Meanwhile, Back in Virginia...

While I've been frolicking around snowy Oxford (details and pictures to come soon, I promise!), my home state has been up to no good.

The Virginia House of Delegates voted today on a "Personhood" bill, which grants individual rights on an embryo from the moment of conception. It passed, so now it moves on to the Senate, where it will be a close vote but it's likely to pass. Bills like this are problematic for a whole wide range of reasons, but particularly because they could limit access to birth control and infertility treatments - after all, the pill and some other birth control methods can prevent fertilized eggs from implanting, which under this bill would be murder. In fact, the bill specifically says that it applies to contraception, not just abortion. Responding to these concerns, Republican Delegate Marshall, from my home county, said "Let's just say that the imaginations of the opponents are fertile, but their arguments are sterile. ... None of these stories that these ladies bring up about birth control being made illegal has ever happened.

Oh, those ladies and their stories. Haha. Funny. I love it when my concerns about access to medical treatment are dismissed and turned into puns. When a Democratic delegate tried to propose an amendment specifically excluding legal contraception, the House refused to take it up.

Meanwhile, the Senate advanced legislation which would include fetuses in wrongful death lawsuits. I like to imagine that they're thinking of women who are victims of violence and miscarry as a result, and want to give them some legal recourse for that loss. However, the South has a long tradition of prosecuting women for miscarrying under laws like this, so I can't imagine it will end well.

Virginia people, contact the General Assembly  and tell them to reject both these ridiculous bills! We really don't need the reputation of being the first state in the nation to give embryos rights at pregnant women's expense!

Apartment Fun Times

Today, my apartment-mates and I gathered around for a group reading of the pamphlets passed out on campus by our local Crisis Pregnancy Center. (And oh, did they have lots of pamphlets. I hate to think of the forests cut down to print this stuff.) I expected the cover of the tabloid-sized piece my friend was reading from to be something pink with babies, but instead it showed a homeless person, a child in Africa, an obviously battered woman... and said "You can stop injustice."

And then you turned the page, where it said, in big letters, "Starting in the womb." With that one picture of a fetus they always use.

And then I think I swore a lot. All of the ridiculous, medically false, emotionally manipulative claims my roommate had been reading from flew out of my head with pure fury at just how completely awful that title was. "The greatest injustice of our time," it said. As in, the way to fix homelessness or poverty or sexual trafficking or domestic violence or racism - all things mentioned on the cover - is not to pay any attention to the people currently in those situations, but to SAVE ALL THE BABIES.

I don't know about you, but I don't read that as a convincing argument for 'life'. If anything, it's a complete disregard for human life, to suggest that the proper way to fight injustice is to coerce women into carrying unwanted pregnancies to term, rather than actually addressing the problem itself, whatever it might happen to be.

(Fun side note, every page in the pamphlet was marked "advertising supplement," which I translated as "we're allowed to lie.")

Pregnant Women who Miscarry Facing Criminal Charges

As is often the case when I come across something profoundly messed up, I have no idea what to say about this article except that you should read it and also note how profoundly messed up it is. Today, it's an article from ThinkProgress about pregnant women in the South facing criminal charges for losing their babies.

Kimbrough [who was charged under a "chemical endangerment" law after her child died shortly after birth] is now facing a 10-year sentence if her case is not reversed on appeal — a 10 year sentence that will deprive her three other children of their mother.

A common tactic by prosecutors is singling out a group of women who are unlikely to draw public sympathy — women who may have used drugs while pregnant — to blur the line between abortion and homicide. Rennie Gibbs, for example, was 15 when she became pregnant and lost her baby in a stillbirth. Prosecutors charged her with a “depraved heart murder” after they discovered she had used cocaine, although there was “no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby’s death.” She now faces life in prison in Mississippi.

ThinkProgress rightly notes that targeting women who use drugs legally is exactly the wrong strategy - rather than encouraging women to seek out pre-natal health care to help them get off drugs and have better health outcomes for themselves and their children, it forces them to hide and put themselves and their children at greater risk. But it's more than the practical outcomes of the policy that's bothering me.

I remember in my women's studies class a few semesters ago reading an article about how our culture wants to control pregnant women's bodies. We tell them not to drink, not to eat too much of this or too little of that, to get some kinds of exercise but not others, or OMG THEIR BABY IS GOING TO BE RUINED FOREVER. And obviously, maternal health and prenatal health is important, so to some extent all that is probably helpful. But...

We have serious problems with maternal and prenatal health in our country. We have high maternal mortality rates and high infant mortality rates, so all of our yelling at women about what to do and not to do doesn't seem to be working.

And maybe micro-managing women's behavior, from bombarding them with parenting books to arresting them when they fail to meet our intense standards for how they should treat their bodies, isn't the best strategy. Maybe more access to pre-natal care, childcare, education, birth control... maybe those things would be a better idea than insisting on controlling women's bodies but giving them no resources.

I think really, what I want to say, is that it's not the government's business if I were pregnant and drank or took drugs or whatever. It's sad. It's a failure of my own health and the health of my child, but in that case it should be a health issue, not a legal one.

A Quick Note

The flood of legislation attacking women's reproductive rights the past few months has been too massive and incessant for me to try to keep track of each bill considered, but Shakesville has a post on a bill being considered in Indiana that's well worth a read. The bill would make abortions illegal after 20 weeks; fetus viability is usually considered to start around 24 weeks. Republicans are hesitant to include exceptions for maternal health, rape and incest, because women "could just lie and say they were raped."

The quote that jumped out at me so was the following:

I'm going to go ahead and flatly say that I believe denying access to a legal medical procedure to women is so thoroughly unethical and so thoroughly breaks faith with women that even if they did have to lie to gain access to abortion, it would be entirely reasonable.

Um, yes. That.

Hold Your Breath and Jump Backwards 7 Times

Mother Jones magazine has a fun history of birth control up today in honor of the 50th year since The Pill was approved by the FDA.

The history before the 20th century is especially fun: Crocodile dung as birth control, black cat bone anti-pregnancy charms, and a picture of Casanova inflating a condom, shown here for your entertainment.

Duh.

A recent study shows that abortion rates are down because contraception rates are up.

Wow, who knew providing women control of their reproductive health - including increasing access to abortion, as the article points out - actually decreases the need for abortion? It's not like pro-reproductive rights activists have been saying that for years or anything.

In which the state of Oklahoma is super-sketch

So, did you know, that under new Oklahoma law, doctors have to collect detailed data about every abortion they perform, which is then posted on a public website?

First of all, my initial reaction: WTF SO SKETCHY.

But to be a bit more smart about it:

1) "The data is intended to be used for academic research to help health officials figure out how to prevent abortion in the future."
First of all, any data collected would be basically useless - If a woman sees more than one provider about her abortion, she'll show up as two people, so it'll be skewed if someone, say, goes to a primary-care provider and an OBGYN. Secondly, there are some questions that have no basis in reality: "Was there an infant born alive as a result of the abortion?" Another question that confused me was, under possible reasons for abortion, "Was the pregnancy a result of forcible rape?" ...Is there any other kind?

2) "There's no information identifying the mother, so it's totally anonymous!"
Because in a tiny Midwestern town, questions about where you live, your education level, your race, your marital status, and your previous pregnancies are totally not enough to narrow it down for any interested creepers.

So I think my first reaction was appropriate. You say "putting abortion data online is totally useful for stuff!" I say, "Oklahoma, stop being a super-sketchy creeper!"

Full text of the law can be found here.

Report Cards!

NARAL just texted me to let me know that the grades are in on how state lawmakers stand on reproductive heath issues!

My state got an F. Is anyone surprised? No. Not at all. I also learned that 86% of counties in my state don't have abortion providers. I think that my county is one of the 14% that does, because I see the protestors day in and day out on my way to fencing.

Speaking of grades, mine have been dropping, which is what happens when you miss two days of school for college visits. So the lack of blog posts that has been plaguing this sad little corner of the internet will probably continue while I frantically run around doing make-up work and getting the magazine going. Sorry! I will someday make up for my epic blogging fail with amazing, astonishingly insightful posts that will make all of your brains explode with the awesome. But first I have to survive the rest of high school.

Happy Days Are Here

Today is a Happy Day.

Reasons to be happy:

1) Obama is ending the Global Gag Rule.
2) It's sunny out.
3) The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed the Senate.
4) I passed my Government exam.
5) Gov. Paterson's Senate pick, Kristen Gillibrand, supports marriage equality, a repeal of DOMA, and the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell. (This is a flip-flop on her part, but hey, I'll take it.)
6) It's the weekend.
7) President Obama released a statement reaffirming Roe v. Wade on its anniversary yesterday, making him the first president to do so in almost a decade.
8) I'm buying a new notebook today.

All this, and I'm only halfway through my blog roll. God, I love Fridays. And I get to spend all weekend doing social justice stuff at church. Whoo!

What made you happy this week?

Marriage and Entitlement

I can't seem to get through a day without finding a blog post that makes me boiling mad. Today, it was a story about a woman charged with battery for defending herself while she was being raped by her husband.

He was released with no charges, by the way.

The story goes as follows:

After a night of drinking, Charris Bowers and her husband arrived at their Deltona home late Saturday and began having oral sex, the report says.
But moments later as Bowers and her spouse, Delou, engaged in the act, she began biting down hard enough that Delou Bowers asked her to stop, the report says.
When she refused, Delou Bowers started punching Charris Bowers in the head and face until she finally let go, the report says.
That wasn't enough, according to the report. Charris Bowers then attempted to punch her husband and he shoved her to the ground and left the room.
Charris Bowers told deputies that she bit her husband because she did not want to have sex.

Generally, when one is forced to engage in sex without consent, it's called rape. In this case, it's apparently innocent marital fun that ended in a terrible crazy female assault.

After reading a bunch of posts on the topic, I thought of some words of wisdom from everyone's favorite right-wing nutjob, Dennis Prager, whose opinion regarding marital sex is as follows:

What if your husband woke up one day and announced that he was not in the mood to go to work? If this happened a few times a year, any wife would have sympathy for her hardworking husband. But what if this happened as often as many wives announce that they are not in the mood to have sex?

That's right, ladies. Having sex with your husband is your job; refusing is terribly irresponsible. And can, apparently, lead to your arrest, if your refusal turns into violent self-defense.

As Yes Means Yes points out, the column constantly describes sex as a wife "giving her body" to her husband. And then compares it to a job; I'm assuming the husband is the employer? Dennis crafts a world in which sex is an object to be given, and by getting married, the woman is handing over ownership.

But wait! You might cry. Isn't sex supposed to be more of a shared experience than something to be given or owned?

Fortunately, Dennis is here to correct our silly feminine notions of sex.

Many contemporary women have an almost exclusively romantic notion of sex: It should always be mutually desired and equally satisfying or one should not engage in it. Therefore, if a couple engages in sexual relations when he wants it and she does not, the act is “dehumanizing” and “mechanical.”

Yes, mutually enjoyable sex is a silly myth. (Personally, I can't see why any guy would want "mechanical" sex, but what would I know?)

It sounds ridiculous (because it is,) but ideas like this obviously aren't limited to the world of crazy fundamentalist columnists. If we didn't assume consent came with marriage, would Charris Bowers be arrested for defending herself against unwanted sex with her husband?

Taking the High Road

Today in my government class we decided that instead of taking notes or anything boring like that, we were just going to debate the issues. We talked about affirmative action, the role of the internet in political campaigns, and then, everyone's favorite pre-packaged debate: Abortion! Yaay!

This only happened once or twice in our particular debate, but it's something I noticed seems to happen pretty regularly when abortion comes up.

An otherwise pro-choice student, about to make a pro-choice comment, starts his or her statement with: "I wouldn't get an abortion myself, but...".

Or any variation thereof.

I used to do this, too, especially during the awkward, "We only half know what we're talking about" debates that went on in my middle school during the last big election. But the thing is, I decided that it's really, really stupid.

I think the idea behind it is to kind of try to put yourself on the moral high ground - I mean, you don't want anyone to think you're a baby-killer. But really, saying "I don't believe in abortion, but I think it's okay for other people" is a weird argument to me, especially when you're going to go on to say that people should look at the unique circumstances each woman is in, as some of the people in my class argued. Qualifying your endorsement of abortion rights by implying that not getting an abortion is the more moral choice makes for a poor endorsement.

I hope that made sense, I'm probably kind of rambling. But really, what you personally would choose shouldn't help your argument one way or another - the important part is having the RIGHT to choose.

The Culture War and High School

In my Government class we're learning about the culture war! Our book, written by a Republican, says there are two sides: Orthodox, who think traditional moral values trump personal liberty and that morality can be defined by a black-and-white, unchanging set of views, and Progressives, who think personal liberty is more important than traditional values and morality should be considered in light of the realities of modern life.

I had kinda thought the whole "Culture War" thing was at least winding down. No such luck. The lovely lady over at What To Expect When You're Aborting put up a post today correcting this misconception with her own first-hand experience.

By all legal evidence the culture war about abortion is over. Roe v wade, Medicaid funded, second trimester having abortion is on the books. And that’s what’s so frieghtening about these people. According to them, the law is wrong. That civil right is wrong. Imagine people outside of a voting both telling you your very right to excerise your choice and cast a ballot IS WRONG. It’s jaw dropping. And their presence was felt all the way into the recovery room. The mandatory counseling session, the literature in the clinic, the scowl on the mothers at their young pregnant daughters in the waiting room were all a direct result of the actions of the culture warriors. I was seething that my body was subject to this debate. That some punk 17 year old who has never had the nerve to stick his trembling shaft into the slit of a woman, who has doesn’t have the right to legally drink, who has never had a period, who will never know what the fuck it feels like to have his nuts up for debate, has the fucking unflinching audacity to shame ME?

So, the Culture War rages on. Sigh. On the one hand, it strikes me as really ridiculous, but on the other hand I know that I'd have as hard a time reaching a compromise as a pro-lifer would, because for me it's a RIGHT that they're stepping on, and for them it's a LIFE that I'm messing with - pretty black and white, all things considered.

There was apparently an epic discussion of reproductive rights in Creative Writing today, but I missed it, because I'm in Independent Study that period while the rest of the class works on Nonfiction. The assignment was to write a letter to the next president for some contest, and my teacher says I have to do it anyway, because the winning letters are actually sent to the president. So I guess I need to get writing on that! I'll post it here when it's done, of course.

Oh, Mondays. I don't like them.

Protecting Patient's Rights

There's an amazing article up at RH Reality Check about the consequences of the proposed HHS rule that's meant to protect heath care provider's rights to practice according to their beliefs... I guess? Something like that. I don't really get the logic behind it. Here's what the article says:

Dr. Brown argues that requiring him to give emergency contraception to Sally would violate his religious beliefs. "I shouldn't have to give up my religious freedom in order to be a doctor," he says. ... How should the hospital go about fulfilling [its] responsibilities for patients like Sally? Should administrators fire Dr. Brown and replace him with someone who will dispense EC to rape victims? No, that would not be the preferable way of dealing with this situation, because there are far less drastic options available. Instead, the hospital could offer Dr. Brown a transfer out of the ER into another unit of the hospital where he would not be expected to dispense EC, and replace him in the ER with someone who has no objections to EC. Such an arrangement would be an example of a "reasonable accommodation" under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices, unless doing so places an "undue hardship" on the employer's business. This type of careful balancing of competing rights is a hallmark of American public policy.

This, to me, seems like the most logical solution. I mean... why would you, as a doctor, take a job where you would be required to violate your personal beliefs, when medicine is such a broad field that surely other jobs are available? If your beliefs are that important to you, you should be willing to compromise to be able to follow them, instead of requiring other people to compromise for you.

So, if I ruled the world, that would be my solution. If a medical professional doesn't want to talk about/provide/refer for a certain drug or service or whatever, he or she should be given the option to do his or her job somewhere else. Because really, in situations like this, I don't care what the doctor believes about EC - The focus should be on the patient and what she needs to know to make an informed decision about her health.

On that note, there are TWELVE DAYS left before the proposed HHS rule becomes law. That's not a lot of time. If you haven't already done it, PLEASE contact Secretary Leavitt here and tell him your concerns.

kNOw More

Being new as I am to writing about reproductive rights, there are a lot of issues I'm not very well-educated on, and one of them came up today. The Family Violence Prevention Fund started a new project called kNOw More, which is about the reproductive health consequences of sexual and domestic violence, particularly for young women.

Besides providing plenty of facts and resources about the topic, the website also provides a place for young women to tell their own stories. Here's one:

Carollee started dating a 32-year-old man when she was 19. Things went well at first and they began to sleep together. She was on birth control pills, however, she noticed that whole rows of pills would disappear. When Carollee called her boyfriend on the disappearing birth control, he responded that he “knew” she wanted to have his child. Carollee also noticed that he was sabotaging the condoms, but didn’t bring it up.

Read the rest here.

Sigh.

The breaking news of the day is that McCain's running mate has a vagina. I'm too sleepy to care about politics. In fact, I think I need a vacation from politics - it's the last weekend of my summer vacation, dammit.

Fortunately, I found awesome articles on a far more interesting topic: Access to emergency contraception.

On a Tuesday morning at 7 a.m., I set out to discover just how easy it would be for me to get my hands on some emergency contraception. ... The sweet sounding girl who answered the phone, didn't know what the hell I was talking about, and then ran off to ask the pharmacist, told me that I needed to get a prescription from my doctor. Given that I had just read that Plan B was available over-the-counter, this seemed strange to me, but given that this pharmacy indubitably deals with such requests frequently, I took the girl's word for it. I called my primary physician's office.

You can find the rest of the epic saga here.

More HHS: Tell them what you think!

The ACLU is making it insanely easy to let the Department of Health and Human Services know that you won't stand for this attack on birth control rights. Clicking the icon above will take you to a comment form - all you have to do is fill it out and hit Send to let Secretary Leavitt know what you think!

What It Would Mean

That proposed HHS rule is now in its 30-day comment period and speeding towards being official, so let's take a look at what it would really mean for women.

Secretary Leavitt insists that the rule only enforces "consciences clause" laws that already exist, but in fact it expands the rights of physicians - or anyone involved in the medical business, from the person dealing with insurance claims to ambulance drivers - to refuse to provide a wide range of services.

In terms of immediate consequences, it has the potential to undermine existing state laws that ensure access to contraception by:
- Requiring health insurance companies that cover prescription medication to include birth control,
- Requiring pharmacists to give contraception or a referral to another pharmacist,
- Requiring hospitals to offer EC to sexual assault victims.

At least thirteen states have such laws in place already, and I would guess that all of them have anti-choice groups that are just waiting for the opportunity to challenge them.

A second problem with the law: Not only do medical professionals have the right to refuse services, they have the right to refuse to refer to another doctor. They can even refuse to give information about the procedure in question, leaving women to make medical decisions without complete information.

And, of course, the main issue is the fact that rule is so broad as to cover not only abortion, as the Secretary insists, but virtually every form of contraception. The new version of the rule is so broad and so vague as to cover an alarmingly wide range of services.

Now, how will this affect women? It only applies to HHS-funded businesses, so as far as I can tell this means that women with private insurance still have something of a pass. Women attending publicly-funded clinics, however, will be forced to leave their health care up to luck of the draw. Pro-choice medical professionals will certainly still exist, but so will anti-choice ones, and women, especially women in rural areas, might not be able to get services anywhere else if their local health care provider refuses to provide them.

To sum it up, here's Senator Clinton:

"So just imagine what this means. Under these proposed rules, health insurance plans could disregard state laws that require covering prescription medications and prescription contraception by claiming that contraception is abortion. Women would watch their contraceptive coverage disappear overnight. And that's not all. Imagine that a sexual assault survivor walks into the emergency room, and—in our state, we are one of fourteen states with laws guaranteeing access to emergency contraception, but, under these Bush rules, an ideologically-driven hospital administrator, or an emergency room supervisor, or a doctor or a nurse on duty, could deny this woman access to emergency contraception. So the woman who survived the assault would now be at risk for becoming pregnant, denied the care she needs in her hour of greatest need. These rules would also build new barriers to counseling, education, contraception and preventive health services for those in need. It is an end-run around the rights of women to make choices about our own health, and we are not going to stand for it."

Damn straight. To tell Secretary Leavitt what you think about the rule, drop him a line at consciencecomment@hhs.gov.

Quick Hit: Planned Parenthood Petition

Planned Parent's petition against the new HHS Proposition that would redefine contraception as abortion has gotten more than 325,000 signatures.

Go sign it!

UPDATE:

In 30 days, the proposal will be officially the new rule. Secretary Leavitt is ignoring protests and calls for hearings from Congress. I don't know what to say about this, except that it's absolutely screwed up.

John McCain on Abortion: I have some questions

"I oppose abortion except in the case of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in danger."

Some questions for the Senator...

1) Where will this raped woman get an abortion? 88% of US counties have no identifiable abortion provider. Additionally, training for medical students who want to learn how to perform abortions is hard to come by. Assuming abortion is made illegal in all cases except rape and incest, it seems like the number of clinics and doctors who bother to learn to perform the procedure would drop significantly - so how is a woman in a rural area supposed to get access to these services?

2) How will you determine who qualifies for an abortion? Will she have to submit to a rape kit? Report the rape? Wait until the man was convicted? Even though the courts are often traumatic and unfair places to the rape victim, to the point that the word "rape" has been banned in a rape trial"? What if she's afraid to report, or doesn't want to deal with the backlash and victim-blaming? What if, by the time the rapist was sentenced, the victim was already late in her pregnancy?

3) Who's paying for this? Abortion is expensive, and many rape victims probably don't have access to health care. Will you set up a government fund to pay for the procedure? What about paying for transportation, since most women have to travel a few hours at least to get to their nearest clinic?

4) And, here's a question for the Religious Right... what makes the fetus/baby/whatever of a rapist any less deserving of life than the fetus/baby/whatever of a non-rapist? It's an individual person!!1!one! ...No, I'm not going to pursue this question any further. I don't want to give them ideas.

The way I see it, if safe and accessible abortion isn't available to EVERY woman, it won't be available to the ones who, in John McCain's mind, deserve it. Any thoughts?