Abortion Gang

We have a lot of discussions in the reproductive justice community about our struggles with the way women, particularly women we know personally and consistently interact with, handle every stage of reproduction, from preventing pregnancy to terminating it, from announcing that they are having children to actually raising them.

Men and genderqueer people along a range of the identity spectrum also have and raise children, but I will posit here that their needs are different than those of self-identified women, whether cis or trans, as are their struggles. What we deal with in reproductive justice centers mostly around the constructed identity of “women,” and the problems that are constructed to go right along with it. For instance, our editor sent an article around the other day, “Baby Bumps on Facebook All the Rage,” in which someone with “Dr.” in their title concern-trolled young women who posed with their “baby bumps,” (side note: WE MUST ELIMINATE THIS PHRASE. operation eliminate “baby bump”: commence. stage: early plotting.) expressing fear that their pregnancy would spread, like cancer or some other disease you get from breathing the same air as a person who already has it. The good “Dr.” felt it would be best not to make pregnancy look like remotely any fun unless a girl is good and married and financially secure.

Here’s the problem: there’s something to that argument, isn’t there? As a women’s rights activist, I want young women to have educational and career opportunities that may be closed to them if they get pregnant in their teens. I want young women to have independence from their families and certainly from significant others, independence that is harder to come by once you have children.

While we were discussing the article, one of our writers weighed in with her own experiences as a woman who had a child before she was twenty. She talked about enjoying being pregnant, and still wanting to look cute when she went to school, and why shouldn’t she? And as she asked that question, I had two simultaneous gut reactions: “Is it responsible to look happy about being a teen mom?” and “Why shouldn’t she?”

We’ve had discussions at Abortion Gang about people announcing their pregnancies early on Facebook (a lot of us expressed legitimate concern that it could make a miscarriage very painful, and there are obvious structural problems with the way these behaviors continue to reinforce heteronormative gender roles), about people announcing their miscarriages on Facebook (it’s great that people feel more open to talking about that now/it’s hard to watch people go through), about adoption as a birth parent, a parent, and a child, about all the stages of pregnancy and all the stages of preventing pregnancy, about STDs, about parenting as a process, and ultimately, this is what I would like to conclude:

Reproductive justice means never having to say you’re sorry.

The reason I, personally, have moved away from the “pro-choice” framework is because I find it limiting; I think we need a bigger framework now to encompass our understanding of “choice” as beyond pregnant or not-pregnant to how to get pregnant, how to stay not-pregnant, how to support pregnancy or not-pregnancy, and all of the heirarchies and indexes of citizenship and power that are written upon our unwitting bodies that allow or disallow participation in those choices.

I believe reproductive justice is about two things: awareness and access. Reproductive justice activism is about moving towards a world in which every person makes choices about preventing pregnancy, getting pregnant, having sex, parenting, not parenting, abortion, STDs, and the million other things that encompass “sex and our lived existence” (and that includes not-sex – abstinence is also about reproductive justice) with awareness (education about what their choices and options are, the structures of power and inequality that influence those choices) and access (the real ability to, having evaluated their options, choose what is best for them and then get it).

With that in mind, here is my brief queerifesto of reproductive justice:

When you educate yourself about all the ways to not get pregnant and then have great, communicative, open, glorious, mind-blowing orgasms by yourself or with another person or several other people,
that’s reproductive justice.

When you choose to parent a child or choose to have someone else parent the child you gave birth to knowing all of your options, with access to the economic equality necessary to make this decision about something other than money,
that’s reproductive justice.

When you wait until after your first trimester to announce your pregnancy on Facebook because you realize that you are in the most danger of miscarrying, and you need that experience, should it happen, to be private,
that’s reproductive justice,

and

When you post your pregnancy on Facebook the second that pink plus sign appears, and you understand that things can go wrong but you are prepared to deal with that with the help and support and love from your community you know you have,
that’s reproductive justice.

When you know you made a choice to parent or not to parent based on economic circumstances you couldn’t control, and you fight to empower other people so they can make their own choices without the economic inequality you faced,
that’s reproductive justice.

When you take a friend to get an abortion at a clinic that you know is good to trans people because he doesn’t want to have to discuss why his gender is “wrong” on his license,
that’s reproductive justice.

When you are thrilled out of your mind to be pregnant at 16 years old and you blog about it and sing about it and wear a really low-cut shirt to school because your boobs may never look this good again,
that’s reproductive justice.

When you help a friend decide not to have a baby because her husband is abusive
and you know a baby will make it worse
and then help her leave him and keep the baby and offer support while she raises that kid you love,
that’s reproductive justice.

When you get an IUD because you like that it is a non-hormonal form of birth control and you know the fucked-up history of IUDs and eugenics and you understand how the sacrifices of poor women and women of color and unmarried women and disabled women gave that choice of yours a history,
that is reproductive justice.

When you make sure no one ever forgets the ways that power gets written on women’s bodies in heirarchies of race and class and religion and a score of other things,
that’s reproductive justice with a vengeance.

I could write a million more verses to the song of why reproductive justice means never having to say you’re sorry, but I would most of all like to hear what reproductive justice means to you, what tune you sing that song in, in the comments. Whether it’s a manifesto, womanifesto, queerifesto, or otherwise – what is reproductive justice to you?

In the introduction to MOMENTUM, Dr. Joycelyn Elders declares that “the best contraceptive in the world is a good education.” MOMENTUM provides more of an open discussion and dialogue than an entirely accurate or comprehensive sexual education, but it lays much-need groundwork for these necessary conversations, it’s enjoyable to read, and it ends with a gorgeous poem. In these senses and more, it’s the best sex-ed book they never gave you in high school.

The anthology comes out of a conference I have never attended and now very much want to, MOMENTUM, an open space that strives to “embrace all elements of sexuality” and “create a safe space where respect and a willingness, not to always agree, but to listen with an open heart and open mind” where attendees could get their sex geek on and, at the same time, feel a tremendous sense of acceptance and camaraderie.” These attitudes from the co-organizers and no co-editors, Tess Danesi (I’m referencing her words from the introduction), Dee Dennis and Inara de Luna run throughout the book as themes.

Rebecca Chalker goes beyond the “sexual revolution” to identify work in what she terms the “pleasure revolution,” the “liberation” of the clitoris and of female pleasure from the “murky swamps” of male-dominated psychoanalytic culture (Freud was not kind to our lady-parts. I read him so you wouldn’t have to.) Ned Mayhem gives a similar, completely fascinating overview of the history of sexual science, complete with an extensive works cited. Also, his name is Ned Mayhem, which is just phenomenal, and it was very cool to see someone self-identify in their bio as a queer scientist who runs a couples’ porn site. For a queer academic with a fluctuating relationship to the gender binary, this sort of gem makes the book utterly worth reading. Likewise, there is something adorable about Bill Taverner’s detailed advice – complete with exclamation points! – for those seeking work in the field of sexology. Work like this creates space for a new kind of normal, for a world on which queer scientists can “Become a Presenter!” and “Get Yourself Published!” in the field of sexology and be concerned only with the quality of their work, rather than whether the work is necessary, or welcome, as those are merely givens in the utopic space MOMENTUM creates.

(more…)

This posts starts with a story – the story of a quote I found one day that became the story of how I concluded that not only is adoption really hard and complicated as a process, but that the ways we have of conceiving of and talking about adoption and the process of adoption are in and of themselves problematic.

The other day I found what I felt was one of the most inspiring, moving stories I have ever read. It’s about Mariska Hargitay, star of “Law and Order: SVU.” Go with me on this.

Ms. Hargitay has two children, both of whom are adopted. However, in this article, she speaks about the adoption process and the early pain she experienced when trying to bring a child home. During their first adoption attempt, she and her husband brought a child home, and named them, clearly considered them a part of their family and were ready to settle in to a life together – when the mother of the child changed her mind.

When we brought my cousins home from the hospital, we had the whole extended family together, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, and that moment of becoming a family was so special. If someone had come back and taken that child away from us, I can’t help but feel like it would left a hole that might never have been filled. It would have been so indescribably painful. And in the long-term, I wouldn’t have my cousins, and I cannot imagine that life.

But this is what Ms. Hargitay, who is now one of my role models, had to say about the experience of having the person who gave birth come back to reclaim the child she was ready to raise as her own:

“But … this is what I’ve come to understand about life: It was probably the greatest, happiest ending. I mean, it was so painful for us, but it was deeply joyful and deeply right for her.”

I think Ms. Hargitay is absolutely right. For the mother to ultimately be able to make the decision that raising her own child was the best thing for both of them is “both deeply joyful and deeply right.” I am of the (possibly permanently) childless variety that thinks having a child and/or raising a child is always an act of untold bravery. But I also think it’s valid to discuss the ways in which this decision caused pain for the couple trying to adopt. The fact that the decision caused Ms. Hargitay and her husband pain does not make the decision any less the mother’s decision to make. It doesn’t make it wrong or bad in any way. But it was obviously difficult and hurtful, painful enough for Ms. Hargitay to describe it and remember it years later. I can still remember and describe the exact process of adopting my cousins as well. Bringing them into the family was an emotional investment, and it involved a series of ups and downs. We were told one of the adoptions wouldn’t go through, then that it would, then that it wouldn’t – and then, finally, we brought my cousin home. I think it is good and right to conceive of a child you are bringing into the family as your daughter, your son, your niece or nephew, your grandchild – but it is incredibly emotionally stressful to then be told that no, maybe not. Maybe. Maybe not. Invest emotionally – oh no, don’t do that. You’re waiting for another child. This one is not yours.

This situation highlights something that, in terms of reproductive choice, gets a lot less play than prevention and abortion: adoption is really, really hard. Lately, as anti-choice rhetoric filters through our culture, you see ladies in the media who get pregnant and have “two choices”: keep the baby or give it up for adoption. Really, that’s it. Examples of this now-pervasive notion that “choice” means only the choice between keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption, with abortion never even getting a mention, include: most episodes of “Sixteen and Pregnant” (there was recently a beautiful and poignant episode highlighting the challenges of abortion, but we were excited to watch it because it’s so damn rare), all conversations about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, anything on the ABC family channel, including “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” and recently, most especially, ABC’s “Once Upon a Time,” which has incredibly problematic portrayals of motherhood, choice, and adoption all-around. All of these fervent claims that adoption is a primary option for pregnant people who cannot parent or do not want to parent obscure the reality of the process. And while pro-choice advocates often mention that the world is overcrowded and adoption is an expensive, raced and classed process to which not everyone has access, which leaves many children world-wide without homes, there are so many more dimensions to this decision.

Carrying a child and giving birth are no joke. While there are certainly situations such as that of the oft-critiqued Juno in which someone knows that carrying a baby to term and giving it to a loving family is exactly the right choice for them, more often the process is fraught with a range of less easily packaged emotions. Many people who give a child up for adoption want to raise them, but simply feel they can’t. When they want to raise their child but cannot offer them what they believe they need or deserve, it can be wrenching, and can certainly lead to feelings of inadequacy and resentment. Ultimately, what they are giving is an incredible gift, and more and more adoptions are very open, allowing them contact with their biological child as it grows up. But someone else parents that child, provides them with a home, attends school functions, spends holidays with them, and has a life with them. And that is an intense decision to make. Were I to ever get pregnant, my options are abortion or parenting. Adoption is off the table. That is not something I could ever go through, and not a decision my large extended family, whom I love very much, would be alright with. It wouldn’t be their decision, but I am close to my family, and in a decision so big, what they want does matter to me.

In writing this post, I ran into a number of difficulties. One of our abortion gangsters objects to the term “birth mother.” I use it because I personally think it’s a sign of respect. I believe that parenting makes you a parent, and gendering the process of parenting makes you a “mother” or father” – I believe that giving birth makes you someone that has given birth. But if someone has been pregnant or given birth and thus conceives of themselves as a mother, I would certainly be the last person to tell them that they’re wrong. I don’t really get to decide who’s a mother, or what makes a mother – but I do have to make decisions about how I will discuss these things from my own perspective, or we cannot open up these conversations. And then, for me, even using the term “mother,” in any of these contexts, is problematic, and I would prefer “birth parent,” since I don’t know how the person in question identifies. They may not prefer those gender pronouns.

What I am saying here, then, is that the process of writing this post demonstrated to me the extremely problematic nature of the discursive framework of adoption and the adoption process. And while all of the issues raised with my drafts of this post, and, I am sure, whatever issues are raised in the comments, were valid and had their own reasoning, I found many of them problematic as well, mostly because I feel like the discursive framework within which we’re working is problematic.

As a member of a family in which other members are adopted, passionately hate the qualifier “adopted.” I absolutely hate when people refer to someone’s child as their “adopted child,” their sister as their “adopted sister,” etc. No disclaimer or qualifier is needed. The word “adopted” is a way of making that relation other, different. As someone who has that relation, let me please tell you, IT IS NOT OTHER OR DIFFERENT. IT IS THE EXACT SAME. It doesn’t matter how someone became family, once they’re in, they’re in. In a way, I find the relationship between my biological family members and adopted family members even more significant and beautiful, because we chose and found one another.

This assertion raised yet another issue with the post – that being adopted is different. Let me clarify. I don’t believe there is a “normal” family, or a normal or regular way of creating a family, so I don’t believe that qualifiers of this kind, when discussing familiar relations, are ever necessary, unless someone requests them. Many of my friends refer to people as parents who are not their biological parents, and they require neither the words “adopted” nor “step.” If they prefer them, I’m happy to use them, but I continue to go qualifier-free until otherwise requested. This is not to invisibilize adoption or the other processes that go into making biological and non-biological, “normative” and “non-normative” family units – it is to instead suggest that all family units are non-normative, and each process of creating and living within them different and unique in ways visible and invisible, requiring its own set of challenges and negotiations. I keeping with my general concerns about the discursive framework, I believe the net-terms of “adopted,” “biological,” and “step,” when used as qualifiers in these contexts, may mask they many differences contained within these constructed categories, and lead to a false set of assumptions or understandings about what is always, contained therein, a universe of individual differences, samenesses, and experiences.

Another of our gangsters pointed out to me that in earlier versions of this post I used the phrase “keep the baby” as opposed to “continue the pregnancy” and “choose to parent.” I think these corrections were totally spot on. She also pointed out that I used the phrase “give up for adoption” when “choose adoption” might be better. There, my feelings are more complicated. Yes, “choose adoption” is absolutely a less loaded, and even, given the context, less judgmental phrase than “give up for adoption,” and for that reason, I infinitely prefer it. I am judging no one here. I think choosing to adopt is brave, choosing to parent is brave, choosing not to parent is brave, choosing to discuss birth control options with your partner so you don’t get pregnant is brave. In short, I believe learning about your options as a reproducing human being of any gender and making conscious decisions regarding those options is a brave and admirable undertaking. But I also believe that putting a child up for adoption is giving up the idea of parenting that child, and choosing instead not to parent, choosing that someone else should parent instead.

I believe, when it works out, that adoption is one of the most beautiful, amazing ways to make a family, but it is not foolproof. As it stands, to decide to give a child up for adoption, and to decide to adopt, are flipsides of the same very challenging coin, and not everyone can do it. That is why I believe a holistic approach to reproductive justice is so very necessary. It is so important that people be made to understand that they have many choices to prevent pregnancy, and then they must be educated about them, and given access to them. Then, if they do get pregnant, whether intended or unintended, they must understand their choices, and again, have access to them. And then, all of these decisions have to be acknowledged as taking place within already-problematic, raced, classed, and gendered structures of power, and those frameworks need to be constantly challenged and examined. We must move towards a framework in which all of the “choices” are structured with the ultimate goal in mind of creating loving family units, however traditionally or non-traditionally, however normative or non-normative those “units” might be. It sounds utopian, but really, how wild and crazy is it to want people to be able to make families?

Yes, this is a real thing. Yes, I am going to tell you ALL about it. Traumatizing. True story.

I am a historically avid proponent of hormonal contraception, as in, I loved me the pill. Long before I started having sex, pain from my period was so bad that it was actually crippling. I was 13 years old, on my back in the nurse’s office at school once every few months, crying and barely able to breathe. Some periods were fine, others were incapacitating. Some could be cured with far more than the daily recommended dose of Advil for a grown adult; others required me to simply lie still and pray for death. When I was 16, the school nurse suggested that I go on birth control, because this awesome little pill could alleviate cramping. I was deeply enthusiastic. My mother was suspicious.

“If you go on the pill, you might think it’s ok to just have sex, and you might not think it’s so important to use a condom.” To her credit, she had a very real concern that sex would be better without a condom, and I would be at risk for pregnancy and STDs. I would describe my mother’s attitude towards talk of sex when I was growing up as vaguely repressed, but she was a former Catholic schoolgirl blessed with a queer, kinky Jewish daughter. She was like the world’s most adorable, chattery mouse who gave birth to the weirdest of all birds. She didn’t know what to do with me, but she did her best, and in this case, I still think about that conversation. It was important.

Still, the pain was awful, and the nice school nurse had thrown me a lifeline. I begged to be allowed on the pill. Mom folded, but not without hesitation and dire warnings.

The experiment was such a resounding success that she put my sister on the pill only a few months later, at the age of 14, and chirped to anyone who would listen about what a GREAT invention it was, this magic pill. This is what comes of being the oldest. My battles were everyone else’s automatic wins.

I stayed a virgin for a few more years and stayed on the pill for 9. The first 2 years were on a fancy name-brand drug, and then I switched to a generic version for 7. I was the happiest kid, you have no idea. The pain was virtually gone, I always knew when my period would come, life was a friggin’ breeze. I continued to use condoms because STDs and not stupid. The pill and I skipped gaily through fields of daisies, holding hands, etc.

I moved home after losing my job and had to switch insurance companies. They kept me on the pill, but switched me to a different generic version of it. I thought nothing of it, until one day, I went insane.

I mean crazy. It had built up for a few weeks, but I chalked up the growing depression, sudden mood swings, and psychotic public crying jags to the job loss and move home. One day, however, I had a minor psychotic break, and it became clear that something was WRONG. It took us a few days to realize that it might be the change in medication, but when I went ahead and googled the new birth control I’d been put on, it turned out sudden mood swings and suicidal tendencies were not as uncommon a side affect of that medication as one might, you know, prefer. I went off the pill. For a long time, I was not in a relationship and saw no need to go back on it. I’m a little titchy about the whole thing, honestly. Hormones. Possibly going crazy again. Now, in a relationship, I am evaluating my options and using the almighty Condom with a religious fervor.

Which brings us to the time the condom broke.

When I told my friend about this, she actually bust out laughing. “I thought that was just a story people tell when they don’t want to admit they weren’t using a condom!” she exclaimed. Nope! Nope. The condom broke. This is a true story. I FOUND A PIECE OF IT LATER I WON’T GET MORE SPECIFIC. Traumatizing. I did say that.

So the condom broke, but I remained calm. Because as a member of the reproductive justice movement, I am privy to, and contain within my head, a lot of information about contraception of various kinds. As a result, I knew that, in the city of New York, where I was When the Condom Broke, I could get emergency contraception over the counter.

Think about that.

Over the counter.

Over. the damn. COUNTER.

I got dressed, walked out the door, went to the nearest pharmacy, and ordered me some whore pills.

I’m serious. The pharmacist knew what I’d been doing. She knew why I was there. She was an older, married woman, and I felt her disapproval. I did not care. I did not care, not one little bit, what she thought about any of it, because she had no concept of my options. I was in a brand-new relationship in the middle of grad school and unready and unprepared for children. No need, no thank you.

And you know what else? I didn’t want an abortion. Not personally, not just then. I wasn’t in a place where I felt that would be the right decision, either.

And because I could walk a few blocks and get EC, I never had to worry about it.

EC is birth control. EC = BC. I know we’re trying to hit that point home.

Because I could walk down the street and pick up EC, I simply never got pregnant, the same as if I had been on the pill.

I can’t tell you the relief.

There were no side effects from the pill, although the experience itself scared the ever-loving crap out of me and led to some serious conversations with what I call a God. The pill itself brought on my period early and elicited yet more prayers, this time expressing fervent gratitude.

When I stood defiantly in the pharmacy, under the disapproving gaze of the nice lady pharmacist, a girl behind me was buying condoms. She saw what I was buying. I think she paled a little, as the potential consequences of our actions – our actions being sexy times – settled on her. We discussed various BC options, and I advised against Durex, the brand that had caused the trouble in the first place. We marveled at a world in which we had not just so many options, but access - a world in which we could get to the things that would make our lives better.

I’m not someone who believes that sex doesn’t have consequences. Frankly, I believe everything has consequences. (I mentioned I was Jewish. Wash your hands.) I believe that those consequences, like the consequences of most anything, differ depending on who you you are, who else is involved, what is at stake, and a score of other circumstances. I also believe that we live in a world where we can control what some of those consequences and are, and pregnancy simply does not have to be one of the many consequences, or outcomes, of consensual sex, be it between stupid teenagers, stupid twentysomethings, or fully mature married people, since once people get married, they are awarded the “fully mature” certificate, like Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries.

In short, EC is awesome, and I hope it is available at a corner store near you – if not today, then soon.

When I lived and worked in DC, federal legislation was everything. All the big gains and losses for the progressive movement were being made at the federal level. Federal legislation – probably thanks in large part to Aaron Sorkin – is sexy. Federal legislation draws attention and big headlines. And over the past decade, while progressives have been winning some battles in DC, the groundwork for the reproductive rights armegeddon of the last few years was being laid at the state level by the anti-choice movement. It has been backed by re-districting pushes that may give more seats at the state level to conservatives, and new voter ID measures that will most certainly make it harder for young people, poor people, and people of color to vote. Frankly, it’s been brilliantly conceived and executed, in the same way that Pearl Harbor was brilliantly conceived and executed.

What this means is that reproductive rights activists, those with female reproductive organs, and anyone who ever wants to be able to access birth control for themselves or their partner need to get organized at the state level. Pay attention to the way yourstate representatives vote. Call their offices. Feel free to stop by, if you have a way to get to your state capitol. Write letters. Prepare to get out the vote in November. Find out if legislators who voted in favor of anti-choice bills in your state have any challengers. If they don’t, run against them.

Seriously, do it. You think you can’t do their job? Have you seen John Boehner?

Here’s a quick run-down of some of the Current “State” of Affairs:

Kansas: Kansas has gotten itself into a bit of a bind. The state has been passing wild anti-choice laws left and right for two years, and was one of the pioneering forces in TRAP laws, Targeted Regulations against Abortion Providers. TRAP laws, which are nit-picky laws that do such helpful things as dictate what temperature a clinic waiting room needs to be at all times, almost closed down every provider in the state overnight. Now the House has approved a budget amendment that would, among other things, prohibit state employees from providing abortion care. Since medical students at the University of Kansas are considered state employees, they would not be able to study abortion as part of their training. However, the medical board has warned the school that it must offer the training as part obstetrics and gynecology to remain accredited in those fields. Students can opt out for religious reasons, and the abortions are not performed at the school. So… good luck with all that, Kansas.

Virginia: Now that Virginia has passed a mandatory ultrasound law, Democrats in the state legislature are just wondering who is going to pay for it.

Idaho: Idaho would really like to join Virginia, and several other states, in requiring that women seeking abortions be forced to undergo an unnecessary ultrasound because the state says so. Soon they, too, can wonder who is going to pay for all of these bright ideas!

Tennessee: I try to maintain a sense of humor about the “state” of things, when I can; it keeps the drinking to a minimum. But there is nothing funny about the law being proposed in Tennessee right now. Nothing. The law would require the state to put detailed information about every abortion performed in the state online. The name of the doctor who performed the abortion, and where they performed it, as well as detailed information about the patient, certainly detailed enough that it might make identifying the patient possible in rural Tennessee. This is incitement. This is absolutely an invitation for an angry and abusive spouse to figure out that a woman had an abortion and hurt or kill her or the doctor. I am absolutely not exaggerating. I would be shocked if that were never the outcome of this bill, if it passes. To understand why that might be, reference my post on domestic violence and abortion and pregnancy here.

Mississippi: Heartbeat Bill (Heartbeat Bills would ban an abortion after the fetus develops a heartbeat, which is not a sign of health, and can occur as early as 18 days into the pregnancy).

Wisconsin: Wisconsin just passed an under-the-wire, last-minute assault on reproductive rights to go before embattled Gov. Scott Walker, who is sure to sign. The wide-ranging bill requires a 24 hr waiting period. Before the 24 hr waiting period, a physician must “determine” if a woman is being coerced into having the abortion – by interrogating her privately (seriously, you can read the bill here). The bill threatens any doctor who doesn’t properly invade their patient’s privacy with a heavy fine. If abortion is drug-induced, the woman must return for a follow-up visit, which will require more time off from work and more childcare for any children she already has, in a state where services are difficult to get to to begin with. If doctors are too busy to offer the follow-up, women may have to have unnecessary surgical procedures. The far-reaching implications of this bill really suck. Remember when I said Gov. Walker was “embattled”? I mean he’s fighting a recall. Go get him recalled. Get out the vote. If you live in Wisconsin or have a couch to crash on there, make getting this jackass recalled and a pro-reproductive rights candidate to replace him your mission.

Oh, yeah – and run for office.

New Hampshire: Live Free or Die now meaning “live the way we tell you to,” NH has proposed some new restrictions on abortion and rolled back some old access to birth control. The latest law would require that a woman seeking an abortion hear a “detailed” description of the fetal development, and then undergo one of those popular 24 hr waiting periods (Are we noticing some themes here? There’s a reason for that.) Non-compliance would be a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

All told, Guttmacher just declared that more than half of women live in states that are “hostile” to reproductive rights. Do you? Do you know someone who does? The answer to at least one of those questions is yes. GET ORGANIZED. Organizing at the state level has an impact. It is sexy and very bad-ass, and it terrifies state legislators who want to hold on to their jobs but are accustomed to an extremely compliant, lazy voter base that isn’t informed about state politics. Get informed. Make a sign. Put some glitter on it!

Oh yeah, and run for office.

I do not enjoy “Communications” as a field. I think, honestly, it’s manipulative. The whole point of communications is to frame your issue in such a way that an audience sees it the way you want them to. Communications, PR, advertising, marketing and branding are all – no matter what anyone says to the contrary – intimately entwined. These fields are getting it on, if you know what I mean, and they’re reproducing, and who knows what they will spawn next? Facebook timeline. I rest my case.

Despite having no interest in communications, I stumbled into a job at a communications firm when I graduated college, and I have been trying, without much success, to stumble my way back out again for years. Working in communications has taught me two important things. One, communications is critical, absolutely critical, to getting anything done in any other movement or field. Two, I do not like it.

I guess the third would be: Three, most people and movements really suck at it.

To generalize in a pretty extreme way, there are two schools of thought in communications. The first school of thought is the “Product” school of thought, and it involves thinking. What is my product, brand, or message? What kinds of people am I targeting with it? How will those people react? What reaction and audience do I want? How do I achieve that? The “Product” school of thought involves building an entire communications plan with multiple, interrelated aspects. It requires your team to establish and stick with a tone and core messaging. That tone and core messaging needs to extend from traditional media placements like op-eds and press releases through social media such as Twitter posts. This kind of communications plan is meant to build and keep an audience or membership over time. In the tortoise vs. the hare, the “Product” school of thought is the tortoise school of thought. Confession: this is absolutely the school of thought to which I subscribe.

The second school of thought is the “Get it Get it” school of thought. In that school of thought, all press is good press. All attention is good attention. While the “Product” school of thought thinks, “Hey, a thing has happened, in the media! It is related to things we do. It makes sense for us to comment. People should listen to us. We know about these things,” the “Get it Get it” school of thought thinks, “A THING HAS HAPPENED. WE CAN DIMLY RELATE IT TO US, PROBABLY THROUGH OUTRAGE. COMMENT OH MY GOD COMMENT NOW RIDE THAT WAVE.” This school of thought will have big surges of attention, followed by almost no attention, because jumping up and down demanding to be heard is only interesting in the short term. This type of communications strategy will attract a large audience at times, but that audience is fickle and unreliable, with very little loyalty. This kind of strategy does not attract a dedicated membership that will be their for your company, organization, or brand through good times and bad, because your company, organization, or brand does not offer consistency. And if you are not consistent, your membership won’t be.

Having spent the last year actually working in the reproductive justice/prochoice movement, I have seen organizations employ both of these strategies. I have recently seen an upswing in long since established organizations, with dedicated followings of millions of hard-working members, alienate people across that membership by chasing the dragon of BIGGER NUMBERS and MORE ATTENTION. Here is what I say to younger people in the prochoice and reproductive justice movements:

Do not do this.

Do not do this, and what’s more, fight back when other people do it.

When you decide to work for an organization and you will be in any way part of their comm team – even if you simply contribute research that the comm team uses – look at their communications strategy. Listen to what they talk about. Do they know their audience, their membership? Do they understand how to talk to them? Are they willing to tell them things they don’t want to hear, because they can rely on their loyalty? Do they want to expand beyond that audience and continue to grow and reach out to other people? The answer to all of these things should be yes. If you and your friends are starting your own movement, group, or organization, ask yourselves these questions, and make sure the answers are all “yes.”

It can be hard when someone comes in with big ideas and changes the messaging in a way that makes you uncomfortable, because odds are, those changes will, in the short term, yield some big numbers. Suddenly, your organization may be receiving attention it didn’t get before. It’s hard to caution against that, because everyone likes attention. Here’s the thing: fight back any way. Recognize that sudden surges of attention based on drastic changes in messaging hit like bouts of hysteria, or like a night of heavy drinking. You’re in for manic highs in which everything seems so amazing you could shit rainbows followed by a terrible low alone at the police station waiting for your folks to pick you up and you don’t know where your friends are.

If you think I’m exaggerating, take a look at the Susan G. Komen debacle trajectory. It’s not a perfect example, because they weren’t looking for attention – in fact, they hoped no one would notice – and it wasn’t exactly a communications shift, although shifting communications was part of what happened. But the basic outline was familiar. A company that does one thing very well, with a wide membership base and lots of support, decides to make a drastic change to the way they do business. Many people within the company object and try to reason with them; those people are ignored. The Big Move is carried out anyway. Exeunt ship – sinking.

Communications are key to your piece of the movement you believe in, however tiny you may feel that piece to be. Commit to slow and steady growth to win the race. If your voice is young and spontaneous, don’t confuse that with erratic. If your voice is mature, don’t confuse that with immobile. Stick to a few key messages and talking points, and comment on current events where appropriate. I would love to see complementary pieces of the reproductive justice and prochoice movements working in beautiful tandem, where everyone feels they can find a place for themselves and their work. And we bring that about by communicating effectively what groups and organizations believe, in an honest and accessible way, and letting audiences and memberships find the place where they feel most comfortable.

Anti-choice activists absolutely love to use metaphors about what abortion is like. Abortion is like the holocaust! Abortion is like genocide! Abortion is like slavery!

I recently came across this quote to that effect. The author is talking about a new facility in Ohio where women would be able to both receive abortion care and talk to and/or engage an adoption specialist:

The Choice Network is a horrible idea.  It’s sort of like a gas chamber-passport facility for Jews.  In one convenient location, we can allow the Nazi-occupied countries of 1942 Europe choose to send their Jews to the gas chambers or give them passports to countries where they will be treated as free and equal citizens.  Both options are given equal validity.  Neither option is recommended or preferred by those who run the facility.  The founders of the facility don’t care if a Jew is sentenced to death or given a new chance at life.  No matter.  Both choices are treated the same.  Though one leads to murder and one to life, the facility takes no position.

No. Abortion is not like the Jews and the Nazis, and it’s not like genocide, and it’s not like slavery. Abortion is not like any of those things. This should be obvious to anyone with half a brain, but apparently, it’s not. Here are some very basic, seemingly obvious reasons why abortion is not like the Holocaust, genocide, or slavery:

1) Whether you think the fetus is a person with a soul or a collection of tissues, the vast majority of abortions occur at a time when the fetus could not  survive outside the womb. In the case of the holocaust and genocide, those being killed were human beings surviving without physical dependence on another person’s body.

2) Those killed in the Holocaust, and in various world-wide genocides, were fully developed human beings with histories, families, and relationships. Abortion does not end relationships in this way, it prevents them from occurring.

3) Slavery! Abortion is not like slavery. Slavery is the ownership and exploitation of a person’s life. Abortion is preventing a life that does not yet exist from becoming one that does.

Whatever you think of abortion, it is not like anything else. It is unique. It is a medical procedure that does not end, but prevents, life. It is a medical procedure that we have, as a society, entangled in deeply suspect moral values, and objections to it generally rely on values and morals that, despite their claims to universality, are actually in the minority, and belong to a small, select group of people – people who, for example, would compare abortion to the Holocaust, or would judge black women for having abortions because abortion is like slavery.

I wonder sometimes if the people who write these hateful things do so because they feel so unjustly entitled to their incredible amount of privilege. Yes, there are anti-choice activists of color, and there are, I’m sure, Jewish anti-choice activists. But I find that the majority of anti-choice activists are white. The piece I quoted above was most certainly written by a white girl – there’s a picture – who has clearly never questioned her own comfortable privilege, or what it would mean to live as part of a group of people with the collective memory of holocaust, genocide or slavery, and what it would mean to have that experience re-appropriated by some asshole who never thought through what that experience of collective memory might actually mean for the people who live with it every single day.

I lived for a period of time in Rwanda, a country that, in the very recent past, actually experienced a genocide – or, probably more accurately, an intense civil war that resulted in deep, indescribable scars. This is a country where, as a result of the estimated one million deaths that occurred, fully 50% of the population is under the age of 18. These numbers are unheard of. It’s a country where, despite its actually liberal and forward-thinking ways (they had universal health care long before we even began debating it), men take more than one wife because there are, quite simply, not enough men, and women have decided it’s better to share a husband than simply not to have one.

A startling number of those children under 18 are the product of mass rapes that occurred during the genocide. The point wasn’t, usually, to get the women pregnant; the objective was generally to give them HIV/AIDS, and kill them slowly. Many of the women who bore children after the genocide did so because they had no access to abortion in the chaos and aftermath. In the United States, that happens occasionally. In Rwanda, it is, like the Holocaust among Jews, a collective memory of repeated trauma; the trauma of genocide, the trauma of rape, the trauma of childbirth and the knowledge that it would be necessary to raise an unwanted child who was the product of all of those previous traumas. It is startling to see. You do not forget it. You would not compare it to abortion.

As for the relationships between these women and their children who are the product of rape, I can say anecdotally that those relationships vary, like other relationships between parents and children. We knew women or heard about women who made the best of it; we knew children who had never known love because of it. We knew children who had been wanted until their parents re-married, and then they found themselves pariahs. It is worth noting, however, that abortion is legal in Rwanda under three circumstances, and one of those circumstances is rape.

Life is a crapshoot. An abortion means someone never plays. Birth control and miscarriages also means someone never plays. The opportunity to live is a much greater crapshoot than life itself.

I say to all the people tempted to make abortion about anything but abortion: don’t. It isn’t like anything else. If you must fight it, if you must insist that you know better than the women and the many, many mothers who make the decision that abortion is best for them, right now, that’s a point I’m too tired to argue. But if you must fight it, don’t be lazy, and don’t be an asshole. Do your research. Think carefully about what you say. Because every time you tell me abortion is like the Holocaust, or genocide, or slavery, I know you’re too dumb to be worth the breath it would take to argue.

Trigger warning: domestic violence.

One of my beloved coworkers at my job this summer became like a younger sister to me. She’s bold, brash, and funny, and she moved to the Big City to Make It On Her Own. I’m not laughing at that – it’s brave, and I did it myself only a few years ago, so I know what it means, and what it is like to be in that place.

She was also being stalked by her ex-boyfriend.

When she first got to the city, alone and scared and exhilarated, she met a model, a little older than her. The first few weeks of the relationship were fun, but within a month he was asking her to move in, berating her in public, and yelling at her at parties. Within six weeks, the police had been involved in two of their disputes. She left him and refused to see him or speak to him. That was when he started showing up, waiting outside her door until she got home from a bar at 4am, waiting at her subway stop, and finally coming to work to harass her, where we had him evicted by a very large man who maybe was not so gentle when he tossed him out the front door. The language he used to text her and contact her was obscene and threatening, and it made me sick just to read it as a third party.

What if she had been pregnant?

Scientific studies show a correlation between abortion and domestic abuse. I am a sociologist. Correlation does not necessarily indicate causation, nor does correlation, such as the correlation between abortion and domestic abuse, explain to us how those two things are related. So here is what we do know: Women are four times as likely to suffer an increase in abuse due to an unintended or unwanted pregnancy. The pregnancy itself may be the result of abuse, which can manifest – and, let me be clear, does manifest – as “sexual abuse, marital rape, or denial of access to birth control.” Those three things can and do also happen in conjunction.

The 14% of women seeking abortions who admit to experiencing or having experienced abuse have made that decision through their experiences as a person, through their experience living their race, their gender, their sexuality and sexual orientation, and, certainly, through their experience/s with partner violence. Supporting a person’s right to an abortion is supporting their need to make that decision in a way that is informed by both their present circumstances and their past experiences.

A common explanation for the correlation between abortion and violence on “prolife” sites is that abortion causes abuse. This is inaccurate. It is damaging and it is far, far worse than being simply misleading. It is a way of twisting reality and victim-blaming that has the net result of blaming victims of abuse while simultaneously encouraging them to remain in unsafe circumstances that get less safe when they become pregnant.

There is one more, extremely serious reason that women seek out abortions when they are impregnated by an abusive partner. One of the leading causes of death amongst pregnant women is homicide by an abusive partner. Yes, you are reading that correctly: one of the most likely ways for a woman to die while pregnant is by being murdered by her partner, her husband, her boyfriend, her lover, her fiancee.

Every day, I hope, but this month particularly, we raise awareness of domestic violence and abuse and ask everyone to reach out to their loved ones and help keep them safe. If you have a friend who is in an abusive situation who then becomes pregnant, I urge you to help them immediately, and help them make decisions before they share the news of their pregnancy with an abusive partner. That decision may be to have an abortion; many people make that decision. But the decision could also be to carry the pregnancy to term and have a child, making it more vital than ever – not because a child’s life is worth more than theirs, but because now two lives will hang in the balance of the abuse, and because the abuse can increase significantly at the announcement of a pregnancy – that they find a way to be safe. A Safe Passage is an excellent place to start finding resources that are specifically for victims of abuse – at any point in their lives – who are pregnant, or are planning to get pregnant.

My job this summer was in an extremely open, sexually liberal environment, in a blue-state east coast city. But when my friend was stalked by her abuser, some of the people I worked with still wondered, out loud, “why she didn’t just tell him to go away,” because, “a man won’t bother a woman if he knows she really means it.” She should have been clearer, she should have told him louder, she shouldn’t have let it go on for so long.

Those basic assumptions about abuse are EXACTLY why people are shamed and stigmatized for so long, and they are EXACTLY the reason my friend was embarrassed when she had to tell our coworkers about her circumstances. Those basic assumptions are the problem. Those basic assumptions create warm, cozy environments for abuse to continue. Abuse will only stop when the silence is broken and no one is ashamed to say, “S/he hurt me.”

If you or someone you know is dealing with abuse – mental, psychological, or physical – please get help. You have NOTHING to be ashamed of. The law and every sense of decency is on your side. You are in the right. You are strong and powerful, and there are people who care about you who will support you in making the choices or decisions you need to make.

You are brave, and I admire you.

Editor’s note: This piece previously stated that Rick Perry’s wife had an abortion. This is incorrect (to the best of our knowledge). Rick Santorum’s wife has had an abortion. The mistake has been fixed in the text below.

Recently, it has been brought to my attention by the internet and cranky people on it that people who are antichoice hate, just simply HATE, when those of us who are prochoice insist that we are also, actually, prolife. Apparently, this made-up thing, “prolife,” is meant to designate a singularity of pro-ness, that is, “being pro anything that has ever been conceived ever being brought to term and to life no matter what the consequences.” This seems, to me, an intensely narrow definition of prolife! I will now expand that definition, for fun.

1) Prochoice is prolife because: LIFE IS AWESOME. Yes, that’s right. I think life is awesome. Therefor, I am prolife. You know what’s awesome about life? Coffee. I have some right now. Also all seven seasons of Buffy on DVD, which I am watching with my roommate. Also our cat.

2) Prochoice is prolife because: HAVING REPRODUCTIVE CHOICES LETS YOU LIVE LIFE ON YOUR OWN TERMS. Life is awesome – see above. You know what’s an awesome thing about life? Having sex with the person I care about a whole bunch, and then going to school AND working full-time and occasionally seeing a movie. Without the many reproductive choices we fight for – including, thank you to the state of New York and sexual health advocates the world over, Plan B over the counter – I would not be able to have all these things. And having these things is awesome.

3) Prochoice is prolife because: ABORTIONS SAVE LIVES. Yes. Yes they do. They really do. In fact, former Senator Rick Santorum’s wife had one to save her life. It was a good choice! Everyone should have that choice.

4) Prochoice is prolife because: PEOPLE IN THE PROCHOICE MOVEMENT FIGHT FOR THE LIVES OF THE LIVING. While antichoicers are attempting to regulate the shit out of abortion, a procedure that is safer than giving birth, during which only .3% of women experience complications, most of the prochoice people I know are much more concerned with the living. For example, a lot of prochoicers I know right now are concerned with the death penalty. Maybe you support it – I do, in some instances – but the way this country handles it has been SERIOUSLY called into question. Also, prochoicers believe in regulating the medical community, to save lives. I am working right now on getting plastic surgery regulated in the state of California because lack of oversights there have resulted in the deaths of five people from lap-band surgery. Why isn’t the “prolife” movement concerned with this? Oh right, because these people are already born. Once we get you born, you’re on your own. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, PEOPLE.

People I know who are prochoice believe that people need to be able to decide what is best for them in terms of reproduction. Once people have made that decision, people in the prochoice movement work to support them in many ways – fighting for access to education, financial support for those living on or below the poverty line, and reforms for the criminal justice system. Prochoicers believe we live in an imperfect world and work to improve it in a million ways every day. Antichoicers sit outside clinics and harass patients, and get snippy and rude online, because it is much easier to deal with a constituency of fetuses who can’t tell you what they think than it is to deal with the real consequences of a material and lived existence of needful human beings.

Look, I know we don’t want to get all sciency here, but I am so sick of listening to people say, prochoice isn’t prolife because they don’t believe in a right to be born. Um, no. No, I don’t believe in the right to be born. Where is that ever a right?? Not in the constitution. Not in the bible. Not ANYWHERE. No one has the right to be born. Pregnant people, however, have the right to make all the decisions they feel are best and necessary to carry a life to term if they so choose, and I support that right and those decisions. I think that decision is awesome. I think it is brave. I think I am super glad I am personally a long way away from making it.

I’m not usually so rude, nor do I typically lump a bunch of people together and say, “all you people are like this.” But I’m having a bit of a day, which has been preceeded by a bit of a week, which, like everyone else who cares about reproductive justice, has been preceeded by a bit of a year. So fuck it. I’m prochoice, and that makes me prolife. I’m not ashamed of anything, I’m not wrong or bad or delusional. I fight every day for good, important things, and just this once, all the people who are telling me I’m going to hell can go to hell. Tomorrow I will again turn the other cheek. Today, I just want to laugh.

As a courtesy, and to head off the barrage of comments that will now come our way that say things like, “I am pro choosing new flavors of ice cream, so I am prochoice!” from people who think they are being clever and proving a point, I will now clarify: when I say I am prochoice, I mean I advocate for people to have as many reproductive choices as possible. These include, just off the top of my head, birth control (hormonal and non-hormonal), adoption, in-vitro fertilization, abortion, and excellent pre and post-natal care for those who give birth. And also I believe in choosing between flavors of ice cream (have you TRIED this new business from Ben& Jerry’s, this Banana Buzz?! it does not matter if you do not like bananas, it tastes like whiskey and awesome, go get some). When I say someone is antichoice, I mean that they do not believe people need, deserve, or should have access to all these reproductive options and more. And that sucks.

Feel free, in the comments, to tell me why being prochoice makes you prolife. I would love to hear about it.

Working for the summer to provide direct reproductive and family planning services, the question of who gets pregnant (and who doesn’t… and who needs those services, whether they do or do not get pregnant…) has started to play a role in how I think about outreach. The language of the last reproductive justice wave was about women, “women’s health,” “women’s needs,” and “women’s rights,” and with good reason, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that that language is exclusionary – too exclusionary, to my mind, for the movement I hope to be a part of building. We’ve had the start of this conversation several times on this blog. Women are no longer the only ones who get pregnant. Many people now can and do get pregnant who do not identify as women. This war on reproductive justice may in many ways still be the “war on women” it is often referred to as, given the narrow gender identities the antichoice community too often ascribes to, but it is not only a war on women when so many people suffer in a silence imposed by language and many kinds of violence. (And what else? What else imposes this silence? Please tell me. I am writing this in the hopes that I can learn.)

So I am wondering, how do we begin to address trans issues, particularly trans reproductive issues, outside of transitioning itself? How do we make prochoice about more than the gender binary? How do we work with language? How do we do direct outreach, how do we make clinics and doctor’s offices and family planning centers truly safe spaces? What other questions do you have? I have so many!

I do not want to see hard-fought cisgender identities subsumed to political correctness. Cisgender identity is valid, and I fight to know and love myself as a woman every day. But that fight has a name and words and acknowledgement; I believe the fight for transgendered identities is silenced a billion ways. So I’m asking you to talk to me. I’m also asking you to talk to me, and to each other, respectfully. If you feel I have already made grave errors in the way this is written, please let me know and I will address them. I know sometimes there is a lot of pent-up anger that, given a release point, can feel very good to vent, but ideally, if people want to talk about this, I would love to see a productive conversation get started here.