These days it seems like all I hear about are the twin crises of budget and healthcare, so I wasn’t surprised when one of my very first assignments this summer at LSRJ was to research religious hospitals and their funding. What did surprise me, however, was what I learned about the disparate standards of care between secular and religious healthcare facilities.

One out of every six patients in the U.S. is cared for in a Catholic hospital. In fact, the Catholic healthcare system is the largest private non-profit provider of healthcare in the nation – 70% of religiously affiliated hospitals identify as Catholic.  Because the Catholic healthcare system has significant medical responsibility for millions of Americans, the services they choose to provide or withhold can have a profound impact on the overall quality of care in the U.S. Additionally, religiously affiliated hospitals receive 50% of their funding from Medicare and Medicaid and also enjoy certain benefits like tax exempt status, low-cost financing through government bond programs, and in some areas, use of municipal buildings.

Because Catholic hospitals receive so much public funding and see so many patients, one might assume that the standard of care in a Catholic hospital is comparable to the standard of care in a secular hospital. Unfortunately, this assumption may not be true.

Some patients treated in Catholic hospitals – women in particular – may not be receiving reproductive healthcare considered basic and essential by secular medical facilities. That is because Catholic healthcare providers are governed by the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, with which all Catholic health care providers are obligated to comply (Directive 5).

Under the Directives, Catholic hospitals are prohibited from providing contraception (Directive 52), sterilization (Directive 53), most infertility treatments (Directives 40, 41, 42), condom distribution for AIDS prevention (Directive 52 prohibits all contraception, regardless of the reason), or abortion services (Directive 45).  Directive 48 goes so far as to say no medical care that could be construed as abortion can be provided, even to a woman with an extra-uterine (ectopic) pregnancy.

It is also difficult to obtain emergency contraception in Catholic hospitals—even as treatment for rape or sexual assault. Despite the fact that it is expressly addressed in the Directives, the language of Directive 36 is unclear on when and under what circumstances EC can be provided:

Compassionate and understanding care should be given to a person who is the victim of sexual assault. Health care providers should cooperate with law enforcement officials and offer the person psychological and spiritual support as well as accurate medical information. A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault. If, after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization. It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum.

Since emergency contraception is most effective in the first 72 hours, a healthcare provider’s refusal to provide comprehensive treatment can further traumatize survivors of rape and sexual assault by forcing them to leave the hospital and attempt to obtain EC elsewhere.

Catholic hospitals do provide a tremendous amount of care in rural and impoverished communities – indeed, they are often the only hospital in such communities. The question remains, however, whether funding institutions that refuse to provide the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare is really the best use of our scarce federal Medicaid and Medicare dollars.

-Megan Mullett

Drug policy has benefited from the harm reduction movement’s innovative approach to improving personal safety.  The application of a harm reduction model to reproductive justice has the potential to transform the way we view reproductive justice issues and mobilize support for issues that are traditionally marginalized within the movement.  I want to consider what we can learn from the harm reduction movement in advocating for sex workers’ rights and comprehensive sex education.

Harm reduction is a public health philosophy that emphasizes individual safety, regardless of lifestyle choices, over prohibition.  This approach acknowledges that some individuals may continue to engage in risky behaviors and aims to address the needs created by those behaviors.  The harm reduction movement spearheaded efforts to improve safety and provide services to substance abusers, such as safer injection sites for heroin addicts—the theory being that if addicts were going to use, at least providing them with clean needles would benefit the addicts themselves as well as the overall public health.  Because harm reduction focuses on social and environmental aspects of risky behavior, its application to sex work is intuitive.  

Sex workers face violations of basic human rights on a daily basis, including violence at the hands of clients as well as police brutality.  Additionally, many sex workers must cope with homelessness, substance dependency, and extreme poverty and desperation.  Because street-based sex workers are predominantly indigent women of color, selective law enforcement practices disproportionately target poor, minority women.

Sex workers are isolated from health care services because of fear of arrest and prosecution, as well as the increasingly inaccessible cost of such care.  Street-based sex workers in particular face health risks that the average worker does not, such as violence (perpetrated by police and clients), exposure to sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, and exposure to the elements.  When sex workers do access health care services, it is generally because of an emergency; thus, lack of access to preventative services is a serious health concern for sex workers.

In the context of providing services and outreach to sex workers, then, an application of the harm reduction model must take into account how various and overlapping forms of oppression create unique challenges for sex workers:  namely, substance abuse problems and lack of resources to access health care.  Services should include the provision of safer sex kits to sex workers and training in condom-negotiation skills, as well as free and confidential STD testing and information about HIV/AIDS.  Holistic services should also embrace substance abuse counseling and clean needles for drug use and hormone injections for transgendered sex workers who utilize hormone therapy.  Programs that collaborate across disciplines would address sex workers’ needs the most effectively by tackling substance abuse, safe housing, domestic violence, and health care.

So, why is this an issue of reproductive justice? First, this approach recognizes that sex workers are often in the industry for reasons beyond their control, such as economic hardship or inability to enter or reenter the workforce due to lack of recognized work experience or a criminal record.  In this respect, this acknowledgement of the multiplicities of oppression reflects the values of the reproductive justice movement—harm reduction recognizes that the decision to enter or remain in the sex industry can be (but is not always) a result of economic, racial, and gender injustice.  Accordingly, rather than criminalize, patronize or demonize sex workers, harm reduction seeks to provide safer options for those who choose to continue in the sex industry.  And, because a harm reduction approach ascribes no moral judgment to the activities of others, the traditional hierarchy assumed by service provision is disrupted.  Significantly, this challenges the notion that those in positions of power “know best” while empowering sex workers to make the healthiest choice possible for themselves under their individual circumstances.  This approach also empowers sex workers to use contraceptives and educate themselves on sexual health issues.  Importantly, then, application of the harm reduction model does not demean the work that sex workers do because it both identifies the intersection of race, class, and gender-based oppression that often create the need to continue working in the sex industry and recognizes that some sex workers remain in the industry by choice.

I already blogged about abstinence-only education, but I think it’s important to consider sex ed in light of harm reduction as well.  The philosophies which underlie harm reduction call for the elimination of funding for abstinence-only education in schools and implementation of comprehensive, sex-positive sex ed.  Abstinence-only education does not actually result in teens abstaining from sex, and instead denies them critical information about sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy prevention, and, yes—sexuality itself. 

Harm reduction acknowledges that people—and, in this case, young people—make choices that may put their health or well-being at risk, and seeks to provide information to most safely make those choices rather than administer judgment or condescension.  Like the earliest manifestations of the harm reduction movement—safer injection sites combined with resources and support for substance abusers who were trying to stop using drugs—comprehensive sex education presents young people with information and options.  And, like its predecessors in the movement, this information is health- and life-saving.  For teens who are having sex or are going to have sex, comprehensive sex education equips them with the tools and information they need to make that decision in a way that protects them from diseases and unwanted pregnancies as well as providing them with a healthy outlook on sexuality. 

Reproductive justice posits that all people have a right to information required to attain sexual and reproductive self-determination.  Providing students with comprehensive sex education reflects the principles that motivate the harm reduction movement, and as such gives students the tools they need to make healthy decisions about their bodies, their relationships, and their futures.

-Amanda Allen

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

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….

in the united states in 1996, about 1.3 MILLION women had an abortion. about half those women were under 25.
and i can assure you, there were approximately 1.3 million different reactions, experiences and stories behind those abortions.
countless girls have been raped or date-raped. are we allowed to talk about it, joke about it, turn it over from every side and try figure it our own confused reaction to it?
or is that just too icky, uncomfortable … and shameful?

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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Today marks the 36^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and for the fourth time bloggers all over the nation are participating in Blog for Choice.  We have been asked to answer the following question: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?

After eight years of Bush, it was a difficult task to choose just one thing.  I decided that my top pro-choice hope for President Obama, and the new Congress, is for the elimination of federal funding for abstinence-only education.  We have to start using our tax dollars to provide comprehensive sexuality education that teaches prevention and tolerance—and that does not rely on sexist attitudes about boys and girls, marginalize gay youth, or insist on using ideology to educate.  The new Congress should pass the Prevention First Act, and President Obama should eliminate funding for abstinence-only education programs in the federal budget and instead resolve to only approve funding for comprehensive sex ed programs.

$176 million a year is spent on abstinence-only education.  In order to receive federal funding, state grantees’ sex ed curriculum must adhere to a strict eight-point definition of abstinence-only education.  For example, abstinence-only education must teach “that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity” and that “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”  Abstinence-only programs may only mention contraceptives in terms of failure rates.

Abstinence-only education has been rightfully criticized for containing medically inaccurate information, its reliance on sexist stereotypes, and for failing to require educating teens about sexual assault.  Back in 2004, a study was commissioned by Rep. Harry Waxman on the content of federally funded abstinence-only education programs.  The study found that 80% of commonly used sex ed curricula contains false, misleading, or inaccurate information about sex and reproductive health.  Curricula commonly stated factually inaccurate information about the risks of abortion and consistently relied on sexist stereotypes, presumably in an effort to teach kids that girls and boys deal with sex differently.  For example, the Waxman study found that one curriculum listed “financial support” as one of women’s “5 Major Needs” and “domestic support” as one of men’s “5 Major Needs.”  Several curricula continue to refer to a now-discredited study that erroneously found that condoms fail to prevent HIV 31% of the time.

More recently, a 2008 study found that abstinence-only education is particularly harmful to girls by undermining social ideals of gender equality and by denying life-saving information about reproductive health to girls, who are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of unprotected sex (with respect to both STIs and unplanned pregnancies).   And, a 2009 report on virginity pledges—many of which are included in abstinence-only curricula—concluded that the sexual behavior of teens who took a virginity pledge did not differ from that of non-pledgers, but that pledgers were less likely to use protection when they did have sex.   (This is worse than what the same researchers found in 2001, which was that virginity pledgers did actually delay the first time they had sex compared to non-pledgers, but were less likely to use birth control when they did.)  Basically, virginity pledges don’t work—and teens who take them don’t have the information they need to protect themselves when they do have sex.

So, why are we still funding programs that portray girls as helpless gatekeepers and boys as uncontrollable bundles of hormones?  Both depictions are unfair, stripping both teen girls and boys of their sexual agency.  Why are we funding programs that place a problematic emphasis on the socially constructed concept of “virginity” rather than giving students the information and tools they need to make healthy choices? And what is the point of teaching kids that men need “domestic support”? Of course, the answer is ideology.  But it is a commitment to a radical ideology that prioritizes misinformation, scare tactics, sexism, and homophobia over science at the expense of teens’—and disproportionately teen girls’—health, safety, and self-determination. 

So, that is my number-one hope for the Obama administration and the new Congress.  Congress should pass the Prevention First Act, reintroduced on January 13, 2009, which aims to reduce unintended pregnancies, including by ensuring that all federal programs provide medically accurate information.  I hope that President Obama does not ask for any funding in his budget request to Congress for abstinence-only education.  I have high hopes that we will move into a new era where sex ed is science-based and, yes, sex-positive; where sex ed doesn’t teach kids that girls are responsible for denying boys’ sexual advances or tell bald-faced lies about contraception.  We need to as a society explore what it means for kids to have a right to information—and adjust sex ed curriculum accordingly. 

-Amanda Allen

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.

Last week, the ACLU sought a court order to force the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to release documents outlining U.S. policy limiting refugee and undocumented teenagers’ access to important reproductive health services. According to the complaint, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request to uncover the details of these policies in August, but has received no response. The FOIA request was triggered by news that in June 2008 the Commonwealth Catholic Charities of Virginia—an ACF grantee—fired four social workers who helped an unaccompanied, undocumented 16-year-old in its custody obtain an abortion and contraception. The complaint also references a Catholic Charities nurse who was fired after she refused to deny her patients information about condoms.

According to the complaint, the ACF’s policies apply to both unaccompanied, undocumented minors and unaccompanied refugee children—many of whom speak little to no English and are detained in jail-like facilities until they are deported, reunited with family in the U.S., or obtain asylum in the U.S., as circumstances warrant.

Reproductive justice demands that minors are given medically accurate information about sex and sexuality and have access to reproductive services. These policies are especially unconscionable considering the vulnerability of the populations affected. As the ACLU put it, “[these minors] are in need of our compassion and care,” not the imposition of religious beliefs that may not match their own. It is maddening that grantees of federal funds who are supposed to provide at-risk minors with necessary services and care are allowed to operate under “the basic teachings of the Catholic Church” rather than to provide medically necessary and legally required reproductive care.

The ACLU’s complaint reminded me of the news in September that women immigrants are now required to receive the HPV vaccine, Gardasil in order to become citizens—a requirement not imposed on male immigrants or current U.S. citizens.

Critics have commented that this is another example of the government using vulnerable populations as human lab rats to test new reproductive technologies. And, I can’t help but notice the double-standard imposed on immigrant women when it comes to the supposed “encouragement” of sexual promiscuity that mandating this vaccine would entail. (You’ll recall, many social conservatives were concerned that vaccinating girls against HPV would conflict with their abstinence-only-until-marriage-or-else message.) I think that this double standard sends a message that only certain groups are worth government “protection”—as a post at Feministing put it, “I guess they don’t care about these things when it comes to immigrant women.”

Personally, I don’t feel that Gardasil has been on the market long enough to be mandated to any group. In fact, the lead researcher in the development of the HPV virus vaccine, Dr. Diane Harper, said that Gardasil “has not been out long enough for us to have post-marketing surveillance to really understand what all of the potential side effects are going to be.” (And while we’re at it, let’s keep studying the effects of the vaccine on boys and men. If we’re going to make the vaccine mandatory, it should be for both sexes.) The Gardasil mandate for immigrant women, coupled with the recent news of alarming domestic policies regarding undocumented and refugee minors’ access to reproductive services, signals the importance of continuing to build and sustain a movement that addresses the intersections between immigration status, class, and access to health care.

-Amanda Allen

I’ve been thinking a lot about coalitions lately. Coalitions and communities, about how those two concepts overlap and how they are very different creatures with very different functions, and different needs.

Some of these musings were sparked by a conversation with a friend of mine, who mentioned how he had spoken up in an LGBTQIQ support group about his experience as a transgender person and gotten nothing but an an awkward silence back from the other members. This led to a discussion of the limitations of the LGBTQIQ (etc) umbrella, and how the word “community,” so commonly applied to the LGBTQIQ movement, is often a misnomer. The issues faced by lesbian and gay people are not the same as issues faced by bisexual people are very much not the same as issues faced by transpeople are not identical to issues faced by intersex people. The issues faced by queer people of color are not the same as those faced by queer White people. The issues preoccupying affluent and middle class queer folks may be completely irrelevant to queer people living in poverty. And all too often the umbrella doesn’t cover everyone the way it’s supposed to or assumed to.

It seems to me that this problem arises when people within the so-called community assume that because it is a “community,” everyone encompassed by it does have the same needs, the same interests, and the same or similar experiences. It’s that mindset–an expectation of automatic clarity and easy understanding, an inability to engage with difference–that my friend met in what was supposed to be a safe space. In fact, the LGBTQIQ movement is much more like a coalition than a community, an alliance of groups with vastly different–and sometimes conflicting–interests, concerns, and unifying experiences. And coalitions are not–cannot be, should not be–safe spaces. Effective coalitions require us to step outside our comfort zones, to work through and with differences of opinion, to expect that understanding won’t always or often be intuitive or simple.

The other thing which has me thinking about coalitions is the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which–as Amanda pointed out in her last post–is most certainly a reproductive justice issue. I believed, and still believe, that it was time for marriage discrimination to be ended in my state. The initiative passed by only a few percentage points–and is a hallmark of coalition failure, a failure of coalition-building.

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Although many ballot initiatives that would threaten reproductive rights were defeated Tuesday night across the nation, we cannot consider last night a victory for the reproductive justice community.

But let’s start with the good news. In California, voters for the third time voted against a constitutional amendment that would require parental notification and a mandatory waiting period for a minor seeking an abortion. This time around, the proponents of the constitutional amendment purported to provide pregnant minors with another option: that of telling an adult relative (other than the parent) about the pregnancy, but having to simultaneously report her parents as abusive to authorities. Proposition 4 was defeated 52 to 47.

Voters in Colorado overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have defined a fertilized egg as a legal human being. By providing legal protections for fertilized eggs, this measure would have had particularly devastating consequences, had it passed, as it would have called into question the legality of hormonal contraception, in vitro fertilization, and stem cell research in Colorado. Voters in South Dakota also rejected a second attempt to ban abortion in the state (this time with “exceptions” for rape, incest, and the health of the pregnant woman). And, in Michigan a measure was passed that would expand embryonic stem cell research in the state.

However, reproductive justice cannot be achieved until all people are treated equally and all people’s decisions about their reproductive and sexual self-determination are treated with dignity. In Florida, voters narrowly approved an amendment banning gay marriage. The Florida constitution will now define marriage as between one man and one woman. Voters in California similarly approved Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that eliminates the rights of same-sex couples to marry announced by the California Supreme Court in May of this year. Voters in Arizona supported a similar constitutional amendment.

And, in a stunning display of contempt for same-sex couples and committed unmarried heterosexual couples, 57% of voters in Arkansas voted to pass a proposal that disqualify all potential adoptive parents except for married couples. The measure also prohibits unmarried couples living together from fostering children.

Why anyone would want to make it even harder for a loving couple to adopt a child in the context of an already-broken adoption system is beyond me. Apparently, the goal is to “publicly affirm the gold standard of rearing children whenever we can”–not to match disadvantaged children with stable and caring parents. (In case you were wondering, the “gold standard” is “married mom and dad homes.”  The priority, then, is deciding whose lifestyle qualifies under a discriminatory and outdated definition of what a family is, not placing needy children in loving homes–to advance a “moral” agenda at the expense of kids without homes.

It’s curious that after reporting that this measure passed in Arkansas, the next sentence in this article is the following: “Tuesday was a relief for supporters of reproductive rights.” Adoption rights are reproductive rights. The rights of same-sex couples to marry and the rights of adults to become parents are reproductive rights. I don’t know about you, but after hearing about the measures that passed in California, Arizona, and Arkansas, the last emotion I feel is relief.

-Amanda Allen

• 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