In Nashville, Tennessee, a routine traffic stop turns into a nightmare for expectant mother Juana Villegas. Driving without a license would normally earn her a citation, but instead, Juana is arrested. An immigration officer at the police station finds she is in the country illegally. Imprisoned and awaiting a court hearing, she goes into labor three days later. At the hospital, the guard will not leave the room while she changes into a gown, forcing her to undress in front of him. While recovering, Juana is shackled by wrist and ankle to the bed; her ankles are shackled together when she gets up to go to the bathroom. The guard has disconnected the phone in her hospital room so she cannot call her husband. When she is taken back to county jail, the authorities take her newborn son from her and gives him to her husband, whom she is still not allowed to see.

The sheriff’s deputy takes away the breast pump the sympathetic nurse has given Juana. Unable to pump, Juana’s breasts become painfully engorged and infected. Her child, denied her milk, quickly develops jaundice. The sheriff’s office ignores the damage done to both mother and child while Juana waits over the long 4th of July weekend for her day in court, in pain and unable to sleep.

All of this occurred pursuant to Nashville’s 287g deportation law, permitting immigration status checks at traffic stops. If Juana had been white, she would have received a citation and sent on her way by the sheriff. Because she is Latina, she was instead treated, in her own words, “like a criminal person.” (Story broken by local Latino blogger Tim A. Chávez at Political Salsa and covered there in great depth; picked up by Daily Kos, the New York Times and RH Reality Check.)

Biologist Susan Shane discovers her 7-year-old adopted daughter has begun to enter puberty. Alarmed, she makes a doctor’s appointment and searches the internet for clues on what has caused her little girl to prematurely develop breasts. What she finds is startling: scientists have linked chemicals in polycarbonate plastics (used in food packaging, water bottles, and baby bottles) and in phthalates (in food packages, time-release capsules, shampoos, lotions, and deodorants, among other things) to early puberty in girls.

Susan’s daughter is Black and has probably been exposed to these damaging environmental toxins since birth. In part because U.S. government’s WIC program discourages breastfeeding by dispensing free formula, 95% of Black women bottle-feed their children–and four times as many Black girls as White girls begin puberty around age 8. And early puberty puts them at heightened risk for breast cancer, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and polycystic ovarian syndrome. Susan stops using plastic water bottles and lunch containers, and her daughter’s pubertal symptoms disappear. “But I cringe as I watch her classmates line up for school lunches heated in plastic, and eat and drink food carried from home in plastic containers,” Susan says. “Some of the girls have already grown prominent breasts and with all that I have learned, I am worried about their futures.”

These two stories illustrate intersecting oppressions beyond those of gender, injustices that can’t be entirely linked to that old, familiar villain “patriarchy.” What we’re talking about here is the operation of kyriarchy perpetuating reproductive injustice for immigrant women, poor women, and women of color. We cannot blame patriarchy alone for these injustices.

So what is kyriarchy?

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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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Hi, folks. As Julie mentioned in her intro post, I’ll be guest blogging at Repo Repro this summer while she masters the bar exam. A little about me: I’m headed into my second year at UC Davis School of Law (King Hall) and will be co-chairing my LSRJ chapter for the 2008-2009 academic year. I’m also a news junkie, and blogging is one of the things I do for fun (yeah, huge nerd here) so I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to apply those dubious talents for a good cause. Thanks for reading!

–Erin Simonitch

Small changes can make a big difference.

It’s a principle that helps sustain and hearten those of us committed to social justice. Without it, the magnitude of the work would overwhelm us. But it’s a double-edged sword, because the principle operates whether the change is for better or for worse. So it’s also why law schools drill “baby lawyers” to obsess over details and precise wording. Use the wrong language in a contract agreement, leave out an important detail, fail to thoroughly define your terms, and sooner or later the consequences will explode into thousands of dollars of unnecessary expenses, while you’re stuck in court debating the meaning of the word “chicken.” (As my property professor likes to point out, litigators exist to clean up other lawyers’ messes.)

Members of Congress demonstrated their failure to understand this concept when they passed the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act, making a small change in federal Medicaid law that has a big impact on young women’s access to contraceptives. Before the Act’s passage, pharmaceutical companies could and did offer hormonal contraceptives at significant discounts. But in drafting the new rules for calculating Medicaid rebates, lawmakers left out a provision that would have preserved those discounts for campus health centers. Now, pharm companies must sell contraceptives to clinics at higher prices or suffer a financial penalty–a “business decision” that’s all too easily made by corporations for whom the bottom line is, well, the bottom line.

The result, of course, is that students pay the price. Contraceptive costs have risen dramatically on college and university campuses, sometimes as much as 500%.

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On the campaign trail this weekend, Senator Obama touched on what is perhaps the most explosive question in an already-explosive issue:  whether abortion is ever a good thing.  Here’s what he said, addressing his support from many to the right of political center:

“It may be that those who have opposed abortion get a sense that I’m listening to them and respect their position even though where we finally come down may be different,” he told reporters at a news conference.

“The mistake that pro-choice forces have sometimes made in the past, and this is a generalization so it has not always been the case, has been to not acknowledge the wrenching moral issues involved in it,” he said.

“Most Americans recognize that what we want to do is avoid, or help people avoid, having to make this difficult choice. That nobody is pro-abortion, abortion is never a good thing.” 

I’d agree that the abortion rights movement has gotten itself in trouble sometimes by refusing to acknowledge the complexities of a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy. But, really, Senator Obama, has the other side done that complexity thing any better? And do we gain anything by starting to accept and repeat their talking points? I think not.  What’s more, saying — as many on the anti-choice side of things do — that abortion is never a good thing obscures the myriad reasons that women get abortions. Yes, abortion is often a fraught decision for women. But it is often a good decision — and the availability of abortion is a good thing.  It’s a good thing for the already-living children of a woman who decides to get an abortion because she is struggling financially and wants to be sure that she can still put food on the table for her kids. Legal and accessible abortion is a good thing for the college student who decides to get an abortion because knows that she will not be able to finish her coursework and maintain her work-study job if she is pregnant or parenting — or for the high school student facing the same dilemma and having the same thoughts.  Legal abortion is a good thing for the professional woman who — in large part because of the societal sexism that we have not yet figured out how to escape — accidentally becomes pregnant and feels that she has to choose the career she has always dreamed of or the child she wants some day but not right now.  And abortion may be a good thing for a couple who are facing a long and painful labor to deliver an unviable child.  Abortion is certainly complicated for many, many people. But that doesn’t mean it’s never a good thing. Obama betrayed his convictions by speaking that way on the trail today. (via zuzu).  

Last week, I wrote about why prisons are a feminist issue. This week, another feminist takes on feminists’ complicity in the mass incarceration movement. Writing in Make/Shift Magazine and reposted on AlterNet, Jessica Hoffman calls out white, wealthy feminists (who have long been the face of the movement) for their (our?) reliance on police and notions of community safety — an impulse that has devastated the black community. Hoffman writes:

In recent years, members of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence have incisively and repeatedly critiqued the white-feminist-led antiviolence movement for its reliance on (and, thus, complicity with) the U.S. criminal-legal system, which uses the rhetoric of “safety” to destroy communities of color, squash dissent, and create profit for private corporations. Yet the primary macro-level strategies of the white-feminist-led movement against domestic violence and sexual assault continue to rely on this system, with a major focus on legislation such as the Violence Against Women Act and the push for hate-crimes laws to include gender and sexual orientation.[3] On the micro/personal level, I have repeatedly seen white, class-privileged feminists unhesitatingly call upon police to protect and serve them; have listened to white feminists advise each other on which “authorities” to go to for protection from stalkers and other abusers; and so on.[4]

At both the macro level of feminist movement strategy and the micro/personal level of individual actions, I’m struck by the apparent lack of awareness of the prominent critiques made by feminists of color of law-and-order approaches to ending (or, even, finding “safety” from) violence. To be a self-identified feminist activist apparently unaware of (or, worse, deliberately skirting) the current work of not only INCITE! but also feminist icons like Angela Davis and numerous other voices calling for abolition of the prison industrial complex as a key element of social change seems to me to be part of a movement that is not only disconnected from but also damaging to some of the most vibrant and potentially liberating social-justice organizing happening today.

There’s no doubt that Hoffman’s rhetoric is inflammatory. And it’s not limited to talk of our prison nation — she indicts white feminists’ responses to immigration too. While it would be a mistake to say that I endorse everything Hoffman has to say (and I am sure that LSRJ would not organizationally echo her anger), she is very right to point out that at the moments where mainstream feminism and the rights/interests of other, marginalized groups have intersected, we as feminists have often not taken these other groups into full account.

Perhaps this is the affliction of every activist group — that its interests should always come first. But if feminism is to stay current in the fluid and intersectional world that is the present moment (see: Barack Obama), feminists have to do a better job of considering the complexities of our society before putting our significant political capital into action.

(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].

The blogosphere has been a-twitter with the news this week of a proposed Missouri ballot initiative that would virtually ban abortion in the state. Unlike the South Dakota ban that was defeated last year, this ballot initiative does not come right out and admit its intentions to bar the procedure; instead, it would create such onerous requirements that no doctors would be able to perform abortion in the state and it would become de facto illegal. Insidious, huh?

Here’s why: According to the Jefferson City (MO) Star, the Missouri ballot initiative “would require doctors to extensively review the medical literature on abortion and investigate each patient’s background and lifestyle. It would require doctors to certify that the abortion was better for the woman than a full-term pregnancy.”

Taking a page right of Justice Kennedy’s Gonzales v. Carhart play book, in which he more than implied that women should not be trusted with a “decision so fraught with emotional consequences,”  this ban suggests that women are not…smart? autonomous? adult?…enough to decide for themselves whether or not to end a pregnancy. Instead, doctors need to protect the poor little women to make sure they don’t make a mistake. And if the doctors “fail” and a woman later regrets her abortion? The doctor would be subject to civil suit.

Missouri’s ballot initiative makes clear how worried we should be about the emergence of the “abortion hurts women” argument - a line of “reasoning” that first appeared in the fight over the South Dakota ban. That the “abortion hurts women” line resonates with so many people is worrisome. Not because it’s true (which, on the whole, it is not), but because it validates the antiquated thinking that women are not men’s equals and not entitled to the full autonomy that citizenship provides. And because so many people seem to want that idea validated to begin with.

Given that abstinence-only programs have been proven time-and-again to be ineffective, it’s no surprise to see pressure mounting to defund them. RH Reality Check today posted a letter, signed by ten prominent researchers in the area of teen reproductive and sexual health, and sent last week to Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid. In the letter, the experts call on Congress’s Democratic leaders to make good on their promise to change things in D.C. by stopping the stream of millions of dollars each year that flow to abstinence-only programs (and to Crisis Pregnancy Centers). They wrote:

As a group of leading scientists who have recently conducted research on adolescents, reproductive health, and abstinence-only education, we are writing to express our strong concern about increasing federal support for abstinence-only education (AOE) programs.

***

The federal programs promoting AOE have prompted multiple scientific and ethical critiques. These critiques were summarized in a January 2006 paper by Santelli, Ott and others. By design, abstinence programs restrict information about condoms and contraception - information that may be critical to protecting the health of young people and to preventing unplanned pregnancy, HIV infection, and infection with other sexually transmitted organisms. They ignore the health needs of sexually active youth and youth who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning for counseling, health care services, and risk reduction education. Withholding lifesaving information from young people is contrary to the standards of medical ethics and to many international human rights conventions. International treaties and human rights statements support the rights of adolescents to seek and receive information vital to their health. Governments have an obligation to provide accurate information to adolescents and adolescents have a right to expect health education provided in public schools to be scientifically accurate and complete.

It goes on. And on. There’s just so much that’s wrong with abstinence only programs. I, for one, hoped the Democrats would own up to that and make getting rid of — or at least minimizing funding for — misogynistic, hetero-centric abstinence only programs a priority. But, as Amanda Marcotte points out, the Dems are in a bind:

Right now Democrats are in a political bind, because abstinence-only proponents are super eager to label anyone who advocates for effective programs (i.e., comprehensive sex education) as advocates for teenagers f–king in the streets.

So, in Lakoff-ian fashion, Amanda calls for a reframing:

What needs to happen is basic reframing. This isn’t about who wants who to have sex with who when, but about who wants kids to be healthy, and who is resigned to letting them get sick. Which is all you’re going to get with abstinence-only. But it’s more than just what “works” better in terms of reducing STDs and pregnancy rates (though comprehensive sex education does), but it’s a philosophical question, too. The very idea that schools should be in the business of reinforcing ignorance instead of improving knowledge is a violation of basic American ideals.

I think Amanda’s right that a reframing would help make real, comprehensive sex-ed more palatable (shocking that providing kids with accurate sex information is not enough).  What strikes me, though, is how often we on the progressive side of this issue find ourselves in this bind. We need to reframe on abortion. We need to reframe on sex-ed. We need to reframe on women and work. I’m left scratching my head a little about why it is that we are so bad at framing in the first place.

President Bush announced today his choice to head the Federal Government’s Family Planning Program:  Susan Orr. Orr, whom Bush called “very qualified” turns out to be not at all qualified for this job. Here’s why:  she vehemently opposes contraception. That’s right. The woman who will be helping shape federal policy about access to contraception doesn’t think contraception is a good idea. She thinks the Global Gag Rule is fine and dandy and that birth control is “not a medical necessity.” She even authored a charming document called “Real Women Stay Married.” And she thinks that Plan B is a “grave threat to women’s health.” Jill says it sounds like a headline from the Onion. Only it’s real life. It’s headspinning.

But it’s not surprising. Why not? Bush’s previous choice for this post was Dr. Eric Keroack, the medical director of A Woman’s Concern (a “crisis pregnancy center”), who has been intimately involved with Leslee Unruh’s Abstinence Clearinghouse and who pushes the scientifically dubious claim that women (note: only women) become unable to form loving relationships if they have sex extra- or pre-maritally because of supposed changes in brain chemistry. Again - no science here.

I’ll chalk this one up to another embarrassingly bad Bush appointee. And the Bush administration knows it. Why else would they announce her appointment on the same day as the Mukasey hearings?