Abortion Gang

A recent article in The Nation, “Crossing the Line,” tells the story of Diana, a single mother of two living in Brownsville near the Texas-Mexico border who needed an abortion. But she faced a few obstacles: The nearest abortion clinic was 30 miles away. Since Texas believes women on Medicaid should have to pay for an abortion out of pocket, the procedure could have cost her almost $1,000. And, perhaps worst of all, the stigma of being seen at an abortion clinic in her conservative community seemed too much for her to bear.

So instead Diana bought Misoprostol, an ulcer medication that is 80-85% effective at causing a process identical to a miscarriage, at a pharmacy across the border for a fraction of the price and self-induced an abortion at home.

Use of Misoprostol as an alternative abortion method, particularly by low-income and immigrant women, is hardly a new phenomenon but has popped up in the news a lot lately. Last month, Nicholas Kristof hailed Misoprostol as a drug that could revolutionize abortion around the world. And as far as do-it-yourself abortion goes, Misoprostol certainly has a lot going for it: It’s relatively safe—much safer than other methods the Planned Parenthood in Brownsville has seen over the years: “women who have used syringes, taken cocktails of prescription drugs, douched with battery acid and beaten themselves in the abdomen.” It’s cheap: $87 to $167 per bottle in a Mexican pharmacy, just pennies per pill in India. Since its primary use isn’t as an abortifacient, it’s hard for governments to restrict—and is likely to become even more widely accessible. Since it causes a miscarriage that looks indistinguishable from a natural one, in places where abortion is illegal, if there’s a complication or it doesn’t work completely, a woman can seek help at a hospital instead of risking either arrest or death. It’s taken in the privacy of her own home, so in conservative communities like Diana’s, she can avoid the stigma of the clinic, the harassment of anti-choice protesters, the “feeling of being judged by the strangers around her.”

In short, Misoprostol could do a lot of good around the world and save the lives of some of the up to 70,000 women worldwide who die from complications of unsafe (usually illegal) abortions each year. And I’m happy Diana could get it and that it worked for her.

But I’m not happy that abortion is so stigmatized in the Rio Grande Valley that many women don’t even realize it is legal. I’m not happy that because of the Hyde Amendment, those women who are least able to afford it are forced to pay between $450 and more than $900 for an abortion in a clinic. I’m not happy that the nearest abortion clinic to Diana is 30 miles away and 35% of women in the U.S. live in counties that lack an abortion provider. I’m not happy that the clinic is so embattled that the doctor wears a bulletproof vest to work and says that many of his clients first find out about the facility when they are brought there by church groups to protest. I’m not happy that he says that about 20% of his patients have tried Misoprostol first before coming to the clinic. I’m not happy that due to cost, inconvenience, and shame, women in the U.S., where abortion is legal, are turning to Mexico, where it is largely illegal, to find alternative ways to end their pregnancies.

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Yesterday, the Oklahoma state legislature overrode Governor Brad Henry’s veto of two extremely restrictive, and quite likely unconstitutional, abortion laws, bringing Oklahoma one step closer to being the worst state for women in the nation.

The first measure requires women seeking an abortion to undergo a mandatory ultrasound and, as we’ve already discussed here, is intrusive beyond belief. As the New York Times notes, while several states have passed ultrasound laws and a few require women to be offered the chance to see the image, Oklahoma’s law goes even farther, stipulating that the monitor must be placed where the woman can see it and that she must listen to a detailed description of the fetus. Furthermore, doctors would be required to use a vaginal probe in cases where it would provide a clearer picture of the fetus than a regular ultrasound, which is often the case earlier in pregnancy (when the vast majority of abortions take place).

In other words, as a prerequisite to obtaining an abortion—a legal, medical procedure—in addition to being forced to hear information she may not want to hear, a woman must be vaginally probed by her doctor, even if it is not medically necessary and even if she has already been the victim of rape or incest. Within hours, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit against the legislation, arguing that is violates the doctor’s freedom of speech, the woman’s right to equal protection and the woman’s right to privacy. And others have suggested that it could break Oklahoma’s rape laws as well.
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I clearly remember the moment when my progressive politics stopped being something I simply absorbed. With a father who ranted about the latest Republican offense over breakfast every morning and a mother who clipped out Times articles she thought I’d be interested in and put them on my pillow, I was destined to grow up a pro-choice, liberal Democrat. But although I took in and thought about the political issues my parents exposed me to, it was awhile before one really grabbed me, outraged me, and demanded I do something with that outrage.

I read an article in the New Yorker about the Bush administration’s global sexual and reproductive health policies, particularly HIV/AIDS prevention in sub-Saharan Africa. It talked about the global gag rule that, until Obama overturned it, barred U.S. aid from going to organizations that even mentioned abortion. It talked about the Bush administration’s requirement that one-third of the dollars spent on HIV prevention go towards abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. And it talked about how more people than I—as a teenager on vacation in the U.S.—could even conceptualize were dying because of AIDS each day. And the epidemic continued to spread.

I couldn’t believe it. Families and communities were falling apart, aid workers deep in the trenches just wanted to do their jobs, African youth needed some condoms to save their very lives, and American politicians sitting half a world away in Washington, D.C. insisted on imposing their own conservative values on the whole damn world. The cultural arrogance, the moral self-righteousness, and above all, the complete disregard for the realities of people’s lived experience were breathtaking. I’d never heard of anything more infuriating. Still haven’t.
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This piece originally appeared on the Feministing Community site last fall.

As someone who works at a reproductive rights organization—in communications no less—I talk about abortion a lot. I talk about abortion as a “fundamental right of all women.”  I talk about abortion as a “safe and legal medical procedure.”  I talk about abortion as “a personal decision made by a woman and her doctor.”

So when I found out I was pregnant recently, I assumed I had not only the knowledge and resources to do what I needed to do with confidence and relative ease, but also the language to speak about it. But as I began to tell the relevant people in my life—my friends, my boyfriend, my family—I felt myself falling back on euphemisms. I was avoiding a word I say every day, and I didn’t like it. So I stopped. I made a conscious decision to talk frankly and directly about my abortion.

Call me naïve, but I wasn’t prepared for how hard that would be. I live in a liberal city, come from a progressive family, surround myself with feminist friends, and work at a pro-choice organization. Yet even in this world, talking about abortion as a personal experience is a far cry from discussing it as a political issue. Here judgment is replaced by fear of the unknown and stigma gives way to a silence.
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It’s been a few days now, but I still start pacing and speaking inappropriately loudly whenever health care reform and abortion coverage comes up. Regardless of what the actual effect of Obama’s executive order turns out to be, we’re still looking at the worst abortion restrictions in some 30 years. Hopes of repealing the terrible Hyde amendment anytime soon took a severe beating, and experts say the Nelson amendment is likely to do nearly as much damage to private insurance coverage for abortion as the Stupak amendment.

Last week Michelle Goldberg made the case that despite this awful rollback of reproductive rights, feminists should still support the bill. I pretty much agree. I’m basically just thankful I’m not one of the 41 pro-choice representatives who pledged not to restrict reproductive rights and then had to go back on their word or vote against a bill that, despite its shortcomings, will give 30 million people health insurance and be “the greatest expansion of the social safety net in a generation.”

But I’m still infuriated about how we got there. As Goldberg writes:

Anti-abortion forces have had the advantage in this fight because they’re willing to sacrifice the health of millions on the altar of their ideology. Their nihilism gives them leverage.

That the Republicans—who would never in a million years vote for Obama’s fantasy basketball pick let alone his administration’s most important piece of legislation—would engage in this kind of nihilism is, of course, so entirely unsurprising I can’t even be that outraged. Yelling about abortion was just good politics on their part—and if they don’t give a fuck about people’s access to health care in general, I suppose you can’t really blame them for not caring about women’s health.
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