@PPSWO just tweeted:
OH’s Atty Genl has REJECTED the Personhood petition language to ban#birthcontrol 1.usa.gov/tIyvHh It wasn’t “fair and truthful”.
(Source: thetart)
This is seriously happening right now.
My spouse works in phlebotomy.
As part of an ice-breaker while he preps the tourniquet, tubes and needle, he casually asks why his patients are there. Obviously it doesn’t require an answer or anything, because that’d be invasive as hell, but often it helps alleviate patient tension if they start talking about something, and the elephant in the room makes for an easy jumping block. People trust medical workers.
“I’m getting an abortion,” one young woman he saw today said. Not the first, not the last.
But she went on to describe her situation. It wasn’t what she wanted; who knows how it happened—brief lapse of judgment, failure of contraception, tampering with contraception, marital rape, whatever—but the point was, she wasn’t ready. She decided to abort, even though her husband tried to convince her otherwise.
He asked for a divorce.
Now she’s in a race to get the procedure done as fast as possible, because he intends to fight for custody of the unborn child. He wants to legally force her to carry that fetus she doesn’t want to term and then take the resulting baby from her.
When my spouse told me about this, his voice shook.
Seriously, this is happening. It’s happening right now.
Who the fuck does this guy think he is trying to tell his partner what to do with her own uterus, not to mention endure pregnancy and labor against her will. Fuck.
This makes me so incredibly angry.
Sterilization of Women of Color: Does “Unforced” Mean “Freely Chosen”?
U.S. women of color have historically been the victims of forced sterilization. Some women were sterilized during Cesarean sections and never told; others were threatened with termination of welfare benefits or denial of medical care if they didn’t “consent” to the procedure; others received unnecessary hysterectomies at teaching hospitals as practice for medical residents. In the South it was such a widespread practice that it had a euphemism: a “Mississippi appendectomy.”
So it’s a startling statistic that today, some of the very populations that were subject to this abuse have high rates of voluntary sterilization. A recent report by the Urban Indian Health Institute showed that, compared to non-Hispanic white women (in gray), American Indian and Alaskan Native women (in cream) have very high rates of sterilization.
What to make of this? Iris Lopez, in an article titled “Agency and Constraint: Sterilization and Reproductive Freedom Among Puerto Rican Women in New York City,” writes about what she discovered when she asked Puerto Rican women in New York City why they choose to undergo sterilization.
During the U.S. colonization of Puerto Rico, over one-third of all women were sterilized. And today, still, Puerto Rican women in both Puerto Rico and the U.S. have “one of the highest documented rates of sterilization in the world.” Two-thirds are sterilized before the age of 30.
Lopez found that 44 percent of the women she surveyed would not have chosen the surgery if their economic conditions were better. They wanted more children, but simply could not afford them.
They also talked about the conditions in which they lived and explained that they didn’t want to bring children into that world:
[They] talked about the burglaries, the lack of hot water in the winter and the dilapidated environment in which they live. Additionally, mothers are constantly worried about the adverse effect that the environment might have on their children. Their neighborhoods are poor with high rates of visible crime and substance abuse. Often women claimed that they were sterilized because they could not tolerate having children in such an adverse environment
Many were unaware of other contraceptive options. Few reported that their health-care providers talked with them about birth control. So, many of them felt that sterilization was the only feasible “choice.”
Lopez argues that, by contrasting the “choice” to become sterilized with the idea of forced sterilization, we overlook the fact that choices are primed by larger institutional structures and ideological messages. Reproductive freedom not only requires the ability to choose from a set of safe, effective, convenient and affordable methods of birth control developed for men and women, but also a context of equitable social, political and economic conditions that let women decide whether or not to have children, how many, and when.
The illusion of Choice
i’d like to add that it is important to READ the Lopez text b/c it is a longitudinal study (over 30 years following up and with women in particular families that she met when she first started this work. i.e. grandmothers, mothers, daughters of adult age.) she also coins the term “agency within restraints” to note how the daughters (in their mid-20s-30sish today) have also opted for sterilization but for different reasons than their mothers and grandmothers. some of these reasons are still connected to class status/income/poverty. others are connected to safety issues for the woman i.e. domestic violence and not experiencing a pregnancy again. etc. etc.
also sterilization procedures have changed as well. today there are options such as essure where the procedure is non-surgical and out-patient (they go vaginally into the uterus and “plug up” the fallopian tubes, wait for scar tissue to build over a series of months while the person is on a hormonal method until scar tissue fully formed for no mature egg to move through/to uterus).
the interesting thing is, back in 2005 when i wanted an IUD (non hormonal for 9 years) insurance (1199 seiu) did NOT cover the IUD but they did cover BOTH forms of sterilization IN FULL which is thousands of dollars MORE than an IUD which is good for up to 9 years, no hormones, does not mess w/fertility as hormones do, and has limited side effects compared to sterilization, and does not require hospital visits (which have additional costs). so this is still def an illusion of choice when our “health care system” does not cover all choices, but will REMAIN wanting us to get sterilized.
(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)
Let me tell you some things.
I used to investigate child abuse and neglect. I can tell you how to stop the vast majority of abortion in the world.
First, make knowledge and access to contraception widely available. Start teaching kids before they hit puberty. Teach them about domestic violence and coercion, and teach them not to coerce and rape. Create a strong, loving community where women and girls feel safe and supported in times of need. Because guess what? They aren’t. You know what happens to babies born under such circumstances? They get hurt, unnecessarily. They get sick, unnecessarily. They get removed from parents who love them but who are unprepared for the burden of a child. Resources? Honey, we try. There aren’t enough resources anywhere. There are waiting lists, and promises, and maybes. If the government itself can’t hook people up, what makes you think an impoverished single mom can handle it?
Abolish poverty. Do you have any idea how much childcare costs? Daycare can cost as much or more than monthly rent. They may be inadequately staffed. Getting a private nanny is a nice idea, but they don’t come cheap either. Relatives? Do they own a car? Does the bus run at the right times? Do they have jobs of their own they need to work just to keep the lights on? Are they going to stick around until you get off you convenience store shift at 4 AM? Do they have criminal histories that will make them unsuitable as caregivers when CPS pokes around? You gonna pay for that? Who’s going to pay for that?
End rape. I know your type errs on the side of blaming the woman, but I’ve seen little girls who’ve barely gotten their periods pregnant because somebody thought raping preteens was an awesome idea. You want to put a child through that? Or someone with a mental or physical inability for whom pregnancy would be frightening, painful or even life-threatening? I’ve seen nonverbal kids who had their feet sliced up by caregivers for no fucking reason at all, you think sexual abuse doesn’t happen either?
You say there’s lots of couples who want to adopt. Kiddo, what they want to adopt are healthy white babies, preferably untainted by the wombs and genetics of women with alcohol or drug dependencies. I’ve seen the kids they don’t want, who almost no one wants. You people focus only on the happy pink babies, the gigglers, the ones who grow and grow with no trouble. Those are not the kids who linger in foster care. Those are certainly not the older kids and teenagers who age out of foster care and then are thrown out in the streets, usually with an array of medical and mental health issues. Are they too old to count?
And yeah, I’ve seen the babies, little hand-sized things barely clinging to life. There’s no glory, no wonder there. There is no wonder in a pregnant woman with five dollars to her name, so deep in depression you wonder if she’ll be alive in a week. Therapy costs money. Medicine costs money. Food, clothes, electricity cost money. Government assistance is a pittance; poverty drives women and girls into situations where they are forced to rely on people who abuse them to survive. (I’ve been up in more hospitals than I can count.)
In each and every dark pit of desperation, I have never seen a pro-lifer. I ain’t never seen them babysitting, scrubbing floors, bringing over goods, handing mom $50 bucks a month or driving her to the pediatrician. I ain’t never seen them sitting up for hours with an autistic child who screams and rages so his mother can get some sleep while she rests up from working 14-hour days. I don’t see them fixing leaks in rundown houses or playing with a kid while the police prepare to interview her about her sexual abuse. They’re not paying for the funerals of babies and children who died after birth, when they truly do become independent organisms. And the crazy thing is they think they’ve already done their job, because the child was born!
Aphids give birth, girl. It’s no miracle. You want to speak for the weak? Get off your high horse and get your hands dirty helping the poor, the isolated, the ill and mentally ill women and mothers and their children who already breathe the dirty air. You are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, for children. You don’t have a flea’s comprehension of injustice. You are not doing shit for life until you get in there and fight that darkness. Until you understand that abortion is salvation in a world like ours. Does that sound too hard? Do you really think suffering post-birth is more permissible, less worthy of outrage?
“Pro-life” is simply a philosophy in which the only life worth saving is the one that can be saved by punishing a woman.
”STFU, Conservatives: When I say I’m pro-life…
This is perfect.
(via mis-anthrop-ologie)
And I mean, I believe in stuff like this.
(via freudianflips)
Well, this made me tear up this morning.
(via tastiejam)
Realest thing to ever grace my dash
(via southerntellect)
When a pregnant woman is arrested for harming the fetus by smoking crack, her crime hinges on her decision to have a baby. She can avoid prosecution if she has an abortion. If she chooses instead to give birth, she risks going to prison. Similarly, when a judge gives the defendant the choice between Norplant or jail, incarceration becomes the penalty for the defendant’s decision to remain fertile. If she violates probation by becoming pregnant, she will be sent to prison. Prosecutors and judges see poor Black women as suitable subjects for these reproductive penalties because society does not view these women as suitable mothers in the first place.
Abortion Foes' Latest Backdoor Ban
Kansas has long been a frontline in the abortion wars, so it isn’t much of a surprise that anti-abortion crusaders there have pioneered one of the newest tactics for limiting access to legal abortion procedures: developing onerous regulations that specifically target clinics. And this strategy—which could lead to shutting down all of the state’s abortion clinics by the end of this month—is being embraced by abortion foes in other states as a way to end abortion in practice if not in law.
This is how it works: anti-abortion legislators pass what are often called “TRAP” laws, or “targeted regulation of abortion providers.” That is, regulations that only apply to abortion clinics, setting compulsory standards that are often difficult to meet, like mandated sizes for waiting and recovery rooms, reconfiguring of exits and entrances to facilities, and additional bathrooms. In Kansas, abortion providers last week were handed a long list of new regulations and told they must comply by July 1. Virginia and Utah have signed similar measures into law this year, joining states like South Carolina and Indiana that have previously targeted providers with stricter regulations, and a number of other states have been considering bills like these.
anti-abortion is really code for anti-women - brown women specifically. rich white women will ALWAYS have access to abortions.
UW Hospital: Abortion language inserted into state budget could jeopardize OB/GYN accreditation (Wisconsin)
A provision inserted in the state budget would prohibit UW Hospital and Clinics from funding abortions, but it’s unclear whether that will stop the hospital from offering required abortion experience to doctors-in-training.
Abortions are not performed at UW Hospital and Clinics, but obstetrics and gynecology residents train at Planned Parenthood to learn about family planning, which includes the opportunity to perform abortions.
State law currently prohibits the use of public funds to pay physicians to perform abortions with few exceptions, but the new legislation specifically targets UW Hospital and Clinics. UW Hospital and Clinics is a public authority and does not receive state funding.
“We don’t want abortions being conducted by the UW and we don’t want to have their residents assisting in abortions at the UW,” said Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, the lead author on the amendment.
Hospital officials argue they are not funding abortions because they are conducted off-site, at Planned Parenthood, and Meriter Hospital pays for that portion of the residents’ training.
The war on women will not stop until we eliminate the worship of men, gods and killing.
Abortion Doula Diaries: Que bueno que estas aqui
Every shift I work at the hospital leaves me with many reflections on the experience of supporting women through abortions, the things I learn about their lives in the short time we spend together, the twisted way politics interferes with what happens there.
Every woman responds differently to the experience, brings a different level of energy, nervousness, calm. […]
The more I do this work, the more I think that most of my value as a doula in these moments is simply being a kind stranger who listens. I never feel like I’m doing very much, usually just making conversation, reassuring, holding hands and caressing shoulders. I’m a smiling face at the bedside without any other tasks than to just be present.
Today one of the women looked up at me during the procedure and smiled: Que bueno que estas aqui (How good that you are here). I responded: Mi placer (My pleasure). And it really is my pleasure, my delight that such a simple act might have an impact. Might make someone feel less alone and more resilient.
Before we parted ways she said to me Este trabajo que tu haces es muy lindo (This work that you do is very lovely).
FUCK YEAH: CRR files lawsuit challenging Texas abortion sonogram law
Today, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a class action lawsuit against Texas’ new abortion ultrasound law on behalf of Texas medical providers performing abortions and their patients. The law prohibits a woman from getting an abortion unless the doctor providing the abortion performs an ultrasound on the woman, takes steps to show and describe the ultrasound images to her, and plays the sound of the fetal heart. The doctor must personally place the images where the woman can see them, and describe the images in detail, regardless of her wishes. The woman must then wait at least 24-hours before she can obtain an abortion (the waiting period is two-hours for women who live more than 100 miles from an abortion provider). With the enactment of this law, Texas joins Oklahoma in having the most extreme ultrasound requirements in the country.
“This law barges in on the doctor-patient relationship” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “When you go to the doctor, you expect to be given information that is relevant to your particular medical decisions and circumstances, not to be held hostage and subjected to an anti-choice agenda.”
The Center argues that the ultrasound requirements violate the First Amendment rights of both the doctor and the patient by forcing physicians to deliver politically-motivated communications to women, regardless of their wishes. The Center also argues that the law discriminates against women by subjecting them to paternalistic “protections” not imposed on men.
“This law is patronizing to women in Texas. It is based on outdated stereotypes that women are too immature or too incompetent to make important decisions,” said Northup. “It’s as if the politician has charged into the doctor’s office and told the woman, ‘Honey, you just don’t understand what you are doing. Let me explain it to you and tell you what to do.’”
In addition, the Center argues that the ultrasound requirements violate basic principles of medical ethics and serve no medical purpose.
