Law Students for Reproductive Justice at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, CA held “Violence Awareness Week” (or V-Week) between February 15 and February 17 to raise awareness about domestic and sexual violence faced by women around the globe. 

We used the three days as both an awareness campaign and as a method to collect toiletries to donate to a local women’s shelter. A large colorful poster bearing violence-related statistics was on display behind our table, and handouts were available for those wishing to learn more.  Each day we posted a different question passersby could answer in an attempt to win a prize. The prizes were shirts that read “Don’t Turn Your Back on Violence Against Women.” One question was “what percentage of women are physically or sexually assaulted each year by either a husband or intimate partner or someone they know?” While a handful of people attempted fair guesses each day, the question on the last day (a nod to this being “National Condom Week”) yielded the most responses: a jar containing condoms was on display and students were urged to guess “how many condoms are in the jar?”  

Finally, our members asked students to take a picture for UNIFEM’s Get Crossed campaign, which urges people to take a stand and “Say No to Sexual Violence in Conflict.” A large red canvas sheet that read “Stop Rape Now” was the backdrop for the pictures where people stood with their arms crossed in the shape of an “X” to demonstrate their solidarity with the campaign. The week of activities was a huge success for our chapter as it garnered a substantial amount of attention from students and faculty.  

Jenn Kish

In her feature on the supposed generational divide in the pro-choice movement, which ran in Sunday’s New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg correctly observes that abortion has hit the headlines recently in the context of health care reform and the horrendously restrictive Stupak amendment—and it’s not something reproductive rights advocates are happy about.  But there isn’t much else I can relate to in her assessment of the current landscape in reproductive rights advocacy and activism.  In fact, I think the story—which argues that there is a chasm between the “menopausal militia,” meaning the generation of feminists who came of age before Roe v. Wade and view abortion in “stark political terms,” and the “millennials,” the younger set for whom Stolberg suggests abortion is a personal issue—misses the mark in a sad but revealing way.

Relying on quotes from Naral Pro-Choice America president Nancy Keenan, Stolberg promotes this political/personal dichotomy without actually explaining how this supposed shift to the personal manifests itself—other than the fact that the post-Roe generations seem less responsive to single-issue pro-choice calls to action.  Provocative accompanying artwork, which consists of a black rectangle with brightly colored letters spelling “WE” floating above “ME,” implies that younger women are selfish in neglecting abortion politics.  Yet Stolberg acknowledges that “a clear majority of Americans support the right to abortion, and there’s little evidence of a difference between those over 30 and under 30.”  In fact, she herself points to several examples of young people organizing right now to stop the Stupak amendment (including LSRJ’s recent webinar on abortion and health care reform legislation).  So what’s the issue?

Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg concludes that young people don’t respond to email alerts about contacting their legislators because they know abortion is legal and believe “if you really need one you can probably figure out how to get one.”  Which means not only are we selfish, but we’re also foolishly complacent.  But what about the millions of poor women, immigrant women, and young women who can’t ever “figure out how to get one” because the barriers we’ve erected to accessing legal abortion are simply too high?  Such women may be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term or to induce an abortion through other means, with serious consequences for the health and security of themselves and their families.  And what about those of us who aren’t poor, immigrant, or under 18 but believe deeply that how our society treats those women reflects on all of us, individually and collectively? (more…)

The reproductive rights movement was founded by women and originally fought for issues men ignored, like a woman’s right to determine the timing and spacing of her children.  Reproductive justice, however, has a greatly expanded focus and fights not just for the right not to have children, but also the right to have children, and to parent the children we have.  RJ strives for healthy and empowered communities and, thus, inherently involves both sexes.  In spite of this expansion, because the movement has traditionally been understood as a woman’s issue, the fight has still largely been left to women. The RJ community has thoroughly discussed this dilemma and has hypothesized how best to frame the issues so that men better understand the implications of ignoring reproductive justice.

We are armed with information that seems like it should be inflammatory to the stereotypical male.  For example, recent scientific studies have shown that exposure to specific chemicals causes the feminization of male fetuses and infant boys.  This means that exposure to phthalates, bisphenol-A, or any other chemical that mimics estrogen can decrease penis size, androgenital length, and sperm count, in addition to other possible physical deformities, like the urethra developing at the base of the penis rather than the tip.  All of these facts hit men where they are, stereotypically, the most sensitive: their “masculinity.”  Those in the reproductive justice community who have been working to reduce environmental reproductive toxins viewed this information primarily as more evidence of harm, but secondarily as a method for getting men interested and involved.  What can convince men more than threats to their virility?

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I’m short on time this week, so here’s a round-up of links, including follow-ups on some of the stories I talked about in my last post.

Outlaw Midwives, a Manifesta.

Mostly pregnant middle and upper class educated white women have the economic and racial privilege and choices to have a ‘natural/normal’ birth. These women, a small segment of the global birthing world, create their natural experiences by exoticising, fetishizing, imitating and co-opting the practices and images of 3rd world brown women childbearing cultures. Natural/normal concept is really code for ‘preferred’, it is the elite white women who have the preferred childbirth and normal body. Their body, lifestyle, childbearing, mothering, and inevitably, their children set the standard through their privilege and access for what is normal and natural.

It’s not about ‘natural’ birth, vs. medical interventions vs. Cesarean. It is about empowerment.

At Salon: Bristol Palin stammers the truth.

Bristol told Van Susteren that telling her parents she was pregnant “was, like, harder than labor,” and described sitting on the couch with Johnston and a best friend there for support, so petrified about making her announcement that she was “just sick to my stomach,” so much so that finally, her best friend had to blurt it out for her. Bristol continued, “I don’t even remember it, because it was just like something I don’t want to remember.”

Amanda Palmer talks more about her controversial song, “Oasis”, and her personal experience of abortion.

I would have to say the worst part about getting an abortion wasn’t the surgery itself, it was having to deal with people screaming at me outside of the clinic, and literally shoving up against me, and shoving pictures of mutilated fetuses in my face. I think, if anything else, when it comes down to it, writing that song was my way of processing that kind of assault, and just making it into a joke, which is how I process it, and that’s got to be fair.

More on Nadya Suleman and the “octuplet debate”:

From RH Reality Check: Missing the Point on Large Families– “Instead of focusing on those who make questionable choices, why not focus on those who have no choice?”

From Lisa at My Ecdysis: Mother of Fourteen, Nadya Suleman– “What I find interesting, though, is that throughout history and the world, there are women exactly like Suleman who raise their multitude of children with much less media and attention than Nadya Suleman. There are women who are neither scorned or criticized for the number of children they have. They are ignored. The reaction our country has had to Nadya Suleman confounds me.”

From Alas, a Blog: Nadya Suleman Receives Death Threats and Return of the Revenge of the Daughter of the Welfare Queen.

Julie writes: this is about “the worship of motherhood and the hatred of mothers.” And I don’t think you can have one without the other.

Nojojo writes: I can’t help wondering how much of the rage I’m seeing — not merely outrage, but murderous incandescent fury — is because the Welfare Queen specter has been raised in Americans’ minds, perhaps conflated in some weird-ass way with The Arab Threat and maybe even The Brown Conspiracy To Outbreed White People? (Suleman’s fertility doctor appears to be Indian, see. We’re all in on it!)

This issue, by the way, is something I didn’t talk about in my last post, and should have–the fact that Nadya Suleman is a woman of color. I think it has everything to do with the way people have responded to this story.

One of my favorite female musicians, Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls, wrote in her blog this week about the BBC’s censorship of her song Oasis, “a tongue-in-cheek, ironic up-tempo pop song…about a girl who got drunk, was date raped, and had an abortion.” The BBC thinks that her lyrics “make light of abortion, rape, and religion.” Amanda, who is herself a survivor of date rape, writes,

our COLLECTIVE freedom to approach situations with humor, with irony, with anger, with sadness, with darkness, with an edge, from a different perspective, from within the situation…it’s ESSENTIAL.
we have to agree about this or we ALL get in trouble….

should we just cry about it demurely and hope that the proper reaction, the one that society deems appropriate, will make it go away?

Her answer is profanely emphatic. As it should be. No one has the right to tell us what is an appropriate, acceptable reaction to what happens to us, to our bodies–to tell us what to feel, what to say, what to hide.

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• From Daily Kos and Netroots Nation: activists from the Pretty Bird Woman House shelter speak about sexual violence against Native women and their struggle for justice. Because of jurisdictional uncertainty, the non-Native perpetrators responsible for 86% of assaults against Native women are rarely arrested or prosecuted. Video here (sorry, couldn’t get it to embed properly.)

• Politico “discovers” the pro-choice spiritual left. It’s actually a pretty savvy article. I think that it’s long past time the religious/spiritual left got some recognition as a political force–from everyone, including the spiritual left itself. Learning to approach reproductive justice from a faith-positive perspective can only help our movement. Some of us may have a hard time getting our head around this, in the context of so many decades/centuries of religiously-motivated attacks on women, sexual freedom, and reproductive rights. (I myself split from Christianity years ago, citing irreconcilable differences.) But as this article points out, the religious Right has done a very good job of hijacking God and spirituality for their own oppressive purposes, and as in many other areas of politics, the left has long allowed them to frame the discourse. Hopefully we’re now seeing the beginning of a push to reclaim it. Combined with the momentum towards framing reproductive rights as human rights, there’s a lot of space in that direction to movement-build.

• Most of the readers here have probably already seen this, but President Bush has proposed new regulations for the Department of Health and Human Services that, among other things, redefine abortion to include some forms of contraception. Under the regulations, health providers, researchers, and medical schools would only receive federal funding if they sign “written certifications” promising that they won’t discriminate against employees who would rather not perform essential reproductive health services. (Rep. Nita Lowey and family planning activists respond.) Looks like Bush is hard at work on his legacy, intent on leaving the country in as much of a mess as possible come January.

• Queen Emily, guest blogger at Questioning Transphobia, has begun a really great series on transphobic tropes. Her second post, Patriarchal Privilege, addresses transphobia in feminism. To some extent, this comes from a lack of understanding; women feel transwomen are “really” men trespassing in women’s spaces. Emily deconstructs this idea, outlining the discrimination and violence faced by trans people. As she says, “Trans people are systematically disempowered, on macro and micro levels. Why on earth does any of this sound like we’re getting monthly muffin baskets from the Patriarchy?” No kidding. The exclusionary “feminism” she calls out looks a lot to me like the operation of unexamined privilege. And like bisexual people facing monosexism, trans people fall into that interstitial space between hard and fast categories that makes them targets of prejudice from all sides–even within the LGBTQIQ community. Why is it that even among those claiming to fight for equality, there’s so often some group considered less equal than others?

–Erin Simonitch

I have been talking to mothers a lot lately, in part because my peers are increasingly married and starting families, but also because I am increasingly engaged in feminism and reproductive justice. Discussion about women’s rights, health, and experiences lead inevitably to motherhood and its place in our female identities—and often to conflict over what that place should be.

I myself am not a mother, nor do I particularly want to be. I am not motherly. I have always put other priorities above reproduction–education, career, activism–and besides, babies terrify me with their helplessness and fragility. Handed an infant, I hold it gingerly as I might an oddly shaped, wriggly Ming vase until it bursts into tears, at which point I relinquish it with a deep sense of relief. Nevertheless, I am assured by older female relatives that the maternal instinct will manifest, like some latent superpower, “when you have your own, of course.” I find this unlikely, and I’m suspicious of the implication that all women must have this aptitude. That if I do not have it or want to have it, there is something not quite right about me, even in this day and age. That all women want to be mothers. “Of course they do…”

But in talking to women who are mothers–feminist women, women of all generations, not just my “Gen Y”–and particularly to those who have chosen motherhood over a career, I hear, over and over, a sentiment that, at first, surprised me. That motherhood is devalued in our society–that other people, other women, look down on mothers for abandoning their career, implying that a woman cannot be a mother and a feminist. That they must work to gain respect and social status, when in fact motherhood is “the most important thing a woman can do with her life.” Even Rebecca Walker, the prominent third-wave feminist, recently had some harsh words to say about feminist devaluation of motherhood by her own mother, Alice Walker.

Knowing what I know about the abortion debate in the U.S., the ongoing erosion of Roe v. Wade, and the constant pressure brought to bear on women’s autonomy in the law, at first I couldn’t understand where these women were coming from. My experience, of course, is quite different. I see the message of exalted, sacred motherhood at every turn, at every level of public discourse. I see motherhood placed at the center of what it means to be a “real” woman, “natural” motherhood raised above all, my own choices dismissed as just a stage, an anomaly. “You’ll change your mind, you’ll see.” (And I do catch myself wondering, sometimes, what is wrong with me that I don’t want that.)

But then I took a step back, and I realized something stunning (to me.) They were right.

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So, unbeknownst to me, last week was the first-ever national week of action for reproductive justice (note to organizers:  please get the word out better next year!).  The RJ Network, organized by the very cool Third Wave Foundation, seeks to get youth involved in advocating for reproductive justice around the country. In honor of the week, here’s an awesome video:   

I think this video gets right to one of the keys of the RJ movement: the emphasis on the community, on community-building, and on strength through organizing. As lawyers and law students, it’s easy to forget sometimes that the courts are not the only — or even the best — way to effect social change. Especially now, when the federal courts are particularly unreceptive to civil rights and social justice, and when many states have similarly conservative state supreme courts. But even in an era of friendlier courts, organizing is not just a good tactic, but a vital one — one that is key to the success of the RJ movement. For a long while, the civil rights movement, and particularly feminist causes, have been seen as being very top down. And they have been. Feminist lawyers have pushed an aggressive litigation agenda, but sometimes without checking with their very constituencies. Reproductive justice reminds us that we can’t do that, and that we shouldn’t do that. Our movement will be stronger and our claim more powerful when it is diverse racially, ethnically, geographically, in terms of age, and in terms of education level and work status and immigration status.

So my hope for the (now past) official week of action and for the future many weeks of unofficial action is that we can keep in mind the importance of diversity of tactic in our movement, and that we can act with the knowledge that our legal precedents are only as strong as the communities they affect.

(via Feministing)