she sees a chubby-cheeked newborn, Cristina getting hit by a car, Cristina losing her job or suffering in some way that might be construed as punishment, Cristina being left behind in the Rapture. She lives, as much as anyone can on Grey’s Anatomy, happily ever after.

A guest post by Speak for Choice.

The state of Kansas recently has undergone extreme social turmoil due to Brownback’s recent legislation designed to target abortion providers in Kansas. At the end of June, all three of Kansas’ abortion providers were nearly shut down and Kansas was days away from becoming the first state in the United States with no legal abortion access. Two of the clinics did not have their licenses renewed, and the Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri received its license after a mad scramble to comply with the new regulations. A judge issued a temporary injunction and all clinics for now remain in practice. Anti-abortion proponents of the law claimed it was a great step toward protecting women’s health, but after learning details of the new regulations, it became apparent that it was less about women’s health and rights, and more about a religious system.

In response to these anti-choice laws, three students from the University of Kansas and local feminists in Lawrence, formed a group to counteract and inform the general public on the reality of these laws and the repercussions that would occur if the legislation passed and the clinics closed.

Speak for Choice is a grassroots organization that aims at educating and informing the public on Choice issues. On September 7, 2011, Speak for Choice will be holding a rally at the capitol in collaboration with other pro-choice, feminist, and equality groups from around the state. There speakers will voice their opinions, feelings, and life experiences in a positive demonstration of support for Choice. The rally will begin at eleven in the morning with music, chants, and speak-out-circles. By noon, speakers will commence.

In an effort to aid commuters, Speak for Choice is asking anyone who is driving to offer their empty seats to others interested in attending. Their blog is an informational hub where the public can access news articles, statistics, and updates on reproductive justice in Kansas.

If anyone is in the Kansas area and is interested in participating, feel free to check out the website or email the group at speakforchoice@gmail.com for more information.

A guest post by ninersgirl.

A guest post from Gretchen Sisson.

Last week’s New York Times Magazine featured an article “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy” about the reduction of multiples pregnancies – that is, the selective abortion of one or more fetuses to reduce twins to singletons. Given the risks associated with higher order multiples births (triplets or more), it’s a fairly accepted procedure to reduce to twins. However, the focus of this article was reducing to one, even when the chance of having healthy twins is high.

As a medical procedure, selective reduction is different than abortion; it does not involve the evacuation of the uterus. However, the discussion around reduction has interesting overlaps with the discussion around abortion given that a) they both involve the death of a fetus and b) they both place a burden on the woman seeking the procedure to justify why she is doing it.

The article describes two doctors whose positions on reduction have shifted. The first, Dr. Evans first opposed twin reductions:

Two years later, as demand for twin reductions climbed, Evans published another journal article, arguing that reduction to singletons “crosses the line between doing a procedure for a medical indication versus one for a social indication.” He urged his colleagues to resist becoming “technicians to our patients’ desires.”

While the article goes on to say that Dr. Evans now endorses the practice of twin reductions, other providers remain adamantly opposed. One sonographer says:

“I told him [the doctor] I just wasn’t comfortable doing a termination of a healthy baby for social reasons, and that if we were going to do a lot of these elective reductions, I thought he should bring in someone else who was more comfortable. From the beginning, I had wrestled with the whole idea of doing reductions, because I was raised in the church. And after a lot of soul searching, I had decided there were truly good medical reasons to reducing higher-order multiples to twins. But I had a hard time reconciling doing reductions two to one. So I said to Dr. Wapner, ‘Is this really the business we want to be in?’ ”

I struggle with these doctors’ perspectives on reduction for several reasons. The first is that, while the article claims that at Dr. Wapner’s medical office “every one of them — the sonographer, the genetic counselors, the schedulers — supported abortion rights” their stance places the burden on the women to have “good” reasons, here defined as medical reasons, for wanting a reduction. “Social” reasons (finances, only wanting to have one child at this time, etc.) are, in their opinion, not good enough.

And, I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough for me. That’s not trusting women to make their own choices about the number and timing of their children. Many of the women in the article who choose to reduce twins are desperate to have only one baby: they consider aborting the entire pregnancy because they can’t obtain or can’t afford a safe reduction, and, as desired as these pregnancies are, they would rather have no children than two. Another woman carrying triplets says she “felt like the pregnancy was a monster” and eventually paid $6,500 for a reduction. She describes leaving the doctor’s office:

“I went out on that street with my mother and jumped up and down saying: ‘I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!’ And then I went and bought baby clothes for the first time.”

Forcing a woman to carry twins when she is not emotionally, financially, or physically prepared to raise two children is no better than forcing a woman to carry a singleton pregnancy when she wants no children. It is a simple matter of choice.

The second reason I struggle with providers’ reluctance to do twin reductions is that they are often part of the reason women are pregnant with twins in the first place.

For part of my doctoral dissertation, I interviewed couples that were struggling with infertility. They visited doctors who could not explain why they were not getting pregnant, and could then not explain why their treatments were failing. Medicine offers few concrete answers to infertility, and in vitro fertilization will sometimes not work at all, or can work too well and end with a multiple pregnancy. (I spoke with one couple who had no healthy fertilizations one month, and 29 fertilizations the next – but no successful transfers from test tube to uterus. The doctor could not explain to them why this happened. Stories like this are common.) So much of fertility treatment remains, in the words of the women I interviewed, an “art rather than a science,” “a matter of luck”, or “just like rolling a dice.”

Furthermore, because of the high cost of fertility treatments, some couples will make decisions that seem counterintuitive: desperate for one baby, they’ll transfer two or three embryos in the hopes that at least one will implant, simply because they can’t afford another IVF cycle. Then they end up with triplets and find they aren’t prepared for multiples, and can’t find a doctor that will help them reduce to the one child for whom they are desperate.

Pregnancy reduction is only one of the more obvious areas where infertility treatment intersects with traditional, abortion-focused considerations of reproductive rights. The pursuit of pregnancy when faced with biological challenges (and the consequent financial and logistical barriers) should be as much as part of a broader “choice” framework as the avoidance of pregnancy. I’d like to challenge pro-choicers to include considerations infertility and access to safe, affordable, and respectful assisted reproductive technologies in their paradigm for reproductive justice.

Gretchen Sisson recently completed her doctorate in sociology, writing her dissertation on the “right” to parenthood: who has it, why some don’t, and how society enforces its ideal of an acceptable pursuit of parenthood. To examine these questions, she spoke with couples pursuing infertility treatments, teen parents and teen pregnancy prevention advocates, and birthparents who have placed infants for adoption.

In social justice movements, we talk a lot about how to be good allies in our public and private spaces. I would argue that pregnant folks need allies too in those public and private spaces. Still, I think it’s hard to be a support person, to know the “right” thing to say, and to feel that one can really be there for someone else. If your friend, child, partner, significant other, client, or colleague says, “I’m pregnant,” maybe that person is looking for an ally. Here are some starting suggestions for how to provide that support.

Hold yourself accountable for creating safer spaces. There’s a lot of stigma around about who should and should not be pregnant, sex, parenting, adoption, and abortion. It’s more likely that you’ll be able to support someone you care about if you “advertise” yourself as a safer space. Remember to not make assumptions in your public or private life and to think critically about what you say. For example, don’t make the assumption that because someone doesn’t have a child that s/he has never been pregnant or make negative statements about single/young/queer/poor/undocumented/disabled mamas.

Thank that person for telling you. Regardless of how someone is feeling about being pregnant, this might be big news. Even if it’s not, that person told you for a reason, so showing you’re open to having a conversation is a great first step. This could be an amazing day for your friend or an incredibly hard one that has caused your loved one to ask a lot of big questions. Either way, you should feel honored that s/he made the choice to tell you.

Ask that person how s/he’s feeling. A lot of the time, we can put a lot of pressure on ourselves to say or do the right thing. The great thing is that you can let yourself off the hook and not have to intuit anything. Just ask. Remember that s/he might not be sure how s/he feels and that any feelings s/he’s having are okay.

Don’t make assumptions about what your loved one might want to do with the news that s/he’s pregnant. S/he might not even be sure of next steps, and it’s okay to help your loved one sort through options. A lot of times we make assumptions though about what a pregnancy means to someone. Some people might assume that younger or single folks might not want to parent or that a person in a committed relationship would not consider abortion. Even if someone has told you previously what s/he would do if s/he became pregnant, still take the time to ask. A real positive pregnancy test might lead to different thoughts than a hypothetical pregnancy.

Ask what you can do to provide support. Some people might want a hug or a ride or to talk or to stay silent or to have someone come with them to an appointment. Everyone’s different, so show that you care but ask first.

Keep the focus on the person you’re supporting. When you care about someone, and s/he mentions going through something that you also went through, it’s a normal first reaction to start giving advice, to start a play-by-play explanation of exactly what you did in a similar situation. The key is that each person is different and what might have worked for you, might really not work for your friend.

Educate yourself so you can provide accurate information and referrals. There is a lot of inaccurate information floating around about pregnancy, fetal development, abortion, parenting, and adoption. Knowing the facts can help improve your ability to help someone you love. Knowing what resources are available in your area that provide high quality, medically sound, and personally supportive care can be really helpful. There are even hotlines that you can call as a support person to get more information.

Take care of yourself. Compassion fatigue is real. Helping others without taking the time to support yourself can lead to taking on someone else’s pain. It’s also possible that if your loved one’s pregnancy could affect you personally. The key is to find a way to care for yourself without harming your loved one or taking away your friend’s right to make her/his own decisions about the pregnancy.

A guest post by Peg Johnston, an independent abortion provider in New York State and member of the Abortion Care Network.

It’s official, the antis have found a way to use public funds to wage their campaign against abortion providers. (Or ANOTHER way, I should say, since funding for their propaganda centers and abstinence education is sizeable, but this is more direct.) Their first target, ironically, is Whole Woman’s Health, arguably one of the best clinics in the U.S. Not surprisingly, the state they have manipulated is Texas, one of the worst states in which to offer women abortion services. Says Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, “I feel like I live in another country where abortion is illegal.”

Here’s how it works: the anti-abortion folks make complaints to various state agencies, anonymously of course, triggering an inspection –many inspections. If you work in a hospital or nursing home or any medical setting you know that a 100% perfect inspection is a rarity. There are always little nitpicky things that you could get caught on, none of which have anything to do with quality patient care. But a spontaneous inspection is its own form of harassment. And in these times more importantly, the state of Texas is nearly bankrupt; the taxpayers should be fighting mad about state agencies wasting time and money on an anti-abortion fool’s errand. But of course, this is Texas we’re talking about.

So, when this story comes to your attention, don’t for a minute think that the abortion clinic is doing something shady. They are not. In the light of the hideous conditions revealed by the investigation of Philadelphia based Dr. Kermit Gosnell, you might understandably be suspicious. The difference there is that the state of Pennsylvania failed to inspect. Had they kept up with regular scheduled inspections women might have been protected from Gosnell’s illegal and substandard practices.

The weight of state scrutiny is considerable but in places like Texas it can also be capricious. Not only is it burdensome, but when the state suddenly shows up it can make you feel like you’re doing something wrong—particularly when anti abortion websites try to make something over a labeling error or other non-patient care issue.

Always remember that the anti-abortion extremists are trying to stigmatize abortion providers. Don’t assume abortion providers are doing bad things. And if this state sponsored harassment of abortion providers comes to your state, call your representative to protest the waste of state funds. Abortion providers are all for inspections—exactly what any medical facility can expect, and not more. But the taxpayers should not be paying for the state to do the bidding of the anti-abortion movement.

A guest post by ninersgal.

My friend recently had a baby. Her pregnancy was difficult. She had gestational diabetes as well as preeclampsia. Her baby was delivered at 30 weeks because there were problems with the placenta. Despite all of those challenges, my friend’s baby went home from the hospital yesterday. Unlike many of her neighbors in the NICU, my goddaughter has had no complications. Her lungs have developed and she can breathe on her own. Her brain is developing normally. And although she was only 2 pounds when she was born, this little fighter is up to 5 pounds now. I see lots of courage and fist pumping in this girl’s future.

My friend got very lucky and had a successful delivery at 30 weeks. However, there were many moments during the last two weeks of her pregnancy where I wondered what would happen. If the doctor had told my friend that the health risks of continuing her pregnancy were too great (either for her, or for the baby) and abortion was her only option, I would have held her hand and supported her. That’s exactly what I did throughout her pregnancy. And if this were the path she needed to take, I would have helped her along the way.

All that being said, spending time in the NICU looking at all premature and struggling babies has given me a lot to think about in terms of late term abortion. Let me preface that statement by saying I support a woman’s right to obtain an abortion no matter what stage of pregnancy she is in, and no matter what her reason is. However, watching the babies in the NICU has helped me see things from the point of view of those who oppose “late term abortion.”

The general medical definition of “late term abortion” refers to abortions that occur after 24 weeks of pregnancy. Most abortions (88% to be exact) occur within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Late term abortion only accounts for 1.5% of abortion cases in the United States. So we need to remember that when the anti-choice crowd starts to focus on so-called “partial-birth abortions,” they’re intentionally trying to muddle the facts by harping on the least common denominator.

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A guest post by Merinda of Quietly Questioning.

I managed to get through high school, and most of university without having to confront difficult decisions about unplanned pregnancy. I had one or two too-close-for-comfort moments, but through a combination of responsibility and luck, it wasn’t until last year that I had to really think about unplanned pregnancy, abortion, adoption and parenthood in any real way. Prior to that, it was a straightforward, yet abstract notion.

Sure, I had considered what I might do if faced with an unplanned pregnancy at various stages since I had become sexually active, but it was always very hypothetical. None of my close friends had ever really had to have those contemplations either, that we talked about.

So I moved in with my boyfriend who I’d been with for more than a year. We were very much in love and had started to dance around the topics of children and planning into the future and all of the things that simultaneously horrified and excited me.

I was taking the contraceptive pill and we had stopped using condoms. I missed some pills after we returned from a holiday, so, concerned, I went to my doctor; she did a pregnancy test which was negative, and reassured me saying that there was probably nothing to worry about due to the time of my cycle that I’d missed the pills. Around 5 days later, I got what I assumed was a period, and was of course very relieved. However, it turns out that wasn’t actually a period… Around 3 weeks later, I found out that I was in fact, pregnant.

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