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.”
Monday, August 25, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Reclaiming the morality of abortion and the overdue change to the Democratic platform.
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.
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.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Sexual harassment okay as it ensures humans breed, Russian judge rules
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.
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.
Monday, August 4, 2008
The Declining of Value of Human Life: South Dakota's Abortion Fairy Tale
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.
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.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
A New Attack on Birth Control
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.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Ovulation moment caught on camera
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!)
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Birth Control=Abortion? Yes, According to Dept. of Health & Human Svcs.
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.
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.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Women of Color Demand Justice: Say NO to Operation Save America
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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