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?

A co-worker once told me that in her 10+ years of working in the reproductive health field, her peers in other movements validated time and again that our movement is the most fucked up. Not fucked up because we don’t have our hearts in the right place (we do) or because we don’t have science on our side (we do), but because of the way we treat each other, and the way our intra-movement politics operate.

Every so often several friends and I debate the merits of “outing” certain organizations for their legendary bullshit. Everyone knows that organization A has an executive director who’s a megalomanic. Everyone knows that two particular organizations bully other smaller organizations. Everyone knows that organization B likes to fire (almost) everyone every couple of years. Everyone knows that certain national organizations have less than cordial relationships with their local affiliates. Is there merit in pinning a name to these claims? What would happen to the person who decided to to do so? Would she be ex-communicated from the movement? Lose the ability to work or volunteer in the movement ever again?

Maybe my friends and I are just bitter (former) employees. But we also believe that our movement can and should be better than this. Is this bait for antis? Everything is bait for antis. I’m willing to bet that they have similar problems in their own organizations. In a time of unprecedented legislative attacks on reproductive health, it feels impossible to find a second to catch our breath and evaluate how we’re doing. I have to believe that making sure our organizations are functioning productively and treating their employees humanely is as important as the work we’re doing.

In an effort to be less vague, let me make it painfully obvious. Here are a few clues that the reproductive health, rights, or justice organization you work at may be a toxic work environment:

• You’re expected to treat your members/patients/donors better than the way your boss/upper management treats you.
• You’re afraid to confront your co-worker/your boss about something racist/classist/transphobic/etc she said for fear of losing your job.
• You don’t get insurance coverage. The insurance coverage you get doesn’t cover pre-natal care, contraception, or abortion. You don’t get decent maternity or paternity leave. Yet these are all values your organization supposedly champions.
• There is frequent turn over and burn-out because of low pay and high stress.
• Your volunteers, interns, or anyone with “assistant” in their title are treated as a commodity.
• Young people, people of color, and/or queer folks are not valued, are not expected to be leaders, and are tokenized.
• When you give thoughtful feedback about your job or about the organization in general, no one takes you seriously.
• Your organization primarily works with or on behalf of low-income communities, communities of color, and/or young people, yet those folks are not represented on the staff or on the board. And there are no conversations about class, race, or privilege among staff. Ever.
• You see young people being encouraged to take on responsibilities for which they are not being paid, for the good of the organization and therefore the movement.
• You find yourself having to mask your work conditions, including poor communication, bad management, and unclear organizational goals, while selling your organization to donors and supporters.
• You are underpaid and are made to feel uncomfortable for any mention of that, or for requesting to be paid fairly, because times are tough/the economy is bad/you should be putting the organization’s needs before your own.
• Your organization only cares about marginalized people in a marginalized place (hello, low-income Texan women!) when your org stands to make a buck off of promoting their rough situation.

I want to be clear that these problems don’t exist in a vacuum (certainly stigma and a small professional world both play a part), and that they don’t exist only in the reproductive health, rights, and justice world.  I think the above grievances feel particularly shitty because we expect better. We expect organizations that are fighting for basic human rights to treat their employees and volunteers like, well, human beings. No organization or movement is perfect. I certainly hope that my former co-worker is wrong and that we’re not the most fucked up. But in listening to dozens of folks who’ve done this work at the highest and lowest levels, I suspect that it’s more than just the non-profit industrial complex.

I originally ended this post with some tips for upper management folks on how to begin to correct the above issues, but let’s be real. They’re not reading this blog. Should we “out” the organizations that perpetuate these problems? Frankly, I don’t have the answer to that. So to those suffering any or all of the above conditions: You’re not alone. You’re not making it up. You deserve better. And if you need a space to vent or process any of your experiences: write about it, anonymously or with your name attached (e-mail us and we’ll even publish it here!). Find your compatriots who are going through the same thing, whether in this movement or others. Let’s figure out how to make our movement sustainable for everyone in it.

Thanks to those who helped me come up with the bulleted list. I won’t name you, in case your organizations might penalize you. You know who you are. Thank you.

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?

Everyone from our celebrated allies to mainstream anti-abortion commentators have recently lauded the mantra that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. I’ve tweeted at these older (white) gentlemen in an attempt to explain why the “rare” framing is so problematic, but sometimes 140 characters just isn’t enough. Thankfully, I’m not the first to explore this subject, so instead of reinventing the wheel, I’m going to summarize one of my favorite articles on this: Tracey Weitz’s Rethinking the Mantra that Abortion Should be “Safe, Legal, and Rare.” 

So what bothers me so much when even President Obama says he wants abortion safe, legal, and rare? Well, the safe and legal part I’m behind 100%. The “rare” aspect? Not so much. Here’s why.

1. By saying that you want abortion to be “rare,” you’re passing a negative judgement on the people who perform abortions and the women who have them. This judgement is harmful to women and clinicians. Dr. Weitz explains why:

“Rare” suggests that abortion is happening more than it should, and  that there are some conditions for which abortions should and should not occur. It separates good abortions from bad abortions. It creates an understanding that women’s individual decision making is somehow responsible for the violent disruptive social conflict over abortion in the United States.

Do we really want to suggest that women who have abortions and clinicians who provide these health services are the reason that abortion is such a lightening rod social issue in the US? To do so is not only simplistic, but absolutely wrong.

2. Saying that you want abortion to be rare implies that there is something wrong with abortion, that abortion is somehow different from other parts of health care.  Specifically, marginalizing abortion care

has contributed to the significant decline in the number of locations where abortions are performed in the United States…Increased access to care is not  part of the “rare” message and efforts to expand services could be construed as working against the goal of making it less frequently used.

There should be as many abortions as there need to be. Instead of saying abortion should be rare, we should be working on expanding access to safe, affordable abortion services.

3. Wanting abortion to be rare suggests that training clinicians to provide abortions is unnecessary. In reality, we need more abortion providers to increase access to safe abortion care. In fact, as Dr. Weitz states,

The uniform acceptance that fewer abortions is good creates the inability to recognize the consequences of reduced access or to accept credit for efforts that actual increase the number of abortions.

What happens when abortion is not accessible to every person who needs it? According to Guttmacher, every year 47,000 women die as a result of unsafe abortion. What would that statistic look like if we trained every doctor worldwide to provide safe abortion care?

4. Another consequence of the “rare” framework is that it legitimizes the need for abortion restrictions, and these anti-abortion laws have the most dire consequences for women with the least resources. In addition to abortion restrictions being medically unnecessary and insulting to women and clinicians, there’s absolutely no proof that they actually reduce abortion rates. They just make it harder for women to access the care they need.

5. The “rare” framing sets up the unrealistic expectation that there’s a magic number of abortions that are acceptable, and once we reach that number, abortion will cease to be a divisive issue in American culture. Dr. Weitz uses the example of Dr. Tiller to elucidate this issue:

Unfortunately, numbers have little to do with ongoing opposition to abortion and the rarity of some abortions seem to be their reason for aversion. Take for example the situation of George Tiller, MD, the physician recently killed in Wichita, KS. In addition to having a robust practice of first trimester and early second-trimester procedures, Dr. Tiller also provided medically indicated abortions in the third trimester. While these abortions were “rare” in numerical sense, occurring only 2,400 times a year in the entire country, they were the abortions for which he was most reviled. The rarity of these procedures did not provide any protection for Dr. Tiller. Instead the specialness of those abortions provided evidence that such abortions were abnormal.

Bottom line? As Dr. Weitz puts it, saying that we want abortion to be rare “does not achieve the underlying goal of reducing  the social conflict over abortion and has real consequences for women’s health and well-being, including reducing access to care, increasing stigma,  justifying restrictions, and establishing unattainable goals.”

Where do we go from here? Thankfully, Dr. Weitz has four suggestions:

1. Accept that abortion is a polarizing issue in the U.S.;
2. Acknowledge that abortion has and will always be part of the human condition;
3. Validate the rights of women to equal participation in society and control over their  reproductive lives; and
4. Engage in the hard conversations about abortion regarding the moral status of life, the extent of the rights and autonomy of women, the limits of the state to intervening in personal decisions, and
   the role of religion in public life.

Instead of stigmatizing abortion by pushing for it to be rare, let’s work on achieving those goals instead.

I quoted extensively from Tracy Weitz’s article. Please go read it if you have the chance!

A guest post from Ayesha Chatterjee and Judy Norsigian. Cross-posted from On the Issues Magazine.

As current staff members at Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS), an organization that has advanced the health and human rights of women and girls over four decades, and longtime reproductive justice activists, we continue to hope that safe and affordable abortion care will, someday, become a reality for everyone. With increasing attacks and restrictions on abortion access worldwide, we have our work cut out.

Here, in the U.S., the debate around abortion has become especially polarized. Right-wing and anti-choice groups bombard young people with messages that stereotype and stigmatize those seeking abortion services — both individuals and entire communities. Think: billboards have popped up around the country equating abortion to the genocide of African-American children, who are further described as an “endangered species.” These — and other — oversimplified messages mock a personal and often complex decision, not to mention the right to a constitutionally protected and medically safe procedure. They influence how people, especially young people, articulate and align themselves on abortion. They drive our activism — our tireless commitment to alliances across aisles and opinions, and to conversations that move beyond “pro-life” and “pro-choice” rhetoric to focus on the individual, her needs, rights and circumstances.

Engaging, mobilizing and building alliances on an issue like abortion can be an uphill climb. But as 2012 rolls in, we want to take a few minutes to remind you about why it is important and suggest a few ways you can go about this challenge.

Building Up Our Friends

Our allies are our greatest strength. We especially need to appeal to the hearts and minds of people “on the fence,” by connecting abortion rights to principles that they hold valuable — equality, privacy, dignity, security and more. We must show how these principles will be affected if we do not have the fundamental right to reproductive freedom. We believe that we can even engage anti-choice people in conversations about how restrictions on access to abortion affect women and girls — especially those who are uninsured, under-insured, socially or ethnically marginalized and isolated.

We need to take a few minutes to contact the judges in our communities and ask them to defend the rights of women and girls. Monica Roa, the lawyer who argued a case before Colombia’s Supreme Court that liberalized that nation’s restrictive abortion law in May 2006, identifies judges as a key audience: “Judicial bias is a major conflict throughout the world.” She proposes a highly effective “court targeting” approach that includes getting better acquainted with specific judges and their position on issues.

And we must not forget our friends, our existing allies — an activist neighbor, a local abortion fund or a provider — on the forefront of the abortion rights movement and under threat because of it. Supporting them is critical and we can do so in a number of ways. We can donate money to local abortion funds which provide financial and logistical assistance to women that need abortions, or simply volunteer our time to their activities — a list of abortion funds is online. We can also volunteer at clinics, in roles that range from administrative to serving as clinic escorts that guide staff, providers and clients in and out of clinics and shield them from harassment and pro-life demonstrators. If these options seem daunting, we can help tremendously by just talking — with family and friends at home, with our community via blogs and local newspapers, and with our political representatives on the phone.

Listening and Engaging Listeners

In our bid to build alliances across the table, those of us involved in the struggle to preserve abortion rights must develop new tools of moral suasion. How? For a start, we need to be good listeners, good storytellers and patient communicators, and to create safe spaces for respectful dialogue, either one-on-one or in groups.

Judy Norsigian:

I remember an eye-opening conversation many years ago with a priest – a family friend – who had regularly sermonized about the evils of abortion. He described how one year a woman came to him afterwards and described WHY she had had her own abortion and why what he had said in church was so wrong and hurtful to her and many other women. A thoughtful and compassionate person, he decided to cease such sermons, but his comment about this encounter was instructive: “Don’t get me wrong, I still think of abortion as killing life in some form…I have not changed my mind about that. But what I realize now is that an abortion can be the RIGHT and moral thing to do.”

In the years that followed, I found a number of people who resonated with this kind of thinking and who could find a way to support a woman’s right to choose, while, at the same time, holding on to the concept of abortion as an act that destroyed life in some form. They noted that society does, at times, sanction even the killing of human beings (during war, in self defense) and, thus, could envision abortion as a moral choice and one to be preserved for women needing to make that choice.

Ayesha Chatterjee:

Active in the grassroots abortion access movement in the Boston area, I am also expecting my first baby in the spring of 2012. While I see absolutely no dichotomy in my activist and parenting roles, I have been asked a few times whether becoming a mother has softened my position on abortion rights, made me more empathetic to pro-life reasoning. My response: Far from it! My decision to have children is situated within my unique context and personal needs and capacity. If anything, the hands-on experience with the ongoing physical, emotional and financial commitment needed to nurture another human being has only deepened my understanding of an incredibly complex and personal issue, as well as my appreciation of why some decide to terminate their pregnancy and others, despite the many and different challenges, carry theirs to term.

When we are at a loss for words, drawing on other eloquent voices in the reproductive justice movement can help get the discussion started.

For starters, here are a couple such individuals:

Dr. Garson Romalis, a Canadian abortion doctor, whose speech on January 25, 2008 at the University of Toronto Law School Symposium is well worth reading. Dr. Romalis had been physically attacked — shot and stabbed, on two different occasions six years apart — and remained deeply committed to providing abortion services throughout his long career. At the close of his speech, he wanted to describe “one last story that I think epitomizes the satisfaction I get from my privileged work.” He continued, “Some years ago I spoke to a class of University of British Columbia medical students. As I left the classroom, a student followed me out. She said: ‘Dr. Romalis, you won’t remember me, but you did an abortion on me in 1992. I am a second year medical student now, and if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be here now.’”

Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, offers many compelling insights in, for example, Missed Opportunities in McCorvey v. Hill: The Limits of Pro-Choice Lawyering, in the New York University Review of Law & Social Change in 2011, or Long Term Policies, Long Term Gains in Conscience in Winter 2006-2007. In the latter, Paltrow writes: “those who defend the right to choose abortion often frame their defense in terms of protecting Roe v.Wade and access to abortion services. But far more than Roe and abortion is at stake. The health, dignity and human rights of all pregnant women are threatened by anti-abortion and fetal rights laws. Such laws create the basis not only for outlawing abortion but also for forcing women to have unnecessary Caesarean sections, for banning vaginal births after Caesarean sections and for treating pregnant women with drug, alcohol and other health problems as child abusers before they have even given birth.”

It also helps to be prepared for contentious conversations with compelling arguments and facts.

Anti-abortion advocates often use dangerous and misleading approaches to restrict access to abortion and birth control, and having a counter argument ready goes a long way. This misinformation runs the gamut — from claiming that the emergency contraception or morning-after pill (Plan B) is the same as the “abortion pill” to asserting that feticide laws, now existing in about 38 states and on the federal level, protect pregnant women, when in reality they are frequently used against pregnant women, especially those who may have used drugs during a pregnancy. So, staying abreast of facts to counter their fiction is critical and there are innumerable on-line and off-line resources. Here are two: The Guttmacher Institute and Ipas.

Converting Our Energy

When we gain ground by changing hearts, minds or policies, we have to ensure it translates into action — securing real and affordable access to birth control and abortion for women and girls.

While we have a long way to go before reproductive justice is a reality for everyone, the looming possibility of an anti-choice administration (and all that this would entail) has serious implications for women and girls in the U.S. and, through policies that restrict the use of U.S. development aid overseas, women and girls around the world. Your voice is important.

Our goals are substantial and clear. We need to become involved — to educate one another and ourselves on the nuances of abortion rights and access; defend the fast dwindling numbers of abortion clinics and abortion providers nationwide; express our outrage when they are attacked and vilified; demand greater and equal access to all reproductive health services including affordable and safe birth control and abortion care; counter misleading and dishonest anti-abortion propaganda and hold the people behind these tactics accountable for their actions.

Doing this effectively will require creativity, tenacity and abiding respect of all women’s realities and circumstances. We’re up for the challenge — are you?

Last week I had the privilege of participating in a panel called Demystifying Abortion, an event that aimed to shift the conversation away from the politics of abortion into the day to day reality of reproductive health care provision here in NYC. I was on the panel representing NYAAF, the abortion fund here, and joining me was an abortion provider, an abortion doula, a woman who’d had an abortion, a representative from Exhale, and a clinic escort. While the panel did a lot to shed light on the who, what, when, where, and why of abortion, it also did something I didn’t expect: it revealed just how much the pro-choice movement itself stigmatizes abortion.

Stigma manifested itself in a number of ways. For one, the abortion doula decided to use this quote to describe why women have abortions: “A woman wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.” Unbeknownst to the doula, this quote is from the anti-choice group Feminists for Life, and is meant to describe a desperation that is destructive, a desperation that leaves a woman alive but (literally) hurt by the experience. Did the doula know the context of this quote? No, and I’m sure she thought she was somehow making women who have abortions sympathetic to the audience. Regardless of the quote’s origins, do we really want to discuss abortion in the context of self-mutilation? To do so is misleading, manipulative, and harmful.

The doula wasn’t the only person to perpetuate abortion stigma. During the Q&A after the panel, several women shared their abortion stories. One woman in particular mentioned that after listening to the representative from Exhale, she felt guilty for not feeling regret after her abortion. I have no doubt that Exhale provides support to women regardless of how they feel after their abortions, but there is something not quite right with your messaging if you’re making women question the validity of their emotional responses, positive or negative.

What surprised me most about the event (though it really shouldn’t have surprised me) was how much both the provider and the doula emphasized that most abortions are not later abortions, and that later abortions are particularly icky. The provider casually mentioned that some people pass out when they see later abortions (giving absolutely no context as to why, leaving the audience to assume the worst), the doula emphasized that all women who have later abortions cry their eyes out before and afterwards. Is it true that some people pass out and some women cry? Of course. But to lay out these statements as universal truths is misinformation, and stigmatizes later abortions (what could be so bad that people pass out??) and the women who have them (what could be so bad that they cry all the time?). What could’ve been useful: some science on later abortions and the women who have them. The truth? Most people don’t pass out. Some women cry, some women don’t. Making later abortions sound like gruesome tragedies stigmatizes the women who need them and the clinicians who perform them.

I understand why we emphasize that the majority of abortions are first trimester abortions from a PR standpoint–most people are grossed out by the idea of later abortions, I get it. And the reality is that most abortions happen in the first trimester. But does emphasizing this over and over do anything besides stigmatize later abortions? Shouldn’t we have empathy, respect, and compassion for all women who need abortions no matter when they have them? We do our movement, and the women we serve, a disservice when we say that an early abortion is ideal and a later abortion is tragic or bad. In doing so, we lose the nuance of why women have abortions, of their personal stories, and instead focus on what makes us comfortable or uncomfortable. It’s not about us. It’s about the women who have abortions.

I don’t want to give the impression that this event was a disaster. In fact, it was the exact opposite. What could be better than an enthusiastic and eager audience listening to experts talk about the ins and outs of getting an abortion? With that said, I do not think the pro-choice movement is absolved from thinking about how we perpetuate certain myths and stigma surrounding abortion. It’s not just the anti-choice folks who succeed in this role. We clearly have some work to do on our own.

Note: To clarify, this post is not meant as a criticism of the work of any of the organizations represented by individuals on this panel. Rather, this post is a critique of abortion stigma, and is meant to cast a light on how pervasive this stigma is, as even members of the pro-choice movement ourselves perpetuate it. 

A guest post by Gwen Emmons.

One of the most common questions reproductive justice activists get is why we focus on choice in a time where so many other pressing issues – jobs, poverty, healthcare reform – have yet to be solved.

My answer is simple: they’re all connected. And on the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I think it’s more crucial than ever to reflect on how reproductive autonomy fits in to the bigger question of realizing the American dream.

The ability to determine the timing and spacing of one’s pregnancies (or whether to be pregnant at all) contributes to your ability to enjoy economic security. Unplanned pregnancies can, unfortunately, be costly (particularly if you are un- or under-insured) and can impact your ability to work in some cases. Having the ability to control your reproduction is crucial to controlling your economic destiny.

Access to safe abortion care, contraception, Plan B, medically accurate sex ed, and affordable gynecological screenings and childcare services are at the base of the pyramid that makes up that American dream. Lose Roe – or any of these other pieces – and we risk toppling that pyramid. Unfortunately, for too many women and men, that’s already happening. And it’s shameful.

The flip side of this is that instead of fixing things like poverty, the economy, or our healthcare system, legislators in Pennsylvania and across the country have focused their efforts on chipping away at choice. Spoiler alert: restricting access to Plan B doesn’t create jobs. Draconian restrictions on abortion services won’t fix our economy.

So as we celebrate 39 years of access to safe, legal abortion, let’s reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that reproductive rights – and the American dream – remain attainable to everyone.

These are composites of clients and the names are pseudonyms.

Marina wants to keep this pregnancy but has an eight-month-old daughter at home and just started a new job. She tells me she’s certain she can’t be a good mom to her daughter, financially or emotionally, if she has another baby so soon. She cries during and after the procedure. She tells me that she knows she “has to do this” for her daughter, but it hurts a lot. She naps a little in the recovery room and I give her my phone number when she leaves.

Leslie, who is trying to escape an abusive partner, tells me that she fears that bringing this pregnancy to term would keep her forever tied to him. She has a warm smile and is very open with me as she describes the shelter where she is staying with her two young children and the restraining order she has against her husband. She flinches a few times during the procedure but is able to talk through it and is surprised when it’s done. She tells me it was much quicker and easier than she thought it would be. The social worker who did her counseling prior to the procedure gave her a lot of resources and I make sure she has a chance to speak to the social worker a second time before she leaves.

Deana emphatically refuses my proffered hand and snarls at the nurse. Later, in the recovery room, she apologizes, telling me, through tears, that these last few weeks have been really stressful. She loves the hot pack I’ve given her and we talk about how to make one at home by filling a large sock with rice, tying off the end, and sticking it in the microwave. She assures me that she is going to go home and sleep this afternoon and will make sure her partner pampers her.

I have been very busy the past two weeks. I volunteer with the Abortion Access Network of Arizona. We recently told the abortion providers in Arizona that we’re available to assist their clients. The result has been that our phone has been ringing off the hook. There are currently only two of us handling intake calls. Needless to say, we’re overwhelmed. But the calls reaffirm the work that we’re doing. Here is a snap shot of the women we’ve funded in the past two weeks. (I’ve changed the names of the women to protect their privacy.)

Vanessa is leaving an abusive relationship. Her partner cleaned out their joint bank account when she left him, leaving Vanessa completely broke. She managed to scrape together money to pay for her abortion, but she needed $60 to pay for gas to drive into Phoenix from one of our small rural communities. We were able to help her get the gas money she needed to get back and forth.

Delores was 21 weeks pregnant – bumping right up against the legal limit for abortion in Arizona. She was getting a late term abortion because she didn’t know she was pregnant until 20 weeks. The birth control method she uses eliminates her period. The only clue about pregnancy was the weight gain. We helped Delores pay for her abortion, as well as gave her money for gas and helped connect her with housing, since she, too, had to drive to Phoenix from a small, rural community.

Several of the women who have called are unemployed. They have all told us that they have other children to support and just cannot afford another child right now.

Every one of the women we have spoken to has a different story to tell. But the consistent theme in all of their stories is that they are making a responsible decision about their health, and doing the best they can to support their families. Antis love to portray abortion patients as slutty, irresponsible people who have no thoughts about their decision. That is a blatant lie. Every single one of the people our fund has helped have put a lot of thought into their decision to get an abortion. The fact is that we are in tough economic times, and lots of people are down on their luck. And I’m very grateful that our abortion fund is able to assist folks.

That being said, our fund is already out of money and it’s only the middle of the month. I know that other funds have similar experiences. It’s difficult to tell folks that you can’t help them because you’re out of money. We’re planning monthly fundraisers for the year of 2012, and we’re very excited to participate in NNAF‘s national bowl-a-thon in April. We’re slowly getting more volunteers to join our fund – but I think you can see why we’re feeling overwhelmed. There’s just so much work to do.

If you’re a reader in Arizona and you’d like to help share the work, AANA would love to hear from you. Please visit our website to find out how you can join our team.

If you’ve been volunteering for an abortion fund for a while, how have you dealt with a call when you’ve had to tell a client that your fund is out of money? I would love to hear your stories.

Guest post from Rachel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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