Cross-posted with permission from Fordham LSRJ

The House Oversight Committee refused to let Sandra Fluke of Georgetown LSRJ testify as a minority witness at today’s ridiculously titled hearing, “Lines Crossed:  Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?”

You can read Sandra’s excellent statement here.  We are with you Georgetown women!

This is the statement Fordham LSRJ submitted for the hearing record:

Putting the men in "Women's Health"

We are students of the Fordham University School of Law in New York City.  Fordham is a Jesuit-affiliated university, however, our student health insurance covers contraception as required by New York State law.  The New York Women’s Health and Wellness Act was passed in 2002 with the goal of promoting women’s health and ending gender discrimination.  From our perspective here at Fordham, the suggestion that requiring the non-discriminatory prescription coverage we already enjoy is some kind of new and unprecedented encroachment on religious freedom seems strange and disingenuous.

The New York law is not a violation of religious freedom.  Fordham didn’t have to go out of business or stop providing prescription coverage.  Our institution was able to accept that religiously affiliated entities that want to sell products in the marketplace like insurance and federally subsidized education must meet the same quality standards as non-religious organizations.

Unfortunately, even though we have contraception coverage thanks to the protections of New York state law, Fordham students still do not have access to affordable contraception.  This is because our health centers, where students with University insurance are meant to receive our primary and gynecological care, will not prescribe contraception.  So, whether a student needs contraception to prevent pregnancy, treat a medical condition or both – she has to pay a $100 deductible to visit a doctor off-campus for a prescription – even if she already underwent a gynecological exam on-campus in the mistaken belief that Fordham provided standard care.  One hundred dollars on top of a monthly copayment is a significant barrier to practicing contraception for a student living on loans.

The experiences of women at Fordham show that though health exemptions from birth control bans may seem workable in theory, they are not in practice.  The Fordham health centers tell us they have a health exception, but students report being turned away despite medical conditions, some of them quite dangerous or painful.  Students have been refused contraception despite having endometriosis, severe acne, ovarian cysts, and high risk of ovarian cancer.

After hearing the stories from many women affected by the no-birth control policy, we decided we needed to address the lack of access to affordable contraception.  Last November, our student group, the Fordham Chapter of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, organized a one night off-campus clinic so students could obtain birth control prescriptions.  Over forty students met with doctors and around one hundred students came out to show their support.  We are extremely grateful for the doctors who provided us treatment free of charge, but it is unfortunate that though we pay $2,300 to $2,400 per year for insurance we have to take up volunteer resources that should go to women who lack insurance and financial resources.

At the clinic, we had the opportunity to talk with smart, thoughtful undergraduates from Fordham’s Bronx and Manhattan campuses.  Undergraduates told us in person and in their exit surveys that access to contraception was a problem for them and they wished we had advertised the clinic on their campuses.  The impact of the University’s policies on the undergraduates, which I suspect may be even greater than that on the law students, is in fact a major concern driving our efforts.  It is extremely important for young women to be able to access comprehensive medical care without feeling judged or censored, regardless of whether they are having sex or plan to anytime soon.  Conversation and information help young women to anticipate and make decisions about what kind of sexual experiences they want to have and when.  Sex should be something a woman chooses because she wants it, not something that happens to her; a culture of secrecy and denial of the fact that some students are sexually active is not creating the conditions for that.

Our efforts to improve contraceptive access at Fordham have been met with various iterations of “you should have known” or “it’s you own fault for going to a Catholic school.”  This is a problematic idea for a number of reasons.  It inaccurately paints Catholics and Catholic institutions as monolithically rigid, unreasonable and beholden to the Vatican.  Catholic institutions can and do embrace people of varying beliefs, religions, sexual orientations and cultures.  Fordham University could not attract the caliber of students and faculty it does if it did not.  The implication that no Catholic-affiliated institution would provide standard health care or put policies in place that aren’t papally-approved, such as allowing LGBTQ student groups on campus or providing benefits to the same-sex partners of faculty members or funding scholarship contrary to Catholic doctrine, is inaccurate and offensive.  It rests on stereotypes of Catholics and ignores the fact that students contract with a particular institution, not a religious hierarchy.

On the other hand, our work to get Fordham women the healthcare they need has also been met with an extraordinary outpouring of support.  Fordham students thank us for fighting for them and send their stories, professors tell us they are proud, and alumni of Fordham and other Catholic universities email their encouragement and advice.

We sincerely believe that the medical personnel at our health centers would like to provide the care that is most appropriate for their patients.  We also believe that Fordham and other Catholic-affiliated institutions would like to do what is in the best interests of their students and employees.  However, Catholic-affiliated institutions are subject to significant pressures from influential groups off-campus that purport to speak for Catholics but may not represent the views of Catholic educational institutions, their students or employees.  Given this reality, we need laws that require equality in health care access.  Our experience at Fordham shows that religiously-affiliated institutions can comply with laws that protect a woman’s individual conscience and simultaneously promote their values and further their missions.

Bridgette Dunlap
Emily Wolf
Fordham University School of Law
Fordham Chapter, Law Students for Reproductive Justice

Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

*This post is part of a series written in support of Trust Women Week Silver Ribbon Campaign and the online virtual march from January 20-27. LSRJ is proud to partner with numerous orgs across the country – join the march by sending a message to your lawmakers today! And check back here throughout the week for more posts.

In May 2009, a 17-year-old girl in Naples, Utah, was pregnant.  She was charged with second-degree felony criminal solicitation to commit murder.  Why was she charged? She solicited a man to punch her in the stomach so that she would miscarry.  He accepted $150 from her, took her to the basement of his parent’s house, and kicked her in the stomach five times.  According to the young girl, who is now a young adult, she solicited the assault because her boyfriend threatened to break up with her if she did not terminate her pregnancy.  A juvenile court dismissed her case in 2009, but the Utah Supreme Court this past December reversed their decision.  They reasoned that an assault does not meet the statutory definition of abortion and now this young woman may face criminal penalties for this tragic incident in her life.

I don’t disagree with the Utah Supreme Court in saying that abortion as imagined by our state’s legislators is a medical procedure, although the term “medical” will most likely be co-opted by the Anti-Choice movement to exclude abortions achieved through pharmaceuticals (see the case of an Idaho woman who terminated her own pregnancy by ordering RU486 online and was charged  with a felony).  What I do disagree with is the numerous laws passed by state legislatures to restrict abortion services to the point that Roe v. Wade doesn’t make any impact in the lives of women who need it the most.  Remember what Justice Ginsburg said at the Aspen Institute in 2010, “If the court were to change its mind . . . the only women who would be truly affected are poor women. Because even at the time before Roe, women who wanted abortions could have a safe, legal abortion.”  The problem is, this great Justice has forgotten that most poor women still can’t have abortions because of the Hyde Amendment.

This young woman in Utah should have had the right to decide to be a parent, to give her born child up for adoption, or to have an abortion without emotional abuse from her boyfriend or having to deal with the heinous consequences and obstacles of laws that ultimately regulate abortions out of existence.  As the Guttmacher Institute said in their awesome video, “There will always be women who need abortions.”

Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma

For the most part, our Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ) chapter at University of Oklahoma received positive feedback this semester. One person even said they liked being part of a group with “balls.” I, of course, corrected him and said we were a group with balls and ovaries. However, not everyone has enthusiastically supported us. Some groups fear working with us will alienate their pro-life members. A leader of one of these groups recently approached me about co-hosting an abortion debate. From previous experience as a student organizer, I know that debates about abortion are usually not a good idea. The debate tends to focus on religion and when life begins. In the process of debating, I have seen “pro-choice” groups lose sight of their original goal of supporting people with unplanned pregnancies.

Engaging in a pro-life/pro-choice style debate strays too far from the reproductive justice movement’s focus on ending reproductive oppression for my comfort. Instead of agreeing to an abortion debate with this group, I offered to discuss goals we can both work toward, such as comprehensive sex education, improved access to birth control, and improved maternal and infant health outcomes. This person was a proponent of abstinence until marriage and even suggested that some common forms of birth control were abortifactants. It was hard to find common ground, but I know there are other students who can look past LSRJ’s stance on abortion rights.

Since we are a new group, we’ve mostly focused on finding students who we consider our natural allies in the reproductive justice movement: feminists, progressives, people of color and LGBTQ-identified students. Next semester we want to co-sponsor events with groups who we might not initially consider as our natural allies: religious groups and conservative groups. We have to be strategic about what events we bring to campus. Organizing for reproductive justice in a conservative state means we must be careful to stay true to our beliefs, while, at the same time, not reinforcing the beliefs of students who have preconceived ideas of us as man-hating, baby-killing feminists. Sometimes we do the stereotypical thing (we’re excited to be the group handing out condoms on campus!), but sometimes we must decline invitations to cosponsor events because it will hurt our objectives rather than promote them.

Have you successfully organized with conservative groups on your campus? Please send your advice my way!

Joanne Caceres, Harvard Law School

Things are busy as ever as the members of HLSRJ finally dive into our long planned Speak Out Week, which aims to engage the HLS student body in honest exchanges about reproductive health, listen to and share personal stories about reproductive choices, and explore the ways in which access to abortion and other reproductive services intersect with larger social movements. Kicking off our week, our first event was “Bro-Choice,” an event geared towards men and their role in the movement. I am happy to report that we had exceptional attendance and that several men signed up for our weekly email list. We are excited for further exploration into engaging men on campus!

Other events this week include two intersectional panels, one featuring women of color and the pro-choice movement, with Gretchen Sisson, Reverend Penny Willis, Jasmine Burnett and Kaitlyn Soligan; and one featuring different religious perspectives on reproductive justice, with Reverend Marvin Ellison, Rabbi Peter Stein, Reverend Matthew Westfox, and Prof. Daniel Dombrowski. As with all of our events, cross promotion and co-sponsorships greatly contribute to our success. Thanks to our partnership with students from the Harvard Kennedy School, we will be screening of 12th and Delaware followed by a conversation with NARAL Pro-Choice MA.

We are also speaking out using Facebook, our LSRJ website, posters, and word of mouth. We have asked HLS and other greater Boston students share their own reproductive health stories, in the hope that doing so will open up a more honest and nuanced conversation regarding the choices women make throughout their lives. To contextualize these stories more effectively, Julia Reticker-Flynn from Advocates for Youth will join us for a strategy discussion regarding how and why to share abortion stories. We encourage all students reading this to also contribute to our survey or tell us what pro-choice means to them in our new tumblr! We hope our events will inspire other groups on other campuses to Speak Out as well!

Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

I was very hesitant to start a Law Students for Reproductive Justice chapter at the University of Utah for three reasons:  1) I’m starting my last year-I’m already exhausted and I don’t want to do any more work, 2) it’s Utah, enough said, and 3) the most terrifying reason-how about if no one wants to join the group and it’s just me and my two friends who do claim a feminist identity (I will just be preaching to the choir).  Luckily, my experiences have brought me back to the lessons I learned as a community organizer which have significantly reduced my stress and my hesitancy.

The first couple of weeks of September I was scrambling to get an executive board together (though I am proud to say that the U of U LSRJ has an awesome one that is composed of all three class years!) and at first no one was really chomping at the bit.  Can I blame my 3L friends for saying that they already have too much on their plates? No, I can’t.  Although at desperate moments I thought I was going to be doing all the work and had the recurring thought late at night, “what did I get myself into?” LSRJ made me tap into the lessons that I learned during my community organizing days in college.  These two basic lessons were:  One, there can be no movement without starting a conversation.  Two, people aren’t going to jump on board unless you meet them where they are.  Of course, my peers weren’t going to volunteer for every task and position because all of us were getting barely comfortable with the concept that we were starting an organization at a school that never had an organization like LSRJ, one that was so revolutionary in nature about a subject that is taboo in Utah.  Hell, I was still getting comfortable with the idea.  How can I ask someone to give their precious time when I’m not completely sold on it? As I become more enamored of U of U LSRJ and its potential, I’m not afraid to ask individuals for their time, money, and support.  As these conversations occur, my friends and my peers are willing to volunteer their time or serve on the executive board, and I appreciate every contribution.  Without them, there would be no way that U of U LSRJ can grow.  I also fully know as a community organizer that there may be days where everyone’s personal lives need to be attended to and I will just have to step up to the plate.  As organizers, we often forget that our personal lives will not stop for our professional and public lives.

My experiences have also reminded me of the sheer joy that is part of community organizing.  During the introductory meeting, a future member of the executive board understood the principles of Reproductive Justice so much that she had this enormous smile on her face.  We had made a connection.  These connections and small moments of spontaneity and laughter are going to sustain the group whenever we have our frustrations with each other, with the campus, or with people who just don’t want to understand Reproductive Justice.

On Sunday, SisterSong wrapped up their “Let’s Talk About Sex: Love, Legislation, and Leadership” (LTAS) conference. The conference agenda ranged from workshops on taking care of your womb to understanding the legislative attacks on reproductive rights. Conference attendants ranging from pre-teens to great grandmothers participated in active discussions throughout the weekend with the opportunities to apply them daily. After every plenary there was an open mic opportunity to ask the panelists questions or talk about what was going on in your own community or work.  SisterSong did a great job making sure the weekend was not only informative but that attendants would also know how to make the information they shared benefit their communities.  In a hotel filled with hundreds of people who were unaware of what the RJ movement stood for you often saw attendees in conversations with other hotel guests explaining WHY we were there talking about SEX.

SisterSong and Trust Black Women’s newest film premiered during the conference, “We Always Resist,” a documentary capturing the activism of Black women in response to the anti-abortion movement and their attacks on women of color through a national billboard campaign. On Saturday the staff of SisterSong took time out to publicly honor the amazing Loretta Ross. Some of her closest friends and colleagues honored the activist and educator (to name only a few titles) with tear jerking words of gratitude for all she has done for them personally, for our communities, and for the reproductive justice movement.

The four day conference concluded with a call for action plenary. After being informed by community organizers, environmentalist, youth activists, and representatives from multiple races what strategies would emerge, we wanted to know what do we do with the information. Themes such as mentoring the youth in our communities, writing letters to our officials, actively reporting violations, and building networks and coalitions were discussed. Overall, the conference was truly inspiring and engaging. Where else do you get to meet FIVE other wonderful Women’s Studies majors like myself, attend workshops by Dorothy Roberts, and witness an amazing Brown Girls Burlesque show?! Once again, I leave you with these quotes from the weekend.

“We have the right to be treated with dignity even if we engage in sex work and are seeking social services”-Shira Hassan (Young Women’s Empowerment Project)

Many assumptions that social services work…so why are our young people running away from them? -Shira Hassan

Same forces that are trying to destroy the ocean outside this hotel are also trying to destroy OUR communities- Nia Robinson

If we want people to trust women of color WE have to trust people of color! – Andrea Ritchie (Streetwise and Safe)

Never be more of a man than you are a human being. – Dr. Willie J. Parker

Erika Willis

To attend the conference virtually, follow us on Twitter @LSRJ!

Yesterday, SisterSong kicked off their “Lets Talk About Sex: Love, Legislation, and Leadership” (LTAS) conference in beautiful Miami. However, the beauty of the city and its alluring night life have been the least of my pleasantries. The women of SisterSong have welcomed conference attendees with a sense of warmth, history, honesty, and courage. A conference free of judgment and attended by representatives from all gender identities is simply refreshing. The day kicked off with a plenary dedicated to the “Love” element of the conference. We heard from organizations and individuals on physical, mental, and spiritual love. The art of loving ones self and the importance of taking good physical care for ourselves no matter what our gender status, HIV status, sexuality, or religion was touched upon again and again. The conversation was so powerful that a fifteen-year-old young woman testified at the conclusion that she had been encouraged and inspired to make a change for her generation.

The plenary was followed by an outstanding keynote speech presented by Dr. Joycelyne Elders, former US Surgeon General (and the FIRST African American woman to hold this title). Her speech centered on what it was going to take to see a change in the way our society and political figures deal with and talk about sex. She touched upon themes such as strategy, commitment, education, courage, common sense, coalition, and leadership. After Dr. Elders’s speech, attendees were allowed to choose between numerous workshops to attend. The SisterSong team has events planned from morning to night to engage in conversation as well as enjoy the time we have in Miami.

For all of my readers, I would like to paint a picture of the experience here at LTAS with a few quotes I have managed to steal from the day! Enjoy!

“They will call me a slut if I carry condoms around. Response: That is fine, Sophisticated Ladies Use Trojans so there is your slut.” – Dr. Elders

“To see change you first have to have crisis, then grass root organizing, and supportive leadership.” – Dr. Elders

“The vows of abstinence are broken far more often than condoms.” – Dr. Elders

“Where else can you have a “Sexual Healing” dance break between panels.” – Conference Participant

“Let your first act of resistance be one of self love.” – B. Cole (Brown Boi Project)

Erika Willis