Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

*The views expressed in this blog post are those of the blogger herself; she is not speaking on behalf of Law Students for Reproductive Justice.*

Many of my law school colleagues and I have dipped our toes in the immigration law pond.  In my experience, when people ask me what type of law I am most interested in, and I say, “immigration law,” it invites a conversation that I don’t want to have.  I’m hesitant to speak about immigration because I never know if the person on the other side will be an individual who has no idea that our immigration system is broken and will use language that is derogatory to me and the clients I’ve worked with.

With the start of Utah’s legislative session this week, I am not only feeling this hesitancy but anger.   Representative Herrod, who has announced that he will join the U.S. Senate race to upseat Senator Hatch, has decided to sponsor legislation that would gut the Utah Immigration Accountability and Enforcement Act passed last year.  The Utah Immigration Accountability and Enforcement Act would create a guest worker program for those who are undocumented in Utah but would like to legally work and live in the state.  In order to get a permit, individuals would have to get a background check, take English and civic classes, and their tax contributions would be tracked.   Aside from the constitutional issues at hand and the likely possibility that the federal government will not give a waiver so that the state can implement this legislation, many immigration advocates were excited because the bill was solution-oriented.  Herrod’s legislation would convert the Accountability and Enforcement Act to the Utah Illegal Alien Family Transition Pilot Program.  Don’t you love the name?  His legislation would only allow individuals who have either (1) overstayed their visas or (2) let their visas expire and have children of a certain age and that were born in specific countries apply. Individuals who came into the country without inspection or through non-legal means could not apply.  The bill would allow local enforcement agencies to detain individuals who they suspect of being in the country without any legal status and punish law enforcement agencies that do not comply with enforcement laws by withholding state funds from them.   Before any of this happens, the bill states that our congressional delegates must lobby for amending federal immigration statutes so that Utah may implement this program.  Herrod said this about his bill, “The forgotten person in all of this has been the legal immigrant. We’ve passed laws that are aiding those who come here illegally. That is wrong; we need to work on laws that aid the legal immigrant.”

What Herrod has forgotten or does not want to acknowledge is that in some places in the world there is no functioning way to legally migrate to the U.S.  If I have to wait at least ten years to migrate from Mexico through a family based visa or if my only other option is to be sponsored through an employer, that is not a functioning immigration system.   I am all for state legislation that pushes the federal government to reform our broken immigration system, but legislation that guts another bill that may be unconstitutional is a waste of time and only foments a heated debate.

Reproductive justice isn’t just about abortion and contraceptives, but about improving the lived realities that impact people’s ability to decide when, how, and if they want to parent.  Because many immigrant women have no legal status, they are more subject to intimate partner violence, lack insurance coverage, and are vilified through the media as mindless, breeding machines whose sole purposes are to birth “anchor babies” and “terrorists.” Immigrant women are clearly part of this struggle. In Utah alone, immigrant women already have been targets of gender-specific threats.  In 2010, Concerned Citizens of the United States compiled a list of 1300 individuals who they thought were in Utah without legal status, asking them to be deported, and sent the list to media outlets.  The list included names, social security numbers, and even pregnant women and their expected due dates.    Herrod’s bill isn’t going to help most immigrant women and it definitely isn’t adding anything new to our country’s immigration debate. 

African American women experience premature births and infant mortality at almost twice the rate of white American women.  When faced with this statistic, the reasons that automatically come to mind are because of socioeconomic inequalities regarding access to healthcare, prenatal care, and a healthy diet.  These inequalities frequently correlate with race.  However, there are increasing studies that point to race being a significant factor in premature births.  Just being a racial minority increases the likelihood of having a premature baby.

The documentary Unnatural Causes, When the Bough Breaks details how being a racial minority, and the everyday prejudices that one experiences, causes a considerable amount of stress to the body. (more…)

As you’ve likely seen covered in the news, several cities have been blanketed with racist and harmful billboards purporting to “save hundreds of thousands of black babies from being aborted every year in the United States…,” a claim that is offensive, outrageous, and, equally importantly, outright ignores the serious reality of health disparities in this country. To learn more, check out the round-up below of some of the more recent blog posts on this issue. If you know of more, put them in the comments! And congratulations to California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ), who successfully mobilized and got 3 of the billboards in the Los Angeles area removed!

“Racist billboards come to Oakland. WTF.” from Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice (ACRJ) in Oakland.

“The continuing fight against anti-abortion billboards targeting communities of color” at Feministing.

“One Racist Billboard Comes Down, Another Goes Up” at RH Reality Check.

“Antiabortion Groups Launch Attacks on Latinas’ Health, Rights, and Dignity” by LSRJ’s very own Alex Walden, Reproductive Justice Fellow at Center for American Progress.

Last week, the Speaker of the House announced plans to introduce legislation that further restricts abortion access in the new health care plan. Last week, the Philadelphia District Attorney, Seth Williams, indicted Dr. Kermit Gosnell on eight counts of murder in the deaths of seven infants and a Bhutanese refugee. These deaths occurred in a clinic that provided abortions to mostly impoverished women, women of color, and immigrant women. The incredibly unsanitary conditions of the clinic, and the horrendous way the women seeking abortions were treated (or more accurately, not treated at all) are described here.

I believe (as do many others) these two events are connected. The events demonstrate that when abortion is used as a pawn in a political (democratic v. republican) chess game, the health and lives of impoverished women, women of color, and immigrant women are put at risk. Even if the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” goes no further, abortion has been more deeply entrenched in the political discourse as a “sacrificial lamb” that can be used to appease a specific group of people.

Reproductive justice activists and lawyers must not only fight against the many barriers women in marginalized communities face in accessing reproductive health care, but also must focus on ensuring that the reproductive health care women receive when (if) these barriers are overcame is safe, effective, and comprehensive. I kept this post short in the hopes of fostering a discussion about what lawyers, law students, community folk, and other RJ activists can do/are doing in response to the existence of clinics like Dr. Gosnell’s.

Lara Shkordoff

On page 12 of the September/October, 2010 issue of Mother Jones, an inset feature called “Conspiracy Watch” details the efforts of various pro-life groups to propagate the idea that abortion is a racist genocidal plot. This is, sadly, not a belief confined to the lunatic fringe of a shadowy misogynist far-right coalition. Unfortunately, there is a very real and unsettling history of reproductive injustices that range from Planned Parenthood’s early ties to the eugenics movement to the Supreme Court’s notorious holding in Buck v. Bell (upholding the forced sterilization of a woman said to be mentally retarded, an opinion in which Justice Holmes famously wrote “Three generations of imbeciles is enough”). If these tactics were embraced by pro-choice movements today, it would legitimately be seen as a dangerous movement, circumscribing the rights of populations of women who tend to be low income and/or people of color. But it is much worse than misleading to imply that the pro-choice movement continues to hew to such ideals. (more…)

A couple of weeks ago, I was irritated and hurt to see a television news story about Ines Sainz, the Latina sports reporter who was allegedly sexually harassed in the Jets’ locker room while trying to conduct an interview for TV Azteca. The rest of the press quickly jumped on the story, and pretty soon, pictures of what Sainz was wearing when she did the interview — and video clips about her feigning surprise at the cat calling — sprung up all over the internet.

My initial reaction was exactly what the press intended it to be: I was at first offended by the sexual harassment, then offended by the photos of Sainz and what she was wearing, and finally blamed her for bringing this on herself. “Come on, what did she think was going to happen when she walked into a locker room full of half-naked NFL players wearing something like that?! She knew exactly what she was doing.” (more…)

I have been interning at LSRJ for over a month now, and it has been a great learning experience, even though much of what I have learned makes me simultaneously sick to my stomach and incredulous that such egregious violations of human rights can still go on in this day and age. I attended LSRJ’s first Summer Networking Lunch last week at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC), a legal services and advocacy organization that, as the name implies, works with incarcerated parents, with an emphasis on prisoners from Communities of Color and low-income communities. Most of us are aware that in the U.S., incarceration disproportionately impacts People of Color, the poor, and other marginalized populations. However, it was not until this Networking Lunch that I began to more fully realize that the harms done by incarceration unjustly impacts, not just the individuals who are imprisoned – many of whom are sentenced for non-violent drug offenses – but also their families and communities. Those sentenced to prison are taken well outside of their communities – presumably to take them away from the “influences” that made them turn to crime in the first place – where they are separated from their loved ones and are unable to maintain ties to their community that, if preserved, would perhaps make reintegration into society much more successful. This is especially hard for prisoners with children; even though a great many of those incarcerated are imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses, incarcerated parents are regularly disallowed from even basic physical contact with their children for more than a year. They also have very little time to even see their children, as those looking after their kids must take time off of work and expend resources they probably don’t have to bring the children to the prison, where there is no real place for kids to be comfortably. Families, and therefore the community at large, are further ripped apart if family members of prisoners (often grandparents of those incarcerated) who are perfectly able and willing to take care of these kids are disallowed from doing so because of laws that restrict the placement of children with ex-felons – even if the felonies were for crimes completely unrelated to children and were non-violent and occurred many years ago. Though it might seem reasonable at first to disallow placement of children with felons, in many cases, it seems that placing children with family members who love them and their incarcerated parents, who will work to keep the family together and who are invested in the success of these kids, is much better than taking children completely out of their community and placing them in homes at great distance from all of their social ties, and often into communities that in no way resemble the ones from which they came. In this way, many communities not only lose members due to incarceration, but also lose a lot of bright kids due to the repercussions of the incarceration of their parents – and this loss of human capital is often permanent.

-Tina Sinha

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.

It’s hard to believe it’s the last day of my internship with LSRJ. This summer has been fabulous. I’ve learned so much and gotten to participate in some fun events, like testifying before the California Commission on the Status of Women at their public hearings. We’ve had great guests for our Networking Lunches and heard about a wide range of issues–from transgender rights to the latest anti-choice proposition in California to young women’s activism and perspective on RJ issues.

My internship project paired me with Generations Ahead, a brand new organization that focuses on assisted reproductive technology and its implications for reproductive justice. I learned a lot about policy work and about some cutting-edge issues and got to know the GA staff. Today when I stopped by to say goodbye I learned that GA is guest blogging at RaceWire right now, so I’m going to use this space to do a little cross-pollination: Truc Thanh Nguyen, Project Director of Racial Justice and Human Rights, writes about the relevance of reproductive technologies to social justice movements.

And while you’re exploring the web beyond Repo Repro, check out the Generations Ahead website to find out more on what they’re about. This org is gearing up to do some great and necessary work in a relatively unexplored area of reproductive justice. I certainly hadn’t fully considered the impact of reproductive technologies before I started my work with them. My perceptions have definitely been widened on these issues.

I should also note that it’s International Blog Against Racism Week. As it happens, I did that here. But don’t let the fact that IBARW only officially lasts until tomorrow stop you if you haven’t had time to post on your own blog this week. Every week should be a week to speak out against racism and injustice.

It’s been fun! Thanks to everyone who read and everyone who commented on my posts. Blogging here has been an unexpected bonus in a summer of exciting RJ work.

–Erin Simonitch

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 give 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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