Abortion Gang

I assume when I go into my doctor’s office that my primary care physician has the skills and knowledge to be able to help me make basic health care decisions, including information about birth control and what my options are. I deserve to make my own, informed decisions about my reproductive health based on what works best for me. If my doctor can’t give me accurate information or counsel me about my options, where would I go for help?

It seems ridiculous to think that in 2013 doctors could not be trained to provide birth control or abortion, but that could be a reality. The Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the group that sets the standards for medical education and curricula in the US, has removed contraception and options counseling from the requirements, meaning that a family doctor could graduate a program with a medical degree and not know anything about birth control.

The requirements also don’t include IUD insertion, implant insertions, or abortion, services that people need and may have to travel long distances to obtain if their family doctor is unable or unwilling to provide them. As restrictive laws continue to make reproductive health care less and less available at the local and state level, it is more critical than ever that we press for comprehensive care, including abortion, to be included in primary care settings.

Lisa Maldonado, Executive Director at the Reproductive Health Access Project (RHAP), an organization working to expand comprehensive reproductive health services in primary care settings, says:

“Family physicians are more likely than any other clinical specialty to work in rural areas and with underserved populations. Ensuring that family physicians get proper training in contraception, prenatal, miscarriage and abortion care will expand access for everyone. But, if residency programs aren’t required to provide training, then they probably won’t, especially religiously affiliated programs. And, if no one is trained, no one can provide and no one has access, even if its legal and covered by insurance. Too many women already have to travel long distances, cross picket lines and deal with unnecessary restrictions to get basic women’s health care as it is. Family physicians need to have the best possible training in family planning and women’s health.”

No person deserves to be denied information or basic health care because their doctor attended a religiously-affiliated medical school, and we can’t let that happen. I want to get reproductive health care from my doctor, the person who I feel comfortable with and who knows me. I deserve that, and you do too.

We have until April 25 to let the ACGME know what we think and to voice support for reproductive health and family planning counseling in primary care settings. I hope you will join me and stand up for your rights by signing the RHAP petition here.

This fall I’m entering a Master of Social Work program, stepping down from my job in reproductive health, and stepping back from other reproductive justice activities. With this transition comes some sadness about being removed from reproductive health, rights, and justice circles and people who have become my allies and friends. The people who I have met over the past few years have provided constant inspiration and support and have challenged me to become a better activist and person. Not engaging with them or the issues I’m passionate about on a daily basis makes me feel like I’m losing something important.

But why do I feel this way, and why does it feel so different from the other transitions I’ve undergone thus far? Maybe it’s because I’m 25 and any life transition is going to feel this way. Or maybe it’s because I am so passionate about abortion access and reproductive justice that taking a break from that feels especially unsettling.

Maybe it’s that the next part of my life is uncertain, and that I’m not sure how reproductive justice activism will fit into it.

If I’m not actively doing activist work, does that mean that I am no longer an activist? What does being an activist even mean? I don’t envision myself as a person who will stop talking, writing, or making art about abortion rights or health care access, but maybe I will. Maybe I will take steps back as I grow older. Maybe I will spend time planning my wedding, learning, and having new experiences.

My hope however, is that no one like me will stop being a reproductive justice activist. Not until we live in a different world where everyone has the ability to plan and space their pregnancies and parent with means, support, and dignity.

That’s why I have all of you, my online Abortion Gang community. No matter what else I’m doing in my daily life, I have this community to speak and engage with, to feel connected to, and to talk about the issues that we care about. And as a social worker, I am going to be doing justice-oriented work that matters. It might not be what I’m doing now, but it will be something that will make a difference.

The next few years will bring challenges and growth, and that must be what life and activism are about. My work will become more intersectional and I will have another frame to see things. I will bring social work to my activism and activism to my social work. I will find new things that I want to do and new communities to be a part of. I will blog more, but I won’t give up talking or fighting. I will make mistakes. I will discover what it means to care so much, although I may never figure it out completely. And I will find a new ways to dedicate my heart to my work.

40 years ago in a momentous Supreme Court victory abortion became legal in the US. Politicians were changed by the champions of the feminist movement. They agreed that all people deserve to plan families and space their pregnancies and that the days of back alley abortions and coat hangers were over. No longer would anyone have to risk their lives to end and unwanted pregnancy.

That was the dream, but it is not the reality. There is no question that Roe made history and laid the foundation for the work we do in abortion access today. But we also know that it didn’t ensure complete accessibility and affordability of care. Despite the passing of Roe in 1973, the Hyde Amendment, prohibiting federal Medicaid dollars from covering abortion, was passed only three years later in 1976 and set the stage for the many abortion restrictions that have followed.

Every person deserves to be able to make the best decisions for themselves and for their families, but abortion coverage restrictions can make that difficult or even impossible. Abortion fund volunteers talk to people unable to afford abortion care every single day. People without insurance coverage of abortion have to struggle, some by putting off paying bills, rent, or even risking their personal safety to come up with the money for an abortion. There is a big difference between making abortion legal and making it accessible.

Our feminist leaders spoke up 40 years ago to legalize abortion and made significant change. As feminists, reproductive justice activists, families, and communities, must speak up again, and shout until the current administration hears us. To continue to let people struggle to afford abortion care, to make it impossible for our friends and communities to access health services, is unconscionable. Sign the petition now and tell President Obama that we are standing strong in support of comprehensive reproductive health care access and abortion coverage for all people, not just those who can afford it.

Like many Americans, I was glued to my television last night, anxious and uncertain about the future of the US. I sat there and could only think about moving forward. It was too hard to think about the opposite outcome, and to worry about how we would be able to protect and expand our rights if we did not re-elect President Obama.

Luckily, some of that positive thinking paid off.

It’s no secret that abortion and reproductive health and rights played heavily into the election. [Last night] I sat waiting to see if the elected leader of our country would be someone who supported my right to reproductive autonomy or someone who would make it difficult or impossible for me to access health care services. We have spoken: we have had enough attacks, and we want to move forward with politicians who respect and support our rights.

I am ecstatic that President Obama will lead our country for four more years. During the election he spoke clearly about his position on reproductive health, calling it an economic issuethat affects women and families. I couldn’t agree more, and neither could voters, like those in Florida who rejected a measure that would have severely limited abortion coverage and access. While there is much work to be done, I can breathe a bit easier knowing that the leader of our country believes in health care and reproductive rights.

We’ve heard throughout the course of campaign season from both the public and the president that reproductive health and rights are critical for people to lead healthy and safe lives, but there’s one piece of the puzzle that no one is talking about: the Hyde Amendment and ensuring abortion coverage for low-income people in the US. Hyde prohibits federal Medicaid coverage of abortion, and politicians have looked the other way for 36 years while people have struggled to come up with the money for care, putting off paying bills, rent, or even going hungry to afford an abortion.

While I appreciate the President’s position, especially at a time when reproductive health and abortion services are being severely limited at state and local levels, I also know that if people can’t afford care, then they don’t have a choice. Hyde has devastated communities and families for three decades. We must compel the President, who believes in reproductive rights and justice, to make change.

Now is the time to reopen the conversation about Hyde and abortion access: the public and the administration have been clear in their support of reproductive rights and affordable access to health care. We have a long way to go and a hard history to overcome, but we cannot back down. We must ensure that all services, including abortion, are affordable in order to secure people’s reproductive rights and ability to make decisions.

If President Obama believes that the lives and health of low-income people matter and that everyone deserves access to reproductive health services, he must take a stand this January and strike restrictions on Medicaid coverage of abortion when he presents his budget to Congress. And we, as advocates and reproductive justice activists, need to remain vocal for the next four years and hold our elected officials and administration accountable to living up to their promises of supporting all people’s rights, not just those who can afford it.

We talk about Hyde all the time, but we rarely talk about the 17 states that have extended their own funds to cover abortion in all or most cases. (However, research shows what advocates have long known—that two of these 17 states (Arizona and Illinois) do not offer that coverage to women in practice.)

Amanda Dennis, Associate at Ibis Reproductive Health, explains: “In states like Massachusetts, New York, and Oregon, Medicaid covers abortion regardless of personal circumstances in both policy and practice. Individuals seeking abortion in these states report being able to weigh their pregnancy options, easily secure accurate information about whether their insurance plan covers abortion, find a health care provider who accepts Medicaid, and make an appointment with confidence.” In these states (“Medicaid states”), a person on Medicaid is able to receive care with fewer stressful complications, compared to his or her counterpart in a non-Medicaid state, where he or she, unable to afford it, may not be able to get an abortion at all.

As people who have worked in Medicaid and non-Medicaid states will tell you, the differences are stark. For a person who has comprehensive health insurance coverage, finding out that it does not cover abortion is unexpected, jarring, and upsetting. It means that she or he can’t get care quickly, will struggle to come up with the money on top of other living expenses, and may jeopardize his or her health or safety. The landscape is vastly different in Medicaid states, where state governments have stepped up to fill the gap and to make it possible for more people to obtain coverage for abortion, trusting that each person should have the ability to make the best decisions for themselves and their families. For people accessing abortion services in these states, it is covered like other health services are covered. That is how it should be: abortion is a legal health service in our country. It is unfair for the federal government to interfere with personal decision-making, and we should applaud the states that allow individuals to think for themselves.

There is still work to be done in Medicaid states to ensure that all people can obtain abortion, particularly for immigrants and minors, We know that Medicaid states aren’t perfect, and the work that we are doing despite Medicaid-covered abortions is necessary and will not go away any time soon. We do not live in utopias, but we do acknowledge abortion is vastly more accessible and affordable. If we don’t talk about Massachusetts, New York, and Oregon, among others, as successes, we will not be able to demonstrate the importance of insurance coverage for abortion, which is desperately needed in the current climate. We, no matter the state we live in, must work together repeal Hyde and to ensure that all people are able to access abortion care regardless of their financial means or insurance status. We can also be proud of those states that have stepped up when the federal government has failed. Let’s shout our success stories loud enough until more state and local governments hear us, loud enough that they take on the responsibility of protecting the health of all of their citizens, not just the ones who can afford it.

Being a young, unapologetic abortion activist and outspoken blogger, I tend to critique the mainstream, pro-choice movement for its lack of inclusivity, unwillingness to take the opinions of young people seriously, and constant criticism that not enough young people are in the movement or that no people in my generation care about reproductive rights.

We hear about this all the time. Two years before stepping down from her position at NARAL Pro-Choice America, Nancy Keenan voiced her concerns that there were no passionate young people to help carry the torch after the leaders in her generation retired. Others, such as Johnathan Allen, asks how groups like NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and NOW can “fire up” young women who have not known a time without legal abortion and nondiscrimination laws.

I don’t know what world they’ve been living in, but not only have there always been young people involved in the movement, but things haven’t been the greatest for abortion access in the US since the passing of Roe, and I don’t just mean in the last five years. Roe was groundbreaking, but Hyde was passed three years later and was followed by other bans, so when we talk about abortion access for everyone in the US post-Roe, we’re talking about people with the means to access abortion. If the media and those at the top of women’s organizations they think that there haven’t been people fighting since Hyde, they are only looking at the most privileged, most visible segment of the movement. That’s why the National Network of Abortion Funds exists, that’s why Sister Song exists, and that’s why we’ve abandoned the term pro-choice and started to think about reproductive justice. Those battles just haven’t been mainstream battles, and they haven’t been the battles that all leaders have engaged with.

As a young feminist and abortion rights activist, I am grateful to those people who fought for the freedoms I have today and who built the foundation for me to be able to do my work. But I am more grateful to those who fought before me and then embraced my views and participation in the movement.

No matter where we fit in the movement generationally, we’ve all had someone who has been a mentor or supporter, whether that person is close to us in age or generations above us, because we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere fighting these battles on our own. For me, personally, and I’m sure for many others, my mentors are the reason I am here in the movement. Without people who have supported me and genuinely cared about me, both personally and professionally, I would not have decided to work in abortion access.

I know that those who say that young people aren’t involved in the movement are looking in the wrong places, but I also wonder if they’re not embracing young people. I credit the first person I worked for with my decision to make reproductive justice a part of my life, and if leaders are concerned about the involvement of young people, they need to hire them and value them.

Right now we are fighting what sometimes feels like a losing battle, and we can’t afford to be protective or territorial. We need to embrace our differences, generational and otherwise. We need to stop ignoring those who have devoted their lives to working for reproductive justice in marginalized communities just because they are not working for mainstream organizations. And we need to acknowledge that young people care about abortion as an issue and if we want to continue to involve them we need to value their contributions and ideas.

This doesn’t just go for executive directors and people in positions of power. It goes for all of us, especially as young people who are moving up in the movement. We need to remember those who have supported us and pass it on, to value those just starting out, and support our peers and allies. If we all pledge to do that, then we shouldn’t have to worry about the future of the movement.

Recently, I was having an abortion-related conversation with someone I love dearly who works in reproductive health and expressed some judgmental ideas about specific groups of people who may access abortion care. No matter what I said, I could not change her mind and convince her to think differently. It was a difficult situation for me to be in, and still one that I am struggling with and replaying in my mind because I value this person. Her words hit me hard.

Working in the field, we all have those moments where a client or an issue makes us uncomfortable. Some people might not be completely agreeable to a trans or non-gender-conforming patient requesting reproductive health services, a patient requesting an abortion at 26 weeks gestation, or a patient who expresses a lack of concern about their reproductive health, to name a few examples. I know that I have certainly experienced jarring moments or uncomfortable conversations that have made me stop and refocus myself. But I do it, because the real, hard truth is that usually, people trying to access care who we feel uncomfortable around are those most marginalized and who most need our support.

With my friend, I’m not sure if I should continue to push the issue or to let it go. I don’t want to give up, especially because this person means a lot to me, but also because I feel an obligation to the movement. It’s hard for me to articulate, but I think that if we don’t continue to press the people closest to us, especially those who are abortion rights supporters, then we will never gain any ground. On the other hand, I don’t want to risk losing an important relationship.

As I’ve continued to think about this, I’ve also reflected on myself and how far I’ve come in the years that I have been working for abortion access. There are certainly still times when I find myself judging someone or lumping them in a category; unfortunately, this is normal in the world we live in. I’ve gotten much better about clarifying my values in the moment: questioning why I’m thinking one way about ideas or people, and recognizing where people are coming from. And of course, I try to do the most important and hardest thing: admitting when I have been wrong.

The truth is that we never know the circumstances of someone else’s life or the reasons why they chose to do things or not, like having an abortion. We can only try to understand and assist someone by listening to what they need, giving them information, and ensuring that they have nonjudgmental access and equal rights to the services they need.

This always takes me back to the saying “Trust Women”. It’s a small phrase that says so much. Of course, in my trans-inclusive, non-gender determining mindset I wouldn’t mind changing it to “Trust People”, but I think you know what I mean. We need to trust that people are their own decision makers and that they think hard about important decisions concerning their health.

I worry that sometimes, we, as a movement say Trust Women or Trust People, but we say it so often that we don’t think about what it means anymore.

As reproductive, justice, and health workers, allies, and advocates, we can’t just say that we trust the people who need access to abortion care: we must continue to work on ourselves and our values to embody that trust. I can’t imagine that there is anything worse than someone who faces difficulty and marginalization accessing a health service being scrutinized, consciously or unconsciously, by a health care provider.

As far as the answer to my first question, about whether or not I should continue to converse with my friend, I’m still not sure what the answer is. But maybe we can start by reminding each other about what trust means for ourselves, our peers, and the people who need abortion care, and maybe we can continue by never letting that go. We will not be a healthy movement unless we embrace all of our constituents wholly, and only by continuously healing ourselves can we can justify making change.

This post is part of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia Blogathon.

I know I’m late to be writing about Fox News’s Monica Crowley questioning Sandra Fluke’s sexuality, but as a queer woman, it’s still getting under my skin. For those of you who’ve managed to avoid hearing about this, after Fluke announced her engagement, Crowley tweeted her response: “To a man?” and her comment provoked numerous and varied responses in the media and Twittersphere, even sparking the hashtag #crowleyjokes. (My favorite #crowleyjoke: Why did the chicken cross the road? LESBIANS!).

I shouldn’t be surprised that a Fox News pundit’s attempt at humor was actually an offensive insult; it’s not the first time that that has happened and it certainly won’t be the last. But I was on Twitter when the story broke, and alongside the #crowleyjokes, pro-choicers and advocates were also tweeting things that made me uncomfortable, like, “Understanding of lesbianism FAIL  FYI: No birth control needed” and “you don’t need contraception if you’re having sex with a woman #idiot”.

Progressive bloggers had a similar take on the situation. Jezebel covered the story, writing: “Irrationality of joking about how a non-procreative sex-having lesbian desperately needing contraception aside…” and Adam Peck on Think Progress wrote: “Crowley’s fake surprise that Fluke is not, in fact, a lesbian is especially ironic given the attacks that her network leveled against Fluke in February…”

So here’s the message I’m getting: It would be irrational and ironic for a gay or lesbian person to advocate for equal access to birth control.

There’s a big problem here. Pretending that queers (and I use queer as a general term to encompass myself and sexually-and-gender-variant peers) don’t need access to contraception is misinformed. According to the Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey, GLBT high schoolers were more than twice as likely as their heterosexual counterparts to become pregnant or to have gotten someone pregnant. Why? Because they were not using birth control regularly and because they did not feel safe going to a doctor to ask for it.  On top of that, many trans, non-gender conforming, and lesbian-identifying individuals may practice survival sex to make a living in a world where systems of oppression, racism, stereotypes, violence, and lack of a job market and legal rights may lead to dangerous situations, risk of pregnancy, and HIV infection. One study found that teenage lesbian and bisexual women were five times more likely to have exchanged sex for food, money, or other necessities than their heterosexual counterparts. Queer sexual health is an important and often forgotten component of reproductive justice, and neglect of queer communities in reproductive health dialogues only segments and divides the reproductive justice movement.

But there’s something else that’s been bothering me about this conversation. It’s not just that by calling Crowley’s comment irrational and ironic people are ignoring the experiences of queer people who need access to birth control or abortion care, and it’s not just that Crowley tweeted a deliberately malicious insult. It’s more than that. Questioning Sandra Fluke’s sexuality implies that she does not have the right to be speaking about birth control access; it intentionally uses queerness to demean her person and to make her opinions about birth control less valid.

It’s no surprise that the religious right is good at connecting queerness to reproductive health; they loop both together when talking about immorality and sex. So why can’t progressives and reproductive health advocates connect the dots? Brushing away queers’ need for birth control and comprehensive reproductive health care is ignoring the complexities of queer life and erasing reproductive choices. Queers are already struggling to find competent health care providers; we need the reproductive health and justice movements to advocate for us instead of shutting us out because of preconceived notions.

It’s time for people to see queers as diverse individuals with fluid identities and varied experiences and not be so quick to dismiss us. Reproductive justice activists will only benefit from our inclusion.

I have been shocked the past couple of days by the response to Susan Heath’s opinion piece New York Times entitled “No One Called Me a Slut” about her experiences getting an abortion in 1978 and how easily accessible and stigma-free it was.

She writes:

A young woman has been called a slut after testifying in favor of insurance coverage for contraceptive care…It wasn’t always like this. This is a story of how it used to be: It’s 1978, five years after Roe v. Wade. I’m 38, I have four sons — the oldest is 17, the youngest is turning 12. I’m at school, getting a B.A., and I’m loving it. I’m about two and a half months pregnant. I don’t want this child.

It’s as simple as that. It’s 1978, Susan wants an abortion, and as a well-meaning, responsible mother of four who is using birth control, she gets her abortion easily and without complication, knowing that it is ultimately the best thing for her and her future. It’s 1978, Roe v. Wade was just passed, and anti-abortion lunatics don’t exist en masse yet; she is free to make a choice to have an abortion without stigma or the threat of violence.

It’s a great story, except for one thing. The Hyde Amendment was officially enacted in 1977, prohibiting federal Medicaid dollars for abortion and making abortion inaccessible for many low-income people. Before most abortion funds were started and with few other options, in the years immediately post-Hyde, people without the means to access abortion care were dying. Rosie Jimenez, the first women believed to have been a victim of Hyde, a 27 year-old mother and student, died on October 3, 1977, and there are more stories like hers. Although there are few deaths from unsafe abortion in the United States today, we know that there are still people in desperate situations selling belongings, going hungry, and not paying bills to come up with the money for an abortion; people who contact abortion funds in the thousands every year.

My problem is not with Susan Heath. It takes strength to write about your abortion anywhere, much less in the New York Times. Her story is honest and unapologetically hers, and I admire her courage to make her story public. While her story isn’t perfect, she is telling it as she remembers it as compared to the stigmatizing, traumatizing, protestors-yelling-in-your-face abortion stories of today.

My problem is with the way that our movement (and I say movement for lack of a better word) embraced the story and accepted it as the whole truth. One respected organization tweeted it and used #thegoodolddays. Another, again, respected organization tweeted it and wrote, “Never thought we’d say this but anyone have a time machine?” The good old days? A time machine? Really? The good old days for wealthy or middle class, feminist-identifying, gender-conforming women with the means to secure an abortion, maybe. A time machine for their low-income, non-white, non-US citizen, non-gender conforming counterparts? Hell no.

I’m not saying this to call out anyone. I don’t care for attacks; they divide us. And if you really, really care who said that on Twitter then you have probably already looked it up. What I do care about is questioning ourselves, and myself included, in how we talk about our history. When we say the good old days, whose good old days do we mean? And when we choose to tell one story over another, whose history are we forgetting?

Our collective memory is crucial to the survival of our movement. If we chose one story over another than we are systematically erasing our struggles and devaluing the legacy of the most important, most neglected individuals. We cannot forget that when we talk about abortion access, we mean different things historically, geographically, socially, and individually; and when we sit down at the table to address issues of abortion access, we must take a hard look at ourselves and ask who has been left out of the conversation.

If we don’t stand together, question our intentions, and make space for marginalized voices then we will never be a collective movement for change. If we don’t call attention to forgotten narratives then we are responsible for their whitewashing and invisibility. And if we don’t remember Rosie Jimenez, who will?