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…)

At Comic Con this year, “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane revealed that Fox would not be airing an episode of the new season focused on abortion.  As previous references to abortion on the show have been in line with the taste and sophistication that we have come to expect from Family Guy (read: sarcasm), we probably aren’t missing much. However, the uproar that has been raised about Fox’s censorship has brought has called attention to the relative dearth of portrayals of abortion in the media. The website for a documentary called “The Abortion Diaries” has a by-no-means comprehensive list of choice stories in U.S. media.  Especially in recent years, it seems that a show will either have a character consider an abortion then back out at the last minute (sometimes with an accompanying miscarriage to avoid actually having a baby on the show), or they will have the abortion and have a tremendous amount of guilt over this procedure. In the most extreme example, Jack and Bobby had a character get an abortion, and promptly die in a car accident.

For one of the best representations of choice on television, however, prospective viewers should watch one of the first. Maude, a spinoff of Norman Lear’s All in the Family, was the first primetime TV show to have the main character choose to have an abortion. The episode Maude’s Dilemma (conveniently available online) illustrates what choice was like for women before 37 years of guilt were forced down our throats. Maude wants to make the decision that is best for her family and herself. They ultimately decide that they don’t want to be parents of a teenager when they turn 60.

When CBS broadcast the episode in 1972, two affiliates decided not to run the episode, and 32 were pressured to not air the rerun the following summer. There were also 24,000 protest letters mailed in response to the two airings.  But the network still decided to air the episode. Which leaves the question, 37 years later, why is the question being stifled?

-Jake Johnson

Today, we have a special guest blog post from Sheena Bosket, co-coordinator of LSRJ’s chapter at Georgia State University.

Last night, I watched 2 episodes of the MTV show “Sex…with Mom and Dad.” The show attempts to facilitate a dialogue with teenagers and their parents about sex, where both parties can air their grievances, concerns, etc. with the help of board-certified sex and relationship therapist Dr. Drew. Both episodes that I watched dealt with teenagers who had been with a number of sexual partners and parents/siblings that were concerned about them. However, in the first episode, the teenager was female and in the second episode, the teenager was male. I was struck, though not surprised, by the contrast in treatment of the two teenagers by Dr. Drew and by the voiceovers used to describe them. In the voiceovers in the episode featuring the female teenager, she was repeatedly referred to as “promiscuous” and was said to “sleep around.” In the voiceovers for the male teenager, he was referred to as a “player” and a “male whore,” a phrase that is offensive to women because by using the qualifier “male,” the suggestion is made that usually a “whore” is female.

 

As the episodes progress, Dr. Drew uses exercises to open up the dialogue between the teenagers and their parents. The first exercise is called “The Icebreaker,” which is meant to encourage both the teenager and her/his parents to share parts of their sexual past and openly communicate with each other. The second exercise is called “The Breakthrough” and is meant to show the teenager the potential consequences of his/her actions. After each exercise, the parents and teenager meet with Dr. Drew to discuss how the exercise affected them. In the episode featuring the female teenager, even before he assigned the first exercise, Dr. Drew took a noticeably paternalistic approach to discussing her sexual history with her by suggesting that her number of sexual partners was most likely a sign of internal turmoil, which may have been true, but does not necessarily have to be the case. When the teenager was hesitant to reveal to Dr. Drew how many sexual partners she had been with, Dr. Drew asked her if she was afraid that people were going to judge her if she revealed her number. When the teenager responded affirmatively, Dr. Drew told her that her fear suggests that she feels guilty about how many people she’s been with. I don’t think this is necessarily true. I think her fear shows that she is aware of the society she lives in. The fact of the matter is if you are a teenage girl in America and it’s decided that you’ve been with more than your fair share of sexual partners, people are going to judge you. That’s just true. Accept it Dr. Drew. Also, she may have been hesitant to reveal her sexual past because she knows that her peers watch this show and she didn’t want to be called names at school; a justifiable fear that should have been acknowledged by Dr. Drew. He also asked her how many sexual partners she planned on having in her life and told her that he was concerned about “the numbers,” a concern that was noticeably absent from his discussion with the male teenager who, interestingly enough, had had more sexual partners than the female teenager.

 

In the female teenager’s episode, her “Breakthrough” exercise was designed to show her the “weight of her choices.” She, her mother, and her sister all participated in the exercise, which involved all of them going on a nature walk together. Along the way, each person had to pick up a rock for each sexual partner they had been with and put it in a bucket that they carried with them for the duration of the walk. The teenager had the most sexual partners of the three and therefore, she had the heaviest bucket and the most to consider. I do not feel positively about this exercise because I feel the subtext of it was that the teenager should feel guilty about the number of sexual partners she’s had or that she should be punished for having as many partners as she’s had. If Dr. Drew was really concerned about this teenager understanding the consequences of her actions, a much better exercise would have been for each rock to have the name of a possible STI she could have gotten written on it along with a rock that had “pregnancy” written on it, as this is another consequence of her choices.

 

Now, I haven’t said all of this just to vent. Well, maybe some of it. I’ve said it to point out that this television show, which was meant to facilitate sexual dialogue between the teenagers who watch it and their parents as well, may also have a very substantial negative effect: instead of encouraging young women to talk to their parents about what’s going on in their lives, it may convince them to keep their sex lives to themselves and be ashamed of them as a result of the sexist treatment of young women on the show. By choosing to create a television show like this, MTV has also created for itself extra responsibility. We live in a society where some young people are still being “educated” about sex solely through “abstinence-only” programs. Many of these programs give young people erroneous information and if they feel that they can’t turn to their parents to discuss this information and possibly have it corrected, what these teenagers don’t know can hurt them. Some teenagers may only receive correct information about STIs, testing, pregnancy, etc. from a show like “Sex…with Mom and Dad,” but if this information is presented via a sexist framework, it can still be harmful. If MTV wants to appropriately address the issues that the young people face who have made the network so successful, this needs to change.

-Sheena Bosket, Co-Coordinator, LSRJ at Georgia State University

 

Apropos of the season–because even for those of us who don’t celebrate Christmas, the imagery is kind of all over the place–I’ve been thinking recently about childbirth and how society treats women as mothers.

A friend just had a beautiful baby boy, her first. She had a long and difficult labor, and described in her blog how one of her doctors wanted to break her water. She told him no, as she wanted to keep the process as natural as possible, and the doctor proceeded to argue with her–while he continued to feel around for her placenta to try to break it.

What is that? What makes a male doctor think he knows better than a mother in labor about when to do what? And what, what makes him think that he can physically invade her body while she’s saying no?

I haven’t talked to my friend about this yet, because she was upset enough as it is. And my knowledge of medical malpractice law in this regard isn’t very extensive. But there are some extremely sketchy consent issues going on there. In fact, it sounds like medical rape.

Fortunately, my friend was attended during the rest of her labor with a more sympathetic female doctor in attendance. But this should, simply put, never happen. A woman in the throes of labor should never have to argue with or fight off a doctor who won’t take no for an answer.

Another close friend of mine has asked me to be an assistant birthing coach for her when she comes due in February. This will be her first child as well. I’ve never witnessed a birth before, and I’m honored that she wants me there. Of course, one thing that I’ll be doing is making sure that her doctors follow her wishes. I’m glad I can be there for her, but again, I shouldn’t have to protect her. Laboring women should be able to trust their doctors to be on their side, to listen when they say “no.” It’s not a complicated problem. We don’t lose our personhood because we’re carrying or delivering a child. Period.

Sound familiar?

The right to choose whether to reproduce is based in the same principle as the right to choose how to bring that child into the world.

Along the lines of personhood and how our society treats women’s bodies, this weekend’s RHReality Check features a very interesting and in my opinion very astute analysis of “The Britney Show”. Never a fan, I’ve really come to feel for Britney Spears in the last few years as she struggles with adulthood and with the pitiless machine of objectification from which she’s never been able to escape. I think Sarah Seltzer sums it up pretty well here:

Many women suffer through at least some of these things. Sure, they do it with a smaller audience, but they often feel the same humiliation when they get caught in sweatpants or with unshaved legs, behave unthinkingly, make bad romantic choices, grow out of their adolescent bodies, get dismissed as crazy, are frowned upon as irresponsible parents or, after giving birth, are desexualized and resented.

It seems that for Britney, and for many of our sisters and friends and mothers and daughters (and daughters-to-be), respect for our personhood is still something we have to fight for.

• 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

Some days, I wonder whether certain prosecutors learned about a little thing called legislative intent when they were in law school. The reason I’m wondering this today is this: in Alabama, a prosecutor is charging a woman who is addicted to methamphetamine and who was unable to kick her addiction during her pregnancy with “chemical endangerment,” a new offense created in 2006 to protect children who live in homes where methamphetamine is produced. The law was envisioned as providing a tool with which to remove kids from homes where parents were producing meth.Operating on the theory that a fetus is a child, and paying no mind to the legislative intent motivating the law, the county prosecutor has used it to charge several women whose infants test positive for meth immediately after birth.  The prosecutor tries to sell the law as being about insuring maternal and fetal health:

 ”We are doing this for the sole purpose of trying to make sure both the mother and the child have a healthy pregnancy,” he said.  ”We’re not trying to throw these women in jail. That’s absolutely not the goal of it.” 

Putting aside for a moment the fact that he is in fact throwing women in jail, this statement is totally wrongheaded.  Expert after expert has asserted and article after article has shown that jailing pregnant women and new moms who struggle with addiction does not ensure healthy pregnancies — in fact, it has just the opposite effect.  Prosecutions like this one drive pregnant women away from seeking the prenatal care that is so vital to their health and that of their fetuses.  Feminist Law Profs has a laundry list of just some of the negative consequences of these prosecutions:

They deter women from getting drug treatment; they restrict reproductive freedom by incentivizing abortion; they are inevitably selectively enforced against the poor and minority; they remove the focus from the very real problem of lack of prenatal care for poor pregnant women; they take the attention off proven risks to fetuses such as fetal alcohol syndrome and tobacco use during pregnancy; they put hospitals and medical care providers in an adversarial relationship with their patients; they lead to absurd results, such as prosecuting women for not getting prenatal care or having a miscarriage; and so forth.

And yet, the prosecutions continue. Despite the fact that drug treatment programs are less expensive than incarceration and are more effective and ensuring healthy pregnancies and helping women get off drugs, treatment continues to be offered very little and funded even less. In some states, there is not a single drug treatment program that is aimed at or has space for a pregnant woman or mother and children. Given all these facts, the Alabama prosecutor’s pledge of purpose becomes even more laughable. The facts are out there to prove that his prosecutions are counterproductive. But at least the healthy child routine provides a good facade to mask the other, less socially acceptable, purposes of these prosecutions.  If this prosecutor (or the others out there pushing punishment on pregnant women and mothers) really cared about making sure pregnancies resulted in healthy births, they’d have halted the prosecutions yesterday.  

 

  

It’s no surprise that pregnant teens face unique challenges. As if finishing high school weren’t difficult enough for a pregnant woman or a young mother, some school districts count the days she misses before and just after birth as unexcused absences.  And then today there’s news, via Cara, that a Maryland school district has decided to inform parents whenever a student is is pregnant, regardless of the student’s wishes. This despite the fact that, under state law, teens have a right to make decisions about their reproductive lives independent of their parents. Not only that, but pregnant teens also have the penumbra of federal constitutional privacy rights that other women have too. What’s more, there’s broad agreement that the policy is bad for the health of both pregnant teens and their fetuses.  

Health experts say that students’ willingness to seek care will decline.“There’s no question this will have a chilling effect on kids coming forward,” said County Health Officer Peter Beilenson. “It’s going to slow down health care.”Howard’s policy “really pushes the issue of informing the parents, when state law says minors have the right to make decisions independent of the parents,” said Deborah Chilcoat, an education and training specialist for Planned Parenthood of Maryland and co-chair of a county coalition on adolescent sexuality and reproductive health. “It’s not going to be in the best interests of young people in Howard County,” she said.  

What’s the school district’s response to all this? Well, just that “parents have a right to know.” Implicit in that statement is the idea that the parents’ right trumps the young woman’s right…which in this context seems totally preposterous. Especially since, as Cara points out, the policy is also probably gender discriminatory:

The thing is that these girls are getting f—-d over on every count. You can bet that the school isn’t going to demand the name of the father, and then call his parents if that boy is a student. Because what boys do with their penises is almost always ultimately up to boys. And these pregnant teens aren’t exactly going to “get away” with not telling their parents, anyway.  

This policy is just another example (others include states’ prosecuting pregnant women who are addicted to drugs) of states, cities, and other governmental entities taking steps that are ostensibly to “protect” fetuses and women but that ultimately endanger them. These policies push women away from seeking pre-natal care, which has been proven time and again to be vitally important to maternal and fetal health. 

(Caption: Huckabee loves babies. The women who give birth to them? Not so much.)

Feministing’s Jessica Valenti has snagged a guest-blogger gig at the Nation, and she’s making the most of it in her first post, taking on Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s views on women and abortion. She writes:

Papa Huckabee is on one heck of a sexist roll.

Just this past weekend Huckabee said, “I think if a doctor knowingly took the life of an unborn child for money, and that’s why he was doing it, yeah, I think you would, you would find some way to sanction that doctor…I think you don’t punish the woman, first of all, because it’s not about … I consider her a victim, not a criminal.”

Now, you have to love that Huckabee assumes abortion providers are men (I suppose that makes it easier to paint them as taking advantage of poor widdle women), but even worse is the assumption that women don’t realize that when they get an abortion, they’re getting an abortion” (emphasis in original).

Paternalism like this from the men in positions of power in the U.S. is nothing new. But it kills me that the more Huckabee says stuff like this, the higher he polls in Iowa and other places. He is ascendant even as he is increasingly public with his antiquated and evangelically-motivated views of women (and gay people, and people who are HIV-positive). All this despite the fact that it turns out that Huckabee has accepted over $50,000 in speaking fees from groups that support stem-cell research and increased access to emergency contraception.

This tactic of blaming the doctor and excusing the woman as not accountable for her own actions is old hat for the anti-woman anti-abortion brigade. It’s a hypocrisy they don’t often address. So perhaps we should give Huckabee props for coming out and saying what his fellow misogynists think: the reason we shouldn’t punish women for seeking abortions but should punish their doctors is that women are not sound moral actors while doctors are. Shocking and saddening that in the year 2008 this notion still gets so much traction…but it does.

All that said, the Iowa caucuses tonight and the primaries that follow over the next month or so will be at least in part a measure of what’s more important to Republican America: culture-war type misogyny and closed-mindedness or real-world credentials and plans to deal with the mess of a situation the Bush Administration has left. I don’t want any of the GOP candidates as my President, but I’d certainly be more disgusted and less hopeful about the coming years to see Huckabee’s name on the ballot than some of the others.

[Note: the political opinions discussed in this post and on this blog are the author’s alone and do not represent the views of LSRJ, which is a non-partisan nonprofit organization].