Abortion Gang

The Catholic Church, through its Bishops, is currently fighting tooth and nail to deny women access to contraceptives- birth control. The Catholic Church believes that contraceptives are immoral, and that women should never ever use them. With the new concept of no-copay birth control, the Catholic Church wants the right to refuse to provide women with access to this basic healthcare- and they want to extend this ability to refuse to any business. This is a dangerous situation for women all across the United States.

There are many arguments against the Catholic Bishop’s position. I’m sure you’ll hear them all over the feminist blogsphere. But I think there’s one idea you will not here shared everywhere: The Catholic Bishop’s position on denying women access to birth control shows that they don’t trust God.

If you’re a Christian, you believe that God is all powerful. He is capable of anything, and He can change our world however He wants to. If the Bishops truly believed this, why would they be so worried about birth control?

If God willed for a specific woman to have a child, then no earthly measures could prevent that (this might sound terrifying for some people, but for Christians it’s usually combated with “God has the best of intentions”). Birth control can fail, even when taken correctly. This wouldn’t be God interfering with free will, but interfering with biological reproduction- just like He did when Mary became pregnant with Jesus, even though she never had any sperm in her
uterus/fallopian tubes, ever. Some methods of birth control may, possibly, somehow, sometimes make it slightly more difficult for a zygote to implant in the uterus (the science on this is still being questioned and debated). Even if this is true, more difficult isn’t impossible- God could ensure a zygote burrows happily into the lining of the uterus without a problem. The same is true for emergency contraceptive, which works by preventing ovulation. If God absolutely wants a specific woman to have a child, He could just ensure she ovulates before she has sex. Again, this is control over biological functions.

If a woman does become pregnant, despite using birth control, the choice of whether or not to carry the pregnancy is then between her and her God — and again, we must trust that the all powerful, all loving God will lead her on the path that He has planned for her, having brought her to this point.

Knowing that God is all powerful, and His will can’t be stopped by using birth control pills, I have to wonder why the Bishops are so worried about including access to birth control. Do they not trust God? Do they not believe He is powerful enough to overcome birth control if He wants to? Do they believe God’s Will can so easily be avoided just by swallowing a daily pill?

I trust in God’s ability. There is absolutely no reason for the Bishops to deny women access to contraceptive. Matthew 18:15-17 says that if someone sins, you should tell them alone, then with some friends, then tell the church- if he still refuses to listen, treat him as a person who does not believe in God or a tax collector. It does not say, “refuse him access to whatever he used to sin.” So if the Bishops think birth control is a sin, they should treat people using it as non-Catholics- still human beings- and not deny them access.

If the Bishops believe in the power of God, they should allow women access to contraceptives, because God’s will is stronger than anything on Earth. However, if they do not believe in God’s power- if they cannot trust God to do what is right, then perhaps they should continue taking this issue into their own hands.

As a feminist I fight every day to demonstrate that I am not a misandrist. As any feminist knows, that is an uphill battle. It seems that feminism and misandry are synonyms for much of the population, and that really upsets me. In fact, my partner held the belief that feminist hate men before he met me. He quickly realized that is the furthest thing from the truth, but that was only because he met me. When I meet new men I like to get them to like me (as friends of course!) and then “drop the bomb,” so to speak, that I am a feminist. Many of them are usually shocked to hear that I have serious concerns with the family justice system too. Because I so strongly feel that the patriarchy hurts men, and that I love my feminist boyfriend, this next sentence hurts me.

I want to silence all the male voices in the abortion discussion.

Trust me, it hurts for me to write that. My partner is one of the biggest supporters of abortion rights there is. I know a great many men who are huge supporters of abortion rights and I so greatly appreciate their support. But I still want to silence their voices.

Abortion, as I have previously blogged, has become a hot topic in Canada recently. The major voices from the government for the anti-choice camp are Stephen Woodworth, Brad Trost, and Rod Bruinooge (there is one more but for the life of me can’t find the correct spelling of his name so we’ll leave it at 3). I’m sure you guessed what they have in common: they’re all MEN! The main anti-choice voices for the U.S. are also all men. In fact, the majority of persons in government who are anti-choice, are men. And none of them can get pregnant. The people who are making decisions that affect the lives of women, CAN’T EVEN GET PREGNANT!

And so, I want to silence the voices of all men. I am so tired of men giving their opinion about abortion. I am so tired of it that I am willing to sacrifice the voices of all the men who support women. I truly believe that if men were no longer allowed to speak on the topic of abortion, every country would be pro-choice. Anti-choice women get abortions too. Abortion crosses every religious, cultural, and political line. The only line it can’t cross is biological sex, and that is where the problem lies.

Of course there are anti-choice women, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann being the two most prominent ones. I dislike them just as much as I dislike male anti-choicers, but something about a man, a person who could never fully appreciate the terror upon seeing a positive pregnancy test, a person who could walk away from a pregnancy if he so chose, a person who will never DIE in childbirth, something about him telling a woman that she should be forced to keep a pregnancy sends me into a rage.

It is that rage, that sense of complete and utter anger at a man telling me what I can and cannot do with my body that causes me to write that sentence, that causes me to want to silence all the male voices in the abortion discussion.

I know not everybody will agree with me, and that is okay. Some people view the male allies as more important than the male antis. I just happen to believe that if we take away the male voices, we will take away most of the antis. Our patriarchal society is based upon male control of women, and control of their bodies is key. I have decided that it’s time to take away male control. It’s time to silence male voices.

As a blogger with the Abortiongang, we are compelled to write about current events surrounding reproductive rights. This usually involves cultivating an anger or, at the very least, a frustration of some sort that provokes a post. But what happens when, as an activist, you become so overwhelmed that your activism stalls?

I’ve been trying to write a new post for a month and half with no success. I have a copy of said post saved in my “Drafts.” It still doesn’t say what I want it to say and I’m not sure it ever will. In and of itself, this is disheartening because I have a passion for words. When they don’t come out right, I feel like a failure. Combine this with my currently evolving life, and I’ve found myself with less and less motivation to tap into that passion that is so utterly necessary to activism. The rest of my life has been too exhausting to expend my anger here.

So what do you do when you find yourself deleting, en mass, calls to sign petitions in your inbox? Or not attending protests in your area? Or ignoring your deadlines for the blogs that you write for? (Well, before it gets to be too depressing and embarrassing to acknowledge that you’ve been slacking…?)

Recently, Serena wrote about self-care, and how we need all need to take better care of ourselves within the movement. Obviously I agree with her. Self-care is extremely important because burnout is all too real. But I don’t feel that I am at the point of burnout, necessarily, just trying to deal with a case of the “laissez-faire’s.”

After struggling for some time, I gave myself permission to acknowledge that my life is kind of screwed up right now and I’m doing the best that I can, and that is OK. My friends and my community have certainly all been there, and they will understand.

By simply giving myself permission to be in the place that I am, I was able to take the next step: taking off my blinders and shifting my focus. Instead of agonizing over a post that may never be, I’m writing this one. Cathartic, to be sure, because I’m actually doing something, just not the thing I originally intended. Will this post have as great an impact as the one I intended to write? I don’t know, but right now, I don’t care.

Finally, I got together with some other activist lady-friends and spent most of the time NOT talking about activism. We drank lots of wine and played with some puppies and talked about life, just not the activist life. It was refreshing and necessary and I love those ladies for spending the time with me as friends.

The moral (if there is one)? Stopping to rest isn’t necessarily stalling. Struggle isn’t necessarily failure. Life happens; having the support of your friends and community is important, but what may be more important, motivating and successful is to make peace with yourself where you are.

This tweet-stream is from a friend of mine @KnittingRad (named by permission). She posted it on Sunday 1/22/2012, the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, where she shared publicly for the first time that she’s had an abortion. I asked her permission to share it via the Abortion Gang, and she enthusiastically agreed

I feel strongly that more women’s stories of having abortions need to be told, need to be heard. We need to encourage each other as women to come out of the shadows, out of the shame, and out of the imposed stigma. It’s only by the sharing of our stories and asserting the rightness of those choices (especially when they include abortion) that we begin to dismantle the stigma of abortion.

I’m proud to know @KnittingRad; for this and many other reasons she’s a brave, fierce woman.

Job interviews and dating have a lot in common. They both involve a great deal of verbal and physical posturing, specific outfits and, at least one party wondering how truthful the other was… and if it was a one time encounter. Of course, a job interview is typically focused entirely on trying to land a position, while dating is a series of lengthy dinners and various recreational activities with the rather ambiguous goal of “getting to know each other.”

First dates, at least in my experience, typically cover the basics. Profession, state or town of origin, and a lengthy list of the most interesting hobbies that each participant can rattle off. A recent first date of mine resembled a geography bee as my date angled to impress me with the various places to which he had traveled.

No one wants to appear to be unattractive, either physically or otherwise, while on a date. So, hewing to advice long ingrained in us by our parents and teachers we stay away from topics like religion, doctors and politics. I may know whether the man sitting across from me is the “nice Jewish boy” of my (and my mother’s) dreams based upon stories of a childhood at Camp Ramah or be able to guess based upon a last name ending in “stein” or “witz,” but unless I ask, how will I know how he feels about abortion?

Straddling religion and politics, the A-word, as I privately call it, is at once both intensely personal and wildly inflammatory given the current political environment. There is no easy way to slip it into conversation on a first date. On a second or third date, when we have moved on to feigning enthusiasm for activities like bowling, salsa dancing and traipsing through numerous local tourist attractions, it seems even harder to ask the question. After all, the goal while dating is to show off the most fun, worldly yet not crazy version of ourselves, and while abortion is implicitly linked to sex, there is nothing sexy about it.

Still, I cannot imagine ever hopping into bed with someone without knowing now he feels about abortion and the current laws restricting it.

I’m curious, am I the only one who struggles with how to best ferret out is nugget of information? Would you stop dating an otherwise seemingly normal person if you found out that they were anti-choice?

A friend of mine recently celebrated her 30th birthday. She asked her party guests to give her their words of wisdom for making the most of her 30′s. I recommended that she schedule frequent hot dates with herself, and I gave her some bubble bath and cheap wine to get her started in the right direction. After I gave her this gift, I had to ask myself why I’m not following my own advice.

I think this is a quandry that many of us can relate to. As activists, we’re so busy taking care of other people that it’s often hard to find time to take care of ourselves.

One of my mentors gave me some good advice when I graduated from college. “Take care of yourself,” she said, “or you will burn out and you won’t be able to take care of anyone else.” I followed her advice by treating myself to expensive haircuts, cheap pedicures, and frequent sushi dinners. My budget ain’t what it used to be – so these days my version of treating myself involves a six-pack of cheap beer and a Netflix marathon.

I know I’m not the only one who struggles with self care. If you work at a clinic or an abortion fund, how do you decompress at the end of a shift? Do you have a hard time disconnecting from other people’s emotional baggage like I do, or have you developed a successful strategy for being compassionate and still taking care of your own emotional well being?

On the same note, for those of us with anti-choice family members, how do you handle family gatherings? I have typically tried to avoid discussing health care or politics. But that strategy crapped out on me over the holidays when my mom started asking me why I don’t support adoption over abortion. I walked away from a fight and took a shower to calm down. However, I can’t do that with every confrontation. I’d love to find a few strategies for dealing with anti-choice family confrontations.

How you practice self-care?

Hi. I’m a writer here at AbortionGang. I’m also a Christian. Nice to meet you!

It seems that a lot of press around our recent #10forTebow campaign is suggesting that we hate God, or Christians, or Jesus, or faith. This is simply not true.

If you take a second look at Sophia’s original post, you’ll see she never says a single bad thing about Christianity. She may laugh at Tebow’s excessive focus on his faith, but that is entirely about Tebow’s actions, not the religion he follows.

Some people may believe that being antichoice and Christian go hand in hand- to attack one is to attack the other. This also is untrue. Taking a stand against being antichoice is not taking a stand against Christianity.

Christianity has been separated into many different organized religions, and some Christians choose to create their own faith, outside of organized religion. I am not here to say which group or type is a/the True Christian, but I do want to point out that this diversity means there is a diversity of beliefs among Christians related to abortion.

One of the first abortion funds ever established was created by ministers, who were counseling women with problem pregnancies, and seeing the horrible effects of back-alley abortions. These ministers worked together to direct women to medically-safe abortion locations, and eventually they raised the money to fund an abortion clinic in their area. In this way, Christians were some of the first supporters of abortion funding, and keeping women safe.

Christians today continue to support a woman’s right to choose. There are many Christian organizations and denominations that have spoken up for women and their families: Catholics for Choice, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, The United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, and more.

Christians have a long history of supporting choice, and we will continue to support choice in the future. Being prochoice does not mean one hates God, or is against faith. Donating to an abortion fund as part of the #10forTebow campaign is one more way that Christians can do good in their community and help their fellow human, as God has asked us to. This campaign is for everyone who disagrees with Tebow’s antichoice position, not just atheists or agnostics who disagree with him.

I’ve had a lot of new year’s resolutions. I’ve had some successes: I still take a dance break every week and write letters by hand and many more failures: I still over-caffeinate, overspend, oversnack, and answer many questions with questions (not answers).  After a lot of thinking and reflecting and writing, I’ve realized what I really want to say I’ve done a little better when 2013 rolls around.   In 2012, I resolve to complain less, envision more.

See, I’m good at complaining.  As a social worker, I advocate professionally.  Part of being an educator on sexual violence is talking about injustice and what needs to change.  I agitate for pay, and I like to think for a good cause.  I call “bullshit” on the regular.  I look at my accomplishments as an activist and justify my outlook, even as this behavior breeds negativity and enervates me.  I can see a change made in the life of one of my clients and can go home to come back again tomorrow and kvetch some more.  I can practice self-care and think I’m doing what I need to do to sustain myself, at least in the short-run.  I channel my perfectionism and my outrage and my ire into trying to make the world a little less fucked up, one person or group of people at a time.

A lot of what we do as activists though is respond to attacks, and it can be engaging but also exhausting. I rally against much more than I rally for. I fight back much more than I fight for.  I am often reactive, rarely proactive.  I feel like I did as an awkward middle-schooler playing dodgeball.  I’m balled up in the corner, ball in hand, fending off an onslaught. I’m dodging, not throwing.  My glasses knocked on the ground, my vision obfuscated, focused on doing what we need to do to survive, feeling too overwhelmed to remember that we deserve to thrive.  And because this seemingly endless barrage mirrors the greater injustice those I serve (and let’s be real, I personally) have experienced, I often feel I only have enough energy to mount an admirable defense.  And that’s ridiculous and unsustainable.

I am not in middle school, and I do have some amount of power and control over at least a small piece of the world.  I can lob my own ball. Better yet, I can change the rules.  I can pick my own team. I can look around and see that I’m on a really fierce team already and use that to my advantage.  I know that I can’t play this game this way forever.  Burnout is real, and I don’t want to quit.

I let myself off the hook because I sometimes see my current paradigm as the only one that will ever exist.  I get self righteous.  Forces seemingly beyond my control (bigotry, violence, oppression) seem way too gargantuan when I have fires to fight right in front of my face.  I am deciding, despite my good intentions, to at least partially believe that change is impossible on a grander scale and that all we can do is keep helping individual people not have to face these injustices alone.  I can justify this as better than ignoring the problem, but I know I need a reframe.  Despite my privileges, I choose to push back rather than push forward.  I dwell in bullshit rather than in possibility.

So, for 2012, I resolve to create, to brainstorm, to envision, to bring together, to build, to facilitate conversation, to ask what if.  I resolve to not only deflect dodgeballs but to figure out how to inch toward a world where the rules are different.  I resolve to take time every day to imagine the world I want to live in five, ten, twenty years from now, the world I want for my children, the world I want for my grandchildren (should my children choose to have children). I resolve to start there and work backwards to today and to do the creative rather than defensive work I need to do to help us get there.  I resolve to, as my mentor has always said to me, use my powers for good.  I will use my power, regardless of how limited in scope, to move beyond fighting back.

We deserve sustainable movements. We deserve to be able to come together, empowered to articulate our own futures.  If we don’t come together to create our future, who will?  Even though there are days I still feel like it, I am not in middle school. And I am not last-picked in dodgeball. We are in this together, and we have the skills.  What do you want to see, and how can we work together to get there?

You may have learned recently that Michelle Duggar was pregnant for the 20th time. You may have also learned that she recently miscarried a baby girl at 19 weeks who the family has named Jubilee Shalom Duggar. You may have read about the funeral service that they held for Jubilee, or you may have seen these photos (trigger warning: fetus photos) of little Jubilee’s hands and feet being held, gently and carefully, by Michelle.

The Duggar family, specifically Michelle and her daughters, get a lot of flack for the lifestyle choices they’ve made (or, in the case of her daughters, will make) from the general populous. Michelle is derogatorily referred to as “Clown-Car-Uterus” (I kid you not, see the comments here, but only if you feel like losing your faith in humanity), and other people feel content to interpret Michelle’s recent miscarriage as a “sign from God” that the Duggars need to stop having children (contrary to Michelle’s belief that “God giveth, so he shall also taketh away”).

While I, personally, had a negative, visceral reaction to the photos that the family displayed at the funeral service, I don’t want to diminish their grieving. If these photos had not been sold to a tabloid (really, TMZ? shame on you), then no one outside of family and friends would have seen them. They would have remained mementos to mark the passing of a sibling and daughter. And how can anyone disrespect their choice of how to grieve? What I find to be unconscionable was that someone close to the family made money off of their misfortune by selling these to a tabloid.

And I fear how these photos will be used going forward. Anti-choice propaganda is rife with these sorts of images. Some, caring and gentle, like Michelle’s memorial photos, others, bloody and violent. I fear that these photos will go viral and will be used to further a message that I find to be so damaging to women in our society. I fear that someone, somewhere is going to see these triggering images, and feel pain or shame or guilt over her own miscarriage or abortion. I fear the a woman who is looking at her life and considering her choices is going to feel shamed into a choice she doesn’t want to make by these images. I worry about the harm that this image can, and likely will, do.

As someone who has suffered a miscarriage, I can empathize with Michelle and the Duggars need to grieve. I also feel that, as a pro-choice population, we need to support Michelle’s right to choose to continue to get pregnant.

But we can also be cognizant of how the Duggars narrative affects the pro-choice narrative, skewing it in one direction. Michelle is likable and accessible, and she makes the Duggars, as a whole, an easier sell. She discusses her faith and her choices in a very non-defensive, calm manner. She carefully chooses her words and her actions, and she sets a very high standard for other Christian women. And all of this would be well and good if it was reflective of the reality of Christian women. Sadly, the reality for other women can differ drastically from the world the Duggars live in. Not all Christian families can afford, both literally and figuratively, for “God to bless them” so frequently. Jim Bob, Michelle’s husband, is a successful realtor and investor, and they supplement their income with royalties from their reality show (which is not acknowledged by the Duggar family on their website). When questioned about money, they reply that they live frugally. While that is likely true, it doesn’t provide a full picture. Similarly, when asked about her pregnancy difficulties, Michelle replies that, while practice certainly helps, her recent weight loss of 40 lbs has been the most helpful thing. No mention of her struggles with preeclampsia with Josie, born at 25 weeks, and certainly no mention of her most recent miscarriage. And finally, the narrative of the Quiverfull Christian is significantly downplayed on the show. They rarely discuss the dangers of multiparity to Michelle’s health, but when forced to respond, Michelle easily answers by saying that she would give her life for her not-yet-born child. And this may seem like the obvious answer to anti-choice people, but what if a mother wants to be alive to parent her other children? What if the father figure is no longer present? What happens to those already-born children if their mother dies for her pregnancy? The Duggars are lucky enough to have Jim Bob, and the support of their community, family and friends. Not all Christian women are so lucky.

Simply put, the Duggars are not reflective of a typical Christian family, nor are their choices reflective of the options available to most women. However, their choice to have more children is theirs and theirs alone. We can stop supporting tabloids that buy these images; we can stop watching the Duggars show; but we cannot tell Michelle and Jim Bob how and when to reproduce.

I generally don’t acknowledge the haters, the violent threats, and anger in emails and responses to the pro-choice articles and blog posts I have written over the years, but today I feel compelled to respond with a reminder to everyone in the movement, sympathizers and the anti-choice readers: abortion saves lives. Furthermore, threats over email, in comment threads, or to my face won’t make me back down. Pro-choice advocacy isn’t going anywhere, not now, not after so many battles have been won and lost.

A friend of mine just informed me that she and her husband have decided to begin trying for a baby. How amazing for them, and such a happy time, too, because they have both chosen the time that’s right for their family to have a child. Their decision has come after much deliberation, planning, and consideration- probably how it should be for all parents. But as we all know, this isn’t how many children come into this world.

Many pregnancies are unplanned, mine was, and I know first hand the internal and external struggle to make my (emphasis on that word, readers) choice: abortion, adoption, or parent. Ultimately, I chose to stay pregnant and now have the most wonderful seven year old boy. But what if I had another child between his birth and now? Would I still be in college? What would our standard of living be? Do I want to travel? Birth control and abortion have allowed me not to fret about those very real questions. My life is better and consequently, so is my son’s, because I have the option to pursue my goals, dreams, aspirations, and express myself sexually (if I so choose) without having to fear becoming pregnant, and knowing that if by some stroke of bad luck, I became pregnant I would not have to remain if I did not so choose.

That’s the beauty of reproductive freedom: we women don’t have to have our uteri and fallopian tubes chained up in anti-choicer’s dogma. And I think ultimately that’s what drives a lot of the anti-choice vitriol. Because we women dare to imagine a world where our bodies are ours alone, where the organs inside of us don’t dictate what decisions we can make in our lives, where morality is not universal and based upon that same organ.

My life today, the ability to sit here and type this post is a direct result of the advances made by pro-choice advocates throughout the years – before and after Roe v. Wade. Some may say the rights of the cells that could potentially implant themselves inside an organ I was born with but did not ask for are more important than my own, I say no they’re not. Some may feel that because our morals and beliefs do not align I am evil, a murderer, or some other vile thing, I say the work I do and those on this site saves lives of women.

Too many lives are at stake, women’s freedom and quality of life are at risk. And it is that very fact that means this movement, our cause, despite threats will not go away.