The Coat Hanger Project Blog

The Abortion Evangelist

2009-08-20T13:21:00.001-04:00

LeRoy Carhart is determined to train as many late-term-abortion providers as possible—or the practice just might die with him.

Full Article
By Sarah Kliff | NEWSWEEK
Published Aug 15, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Aug 31, 2009

Leroy Carhart was at his abortion clinic near Omaha when he got the phone call. It was Sunday morning, a little after 10, and the doctor was in surgery. He felt his cell phone vibrate. Carhart ignored it, finishing the abortion before checking his phone. The number for George Tiller's head nurse in Wichita, Kans., flashed on the screen. The timing was unusual; Carhart didn't often hear from Tiller on Sunday mornings. He thought it might have to do with a patient, maybe an emergency. But when Carhart called back, Tiller's nurse was crying. "George is dead," she told him through sobs, relaying the news that Tiller, the late-term-abortion provider, had been fatally shot at his Lutheran church.

Carhart was scheduled to work in Tiller's clinic the next day; he was one of three abortion doctors who took turns assisting there. His car was already packed for the five-hour drive from Omaha to Wichita he'd made every third Sunday for the past five years. Carhart decided he would still go, to see Tiller's family and help figure out what would happen to the clinic. But first he would see the patients at hand. His waiting room, after all, was full of women who'd crossed state lines and waited hours to see him. "I didn't have any time to sit here and feel sorry for myself," says Carhart. He hung up the phone, went back into the operating room, performed another abortion. By day's end, he had seen a dozen women.

Carhart knows there are people who want him dead, too. A few days after Tiller's murder, Carhart's daughter received a late-night phone call saying her parents too had been killed. His clinic got suspicious letters, one with white powder. It's been like this since Carhart started performing abortions in the late 1980s. On the same day Nebraska passed a parental-notification law in 1991, his farm burned down, killing 17 horses, a cat, and a dog (the local fire department was unable to determine the fire's cause). The next day his clinic received a letter justifying the murder of abortion providers. His -clinic's sidewalks have been smeared with manure. Protesters sometimes stalk him in airports. The threats, the violence, now the assassination of his close friend—all of it has left Carhart undaunted, and the billboard-size sign over his parking garage still reads, in foot-high block letters, ABORTION & CONTRACEPTION CLINIC OF NEBRASKA. "They're at war with us," says Carhart of the anti--abortion activist who killed Tiller. "We have to realize this isn't a difference of opinions. We need to fight back."

What makes Carhart such a target isn't just that he performs abortions—about 1,800 doctors do so today—but that he is among the very few still willing to do so late into pregnancy. Only 1.3 percent of abortions happen after the 21st week of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But those procedures have become the focus of intense debate. To pro-choicers they are tragic stories of late-discovered anomalies, with heroic doctors terminating a fetus that wouldn't survive long after birth. To pro-lifers they are morality tales that best prove the point about all abortion. "I don't support any abortions, but I think third-trimester abortions are particularly abhorrent," says Nebraska's attorney general, Jon Bruning, who has publicly called Carhart "one sick individual" and vowed to act on any evidence that would warrant an investigation. In the third trimester, Bruning says, abortion is "not only morally abhorrent but visually and physically abhorrent. You have a child with arms and legs."

A public-opinion poll in May found 68 percent of Americans support Roe v. Wade's comprehensive protection of elective, first-trimester abortion. But the farther along a pregnancy gets and with each biological milestone a fetus passes, the numbers drop and Americans become more cautious and conflicted. Around 24 weeks, when the fetus is likely viable outside the womb, the right to terminate becomes most controversial and abortion least accessible. Roe recognized the unique status of late-term abortions and gave states the power to restrict or disallow abortion when the fetus is viable (with an exception for "the preservation of the life or health of the mother").

Past viability, no doctor will terminate a pregnancy without a compelling reason. But what is a compelling reason, and who decides? Some would count a serious fetal abnormality, mental or physical; others would not. What if the baby has a 50 percent chance of surviving outside the womb? A 30 percent chance? While most of us navigate these questions in theory, Carhart deals with them in practice. At Tiller's clinic, he saw a rape victim in the third trimester of pregnancy. Every time she felt the baby move, she said, it brought back the rape all over again. She'd made three suicide attempts. Carhart performed her abortion. "If a woman is going to kill herself, then I think you have to look at it for her health," he says. The day before Tiller's death, a woman came into Carhart's Nebraska clinic 28 weeks along. Carhart asked her what she would do if she had to carry the baby to term. "She didn't say she was going to kill herself," he says. "She said she would put it up [for adoption]." He turned her away.

Carhart has a few firm lines; he won't, for example, do elective abortions past 24 weeks, because the fetus is likely viable. "It just makes sense to me," says Carhart. "After a certain point in time, the fetus is viable and we have to look at it differently than if it were not viable." And at 24 weeks, many studies show a fetus's chance of survival to be above 50 percent. Any earlier and the survival rate is lower; at 22 weeks it's less than 10 percent. But Carhart admits that such clear guidelines rarely present themselves. "There are times when abortion is the right answer," he says. "There are times when abortion is not the right answer. I hope I get it right."

Italy approves RU-486 abortion pill

2009-08-03T14:14:00.000-04:00

Philadelphia Inquirer

August 1, 2009
The long-debated move drew Vatican warnings of excommunication for doctors and patients.

By Alessandra Rizzo

Associated Press
ROME - Italy has approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486, capping years of debate and defying opposition from the Vatican, which warned of immediate excommunication for doctors prescribing the pill and for women who use it.

The pill is already available in a number of European countries. Its approval by Italy's drug-regulation authorities was praised by women's groups and abortion-rights organizations, which say the pill will provide women with an additional, noninvasive procedure.

It drew the immediate protest of the Catholic Church, which opposes abortion and contraception.

"That's not how you alleviate human suffering, that's not how you help women, that's not how you help mankind," Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, a senior church bioethicist, said yesterday.

The Italian Drug Agency ruled after a meeting that ended late Thursday that the drug, which terminates pregnancy by causing the embryo to detach from the uterine wall, cannot be sold in pharmacies; it can be administered only by doctors in a hospital.

The agency said in a statement that the pill can be taken only up to the seventh week of pregnancy - not up to the ninth, as is the case in other countries. Women who used the pill between the seventh and the ninth week of pregnancy incurred more risks and had often needed surgery, it said.

The decision is expected to go into effect in about two months, the agency said.

In a nod to the ethical implications associated with the decision and the controversy surrounding it, the agency noted that "the task of protecting the well-being of citizens . . . must take precedence over personal convictions."

The 4-1 vote at the agency's executive branch comes about two years after it started looking at the issue. The pill became available in some parts of Italy on an experimental basis in 2006.

For the Catholic Church, the decision was the latest defeat in its efforts to ban or restrict abortion in the nation that hosts the Vatican.

Italy legalized abortion on demand through the end of the third month of pregnancy in 1978, after a long battle between secular forces and the church. Abortion after three months is allowed when the pregnancy is deemed a grave danger to the woman's mental or physical health.

Three years later, Italians voted in a referendum to keep the law, again defying a church-backed campaign.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who heads the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life, issued a condemnation of abortion and the RU-486 pill in a front-page article in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano yesterday. He said the church cannot passively sit back, and insisted the ethical implications of the pill could not be overlooked.

"An embryo is not a bunch of cells," Fisichella wrote. "It's real and full human life. Suppressing it is a responsibility nobody can take without fully knowing the consequences."

There were about 121,000 abortions on demand in Italy in 2008, according to figures provided by Italy's health authorities. That number was down 48 percent from 1982 - the year when the number peaked after the referendum upholding the abortion law - and down 4 percent compared with the previous year.

Critics of RU-486 say that taking a pill might reverse that trend because it would make interrupting a pregnancy easier.

Confronting Our Ambivalence: The Need for Second-Trimester Abortion Advocacy

2009-07-07T11:01:00.001-04:00

Article
by Susan Yanow

Abortion continues to be one of the most politically contentious and divisive issues in the United States. In attempts to reframe the issue, many prochoice groups are prioritizing messages of “prevention” and “reducing the need for abortion.” These frames mirror public sentiment that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” but are problematic. While it is critically important to increase access to comprehensive sexuality education and contraception, these frames may be used to support those who seek to impose increased restrictions on abortion access. Our messages must embrace the reality that women will always need contraception and abortion services, that these services need to be more accessible and that they need to be available throughout pregnancy.

Since abortion was legalized in 1973, the right to abortion has been eroded through laws that create barriers to care. Second-trimester abortion is particularly vulnerable. Opinion polls show that only a quarter of the public agrees that abortion should be legal in the second trimester. Intense public debate over so-called “partial-birth abortion” has inserted graphic descriptions, often misleading, of later abortion into the public arena. The widespread availability of high-resolution ultrasonography, which brings vivid images of fetal development into the public eye, adds fuel to the debate. News stories about very premature infants being “kept alive” through medical intervention call into question for some the definition of “viability.”

As a movement, we have not engaged fully in the debate over later abortions, aware that we do not have public support or compelling ways of talking about the women who need these services. Some prochoice writers, such as William Saletan, have even questioned the wisdom of continuing to fight for later abortions, arguing that efforts should be focused on securing first trimester abortions. (Washington Post, March 5, 2006) This position threatens the reproductive rights of the thousands of women every year who need second-trimester abortion services, and reflects a lack of knowledge about who these women are and why they do not seek abortion care earlier.

Too many conversations about second trimester abortion start defensively with the statement, “Of course, most abortions take place in the first trimester.” However, approximately 55,000 women in the US obtain abortions at 16 weeks or later every year. This is not new; women have consistently needed access to later abortions. The distribution of abortions by gestational age has remained fairly constant since 1983 with approximately 88 percent of abortions occurring before 13 weeks, six percent occurring between 13 and 15 weeks, four percent occurring between 16 and 20weeks and one percent occurring after 21 weeks.

Who are these women? The women who seek later abortions are disproportionately young women, low-income women and women of color who often face numerous delays in obtaining services that contribute to the later gestational ages at which they present for care. Of the abortions provided to white women, 11.5 percent occur after 12 weeks compared to 13.1 percent of abortions to African Americans. A Guttmacher Institute study found that adolescents took a week longer to suspect a pregnancy than adults.

While women who detect severe fetal abnormalities in the second trimester have been the “face” of advocacy for later abortions, in fact they represent a minority of the women who need this service. Two recent studies of why women obtain abortions in the second trimester suggest that late detection of pregnancy, cost and access barriers, and difficulty making a decision, all play a role in the use of second-trimester abortion. Fifty-eight percent of women reported that they would have liked to have had the abortion earlier, but faced barriers. These barriers include a shortage of second-trimester abortion providers, the cost of a second-trimester abortion (which is covered by Medicaid in only 17 states), referral issues and low public support for women who seek later abortions.

A Shortage of Providers

While the shortage of abortion providers outside of urban areas in the US is widely acknowledged, there is an acute shortage of clinicians trained and willing to provide abortions after twelve weeks for non maternal and fetal indicators. According to a survey of abortion providers conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, approximately 60 percent of abortion-providing facilities offer abortion services after 14 weeks, and only 33 percent of the facilities offer abortions at 20 weeks. Only 24percent of the facilities offer abortions at 21 weeks and beyond. Five states lack a provider performing abortions after 12 weeks for non-maternal or fetal indications, ten states lack a provider performing abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and 22 do not have a provider offering abortions after 20 weeks. Consequently, access to second-trimester abortion care is severely limited for women living in those states. Getting an accurate referral, making travel and child-care arrangements, and raising the extra money needed to travel, sometimes including plane fares and overnight stays can cause substantial delays in women getting the abortions they seek.

Some states have passed burdensome requirements that restrict providers. For example, in 2003 in Texas, there were 3,066 post-16 week abortions performed. In 2004 the Texas legislature passed a law that abortions after 16 weeks can only be provided in surgicenters, which are extraordinarily expensive to construct. In 2004, there were only 403 post-16 week abortions provided in Texas.

Costs of Second-Trimester Abortion

The cost of second-trimester abortion, which can include travel, accommodations, lost wages and child care, continues to be a barrier and cause of delay for many women, in spite of the ongoing efforts of the 100 grassroots abortion funds affiliated with the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF) and other funding resources. Fees for second-trimester abortion vary depending on gestational age and location, and range from $600 to $3,000. If the procedure is done in a hospital rather than a freestanding clinic or surgical center, the fee can be even higher.

The Hyde Amendment (first passed in 1976 and reauthorized every year since) prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortions except for cases of rape, incest or life endangerment. Only 17 states allow the use of state funds for abortions outside of these three narrow circumstances. Additionally, 12 states restrict abortion coverage in insurance plans for public employees, and five states restrict insurance coverage of abortion in private insurance plans. Three quarters of the women receiving outpatient abortions pay for the procedure with their own funds.

Insurance carriers and Medicaid (in the 17 states where Medicaid covers abortions) reimburse second-trimester abortions at a rate that does not cover the costs. Additionally, many malpractice policies increase rates for post-16 week abortions, with another increase at 19-20 weeks. The cost of providing later abortions and poor reimbursement provide a disincentive for clinics and hospitals to provide second-trimester services.

Inaccurate Referrals

Inaccurate referrals can contribute to many of the delays imposed on women seeking abortion services. If a woman calls the clinic closest to her, they may schedule an appointment for the following week without adequately screening her. When she arrives, she may learn that she is above the clinic’s gestational age or be above their weight limit. Many organizations refer only to other providers within their membership systems rather than to the closest appropriate provider. Most states do not have comprehensive guides available to assist in good referrals to the nearest and most appropriate provider.

Currently, there are a number of referral sources for women seeking abortions, but each is limited. Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation maintain only listings of their members. The various abortion funds often only have information about the clinics that are geographically most proximate, and must do extensive research with each caller to find appropriate referrals for women needing later procedures. The lack of a comprehensive referral network means that women are often delayed needlessly, or must travel further than necessary.

Low Public Support for Women and Providers

“You are 16 weeks pregnant and you want an abortion? Why did you wait so long?”

Despite the ongoing need for second-trimester abortion services, public support for abortions after the first trimester is very low. In addition to the visibility of later pregnancies, many members of the public have themselves experienced pregnancy at this stage and have uniquely personal experiences with fetal movement. This experience leads some to ask, “How can a woman who experiences fetal movement still opt for an abortion?” There is little understanding that many women end up in the second trimester of an unwanted pregnancy due to barriers and delays, while other women can only make the decision to have an abortion when they are in the second trimester. Some women need more time to wrestle with the decision—for example, they may be against abortion while at the same time knowing that they cannot possibly become a parent at this point in their lives—and this deep ambivalence delays their decision. Other women have desired pregnancies and then find themselves in a changed situation, either medically or socially (a partner becomes abusive or leaves, a job loss, a hurricane that destroys her home, a cancer diagnosis), which necessitates an abortion, despite the initial desire to keep the pregnancy and have a child.

Additionally, the general public and many medical professionals do not recognize or honor the work of abortion providers. The public image of a second-trimester abortion provider is a negative one, fueled by antichoice rhetoric and sensationalist stories after rare complications occur. In order to protect their safety and the privacy of their families, physicians who perform later abortions often do not discuss their work in any public forum. As abortions are primarily done in freestanding clinics, the procedure and those who provide it are often marginalized by colleagues in mainstream medicine.

Developing a Solution

While there is good data on the multiple reasons women delay seeking abortions and the obstacles they face, we don’t know why the second-trimester abortion rate has remained steady and which barriers, if removed, would result in women accessing services earlier. For example, would free pregnancy tests result in earlier detection and earlier decision making around abortion? What would the impact of comprehensive sexuality education be on women’s recognition of pregnancy symptoms? There is a clear need for more quantitative and qualitative research on women who seek second-trimester abortions, and more collaborative strategies to increase abortion access.

In 2007, recognizing this need for a coordinated effort by the reproductive health, rights and justice communities, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a program of the University of California San Francisco, launched the National Strategic Initiative to Secure and Expand Second-Trimester Abortion to develop strategies to increase second-trimester abortion services and support those who offer this service. This initiative has evolved into the Second Trimester Access Network, a collaboration that includes leadership from many prochoice organizations and seeks to promote work across the field on second-trimester issues. The mission of the network is to thoroughly understand all aspects of second-trimester abortion and support member groups in removing barriers that delay a woman’s access to abortion, while recognizing that some women will always need abortions late in the second trimester for a myriad of complicated reasons.

The Initiative and the Network have identified some initial strategies to removing barriers to women’s access to second-trimester abortion.

Increase Training and Services

Acquiring the skills needed to provide second-trimester abortions requires experienced trainers and a sufficient volume of patients, both during the training experience and afterwards to maintain skills. Possible solutions include establishing regional hubs that would provide a sufficient volume of procedures to train all types of clinicians (doctors, advanced practice clinicians, registered nurses), or expanding the training capacity and increasing the gestational age at some current sites that provide later abortions. It is also important to recognize that training is only a first step. Once trained, providers need support to overcome obstacles to practice, including building public and clinical support for their practice.

Second-trimester abortion services are unevenly distributed. While many states have no providers of second-trimester abortions, some urban areas have a wealth of resources (for example, in the Greater Boston area there are eight facilities that offer abortion after 16 weeks.) For first trimester abortion, it is reasonable that no woman should have to travel further than the nearest primary care provider. However, second-trimester abortions require a different set of skills and different types of facilities. How many providers are needed? How far is it reasonable to expect a woman to travel for a later abortion? Research is needed to gather detailed information on current providers (including whether they are in solo practice, retirement plans, etc.), develop a model for a rational geographic distribution of services and explore the potential of providing incentives for trainees to provide abortions in underserved areas to expand services beyond where they are currently located.

Provide Funding for Abortion and All Reproductive Health Care

The Hyde Amendment, which bans Federal Medicaid coverage of abortions, is blatantly unjust and must be repealed. A strong coalition to repeal the Hyde Amendment exists (Hyde: 30 Years is Enough!) and activity within the coalition is increasing as new possibilities are seen with the change of power in Washington. In the interim, legal and advocacy strategies must be developed in each state to ensure a fair reimbursement rate to providers. In states with coverage only for rape survivors or danger to a woman’s health, advocates must ensure that at least these exceptional cases are covered.

However, the repeal of the Hyde Amendment is only a first step. Health-care reform of some kind is coming. Advocates must make sure that health-care reform efforts at both the state and federal levels include coverage of comprehensive reproductive health services. Several coalitions, including Raising Women’s Voices for the Healthcare We Need, are working for health-care reform that explicitly includes coverage of abortion care.

Provide Accurate, Timely Referrals

There is a clear need for a comprehensive referral resource that includes information on gestational limits for each provider, weight restrictions if any, cost schedules and other services (e.g. translation services). The resource should also provide funding assistance if a woman is facing economic challenges, be regularly updated and accessible to all possible referral sources. The National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF) is currently collecting information from its member funds to begin compiling this resource.

Develop a Multifaceted Communications Strategy

The general public is unaware or misinformed about the reasons that women seek abortion in the second trimester. The complicated issues that lead women to make this decision must be shared with the public in a sympathetic light to increase political support for second-trimester abortion care. To create messages that resonate with different communities, we must engage those who work most closely with young women, rural women and women of color. The strategy must destigmatize abortion, incorporate respect for women and providers and avoid the devaluation of any groups, including disabled people, in the development of messaging. We must find ways to clarify that our goal is to prevent unwanted pregnancy, not to prevent abortions.

A first step is to begin with ourselves. Within our organizations and across our movement, we must clarify our values and remind ourselves that a definition of reproductive justice must include all women with unintended pregnancies, regardless of gestational age. Prevention will not eradicate the need for second-trimester abortion. Instead of using the frame of “prevention,” we must begin to advocate for abortion “as early as possible, as late as necessary.”

Susan Yanow, MSW, is a long-time reproductive rights activist and founding executive director of the Abortion Access Project.

Changes at TCHP Blog

2009-07-03T14:52:00.002-04:00

Hello regular, new and future readers of The Coathanger Project Blog. I’m Lisa. I’ll be here pitching in with blogs, updates on the state of the Reproductive Justice/Pro-choice movement, stories that are related to abortion legislation, feminism, women’s issues and a lot that is pertinent to thinking, caring, and passionate people like you. I’m also hoping to have guest contributors, fiction, poetry, short films – anything to make visiting us here at TCHP Blog interesting, elevating, motivating and inspiring so that you can in turn spread that information, energy and action to the culture around you. So really not much will change, just more hands in the kitchen! Feel free to contact us here if you’ve got anything to say—or if you want to contribute or for whatever! Don't worry, Angie's still with us and will contribute-- she's working on spreading the awesome-ness that is TCHP film (if you want her or the film to happen at your space, please don't hesitate to let us know!) and is working on something new!

Right-Wing Extremists Threaten Women's Rights All Over the World

2009-06-22T11:14:00.000-04:00

Alternet

In the weeks following the assassination of Wichita abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, it was perhaps too much to hope that antiabortion organizations and activists would reflect on, and even temper, their movement’s rhetoric. Instead, the halfhearted denunciations of violence issued by groups like the National Right to Life Committee and Operation Rescue were all too quickly followed by a return to offensive characterizations not only of abortion, but of abortion providers.

While the most harmful expressions of antiabortion violence are playing out here in the United States, the vigorous export of the rhetoric, tactics and ideology of the movement is creating a similar hostile environment for abortion providers and for women seeking abortions in other countries. Legal attacks and harassment against clinics, women and providers in countries where women risk their lives to end a pregnancy are increasing, largely tolerated by governments who are reluctant to confront powerful religious leaders.

In many ways the U.S. antiabortion movement is succeeding in recreating the intimidating American model abroad. Take, for example, the 2007 police raid on a family planning clinic in Brazil, which was eerily reminiscent of the raids on Dr. Tiller’s clinic in Wichita. In both cases, the private medical records of thousands of women were confiscated and searched for evidence of illegal abortions. Prosecutors felt that the possibility that any of them might have had an illegal abortion far outweighed their right to keep their medical records private.

Similar attitudes can be seen at the national level where conservative antiabortion legislators recently submitted a proposal to the Brazilian Congress seeking to define abortion as a “heinous crime.” This came just months after their caucus, the Parliamentary Front in Defense of Life, pushed for the approval of a congressional committee dedicated to investigating illegal abortions and the black market sale of abortive drugs “in order to implement the law to the fullest extent.” If found guilty, women who undergo illegal abortions could receive one-to-three years imprisonment, and physicians up to 20 years.

Even where abortion is legal, activists are applying the same tactics of intimidation seen here in United States. Last year the Mexico City legislature approved a progressive reproductive health bill allowing abortion for up to twelve weeks. A legal appeal (supported by the country’s Catholic hierarchy) quickly followed but was denied by the Mexican Supreme Court. Antiabortion activists sprung into full attack mode, protesting clinics wielding massive posters of bloodied, mangled full-term babies who they claimed were the victims of abortion. They continue to film, intimidate and harass women entering clinics for legal services, begging them not to get an abortion.

With the exception of a few countries, most nations in the world allow abortion for at least some indications. Still, abortion stigma is so culturally pervasive that many women do not use legal facilities to terminate their unwanted pregnancies but instead self-induce under dangerous conditions. Because of the stigma, governments have little incentive to ensure that legal services are available and many doctors are unaware that women have the right to request legal abortions in their hospitals and clinics. Instead, antiabortion organizations use their political influence and dangerous rhetoric to punish and endanger women.

In this country we can observe in the wake of Tiller’s murder a certain reinvigoration of the antichoice movement. Rather than stepping back to evaluate how they contribute to hostility toward women and providers, the anti-abortion movement is continuing to stick to its message. The repeated refrain is that they don’t condone Tiller’s killing but that, after all, he “murdered unborn children.”

Human Life International (HLI), a Virginia-based organization that claims it is “the largest prolife movement of Catholic orientation in the world,” is a perfect example of this global approach. They are clearly not ready to tamp down on its war of words. Indeed, their public statement following Tiller’s murder offers no apology:

George Tiller, the mass murderer of Wichita, Kansas is dead. “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword,” said the Lord… Can killing a mass murderer be considered “justifiable homicide”? The short answer to this is “no,” but it is not always apparent why HLI provides financial and material support to affiliates around the world to pressure governments to reject liberalizing abortion laws, while simultaneously creating a cultural climate that stigmatizes abortion and the women who get them. Its activities are focused on the developing world where abortion is already legally restricted (including in Mexico and Brazil), and where women often risk their lives to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Given the history of U.S. antichoice organizations working to recreate the hostile social environment around abortion abroad, is it just a matter of time before a Scott Roeder appears in South Africa or India?

Tiller's Clinic to Close Permanently

2009-06-09T12:34:00.000-04:00

6/9/09

The Witchita, Kan., abortion clinic run by murdered doctor George Tiller will be closed permanently, the Tiller family announced Tuesday as Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., offered a House resolution honoring the slain abortion provider.

Tiller opened the Women's Health Care Services, Inc., in the 1970s and it served as one of three clinics in the country that performed controversial second- and third-term abortions.

"Notice is being given today to all concerned that the Tiller family is ceasing operation of the clinic and any involvement by family members in any other similar clinic," Tiller family attorneys Lee Thompson and Dan Monnat said in a statement.

"We are proud of the service and courage shown by our husband and father and know that women's health care needs have been met because of his dedication and service. That is a legacy that will never die. The family will honor Dr. Tiller's memory through private charitable activities," the attorneys said.

Tiller, who in March was acquitted on 19 misdemeanor charges related to his practice, was fatally shot while serving as an usher in his church on May 31. The murder drew a flood of denunciations from President Obama along with liberal and conservative lawmakers and abortion rights groups and abortion foes.

Attorney General Eric Holder ordered the U.S. Marshals' service to "increase security for a number of individuals and facilities" although officials provided no specifics.

Scott Roeder, 51, was taken into custody for the crime.

On Tuesday, Slaughter offered a resolution condemning Tiller's murder on behalf of 80 co-sponsors. The resolution noted the increased acts of violence taking place in places of worship, and called for condolences to the Tiller family and a recommitment to tolerance.

Why I Am An Abortion Doctor by Dr. Gary Romalis

2009-06-08T13:22:00.000-04:00

Why I am an abortion doctor

'I can take a woman, in the biggest trouble she has ever experienced in her life, and by performing a five-minute operation, in comfort and dignity, I can give her back her life'

By: Dr. Garson Romalis, © Garson Romalis
Published: Monday, February 04, 2008

What follows are remarks delivered by Canadian abortion doctor Garson Romalis on Jan. 25, at the University of Toronto Law School's Symposium to Mark the 20th Anniversary of R. vs. Morgentaler

---

I am honoured to be speaking today, and honored to call Henry Morgentaler my friend.

I have been an abortion provider since 1972. Why do I do abortions, and why do I continue to do abortions, despite two murder attempts?

The first time I started to think about abortion was in 1960, when I was in secondyear medical school. I was assigned the case of a young woman who had died of a septic abortion. She had aborted herself using slippery elm bark.

I had never heard of slippery elm. A buddy and I went down to skid row, and without too much difficulty, purchased some slippery elm bark to use as a visual aid in our presentation. Slippery elm is not sterile, and frequently contains spores of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. It is called slippery elm because, when it gets wet, it feels slippery. This makes it easier to slide slender pieces through the cervix where they absorb water, expand, dilate the cervix, produce infection and induce abortion. The young woman in our case developed an overwhelming infection. At autopsy she had multiple abscesses throughout her body, in her brain, lungs, liver and abdomen.

I have never forgotten that case.

After I graduated from University of British Columbia medical school in 1962, I went to Chicago, where I served my internship and Ob/Gyn residency at Cook County Hospital. At that time, Cook County had about 3,000 beds, and served a mainly indigent population. If you were really sick, or really poor, or both, Cook County was where you went.

The first month of my internship was spent on Ward 41, the septic obstetrics ward. Yes, it's hard to believe now, but in those days, they had one ward dedicated exclusively to septic complications of pregnancy.

About 90% of the patients were there with complications of septic abortion. The ward had about 40 beds, in addition to extra beds which lined the halls. Each day we admitted between 10-30 septic abortion patients. We had about one death a month, usually from septic shock associated with hemorrhage.

I will never forget the 17-year-old girl lying on a stretcher with 6 feet of small bowel protruding from her vagina. She survived.

I will never forget the jaundiced woman in liver and kidney failure, in septic shock, with very severe anemia, whose life we were unable to save.

Today, in Canada and the U.S., septic shock from illegal abortion is virtually never seen. Like smallpox, it is a "disappeared disease."

I had originally been drawn to obstetrics and gynecology because I loved delivering babies. Abortion was illegal when I trained, so I did not learn how to do abortions in my residency, although I had more than my share of experience looking after illegal abortion complications.

In 1972, a couple of years after the law on abortion was liberalized, I began the practise of obstetrics and gynecology, and joined a three-man group in Vancouver. My practice partners and I believed strongly that a woman should be able to decide for herself if and when to have a baby. We were frequently asked to look after women who needed termination of pregnancy. Although I had done virtually no terminations in my training, I soon learned how. I also learned just how much demand there was for abortion services.

Providing abortion services can be quite stressful. Usually, an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is the worst trouble the patient has ever been in in her entire life.

I remember one 18-year-old patient who desperately wanted an abortion, but felt she could not confide in her mother, who was a nurse in another Vancouver area hospital. She impressed on me how important it was that her termination remain a secret from her family. In those years, parental consent was required if the patient was less than 19 years old. I obtained the required second opinion from a colleague, and performed an abortion on her.

About two weeks, later I received a phone call from her mother. She asked me directly "Did you do an abortion on my daughter?" Visions of legal suit passed through my mind as I tried to think of how to answer her question. I decided to answer directly and truthfully. I answered with trepidation, "Yes, I did" and started to make mental preparations to call my lawyer. The mother replied: "Thank you, Doctor. Thank God there are people like you around."

Like many of my colleagues, I had been the subject of antiabortion picketing, particularly in the 1980s. I did not like having my office and home picketed, or nails thrown into my driveway, but viewed these picketers as a nuisance, exercising their right of free speech. Being in Canada, I felt I did not have to worry about my physical security.

I had been a medical doctor for 32 years when I was shot at 7:10 a.m., Nov. 8, 1994. For over half my life, I had been providing obstetrical and gynecological care, including abortions. It is still hard for me to understand how someone could think I should be killed for helping women get safe abortions.

I had a very severe gun shot wound to my left thigh. My thigh bone was fractured, large blood vessels severed, and a large amount of my thigh muscles destroyed. I almost died several times from blood loss and multiple other complications. After about two years of physical and emotional rehabilitation, with a great deal of support from my family and the medical community, I was able to resume work on a part-time basis. I was no longer able to deliver babies or perform major gynecological surgery. I had to take security measures, but I continued to work as a gynecologist, including providing abortion services. My life had changed, but my views on choice remained unchanged, and I was continuing to enjoy practicing medicine. I told people that I was shot in the thigh, not in my sense of humour.

Six years after the shooting, on July 11, 2000, shortly after entering the clinic where I had my private office, a young man approached me. There was nothing unusual about his appearance until he suddenly got a vicious look on his face, stabbed me in the left flank area and then ran away.

This could have been a lethal injury, but fortunately no vital organs were seriously involved, and after six days of hospital observation I was able to return home. The physical implications were minor, but the security implications were major. After two murder attempts, all my security advisors concurred that I was at increased risk for another attack.

My family and I had to have some serious discussions about my future. The National Abortion Federation provided me with a very experienced personal security consultant. He moved into our home and lived with us for three days, talked with us, assessed my personality, visited the places that I worked in and gave me security advice. In those three days, he got to know me well. After he finished his evaluation, when I was dropping him off at the airport, his departing words to me were "Gary, you have to go back to work."

About two months after the stabbing, I returned to the practise of medicine, but with added security measures. Since the year 2000, I have restricted my practise exclusively to abortion provision.

These acts of terrorist violence have affected virtually every aspect of my and my family's life. Our lives have changed forever. I must live with security measures that I never dreamed about when I was learning how to deliver babies.

Let me tell you about an abortion patient I looked after recently. She was 18 years old, and 18-19 weeks pregnant. She came from a very strict, religious family. She was an only daughter, and had several brothers. She was East Indian Hindu and her boyfriend was East Indian Muslim, which did not please her parents. She told me if her parents found out she was pregnant she would be disowned and kicked out of the family home. She also told me that her brothers would murder her boyfriend, and I believed her. About an hour after her operation I and my nurse saw her and her boyfriend walking out of the clinic hand in hand, and I said to my nurse, "Look at that. We saved two lives today."

I love my work. I get enormous personal and professional satisfaction out of helping people, and that includes providing safe, comfortable, abortions. The people that I work with are extraordinary, and we all feel that we are doing important work, making a real difference in peoples' lives.

I can take an anxious woman, who is in the biggest trouble she has ever experiences in her life, and by performing a five-minute operation, in comfort and dignity, I can give her back her life.

After an abortion operation, patients frequently say "Thank You Doctor." But abortion is the only operation I know of where they also sometimes say "Thank you for what you do."

I want to tell you one last story that I think epitomizes the satisfaction I get from my privileged work. 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 secondyear medical student now, and if it weren't for you I wouldn't be here now."

Vigil for Dr. Tiller in front of the White House 6-1-09

2009-06-05T19:11:00.000-04:00

Saddest News.

2009-05-31T21:21:00.000-04:00

New York Times
5/31/09

WICHITA, Kan. — Authorities said they had a suspect in custody Sunday afternoon in the shooting death of George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who was one of the few doctors in the nation to perform late-term abortions.

Dr. Tiller, who had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the issue of abortion and had survived a shooting more than a decade ago, was shot inside his church here on Sunday morning, the authorities said. Dr. Tiller, 67, was shot with a handgun inside the lobby of his longtime church, Reformation Lutheran Church on the city’s East Side, just after 10 a.m. (Central Time). The service had started minutes earlier.

Dr. Tiller, who had performed abortions since the 1970s, had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the issue of abortion, particularly in Kansas, where abortion opponents regularly protested outside his clinic and sometimes his home and church. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by an abortion opponent but recovered.

Dr. Tiller had also been the subject of many efforts at prosecution, including a citizen-initiated grand jury investigation. In the latest such effort, in March, Dr. Tiller was acquitted of charges that he had performed late-term abortions that violated state law.

Shortly after Sunday’s shooting, police said they were searching for a man who had fled in a powder blue Taurus. By mid-afternoon, they said someone had been taken into custody, but offered no additional details.

“This is going to be a larger search than maybe just Wichita,” said Brent Allred, a police captain, who said that the FBI and state police had been called to the scene. Few parishioners remained at the church, a modern, red brick facility that seats about 500 people. Police cars surrounded the building.

Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group that has led opposition to Dr. Tiller’s methods, denounced the killing on Sunday, as did other national groups opposed to abortion. “Our prayers go out to his family and the thousands of people this will impact,” Mr. Newman said in a telephone interview from his home in Wichita.

“Operation Rescue has worked tirelessly on peaceful, non-violent measures to bring him to justice through the legal system, the legislative system,” Mr. Newman said. “I’m a tireless advocate and spokesman for the pre-born children who are dying in clinics everyday. Mr. Tiller was an abortionist. But this wasn’t personal. We are pro life, and this act was antithetical to what we believe.”

Leaders of national abortion rights organizations, meanwhile, expressed outrage. Some described Dr. Tiller as one of the only doctors in the nation who performed third-trimester abortions when the life or health of a mother was at stake, and said that his death would make it even harder for women in such circumstances to end their pregnancies.

“Dr. Tiller was a fearless, passionate defender of women’s reproductive health and rights,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, based in New York, which had worked on a legal case related to Dr. Tiller. “It’s time that this nation stop demonizing these doctors, and start honoring them.”

At St. George Orthodox Christian Church, next door to Dr. Tiller’s church, members said they had often been concerned about being so close to a church that often was the scene of protests because of Dr. Tiller’s presence. Dr. Tiller had attended the church for a long time, they said, and had contributed significantly to construction of the current facility, which was built in about 1996.

“This is a God-fearing community,” said Mickey Cohlmia, who was at services at the neighboring church on Sunday morning and said she was horrified that such a thing had happened in Wichita, a city of about 358,000 in southern Kansas. “How does this scar everybody in his church?”

Favorite New Blog: The Abortioneers

2009-05-26T14:11:00.000-04:00

http://abortioneers.blogspot.com/

The Abortioneers is a fantastic new blog (created January 2009) about the ins and outs and ups and downs of direct service in the field of abortion care. It contains a variety of voices expressing the multi-faceted vicissitudes of the contemporary prochoice/direct care experience. It's at the top of The Coat Hanger Project's favorite blogs list - check it out!!!

UN Committee Concludes That Abortion Law in Northern Ireland Should Be Amended

2009-05-26T14:06:00.000-04:00

Safe and Legal Abortion Rights in Ireland
Tuesday 27 May 2009

UN Committee concludes that abortion law in Northern Ireland should be amended

For the third time in ten years, another United Nations human rights monitoring body has recommended that the abortion law in Northern Ireland should be amended and better protection afforded to women’s human rights. The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the monitoring body of the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights met in Geneva on the 12 and 13 of May 2009, to examine the UK and Northern Ireland government. In its concluding observations, the Committee recommended that the abortion law in Northern Ireland should be brought into line with the rest of the UK.

It stated:
“The Committee calls upon the State party to amend the abortion law of Northern Ireland to bring it in line with the 1967 Abortion Act with a view to preventing clandestine and unsafe abortions in cases of rape, incest or foetal abnormality.”

Reacting to the Committee’s recommendations, Dr Audrey Simpson, fpa Director Northern Ireland said:
“Once again the ongoing discrimination of Northern Ireland women has been acknowledged in Europe. It is totally unacceptable for the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly to continue to ignore UN human rights monitoring bodies. It is a blatant disregard for women’s human rights in relation to their reproductive health.”

Response to Obama’s speech at Notre Dame on "common ground" and abortion

2009-05-26T11:23:00.000-04:00

revcom.us
By Sunsara Taylor

In the weeks leading up to Barack Obama’s delivery of the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, the national eye was drawn once again to the question of women’s right to abortion. Anti-abortion Catholics and Christian fundamentalists, many of whom have been at the heart of some of the most violent tactics against doctors, women and clinics, descended on the campus. They trespassed. They got arrested. They put up billboards. More than 70 bishops condemned Notre Dame’s decision.

However, on March 17, when graduation day finally arrived, Obama received a standing ovation upon entrance, a glowing introduction from the Catholic president of the university, and repeated cheers as he spoke.

In his speech, Obama called for “fair-minded words” on both sides of the abortion issue. He called on people to express their differences but not to demonize those who think differently than themselves. He called for “common ground” and pointed to where he felt this could be found, as well as some of the challenges he sees in achieving it.

To many, these were reasonable words. To many, the response to him by the overwhelming majority of the student body—together with a significant number of prominent Catholic figures—represents motion in a positive direction.

But, when Obama speaks of “common ground” on abortion, he is not standing on some neutral “middle ground”—he is accepting the terms of the anti-abortion movement and adapting aspects of a pro-choice position into that framework while gutting the heart of the abortion-rights position. In so doing, he is legitimizing and strengthening a viciously anti-woman program while both abandoning the much needed fight to expand access to abortion and birth control and giving up the moral and ideological basis on which the pro-choice position stands.

Much of what is wrong with Obama’s approach is concentrated in a few key sentences of Obama’s speech, where he speaks directly to the question of abortion:

“Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions. So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoptions more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.”

First, and very importantly, abortion is not a “heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make.” A great many women are not conflicted at all about their abortions. Many feel relief and even joy at having their lives and their futures more fully back in their control.

This is as it should be. The simple fact is that a fetus is not a baby, it is a subordinate part of a woman’s body. A woman has no moral obligation to carry a fetus to term simply because she gets pregnant. And a woman who chooses at whatever point and for whatever reason to terminate a pregnancy, should feel fine about doing so and should be able to.

When it comes to abortion, there really is only one moral question: Will women be free to determine their own lives, including whether and when they will bear children, or will women be subjugated to patriarchal male authority and forced to breed against their will?

By denying the experience of the many women who feel positively about their abortions, Obama is undermining the legitimacy of this response and reinforcing all the many voices in society that tell women they should feel heart-wrenched for terminating a pregnancy.

As for the fact that many women do feel conflicted or even deeply guilty about getting an abortion, this doesn’t prove that abortion is a morally complex issue any more than the fact that many women feel guilty or ashamed after being raped makes rape a morally complex issue.

To understand where these feelings of guilt come from, where they do exist, it is necessary to pull back the lens from the individual woman to see the larger culture and forces shaping their responses.

Women have been told—for centuries in every major religion and almost every culture—that the most meaningful thing they will ever do is bear children. Women are conditioned—and expected—to plan their lives around when they will have children, and, once they do, to evaluate every major decision from the framework of how it will affect their children. Women who do not subordinate their own dreams and aspirations to the raising of their children are openly considered selfish and routinely demonized.

On top of this, there have been decades of relentless ideological assault on abortion that has been orchestrated from the highest levels of government and power. Women have been told that they are “murderers” if they choose to abort—by Christian fundamentalists at the doors of women’s clinics across the country, by talking heads on the major media and by blockbuster movies and TV dramas that invariably portray abortion, at “best,” as a desperate and regrettable act. Women have been told there is something wrong with them if they don’t feel guilty.

All this conditions the guilt that women feel, where that is part of their experience. But none of this means that there is anything about abortion that women should feel guilty about.

From here, Obama moves forward, stating that “common ground” can be found by working “together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions” and to “reduce unintended pregnancies.”

But, as I wrote previously, “To talk today of reducing the number of abortions is to talk about strengthening the chains on women. The goal should NOT be to reduce the number of abortions. The goal should be to break down the barriers that still exist in every sphere of society to women’s full and equal participation as emancipated human beings. In this society, right now, that means there will be—and therefore should be—more abortions.

“This is because there are many, many women who want abortions who are unable to get them due to the tremendous legal, social and economic obstacles that have been put in their way. These obstacles include parental notification laws, mandatory waiting periods, anti-abortion fake clinics that disorient and delay women, the fact that 84% of counties have no abortion providers at all, and countless other cruel and humiliating restrictions.”

Right now, as you read, real women’s lives are being foreclosed and degraded due to lack of accessible abortion services.

As for reducing unintended pregnancies, it would be truly wonderful if all young people received frank and scientific education about their bodies, their sexuality, and how to form healthy and mutually respectful emotional and physical relationships. It would be truly wonderful if birth control were widely and easily available and its use was popularized. This would be the best and most effective way to reduce unintended pregnancies. However, this is not something that the forces behind the “pro-life” movement will agree to. The same biblical scripture that drives these forces to try to force women to carry every pregnancy to term, also drives them to oppose birth control. There is not a single “pro-life” organization that supports birth control.

At its core and from its inception the “pro-life” movement has been driven by the biblical mandate that women must leave it up to god to decide how many children they have. This mandate is rooted in the Christian mythology of “original sin” and its repercussions.

As the Bible tells it, “god” created man (Adam) first, and then made a woman (Eve) out of his rib. These two lived in innocent bliss in the “Garden of Eden” until a serpent tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam to eat the “forbidden fruit.” For this “original sin,” Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise and ever since—so the myth goes—mankind has had an evil nature which has led to all the horrors humankind has inflicted on each other ever since.

Flowing from this—and central to the “right-to-life” movement—a special additional curse is put on women. Right there, in Genesis, the “Lord” is quoted as saying to women, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Later, the Bible articulates that women can only redeem themselves by submitting to men and bearing children: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, providing they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.” (1 Timothy 2: 13-15)

There can be no “common ground” with this view, even in the aim of preventing unwanted pregnancies. And, by seeking to find “common ground” here, Obama is just moving the ball further down the court towards enforced motherhood; he is leading pro-choice people away from the fight that needs to be waged for abortion while at the same time setting the stage for another losing battle around sex education and birth control.

What’s perhaps even more outrageous is the fact that Obama—rather than challenging the mandate embedded within the “original sin” mythology that women become obedient breeders—himself cites and legitimates this farcical and very harmful myth. Earlier in his speech, Obama offers a non-explanation as to why “common ground” is often hard to find between, among others, “the soldier and the lawyer” who “both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm” and between “the gay activist and the evangelical pastor” who “both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts.” He says, “part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of men—our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin.”

No. “Common ground” is not hard to find because we demonize those who are fighting to subjugate women, those carrying out torture and war crimes against detainees, or those who want to deny fundamental rights to gay people. “Common ground” is not difficult to find because we have big egos or are too prideful or insecure.

“Common ground” is difficult to find because those who uphold women’s right to abortion are coming from a point of view that is completely antagonistic to those who are trying to take away this right. In the same way, those who condemn torture are coming from a view that is antagonistic to justifying, covering up and continuing that torture. And those who recognize the basic rights and humanity of gay people as well as the need for real education about safe sex are coming from a view that is completely antagonistic to the biblical motivation that sees any sex outside of procreation as an abomination.

As I stated earlier, there is no such thing as a “neutral middle ground” between antagonistic positions. Even the illusion of “common ground” can only be achieved when one side capitulates to the terms of the other side. This is exactly what Obama has done.

When it comes to abortion, the “common ground” Obama is putting forward is one where everyone accepts the notion that there is something morally wrong with abortion and where the legitimacy and the very existence of women who are perfectly okay with their abortions is erased. At a time when abortion is very hard to access for a great many women and the freedom to abort is undermined by the mountain of guilt and shame that is heaped on women for even considering this option, Obama’s “common ground” is one which abandons the fight for abortion access and retreats instead to a rear-guard battle to reduce unintended pregnancies without ever even mentioning birth control.

Finally, Obama tips his hat entirely to the anti-abortion position when he says we can unite to “provide care and support for women who do carry their child to term.” Here, in one phrase he accepts the unscientific, anti-abortion rhetoric that refers to fetuses as children. Flowing from this, a woman who chooses to terminate is killing her “child.”

In many ways, the approach Obama has taken to abortion—and what he mapped out in his speech—could prove even more dangerous to women’s rights and women’s lives than the religious fascists who were gathered at the gate. This is because Obama is dragging along many women and men who ought to know better—who, if there were outright attacks on the legality of abortion very well might be up in arms, but who are being lullabied to sleep by Obama’s calm and reasonable tone as he barters away women’s fundamental rights.

It is imperative that people see this speech, and Obama’s position overall, for what it truly is. It is not a reasonable middle ground, but a step-by-step waltz into a world with fewer and fewer rights for women and less and less ground to stand on to resist. It is urgent that people bring forward a new framework: one that values the lives of women above fetuses, one that sees the positive value in women being enabled to live full social lives including by controlling their own reproduction, one that recognizes that this is good for society as a whole.

Mexico Anti-Abortion Laws On The Rise

2009-05-26T11:12:00.001-04:00

Huffington Post
MEXICO CITY, May 22 (IPS) - In the last 13 months, 12 of Mexico's 32 states have approved amendments to their state constitutions defining a fertilised human egg as a person with a right to legal protection, and seven other state parliaments are taking steps in the same direction.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say it is a massive conservative reaction to a law decriminalising abortion up to 12 weeks' gestation that went into force in the Mexican capital in April 2007.

The law was upheld in August 2008 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that it did not violate the Mexican constitution.

Behind the wave of reforms of state constitutions, according to critics, is a pact between the hierarchy of the Mexican Catholic Church and the leadership of the most traditional political parties to curb social movements advocating the legalisation of abortion.

"I have no direct evidence, but we have repeatedly heard allegations" that such a pact exists, María Mejía, head of Catholics for the Right to Decide (CDD), told IPS.

According to María Luisa Sánchez, director of the Information Group on Reproductive Choice (GIRE), what is happening is a kind of "revenge" on the part of conservative groups. "These reforms are absurd and put women at risk," she told IPS.

The states where constitutions have been reformed are governed by President Felipe Calderón's conservative National Action Party (PAN) or by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for seven decades.

The amendments of the state constitutions have not, so far, been accompanied by changes to the regional criminal codes, which for the most part allow abortion in the case of rape or danger to the mother's life.

But the possibility remains that the criminal codes will be brought into line with the constitutional reforms, Mejía said.

Mexico is a federal nation in which each state has its own constitution and criminal code, although these cannot run counter to the national constitution and criminal code.

In this country of over 107 million people, an estimated 880,000 abortions are carried out annually, according to a study presented in 2008 by the Colegio de México, the Mexico office of the Population Council and the Guttmacher Institute in the United States.

The study found that an average of 33 abortions a year are performed for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44. This figure is higher than the average reported for developing countries, which is 29 abortions a year per 1,000 women of reproductive age.

Most abortions are performed clandestinely, even in cases where they are legal, because the authorities and public health centres put up such barriers that the right to therapeutic abortion under certain circumstances becomes non-existent.

A PAN lawmaker for the central state of Querétaro, Fernando Urbiola, told IPS that the recent reforms of the state constitutions "are simply due to the need to be consistent with the principle of defending human life, which begins at conception."

In Querétaro, which is governed by the PAN, Urbiola chairs the Commission on the Family in the state parliament, and is promoting a modification of the state constitution so that it will protect the fertilised egg from the time of conception. The change could be approved before the end of the year.

Urbiola argues that "unborn children" urgently need legal protection, on a par with any other person, until death. In his view, the wave of reforms will also close the door to euthanasia and recognise men's right to keep alive the eggs they fertilise.

GIRE's Sánchez said that her group is coordinating a series of demonstrations with women's movements in the various states, to urge the Supreme Court to rule on the wave of constitutional changes in the states.

"We hope that the Supreme Court will take up the issue again and give more weight to the right of women to decide about their lives and bodies. The Court must hold another debate and ratify its earlier ruling," said Sánchez.

In the August 2008 ruling, in response to a lawsuit arguing that the decriminalisation of abortion in the capital, governed by the leftwing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled that the law did not violate the constitution.

The Supreme Court verdict was repudiated by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and other conservative sectors.

However, the Calderón administration accepted the decision, although it had previously demanded, through the Attorney-General's Office, that the Mexico City law be repealed.

Now GIRE is asking the Attorney-General's Office to take up the issue again, this time to bring a suit before the Supreme Court alleging the unconstitutionality of the reforms against abortion approved by the states.

According to Mexican law, the Supreme Court deals with cases at the request of the Attorney-General's Office or the state National Human Rights Commission, or on its own initiative.

Mejía, of Catholics for the Right to Decide, also wants the Supreme Court to deal with the issue, but she recognised that this is very unlikely to happen in the short or medium term.

Since April 2007, when abortion in the first three months of pregnancy was decriminalised in Mexico City, just over 20,000 women have exercised this right in public health centres. Nearly 80 percent of them were from the capital.

According to official statistics, 47 percent of the women who requested an abortion in Mexico City were between the ages of 18 and 24, and 21 percent were aged 25 to 29. Nearly seven percent were under 18, and the remainder were over 30.

The great majority of the women who had abortions said they were Catholic, like 90 percent of Mexicans.

Mejía and Sánchez both said that it is illogical for only some women in Mexico to have the right to an abortion, and called for the same rights to be available for all women.

Furthermore, they both said that abortion should be removed from the criminal codes and should be dealt with instead as a public health issue.

No woman is happy to make the decision to have an abortion and no woman seeks an abortion for pleasure, which is "something conservatives just don't understand," and that is why they close the doors to women and their rights, and even worse, threaten them with imprisonment, Mejía said.

The state criminal codes lay down different penalties for women who have abortions, except for victims of rape or when the mother's life is endangered. In some cases, foetal malformation is also accepted as a legal reason for abortion.

In the state of Veracruz, for example, abortion carries a prison sentence of six months to four years; in Jalisco it is four months to one year, in Guanajuato from six months to three years, and in Baja California Sur from two months to two years.

Studies indicate that clandestine abortions are the fourth or fifth cause of death among Mexican women, and that obtaining permission for an abortion is complicated and, in many cases, impossible.

After the August 2008 Supreme Court resolution, GIRE legal adviser Pedro Morales called on state legislators to move from "prohibitive and punitive regimes on abortion to permissive laws compatible with the fundamental rights of women."

Instead, 12 states moved in the opposite direction and made it even more difficult to get a legal abortion, and another seven states may soon follow suit.

BBC News: Obama Overturns Global Gag Rule (with video)

2009-01-26T15:55:00.000-05:00

BBC News
1/24/09

US President Barack Obama has lifted a ban on federal funding for foreign family planning agencies that promote or give information about abortion.

The US is one of the biggest supporters of family planning programmes globally, but former president George W Bush blocked funds for abortion services.

Powerful anti-abortion groups in the US have criticised the lifting of the ban.

But aid agencies welcomed the move, saying it would promote women's health, especially in developing countries.

A White House spokesman said Mr Obama signed the executive order without asking for coverage by the media late on Friday afternoon.

The issue of abortion services remains controversial in the US, pitting pro-life conservative groups against more liberal, pro-choice Americans who back a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.

The BBC's Richard Lister in Washington says this may be why President Obama signed the order with so little fanfare.

Highly contentious

Organisations that had pressed Mr Obama to make the abortion-ban change were jubilant.

They called the funding ban the "gag rule" because it cuts funds to groups that advocate or lobby for the lifting of abortion restrictions.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America hailed the president for "lifting the stranglehold on women's health across the globe with the stroke of a pen."

"No longer will health care providers be forced to choose between receiving family planning funding and restricting the health care services they provide to women," the organization said in a statement.

But anti-abortion groups were quick to criticise the reversal of the funding ban.

"President Obama not long ago told the American people that he would support policies to reduce abortions, but today he is effectively guaranteeing more abortions by funding groups that promote abortion as a method of population control," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee.

A 1973 decision by the US Supreme Court legalised abortion.

A Gallup poll conducted last year showed that 54% of Americans think abortion should be allowed under certain circumstances, 28% believe it should be legal under any circumstances, while 17% back a total ban.

See-saw issue

The policy has become a see-saw issue between Republican and Democratic administrations.

Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, repealed the policy when he took office in 1993 and George W Bush reinstated it in 2001.

The ruling is also known as the Mexico City Policy, because it was first introduced at a UN conference there in 1984 by former Republican President Ronald Reagan.

In a move related to the lifting of the abortion rule, Mr Obama is also expected to restore funding to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in the next budget, the AP news agency reported.

The Bush administration contended that the fund's work in China supported a Chinese family planning policy of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilisation, claims the UNFPA has vehemently denied.

In a separate move earlier on Friday, US regulators cleared the way for the world's first study on human embryonic stem cell therapy.

While the decision of the US Food and Drug Administration is independent of White House control, Mr Obama is widely expected to adopt a more pragmatic and science-oriented approach to stem cell research.

Blogs Comment On Abortion Myths, 'Pro-Life Atheists,' PEPFAR, Proposed HHS Conscience Rule

2008-12-14T18:32:00.000-05:00

Article
12/8/08
The following summarizes selected women's health-related blog entries.

~ "Abortion Myth About Depression Falls Before Science," Bonnie Erbe, U.S. World and News Report's Thomas Jefferson Street blog: The claim by antiabortion-rights advocates that abortion can lead to mental health problems is "another claim [that] fell prey to scientific accuracy" with the release of a Johns Hopkins University review that said there is no study to-date that supports the argument, Erbe writes. "The list of myths propagated by the right-wing abortion foes goes on and on," she writes, adding that the "fight to deny women the right to control their own fertility is still going on," despite the election of President-elect Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights. President Bush "is trying to pay off debts to the Christian right" with a proposed HHS conscience rule that would allow health care providers who receive federal grants to opt out of care based on their moral or religious beliefs. Erbe writes that she "remember[s] in 2001 watching President Bush undo so many of the gains women's rights advocates made under President Clinton." She concludes that "this time the pendulum is swinging in the direction of the future, not the past" (Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog, 12/4).

~"Not on Our Watch: Part Two of Two," National Right to Life blog: The "deception" of abortion rights advocates "to make inroads into constituencies that normally would never have given a pro-abortion maximalist like [President-elect Barack Obama] a second thought" is the "fabricated out of whole cloth myth that pro-abortionist and pro-life alike are bent on 'reducing the number of abortions,'" a National Right to Life blog post says in response to a recent Newsweek article on atheists who oppose abortion rights. The blog says that the "strategy" of reducing the need for abortions is one that "Obama and his ilk will nonetheless carry in front of them like a banner." It continues, "provided they offer a rhetorical crumb or two along the way," abortion-rights supporters "are to accept that 'progress' is made in" compromise between the two sides. Although the Newsweek article said "such honest reflection" about the complexity of the issues involving abortion is "progress indeed," the blog concludes it is "nothing of that sort. Far from honest reflection, it is both morally tone-deaf and plagued by an arrogant self-assurance that allows them to believe that if they speak loud enough and long enough and insincerely enough, truth can be turned on its head" (National Right to Life blog, 12/2).

~ "Strengthening PEPFAR: A Plan for Immediate Action," Jodi Jacobson, RH Reality Check: Although President-elect Barack Obama will face "many challenges" when he takes office Jan. 20, "[h]e will also inherit the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief," Jacobson writes. She continues that "PEPFAR presents both opportunities and challenges," including "several controversial policies originally supported by the Bush administration" that "undermine efforts to stop the spread of HIV by denying critical services to the most vulnerable, blocking effective integration of health services and failing to effectively address the social and economic roots of this pandemic." Jacobson's blog post suggests steps that Obama should take to "initiate the change PEPFAR needs, ensuring we simultaneously save more lives and strengthen health systems while making the best possible use of scarce public dollars." Among her suggestions, Jacobson recommends appointing a Global AIDS Coordinator who "embraces both the public health and human rights dimensions of risk and disease and who recognizes that sex and sexuality are normal attributes of being human." She writes that Obama also should "talk about the role of safer sex in prevention" and "immediately direct" the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator "to support flexible interpretations of requirements in the law affecting spending on 'abstinence and be faithful' programs." She continues that PEPFAR funding should also support programs that "equip all individuals ... with the education, information, skills and methods necessary to engage in sexual relations," in order to "move beyond the formulaic 'ABC' approach and away from the 'abstinence versus condoms' debate." Obama also should instruct OGAC "to promote wherever necessary the integration of relevant HIV and AIDS services with broader reproductive and sexual health services." In addition, he should reverse the "Mexico City policy," or "global gag rule," and restore funding for the United Nations Population Fund (Jacobson, RH Reality Check, 12/4).

~ "Still Waiting for Administration to Impose 'Conscience Rule'", Our Bodies, Our Blog: The proposed HHS conscience rule "would likely have the effect of seriously reducing access to legal health care such as oral contraceptives," an Our Bodies, Our Blog entry says. The blog states that "we're watching closely to see it if is rammed through during the last days of the Bush administration." According to the blog, recent newspaper articles "suggest that the rule could still be finalized" even though the Bush administration has "obviously missed" its own regulation deadline of Nov. 1. The blog entry also highlights a recent discussion on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" (Our Bodies, Our Blog, 12/3).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2008 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.

Some Abortion Foes Shifting Focus From Ban to Reduction

2008-11-19T11:26:00.000-05:00

Washington Post 11/18/08

Frustrated by the failure to overturn Roe v. Wade, a growing number of antiabortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions.

Some of the activists are actually working with abortion rights advocates to push for legislation in Congress that would provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education -- services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies.

Their efforts, they said, reflect the political reality that legal challenges to abortion rights will not be successful, especially after Barack Obama's victory this month in the presidential election and the defeat of several ballot measures that would have restricted access to abortions. Although the activists insist that they are not retreating from their belief that abortion is immoral and should be outlawed, they argue that a more practical alternative is to try to reduce abortions through other means.

"If one strategy has failed and failed over decades, and you have empirical information that tells how you can honor life and encourage women to make that choice by meeting real needs that are existing and tangible, why not do that?" said Douglas W. Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Kmiec, a Catholic who opposes abortion, was criticized by some abortion foes because he endorsed Obama.

Obama supports abortion rights and is unlikely to appoint justices who would overturn the controversial Supreme Court decision that allowed the practice. But during the campaign, he spoke of wanting to reduce abortions and of finding "common ground" in the debate.

The new effort is causing a fissure in the antiabortion movement, with traditional groups viewing the activists as traitors to their cause. Leaders worry that the approach could gain traction with a more liberal Congress and president, although they do not expect it to weaken hard-core opposition.

"It's a sellout, as far as we are concerned," said Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League. "We don't think it's really genuine. You don't have to have a lot of social programs to cut down on abortions."

The diverse group that has come together to try a different tack includes prominent pastors such as Joel Hunter; Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good; Sojourners, a progressive evangelical organization; and RealAbortionSolutions.org, a coalition of Catholics and evangelical leaders.

Others include Catholics United, a progressive Catholic lay group; Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals; the Rev. Thomas Reese of Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center, a prominent Jesuit thinker; and Nicholas Cafardi, former dean of the Duquesne University School of Law and a Catholic canon lawyer.

Their actions have not come without consequences. Cafardi resigned from the board of Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio after writing a column supporting Obama and declaring the abortion battle lost. Kmiec has received hate e-mail, and a priest denied him Communion in April. And Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has criticized Kmiec and several of the groups involved, saying they have "undermined the progress pro-lifers have made and provided an excuse for some Catholics to abandon the abortion issue."

The activists say the time has come for more cooperation on difficult social and moral issues such as abortion.

"We are not compromising our values, but at the same time we are finding a way we can all accomplish our agenda, or at least a piece of our agenda, together," said Hunter, pastor of Northland in Longwood, Fla., one of the nation's largest churches, and a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals. "There's got to be a way we can take some of these hot-button issues and cooperate, rather than simply keep fighting and becoming gridlocked in this hostility of the culture wars."

The activists are beginning with ad campaigns to raise their profile, advocating legislation and planning rallies. They say they hope to harness the two-thirds of Americans who want a "middle ground" on abortion, according to a 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Some are working with Third Way, an abortion rights think tank, to build political support among Democratic lawmakers.

Even if Roe v. Wade was overturned, many in the coalition say, the battle would return to the states. And that is no guarantee that abortion would be outlawed.

Overturning the Supreme Court decision "is not going to dramatically reduce the number of abortions in America," said Third Way spokeswoman Rachel Laser. "So here is a whole other way that promises to be very productive in terms of their goals, which is reducing the number of abortions, and that also serves the purpose of healing the divide and reasoning together."

A study sponsored by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good cited recent research that found that the abortion rate among women living below the poverty line is more than four times that of women above 300 percent of the poverty level. The authors of the study found that social and economic supports, such as benefits for pregnant women and mothers and economic assistance to low-income families, have contributed significantly to reducing abortions in the United States over the past two decades.

"Clearly, poverty impacts the abortion rate," said Alexia Kelley, the group's executive director.

But established abortion opponents dispute that approach. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said last week during a meeting of the conference that social-service spending is no substitute for legal protections for the unborn. He also questioned research showing that improvements in areas such as employment and health care can reduce the likelihood that a woman will want to end her pregnancy. "It's still to be proven what the connection is between poverty and abortion," he said.

Undeterred by critics, the activists are pushing for the passage of legislation that would increase funding for social services for pregnant women, such as low-cost health care and day care; provide grants at colleges for pregnant women and new mothers' education; and set up maternity group homes. Two House bills with backing from various groups are the Pregnant Women's Support Act, sponsored by Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), and the Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act, sponsored by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who oppose abortion.

Those bills are largely opposed by antiabortion groups. "You don't work to limit the murder of innocent victims," said Judie Brown, president of the American Life League. "You work to stop it."

To preserve the coalition, activists have avoided taking positions on the more sensitive aspects of the issue, such as laws that restrict abortions, contraception, sex education and abstinence-only programs.

"There are certain things that we probably all can support, and then there are other things that we're going to disagree about, and you find common ground on what you can, and then you have a political battle on your other issues," said Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners.

Staff writer Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report.

South Dakota Abortion Ban Fails!

2008-11-05T11:53:00.000-05:00

Article

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- Two years after South Dakotans rejected a nearly total ban on abortion, the early count in Tuesday's election showed a less restrictive ballot measure also failing.

With about one-third of the precincts reporting, Initiated Measure 11 was losing with 55 percent of the votes against it.

If passed, the measure would likely send a legal challenge of Roe v. Wade to the U.S. Supreme Court, so the issue is being watched closely nationally.

This year's ballot measure was less restrictive than the 2006 measure, which was rejected by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent.

The new version would outlaw abortions but included exceptions for rape, incest and pregnancies that threaten the life or health of the woman. Some voters said they wanted those exceptions when they rejected the 2006 measure.

Opponents of Initiated Measure 11 said it would jeopardize the patient-doctor relationship because physicians could be criminally charged for exceeding its bounds.

Supporters said the focus is on preventing abortions in South Dakota, and doctors abiding by standard medical practices would have nothing to fear.

South Dakota Right To Life had urged voters to reject Initiated Measure 11. The group supported the 2006 measure but not the latest one because the exceptions were added.

Jon Schafer, 42, of Sioux Falls voted for Measure 11.

"I'm a little more comfortable with it now," he said of the exceptions.

Inez Grenz, 64, of Eureka said she did, as well.

"It will save 97 percent of all abortions and eventually Roe v. Wade could be overturned," she said.

But Jon Gonzales, 30, of Sioux Falls voted against the ban.

"I believe in choice. It's a no-win thing. They're just kicking at a dead horse," he said of the second attempt.

Ron Kjellsen, 72, of Watertown said he voted against it but with mixed emotions.

"I would say I'm very torn about it. I don't think there should be abortions, one side of me is saying. The other side of me is saying, why should a 72-year-old man be making a decision for a 16-, 17- , 18-year-old girl who got in trouble?"

According to the state Health Department, 748 abortions were performed in 2006, the last year for which records are available.

South Dakota to reconsider vote on abortion ban

2008-10-27T14:45:00.000-04:00

The measure is a version of a 2006 one but has exceptions for rape and incest.
By Nicholas Riccardi
LA Times

October 27, 2008

Two years ago, South Dakota voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed ban on abortions that proponents had hoped would set up a Supreme Court showdown over Roe vs. Wade.

Next month, the state ballot will include another abortion ban with similar goals -- but observers say this one is far more likely to pass.

The new ballot measure would allow for abortions in the case of rape and incest, exceptions that were not in the 2006 version. The absence of such exceptions is believed to have doomed the earlier version to failure.

"They said we'd gone too far, that we had to have exceptions for rape and incest," said Leslee Unruh, an antiabortion activist who has backed both measures.

This year's measure permits abortion in cases of rape -- provided the mother identifies the violator, a DNA test proves it is his child and the procedure occurs in the first 20 weeks -- and incest.

But opponents contend the initiative does not provide as much leeway as advertised.

"They tried to twist it to make it seem like there are exceptions, but there are not exceptions," said Jan Nicolay, a former state legislator who is co-chairwoman of South Dakota for Healthy Families, which opposes the initiative.

Though the initiative allows an abortion to protect the mother's health, abortion rights advocates say the standard is impossibly high: the threat of a major organ failure. They note that a pregnant woman with breast cancer, for example, couldn't seek chemotherapy or other treatment that could cause a miscarriage because an organ was not immediately at risk.

They also have publicized a memo from attorneys for the state's largest hospital chain that warns Measure 11 "will require a physician to choose between possibly committing a felony or subjecting a pregnant woman to a higher degree of medical risk than what would otherwise be clinically desirable."

The attacks frustrate Unruh, who hoped for a straightforward discussion of whether voters wanted unfettered abortion access. "The South Dakota law is a reasonable law," she said.

But the continuing abortion battles in South Dakota show that abortion is not a black and white issue, said Elizabeth T. Smith, a political science professor at the University of South Dakota. "The average citizen doesn't have a straight up or down vote on abortion," Smith said. "There are gradations of support based on different circumstances."

South Dakota already has what are considered the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, including a requirement that doctors warn that abortion can lead to increased risk of suicide and a mandatory 24-hour period between the time a woman requests an abortion and has one.

There is only one abortion clinic in the state, in Sioux Falls, and Planned Parenthood flies in physicians from Minnesota because no doctors in South Dakota will risk regularly performing the procedure.

Unruh said her campaign's polls showed Measure 11 slightly ahead. A poll released Sunday by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader/KELO-TV showed a dead heat, with voters divided 44% to 44%. Both sides agree the tally will be closer than in 2006, when voters rejected, 56% to 44%, an abortion ban signed into law by Republican Gov. Michael Rounds.

In allowing the exceptions, the measure's backers have had to deal with some dissension in the antiabortion movement. Some argue that if abortion is truly murder, there should be no exceptions other than for the life of the mother.

"Our biggest battles are with our own people," Unruh said.

The proposed ban also aggravates a rift among antiabortion groups over strategy. Some groups prefer to incrementally increase restrictions on abortion and appoint more sympathetic judges. Unruh and her backers hope abortion rights groups will sue to overturn the measure if it passes, forcing the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider Roe vs. Wade.

Even if the effort fails again, Unruh said activists would try again at the ballot box in 2010.

"I'm not tired," she said. "We're going to continue. We believe in this."

President Ortega vs. the Feminists

2008-10-20T15:40:00.000-04:00

NOTE FROM THE COAT HANGER PROJECT: The Sandinistas, a once liberal, revolutionary party of Nicaragua, have sold out women's rights (including abortion rights) to stay in power.

By Tim Rogers
Time Magazine
10/16/08

President Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua's macho and mustachioed Sandinista commandante of the 1970s and '80s, may claim the mantle of revolutionary "new man," but Latin America's feminists insist Ortega is a dirty old man. Throughout the continent, Ortega is being hounded by feminist groups over his alleged sexual abuse of stepdaughter Zoilamerica Narvaez during the 1980s. The allegation first surfaced in 1998, but was eventually dismissed by a Sandinista judge without investigation or trial — despite an investigation by the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, which determined that the case had merit. In most democracies, the furor would have been enough to sink any political career. But not in Nicaragua, where Ortega — protected by legal immunity and a judicial system stacked with Sandinista judges — has not only survived but thrived, returning to the presidency in 2007 and amassing more power than ever before. But now that Ortega is trying to reclaim his place in the international pantheon of revolutionary heroes, the feminists are crying foul. Unable to pursue him through Nicaragua's legal system, they are instead subjecting the Sandinista leader to the tribunal of public opinion.

Ortega's accusers are not limited to Nicaragua's small feminist organizations. The minister of women's affairs in Paraguay's new left-wing government, Gloria Rubin, whipped up a media storm in August by calling Ortega a "rapist" and protesting his invitation to President Fernando Lugo's inauguration — an event Ortega eventually skipped to avoid the heat. A week later in Honduras, Selma Estrada, minister of the National Institute of Women, resigned her government post in protest over the official invitation of Ortega to Tegucigalpa. And in El Salvador, feminist leaders are asking their government to declare Ortega persona non grata before he's scheduled to attend a presidential summit there at the end of the month.

Throughout Latin America, the feminist movement has become Ortega's nemesis, challenging his efforts to restore his image as a progressive and revolutionary leader. Although Narvaez last month wrote to the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights asking it to close the books on her case — she did not retract the accusation that Ortega had sexually abused her, but simply said she'd made a decision to "find a solution" and asked for others to respect her privacy — the president's problem with the women of Latin America continues to grow. Last week in Honduras, Ortega had to sneak in through the back door of a Central American presidential summit to avoid feminists who were waiting for him out front holding pictures of his stepdaughter.

"This is Ortega's main vulnerability, which is making it very difficult for him to recapture the image of the great Latin American revolutionary leader like Fidel Castro," said Maria Teresa Blandon, an activist with Nicaragua's Feminist Movement.

Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, who has long been accused by feminists of being a silent accomplice in her daughter's alleged abuse, are fighting back with a Sandinista inquisition. Ortega has used all his tentacles — Sandinista media outlets, government ministries and fanatical party structures — to investigate, slander and harass Nicaragua's feminist movement, which is being informally accused of everything from money laundering and conspiring with the CIA, to "illegally" promoting abortion, pornography and "assassinating children".

Murillo has even tried to reinvent the feminist movement in her own image by penning an Orwellian essay called "Feminism and Low Intensity War." Murillo's feminist manifesto is intended to change the way Nicaraguan women look at feminism, but her views will hardly be deemed transformative — she lauds the traditional role of a woman as wife and mother, and rails against other feminists as "counterrevolutionaries" who "dress in the clothing of women, but have never known the sensibility of a woman's heart."

Murillo tried to give life to her new feminist vision through the unveiling of a new women's movement, "The Blanca Arauz Movement for the Dignity of Women's Rights," named after the wife of Sandinista namesake Augusto Sandino. The movement, which materialized overnight, is made up of Sandinista activists who profess their solidarity with "our sister, Rosario Murillo" and denounce other feminist groups critical of Ortega. The "Blanca Arauz" movement recently tried to legitimize itself by requesting a meeting with other feminist organizations in El Salvador, but there wasn't interest in networking with Murillo's group.

Now the Sandinista inquisition is escalating from threats to actions. Last Friday, state prosecutors and police raided the central office of the Autonomous Women's Movement (MAM) and another local NGO that has helped finance the feminist movement and removed all the files, computers and bookkeeping from their offices, in what Public Prosecutor Armando Juarez called a raid to "find evidence" to mount a case against them. The local opposition press denounced the raid as a "Gestapo" tactic, and women's rights activists from across Latin America released a joint statement from Guatemala denouncing the Ortega government's "institutionalized misogynism" and "campaign to criminalize feminists."

Nicaraguan journalist and feminist leader Sofia Montenegro, a central target in the government's crackdown, predicts Ortega's "psychologically vulgar and manipulative campaign" will eventually boomerang on him. Montenegro says the personal nature of the attacks against her have been so crass that even the machista element of Nicaraguan society is rejecting what many view as a cowardly persecution of women. "Men think: that could be my sister, or my wife," she said.

The attacks have only served to "throw more wood on the fire" and reinforce Ortega's misogynistic image abroad, Montenegro said. Even now that Narvaez has withdrawn her abuse case, the protests will continue to grow because the movement is now "out of her hands," Montenegro says.

"The case of Nicaragua has become super emblematic in Latin America because there was a revolution here and it was supposed to bring social change," she said. "If this was Pinochet's Chile, no one would expect differently, but with Ortega, it's doubly hard."

Women on Waves sparks controversy in Spain

2008-10-15T15:22:00.000-04:00

AFP
10/15/08

MADRID (AFP) — A Spanish pro-life group said it plans to protest the arrival on Thursday of a Dutch boat that is offering to provide abortions that circumvent Spain's strict laws.

The boat is due to anchor off the Mediterranean port of Valencia, the Dutch non-profit organisation Women on Waves said on its web site.

From Friday, it will offer abortions on the ship in international waters under the Netherlands' more liberal abortion laws.

This "symbolic initiative" will allow "abortions outside Spanish law for the first time in Spain's recent history, but without violating it," said Spanish gynaecologist Josep Lluis Carbonell, one of the promoters.

But it has already sparked controversy.

Valencia's conservative mayor Rita Barbera termed the plan a "provocation that has sparked indignation."

The anti-abortion group Provida in Valencia said its members plan a protest aboard a smaller vessels when the boat arrives.

Spain decriminalised abortion in 1985 but only for certain cases: up to 12 weeks of pregnancy after a rape; up to 22 weeks in the case of malformation of the foetus; and at any point if the pregnancy represents a threat to the physical or mental health of the woman.

But the Socialist government last month said it plans to introduce a new law that will offer greater legal protection for women who wish to have an abortion and doctors who carry out the procedure.

The Women on Waves ship visited Ireland in 2001, Poland in 2003 and Portugal in 2004, sparking protests in each country.

Plans to legalise abortion in Northern Ireland shelved

2008-10-15T12:47:00.000-04:00

UK Telegraph
By Rosa Prince and Martin Beckford

Pro-choice Labour MPs had been planning to back an amendment to the Embryology Bill that would allow terminations in Northern Ireland, the only part of Britain where the procedure remains illegal.

They have changed their minds after being privately warned by ministers that with the Stormont executive close to collapse, the move could tip the province's politicians into withdrawing from negotiations.

The MPs still plan to push ahead with separate plans to make access to abortion easier in the rest of the country by removing the requirement for two doctors' signatures and allowing nurses to carry out early-stage terminations, however.

But they face determined opposition from pro-life MPs, backed by church groups, when the Bill is debated in the Commons on Wednesday.

Mark Pritchard, Conservative MP for The Wrekin, said the decision not to legalise abortion in Northern Ireland was a ``welcome U-turn'' but added: ``The decision appears to be more about extending the political life of the Prime Minister - rather than the Government extending the lives of the unborn.

``It appears ministers are still determined to introduce 'drive-thru' abortions where mothers can bypass the advice of their local GP, drive straight to their local clinic and place an order for an abortion.''

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which also includes measures allowing human-animal hybrid embryo research and the creation of ``saviour siblings'', has already been the cause of some of the most heated exchanges in Parliament in recent years.

A series of amendments to lower the upper time limit for abortions from 24 weeks was defeated after an impassioned debate in May and the Bill had been due to clear the Commons in July.

But it was suddenly halted on the intervention of Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House, who was said to be keen to see the Northern Ireland amendment pass and wanted more time to raise support for it.

Pro-choice MPs had been confident of success when the Bill returns to the Commons next week, particularly given the forthcoming departure from the Cabinet of Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, who as a committed Catholic had forced Gordon Brown to allow ministers a free vote when it was last debated.

But the Ulster political situation has deteriorated recently, with the Executive failing to meet as scheduled as a result of a disagreement between unionists and republicans over the devolution of policing and justice.

While abortion is one area where Northern Ireland's politicians largely concur - with both Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party opposed to legalisation - ministers fear that forcing the amendment through could undermine their attempts to broker an agreement.

As a result, pro-choice Labour MPs have been taken aside and warned not to proceed with their plan.

An amendment has been tabled by Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney north, for but without the full backing of the powerful female Labour pro-choice group, it has little chance of success.

The message was underlined at the ``Ulster Fry'' breakfast meeting at Labour Party Conference, where MPs mingled with Northern Irish politicians - who told them they would consider breaking off communication with the Government over the issue.

Around 1,400 girls and women travel from the province each year to have a termination on the mainland, as the 1967 Act which legalised abortion in the rest of the country was never extended to Northern Ireland.

The Fpa, formerly the Family Planning Association, has now launched an online video campaign aimed at MPs urging them to end the ``discrimination'' that pregnant women in Northern Ireland face if they do not want to have their baby.

Julie Bentley, chief executive of the Fpa, said: ``The leaders of the four main political parties and the leaders of the main church groups in Northern Ireland have all demanded that abortion should remain highly restricted but only 16.6 percent of the Northern Ireland Assembly are women.

``So the situation exists that groups of men are making decisions about women's lives and creating a division of rights and entitlement between women, on the basis that they live in different regions of the UK.''

Lithuanian Abortion Vote Looms Beyond Elections

2008-10-13T13:11:00.000-04:00

Women's E-News
Run Date: 10/10/08
By Elisabeth Roy Trudel
WeNews correspondent

(WOMENSENEWS)--A bill currently under review by the parliament in Lithuania--which has one of the lowest abortion rates among Baltic nations--would create one of the most restrictive bans in all of Europe.

The bill--formally called the Draft Act of the Republic of Lithuania on the Protection of Human Life in the Prenatal Stage--is currently pending review by the Health Committee, which is expected to wait until after the Oct. 12 parliamentary elections to present its conclusions and recommendations.

Proponents of the ban have kept it low on the political agenda and have successfully avoided making it a major issue during the election campaign.

Women's rights activists have sought to raise awareness about the bill and its impact as they fear it will be adopted in a rush and without a real and open debate in society if socially conservative parties win the elections.

The draft--strongly backed by the Catholic Church--says "all issues on the protection of life in the prenatal stage should be considered as giving priority to the rights of a child."

Exceptions to the ban would only apply when a pregnancy endangers the life or health of the woman, when a pregnancy is caused by a criminal act or when the fetus has been diagnosed with a severe disability.

Abortion is currently illegal in three of the 27 European Union countries. In Malta abortion is prohibited in all circumstances; specific provisions allowing an abortion to save the woman's life were removed from the criminal code in 1981. Abortion has been illegal in Ireland since 1861 and is only permitted to save the life of the woman. Poland first restricted abortion in 1993 following the end of Communist Party rule and reaffirmed its opposition to abortion in 1997.
Soviet Era Abortion Law

Under existing law a Lithuanian woman can choose to legally terminate an unwanted pregnancy for any reason up to the 12th week, as in most Western countries. The current legislation has been inherited from its status as a republic in the former Soviet Union and has not been changed since the country's independence in 1991.

Among its neighbors, Lithuania has a relatively low abortion rate, spurring the Lithuanian Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which does not support abortion as a pregnancy regulation method, to nonetheless question the purpose of the bill. There were 14 abortions per 1,000 Lithuanian women aged 15 to 45 in 2004, far below neighboring Estonia and Latvia, where the rates, respectively, were 33 and 27 abortions per 1,000 women.

Algimantas Ramonas, chair of the National Families and Parents Association of Lithuania, is one of the bill's strong supporters.

"Every child has the right to be born and to live," he told Women's eNews. "Of course a woman has the right to decide on her sexual life and plan her family, but she also has responsibilities. A pregnant woman has a human being inside her, which is not just another part of her body, and she should be proud of it."

On the other side of the bill, Esmeralda Kuliestyle, director of the Vilnius-based Family Planning and Sexual Health Association, decries it as a violation of women's freedom to make their own decisions.

"This is a very dangerous step for Lithuanian women," says Kuliestyle. "It could lead to serious health complications and even to an increase in the maternal mortality rate because of illegal and unsafe abortions."
Authors Sit on Review Committees

While earlier versions of the draft legislation were judged unconstitutional by the parliament's legal affairs committee, the latest draft has been approved by this committee and, last April, also by the human rights committee. Two of the five original authors of the bill sit on these committees.

The authors justify their proposal, saying the bill "reflects the teaching of the Catholic Church and John Paul II."

Kuliestyle objects to the heavy involvement of the Catholic Church in the matter.

"Priests are everywhere: They appear on television, on the radio, in newspapers and even on the Internet," she says. "They say that using contraceptive methods is immoral and that abortion is a crime. They have too much influence, particularly on politicians."

The Catholic Church has traditionally played an important role in Lithuania. During Soviet occupation, the church's underground activities in support of dissidents were a major asset in the struggle for the country's independence. Since then, its influence on society has remained high.

The draft law has been criticized for its vagueness, as it does not clearly state which criminal sanctions women and doctors involved with illegal abortions would face. Because the bill seeks to amend the criminal code and would therefore establish a criminal link between abortion and murder, judges would have discretion to sentence violators of the law to several years' imprisonment.
70 Percent Opposed to Criminalization

A survey conducted by the Family Planning and Sexual Health Association shows that, while most Lithuanians would personally prefer to avoid terminating pregnancies, more than 70 percent of the population regards abortion as matter of individual choice and opposes criminalization.

Authors of the bill take both a moral and practical stance, arguing that abortion indicates a "low moral level of society and a critical demographic situation" in Lithuania. The population in the country has continuously declined--by an average of half a percentage point annually--since the beginning of the 1990s, and the total fertility rate decreased from two children per woman in 1990 to 1.3 children in 2006. Supporters of the bill say an abortion ban would encourage population growth.

Kuliestyle rejects that, arguing that its main effect will be to discriminate against lower-income women. "No matter if abortion is legal or not, women who decide to abort will do it anyway. Those who can afford it will travel to nearby countries where the law isn't so strict. Others who don't have money will turn to unsafe underground operations and put their health at risk."

Since neighboring Poland, a country looked upon by supporters of the legislation in Lithuania, passed its strict abortion ban in 1993, the total fertility rate fell to 1.23 births per woman in 2006 from a higher rate of 2.04 births per woman in 1990. This situation mirrors a general trend in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.

Earlier this year 110 members of the European Parliament--out of 785--sent a letter to Lithuanian deputies urging them to reject the bill, describing it as a "serious backlash on women's reproductive health rights in Lithuania."

Women's rights advocates worry that the bill will be passed as anti-choice factions gain ground at the expense of progressive women's rights.

In June the Lithuanian parliament redefined "family" exclusively as a married, heterosexual couple and their children. As a result, single mothers or fathers, unmarried partners and grandparents raising children no longer constitute a family or qualify for the same level of government assistance as a "traditional family."

Elisabeth Roy Trudel is a freelance journalist from Montreal, Canada, who frequently writes on human rights and social issues.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.

Palin On Abortion: I'd Oppose Even If My Own Daughter Was Raped

2008-10-13T13:04:00.000-04:00

The Huffington Post

In November 2006, then gubernatorial candidate Sarah Palin declared that she would not support an abortion for her own daughter even if she had been raped.

Granting exceptions only if the mother's life was in danger, Palin said that when it came to her daughter, "I would choose life."

At the time, her daughter was 14 years old. Moreover, Alaska's rape rate was an abysmal 2.2 times above the national average and 25 percent of all rapes resulted in unwanted pregnancies. But Palin's position was palatable within the state's largely Republican political circles.

Now that she's John McCain's vice presidential candidate, Palin's abortion policy (among others) is undergoing renewed scrutiny. The Alaska Republican has long declared herself pro-life. And her credentials on the topic make her the belle of the ball among religious conservatives. But Democrats and abortion rights advocates say her stance, specifically her unwillingness to grant her own child a choice to end a pregnancy induced by rape, is drastically at odds with public opinion -- even among many Republicans.

"This is absolutely outside the mainstream. Even in South Dakota they rejected [outlawing abortion in cases of rape] in '06 because it has gone too far and everyone can identify that in a case of rape or incest a woman should have the chance to make the decision with their family or doctor," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro Choice America. "Women voters are going to reject both her and John McCain, and I think we see it specifically because we reach out to Republicans and independent pro-choice women. They live in the suburbs and exurbs. They are very much part of the mainstream America. And woman in general will reject that ticket."

Palin makes no secret of her abortion views. A member of the group Feminists for Life, she told the Alaska Right to Life Board in 2002 that she "adamantly supported our cause since I first understood, as a child, the atrocity of abortion." In an Eagle Forum Alaska questionnaire filled out during the 2006 gubernatorial race, Palin again stated that she is against abortion unless a doctor determined that a mother's life would end due to the pregnancy.

"I believe that no matter what mistakes we make as a society," she wrote, "we cannot condone ending an innocent's life."

But it's not just abortion policy that has Democrats up in arms over Palin. In that same 2006 questionnaire, the soon-to-be governor said she would fund abstinence-only education programs in schools. "The explicit sex-ed programs," she added, "will not find my support." The stance, which reflected the priorities of the GOP, nevertheless led to an incredulous editorial in the Juneau Empire.

"Abstinence may be a laudable goal, but failing to educate teenagers about how to protect themselves from disease or unintended pregnancy is tragically misguided. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, abstinence-only programs do not reduce sexual activity, teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. Every day 10,000 U.S. teens contract a sexually transmitted disease, 2,400 get pregnant and 55 contract HIV. Unintended pregnancies happen to Republicans, Democrats and people of all faiths."

While Palin's positions have drawn the ire and concern of the pro-choice and progressive community, they are largely -- save abortions in the case of rape -- in line with John McCain's own stances. The Senator is against federal funding of birth control and sex education. He has called for the overturning of Roe v. Wade and received a zero rating from NARAL. Once, aboard the Straight Talk Express, McCain was asked if he supported the use of contraception or President Bush's abstinence-only education program to stem the spreading of AIDS.

"After a long pause, he said, 'I think I support the president's policy.' Does he believe that contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV? After another long pause, he replied, "You've stumped me."

Madonna Talks About Abortion (From 1994 Interview)

2008-10-03T14:40:00.001-04:00

I found this while browsing around on YouTube. It's an interview from 1994 with Madonna and a Swedish journalist. The journalist probes into Madonna's life to talk about her abortions.

If Roe Goes, Our State Will Be Worse Than You Think

2008-10-03T12:35:00.000-04:00

Washington Post
By Linda Hirshman
Sunday, September 28, 2008; B01

In the 1980s, when abortion was severely limited in then-West Germany, border guards sometimes required German women returning from foreign trips to undergo vaginal examinations to make sure that they hadn't illegally terminated a pregnancy while they were abroad. According to news stories and other accounts, the guards would stop young women and ask them about drugs, then look for evidence of abortion, such as sanitary pads or nightgowns, in their cars, and eventually force them to undergo a medical examination -- as West German law empowered them to do.

Sounds like a nightmare of a police state, doesn't it? Like something that could never happen in this day and age -- and certainly not in the United States? But depending upon the outcome of this presidential election, it could happen here. This is how.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain opposes abortion, believing that life begins at conception. Imagine that he's elected to the White House and, not long after, one of the aging Supreme Court justices dies or resigns. President McCain appoints a suitably conservative replacement, and a complaisant or cowed Senate confirms the nomination. Then, an ambitious district attorney in Alabama, Delaware or any one of more than a dozen other states with old abortion laws still on the books or a new, untested abortion restriction prosecutes a local clinic for performing the procedure. (Legal scholars pretty much agree that laws from before Roe v. Wade can be revived.) The clinic goes to federal court; after appeals, the case goes to the Supreme Court, which votes 5-4 to overturn Roe. And we're back to the '60s .

Well, that wouldn't be so bad, you may think. Some states (or even cities and counties) will offer abortion, and others won't. Women will just have to go to New York or someplace else if they want or need to end a pregnancy. A lot of states had pretty liberal laws in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade. Even Georgia, one of the two states involved in that case, allowed some abortions for the health of the mother.

But it's not 1972. The climate then was one of growing sympathy for women seeking abortion, triggered in part by stories of those who sought one after realizing that their children would be deformed by the anti-morning-sickness drug thalidomide. Social liberalism was rising; religions weren't much engaged in politics. Today, the politics of abortion have changed. In addition to old laws that would spring back up should Roe be reversed, the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute lists four states -- Louisiana, Missisippi, North and South Dakota -- as having trigger laws explicitly aimed at making abortion criminal upon Roe' s demise, and seven others that have committed to acting to the extent that the court may allow.

The trigger laws are much harsher than the pre- Roe laws; Louisiana's, for instance, would allow abortion only in case of a threat to the mother's life or to a life-sustaining organ. In 1972, roughly 40 percent of the women who got abortions in the United States did so outside their state of residence. There are now more than a million abortions a year. Can you imagine how many women will travel elsewhere if their home states prohibit abortion unless the mother's life is at risk?

The difference today is that some states with criminal abortion laws will almost certainly also forbid their residents to cross state lines to obtain an abortion. Missouri already allows civil litigation against anyone who helps a minor cross state lines to get an abortion without parental consent. Congress was well along to passing a law making it criminal to take a minor from a state requiring parental consent when the Democrats won in 2006 and stopped it.

Is it possible, you ask, that in a post- Roe world, states would be able to pass valid laws stopping women from leaving to obtain an abortion? It seems un-American. But a lot of law professors have looked at this question, and although they're still debating it, many of the best in the business believe that this is something states probably can do. "To speak of the fetus' " home state, and make the home it shares with the mother "a basis" for controlling a woman's ability to get an abortion might "make sense," Columbia law professor Gerald Neuman wrote in 1993 when abortion rights were last in peril.

Under the American constitutional system, a state does have some authority to regulate its citizens' conduct even when they aren't on its territory. The Tenth Amendment and numerous Supreme Court rulings have recognized the broad reach of state sovereignty. In 1792, the Supreme Court approved Virginia's prosecution of a Virginian for stealing a horse from another Virginian, even though the dastardly deed took place entirely in the District of Columbia.

There are, of course, limits to what states can do to stop out-of-state abortions. They have to comply with the restrictions of the federal Constitution, such as the clause saying that no state may deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Courts apply this due-process clause to prohibit states from taking "arbitrary" actions. A state's decision to prosecute a woman for an abortion that it holds to be illegal but that was legal where she got it could be seen as arbitrary -- meddling in behavior that's none of its business -- unless that state shows that it has a legitimate interest in the out-of-state act.

In some indirect -- but ominous -- cases, the Supreme Court has shown itself to be open to the idea that a state has an interest in its citizens' behavior wherever it occurs. In 1985, the court allowed Alabama to prosecute an Alabama defendant for his wife's murder, even though he had already been tried and convicted in Georgia, where the actual murder occurred. In 1993, the court recognized the interest of a state that forbids gambling in upholding a federal law prohibiting broadcasters from tempting its citizens with advertisements for out-of-state lotteries.

There is one case in which the Supreme Court indicated that a state's interest in prohibiting abortion isn't great enough to support reach beyond its borders. In 1975, in Bigelow v. Virginia, the court protected a Virginia newspaper's right to publish ads for a New York abortion-referral service. In its opinion, the court said that "neither could Virginia prevent its residents from traveling to New York to obtain those services, or, as the state concedes, prosecute them for going there."

Sound pretty definitive? It's not, though. The free-speech provisions of the Constitution already protect newspapers in these circumstances, so the court didn't need to make the above determination. Its ruling was essentially what lawyers call a dictum -- meaning that it was just kibitzing, and later courts don't have to pay much attention.

Will the Supreme Court allow a state to prohibit abortion travel? In Bigelow, the court was very anxious to protect its new Roe decision. The seven justices who had voted in favor of Roe were the same ones who protected the newspaper in Bigelow. The losing justices in Bigelow were the same two -- William H. Rehnquist and Byron R. White -- who'd dissented in Roe. But their once-losing position would become the majority position today if a president opposed to abortion appointed a fifth anti-abortion justice. It hardly seems likely that this new majority would feel bound by some kibitzing from the Virginia case.

Moreover, a Supreme Court that reversed Roe could also rule more broadly that the fetus is a person under the Fourteenth Amendment. Such a ruling would be the flip side of Roe, making state support of abortion a constitutional offense. There are barriers to using the Constitution affirmatively to stop abortions nationwide, but such an ambitious ruling would surely encourage the anti-abortion states' most restrictive plans and increase the pressure on Congress to pass a national law restricting abortion. Don't forget that even many Democrats voted in favor of the late-term abortion ban.

Even if the Senate, uncharacteristically, refused to confirm a McCain nominee -- or nominees, if he kept sending up names -- leaving the court at eight justices, women's options would probably erode rapidly. It's easy to imagine the anti-abortion states pushing the envelope with once improbably restrictive laws, such as one requiring clinics to be licensed by the state and prohibiting women from getting abortions in unlicensed clinics, either in- or out-of-state.

If a clinic went to federal court to enjoin such a law, the case would eventually reach one of the 13 federal Courts of Appeal, 11 of which are firmly dominated by Republican appointees and would probably produce a decision either refusing to follow Roe or, more likely, making some transparent distinction between Roe and the new case. In a divided Supreme Court, four justices would probably vote to affirm the lower court, and four to reverse, leaving the appeals court's decision standing. This means that the states that fell within the Circuit in question would come under an anti-abortion umbrella allowing anything up to explicit reversal of Roe.

How would state laws forbidding pregnant women to leave be enforced? The Hope Clinic in Granite City, Ill., is just 10 minutes from the Missouri border. Police from the prohibiting state can just take the license plates of local vehicles at the abortion clinics across the state lines and arrest the women when they re-enter the state. Or a traffic stop can produce a search. Tips from pharmacy workers, disapproving parents or disappointed boyfriends can alert the police to arrest the pregnant woman for intent to seek an abortion out of state. The state law may allow interested parties to seek injunctions to stop her from leaving.

It seems a long way from McCain's bold statement that life begins at conception to police cars waiting on an abortion clinic side street in Granite City. But it's not. If the law were to take this post- Roe course, Americans' lives would be determined by their state citizenship in ways unseen since the Civil War. Professional legal scholars have traced the developments step by step. As constitutional scholar Richard Fallon of Harvard said recently, "If Roe were to go, it would not go gently."

linda@gettoworkmanifesto.com

Linda Hirshman, a lawyer and former professor of law and philosophy, is the author, most recently, of "Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World."

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Can You Be a Feminist and Anti-Abortion?

2008-09-25T18:17:00.000-04:00

A NOTE from THE COAT HANGER PROJECT: I disagree with Jennifer Baumgardner's position that you can be feminist AND pro-life. While I agree that one can be a feminist and simultaneously have ambivalence about the termination of life, see it as a sad thing, etc., I don't think one can be pro-life and feminist at the same time. I say this because, at its core, the pro-life position seeks to abolish abortion rights for women. Feminism, as I understand it, is about a woman's right to self-determination, to be in control of her own life. If a woman cannot control her own reproduction, she is not free. So in other words, I see the feminist position and the pro-life position as diametrically opposed. And I think there is a danger in giving credit to organizations like "Feminists for Life" for actually having feminist values. To me, organizations like this have simply co-opted the language of feminism to re-package conservative values as a "new" form of liberation.

##

By Mandy Van Deven, AlterNet
Posted on September 25, 2008, Printed on September 25, 2008
Alternet

Abortion is, in many ways, a played-out topic in the women's movement, but activist and writer Jennifer Baumgardner (author of Look Both Ways, Manifesta and Grassroots) continues to breathe new life into this contentious issue. In 2004, she created the "I Had an Abortion" speak-out campaign, which both shocked and awed feminists and non-feminists alike through the dissemination of shirts with the controversial "coming out" statement emblazoned across the front. Today, Baumgardner continues to carve out a space for women's narratives and take an unabashed look at issues that have a tendency to be swept under the rug by the abortion rights movement in her new book, Abortion & Life (Akashic Books, 2008). An excerpt follows.

Mandy Van Deven: Why are abortion narratives important, personally and politically, and what makes this moment in history the right time for them to re-surface?

Jennifer Baumgardner: The history of women's gains in reproductive freedom is tied to women speaking out and telling the truth about their lives. The early days of the women's liberation movement saw women shedding shame and guilt by coming out about their illegal abortions; this lent momentum and urgency to the abortion law reform movement. In fact, it was women speaking out that took the movement from one of doctors, legislators and clergymen advising reform to a much more radical repeal movement. This is the right moment for abortion narratives because the movement needs to evolve again. It's no longer 1973. We know much more about fetal development, women who have unplanned pregnancies nowadays don't face as much societal scorn if they have a baby outside of marriage, and abortions have been legal for nearly four decades. Times have changed, and we need new politics to go with these new times. Thus, we should return to women's (and men's) lives to see where the movement needs to go.

MV: Some might say Abortion & Life gives the anti-abortion movement fuel to add to an already raging fire by criticizing the abortion rights movement. How do you respond to what you call "knee-jerk naivete"?

JB: I used to be resistant to hearing that a woman had a bad experience with her doctor or that she was extremely sad or had regrets about her abortion. I chalked it all up to right-wing propaganda. I see it differently now. These stories aren't necessarily the most common abortion experience (the best guess I have is that they account for less than 10 percent), but to suppress them or not want to hear them is a position of weakness. I don't think the abortion rights movement has to be as defensive as we've been. As a movement, we need to turn away from our commitment to arguing with the protesters and listen to the women again. To not do so gives fuel to the anti-abortion movement because then it is only those who oppose abortion who are willing to hear its complicated stories.

MV: In the book, you alternate the use of words like "fetus" and "child". With language being so controversial, why did you vary yours?

JB: I think there is legal truth around this issue, and then there is personal or emotional truth. In terms of the law, there is a difference between a potential child -- a fetus -- who is totally dependent upon its maternal host to survive and an already born baby who is dependent, but not exclusively on its biological mother. I understand the need for that language, but it is limiting and even alienating for many women who have had abortions. I have met women who think of the child -- their word -- every year on the day it was due to be born. I have read journals in abortion clinics in which women write prayers to their unborn babies, asking them to be guardian angels. I don't think "fetus" fits the bill in describing who they are talking about.

MV: I know you've got an entire chapter on this, but can you be a feminist and pro-life?

JB: Yes. Certainly you cannot bomb an abortion clinic and be a feminist, nor can you prohibit another woman from accessing an abortion and call yourself a feminist. But you can say that you believe that life begins at conception, that you are ambivalent or even deeply sad about abortion, or that you don't want to attend the March for Women's Lives. What you do have to do is find a way to be authentically pro-life that isn't anti-woman. You can work on birth control and sex education. You can become a foster parent. You can work with your place of worship or elected representatives to make sure women who are having abortions are supported. There is so much to do on the pro-life side that simply isn't being done.

MV: Mainstream -- white -- reproductive rights activists have recently begun to co-opt the language and politics of more radical women of color-led groups like SisterSong. There is a long history of white feminists claiming the theory and practice of women of color as their own, and many times getting it all wrong. How do you see this playing out today?

JB: The reproductive justice frame that is emerging was developed by women of color, and it provides a way for the movement to evolve to more clearly represent the diversity of women who get abortions, as you allude. Reproductive justice says that there is no objective experience of "choice" -- that we all make reproductive decisions within a community and have to deal with whatever oppressions act on that community. It also says that we should all have the right to choose an abortion, adoption or raising a child; to choose the conditions under which we give birth; and to parent the children we have.

I see white activists and thinkers, like Marlene Gerber Fried, who really believe in reproductive justice and work in relationship with organizations like SisterSong, but Loretta Ross comes right out and says that, though everyone loves the term "reproductive justice," few want to include the women of color who created it. That's obviously wrongheaded. Ross and others are working on a book that will lay out the theory and strategy more clearly, so I hope this problem will diminish a bit in the future.

MV: Can you talk about how your pro-choice position has changed over time?

JB: I'm clearer than ever that most restrictions on abortion are merely punitive and do not have a pro-life function at all. I'm radically pro-abortion in that I don't want any restrictions, just ways to support women who want to end a pregnancy to have earlier, better abortions whenever possible. I also think that fetuses are human life, and I'm not cold to the process of ending that life. I used to think of an abortion as nothing more than removing inanimate tissue. I've seen abortions now, which challenged me to face its reality. I can face it, and I think it is the moral responsibility of pro-abortion people to not protect themselves from the thornier or grislier aspects of abortion.

MV: You write again and again in Abortion & Life about the humility that you felt throughout the "I Had an Abortion" campaign, and it's been four years since you unveiled the T-shirts. How has this work affected you?

JB: I know! They were on the Drudge Report the night that Planned Parenthood's very courageous Gloria Feldt addressed the Democratic National Convention in 2004, and here we are heading into the convention again. I feel humility mainly because I haven't had an abortion, and I'm not an expert on that experience. I have listened to hundreds of abortion stories, I've visited dozens of clinics, I've interviewed countless activists and lawyers, and I've had an unplanned pregnancy, but women who have had abortions know more than I do. I see myself as a conduit to their expertise, and I'm still open to hearing what I need to learn.

******

Abortion & Life Excerpt

In 1993, Amy Richards (then the twenty-three-year-old co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation) was on a panel at a local New York City high school discussing feminism, when a sixteen-year-old girl timidly inquired whether one could be pro-life and a feminist. Amy answered promptly: "No. Next question." Amy recalls that Angel Williams, another activist on the panel, looked the girl in the eyes and said, "Being pro-life doesn't make you ineligible to be a feminist." Amy was infuriated by Angel's comment. "The only thing that made me feel better," recalls Amy, "was knowing that I was simply the better feminist, while Angel was willing to compromise feminism's core values."

Years later, after Amy and I had co-written two books addressing third-wave feminism, we became intrigued by that same recurring question. At a certain point in nearly every college classroom we visited, an earnest woman would raise her hand and recount the ways in which she felt she was a feminist ("I directed my campus production of The Vagina Monologues"; "I founded a group in high school to build schools for girls in Afghanistan"; etc.). Then she'd say, "But can you be a feminist and pro-life?"

It's a challenge to combine those identities, but Amy and I have both learned that these women are not asking if bombing an abortion clinic can fall within the realm of feminism. They aren't even wondering if it is okay to keep others from accessing an abortion and still call themselves feminists. They are usually asking if it's okay not to prioritize abortion, not to go to the March for Women's Lives, not to raise money for women's procedures. They are asking if they can believe that abortion is the taking of a life, even a sacred human life, and still be a feminist. If not, then these women (and men) see no alternative than to join the swelling ranks of "I'm not a feminist but ... " They can't suddenly abandon their belief about fetal life. So, are there organizations that represent the pro-life person who doesn't believe that women are second-class citizens?

There are at least two very visible groups that identify as both pro-woman and pro-life: Democrats for Life of America and Feminists for Life of America. Democrats for Life was founded in 1999, initially with four chapters but has grown to more than forty. While their executive director Kristen Day cites a December 2003 Zogby poll finding that forty-three percent of Democrats oppose abortion except in the case of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother, she also concedes that most Democrats do not want to recriminalize the procedure. While Democrats for Life's leaders in Congress include Jim Oberstar, who helped craft the extremely punitive Hyde Amendment, the stated mission of the group is to make good on the party plank holding that abortion should be rare. In 2005, Democrats for Life began pushing "95-10," a plan they hoped would reduce abortions by ninety-five percent in ten years.

The strategy, however, doesn't have a serious plan of action. Their platform doesn't advocate birth control and provides little to inspire a person who wants to be true to both their feminism and the value they place on fetal life. At first glance, Feminists for Life appears to provide a good haven for the pro-life feminist, but their practices echo that of Democrats for Life.

They focus on dismantling abortion without bringing about the pro-woman changes -- in particular, access to family planning -- that might make abortion less common. (They say that "pre-conception issues" are outside of their mission.) They claim that early feminists were in fact pro-life, but have taken the women's comments so out of context that many historians disagree with their conclusions. Certainly it is true that first-wave feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony took up the cause of women like Hester Vaughn, a teenage immigrant in Philadelphia who was condemned to be hanged after she was forcibly impregnated by her employer, cast out on the street, and found with her baby dead -- a series of tragedies then judged an infanticide. Anthony and Stanton organized women to protest -- arguing that Vaughn was a "victim of a social system that forced women, especially poor women, to murder their illegitimate children or face social ostracism," as Ellen Carol DuBois writes in her 1999 book, Feminism & Suffrage. But their critique of Vaughn's treatment cannot be conflated with the message that women should never choose or desire to end an unplanned pregnancy.

Feminists for Life's position that "women deserve better" than the degradation they often face, though, has value. And it is true that if women were more empowered -- free of abusive partners, less poisoned by misogyny, had adequate access to health care and education about sex and their bodies -- abortion would occur far less frequently. (But the need for abortion will never be totally eradicated, according to the late health activist Barbara Seaman, unless society commits to giving vasectomies to all boys after freezing their sperm, and only allowing procreation through in vitro fertilization after demonstrating sufficient income and maturity to support a child for eighteen years. No one has jumped on this policy proposal for an abortion-free world.) The sentiments put forth by Democrats for Life and Feminists for Life work well as an ideal -- women deserve better than to be left holding the bag for a mutual sexual encounter -- but they don't appear to address the fact that people will always have sex.

It's a stultifying myth of feminism that prioritizing abortion rights is the most significant test of your commitment to women. You don't have to go to that march on Washington, you don't have to counsel your friends to have abortions, and you don't have to believe that abortion might be a good option for you. But that is just what you don't have to do. You do have to do something to animate your value system. What does it mean to be authentically pro-life and a feminist? Given how reproductive decisions occur within a social framework of so many other personal values, such as one's religion or family culture or self-image, it might seem difficult to actually lay out pro-life strategies that are genuine and don't conflict with women's freedom. Nonetheless, these parameters strike me as fitting the bill:

Work to make sure women who want to raise their kids have the support to do so: Traditionally, women have taken on the everyday hard work of cultivating the future. In other words, we raise the children. The "future," meanwhile, has it tough. Our often inadequate, frequently cruel foster care system can't handle the more than 300,000 kids thrust into its rigid arms each year, and the "end of welfare" ushered in during Bill Clinton's presidency means that living in poverty is just a part of growing up for thirteen million children in the United States. Yet more and more young women -- child-free and mothers, single and partnered -- are dealing with the collapse of the nuclear family. Feminists for Life is good at pointing out the ways that some pro-choice organizing, particularly on college campuses, can be downright hostile to early parenting. Sadly, though, they don't raise money to provide the resources they are so mad do not exist. Some of those resources might include: recruiting foster parents; providing family court advocates; establishing funds to offer support to low-income or otherwise stressed parents (from formula and diapers to lactation consultants); organizing free emergency babysitting services at trustworthy public locations (like universities) and publicizing them at churches, welfare agencies, and grocery stores.

Loretta Ross has long worked to bridge the divide between women who get abortions -- often lower-income and disproportionately black -- and abortion rights advocates, who are often middle-class and white. "If you're in the field, you know that black women are twelve percent of the female population but get twenty-five percent of the abortions in the country," says Ross, the fifty-five-year-old coauthor of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice (South End Press, 2004). "Yet black women are saying this is not their issue. I have to ask why not." Ross is national coordinator of SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, an organization that was instrumental in changing the name of the 2004 pro-abortion rights demonstration in Washington from "March for Freedom of Choice" to "March for Women's Lives."

"We couldn't endorse the march unless they recognized the complex issues that women face," explains Ross. "Every woman who is pregnant wonders if she has a bedroom for that child; can she afford to take off the time to raise that child? Why flatten the decisions around abortion to just abortion? When women don't have jobs or health care, where is the choice? There is nothing worse than a woman aborting a baby she wanted because she couldn't support it." Ross notes that black women were the first to resist the pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy. "A very large percentage of (black) women are personally opposed to abortion but are politically pro-choice," adds Ross, who is one of the architects of the reproductive justice framework. "Women of color agree with not giving unborn children more rights than grown women, but even when they're terminating a pregnancy, they call it a baby. This has been going on as long as we have had the debate."

Support birth control and sex education (along with abstinence): Feminists for Life along with other not-so-feminist-friendly pro-life organizations do not support contraception or sex education. A position paper released by the largest right-to-life educational organization -- the American Life League -- reads, The practice of contraception is intrinsically evil and lays the groundwork for other evils such as the act of abortion, and calls for an absolute trust in God and His will with regard to the gift of children. Many pro-life activists consider contraception as the first step in a "slippery slope" that leads to abortion, because, that thinking goes, if you can have sex without fear of pregnancy, you will be more likely to have sex outside of the bounds of marriage. It's undeniable that abstinence from sexual intercourse is the best way to avoid getting pregnant. It's also undeniable that much sexual activity occurs in less than ideal, coherent, and consensual circumstances and that most people have sex more often than the few times it took to conceive their children. However, the best way to truly protect women and men and to improve our bodily health and our potential to reproduce is with honest information about sex, honest talk about personal values, and by modeling the behavior we believe to be most healthy. As the statistics about abstinence-only education attest, people are going to have sex whether or not it's sanctioned.

Work toward early abortion: Later abortions are harder on everyone. They are more expensive ($1,000 to $2,500 or more for a twenty-week procedure, compared to $400 or less for an eight-week procedure) and require greater medical expertise (not to mention up to three days of doctor's visits to complete) and travel expense, as there are very few doctors who do later procedures. They're harder on women (financially and physically) and possibly harder on the fetus (there is contradictory evidence in recent research on fetal pain). A strong abortion rights movement has already meant that women are getting procedures earlier, when the surgery is easier and safer. In 1973, only thirty-eight percent of abortions were performed within the first two months of pregnancy. Today the figure is more than fifty-five percent. Coincidentally, earlier abortions are less controversial among the pro-choice advocates who favor some restrictions (a surprisingly high number of people). It is part of the future of abortion to promote earlier procedures, when the cost is reduced in every way -- on the medical system, on the woman, on the fetus, and even in the field of public opinion. "You can't have choice without knowledge," says Merle Hoffman. "And sometimes that knowledge is hard to bear." But given the myriad of factors that might impact one's decision, it is crucial to be frank and fearless about what we know and don't know about the fetus and let women decide for themselves.

Support EC and medical abortion: To encourage earlier abortions, we need to make mifepristone and emergency contraception more readily available, as well as rethink our restrictions on abortion generally. Researchers James Trussell and Felicia Stewart concluded that if emergency contraception (pills that can be taken within ninety-six hours of unprotected sex) were effectively promoted and distributed, they could address an estimated two million unintended pregnancies per year. If their assessment is correct, this initiative would save billions of dollars each year. A study commissioned by New York State comptroller in 2003 (and revised for 2005), titled "Emergency Contraception: Fewer Unintended Pregnancies and Lower Health Care Costs," estimates "that widely available and easily accessible emergency contraception could result in $233.1 million in savings" for New York State alone, "reducing the 104,776 unintended pregnancies associated with Medicaid-eligible women" by half.

Work against restrictions: For years I have supported the New York Abortion Access Fund, which funded many later-term procedures since women travel to New York City for abortions up to twenty-four weeks. (New York is one of the few places with doctors trained to perform those procedures and a public that supports those doctors -- or at least isn't openly hostile.) When doing intake, we would learn why the individual patient was seeking a later procedure, and almost without exception it had to do with restrictions on abortion. These laws became infuriating to me because they didn't make women change their minds about needing a procedure, they merely punished them, making them jump through demeaning hoops at a time when they needed support. Because of the Hyde Amendment, women on public assistance in some states couldn't get a Medicaid-covered procedure; raising money meant waiting to get the abortion. Ditto, parental consent rules. As girls drum up the courage to tell their parents, the pregnancy develops further. According to Susan Cohen, the director of government affairs at the Guttmacher Institute, evidence from around the world shows that placing restrictions on abortion makes it less safe rather than more rare. "In the United States, abortion opponents take credit for the mounting state and federal restrictions on abortion," says Cohen, "rather than working to reduce unintended pregnancy to begin with."

Actively condemn violence: Ani DiFranco's wrenching song "Hello Birmingham" is a letter to that city from her hometown of Buffalo, New York. In 1998, Eric Rudolph bombed New Woman All Women Health Care in Birmingham, Alabama, killing a young off-duty police officer named Robert Sanderson and horrifically maiming clinic nurse Emily Lyons. That same year, a Buffalo doctor named Barnett Slepian who provided abortions was murdered in his home, in front of his children. The bravery that is sometimes required for clinic workers just to show up for their jobs is heartbreaking. And the violence is utterly in conflict with any authentic reverence for life. Feminists for Life offered a reward for any information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of the Birmingham bomber, demonstrating that their pro-life worldview can work in concert with feminist goals.

Truly understand adoption, and work to make sure the birth mother has a voice: When Norma McCorvey's autobiography, I Am Roe, was published in 1994, it was dedicated to "All of the Jane Does who died for Choice." Yet by the very next year, she had become one of the best-known anti-abortion activists in history, joining Operation Rescue. She even petitioned the Supreme Court (unsuccessfully) to have Roe overturned. And yet, Norma McCorvey, who never actually had an abortion, nonetheless represents a very silenced, often-mistreated demographic: birth mothers. Just before Christmas of 2006, I attended an event at which adoption scholar Ann Fessler played the audio pastiche of her interviews with birth mothers who surrendered their children in the years before Roe. I perched on the arm of a couch in a Park Avenue apartment and sobbed. I cried for the many women who were conned into relinquishing their children and fed a nonstop barrage of insults, from "You'd be a terrible mother" to "You've brought shame on the family" to "Just pretend this never happened." I cried remembering how intense it was to be pregnant and to give birth -- how hormones and pain and extreme physical duress combined into what felt like a near-death experience.

I recalled how I really understood -- in my loosened pelvis, my stretched-out ribs, and the kicks to my cervix from tiny limbs -- the sensitive factory that is our bodies, arduously creating another human. The thought of going through that and being told it didn't matter -- You don't know this baby anyway -- struck me as unbearably cruel. My tears also reflected the poignancy of growing up in a different era, one in which my unplanned pregnancy and subsequent out-of-wedlock parenting can be celebrated and supported, with two sets of parents thrilled to become grandparents. I read Fessler's wonderful book, The Girls Who Went Away, and was overwhelmed by the emotional pain the women endured. It's not a fair comparison, perhaps, but I found the stories of women who surrendered their babies just as traumatic and heartbreaking as the stories I've heard of women who had abortions pre-Roe.

I spoke with Ann Fessler about adoption. Even if the terrain has shifted radically from the social pressures on girls raised in the 1950s, it's clear that the voice of the birth mother is still very suppressed. "Many (birth mothers) are promised one thing and enter into the misunderstanding that they are committing to a situation with certain protections that, in fact, aren't guaranteed," Fessler says.

In many places, for instance, if the mother leaves the state in which the adoption occurred, the contract is broken and she no longer has the right to see her child. "Over the years, all of the laws have gone the way of supporting adoption agencies' needs," she explains. "In some states, women are asked to sign within twenty-four hours of birth, and it is irrevocable." There is less and less of a space for the birth mother to process the experience of having had a baby at all.

"I'm an adoptee, and I'm not dispassionate to the emotional stress that the adoptive parent is feeling," Fessler reveals. "The bottom line, though, is that it is not their child yet, and even though this is emotional, the birth mother needs a reasonable amount of time to come to grips with this decision."

Ethical adoption is one piece of a pie that includes foster care, a social safety net that supports struggling families, and a commitment to helping parents raise healthy children. Pro-choice organizations such as Backline in Portland, Oregon are opening up space to discuss adoption in all of its facets. No doubt the room created by these activists and parents will shepherd in new understanding of how to support the adoption option that is so glibly proffered by some politicians.

So, can you be a feminist and pro-life? The answer is a resounding "yes." In fact, finding more and better ways to do just that would be, in a word, revolutionary.

To purchase the book, visit Powells.com.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/96513/

Sterilization Bill in New Orleans

2008-09-24T18:17:00.000-04:00

Metairie lawmaker considers bill to fund sterilizations
by Richard A. Webster Staff Writer

NEW ORLEANS - State Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, fears Louisiana may be headed toward an economic crisis if the percentage of people dependent on the government is not decreased.

His solution: pay impoverished women $1,000 to have their tubes tied so they will stop having babies they can’t afford.

The idea came to LaBruzzo after hurricanes Katrina and Gustav when the state was forced to evacuate, shelter and care for tens of thousands of people.

"I realized that all these people were in Louisiana's care and what a massive financial responsibility that is to the state," LaBruzzo said. "I said, 'I wonder if it might be a good idea to pay some of these people to get sterilized.'"

LaBruzzo said he is researching the issue, and if he finds that the number of people on welfare has increased on a dramatic and continuous basis over the past several decades, he may introduce a bill during the next legislative session promoting voluntary sterilization in exchange for monetary compensation.

"If both the welfare and Social Security system keep growing, one day we're going to have a small minority of people working to fund and finance everybody else who isn’t working or producing," LaBruzzo said. "Our kids, who will be working, will be the minority and any vote of theirs will be canceled out. If your livelihood is based on government handouts, why would you ever vote for somebody who is going to lower taxes? They never would. So once we reach that breaking point there's no return."

Reaction to LaBruzzo's proposal has been swift. It has been called racist and reminiscent of the genocidal policies of the Nazis.

Shana Griffin, interim director of the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic, described it as a modern day version of eugenics, a theory that promotes improving humanity’s future by decreasing the number of babies produced by people who are seen as physically, socially or mentally deficient.

It is obvious who LaBruzzo is targeting with this legislation by mentioning welfare recipients and those dependent on city-assisted evacuation — poor, black women, Griffin said.

"If someone doesn't have a car and needs to utilize city-assisted evacuation, that makes them a social burden? The fact that he feels so comfortable and entitled to make these statements is a reflection of our society, that we’re OK with the most vulnerable of our community being blamed for the social, economic and political crises that we’re experiencing,” Griffin said. “If we really want to improve the lives of people in our communities we would think about raising the minimum wage, holistic health care, improving labor laws, employment opportunities for all people and the educational system.

"Instead he wants to use a form of medical experimentation and forced sterilization on poor women of color, using their economic status as a way to make them more vulnerable to the offer.”

Tulane University criminologist Peter Scharf said LaBruzzo's idea is proof that Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is alive and well. In the 1729 satirical essay, Swift proposed solving Ireland’s economic troubles by selling children as food to the wealthy. His essay is subtitled, "For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public."

It is not unusual during times of economic turmoil for people to lay the blame for everyone’s problems on the backs of the black underclass, Scharf said. But in this case, LaBruzzo is out on a raft by himself.

"We're about to go into a major recession or depression and no one economically is blaming it on the black underclass," Scharf said. "They're blaming it on Congress, George W. Bush or the captains of industry. The true victimizers of present-day society live in the corporate boardrooms, and very few of them are black. They’re the people running Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers and AIG.

"We're about to spend $700 billion in a week to save these welfare corporations who have ripped off society, and he's worrying about someone who might collect a welfare check 20 years from now? The irony given the world situation today makes me want to laugh."

But this is not about the problems of today, LaBruzzo said. It is about the future and whether the number of people dependent on the state will continue to grow to the point where the whole system crashes.

LaBruzzo said he is only considering the proposal for now while he conducts research. But backlash from various groups was to be expected, he said.

“The black community will say this is some sort of race-based genocide. And there will be tremendous push back from the ACLU. They'll try to say these people are incapable of making such a decision when their life is in turmoil. That if you're dangling money in front of them, of course they'll make a decision that will affect them negatively.

"My argument would be if they’re incapable of making a decision whether to cease reproduction are they capable of raising multiple children to be good citizens? And if they're incapable, maybe Social Services should take their children."

The church also bears some responsibility for failing to speak out more forcefully against economically challenged women giving birth to multiple children, LaBruzzo said.

"I'm sure many of these people aren't going to church every Sunday and many aren't married before having children and sex. But the church isn't condemning their lifestyle. They’re just condemning anyone who's trying to do something about it."

Despite the criticisms that have been leveled against him, LaBruzzo insists that voluntary sterilization has nothing to do with race.

"The majority of people on welfare in the nation are white. So the people making those arguments are less concerned with helping those people and more concerned trying to convince themselves that they're not prejudiced, that they're these wonderful, good people. The politically safe thing to do is to not touch this, but the train is potentially going off the cliff and everyone just wants to ignore the problem."

Griffin said it would have been to the benefit of everyone if LaBruzzo was the one ignoring the problem.

"Referring to people as social burdens is the same as referring to them as social degenerates," she said. "What he needs to keep in mind is that the people he's talking about sterilizing are the working class who keep this city afloat."•

Voices for choice

2008-09-24T12:10:00.000-04:00

The McGill Daily

Reproductive rights are brought to the fore in panel discussion over two new documentaries

Erin O’Callaghan
Mind&Body Writer

On Tuesday night, Canadians for Choice and the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy joined to present two groundbreaking documentaries about women’s reproductive rights.

Abortion Democracy, directed by Sarah Diehl, and The Coathanger Project, directed by Angie Young, address some shocking truths about abortion laws around the world. The screenings were accompanied by a panel discussion with the two directors and representatives from Canadians for Choice and the Centre for Gender Advocacy. The discussion was used as a forum for debate over Canadian reproductive rights and how they relate to broader international issues.

The screenings were organized partly as a response to the introduction in Parliament earlier this year of Bill C-484, which threatened to compromise women’s reproductive rights. Also known as the “Unborn Victims of Crime Act,” the private-members bill proposes to allow separate homicide charges for the death of a fetus when a pregnant woman is attacked. While the language of the bill specifically excludes abortion, the bill’s opponents argue that the legislation could be a step toward the criminalization of abortion in the future.

Reeling it in

The two documentaries, screened at Concordia, look at abortion issues from an international perspective. Abortion Democracy explores an ironic parallel between Poland and South Africa with respect to abortion law. The Coathanger Project deals with the state of the current pro-choice movement in the United States. The films reveal that cross-culturally, women face similar challenges regarding their reproductive rights.

Abortion Democracy addresses abortion rights and access issues in South Africa and Poland. Despite South Africa’s legalization of abortion in 1994, an extraordinary 60,000 to 80,000 deaths are reported per year due to complications resulting from illegal or do-it-yourself abortions. Meanwhile, Poland has gone in a different direction. In 1997 it banned abortion except in very specific cases such as rape, gross deformation of the fetus, or when the fetus poses a serious threat to the health of the mother. Yet paradoxically, today abortions remain safer and more accessible in Poland than in South Africa.

In The Coathanger Project, Angie Young looks at American society post-Roe v. Wade, examining the current generation of women who have grown up knowing legalized abortion, but have no memory of the struggles over reproductive rights that came before their time. The movie was inspired by Young’s experience in South Dakota, where she worked to defeat the absolute ban against abortion proposed by the state government in 2006. South Dakota successfully turned down that ban, but is now facing a second challenge of abortion rights. The film attempts to remind this generation of why it should not take freedom of choice for granted.

Canada’s unborn victims?

The two films illustrate the vulnerable state of Canada’s own abortion laws, and contextualize the importance of Bill C-484.

Although abortions are fully legal in Canada, there are no laws specifically addressing the right to an abortion. In 1995, Diane Marleau, the Canadian Health Minister at the time, declared that an abortion, as a “necessary medical procedure,” should be covered by every health care insurance plan in every province, regardless of whether it is performed in a free-standing clinic or a hospital. However, there remain marked differences throughout Canada’s provinces.

According to Canadians for Choice, just 17.8 per cent of Canadian hospitals provide abortion services. Prince Edward Island does not have any hospitals that do, and New Brunswick has only two. Neither province provides adequate funding for the cost of abortions, technically violating the Canada Health Act. New Brunswick, for instance, only funds abortion at hospitals and does not cover the costs at clinics.

Furthermore, as noted in the panel discussion, women from rural areas often have to travel great distances to reach a clinic or hospital that can perform the procedure, and their travel and accommodation costs are not covered by their health care plans.

The two documentaries screened Tuesday night underscore the importance of upholding the right to reproductive choice. They address not only the difficulties faced by people fighting for these rights, but also the continuing struggle of maintaining reproductive rights where they are already in place. Even here in Canada, as the appearance of Bill C-484 shows, our freedom of choice is vulnerable; although abortion is legal, the choice can be effectively denied if services are not made more accessible.

Angie Young and Sarah Diehl are currently on tour screening their two documentaries across North America. The films will be released on DVD, along with footage from various panel discussions.

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Last of the Old Guard: Abortion providers retire in the West, leaving their posts empty

2008-08-25T13:09:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
By Grace Hammond
Article

Jackson Hole, Wyo.- On a cloudless December night in a small town in South Dakota, Julie was curled in a ball in a snowdrift, her gloves and hat littered across the parking lot. She had emptied one whiskey bottle and was working through the second - enough, she hoped, to end her pregnancy. If it didn’t, she’d have to try something else.

Julie, which is not her real name, agreed to tell her story but declined to reveal her identity in order to protect her privacy.

Julie, 21, was single, in debt from the birth of her first son, and working a desk job at $5.65 an hour. She knew that if she asked for time off - either to have an abortion or to take care of a newborn - that she would lose her job.

“I couldn’t feed the son I already had,” she said. “So I did what I could do.”

By her estimates, getting to Sioux Falls - some 300 miles away - for a “doctor abortion” would have cost her $660, including $100 for gas, $60 for a hotel and $500 for the procedure itself. She would have needed a car, which she didn’t have, and two days off of work to wait out the state-mandated, 24-hour waiting period. Time and money were resources she simply had no access to.

Her friend bought the whiskey for her, and Julie took it to the high school parking lot after putting her 2-year-old to bed.

“I drank [the pregnancy] to death under the basketball hoop,” she said. “I nearly drank me dead, too. I had to find that balance between it dying and me dying, you know?”

Her friend took her to the hospital for alcohol poisoning once the whiskey - and, they figured, the pregnancy - was gone.

“It worked,” Julie said about the incident, now nearly two years behind her. “I’ve told a few girls it works.”

Empty frontiers

Julie is one of a growing number of women living in the West without an abortion provider within 100 miles.

Since 1982, the number of abortion providers in the United States has fallen by 37 percent. Of the remaining practitioners, 57 percent are older than 50 and are expected to retire within the next decade, according to Medical Students for Choice, a group founded in 1993 on the belief that “one of the greatest obstacles to safe abortion today is the absence of trained providers.”

The ‘graying of the profession’ is already affecting the West, which struggles with attracting and keeping physicians in its rural areas and has seen dramatic declines in abortion providers over the past two decades.

At the height of abortion services in the state of Wyoming, from 1981 to 1985, there were eight providers, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization for sexual and reproductive health research. About 1,000 abortions a year were performed in Wyoming during that time.

After 1985, provider numbers began to drop as doctors retired but were not replaced. By 1988, a study found that the majority of women were leaving Wyoming to procure abortions. This report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that while only 188 abortions were performed in the state that year, 902 women who identified themselves as Wyoming residents had obtained abortions somewhere in the country.

By 2005, two abortion providers remained in Wyoming, and 70 abortions were recorded in the state. Now, a single advertised abortion provider is left: Dr. Brent Blue, a family practitioner at Emerg-A-Care in Jackson Hole. There may be other Wyoming providers, however, who don’t advertise their abortion services and limit them to their own patients.

A class of its own

The retiring generation of abortion providers is largely comprised of general and family practice physicians who were studying or practicing medicine both before and after Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the U.S. in 1973.

Many doctors of this era do not consider themselves activists. Rather, they call themselves ‘community doctors,’ and they consider abortion a small but integral part of providing full-service medical care.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s part of a family practice,” Blue said. “It’s part of medicine. It’s no different from vasectomy services and no different than delivery services. … It is not a political issue.”

Blue’s clinic in Jackson Hole was bombed in 1995 by Richard Thomas Andrews, an anti-abortion activist who later pleaded guilty to bombing abortion clinics in California, Montana and Idaho. Still, Blue said that he pays “very little attention” to opposition.

Edward Boas, one of the few remaining family practice physicians to provide abortions in Boise, Idaho, said he is not an upstart by any means.

“I’m not gonna go marchin’,” he said. “I have done surgery all my life and this is a minor little surgical procedure. … It’s part of the medical world and somebody’s got to do it.”

The toll of travel

Even though an estimated 35 percent of U.S. women will have at least one abortion by age 45, about 87 percent of the nation’s counties currently have no provider, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

In the Western census region, where Wyoming is located, 18 percent of women having abortions in 2005 reported traveling more than 50 miles and 5 percent traveled more than 100 miles.

In other Western states, some women report traveling 300 miles or more.
Planned Parenthood’s Wyoming Abortion Fund has provided more than 200 women with financial assistance, paid directly to the provider, since its creation in October 2004. The fund will assist Wyoming residents with lodging, day care, and travel to other states, as is often necessary. Another fund, called Women for Women, also helps Wyoming residents.

An abortion at Emerg-A-Care in Jackson Hole costs $1,045, cash only, and insurance is not accepted. The abortion funds in the state may provide $500 in total toward this cost.

Boas, in Idaho, charges $450 for the procedure.

The Hyde Amendment denies federal Medicaid funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or life endangerment.

No replacements

Boas, like many Western family practice doctors, believes that no one will take his place performing safe, legal abortions when he retires. Just recently, there were three providers in Idaho. But one retired last year, Boas is retiring in December and the final provider “is not really that into doing it,” he said.

Unless there are abortion providers working under the radar in Idaho - which Boas doubts, based on the cost of ultrasound and other equipment - it could be the end of an era for the state.

New medical school graduates don’t want “that bad connotation” of providing abortion services, he said, and that’s why there isn’t anyone replacing the retiring generation - yet.

“Guys like me, I started doing it when I was about 50,” Boas said. By then, he was established in the community and unconcerned about losing business by providing abortions to women who wanted them.

Doctors who are just graduating from medical school and creating their practices may more worried about what people think, he said.

One Western abortion provider, who asked not to be named, said that state legal restrictions saddle the procedure with so many regulations that some doctors are wary to become involved, even if they have no qualms about abortion itself.

“There is also the issue of reporting terminations,” the doctor said. “New graduates are going to be more worried about the laws than maybe us old doctors are. They think of the law as bigger than it is.”

Wyoming has parental notification laws that require that the parent of a minor consent before an abortion can be provided. There have also been repeated attempts in the Legislature to create a state-written script that doctors must recite to a patient before performing the procedure. The script included phrases medical professionals called “insulting, patronizing and unscientific,” such as linking abortions to breast cancer. The bill was most recently defeated in 2007.

Blue just smiled at the idea of a mandated script. “What I say to a patient is no one’s business but mine and the patient’s,” he said.

Other doctors are afraid that if they provide abortions they will be pigeonholed as “abortion doctors” rather than doctors providing a full range of services. Some doctors are concerned about being stigmatized within the medical community, said Sharon Breitweiser of NARAL Pro-Choice Wyoming.

Other doctors, say anti-abortion groups, simply think it’s wrong.

Lack of medical school training

Even if medical students want to be trained in surgical abortion procedures, some have little opportunity. Between 1978 and 1995, the number of medical programs providing routine abortion training to residents dropped from 26 percent to 12 percent, according to Guttmacher data.

“Medical schools across the country just are not teaching the service, so when people are presenting at emergency rooms … they’re not providing abortion services,” said Katie Groke, a field manager at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. “They don’t know how.”

It is possible that surgical abortions will decrease as surgical training opportunities flounder but that medical abortions with RU-486, the so-called “abortion pill,” will increase in the future, some medical professionals said.

Medical Students for Choice was formed in the 1990s to address the dearth of training, but it has “had trouble catching on in the West,” where most doctors are “funneled” to the University of Washington Medical School to complete their residencies and where abortion training is “severely lacking,” said a member of the group.

Officials at the medical school did not return calls for comment.

Boas is connected to the organization. “I go to these meetings that are nationwide, and you get about 12 to 15 of these kids in training,” he said. “They’re different now than we are. Most of them are girls.”
He would be happy to pass his knowledge along to another Idaho doctor.
“Hell, I could teach somebody to do one in two days,” he said. “It’s not brain surgery.”

Few ‘abortion clinics’

As these providers retire, their services are rarely replaced by ‘abortion clinics’ in the West, which are defined as clinics where abortions make up more than 50 percent of provided services.

Abortion clinics are typically established in city centers with dense populations, which the West lacks. Further, Planned Parenthood officials said the pool of abortion providers in some Western states is too small to provide enough doctors to operate a clinic.

A few clinics operate without local doctors. South Dakota’s single abortion clinic, on the far eastern side of the state in Sioux Falls, flies doctors in to provide abortions a few hours a week.

The doctors “have security from the moment they step into South Dakota until the moment they leave,” said Kathi Di Nicola, Director of Media Relations for the Planned Parenthood clinic. “They just have to.”

Three out of four doctors are “seasoned,” said Di Nicola, and one provider, identified in the media as Dr. Miriam McCreary from Minneapolis, came out of retirement just to provide termination services in a state where none of its own doctors are willing to do so.

One of the biggest challenges is what to do next if any of these doctors retire from the clinic, Di Nicola said. “They won’t be easy to replace.”

Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics aren’t attractive options to medical professionals like Boas, who defines himself as a generalist and a community doctor rather than ‘an abortion doctor.’

“They tried to recruit me to come to Spokane … but I turned it down,” Boas said. “That’s itinerant medicine. I don’t really like it.”

The end of an era

Boas said he believes “we’re seeing the last days of Roe v. Wade.”

Even if abortion remains legal, it could become inaccessible, he said. If there are enough barriers placed between a woman and a doctor, like in Julie’s case, the two may never connect.

“These anti-abortionists, they’ll chip away at it until it will eventually collapse,” Boas said. “Finally the providers are going to say, ‘I’ve had enough of this and I can’t do it anymore.’ I guess I’m glad I’m retiring.”

Reclaiming the morality of abortion and the overdue change to the Democratic platform.

2008-08-13T16:36:00.000-04:00

YAY!

By Linda Hirshman
Slate

The Democratic Party platform of 2008 finally dropped its old abortion language ("safe, legal and rare"), which had asked that women not have abortions unless they absolutely must. The 2008 platform, just announced, says instead, "The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right." Should a woman desire to bear her child, the Dems advocate prenatal care, income support, and adoption programs to help her there, too. But in the world of the new Democratic platform, it's the woman's decision to make.

In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled by a margin of 7-2 in Roe v. Wade that women—not their husbands, their doctors, or their legislatures—must be the ones to decide whether to bear or beget a child. Edward Lazarus, who clerked for the author of that opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun, called the decision "the Emancipation Proclamation for American women." But if Roe was Emancipation, the past three decades have felt like the Jim Crow South. Unable to repeal the decision itself, opponents made abortion as illegitimate as possible. The Hyde Amendment pulled Medicaid financing for the poorest and most desperate women. In 1992, the Clinton campaign reframed abortion as an unpleasant last resort. Last term, the Supreme Court finally broke, affirming the criminalization of certain late-term abortions. And Democratic candidate Barack Obama, in The Audacity of Hope, compared women's regrets over their past abortions to white people's regrets about past bigotry. This Clintonian compromise—that abortion was a necessary moral evil—had become the most progressives could hope for.

With the release of the new platform, and so long as the Obama campaign doesn't cast the platform into purgatory and pick an anti-abortion candidate—like Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine—for vice president, the emancipation of women may once again become a legitimate political position. It is time to revive the moral argument for protecting a woman's right to choose: Abortion is about the value of women's lives.

Liberals have never won anything by reframing moral questions as pragmatic ones; they end up looking shifty and evasive. Whatever else it has been doing, the Supreme Court has always framed its decisions about the legality of abortion in moral terms. The decision in Roe to protect women's reproductive choices grew out of earlier cases protecting ordinary means of birth control as a matter of "privacy." It was only over the course of its long philosophical evolution on abortion that the court silently changed the meaning of privacy from the morally neutral secrecy to autonomy, a moral claim for the individual's right to shape her own life.

When, in 1986, Justice Byron White attempted to argue that disputed questions of abortion were best resolved by referring these questions to the states, Justice John Paul Stevens insisted that the only proper decision-maker in such a crucial matter was the mother. Similarly, in their landmark 1992 abortion decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter agreed that "at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

The gay-rights movement best illuminates the need to emphasize the role of morality in politics. In 1986, the Supreme Court decided Bowers v. Hardwick, upholding the constitutionality of criminal penalties for gay sodomy. Choice, said the five-justice majority, although available for a wide range of decisions (including abortion), was not available for conduct we consider really, really icky. (They didn't say that explicitly; they put the words in the mouth of the "Judeo-Christian" tradition and let the priests say it for them.) Just as Bowers was decided, however, the AIDS epidemic motivated and enabled gay people to tell the world why their behavior was moral. As gay men began to die, they and their loved ones began to write about their relationships, their shared homes, and their desire—going back to Homer—to bury those they loved. At the same time, lesbians, who had been fighting for their children after divorces and for the families they were creating with donor insemination—publicly told the story of their own moral commitments.

By the time the Supreme Court faced the previously sinful gay litigants again in Lawrence v. Texas, 17 years later, the decision went the other way. It is impossible to read the two opinions and ignore the change in moral climate that produced the legal shift. And although recent polling fails to reveal a majority supporting gay marriage, the numbers have been steadily improving.

After 30 years of ghastly representations of abortion by the right and weak-kneed defenses by the left, one would expect public support for abortion to have plummeted. Although most polling experts contend that American beliefs about abortion have been roughly stable, the deeper picture is ominous. About 20 percent of those polled believe abortion should never be allowed, and about 20 percent think it should always be allowed. About 60 percent think it should be allowed under certain limited circumstances.

If you unpack that crucial 60 percent, however, even these "centrists" only firmly support abortion in cases in which there is rape, incest, or a threat to the mother's life or health. Just over half of them support abortion in the case of physical or mental defects in the prospective baby. And when asked whether a woman should abort if she or her family could not afford to raise the child, the support for abortion drops to 35 percent.

This polling data represents the price of progressives' refusal to make the moral argument. Women bear the overwhelming majority of child-rearing responsibility in this society. Yet barely more than half of the moderate centrists would allow them to decide whether to abort—even in face of a physical or mental defect in the prospective child. Women, whose economic prospects plummet with the birth of a child, now face 65 percent majorities who would support criminalizing their decision to abort because they are too poor for parenthood. Guttmacher Institute abortion numbers reveal that these same poor women are disproportionately black and Hispanic. It is fair to conclude that a lot of abortions, regardless of race, are about women seeking the flourishing life prospects that our current morality-free discourse completely conceals.

In the 30-some years since Roe v. Wade, somewhere between 18 million and 30 million American women—15 percent to 20 percent of the female American population—have terminated their pregnancies. More than 10 years ago, a movement I'll call the Post-Abortion Syndrome movement began to shift the argument against abortion to the harm done to women. Not surprisingly, in a population of many millions, the PAS movement found a few thousand women who signed affidavits about their regrets at having had abortions.

Last year, in Gonzalez v. Carhart, the Supreme Court, for the first time, upheld the constitutionality of a federal law criminalizing a type of abortion. In his opinion for the court, Justice Kennedy wrote that "Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child ... it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow." In Kennedy's view it was best to spare women such regrets. Indeed it was better still not to allow doctors to perform these procedures at all.

Others have dissected Justice Kennedy's bizarre logic in detail. But what most have missed is that his opinion in Carhart rested on the assumption, ceded so long ago by liberals, that abortions are a necessary evil. There is no serious scientific evidence for any of the justice's findings that a remotely cognizable percentage of the 18 million to 30 million living American abortion recipients have suffered regret, severe depression, and loss of esteem. The American Psychiatric Association has directly refuted any such claim time and again. Why, then, did Justice Kennedy feel so comfortable—indeed, "unexceptionable" —in asserting it? Why, more interestingly, did the Democratic candidate for president similarly invoke the image of the "middle-aged feminist who regrets her abortion" in The Audacity of Hope?

Because they suspect abortion is morally wrong. In the absence of a robust description of the value of women's lives—their ability to develop their capacities through education, to use them to achieve economic independence and political citizenship, to take on only the relationships they can manage—there is no moral argument for their "choice" to have an abortion. Set against the sound of nothing, the smallest moral claim of the potential human life looms large. Such an immoral act, moral thinkers conclude, must always be a mistake, the product of incomplete information or logic, and, in time, must produce regret, depression, and loss of self-esteem.

The wrong question will always lead to the wrong answer. Not coincidentally, the founding text of the Post-Abortion Syndrome movement is called "Making Abortion Rare." The Democratic platform of 2008 offers an opportunity to put an end to this self-destructive cycle of Safe, Legal, and Rare, otherwise known as regret, depression, and self-denigration. In its place, it can finally argue for the value of women's lives. Above rubies sounds about right to me.

Sexual harassment okay as it ensures humans breed, Russian judge rules

2008-08-08T12:05:00.000-04:00

A Russian advertising executive who sued her boss for sexual harassment lost her case after a judge ruled that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race.

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 1:12PM BST 30 Jul 2008
UK Telegraph

The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia's history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.

She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.

"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.

Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.

According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.

Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.

Women also report that it is common to be browbeaten into sex during job interviews, while female students regularly complain that university professors trade high marks for sexual favours.

Only two women have won sexual harassment cases since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one in 1993 and the other in 1997.

Human rights activists say that Russian women remain second-class citizens and are subjected to some of the highest levels of domestic abuse in the world.

The Declining of Value of Human Life: South Dakota's Abortion Fairy Tale

2008-08-04T15:41:00.000-04:00

By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI

Herewith a suggestion on how to improve the South Dakota Fairy Tale that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit has approved for reading to women before they undergo abortions. The case was Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, et al vs. Mike Rounds, et al. It pertained to a piece of legislation passed by the South Dakota legislature, a mostly male body that has, until now, unsuccessfully tried to tell women what they may and may not do with their bodies. Thanks to the Court it has finally succeeded.

The essence of the case was that although women may continue to get abortions in South Dakota, the physician performing the procedure is required to read aloud to the prospective mother. Under section 7 of the statute a woman is required to receive oral disclosures about the procedure she is about to undergo. Some of the information must be given orally AND in writing and other information only in writing although the language of the statute can be read to require that all information must be imparted orally by the physician.

Although the prescribed reading (and writing) is not the sort of thing the mother would read aloud to the child were the child to be born, it has a certain fairy tale like quality to it. Among the things the physician is required to tell the mother is that an abortion will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being,” that the woman has an “existing relationship with that unborn human being, ” that the relationship enjoys protection under the United States constitution and under laws of South Dakota” and that “by having an abortion, her existing relationship and her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated.”

It is patently absurd to describe the embryo has a “whole” and a “separate” human being since whatever else it may be, it is neither whole, having many months to go before it achieves that state, nor is it “separate” since ordinarily it cannot survive outside the mother’s body at the time the abortion is performed. It is equally absurd to say that the “relationship” “enjoys protection under the United States Constitution” since it does not.

Sarah Stoesz, president of the regional Planned Parenthood office, said the statute represents an “unprecedented interference in the doctor-patient relationship and unprecedented interference in a woman’s life.” She also observed that the law is “non-science” based but as we have been taught by none other than the president of the United States and his minions, science is an elective subject whose proofs one may accept or reject based on one’s personal biases. And speaking of science, we are brought to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent pronouncement that if added to the South Dakota statute, will bring the number of abortions performed in South Dakota to zero.

The E.P.A. issued a report on July 19, 2008 that pertained to a matter with which few people knew the E.P.A. was concerned. The report said the value of a human life has gone down from $8.04 million to $7.22 million. That does not mean, as the report is careful to point out, that every reader of this column is worth that.
Some will be worth more and others less and most readers know to which group they belong.

The reason it is important to know the value of a human life is that when you have the answer to that question you can decide whether certain governmental actions are worthwhile. If something is proposed that a governmental agency determines will save 50 lives and cost $500 million, the agency determines if the proposal makes sense by multiplying 50 lives times $7.22 million. If the product is less than $500 million, the project is abandoned and if more, it may be implemented. If, in that example, 200 people were affected, then the math would justify the cost.

Now that this information is available, the South Dakota legislature should promptly amend House Bill 1166 to include a requirement that the fairy tale be refined to add a section that will inform the woman that not only is she “terminating the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being” but she is also disposing of an asset that has a scientifically established value of $7.22 million. Armed with that scientifically correct information most women will immediately spring for the cash and abortions in South Dakota will come to an end. There will, of course, be a modicum of disappointment when the kid hits college age and the parent goes looking for the $7.22 million the parent knows was being stowed away. Parents will find, to their dismay, that the $7.22 million was, like much of the rest of the language in the South Dakota Fairy Tale, made up by ignorant busy bodies more interested in controlling women’s bodies than in educating their proprietors.

A New Attack on Birth Control

2008-07-31T16:36:00.000-04:00

Wednesday 30 July 2008
The Boston Globe | Editorial

With just a few months left in office, President Bush is still doing the bidding of social conservatives who oppose women's reproductive freedoms. Under the guise of rules to protect antiabortion nurses and doctors from discrimination in hiring, a proposed new regulation would expand the definition of abortion to include any form of contraception that can work by stopping implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus. This can include common birth-control pills, emergency contraception, and the intra-uterine device, or IUD. Doctors who refuse to perform abortions for reasons of personal conscience already are protected by law.

The potential impact of this new rule on the more than 500,000 hospitals, family planning clinics, and medical offices that receive any form of federal funding could be dramatic. The rule could also undercut many state laws - including one in Massachusetts requiring hospitals to provide emergency contraception for rape victims - and laws requiring prescription drug insurance plans to include contraceptives. Massachusetts passed such a law in 2002.

The draft proposed rule highlights the fact that many antiabortion groups also oppose one good method of preventing the unplanned pregnancies that lead to abortions - birth control. At some point in their lives, 98 percent of US women use birth control.

The proposed rule, while claiming to protect the rights of nurses and doctors, would interfere with patients' rights. A woman seeking treatment could be denied birth control and not even be aware that the service was available - only denied to her because of the unexpressed personal beliefs of the practitioner.

Last November, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said gynecologists must provide "accurate and unbiased information" to patients and "have the duty to refer patients in a timely manner to other providers" if the doctors do not want to perform an abortion or prescribe birth control. The US secretary of health and human services, Michael Leavitt, said he thought this statement went too far in forcing doctors to choose between their beliefs and the prospect of professional sanctions.

The administration does not need approval of Congress to put this rule into effect. But about 100 members of the House, including all representatives from this state except Stephen Lynch of South Boston, have signed a letter protesting it. In the Senate, Patty Murray of Washington and Hillary Clinton of New York are leading the opposition. The administration should take heed and drop its ideological attack on contraception.

Ovulation moment caught on camera

2008-07-17T13:15:00.000-04:00

BBC News

A human egg has been filmed in close-up emerging from the ovary for the first time, captured by chance during a routine operation.

Fertile women release one or more eggs every month, but until now, only animal ovulation has been recorded in detail.

Gynaecologist Dr Jacques Donnez spotted it in progress during a hysterectomy.

The pictures, published in New Scientist magazine, were described as "fascinating" by a UK fertility specialist.

Human eggs are produced by follicles, fluid-filled sacs on the side of the ovary, which, around the time of ovulation, produce a reddish protrusion seen in the pictures.

The egg comes from the end of this, surrounded by a jelly-like substance containing cells.

The egg itself is only the size of a full-stop, and the whole ovary, which contains many immature eggs, just a couple of inches long.

They belonged to a 45-year-old Belgian woman, and Dr Donnez, from the Catholic University of Louvain, told New Scientist that the pictures would help scientists understand the mechanisms involved.

He said that some theories had suggested an "explosive" release for the egg, but the ovulation he witnessed took 15 minutes to complete.

Professor Alan McNeilly, from the Medical Research Council's Human Reproduction Unit in Edinburgh, said that this fitted with his own research into the ovulation process.

He said: "It really is a fascinating insight into ovulation, and to see it in real life is an incredibly rare occurrence.

"It really is a pivotal moment in the whole process, the beginnings of life in a way."

***

(Note from blog mistress: Well, not exactly, BBC News,...it's actually just ovulation. Not the beginning of life. When one makes the leap that ovulation is the beginning of life, does one then imply that women are capable of parthenogenesis? If that's what the BBC is trying to tell me then, woohoo! I am going to harvest all of my eggs to raise a feminist clone army and we are going to take over the world!)

Birth Control=Abortion? Yes, According to Dept. of Health & Human Svcs.

2008-07-15T17:05:00.000-04:00

HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion
By Cristina Page
Created Jul 15 2008 - 3:02pm
RH Reality Check

In a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right, the Department of Health and Human Services Monday released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception. In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40% of Americans use, as abortion. Doing so protects extremists under the Weldon and Church amendments. Those laws prohibit federal grant recipients from requiring employees to help provide or refer for abortion services. The "Definitions" section of the HHS proposal states,

***
Abortion: An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus). A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49% of Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be included in their definition of the term "abortion." Those who believe pregnancy begins at implantation believe the term "abortion" only includes the destruction of a human being after it has implanted in the lining of the uterus.

***

The proposal continues,

***

Both definitions of pregnancy inform medical practice. Some medical authorities, like the American Medical Association and the British Medical Association, have defined the term "established pregnancy" as occurring after implantation. Other medical authorities present different definitions. Stedman's Medical Dictionary, for example, defines pregnancy as "[t]he state of a female after conception and until the termination of the gestation." Dorland's Medical Dictionary defines pregnancy, in relevant part, as "the condition of having a developing embryo or fetus in the body, after union of an oocyte and spermatozoon.

***

Up until now, the federal government followed the definition of pregnancy accepted by the American Medical Association and our nation's pregnancy experts, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is: pregnancy begins at implantation. With this proposal, however, HHS is dismissing medical experts and opting instead to accept a definition of pregnancy based on polling data. It now claims that pregnancy begins at some biologically unknowable moment (there's no test to determine if a woman's egg has been fertilized). Under these new standards there would be no way for a woman to prove she's not pregnant. Thus, any woman could be denied contraception under HHS' new science.

The other rarely discussed issue here is whether hormonal contraception even does what the religious right claims. There is no scientific evidence that hormonal methods of birth control can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. This argument is the basis upon which the religious right hopes to include the 40% of the birth control methods Americans use, such as the pill, the patch, the shot, the ring, the IUD, and emergency contraception, under the classification "abortion." Even the "pro-life" movement's most respected physicians cautioned the movement about making these claims. In 1999, the physicians--who, like the movement at large, define pregnancy as beginning at fertilization-- released an open letter [1]to community stating: "Recently, some special interest groups have claimed, without providing any scientific rationale, that some methods of contraception may have an abortifacient effect...The 'hormonal contraception is abortifacient' theory is not established fact. It is speculation, and the discussion presented here suggests it is error...if a family, weighing all the factors affecting their own circumstances, decides to use this modality, we are confident that they are not using an abortifacient."

As the HHS proposal proves, the absence of fact or evidence does not slow anti-abortion movement attempts to classify hormonal contraception as abortion. With HHS' proposal they have struck gold. Anyone working for a federal clinic, or a health center that receives federal funding--even in the form of Medicaid--and would like to prevent a woman from accessing most prescription birth control methods has federal protection to do so. As the HHS proposal details,

***
Because the statutes that would be enforced through this regulation seek, in part, to protect individuals and institutions from suffering discrimination on the basis of conscience, the conscience of the individual or institution should be paramount in determining what constitutes abortion, within the bounds of reason. As discussed above, both definitions of pregnancy are reasonable and used within the scientific and medical community. The Department proposes, then, to allow individuals and institutions to adhere to their own views and adopt a definition of abortion that encompasses both views of abortion.

***

So HHS proposes that anyone can enforce his or her own definition of abortion "within the bounds of reason." And, it would seem the bounds are pretty far flung. Most dangerously, perhaps, this new rule establishes a legal precedent that may eventually be used as a basis for banning the most popular forms of birth control along with what is, in fact, abortion.

Women of Color Demand Justice: Say NO to Operation Save America

2008-07-14T14:32:00.000-04:00

By SPARK Reproductive Justice Now and SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective

The week of July 12-19 2008, Operation Save America, a violent anti-choice and racist organization, will fill the city of Atlanta, GA with their message of hate and terror. During this time we call on women of color, our allies and reproductive justice and social justice activists to Stand for Justice and Say NO to Operation Save America.

As leaders, mothers, partners, students, and beyond women of color are faced with intricate realities that shape our lives. For all of us that reality includes making decisions about our bodies, our lives, and our communities. For some of us that means we choose abortion. We unapologetically support women of color as creators of their own futures and, in creating our paths of autonomy support women's access to safe and legal abortion. Our struggle for abortion access is anchored in our belief in reproductive justice or the complete economic, physical, social, and political well-being and power to make the best decision for our bodies, our families, and our communities.

Abortion has always been a part of our lives. As healers, midwives, enslaved, free, colonized, and imprisoned people, women of color have and continue to create a story of resilience and resistance in which abortion, parenting, adoption, foster care and beyond have all played a part. We will not allow Operation Save America to reduce our lives into a simplistic sound bite that points the finger solely at abortion and not at the impact of war, poor education and healthcare to name a few. We resist our stories and our legacies being co-opted by this group. We denounce images of our children used as tokens by a mostly White group to justify their cause.

Operation Save America continues to play on a history of shaming and blaming women of color. As reproductive justice advocates and activists, we recognize our choices are dictated by our circumstances; and the discussion regarding abortion requires that we talk honestly about racism, health care, education, sexuality, and poverty. OSA's presence is just another overt reign of terror felt by women of color and our communities by an organization whose membership and message aim only to point the finger without addressing the real issues that impact the lives of women of color and our families.

For this week and beyond, women of color and our allies unite to say NO to OSA. Calling on the prophetic traditions of the Black church, civil rights movement, and our women of color's historical commitment to freedom and liberation, we have a firm understanding that fight for our bodily autonomy, the safety of our communities, and the demise of oppression and exploitation requires that everyone Stand for Justice and Say NO to Operation Save America.

Med schools: Next abortion battleground

2008-07-14T13:17:00.000-04:00

Stressful work environment since Roe may dissuade many from becoming providers.
By CHARLIE QUIMBY
Last update: July 14, 2008 - 10:57 AM
Star Tribune

Sara Stoesz describes the latest ruling by the Eighth Circuit Court as an additional obstacle to access to legal abortion care ("In South Dakota, a blow to abortion rights," July 2).

With the strictest laws in the nation, South Dakota has been a bellwether state for the erosion of reproductive rights. Now the court's approval of a law requiring what doctors must tell their patients gives other states hell-bent on limiting abortion another way to drive a chink into Roe v. Wade. But if you think the threat to choice is coming from the state legislatures, court rulings or who's appointed to the Supreme Court, you're missing the real battle -- which may already be lost.

First, some history.

In 1967, my home state of Colorado became the first to reform its abortion law, permitting abortions if the pregnant woman's life or physical or mental health were endangered, if the fetus would be born with a severe physical or mental defect, or if the pregnancy had resulted from rape or incest. This same year, my high school girl friend -- her family rigidly fundamentalist, mine Catholic -- thought she was pregnant. Although it proved not to be the case, I still remember how isolated, powerless and bereft of options we felt, living in the place with the greatest reproductive choice in the country.

Other states began reforming or repealing antiabortion laws, most along the lines of Colorado's. In 1970, two years before the Roe v. Wade ruling, Alaska, Hawaii, New York and Washington made abortion legal. All but New York imposed a 30-day residency requirement for women seeking an abortion.

But if you were pregnant in say, a small Colorado town, without money or connections, and wanted a legal abortion, you might as well have lived on the moon.

According to an analysis by The Alan Guttmacher Institute, just over 100,000 women did leave their own state to obtain a legal abortion in New York City in the year before the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. The institute found an estimated 50,000 women traveled more than 500 miles to obtain a legal abortion in New York City; nearly 7,000 women traveled more than 1,000 miles, and some 250 traveled more than 2,000 miles, from places as far as Arizona, Idaho and Nevada.

The official line today is that if some states backtrack and limit abortion, it will remain legal in others. But some people who remember the old days aren't comforted. They remember how it used to be.

I don't have firm statistics, but I would say most of the physicians providing abortion services in Minnesota today are my contemporaries or older. That is, people who experienced the days of illegal abortion and the complications that ensued. That is, doctors within a decade of retirement. The late Dr. Jane Hodgson, who tested Minnesota's law by deliberately performing an illegal abortion in 1970, continued to perform abortions until age 76, traveling from St. Paul to Duluth, because doctors there would not. She was born in 1915 and reached reproductive maturity about the year nearly 2,700 women in America died from reported self-induced or illegal abortions.

Most of the subsequent generations of doctors, including those who completed OB-GYN residencies in the early '80s who will soon be leaving practice, received no training in terminating pregnancies, and the attitude in medical schools still seems to be "don't ask, don't tell." Residents who want to learn about the full range of women's health issues are free to arrange their own training, if they can find someone to provide it. The barriers don't just involve learning medical procedures that are not mentioned in class; there are also issues about malpractice coverage and getting institutional approval.

Today's medical residents were born in post-Reagan America, went to college in during the Rehnquist/Scalia era and have only known a post-Roe existence. Faced with roadblocks in their already stressful training regimens, even strongly prochoice residents may not pursue this on their own.

Meanwhile, practicing physicians who believe in choice may advise patients about all their options in handling a pregnancy, but they aren't going to provide all the options -- especially without having the training. But also because of outright harassment, fear of bad publicity or concern for their family's safety, they have quietly decided to let reproductive freedom become not just the patient's decision, but the patient's problem.

We may think the abortion issue will be decided contentiously on the Capitol steps, in Supreme Court cloisters or on the Planned Parenthood sidewalks. But more likely, Roe v. Wade will be nullified where none of us have any voice, by a medical profession with an ever-diminishing memory of the past -- and with fewer and fewer physicians who have the skills to keep choice a reality.

Charlie Quimby writes about community, values, perception and politics at Across the Great Divide. He is married to a physician.

Democratic Party's Stance On Abortion

2008-07-14T11:29:00.000-04:00

Opinion Piece Examines Democratic Party's Stance On Abortion
Medical News Today
09 Jul 2008

Suggesting to women that the Democratic Party's "commitment to abortion rights is what should drive their vote," while simultaneously suggesting that "given the choice, having a baby is a more moral choice than abortion, will be understood for what it is: condescending and sexist," Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for Choice, and Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, write in a Salon opinion piece.

Concerns among Democrats about how to deal with "disaffected" supporters of former presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) "involves focusing on women's understandable fears that a John McCain administration would limit abortion rights and even overturn Roe v. Wade" and promises that "Democrats will clearly do better," the authors write. They add, "That's why it's so remarkable that in recent weeks, Democrats, including Sojourners founder Jim Wallis, havesuggested that the party may need to take another crack at tempering its strong platform support for abortion rights by making 'abortion reduction ... a central Democratic Party plank in this election.'"

Kissling and Michelman write that reducing the need for abortion is "sound policy" and that the abortion rights movement has been supporting such an agenda for two decades. They question why the Democratic Party platform should be framed by groups "who seem ignorant of the fact that the platform already contains all the elements necessary to reduce abortion," such as access to family planning and promotion of an "economic program, health care reform and protections for women's equality that would, if enacted, make it more possible for women who become pregnant and wish to continue those pregnancies to keep and raise their children in a secure environment." Kissling and Michelman note that, ironically, Sojourners and Democrats for Life do not promote contraception as part of an abortion reduction strategy. They add, "The stakes for women could not be higher, and Democrats need to do better in defending the moral right of women to choose, in every way: to choose to have a baby, to choose to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, to choose to terminate a pregnancy."

Kissling and Michelman point out that two bills are "languishing" in Congress that focus on reducing the need for abortion: the Prevention First Act (S 21, HR 819) and the Reducing the Need for Abortion Initiative (HR 1074). "Moving these bills before the election will give us a yardstick by which to measure members of Congress' commitments to meeting women's needs while recognizing their rights," according to the authors. They add that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) could use his skills to garner support from Wallis and others to make "pregnancy and motherhood a real choice for everyone; to make sure abortion is a choice and never a grim default and, when it is a choice, is safe and legal and never stigmatized by Democrats." In addition, policies supporting women's rights must be a high priority for Obama, Kissling and Michelman write, adding that although "both men and women have a stake in women's well-being, women's preeminent role in developing policies that affect their lives must be a central commitment of the senator and the party." As "feminists who have proudly and enthusiastically supported Obama for some time, we are convinced that this is exactly the approach he will take," the authors write, concluding, "And while this approach is as old as feminism, it will be a breath of fresh air in the party" (Kissling/Michelman,Salon, 7/7).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2008 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.

Brazil votes to keep abortion a crime

2008-07-10T16:07:00.000-04:00

Agence France-Presse
Thursday, July 10, 2008 (Brasillia)

Lawmakers in Brazil voted to keep abortion a crime, disappointing groups seeking to decriminalise an operation estimated to be carried out three million times a year in the country with the world's largest Catholic population.

The representatives in the congressional commission on the constitution and justice voted 30 to four against lifting the penal prohibition on abortion on Wednesday.

One of the deputies carried dolls and a baby's coffin to the session to underline his opposition to changing the law.

A pro-abortion organisation, Catholics for the Right to Decide, said it was disappointed but not surprised by the outcome.

''We expected this result against decriminalising abortion because there are totally opposed forces at work within the Congress,'' said a spokeswoman for the group, Dulce Xavier.

''They called a public audience to decide the issue and invited eight people opposed to abortion, six of them religious leaders, and only one health ministry official in favour,'' said Xavier.

While abortion is illegal in Brazil and can be punished by jail sentences, it is widely practiced.

Of the estimated three million terminations, most are conducted on married Catholics, according to a study by the universities of Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro state and the health ministry, which was published in 2008 in the press.

Many women die because of inadequate procedures or follow-up.

Brazilian law permits abortions only in cases of rape and where the mother risks dying in childbirth.

South Dakota's Unbelievable New Abortion Law

2008-07-08T17:16:00.000-04:00

Telling Doctors What To Think --
South Dakota's unbelievable new abortion law.
Slate
By Emily Bazelon
Posted Wednesday, July 2, 2008, at 6:43 PM ET

In 2005, South Dakota passed an unprecedented abortion law. The statute purports to be about ensuring that patients give informed consent. Planned Parenthood characterizes it differently: as an intrusion on the doctor-patient relationship, forcing doctors to give inaccurate medical facts and to be the state's ideological mouthpiece. Now, following a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, the law is about to go into effect for the first time. And the question is how it will change the experience of going to get an abortion—and whether it will open a new front in the abortion wars by encouraging other states to follow suit.

The South Dakota law requires doctors to give patients who come for an abortion a written statement telling them that "the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," and that they have "an existing relationship with that unborn human being" that is constitutionally protected. (What does the constitutionally protected part mean? Who knows.) In addition, doctors are ordered to describe "all known medical risks of the procedure and statistically significant risk factors," including "depression and related psychological distress" and "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide."

The idea behind the statute is that if you force women to confront the implications of an abortion, they'll be less likely to go through with it. That's what the "whole, separate, unique, living human being" language is about. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that a fetus is not a person, in the legal sense of the word, which is to say it doesn't have the same rights. So South Dakota couldn't order doctors to tell women that to have an abortion is to kill a person. But human being is a different term that's up for grabs, the drafters of the legislation decided.

This was the insight of a smart New Jersey lawyer named Harold Cassidy, who has represented women who've accused abortion providers of malpractice, and who helped draft South Dakota's statute. Cassidy also helped persuade state lawmakers that women might be scared out of having abortions if doctors were forced to enumerate the procedure's medical risks. This is where the idea of linking abortion to depression and increased risk of suicide comes in. Never mind that the weight of the medical evidence tilts heavily against the increased-suicide tie or that there's more evidence of a link between depression and unintended pregnancy—or simply giving birth—than between depression and abortion, according to most of the literature.

If you care about doctors' freedom of speech, or their responsibility to give accurate information to patients, the South Dakota statute looks pretty alarming. And yet by a vote of seven judges to four, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit managed to weave its way around these concerns last week. After sitting on the case for more than a year, the court instructed abortion clinics (actually, clinic, since there's only one in South Dakota) to put the law into effect in mid-July.

In a majority opinion by Judge Raymond Gruender, the court ruled only on the "human being" part of the statute—a challenge to the suicide provision is still pending before a lower court. (Planned Parenthood decided it could live with the depression provision because the law doesn't claim that abortion increases that risk.) Planned Parenthood argued that the state is legislating morality because to call a fetus a "whole, separate, unique, living human being" is an ideological statement, not a medical one. The Supreme Court has told the states that it's not for them to resolve when life begins—and it should certainly follow from this that they can't force any such resolution on doctors. As the 8th Circuit dissent by Judge Diana Murphy points out, the question "in some sense encompass[es] the whole philosophical debate about abortion."

But none of this swayed the majority. They bought the state's argument that the statute circumvents ideology by defining "human being," elsewhere in the statute, as "an individual living member of the species Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation." Presto, said the majority—with that definition, the "truthfulness and relevance" of the provision "generates little dispute." Yes, this logic is as tautological as it sounds. The legislature basically defined "human being" to include unborn human beings.

The idea that a fetus is whole and separate will probably be news to a lot of women who have carried one. But what's more distressing, because the majority's reasoning is so strained, is the assertion that by defining a phrase one way, a state can erase its ambiguity and the variety of perceptions people bring to it. It's one thing to say—as the case law the majority relies on here does—that a statutory definition binds judges and their interpretation of language. It's another entirely to say that when doctors tell women they are carrying a human being, that women will think, Oh, right, that means only the long, convoluted thing that the state says it does. Most patients won't think that, because they won't necessarily define "human being" the way the statute does. As Yale law professor Robert Post says in a 2007 article (PDF) in the University of Illinois Law Review, "If South Dakota were to enact a statute requiring physicians to inform abortion patients that they were destroying the 'soul' of their unborn progeny, and if it were explicitly to provide in the statute that 'soul' is defined as 'human DNA,' the evasion would be obvious." Instead, South Dakota has co-opted human being and attached its own meaning to it.

The 8th Circuit's decision to uphold the South Dakota law, even though it compels doctors to say things they don't believe, is in part the fault of Justice Anthony Kennedy. In his 2007 decision banning a method of late-term abortion, Kennedy worried a lot about women who regret having abortions. With paternalistic abandon, he wrote about their "distress" in terms of their "lack of information" about abortion. Kennedy was talking, in graphic specifics, about lack of information on the way a so-called partial-birth abortion unfolds. Whether or not he's right, these details have nothing to do with philosophical musings about whether the fetus is a human being. But that didn't stop the 8th Circuit from quoting him at length in the very different context of the South Dakota law.

The fraught claim that abortion harms women, which I've written about before, was languishing in legal Nowheresville until Kennedy unexpectedly raised it up and blessed it. Now that notion, and the small minority of women who attest to it, are a handy new tool for abortion opponents. The 8th Circuit includes six other states—Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and North Dakota. Laws that compel doctors' speech, as this one does, would now be legal in all those places, should state legislators adopt them. And if states in other regions want to try passing such laws, they'll have a great precedent to cite to the other circuit courts.

In the meantime, Planned Parenthood's lawyers and the state's lone abortion clinic in Sioux Falls have two more weeks to figure out what its doctors can legally and ethically say to the women they treat. "Our doctors are now being asked to say things they do not believe are true," says Sarah Stoesz, the head of Planned Parenthood in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Whatever you think about abortion, how is that a good thing?

Dr. Tiller Vindicated!

2008-07-08T17:14:00.000-04:00

Yay!!!

Feminist Daily News Wire
July 3, 2008

A Kansas Grand Jury adjourned on Wednesday without finding substantial evidence that Dr Tiller, a late-term abortion provider, violated any abortion laws. The Wichita Eagle reports that the grand jury was forced to convene by an anti-choice group, Kansas for Life. Kansas is one of six states that allow citizens to petition to convene a grand jury.

The District Attorney told the Wichita Eagle, "After six months of conducting an investigation … this Grand Jury has not found sufficient evidence to bring an indictment on any crime related to the abortion laws." The grand jury investigation had previously come before the Kansas Supreme Court over its attempts to subpoena confidential patient medical records.

Dr. Tiller is one of only a few late-term abortion providers in the country. According to Kansas and federal law, an abortion can only be performed after the 22 weeks if carrying the fetus to term would cause the woman "substantial and irreversible impairment," according to KWCH News. Dr. Tiller has consistently been targeted by anti-choice groups.

Media Resources: Wichita Eagle 7/3/2008, KWCH 7/3/2008, Feminist Daily News Wire 7/6/2007, Feminist Daily News Wire 5/7/2008

Obama: Mental distress can't justify late abortion

2008-07-08T17:11:00.000-04:00

BOO!!!!

Article
Jul 3, 6:01 PM (ET)
By JIM KUHNHENN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says "mental distress" should not qualify as a health exception for late term-abortions, a key distinction not embraced by many supporters of abortion rights.

In an interview this week with "Relevant," a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain "a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother."

Obama then added: "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term."

Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he "strongly disagreed" with the ruling because it "dramatically departs form previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women."

The health care exception is crucial to abortion rights advocates and is considered a legal loophole by abortion opponents. By limiting the health exception to a "serious physical issue," Obama set himself apart from other abortion rights proponents.

The official position of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group that endorsed Obama in May, states: "A health exception must also account for the mental health problems that may occur in pregnancy. Severe fetal anomalies, for example, can exact a tremendous emotional toll on a pregnant woman and her family."

The 1973 landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade, established a right to an abortion, and a concurrent case, Doe v. Bolton, established that medical judgments about the need for an abortion could include physical, emotional and psychological health factors.

"Senator Obama has consistently maintained that laws restricting abortions must contain exceptions for the health and life of the mother," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said Thursday. "Obviously, as he stated in the interview, he has consistently believed those exceptions should be clear and limited enough to ensure that they don't undermine the prohibition on late-term abortions."

In a statement, NARAL Pro-Choice said Obama's magazine interview is consistent with Roe v. Wade.

"Sen. Obama has consistently said he supports the tenets set forth by Roe, and has made strong statements against President Bush's Federal Abortion Ban, which does not have an exception to protect a woman's health," the organization's statement said.

A leading abortion opponent, however, said Obama's rhetoric does not match his voting record and his previously stated views on abortion rights.

David N. O'Steen, the executive director of National Right to Life, said Obama's remarks to the magazine "are either quite disingenuous or they reflect that Obama does not know what he is talking about."

"You cannot believe that abortion should not be allowed for mental health reasons and support Roe v Wade," O'Steen said.

In the interview with Relevant, conducted on Tuesday, Obama also defended his opposition to restrictions on induced abortions where the fetus sometimes survives for short periods. Obama voted against such a bill when he was in the Illinois Senate. He has said he supported a federal version of the law that contained more specific language because he feared the Illinois proposal would have applied to all abortions.

"There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the 'Born Alive' bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill," Obama said Tuesday. "The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn't think it was going to pass constitutional muster."

Va. Bishop Apologizes Over Girl's Abortion

2008-07-08T17:10:00.000-04:00

Article
By Kameel Stanley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 4, 2008; B01

Leaders of a Richmond-based Catholic charity under federal investigation are scrambling to explain the organization's involvement in helping a 16-year-old illegal immigrant in its care get an abortion in January.

Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo apologized this week for the "monumental tragedy" and the embarrassment the incident has caused the diocese and Catholics across the country.

"The guilt and depression that many of us experience as a result of the behavior of a few is something that we will bear for a long time to come," he wrote in a statement to the Catholic Virginian, a biweekly newspaper that serves the Richmond diocese.

DiLorenzo's comments followed reports that four staff members of Commonwealth Catholic Charities were fired after it was revealed that they provided the girl with transportation and signed a consent form needed for the abortion.

An investigation revealed that the workers also had helped her implant a contraceptive two months before the abortion, Joanne D. Nattrass, the charity's executive director, said in a statement.

The charity's staff and DiLorenzo "are deeply saddened by the incident," she said.

The girl, who is from Guatemala, was in the government's refugee resettlement program and living in Virginia. It is unclear why the workers helped her obtain the abortion, which is against Catholic teachings.

Nattrass would not discuss the employees' motivation. But she said Commonwealth Catholic Charities has taken steps to ensure that such an incident doesn't happen again, including ongoing education and training for employees about Catholic beliefs.

Charity employees do not have to be Catholic but are expected to adhere to the religion's teachings. "Most of our staff here are not Catholic," spokeswoman Paula Ritter said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is investigating whether the charity violated state and federal laws by facilitating the abortion.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops receives about $7.6 million annually to provide foster care for illegal immigrant children until they can be reunited with their families.

The conference contracts with more than 1,700 Catholic Charities branches across the country to provide services. Federal law prohibits using federal funds to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the woman's life is in danger.

Also, Virginia law requires those younger than 18 to have parental consent for an abortion.

"These federal funds are awarded with the clear purpose of caring for unaccompanied minors here from other countries," said Kenneth J. Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families. "We were surprised and disappointed to learn of a chapter of Catholic Charities using this funding to care for a minor, facilitated a minor procuring an abortion."

Nattrass said no agency or diocese funds were used.

A statement by Catholic Charities USA said the association "encourages all of our member agencies and their staff to adhere to our Code of Ethics which states that 'agencies shall clearly indicate, prior to the creation of any client relationship, that the agency does not provide services contrary to the teachings of the Church.' "

Because of privacy issues, little is known about the girl or her current situation. And it is unclear whether she is still in the United States or whose care she is under. But correspondence between government officials and the charity and statements by the charity's leaders reveal more about the incident.

Church leaders learned Jan. 17, the day before the procedure took place, that the girl was pregnant and considering an abortion but did not stop her, according to an April 23 letter that David Siegel, head of refugee resettlement program, sent to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In a statement, Nattrass said that upon learning of the plans, she immediately contacted DiLorenzo, who explicitly forbade the procedure.

"Based on erroneous and incorrect information provided to Nattrass, the Bishop was told it could not be stopped," the statement said.

In addition to failing to get parental consent, the agency also failed to file a treatment authorization request, required for medical procedures for minors in their care, federal officials said.

"The CCC staff had rationalized that [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] had given consent for the abortion because the staff had a medical authorization form on file," Siegel wrote.

Furthermore, even though the federal government has custody over children in the refugee resettlement program, federal guidelines require consent from a minor's parent or legal guardian when the medical procedure is considered serious.

Abortions are in the "serious medical services" category, according to federal officials.

"It was a failure of management and oversight by [the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops] and a failure in judgment by CCC to conclude that a medical procedure of such seriousness . . . could be consented to unilaterally by a grantee of the federal government," Siegel said in the letter.

Richmond diocese spokesman Steve Neill said church leaders hope the incident will not permanently taint the organization.

"The main thing is there was a life taken, and in no way does the Catholic Church condone abortion," he said. "The bishop is agonized over it."

Some say the damage is done.

Judie Brown, founder and president of the American Life League, an anti-abortion organization, said she was horrified to learn that DiLorenzo knew about the abortion before it took place.

"It's scandalous," Brown said. "It's just another nail in the coffin of the Catholic Church's credibility."

Brown said she holds DiLorenzo responsible, especially given the position and authority bishops hold in the church.

"I don't think it matters what this girl was thinking," she said. "I think it matters what the bishop did not do."

Others say the government's reaction to the incident is disturbing.

Brigitte Amiri, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, said the government should be helping teens who ask for help, not putting up roadblocks.

"It's a big concern, and we're learning more about it," Amiri said. "Instead of showing them compassion, the government is putting its political opposition to abortion above their best interests."

Repairing the Damage, Before Roe

2008-06-03T18:55:00.000-04:00

NY Times
By WALDO L. FIELDING, M.D.

With the Supreme Court becoming more conservative, many people who support women’s right to choose an abortion fear that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that gave them that right, is in danger of being swept aside.

When such fears arise, we often hear about the pre-Roe “bad old days.” Yet there are few physicians today who can relate to them from personal experience. I can.

I am a retired gynecologist, in my mid-80s. My early formal training in my specialty was spent in New York City, from 1948 to 1953, in two of the city’s large municipal hospitals.

There I saw and treated almost every complication of illegal abortion that one could conjure, done either by the patient herself or by an abortionist — often unknowing, unskilled and probably uncaring. Yet the patient never told us who did the work, or where and under what conditions it was performed. She was in dire need of our help to complete the process or, as frequently was the case, to correct what damage might have been done.

The patient also did not explain why she had attempted the abortion, and we did not ask. This was a decision she made for herself, and the reasons were hers alone. Yet this much was clear: The woman had put herself at total risk, and literally did not know whether she would live or die.

This, too, was clear: Her desperate need to terminate a pregnancy was the driving force behind the selection of any method available.

The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous “coat hanger” — which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in — perhaps the patient herself — found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it.

We did not have ultrasound, CT scans or any of the now accepted radiology techniques. The woman was placed under anesthesia, and as we removed the metal piece we held our breath, because we could not tell whether the hanger had gone through the uterus into the abdominal cavity. Fortunately, in the cases I saw, it had not.

However, not simply coat hangers were used.

Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion — darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off.

Another method that I did not encounter, but heard about from colleagues in other hospitals, was a soap solution forced through the cervical canal with a syringe. This could cause almost immediate death if a bubble in the solution entered a blood vessel and was transported to the heart.

The worst case I saw, and one I hope no one else will ever have to face, was that of a nurse who was admitted with what looked like a partly delivered umbilical cord. Yet as soon as we examined her, we realized that what we thought was the cord was in fact part of her intestine, which had been hooked and torn by whatever implement had been used in the abortion. It took six hours of surgery to remove the infected uterus and ovaries and repair the part of the bowel that was still functional.

It is important to remember that Roe v. Wade did not mean that abortions could be performed. They have always been done, dating from ancient Greek days.

What Roe said was that ending a pregnancy could be carried out by medical personnel, in a medically accepted setting, thus conferring on women, finally, the full rights of first-class citizens — and freeing their doctors to treat them as such.

Waldo L. Fielding was an obstetrician and gynecologist in Boston for 38 years. He is the author of “Pregnancy: The Best State of the Union” (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1971).

The Coat Hanger Project featured in "Words of Choice" Blog!

2008-05-31T15:09:00.000-04:00

I'm thrilled that notable pro-choice activist Cindy Cooper gave TCHP some love on her Words of Choice blog. Thanks for the shout out!

About the blog:
This blog is about airr -- artistic investigations of reproductive rights & essential human rights for women. Creativity opens breathing space for new and positive conversations about women's freedom and reproductive justice. This blog shares the ways!

About "Words of Choice"
Words of Choice is dynamic pro-choice theater. Created by Cindy Cooper, the play is a collection of savvy and sophisticated works by a dozen writers and performed by three actors. We've traveled to 20 states to open new conversations about choice.

Harvey Karman, 84; invented device for safer, easier abortions

2008-05-23T12:21:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Woo
Los Angeles Times

May 18, 2008

Harvey Karman, a flamboyant psychologist whose invention made a key contribution to women's reproductive health, particularly by making abortions simpler, cheaper and less painful, died May 6 at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. He was 84.

The cause was a stroke, said his son Kenneth, of Los Angeles.

Activist, inventor, educator and rogue, Karman was drawn to the plight of women facing unwanted pregnancy in the 1950s, when abortion was illegal. While training in psychology at UCLA, he started an underground abortion referral service and eventually performed abortions himself, for which he was convicted and sent to state prison for 2 1/2 years.

In the early 1970s he developed a soft, flexible tube, or cannula, for a device that was widely adopted in the United States and developing countries to perform early abortions. He freely demonstrated its use for doctors and other medical professionals and in 1972 was part of a humanitarian mission to terminate the pregnancies of 1,500 Bangladesh women and girls who had been raped by Pakistani soldiers. His cannula is still widely used today.

"Harvey Karman did more for safe abortion around the world than practically any other person in the world," said Dr. Malcolm Potts, Bixby professor of Population, Family Planning and Maternal Health at UC Berkeley, who accompanied Karman to Bangladesh 35 years ago.

"Karman's name is not known, yet his ingenuity and to some extent his courage has made safe abortion available to literally millions of women around the world."

Doctors later found other applications for the Karman cannula, including using it in the diagnosis of uterine cancer, said Dr. Philip Darney, chief of gynecology and obstetrics at San Francisco General Hospital.

The tube, which Karman never patented, is so inexpensive and easy to sterilize and re-use that it has "dramatically reduced healthcare costs in treating uterine bleeding, one of the most common reasons women come to the emergency room," Darney said.

Karman also had many detractors, particularly because of his attempt to revolutionize second-trimester abortions with a device called the super coil, which was inserted into the uterus and expanded when exposed to moisture, causing a miscarriage. It caused serious complications, including hemorrhaging and infection, when it was used on about a dozen women in Philadelphia on Mother's Day in 1972.

"Harvey engaged in some very irresponsible experimentation on women's bodies," said Carol Downer, who co-founded feminist women's health clinics in Southern California in the 1970s.

The incident was investigated by the national Centers for Disease Control, where Darney worked at the time. Darney called the super coil a "bad idea" but added, "I don't think that offsets the importance" of Karman's other contributions.

Downer agreed, calling Karman "a real change agent" whose invention gave momentum to the abortion rights movement in the period before the procedure was legalized by the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe vs. Wade. "I would never take away from the importance of a lot of the work he did," she said.

Karman was born Harvey Walters on April 26, 1924, in the tiny northwest Oregon town of Clatskanie. He did not know his father, and his mother, who led a transient lifestyle, often left him in orphanages. When she married, he took the last name of his stepfather.

A high school dropout, he joined the Army Air Forces and was stationed in England during World War II. After completing his military service, he used the GI Bill to attend UCLA, where he earned a bachelor's in theater and a master's in psychology. He later became director of psychosomatic research at San Vicente Hospital in Los Angeles.

He became interested in abortion when he was conducting research at UCLA on the emotional aspects of therapeutic abortion. During this time a student with an unplanned pregnancy committed suicide and another died from a botched abortion. Karman responded by helping women obtain illegal abortions in Mexico. Unhappy with the high prices and poor care some of the women received, he began performing abortions himself.

His ultimate goal, according to Darney, who met Karman in the early 1970s, was to "make it possible for women to safely do their own abortions using the simplest possible equipment."

Working with Merle Goldberg, a medical writer and women's health activist, Karman developed a method for extracting menstrual blood during the first weeks after a missed period with a vacuum syringe and a flexible plastic tube about the width of a drinking straw.

The device could be manually operated and, because of the narrowness of the tube, caused less discomfort than the larger metal curets that were normally used in abortions.

The procedure Karman and Goldberg developed took a matter of minutes, leading some to call it the "lunch-hour abortion." Karman offered the procedure at his Community Service Center clinic in West Los Angeles. Studies found that complications were rare.

Some doctors were quoted expressing reservations about do-it-yourself abortions, warning of the risk of infection and other problems. Anti-abortion forces attacked Karman as an illegal abortionist. But Karman was undeterred and proceeded to train many mainstream doctors as well as paramedics and others, including Downer and other feminist healthcare activists.

In 1973, the New York Times reported that the method was available in 45 states and cost no more than $80.

After the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971, when Bangladesh gained independence, he was part of a five-member team of abortion experts invited by the Bangladesh government to perform abortions on rape victims and train native doctors and paramedics in his method. Most of the victims were between the ages of 10 and 16.

"Many victims were actually being driven from their homes and villages by husbands and families who felt disgraced. And many committed suicide," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1972.

He said the team visited outlying villages and taught midwives, village chiefs, young girls, "anybody who wanted to learn," how to use the cannula for an abortion. The method is still used widely there, although it is called menstrual extraction because abortion is banned.

Karman "is responsible for saving the lives of countless women throughout the world through this innovative technology," Vicki Saporta, president and chief executive of the National Abortion Federation, a professional association for abortion providers based in Washington, D.C., said in an interview last week.

Along with advances in local anesthesia and suction equipment, his little tube, she said, was one of three major innovations that dramatically improved abortion care in the 1970s.

Karman spent much of the late 1970s and early '80s in Bangladesh, India and China, where he championed women's rights and safe, easy abortions. He lived for some years in London, where he also had a psychotherapy practice. He retired in 1992 to Santa Barbara.

In addition to his son Kenneth, Karman is survived by three other children, Kathleen, Steven and Janice; and six grandchildren.

elaine.woo@latimes.com

The Maverick Steps Back in Line

2008-05-20T17:29:00.000-04:00

By Carole Joffe
RH Reality Check
Created May 16 2008 - 8:00am

In 2000, in a debate just before the South Carolina primary, John McCain confronted his opponent, George W. Bush, for the latter's failure to disavow the Republican party's plank on abortion. McCain repeatedly asked Bush, "Do you believe in the platform on abortion the way it is written -- with no exception for the life of the mother, no exception for rape or incest?"

McCain appeared incredulous that Bush could support such an extremist platform, without those exceptions. In 2007, McCain reaffirmed his commitment to change the Party's platform to reflect these changes.

That was then. Now it is widely assumed that McCain will drop his call for these changes. In the words of Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, for McCain to continue to call for a revised platform, "would be political suicide...I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters."

Are Perkins and other Christian conservatives courted by McCain, such as Senator Sam Brownback, co-chair of the nominee's Justice Advisory Committee, correct in their view that a challenge on the abortion plank would doom his run for the presidency?

This question, of course, captures the larger dilemma swirling around McCain's candidacy -- go too much to the Center and lose the base, swing too much to the Right and lose the independents and moderate Republicans (yes, there still are some left). Which is more costly a strategy for him? Or put another way, how long can McCain get away with at one moment seeking the endorsements of right-wing preachers whose statements are every bit as incendiary as those of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and at the next, go on the Daily Show and act like a very charming and hip person who could not possibly believe the outrageous positions he is forced by circumstances to take?

McCain's "maverick" image has misled a considerable number of voters into believing he is for abortion rights.

In fact, he has long been opposed to abortion. The differences now is that the "straight talker" appears more than willing to overlook his previous more thoughtful positions in order to please his extremist friends. Several years ago, McCain was on record as saying reversing Roe would not be a good idea, because of the likelihood of women resorting to illegal and dangerous abortions; today, he calls for the immediate overturning of Roe.

While McCain struggles to keep both the right and the center happy, it is our job, as progressives, to let the American people know what his party -- and presumably, he -- is capable of supporting. The utterly draconian nature of the Republican party's official position on abortion has not gotten the attention it deserves, either from the media or, surprisingly, from abortion rights advocates themselves. No exception for the life of the woman?!

Recall that South Dakota voters in 2006 voted down a ban on abortions that had a life exception, but did not have one for rape and incest. Assuming there are reporters and debate moderators willing to call him on it, how possibly will McCain defend a position on abortion that, even if symbolic, is breathtaking in its callous disregard for women?

There is no question that in the coming general election campaign Barack Obama (assuming he will be the Democratic nominee) will be targeted by antiabortion forces because of his support for abortion rights. In particular, we can expect that Obama's expressed disagreement with the most recent Supreme Court decision on abortion, Gonzales v. Carhart, will be relentlessly revisited in TV and radio ads to selected audiences. Obama's statement after the decision voiced his concern [8] that the Court for the first time upheld an abortion law that did not allow an exception for women's health.

Since this decision involved a ban on a rarely used procedure, that has been successfully sensationalized for years by opponents as "partial birth abortion," and which many Americans find upsetting, we can expect Republicans to hammer him on this point.

But I believe that if Americans are told that John McCain, and the party for which he is a standard bearer, stand behind the proposition that it is preferable that women die, rather than have an abortion, that will be substantially more upsetting. Words matter. If McCain insists on placating the fanatics in his party, let him start paying a price.

Safe abortion steps inaccessible to rural women

2008-05-18T19:08:00.000-04:00

By: ARTI SAHULIYAR
The Telegraph

Ranchi, May 18: A recent survey carried out in the Arki block in Ranchi district revealed that only three of 25 women opted for a safe abortion.

Lack of human resources, negligible number of NGOs, ignorance of scientific methods and heavy reliance on quacks and ojhas have increased unsafe abortions in the state.

Few trained doctors coupled with low awareness among women have made the situation worse. Moreover, there exists a social stigma and secrecy surrounding abortion in the state.

The MMP (maternal mortality programme) — death per 100,000 live births — in the state is 371 while the national average is 301. The number of induced abortions in Jharkhand is 146,000 per year while the number of safe abortions per year is 97,000.

Even though abortion up to 20 weeks of gestation is legal, safe but legal abortion services are not easily available to poor, rural women.

“Unsafe abortion endangers 4 million women in India every year, damaging the health and fertility of thousands and causing an estimated 15,000 preventable deaths,” said Usha Rani, a city-based gynaecologist.

While Vanoj Manin, country head of IPAS, an international NGO protecting women’s health and advancing women’s reproductive rights, said two-thirds (67 per cent) of induced abortions are carried out in unsafe conditions.

The IPAS programme, which was established in India in 2001, has helped establish safe abortion practices in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttarakhand.

“The proportion of maternal deaths due to unsafe abortions is gradually on the decrease. It has come down from 12 per cent in 2001 to 8 per cent in 2006,” Manin said.

IPAS works with the state government in rural areas. “People in rural areas are superstitious. But the state government is training doctors to handle abortion cases,” he added. “Besides, limited primary health centres exist and women come here only after developing complications,” said Manin.

In fact, senior gynaecologist Rani, who is also a member of the National Association of Gynaecologists, said: “Members should show their commitment in increasing the number of doctors, promoting expanded use of appropriate technologies and increasing awareness among women.”

The survey carried out in Chandankiari block (Bokaro) revealed rural practitioners often used ayurvedic and allopathic methods for abortion. Besides, wrong pills were also prescribed, Rani pointed out.

Some of the rural practitioners are trained by qualified doctors of Chas and Bokaro. Besides, several medical agents who refer cases earn around Rs 200-300 every day while medical practitioners charge Rs 800 for the abortion. Traditional midwives, however, refer to herbal practitioners and rely on drugs and herbal medicines.

“There are no abortion services in government health centres in Bokaro. The study also revealed four death cases due to abortion. Only two women had opted for medical care while two women used oral contraceptive pills. Only one man used protection,” added Manin.
Top

GOP Cognitive Dissonance

2008-05-09T10:58:00.000-04:00

The Republican state convention delegate was discussing with a prominent Utah GOP elected officeholder the issue of immigration when the delegate whined that a fence should be constructed to span the entire USA-Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants.

GOP OFFICIAL: What happens when they climb the fence?

DELEGATE: You electrify it. Then they won't touch it.

GOP OFFICIAL: But what if they touch it? You would let them die?

DELEGATE: It would be their choice.

GOP OFFICIAL: What about a mother with a baby strapped to her back? You would let the mother and the baby die?

DELEGATE: It would be the mother's choice to kill that baby.

GOP OFFICIAL: Then you're in favor of abortion?

[Dead silence]

What if Abortion Became Illegal?

2008-05-08T11:08:00.000-04:00

NYT
By The Editorial Board

A lot of elected officials say they want to see Roe v. Wade repealed, clearing the way for abortion to be made illegal. But few of them go the extra step and say what they would like to see done to women who have abortions. Throw a scared 17-year-old woman in jail? For how long?

Since a couple more Supreme Court nominations could doom Roe, the National Institute for Reproductive Health, an offshoot of Naral Pro-Choice New York, is trying to inject this question into the presidential campaign. They’re doing it in a TV commercial aimed at John McCain, who –unlike Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — is strongly anti-choice.

The ad aims to focus voter attention on the harsh real-world consequences if Roe were overturned and abortion became a criminal act.

Here’s the ad:

In Colorado, Playing "Who Hates Abortion More?"

2008-05-01T13:24:00.000-04:00

By Wendy Norris
Created Apr 30 2008 - 8:07am
RH Reality Check

Steve Curtis came out firing on all cylinders. And, in a bit of internecine political warfare rarely seen in these parts, the former Colorado Republican Party chief was gunning for the state's presumptive GOP nominee for U.S. Senate.

Curtis, the vice president of American Right to Life Action, took ex-Rep. Schaffer, a fellow staunch anti-abortion advocate, to the proverbial woodshed following a series of news stories chronicling the congressman's support of guest worker policies on the Mariana Islands as a possible model for the continental United States' migrant labor woes.

The Marianas are long known for squalid sweatshop practices -- including accusations that the primarily Chinese and southeast Asian female workers were forced to undergo abortions and young girls were pushed into prostitution.

Schaffer's guest worker proposal and a later press statement that he never personally witnessed 1 any forced abortions while on a $13,000 "fact-finding" trip to the Marianas in 1999 (paid by associates of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff) were met with howls of derision by the press, bloggers and the public.

Curtis, an outspoken proponent of a controversial proposed state ballot measure 2 to prohibit abortion by conferring constitutional rights on fertilized eggs, seized the media controversy and ran with it.

He excoriated Schaffer in the Colorado press this week as being soft on abortion. Later, he accused Schaffer of lying about not having an opinion on the ballot measure that has caused deep fissures 3 in the local anti-abortion movement.

While Schaffer has since retreated 4, his camp, notably campaign manager Dick Wadhams, hit back, calling Curtis "attention-starved" and referencing National Right to Life unceremoniously dumping Curtis' Colorado affiliate after its members attacked Focus on the Family 5 founder James Dobson for not being anti-abortion enough in newspaper ads last year.

Then, two days ago, Curtis suddenly backed off. His public statements softened. He claimed the whole thing "got off issue" and was simply "political battles in the heat of the moment."

Except the battle is now being waged elsewhere -- far from public view where Curtis' involvement in the hard-line anti-abortion movement runs deep.

On April 26, another of Curtis' tax-exempt charities, LifeCommercials.com, which bills itself as "America's premier pro-life ministry," is hosting a fundraiser [PDF] 6 at a hotel ballroom in Westminster, Colo., a conservative suburb northwest of Denver. The group produces provocative television ads on emergency contraception 7, abortion and eugenics.

Event organizers released a late-breaking update this morning gleefully announcing a "surprise guest" -- Shiu Yon Zhou, who claims she was forced to undergo an abortion in China.

The event will also feature a presentation by the Rev. Bob Enyart, who refers to himself as "America's most popular self-proclaimed right-wing, religious fanatic, homophobic, anti-choice talk show host." Enyart said on his Thursday radio program, "If China was killing Jews, would [Bob Schaffer] still vote for most-favored nation trading status because of the overarching economic and political considerations?"

A press release issued on Thursday by American Right to Life Action -- after Curtis claimed to the press that the disagreement was over -- cites Zhou and Curtis himself ramping up the anti-Schaffer rhetoric even higher:

"The pro-life movement will no longer give a pass to candidates like Bob Schaffer who look the other way when Chinese women are forced to abort their children," said Steve Curtis, former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party and spokesperson for American Right To Life Action. "At best Schaffer was negligent investigating coerced abortion in the Mariana Islands. Worse, he has voted (May 2000) for permanent normal trade relations with China, rewarding the regime that forces women to abort their children."

The vice president of Colorado's largest pro-life organization agrees. "At Colorado Right To Life, one of our dearest members, a young woman named Shiu Yon Zhou, is the victim of Chinese forced abortion policy," said Leslie Hanks. "While Bob Schaffer supported (1990s) most-favored nation trading status to Communist China, that government was literally forcing women like Shiu Yon down on operating tables and killing their unborn children."

"As a Chinese woman, I know the horror and shame of forced abortion," said Shiu Yon Zhou. "And I beg Mr. Schaffer to not look the other way, and to apologize for being part of the problem. He calls himself pro-life, but how can he be when he is not outraged by Chinese forced abortion? That is worse than pro-choice."

Also sharing the event dais will be Colorado for Equal Rights' Kristi Burton, the putative leader of the group sponsoring the "egg as a person" ballot measure -- the very issue that ignited Curtis-Schaffer kerfuffle.

Coerced Abortion Bill Harms, Not Protects, Women

2008-05-01T13:16:00.000-04:00

Pamela Merritt, RH Reality Check on April 28, 2008 - 8:28am
RH Blog

Flowers are blooming, the temperature is rising and Missouri lawmakers are trying to work another anti-choice bill through the legislature.

It must be spring!

The Missouri House has approved House Bill 1831, which "changes the laws regarding the consent requirements for obtaining an abortion and creates the crime of coercing an abortion." As a Missouri native my initial reaction was to ask what this bill was in response to. I haven't noticed a flood of news stories about coerced abortions here and pro-choice is the antithesis of coercion. But, true to form, this bill is not in response to a rash of complaints by women who have been coerced into an abortion. Rather, House Bill 1831 (Senate Bill 1058) is about devaluing the intelligence of women and questioning our ability to make decisions about our medical care.

In the mythical Missouri represented in House Bill 1831, women are fragile gullible creatures that need to be protected from manipulative forces that seek for us to have an abortion we don't really want to have. Under the provisions of the bill a man who asks his partner to have an abortion is guilty of coercion even if his partner was not actually pregnant and never actually had an abortion. A business would be guilty of coercion simply for threatening to reduce a pregnant employees pay and/or cut that employee's benefits. Oh but wait, it gets better! A business would also be guilty of coercion for threatening to terminate the employment of a pregnant employee.

Under House Bill 1831 schools would risk prosecution for coercion simply by threatening to revoke a pregnant woman's scholarship. Terminating a pregnancy resulting from rape would be considered coercion and physicians would face a felony charge for performing that abortion.

Pamela L. Sumners, Esq., Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, points out that the House Bill 1831 recently approved by the Missouri House was much better than what was originally proposed.

"Believe it or not, this bill is so much better than it was when first it was introduced. It made leaving or even attempting to leave one's pregnant wife because she did not want to have an abortion a crime, ditto with threatening twice (but not just once!) to move out under these circumstances, or calling a lawyer about separation papers under these circumstances, or telling her you don't want to be a daddy so she better hit the road if she doesn't have an abortion."

Sumners added that NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, Planned Parenthood, and domestic violence lobbyists worked very hard to strip the most constitutionally objectionable provisions from the bill.

"I want everyone to know how hard we work to keep the most utterly egregious provisions out of legislation. We still despise the glorious instrument you see today, of course. We do not like the premise of creating a crime of 'coercing' an abortion, although we at NARAL, like any other people of good taste and right reason, abhor the notion of coercion. We simply think that battery, assault, and stalking laws would adequately address any legally actionable "coercion" in this context."

House Bill 1831 (Senate Bill 1058) remains horribly flawed. The bill imposes personal investigative requirements on doctors requiring that they ascertain whether a patient seeking abortion services has an athletic scholarship that may be revoked or if she has been told her job will be negatively impacted if she is pregnant. A physician who fails to meet these investigative requirements will have committed a Class C felony.

What I find most alarming about House Bill 1831 is the creation of the crime of coercion. I can not imagine how this law would be enforced or how the legal system would determine that the law had been violated beyond a reasonable doubt. Add in the potential of false accusations and this mess just gets messier.

The Missouri Senate will soon take their version, Senate Bill 1058, under consideration. Given all that is wrong with this legislation, Missouri Senators should take this opportunity to lead by example and put an end to this insulting and unconstitutional nonsense.

My take on the Yale abortion "art" debacle

2008-04-21T11:03:00.000-04:00

Just my two cents here, but after pondering this more (as someone who is also making art on this topic), I think what the artist in the Yale art scandal was trying to articulate with her performance piece was the cultural reaction to abjection with relation to the fetus.

Here is a definition of "abjection" from wikipedia:

The term "Abjection" literally means "the state of being cast off." The concept of abject exists in between the concept of an object and the concept of the subject, something alive yet not. In contemporary critical theory, it is often used to describe the state of often-marginalized groups, such as people of color, prostitutes, homosexuals, convicts, poor people and handicapped persons. This term originated in the works of Julia Kristeva. Often, the term space of abjection is also used, referring to a space that abjected things or beings inhabit.

Following Kristeva's formulation of abjection in Powers of Horror - An Essay on Abjection, abjection can be seen as letting go of something we would still like to keep. In the case of blood, semen, hair and excrement/urine, we recognize these as once being a part of ourselves, thus these forms of the abject are taken out of our system while bits of them remain in our selves. When one encounters blood, excrement, etc. outside of the body, one is forced to confront what was once a part of oneself, but no longer is. Dismemberment compels the same kind of heightened reaction when one confronts the horror of detachment. A dismembered finger or limb is identified as belonging to one's own body and is 'missed' while at the same time repulsive to the viewer for no longer being a part of the whole. Because humans frequently shed skin and blood etc. there is a higher tolerance to it and we are not as horrified as we would be in the case of dismemberment, yet most are not willing to engage with excrement or blood due to its detached nature. In a way, we exist in abjection: the process of creating our self (identity) is never-ending. The act of "selfing" ("identifying") ourselves is the only common feature of all people.

According to Kristeva, since the abject is situated outside the symbolic order, being forced to face it is an inherently traumatic experience. For example, upon being faced with a corpse, a person would be most likely repulsed because he or she is forced to face an object which is violently cast out of the cultural world, having once been a subject. We encounter other beings daily, and more often than not they are alive. To confront a corpse of one that we recognize as human, something that should be alive but isn't, is to confront the reality that we are capable of existing in the same state, our own mortality. This repulsion from death, excrement and rot constitutes the subject as a living being in the symbolic order.

This act is done in the light of the parts of ourselves that we exclude: un-namely – the mother. We must abject the maternal, the object which has created us, in order to construct an identity. This is done on the micro level of the speaking being, through her subjective dynamics, as well as on the macro level of society, through "language as a common and universal law." We use rituals, specifically those of defilement, in order to maintain clear boundaries between nature and society, the semiotic and the symbolic. This line of thought begins with Mary Douglas' important book, Purity and Danger, as well as in Kristeva's own Black Sun.

The concept of abject is often coupled (and sometimes confused with) the idea of the uncanny, the concept of something being "un-home-like", or foreign, yet familiar. The abject can be uncanny in the sense that we can recognize aspects in it, despite its being "foreign". An example, continuing on the one used above, is that of a corpse, namely the corpse of a loved one. We will recognize that person as being close to us, but the fact that the person is dead, and "no longer" the familiar loved one, is what creates a sort of cognitive dissonance, leading to abjection of the corpse.

**

IMO, the anti-choice forces have employed abjection vis a vis the proliferation dismembered fetus pictures, and very effectively, to dissuade people from supporting abortion rights. However, the contrast to this is the abjection that is the female corpse - as the result of self-induced or illegal abortion. It is this abjection that I am trying to use in The Coat Hanger Project to remind people why safe, legal abortion is a fundamental human right for women. And this is where I wish the Yale artist had tried to take her work, to complete her thought, to make a statement - instead of just causing an empty rucus with her "hoax."

- Angie Young, Director, The Coat Hanger Project

Yale Performance Art: Where Are the Grown-Ups?

2008-04-21T01:25:00.001-04:00

By Carole Joffe, Created Apr 18 2008 - 8:58am

Yesterday the Yale Daily News published a story 1 about the senior project of an art major, Aliza Shvarts, which consists, as the article put it, of "a documentation of a nine month process during which she inseminated herself as often as possible while periodically taking abortifacient 2 drugs to induce miscarriages." In short, Ms. Shvarts claimed to use donated sperm to achieve repeated pregnancies, and used then an unspecified drug for repeated abortions. Predictably, this story has spread like wildfire both on the Internet as well as the mainstream press.

Later on Thursday, Yale University issued a statement 3 announcing that Shvarts' project did not involve actual pregnancy or induced miscarriage. But even before their statement, I was skeptical. Most puzzling to me was her claim to have used "abortifacient drugs that were legal and herbal." If she had really terminated her own pregnancies repeatedly, she could have been subject to legal prosecution -- as occurred recently to a number of poor, mainly immigrant women who have tried to terminate their unwanted pregnancies by themselves, in situations vastly more grave than Schvarts' "senior project."

Even though Schvarts did not actually become pregnant and self-abort, this is a disturbing and irresponsible project. Shvarts told the Yale Daily News that her project was not designed for "shock value" and it was not her intention to "scandalize anyone." She also told the paper that she "believes strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity."

It is very hard to take such statements seriously. If she truly believed that claiming to get herself pregnant "repeatedly," only to then terminate those pregnancies, would not shock and scandalize, then she clearly has not a clue about reproductive politics, and should not be sticking her nose, er, her uterus, into a highly charged issue she knows nothing about. Art should be a medium for politics, but the responsibility of the artist is to know something about the politics with which she is engaging.

What useful "conversation" has Shvarts provoked with this project -- other than the fact that not all ideas for performance art are good ones? Does anyone -- on either side of the abortion debate -- gain any new insight from her work? All that seems to be accomplished with this project is a highly visible trivialization of the issue of abortion and a phenomenal insensitivity to women who suffer repeat miscarriages.

As someone who has been a college professor for over thirty years, I know it is not uncommon for eager students to have fanciful ideas projects, and some of these, for various reasons, simply should not take place. It is the job of faculty mentors to give appropriate guidance and to point out that not everything that is "provocative" is necessarily worth doing. The Yale art department, and her advisor in particular, has failed Aliza Shvarts big-time. And in ways that clearly Ms. Shvarts does not understand, her "artistic" contribution to politics fails the rest of us.

Yale Art Student Claims She Used Blood Samples, Video of Self-Induced Abortions for Senior Project

2008-04-17T16:05:00.000-04:00

Thursday, April 17, 2008
By Catherine Donaldson-Evans
Article

A Yale student who claims she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" and then took drugs to induce miscarriages for her senior art project says she will showcase the stomach-turning display next week — complete with her own blood samples and videos from the terminated possible pregnancies.

The story of art major Aliza Shvarts' upcoming exhibit, which the Yale Daily News broke Thursday, has sparked widespread disgust and outrage.

"It’s clearly depraved. I think the poor woman has got some major mental problems," said National Right to Life Committee President Wanda Franz. "She’s a serial killer. This is just a horrible thought."

Critics on campus have said the display sounds like a shock-and-awe look at the highly sensitive issue of abortion and called it a sick stunt to get attention.

But Shvarts said the goal of the project is to encourage debate and discussion about the connection between art and the human body.

"I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts, whose age was withheld, told Yale's newspaper. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone."

Shvarts' campus phone has been disconnected, and she did not respond to e-mailed requests for an interview. Yale University and the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America also did not return calls seeking comment.

Shvarts told the school paper that her sperm donors, whom she declined to identify, were not paid for their participation but added that she did require them to be screened for STDs.

The drugs she took to induce contractions and miscarriages were legal and herbal in nature, according to Shvarts — who didn't specify what they were. The art major insisted she wasn't concerned about the effects of her research on her own body.

But ob-gyn Dr. Manuel Alvarez, FOXNews.com's health managing editor, said the young woman should have been worried because what she was doing was extremely unsafe.

"It’s quite dangerous," Alvarez said. "She was playing Russian roulette with her life, if she indeed did this to these unborn children for the sake of art. I don’t even have the words to express the disbelief that I have."

Alvarez said herbal remedies to trigger uterine contractions have long been used in countries where abortions are illegal — including certain raspberry teas and strong cinnamon teas — but they are far from consistently effective, and they tend to be risky.

"They interfere with pregnancy and are either toxic to the fetus or cause contractions," he explained. "The reason they are effective is that they create side effects, but none of them are 100 percent prescriptive to be abortive."

Shvarts wouldn't say how many times she was artificially inseminated and actually got pregnant for the project — which she described to the Yale paper as a huge cube hanging from the ceiling and swathed in plastic sheeting smeared with her blood from the reported miscarriages. The existence and number of pregnancies Shvarts may have had weren't independently confirmed.

Videos taken of what the college student says were self-induced abortions in her bathtub will be projected both on the cube's sides and on the gallery walls.

The exhibit will be on public display from April 22 to May 1 at Yale's Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall. Shvarts will be honored at a reception April 25.

Franz likened Shvarts' process of artificial insemination and induced miscarriages to the human experimentation that took place during the Holocaust. She said the Yale senior's work highlights a stark truth about American society's approach to abortion.

"She really has hit on a reality that what she has done is legal," Franz said. "Anything she chooses to do here can’t be stopped in terms of legality. And there are people fighting for her right to do this."

Alvarez believes such an endeavor in the name of art is offensive, harmful and insensitive, especially to women who face difficult choices about pregnancy or who aren't able to conceive.

"Anybody who trivializes a woman’s choice to terminate a pregnancy is really not contributing anything positive to these matters," he said. "I don’t see anything artistic about this. ... It’s completely unethical and immoral. What have we accomplished? Absolutely nothing."

Anti-Choice and the Woo Factor

2008-04-06T10:00:00.000-04:00

By Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check
Posted on March 27, 2008, Printed on March 28, 2008
Article on RH Reality Check

If you've never really delved into it, I highly recommend that you take some time to discover the skeptical community. People who consider themselves bona fide skeptics are generally delightful people, if a little nerdy, and if you are not someone who gets highly attached to what skeptics like to call "woo" -- a catchall term for beliefs that have little to no grounding in reality, from conspiracy theories to belief in the paranormal. Skeptics are big fans of science (most of the contributers to one of my favorite podcasts, "The Skeptic's Guide To The Universe," are scientists of some sort), and a handful of honest magicians like James Randi and Penn and Teller also throw in, angry at less ethical magicians who present their tricks as something more than entertaining diversions. They have books, podcasts, websites, and even TV shows, like "Mythbusters" and "Bullsh*t."

Skeptics enjoy debunking people's delusions. They poke holes in the claims made by "alternative medicines" like homeopathy, acupuncture, or chiropractic therapy. They like to expose psychics as frauds. They show up ghost hunters, and question people who believe they were abducted by aliens. What they don't take on, and has always puzzled me, are the woo-based claims made by the anti-choice movement.

I can't think of a better example of organized woo than anti-choicers. UFO aficionados and conspiracy theorists have the numbers, but rarely do they exhibit the same kind political pull that the anti-choice community has. But other than their extraordinary political effectiveness, the anti-choice movement resembles any other group of woo believers. They organize around some really wild claims that filter out to the rest of society in a milder form that makes them seem more sane. For instance, UFO believers and homeopathy followers internally believe, respectively, that people live entire alternate lives on board alien ships and that almost any disease can be cured by drinking lots of water with microscopic traces of herbs in it. What filters out to the rest of us is just the erroneous belief that we have aliens that visit occasionally and taking herbs can be a substitute for real medicine. Similarly, anti-choicers internally believe that sex education and birth control is unilaterally an offense against god and nature, but the outside world that picks up on this mostly walks away with the message that abortion is bad.

Seriously, it should only take one look at the folks marching around the Hollywood premiere of "Horton Hears A Who" with red stickers that say "Life" over their faces, half willing themselves to believe that this movie is secretly all about them and their issues. It's a cult, and a strange one at that.

But what should really put the anti-choice community on the radar of the skeptical community is their hostility to science and their affection for anti-scientific claims. Anti-choicers make outlandish claims about the brain activity and feelings of embryos and fetuses, claims that could potentially affect a woman who obtained an abortion and believed lies about what happened later. They make deeply unscientific claims about how hormonal contraception causes abortion in order to give cover to a larger anti-contraception agenda. They make claims about how condoms don't work in an effort to dissuade people from using this potentially life-saving prevention device. And let's not get into the unscientific, woo-esque claims made about how Terri Schiavo could have a miraculous recovery.

Penn and Teller did in fact take on the anti-choice community's claims in an episode of "Bullsh*t," when they did an episode on abstinence-only education. So there's some indication on the horizon that the skeptical community senses all the woo coming from the anti-choice community and leaking into the regular political discourse, sometimes into alarming bills like the Human Life Amendment that attempts to enshrine the woo about "life" beginning at conception into law. But even though there's ample unscientific material to work with in the anti-choice literature, there's not a whole lot of correction coming from the usual skeptical sources. Why not?

Probably because politics ruins a good party. Skeptics come from all over the political spectrum, so digging into this angle might cause strife in the community. Many skeptics, while still being pro-science, might be amenable to the idea that women should be held as second class citizens by laws against reproductive justice, and starting internal battles on this issue might be seen as too much trouble. There's also the fear that getting political leads to ideological claims, which color the ability to practice skeptical inquiry properly. Penn and Teller often get called out on the carpet because their libertarian ideology often leads them to abandon their commitment to scientific evidence, most notably in their episode about second hand smoke, an episode that ignored evidence against their claims that it is basically harmless.

Unfortunately, the struggle between science-based thinking and woo-based thinking is getting increasingly politicized in this country. Even the most reluctantly political science supporters have had to face up to the political power of woo in the aftermath of increasingly vehement attempts from creationists trying to replace genuine science in the biology classroom with myths that sit better with their more magical understanding of the world. Maybe the scope of skepticism could widen to include skepticism about outrageous claims made by anti-choicers? God knows a lot of us fighting the woo-based anti-choice activists come from a background of social justice, not science, and we could use all the help we can get.

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the popular blog Pandagon.

Bush Administration Moves to Block ACOG Guidelines that Require Anti-Choice Docs to Refer Patients Seeking Abortion

2008-03-25T15:24:00.000-04:00

Click here for original article

In November, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued new ethics guidelines. Members who have a moral objection to performing abortions are now required to refer their patients to another provider:

Physicians and other health care providers have the duty to refer patients in a timely manner to other providers if they do not feel they can in conscience provide the standard reproductive services that patients request. In resource-poor areas, access to safe and legal reproductive services should be maintained.

The Bush administration has now stepped in to block these guidelines. In a little-noticed letter on Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt wrote a letter to the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG), stating that providers with moral objections to abortion should have no obligation to refer patients:

I am writing to express my strong concern over recent actions that undermine the conscience and other individual rights of health care providers. […]

It appears that the interaction of the ABOG Bulletin with the ACOG ethics report would force physicians to violate their conscience by referring patients for abortions or taking other objectionable actions, or risk losing their board certification.

Leavitt is overly concerned with these physicians who may be forced to “violate their conscience,” but apparently not at all concerned for women who may be turned away from the only accessible health care service. ACOG never stated that board certification would be stripped from doctors who ignore these guidelines.

As OB/GYN Wendy Chavkin of Columbia University told NPR this morning, Leavitt’s policy may also allow physicians to deny a woman who has been raped emergency contraception. Listen here:

Yesterday, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice put out a statement supporting ACOG’s “principled and sensible policy,” which would “leave untouched a physician’s right to refuse to provide abortions — a right that has been spelled out in law since 1973 — but would ensure that the patient received the services she needed and wanted.”

Abortion Ban for American Indian Women Passes

2008-03-11T16:31:00.000-04:00

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) (WDCpix) -->

Abortion Ban For American Indians Only:
Indian Health Care Bill Places Added Restriction on Native American Women
By Mike Lillis 03/05/2008
Click here for article

Following scant debate, the Senate last week approved an amendment to an Indian health care bill that would permanently prohibit the use of federal dollars to fund abortions for Native Americans except in rare cases. The move has prompted an outcry from women’s health advocates—who point out that a similar ban has existed on a temporary basis for years—and from tribal groups, who are asking why Native American women should be subject to restrictions not applicable to other ethnic groups. Some charge that the Senate proposal is overtly racist.

The issue is a sensitive one in American Indian communities, where women are statistically more likely to be victims of rape or sexual assault than other American women—but also where victims very rarely use the exceptions to the current federally funded abortion ban in the wake of those crimes. In the face of that discrepancy, advocates say, Congress should encourage victims to take advantage of the available services, not impose tighter restrictions.

The debate pits anti-abortion lawmakers on both sides of the aisle against health-care advocates who fear the latest move could set the stage for broader abortion prohibitions under federal programs outside the realm of Indian health services. In addition, there is the intrigue of scandal, for the sponsor of the controversial amendment, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), made headlines last year for his earlier entanglement in a prostitution ring. Several abortion-rights sources suggested that Vitter—who built his political career on family-values issues—is trying to bolster his conservative credentials in the wake of that embarrassment.

The controversy swirls around a federal law—known as the Hyde amendment—that prohibits abortion coverage under Medicaid, Medicare and Indian Health Service programs. While the Hyde law must be renewed by Congress each year, the Vitter amendment—which the Senate approved on Feb. 26—would apply Hyde’s restrictions permanently to IHS beneficiaries. For that reason, tribal health advocates charge that the Vitter language treads on the sovereignty of Indian communities and places unique constraints on native women.

"It’s a very racist amendment," said Charon Asetoyer, executive director of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center, "[because] it puts another layer of restrictions on the only race of people whose health care is governed primarily by the federal government. All women are subject to the Hyde amendment, so why would they put another set of conditions on us?"

Vitter’s office did not return several calls and e-mails requesting comment.

A number of women’s health groups have criticized the Vitter amendment as well, claiming it will have no practical effect on women’s health services.

"Apart from being bad public health policy," Planned Parenthood said in a statement, "this language is duplicative of current law and serves only to politicize important legislation regarding comprehensive health care for Native Americans."

Though the Hyde amendment—named for its sponsor, the late Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde (R )—first took effect in 1977, Congress must reapply it annually through the appropriations process. That, according to Vitter, puts the Hyde language "in a tenuous and precarious posture. It puts it up for debate and possible change of policy every year, every time we debate a new Health and Human Services appropriations bill. Therefore, it doesn’t make the policy very solid, very secure, or very clear."

Vitter’s amendment, attached last week to the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, would eliminate that uncertainty by codifying the Hyde amendment as a matter of authorization, not appropriation. "I suggest that would be a positive statement for life, for positive values for the future," he said on the Senate floor Jan. 22—the same day that thousands of anti-abortion marchers descended on Washington. A month later, the Senate approved Vitter’s amendment by a vote of 52 to 42.

But critics say the creation of a second law governing IHS-funded abortion services might confuse the issue if inconsistencies are found between the two mandates. Indeed, certain elements of Vitter’s amendment stray from the Hyde language. For example, while Hyde allows federally funded abortions for victims of incest at any age, Vitter specifies that the incest exception pertains only to minors.

Marlene Fried, a founding board member of the National Network of Abortion Funds, said the practical implications of that difference would be minimal. Still, she added, the change is significant as "another way of narrowing the [Hyde] exceptions."

The issue is especially charged because Native American women are more than three times as likely to suffer rape and sexual abuse as other women in the United States. Yet despite that statistic, only 25 abortions were performed at all IHS facilities between 1981 and 2001, according to figures gathered from the IHS by the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center. (An IHS spokeswoman declined to release more recent IHS-funded abortion figures, suggesting that a reporter file a Freedom Of Information Act request.)

But, advocates say, Indian women continue to have the procedure off the reservation. "Native American women have abortions," Asetoyer said, "and anyone who tells you differently is out of touch with their community."

Susan Cohen, the director of government affairs at the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit reproductive health research group, said the Hyde restrictions don’t prevent abortions, but they can delay them as low-income women are forced to save the money to fund the procedures out-of-pocket. That delay, Cohen added, can lead to dangerous complications. "Having later abortions is in no one’s best interest," she said.

Meanwhile, some tribal advocates are concerned that the Vitter amendment might carry additional political significance, as the Senate bill now moves to the House for consideration. Several sources said the controversial amendment is potentially a poison pill for the overall bill, for House Democratic leaders have been loathe to codify the Hyde amendment.

Not that the issue is entirely partisan. A number of Democratic lawmakers voted to approve the Vitter provision last week, including Sens. Ken Salazar (Col.), Evan Bayh (Ind.), Robert Byrd (W.Va.), Robert Casey (Pa.), Tim Johnson (S.D.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.). Of that group, Landrieu and Johnson are up for reelection this year in relative conservative states, with Landrieu facing a tight race.

Three Republicans—Sens. Susan Collins (Me.), Olympia Snowe (Me.) and Arlen Specter (Pa.)—voted against the amendment. All three have historic records of bucking their party on the abortion issue.

Vitter, for his part, voted against the final IHCIA bill on the same day that his amendment passed. The final bill was approved, however, by a count of 83 to 10.

Unsafe abortions - The silent pandemic

2008-02-16T23:33:00.000-05:00

published: Sunday | February 17, 2008
Heather Little-White, Ph.D., Contributor
Click here for article

As advocacy for increased access to safe, legal abortion continues in Jamaica, arguments for or against it are usually well presented. Unplanned or unwanted pregnancies are a reality of life, so Sheronbelieves that abortion should be made legal so that it can be safe for those who need to have one done. Sheron, 38, a victim of unsafe backdoor abortion, tells her story.

"I remember visiting the country at age 20 to visit my ailing grandmother. My grandmother had to be hospitalised and most times I was alone in the house. One day my uncle came home from work early, to my surprise. He always had 'eyes for me' but I used to tell him how disgusted I was with his behaviour. Later that day as I was taking a shower, I heard the bathroom door open, it was my uncle, naked as the day he was born ... he pushed me against the shower, and forced himself on me, raping me despite my pleas to stop. I could not fight him off with my small frame as he was a tall, heavyset man.

"I felt dirty and ashamed. Days later, I eventually found the courage to tell my mother, who did not believe me and accused me of telling lies on her brother. I cried even more. Weeks passed, I missed my period and realised that I was pregnant, I decided that no way could I carry a child for my uncle ... when my mother discovered that was I pregnant, she was alarmed and offered to take me to a 'doctor' in town.

"I remember ascending a flight of stairs to a dusty room where I was asked to lay on a table behind a black curtain. Today the visit is still vivid in my mind. I was given a cup of warn drink and soon felt drowsy. Later, the middle-aged 'doctor' asked me to spread my legs, he pressed my stomach hard, asked me to take a deep breath and I could feel a cold instrument being inserted into my vagina, then a piercing pain, after about an hour or so I was released in pain and blood, the bleeding continued for three days despite the doctor's promise of a couple hours. I realised that I had an abortion which resulted in infections and my inability to conceive later in life and the psychological effect is like a nightmare."

Sheron's story concurs with similar stories from an estimated 20 million women around the world who have unsafe abortions annually (Allan Guttmacher Institute, 1999). However, some victims of unsafe abortion do not live to tell the tale. Anti-abortionists argue that women should not find themselves in the position where they end with unplanned or unwanted pregnancies, even though these may occur for a number of reasons.

Like Sheron, pregnancy could result from incest or rape or from failure to use contraceptive, pressure from a partner not to use contraceptive, contraceptive failure and changes in circumstances that make a pregnancy unwanted, such as abandonment, relationship problems with husband or partner, risks to maternal health and financial difficulties. Women may also want to pursue educational or career goals and will want to postpone childbearing. The number of unplanned pregnancies illustrates the unmet needs of family planning.

Unsanitary conditions

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines an unsafe abortion as a procedure to terminate an unintended pregnancy by untrained persons who are styled as 'doctors', and usually in unsanitary conditions that do not conform to medical standards. In the United States, a slang term for unsafe abortions is back alley abortions, characterised by the use of a coat hanger. The magnitude of unsafe abortions in the United States led to Roe vs Wade Supreme Court decision 1973 to legalise abortion in America.

In developing countries, unsafe abortion places women at risk because abortion is highly restricted by law, or where it is legally permitted safe abortion is not easily accessible. According to WHO, an estimated 20 million unsafe abortions are performed each year with 95 per cent in developing countries. Simply put, unsafe abortions are performed at a rate of eight per hour.

Bitter concoctions

Unsafe abortion use self-induced methods which are crude, dangerous and even fatal. These include taking teas and herbal remedies, such as boiled avocado or basil leaves, wine boiled with cinnamon and raisins, boiled celery water with aspirin and bitter concoctions; ingesting alcohol and toxic solutions such as turpentine, detergent solutions, bleach and acid; pushing objects into the uterus, such as a stick, wire, coat hanger, knitting needle, ballpoint pen, bicycle spoke, rubber tubing; air blown in the vagina by a syringe and physical damage such as an abdominal or back massage, lifting heavy weight or falling or jumping from the top of stairs or roof when there is no other way to end an unwanted pregnancy. Pharmaceuticals administered include uterine stimulants, such as misoprostol or oxytocin, and quinine or chloroquine used for treating malaria.

On the contrary, safe abortions are performed by trained professionals in sterile conditions using safe methods like pharmaceuticals, suction curettage and induced labour. When performed in sanitary conditions, legal abortions are one of the safest procedures in contemporary medicine. However, the cost of safe abortions is usually prohibitive, which causes poor women to delay getting an abortion until later into the pregnancy when the risk is greater. Regardless of the legal status of abortion, the data show that poor women are at greater risk for undergoing unsafe abortions using primitive, unsafe methods for self-induced abortions.

Bleeding

Morbidity complications resulting from unsafe abortions include incomplete abortion, infection (sepsis), haemorrhage and trauma to the cervix, vagina and uterus and injury to internal organs, such as puncturing or tearing of the uterus. Long- term damage includes chronic pain, pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and infertility. Death is also a consequence of unsafe, illegal abortions. Globally, WHO estimates that 68,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions. Teenagers comprise a significant proportion of victims of unsafe abortion because they tend to wait to seek abortion later than do older women and are at greater risk of complication.

Abortions conducted in unsafe conditions put the lives of many women at risk and present a grave public health problem to governments. Consensus from the IV World Conference of Women in Beijing 1995, posited that the majority of deaths, injuries and abortion-related health problems could have been prevented with improved access to health services, including safe and effective methods of birth control and gynaecological care.

Public health issue

At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), nations around the world agreed that societies must ensure high-quality, compassionate treatment for complications resulting from unsafe abortions; provide access to family planning; reform restrictive laws that limit the availability of safe services and trained professionals and ensure safe abortion services. Public health record indicates that safe, legal accessible abortion improves health. The ICPD conference resolved that governments should work to eliminate unsafe abortions by an integrated, comprehensive approach involving health workers, policymakers and advocates.

Name changed for privacy

Abortion is here to stay

2008-02-15T21:56:00.000-05:00

Sam Rowlands
Published 15 February 2008
New Statesman
Debating the abortion rate is futile - we need to focus on providing information and contraception

Recourse to abortion is a feature of all societies and is as old as humanity. Women have abortions regardless of the legal situation in their country. It’s clearly much safer for a woman to have an abortion in proper medical surroundings than as a clandestine procedure performed by untrained personnel. Younger generations need to be told and older generations reminded of the results of backstreet abortion: death and permanent injury from sepsis, mechanical trauma and chemical burns.

Globally there are about 42 million abortions annually, of which nearly a half are unsafe. 68,000 deaths occur annually from unsafe abortion, almost exclusively in the developing world.

It’s true that in the past, in countries like the former Soviet Union, because of almost complete lack of access to contraceptives women used abortion as a primary means of fertility control. This is not so nowadays in the West. But women clearly use abortion as an adjunct to contraception in the event of non-use, incorrect use, inconsistent use or failure of contraception. The most commonly used methods, the pill and condoms, have substantial failure rates in everyday use. This is why there is a current push from the National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence for wider adoption of long-acting reversible methods (injections, implants and intrauterine devices).

Emergency contraception (pills or intrauterine devices administered after unprotected sex) have the potential to make inroads into the abortion rate. So far though, its use is not widespread enough to make any detectable difference.

An estimated 108 million married women in developing countries have an unmet need for contraception. So, there is potential here for reducing abortions in these countries. Availability of contraception in Eastern Europe has improved and abortion rates have fallen, but rates remains much higher than in the rest of Europe with more abortions than births.

Countries such as Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland have low abortion rates. High use of contraception and universal sex education almost certainly play an important part there. The specifics of their abortion laws and how they operate in practice will be relevant too. Abortion rates are determined by a complex range of factors including family size intentions, confidence in the safety of contraceptives, amount of sexual activity in adolescents and where the country concerned is in its demographic transition.

There has been a continuing decline of the abortion rate in the United States since it peaked in 1981, although it remains well above that of Western Europe. Increased use of contraception has contributed to this decline. Much of the decline took place in eight states in which efforts have been made to deliver good sex education, not the Bush administration’s abstinence-only approach. One suspects some of the decline is due to restrictive state laws causing delays or preventing some women altogether from having an abortion. These restrictions unfortunately have a disproportionate effect on the poor. And such a decline is not a unique trend - it may be part of a global decline which has been measured between 1995 and 2003.

In Britain the abortion rate has increased year on year since legalisation in 1968, but after 1998 this increase has been slower. There are signs that women’s desire to control their fertility is now being met by service availability.

Abortion is here to stay. There is little point debating whether our abortion rate is too high. What we should be concentrating on is making sure that women requesting abortion are supplied with evidence-guided information on which to base their decision. They should all be offered medical abortion: in this respect England and Wales are lagging behind Scotland. All women should be offered screening for infection. And all women should be offered contraception, including long-acting methods. Further research is needed on factors that detract from consistent use of contraception and from this possible effective interventions can be developed.

Dr Sam Rowlands is a freelance specialist in contraception and reproductive health and a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Warwick.

What is The New York Times' problem with abortion?

2008-02-14T18:25:00.000-05:00

In These 'Times'
The newspaper of record's squeamishness about abortion.

By Debbie Nathan
The New Republic
Published: Thursday, February 14, 2008

What is The New York Times' problem with abortion? The editorial page consistently supports sex education, birth control, and the right to legally end unwanted pregnancy. The rest of the Times, however, often seems uncomfortable with concrete applications of these principles. Not a season goes by that a news item or magazine feature doesn't imply that women who get abortions are acting with egotism, unhealthiness, and cruelty.

The most recent instance of this is Annie Murphy Paul's "The First Ache," in last Sunday's Magazine. "When does the experience of pain begin?" the subtitle asks. "Anti-abortion activists aren't the only ones to argue that it may be in the womb."

Paul's article, which runs over 5,000 words, begins with a doctor in Arkansas claiming that fetuses as immature as 20 weeks after gestation suffer agonies when prodded and cut during, say, prenatal surgery. And--the point of the piece--when they're aborted.

But then other doctors start discussing the Arkansas physician's claim, and their opinions are all over the map. One insists that fetuses feel no pain until at least 29 weeks. Another pushes the pain date all the way forward to 18 weeks. Someone else says that even born babies can't feel pain until they're one year old. Clearly, there's no consensus on the issue. But the lack of agreement is lost amid the article's looming intimation that women who end their pregnancies are hurting their fetuses. Paul never specifies that the vast majority of abortions--more than 96 percent--are performed before 18 weeks' gestation, the earliest date being claimed for the beginning of fetal pain. Nor does she mention that American women are getting abortions earlier and earlier in their pregnancies: The rate occurring in the first eight weeks has increased sharply in recent years, with many now done in the sixth week of pregnancy or earlier. Without these statistics, the article's main effect is to make female readers feel guilty and confused about abortion.

Paul's is not the only problem piece to run in the Sunday Magazine. Another, by Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon, appeared last January and looked at "post-abortion syndrome" (PAS). A takeoff on PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), PAS is not recognized by the psychiatric or psychotherapy establishment because there's no scientific evidence it exists. But moral conservatives out to overturn Roe v. Wade have popularized the purported malady among women who've had abortions. And last year, the Supreme Court cited affidavits submitted by people claiming they've suffered from PAS. The court said the risk to women of contracting the risk of "severe depression and loss of esteem" was one reason to ban "dilation and extraction"--better known as "partial birth" abortion. If for no other reason than this politicking, PAS is well worth exploring.

Problem is, Bazelon skips lightly over politics, focusing instead on fuzzy profiles of self-described PAS sufferers. One is Rhonda Arias, an evangelical minister who runs PAS-support groups in Texas women's prisons. Bazelon follows Arias as she holds forth in one facility, reading from the New Testament, playing gospel music, and handing dolls to inmates who weep as they mourn their aborted offspring. Then Arias asks these prisoners to send her testimonies about their PAS to her so she can submit them to places like the Supreme Court.

To be fair, Bazelon spends a long time discussing the piled-up scientific evidence showing that PAS doesn't exist, with many interviews from respected researchers illustrating the consensus that it's just a right-wing talking-point. Still, Bazelon writes that Arias's audience members "drink in [her] preaching," and about how Arias "ministers from the heart" with her face "alight." We read that Arias conducted a study with data culled from prisoner reports of psychological trauma from abortion (which she later sent to the Supreme Court). But Bazelon does not remind us that prison inmates are considered a terrible source of data for psychology studies. They are a captive population at great risk of saying whatever they think people in authority--including researchers--want to hear. Nor are we told that one facility where Arias does her PAS data collection has been cited by inmates as lacking access to work and substance abuse programs. Another prison houses all nine women on Texas's death row and is among the state's ten most violent prisons. No wonder inmates might exchange PAS testimonials for hugs and music.

And Bazelon only glances over the Justice Foundation, a Texas group that funded the collection of those PAS affidavits for delivery to the Supreme Court. The article calls the foundation "a conservative law center," but doesn't say that it was founded by, and gets its money from, James Leininger, a Christian right winger and one of the richest people in Texas. Leininger has used the Justice Foundation and other groups, also funded by him, to pack the Texas school board with members who oppose sex education and favor censoring textbooks. He has bankrolled political campaigns in which candidates who don't toe his line have been smeared with charges that they promote illegal drug use and homosexuality to school children. And he is staunchly anti-choice: Using the Justice Foundation, he almost single-handedly has enabled the gathering of PAS affidavits to erode Roe v. Wade. Rhonda Arias would be a nobody without this man's fortune and political designs. He's as important as she is--if not more so--to understand the PAS push.

Magazine articles aren't the Times's only problem. News stories also sometimes issue strange and conflicting messages about abortion. Last spring, for instance, a long piece appeared on the front page: "Today's Face of Abortion in China is a Young, Unmarried Woman," by Jim Yardley with Lin Yang contributing. The article's point seemed to be that, back when China coerced married women to have only one child, it wasn't their fault they had to get abortions--but now, single young women are obtaining them voluntarily. And this is bad.

Why bad? The article reeks with veiled references to selfishness and irresponsibility. The first paragraph says, "it was her second abortion in 18 months." Indeed, most patients sitting at a clinic with this woman have already had an abortion; one is on her sixth! And how did they find the clinic? The article notes that private abortion clinics proliferate in China now, and newspapers there run "sensational" ads promising "Painless Abortions." (The reporters seem unaware that ethnic papers in New York City, such as El Diario, are stuffed with identical ads, and that most abortions in this country are done at private facilities.)

Again, numbers are used out of context. The Times cites the number of abortions per year in China, and the number in this country: 7.1 million there, 1.29 million here--an alarming differential until you recall that China's population is over four times that of the US. The article never mentions this basic data.

A headline was the problem in another front page story, which ran on January 31. The article reported that Shanghai Hualian, a big pharmaceuticals manufacturer in China, made a contaminated leukemia drug that sickened patients in that country. The same firm produces all the RU-486 distributed in the U.S. (the drug is used to induce non-surgical abortions). But the FDA said the company's RU-486 factory had passed many inspections and is safe. The Times reported this at length. So why was the articled titled "Tainted Drugs Linked to Maker of Abortion Pill"?

To be sure, Times stories are not always pursed-lipped about abortion. Spring 2006 saw a national scare about a deadly bacterial infection associated with RU-486 abortions. In a follow-up article in May, reporter Gardiner Harris pointed out that infection with the same bacteria might be a risk for pregnant women who intend to have their babies. Harris even quoted two New York woman who'd had multiple abortions, some done surgically and some with RU-486. They discussed the pros and cons of each procedure, and one woman allowed publication of her name: Anne Hawkins. The whole thing was refreshingly matter of fact and devoid of cryptic moralizing. But the article was buried near the back of the A section.

Then there was the disturbing flap at the Magazine two years ago, after a cover piece about illegal abortion in Latin America reported on a woman in El Salvador who supposedly was criminally convicted for aborting her 18-week fetus. Post publication, it turned out the woman was actually judged guilty of murdering her newborn, full-term baby. The reporter had never bothered to read the court records, and the Magazine's fact checkers hadn't either. In its eagerness to champion abortion rights in a country that has none, the paper had gotten sloppy. And on its own national turf, where long-established rights are being chipped at, sloppiness runs in the other direction.

So, what's going on at the Times? Maybe only what's happening in the whole culture. Liberals and even feminists have bought into the reasoning that abortion is basically immoral, and if women could just be educated and dosed with birth control, we wouldn't have to terminate any pregnancies. Bill Clinton's famous formulation, that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare," has become conventional wisdom.

It's the line on the Times editorial page. In other sections, awkward reality intrudes, making reporters and editors skittish. Women--particularly young and poor women--don't take their contraceptives, and when they get pregnant many wait to go to the abortion clinic. Then they get pregnant again. Their behavior seems mysterious and threatening. They become scapegoats, not just for the Right, but for older and more educated liberals, too. That's the demographic who work at the Times, and a good percentage of its readership. But the Gray Lady is powerful way beyond New York liberal circles. And by making anti-woman moral judgments and obsessing over "problems" with no good evidence they exist, she's abusing her nation and the world.

Debbie Nathan is a New York City-based journalist. Her latest book, Pornography (Groundwood Press), explains the subject to teenagers and young adults.

Men's Abortion Rights: What Will They Think of Next?

2008-01-28T14:09:00.000-05:00

By Sherrie L. Porter, Communication Intern

January 18, 2008

The religious right has fought hard to chip away at women's rights and personal freedoms for decades. Over the years, we have faced a range of attempts – some successful - to take away a woman's control over her body. Men's abortions rights, the newest disturbing trend in the battle to undermine Roe v Wade, claims that men are "victims" of abortion.

The idea of male victims stems from the concept of "post-abortion syndrome" -- a nonscientific term coined in the 1980s by abortion opponents who claim that women experience psychological trauma after terminating a pregnancy. While there are no long-term, credible research studies, proponents of this creatively named "condition" claim it leads to depression in women, as well as alcoholism and drug addiction.

In a recent Los Angeles Times piece, "Changing Abortion's Pronoun," writer Stephanie Simon sees the political calculation behind the curtain: "Abortion is one of the most common surgeries in the country, with more than 1 million performed a year; while some who chose the procedure surely come to regret it, doctors say they see no epidemic of trauma in either men or women."

Despite the lack of evidence for post-abortion syndrome in either gender, anti-abortion advocates suggest "lost fatherhood" can lead to domestic violence and an addiction to sex. Both claims seem to suggest a rationale for men behaving badly. Men, they suggest, experience symptoms of post-abortion syndrome equally if not more powerfully than women. Male victims throughout the country are sharing stories of "their abortions." In November, anti-abortion activists met in San Francisco for what they boasted was "the first ever conference on the effects of abortion on men."

In the movement for men's abortion rights, Ohio legislators are attempting to make headway. Ohio house bill 287, seeks to give a man the legal right to decide whether or not the woman he impregnates should get an abortion and would make it mandatory for all women to have the written consent of "the father of the fetus" before she can go forward with the procedure. Under the same legislation, rape and incest victims would need a police report to "prove" they need an abortion. As for a woman who does not know (or doesn't want to reveal) who the man is, she would be unable to elect the procedure. Anyone, including doctors, who violate the bill would be guilty of "abortion fraud" and charged with a misdemeanor.

"If a woman wishes to include a man in her decision about whether or not to continue a pregnancy, she may do so. But the state cannot mandate that she do so," said NOW President Kim Gandy. "Requiring a 'permission slip' for abortion would mock the right guaranteed in Roe v. Wade."

Ohio HB 287 was introduced by Republican State Rep. John Adams in July 2007 and now sits at the desk of the House Health Committee. While it is unlikely that the bill will set sail--due to a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it is not Constitutional--NOW activists are working across the country to fight the continual assaults on women's reproductive autonomy.

"What the extremists really want is an end to all abortion and birth control, severely restricting the personal, medical decisions of every woman in the U.S.," said NOW Action Vice President Melody Drnach. "While we will fight this legislation and every other attempt to deny our reproductive rights, we will not take our eyes off of the very real and dangerous fight that these extremists are waging against women."

Click here for article

Abortion Rights Groups Say Legal Fights Loom

2008-01-28T13:52:00.000-05:00

by Lisa Vives

NEW YORK - The 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade — the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave women the right to abortion — is being observed this week amid concerns over threats to erode or eliminate a woman’s reproductive rights.

Republicans on the campaign trail have almost universally condemned Roe v. Wade and President George w. Bush this week voiced support for abortion opponents attending a Washington ‘right to life’ protest and rally, inviting about 200 of them for coffee and doughnuts at the White House.

Protests by anti- and pro-abortion activists took place this week across the country marking the high court ruling. Politicians used the occasion to rally their supporters. Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, called Roe v. Wade ‘a great American tragedy that has led to the loss of millions of innocent lives.’

Members of the Democratic Party, including the leading contenders for the presidential nomination, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, spoke out strongly in favour of women’s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

‘We have a huge fight (to preserve a woman’s right to choose),’ said Rhonda Copelon, a law professor and director of the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic of the City University of New York School of Law, ‘but I think this is the time to fight it.’

‘In the last 35 years, anti-choice groups have grown more vicious, lashing out against the landmark Supreme Court decision as part of their ongoing campaign to eviscerate it,’ says Kim Gandy, president of the National Organisation of Women (NOW).

‘We have endured more than three decades of challenges and roadblocks from a well-funded opposition, and our rights are more tenuous than ever — so now, more than ever, we have to fight to keep Roe alive,’ said Gandy.

Legislation limiting woman’s rights has met with some success. In 2006, South Dakota lawmakers made it a felony for doctors to perform any abortion except to save the life of a pregnant woman, but the law was reversed by voters later that year.

Last April, the Supreme Court upheld an abortion procedure ban without any exception to protect the woman’s health.

‘The Court’s majority opinion leaves women out of this equation and allows the state’s supposed interest in ‘promoting fetal life’ to trump women’s rights to control the direction of our lives,’ noted Annie Tummino of the activist group Women’s Liberation Birth Control Project. ‘Two Justices, Thomas and Scalia, even went so far as to say that ‘the Court’s abortion jurisprudence, including Casey and Roe, has no basis in the Constitution’.’

‘What’s more, doctors who choose to uphold our rights can now be prosecuted,’ she said.

In Missouri, a proposed ballot measure, if adopted, would ban abortion in almost all circumstances and could spur a legal challenge before the Supreme Court.

Between four and eight ballot measures imposing new restrictions on abortion rights could face voters in upcoming state polls.

A new report by the Guttmacher Institute, a NYC-based research organisation studying reproductive health, has found that medically-induced abortions are dropping to historic lows. In 2005, they found, the abortion rate dipped to 19.4 per 1,000 women, its lowest level since 1974.

Many factors could explain this, says Rachel Jones, an author of the report, and ‘we just aren’t able to get at the reasons behind the decline.’

While traditional abortion providers are fewer in number, there has been a rise in the number of new clinics that offer only ‘early medication abortion services,’ or RU486, a medication that terminates a pregnancy in the first trimester by blocking the effects of progesterone.

Since the drug was introduced in the United States in September 2000, more than 840,000 women have taken it, and the Guttmacher study estimates that it is now used in 14 percent of all abortions, up from 6 percent in 2001.

Clinics that offer only RU486 — not surgical abortions — are growing in popularity. Also showing an increase is the use of a ‘morning after’ contraceptive pill, known as Plan B, available for women 18 and older.

About 150,000 of the 1.2 million abortions in the United States in 2006 were done with medication, the Guttmacher Institute has estimated.

‘Mifepristone (RU-486) is clearly starting to become an important part of the abortion provision in the United States,’ said Lawrence Finer, who studies the drug at Guttmacher. ‘I think we’ll continue to see increases.’

Of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year, half are 25 or older. Only about 17 percent are teens. About 60 percent have given birth to at least one child prior to getting an abortion.

A disproportionately-high number of women having abortions are African American or Latino. New figures from the Centres for Disease Control show they account for 35 percent of the abortions.

Meanwhile, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc. has announced plans to spend 10 million dollars in a major effort to elect pro-abortion-rights candidates to Congress and the White House in November.

‘We’ve seen in this presidential election, unfortunately, in the Republican primaries a real rush to the far edges … folks really trying to move us in a direction antithetical to where the American people are,’ said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood’s political arm.

The campaign would wait for the results of the presidential primary elections before deciding which states get its most intense efforts, she said.

© 2008 Inter Press Service

Post your abortion story on NPR's blog!

2008-01-24T15:47:00.000-05:00

In honor of the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, NPR posted the following blog:

Click here to post your own abortion story on NPR's blog.

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One More Taboo...

In the Sex and the City episode "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda," Carrie Bradshaw tackled one of the subjects most familiar and least handled in popular culture -- Abortion. In it, Carrie admits that she got an abortion herself after a drunk one night stand over a decade ago. This, for the show that regularly did competely unprintable things with say, wheatgrass, doesn't seem to be taboo, right? Except, abortion is one of those things that women rarely talk about after they've had them -- whatever the reason. It doesn't matter if you're pro-choice or pro-life or in-between -- many women don't talk about past abortions -- even with their dearest friends or family. So today, we're going to do it -- and we're asking you to tell your stories -- whatever they are. If you had an abortion, tell us about it, and how you felt at the time. And why, if this is your experience, you do or do not talk about it now.

Barrie Hardymon

Are U.S. Policies Killing Women?

2008-01-23T12:41:00.000-05:00

By Michele Kort, Ms. Magazine
Posted on January 22, 2008

Even as we commemorate the landmark 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade this year, U.S. reproductive-health policies are having an inordinately negative effect outside of our borders. They're causing women to die or be maimed. Harsh words, but true.

For the past 24 years, except during the Clinton presidency, U.S. administrations have maintained a global gag rule against providing counseling or referrals for abortions at U.S.-funded clinics in developing nations. It's a rule that only thwarts safe abortions, while reducing the already limited availability of other family-planning services. The global gag rule has also led to a pullback in overseas delivery of contraceptives, according to recent testimony by Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) before the House Foreign Affairs Committee: "U.S. shipments of contraceptives have ceased to 20 developing nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In some areas, the largest distribution centers for contraceptives have experienced decreased access for over 50 percent of the women they serve."

Women's health and rights activists in the U.S. have spent the past two decades fighting against such actions, and advocating on behalf of global reproductive health issues. But progress has come slowly.

While maternal mortality has been declining at 1 percent annually, it needs to decline by 5.5 percent a year in order to be three-quarters reduced by 2015 (one of the United Nation's Millenium Development Goals). Sounds like a lot -- but it would require just about $6.1 billion more in annual funding -- the price of three weeks of the Iraq war -- to achieve that goal. Without that commitment, more than 500,000 women will still die annually from childbirth and its complications, with an estimated 70,000 of those deaths due to unsafe abortions.

Take, for example, the situation of women in Kenya, where abortion remains illegal unless the pregnant woman's life is in danger (a loophole some compassionate doctors interpret liberally, as they know that desperate women will risk their lives to abort anyway). An estimated 250,000 to 320,000 abortions are carried out in the country each year, with unsafe procedures causing a shocking toll: Globally,
13 percent of maternal deaths result from abortion-related complications, but in Kenya it's as high as 40 percent.

In public hospitals such as Kenyatta National in Nairobi, about 20,000 Kenyan women are treated each year for abortion-related complications. Nearly two-thirds of the beds in the notorious gynecological section -- Ward 1D -- are occupied by those patients, who suffer everything from excessive bleeding to injured organs to sepsis. Those sufferers include women such as Wangui (not her real name), who drank a boiled concoction made from trees and took several doses of an anti-malaria drug in order to abort because her impoverished household couldn't support a fifth child. She ended up in Ward 1D because she required an urgent blood transfusion to save her life.

Women's-rights groups in Kenya have been pushing for a new national law on reproductive rights, as well as supporting a continental protocol on the rights of African women and a patients' bill of rights. But they're not helped in their efforts to improve reproductive health care by the global gag rule, which has forced a number of clinics to turn down U.S. funds rather than stop discussing abortion. Three clinics of the Family Planning Association of Kenya (an affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation) and two clinics of Marie Stopes International (the U.K.-based reproductive-health NGO) have been closed for loss of funds, according to a 2004 report from the Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy in San Francisco.

Maternity care in general is problematic in Kenya's public hospitals. The 2007 report "Failure to Deliver," produced by the Federation of Women Lawyers-Kenya (FIDA Kenya) and the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, pointed out that public health facilities often suffer from lack of supplies and congestion. Claris Ogangah-Onyango, legal counsel for FIDA Kenya, points out the obvious: When the majority of beds in maternity hospitals are occupied by women with post-abortion complications, there is not enough space and care for other women.

"The government is mostly concerned with post-abortion care," she says, "and most of the funding goes to that. But they're not doing anything to stop [unsafe] abortions."

"What has really affected our work in Kenya is that we have very few women in our parliament [just 18 of 222 members]," says Ogandah-Onyango. "When we take our issues to the government, they are blocked. FIDA and other women's organizations have approached the candidates for the next parliament to sign a document that they will support gender-friendly bills. Putting more women in government would make a big difference."

And what can women in the U.S. do to help their Kenyan sisters?

"Lobby for change in the policies that govern reproductive health,"
she says. U.S. women can also support the efforts of groups such as FIDA Kenya, which is now part of the Reproductive Health and Rights Alliance in Kenya.

Sisterhood is a global mission. Economics and politics and even social conscience aside, we know that only by empowering all women can we ensure the future of the world.

For the full article, see the Winter 2008 issue of Ms. magazine, now available on newsstands and by subscription from www.msmagazine.com.

The Coat Hanger Project featured in The Burning Times' Prochoice Carnival!

2008-01-09T12:06:00.000-05:00

Click here for a link to the Pro-choice Carnival

This is what was written up about my project:

The Coat Hanger Project is a documentary film currently being made and due for release in 2009. It is being directed by Angie Young, a committed pro-choice activist.

The focus of the film is the abortion provision in the United States, and the pro-choice campaign fighting to keep women’s access to abortion safe, legal, and harrassment free. The film also aims to provide a strong critique of the tactics of anti-abortion campaigners, who try to restrict and even ban women’s access to abortion. The website for the film says of these anti-choice campaigners,

“They channeled your discomfort with the reality of life and death to convince you that the brave, courageous individuals who do the work of providing abortions are immoral and deserving of jail time and hatred for helping women. They changed the way we spoke about abortion by inventing loaded, inaccurate terms like “partial birth abortion” and “fetal pain” and “post abortion syndrome” - none of which are concepts that previously existed outside of antichoice vernacular - but nevertheless have stupefied and scared even the most radical of us.”

In 2006, the state of South Dakota very narrowly avoided having a total ban on abortion imposed on its women, including in rape and incest cases. The concerted actions of pro-choice campaigners were instrumental in preventing the ban from going ahead. This shows that a woman’s right to abortion can never be taken for granted.

“Denying women access to abortion forces them to either carry a fetus to term that they do not want, or take their chances ending the pregnancy themselves or with the help of an underground provider who may or may not know what they are doing. It is beyond injustice, beyond horriflying, to put this burden on women. The Coat Hanger Project aims to provide a radical, fierce, unflinchingly prochoice perspective and show the world that we can stand strong as advocates for women’s reproductive freedom.”

The films website has a wealth of information about the film, and the beliefs behind the making of it. There are also video clips you can watch of counter-protests (a reaction to anti-abortion protests) outside Planned Parenthood clinics, and some tips on starting your own pro-choice counter-protest. The site also tells you how you can help and get involved.

The film is a tremendously exciting and valuable project, and I hope you will check out the website to find out more about it. Among other things, the film “features interviews with Vicki Saporta (President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation), Heather Booth (founding member of Jane, the underground feminist abortion service, 1969-73), Dr. Bonnie Morris (Author and Dean of Women’s Studies, Georgetown University), as well as artists, activists, and other notable voices on the movement.”

The Coat Hanger Project also has a blog, featuring abortion information and resources, and pro-choice related news and current events.

If you are on Myspace, you should add The Coat Hanger Project to your friends and help to spread the word about this important and exciting project. Have a look at the website, the blog, or the Myspace page to find out more about it!

Keep abortion safe, legal and accessible. No apologies. No exceptions.

A Change of Heart: From Pro-Life to Pro-Choice

2008-01-09T12:00:00.000-05:00

By Anna Clark, RH Reality Check
Posted on January 9, 2008, Printed on January 9, 2008
Click here for article

What if I told you that I used to call myself pro-life?

What if I said that I once believed abortion was murder, or that I suspected women used the procedure to bypass the consequences of sex?

If I told you, would I lose your respect? Would you be suspicious when I say that today I'm committed to the right to reproductive health, access, and choice?

If so, you wouldn't be the first.

I'm a person who changed her mind. And no, it didn't happen with cymbal-crashing drama -- no unexpected pregnancy of my own or anyone I'm close to (that I know of). It didn't happen with abrupt college-age fervor; though I entered the University of Michigan as a progressive, I held onto my belief that abortion was wrong (though I got quieter about it).

Here's what did happen:

Growing up in Michigan, I advocated social systems as a response to unwanted pregnancies. Sure, there were plenty of reasons why someone wouldn't have the ability or desire to parent. But don't punish the future child, I argued.

Adoption seemed an ideal compromise. With some systematic improvements, then, I thought, abortion is rendered moot and the world will be just.

Fast forward: In college, I was part of the Prison Creative Arts Project. PCAP planned an event on reproductive rights and incarcerated women. It wanted the campus pro-choice group to sponsor it.

I argued for having both the pro-choice and the anti-abortion groups sponsor the forum. A more diverse audience! We won't preach to that interminable choir! Besides, not all inmates are pro-choice. No, of course, we don't want this to be a debate. Let's have a nuanced conversation.

In this leftist group, alluding to anti-abortion views was no less startling and shameful than if I'd proceeded to urinate on another PCAPer. The others made meaningful eye contact to each other and moved on. The event was sponsored by the pro-choice group.

Stay with me for one more fast forward.

In my twenties, in Boston, I was part of a feminist book club when I still hedged around identifying as pro-choice. Such a claim felt akin to articulating God: putting spirituality into words seemed to inevitably misrepresent it.

To assert the label "pro-choice" felt like I was taking somebody else's language to describe a most personal feeling about my own body and, yes, about my spirituality. To call it my own felt phony, cheap, and careless.

In my heart, however, the change had happened. I supported the right to choose, but I balked at throwing myself into the cartoonish divisions of the public "conversation" about abortion. So I said nothing. Silence seemed the only alternative to submitting my beliefs to sloganeering.

What changed?

I don't remember the day. But that day didn't come until after I'd met people -- surprise! -- who'd chosen abortion. It came after my school friends became parents; after I began having sex and selecting birth control; after I experienced and witnessed sexual harassment.

In short, it happened after pro-choice rhetoric took a human shape. I saw those I loved. I saw myself.

Today, I have the passion of a convert for reproductive rights. I remain equally passionate in my resistance to the machine that bypasses all ambiguity about abortion.

I didn't "switch sides;" I'm against the notion of "sides" in the first place.

I spent years in ambivalence, despite an inward belief in reproductive rights. While acknowledging my cowardice, I would've allied myself with the cause sooner had choice advocates talked with me, rather than dismiss me as an anti-choicer not worth the breath. I would've spoken sooner had I not felt that I must forsake anti-choice family and friends to do so.

My story echoes others -- those of parents, students, clinic workers; religious and non-religious individuals; those who changed their minds, those who changed their reasons, and those who changed nothing. Not only are a great many people unable to split themselves between the enemy camps of "pro-life" and "pro-choice," but there is widespread revulsion at how abortion is talked about.

Depending on whose statistics you use, 37-43% of American women have an abortion. Why don't more people connect their private and public ethic?

"I hear: 'Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-choice, I always have been, I just never thought I'd be here,'" said Claire Keyes, director of Pittsburgh's Allegheny Reproductive Health Center. "And others who come in, who have been anti-abortion their whole life, they say: 'Now I don't know how I can live with myself; not because of having abortion, but because I feel like a hypocrite.'"

Dr. Megan Gilliam practices pediatric and adolescent gynecology at a University of Chicago hospital; among other responsibilities, she provides abortions. When asked about patients that identify as "pro-life," she said, "Oh, it happens all the time."

"People obtain services for their reason," Gilliam said. "We luckily don't have protesters, but they tell me about how they protest (a clinic) one day, come in the next, and are back out protesting a few days later."

This dissonance is also apparent in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Emily Batchelder once managed a clinic that provides abortions.

"I can't tell you how many times I checked in a patient who said, 'Now I don't believe in this kind of thing, but...'" Batchelder said. "No one wants to have an abortion, but it's all those 'ands' and 'buts' that make abortion services a necessary part of the reproductive health dialogue."

This fluidity between pro- and anti-choice beliefs also affects doctors.

Medical students may cite ethical difference and opt-out of aspects of their rotations. Dr. Gilliam said that in any trainee group, one or two pick their way through family planning. They might refuse to assist an abortion, Gilliam said, but they will offer counsel.

Many, particularly younger residents, change their mind about abortion.

"Where does conversion happen?" Gilliam asks. "They encounter us in so many settings. You admire someone as a physician, and biases begin to chip away."

"Conversion happens with the human connections," she emphasized. "People are able to live with a lot of grey. It's people with no experience whatsoever who can live with black and white."

Is there enough acknowledgment of the grey in the pro-choice movement? I do not mean that we should dilute strong positions against mandatory delays, for example, but we certainly could use more nuance in our interactions with one another and with those with whom we currently disagree. While many will nod knowingly at Gilliam's pronouncement that "the dichotomy is a political tool," our movement feeds into it.

So many of us feel like we don't fit -- to the point that even some who exercise their right to an abortion don't consider the movement to be their own.

Why do we support choice, after all? We cite constitutional rights (at least a little while longer); but as Claire Keyes points out, patients don't talk in those terms. "They don't come in to exercise their constitutional rights," Keyes said. "They may feel grief, but they feel this is the right choice for them."

We valorize "choice;" but Dr. Gilliam says that such language doesn't resonate with those who see themselves in communities -- part of a church, school, neighborhood, or family. "They don't approach life on such individualistic terms," Gilliam said.

We speak of the right to control one's body. But ownership language causes some progressives to bristle. One of them, Harvard sophomore Jessica Ranucci, recalls the world's sordid history of people who take it upon themselves to define who is and isn't human. She wonders how she can use the same language to justify abortion. "How is that different from the slaveholder?" she asks. The politicized language of abortion leads us to address each other as one thing, or another. This is symptomatic of the discomfort when, as in my case, divisions blur.

Which is unfortunate for the future of reproductive justice, because those human connections that Gilliam says are vital to conversion -- that were vital to my conversion -- simply do not exist when we fight "the other side."

Says Matthew Spektor, a 41-year-old in Los Angeles and lifelong pro-choicer: "I sometimes think my liberal education and cultural background drilled the pro-choice ethic into me so absolutely that it's been difficult even to understand that pro-lifers aren't all religious crazies," Spektor said.

Enemy caricatures mask the greatest strength of pro-choice philosophy: inclusiveness.

"If you asked me five years ago about abortion, I would have told you that I was 100 percent pro-life and there was no way around that," said Jeremy Shermak, a 28-year-old from Illinois. "But somehow during that moment and today, I realized that you can be pro-life while at the same time be pro-choice."

Pro-choice society, like democractic society, is predicated on space for those who disagree. When we play sides, we forget there are no enemies in the vision we pursue. Our inclusiveness of those who choose not to have abortions, and even those who judge abortion to be morally wrong, is our movement's power. When we approach anti-choicers as friends, not only do we act on the heart of our beliefs, but we create space for anti-choicers to become our allies.

I urge reproductive health advocates to remember the ones who will change their minds. We must build spaces where those of us who move slowly into the pro-choice movement are recognized as true partners, rather than tagalongs.

Our beliefs are not created by what -- or who -- we are against. They exist because of what we are for: comprehensive reproductive health for all, and the ability to decide for ourselves if we will or will not have an abortion.

As individuals and as a movement, we must act from that truth.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/73169/

The First Pro-Choice Carnival

2008-01-02T12:35:00.000-05:00

This is from an awesome pro-choice blog titled "Abortion is a Woman's Right" . The goal of the pro-choice carnival is to highlight excellent pro-choice writing & thinking. Spread the word!

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This is an excerpt from the Pro-choice carnival website:

Welcome to the first edition of the Pro-Choice Carnival. I hope it will be the first of many. This Carnival aims to highlight some of the best writing on the theme of a woman’s right to choose, and will be published every other month. Contributions can be new or old, long or short, written by women or men, feminists or non-feminists, just as long as the writing comes from a firm belief that access to safe, legal abortion is every woman’s basic human right. Links to all editions of the Carnival will be posted on the Carnival homepage.

Although abortion is legal in most countries of the world today, that legality is constantly under threat from people, organisations, religions, and systems of government who seek to minimise or eradicate abortion. We must therefore be vigilant and never become complacent.

On with the Carnival, then, I hope you enjoy it, and will help to spread the word about it on your own blogs!

Spain Arrests 6 in Abortion Clinic Raids

2007-11-27T13:58:00.000-05:00

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:52 p.m. ET
Click here for article

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Police arrested at least six people Monday in raids on clinics suspected of carrying out illegal abortions in Spain, officials said.

Four facilities in Barcelona were being searched, said a Civil Guard official in the city who could not be identified named under rules barring his name from being published. The official would not say what illegal activity the clinics were suspected of doing.

Spain allows abortions in cases of rape, fetal deformation or danger to a pregnant woman's physical or mental health. In the last instance, this danger must be certified by a doctor other than the one who would carry out the abortion.

The raids were ordered as part of an investigation that began following a complaint by an anti-abortion group called E-Cristians, the Civil Guard official said.

That complaint was filed in January after Danish television broadcast a documentary in which the gynecologist who runs the four raided clinics, Dr. Carlos Morin, was filmed offering to perform an abortion on a female journalist posing as being nearly seven months pregnant, said Pablo Molins, a lawyer for E-Cristians.

The doctor dispensed with the medical-certificate requirement and offered her a form in which she could state she suffered from a grave mental disorder, Molins said.

Morin was among those arrested, the Civil Guard official said.