Here’s a guest blog by Madison Burnett, rising 3L at Georgia State University and recently elected LSRJ national board president.

Atlanta, Georgia

Georgia is not an easy place to be a reproductive justice advocate. Abortion rights are constantly threatened at the state level, and every legislative session in Georgia provides new laws that undermine a woman’s decision to have an abortion or bills that serve as an attempt to challenge to the constitutional right to abortion. Anti-choice groups continue to disproportionately target the South and rural areas where they think- with some reason- that they will be more successful.

The week of July 14-20 served as a harsh reminder to the South’s reproductive justice community that our rights continue to be threatened. The anti-choice group “Operation Save America” came to Atlanta last week. The group, formerly known as Operation Rescue, has a history of blocking access to abortion and family planning clinics and some members have advocated violence against abortion providers. Their threatening activities of the week included throwing a brick through an abortion provider’s window, but luckily no one was injured.

Apparently even anti-choice conservative Christian churches aren’t acceptable enough for OSA. The group even protested at a church in the Sugar Hill suburb because the pastor had the audacity to indicate that women who have abortions shouldn’t be demonized. They also targeted moderate churches who support abortion rights and welcome gay parishioners.

OSA targeted Atlanta in an attempt to pervert our city’s history in the civil rights movement, twisting civil rights language with the goal of restricting women’s power to control their bodies and lives. This majority white, majority male group have gone so far as to accuse Black women and their families as “perpetrators of black genocide.”

The RJ community in Atlanta responded with strength and intelligence. SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, SPARK Reproductive Justice Now , and Planned Parenthood of Georgia led the way, organizing a press conference, counter-protests, and informative workshops. I have never been prouder to be a part of the RJ movement then when I read Spark and SisterSong’s joint statement. Spark also beautifully co-opted the group’s “sidewalk counseling” practice outside a OSA rally.

OSA’s presence is a reminder to all of us of the importance of standing up for reproductive justice, both as citizens and as future lawyers.

• 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

Last year, reproductive justice activists at Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) were informed that the school (which is Jesuit) would not fund internships at abortion rights advocacy organizations…after those students had already helped raise money to fund students’ summer placements. LSRJ flew into action, organizing protests and petitions. And their work paid off last week when the GULC administration reversed its policy.

From Georgetown Law student and LSRJ chapter head Rachel Spitzer:

On September 7, Dean Alexander Aleinikoff of Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) announced a new funding program guaranteeing summer stipends for all students who wish to participate in summer public interest internships, regardless of the issues on which their internships focus. This new program came in direct response to outcry across the campus last spring when GULC administrators refused to fund internships focused on reproductive rights. Student leaders, including the leadership of the Georgetown chapter of Law Students for Choice, worked with the administration for months, and were elated when the new program was announced. “This tremendous victory shows what we can accomplish when we work together with alumni, supportive student organizations, and faculty, and refuse to accept anything less than equal treatment,” said Joy Welan, president of LSFC at Georgetown in 2006-2007 [ed. note: and current LSRJ board member]. The new program is a major improvement because reproductive justice internships will get funded. In addition, the policy of guaranteed funding reduces barriers for all students who want to pursue public interest internships. The efforts of Georgetown LSFC and other supporters of educational freedom and reproductive rights have made it possible for future students to pursue public interest internships without subject-based discrimination.

The proof is in the pudding: on-campus advocacy can get things done. And fast.

There are over 1.1 billion Catholics in the world. The lion’s share of those are in South and Central America, where religious observance is high, abortion is often illegal, and rates of birth control use are low. And the Pope isn’t to happy about that. The New York Times reported the other day that the Pope, in a visit to Vienna, called on politicians to help reverse declining birthrates there and in other European countries:

Benedict stressed demographics as he repeated, in a strong multifront attack, the Vatican’s long-held opposition to abortion.

“I appeal, then, to political leaders not to allow children to be considered as a form of illness,” he said in his native German to a gathering of diplomats. “I say this out of concern for humanity. But that is only one side of this disturbing problem.

“The other is the need to do everything possible to make European countries once again open to welcoming children,” he added, in this nation with a low birthrate. “Encourage young married couples to establish new families and to become mothers and fathers! You will not only assist them, but you will benefit society as a whole.”

He further said that children should not “be considered a form of illness.” We can all recognize that birthrates in Europe are declining. Italy’s birthrate is at an all-time low. And religious observance is on the wane in countries that have long been among the most staunchly Catholic in the world. The Pope is right to say that Catholicism “profoundly shaped the [European] continent.”

But what makes me uncomfortable is what he said next: that Europe’s embracing of legalized abortion and rejection of Catholic teachings regarding birth control could threaten the continent’s existence, leaving a world where Catholicism predominates not in traditionally white European countries but in Latin American countries that are devout in the way Europe used to be.

While praying in the shadows of Vienna’s holocaust memorial, the Pope called out abortion as the threat to European humanity. Might that have been a good moment to talk instead about the horrors of genocide, and perhaps to bring up Rwanda or Darfur? Or to highlight the importance of universal healthcare in healing the ill and ensuring a society that respects its citizens? Seems to me like a real missed opportunity.

(h/t Sheila)