Mermaid Musings

This op-ed caught my eye today, mostly for the title and the conclusion. Because, frankly, I don’t really get this guy’s argument. He seems to be saying that because there are more male atheletes being deprived of a place to compete than women athletes as a result of budget cuts, that Title IX is actually discriminating against men.

Is it just that the economy makes men cranky and scared? or are they all whiners who will grab at any excuse to propel women back to the dark ages? Give me a break. Title IX was enacted to ensure that women had equal access to competitive sports - which means if you have to make sure if you’re cutting atheletic programs, you have to continue to ensure women’s access. And let’s face it, as brilliant as Title IX is, when it comes to college atheltics, unless you go to a women’s college, there are more men’s teams than women’s teams. Period.  Which means, if you need to cut athletics, you have more men’s teams that are expendable just by virtue of the fact that there are MORE of them. It’s basic math really.

Quit whining boys. Get a life. Go save the environment or find something useful to do, will you?

It’s nice when there’s good news in the news for a change!

First, the US Senate is moving toward legislation that will get rid of the global gag rule permanently. The back-and-forth that has ensued from this dispicable policy may finally be coming to an end. The rule prohibits any agency that receives US foreign aid from even talking about abortion. It has put millions of women’s lives and health at risk. There is reason to hope that this legislation will pass the full Senate, as a recent attempt to make the global gag rule permanent was soundly defeated.

The 9th District Court upheld a Washington State law that mandates pharmacies stock Plan B. The implications of this just make me giddy. Washington State, apparently believes that women’s health and reproductive rights trump the consciences of pharmacists, particularly when they are using faulty logic in claiming that Plan B is equivalent to an abortion when in fact it helps prevent abortions.

The House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies just released their 2010 budget eliminating funding for abstinence-only sex education. Still much work to be done on that particular document, but this is a good start.

And finally, the state of Massachusetts is suing the federal government over the Defense of Marriage Act, stating that the feds have overstepped their bounds and violated the constitution by recinding the right of states to make their own decisions regarding marriage. Go Massachusetts!

What a lovely way to start the weekend!

Is this 2009 or 1821? Congress is hard at work on the health care reform and according to a Women’s Health Policy Report, there are efforts being made to exclude abortion from health care in the US. As if it weren’t bad enough that the Hyde Amendment prevents women on Medicaid, Federal employees and military personnel from accessing abortion services by denying payment for said services. No, now these fundamentalist ideologues and the wimp-ass democrats who like to pander to them want to make sure that private insurance companies no longer pay for abortion services either. How will they do this? By not allowing federal subsidies to be used to pay for any policy that covers abortion care.

Does anyone else find this insulting, not to mention fascist? It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? The very people who oppose universal health care through a single payer system because it smacks of socialism and too much government involvement into people’s private lives (ie, their health care) have no qualms whatsoever in limiting the services available to women.

This on top of the ‘personhood‘ movement is almost enough to make me throw my hands in the air. (I mean really, civil rights for zygotes? WTF?) Roe may be safe with Obama as president (and that’s a maybe in my book) but a woman’s access to abortion is by no means secure. And having a right with no ability to access it is kind of like not having the right. As my long time heroine, Marlene Gerber-Fried, recently said - having Obama in office opens a window of opportunity for advancing women’s reproductive rights. We need to use this small window of opportunity to KNOCK DOWN THE DAMN DOOR!!

To hell with the common ground agenda. We need to stop the hand-wringing and apologizing: abortion is a human right. Period. Women deserve the right to determine the course of their lives and if that means terminating an unwanted pregnancy, so be it. We need to take pride in making the decisions that are best for us and best for our families. Get out of the closet, throw off the shame. We need abortion pride day! I get accused of being to flippant about abortion all the time, but damn it life is too short for all this shame and silence. Women choose abortions for all kinds of reasons and we need to start acknowledging and honoring women who choose abortion for making good decsions for themselves, their health, and the well being of their families.

Write to your representatives and tell them to stay the hell out of women’s bedrooms, bathrooms and reproductive decisions. Abortion is basic reproductive health care and a woman’s right.

Grr.

So here is fodder for conversation: When is it not ok for a woman to have an abortion?

In reading Frances Kissling’s piece, my gut response is the original intention of the Roe decision: the decision to have an abortion should be left to the woman and her doctor. If a doctor feels s/he cannot ethically perform an abortion on a woman, then there is the decision and the woman is free to go along with her doctor’s ethics or find another doctor who is more comfortable with her wishes. I appreciate Frances intention that if we become as hard-line about the absolute morality of having an abortion, then we are little better than the anti-abortion folks who don’t think there is ever a good reason to have an abortion. I think the problem really lies in the fact that as a society, we’re always looking for absolutes: the one, right way that has to be followed every time by every person.

Certainly, I think most people would have some moral qualms about a woman choosing to have an abortion because she didn’t like the biological sex that her baby was going to be assigned, or even having an abortion because she didn’t want a baby born under a certain astrological sign. But I also think women making those decisions would be hard pressed to find a physician willing to perform a procedure for those reasons. As much as I believe the Roe decision was inadequate to protect a woman’s right to abortion, this one of those moments when I feel that the right to privacy is good to invoke.

As far as Joan Walsh’s answer to Mr. O’Reilly, that fetuses don’t need to be considered, I agree, in most abortions -the 90+% that are performed before 12 weeks- there isn’t much to consider in terms of the fetus’ rights. As far as the less than 2% that are performed after 24 weeks, I believe that the fetus is considered, heavily and when an abortion is performed, it is not done frivolously or without a lot of weighing of the decision.

Frankly, I think most people who favor reproductive justice and reproductive freedom are not fanatics and are willing to consider the complex moral issues involved in late-term abortions. However, it is difficult to discuss the complexity of these issues when our opponents work continuously to hamper women’s access to early abortion and work to eliminate the option for women entirely. Because, the issue isn’t really abortion. The issue is really about power and who is controlling women’s bodies and women’s sexuality. If we lived in a society in which women’s bodies and women’s sexuality were valued and appreciated and, dare I say, honored, then we could have reasonable conversations about the moral complexity of abortion. Because then there wouldn’t be the threat of taking away a woman’s right to decide her own future, her own life.

The following is a piece I wrote for a newsletter that got bumped after Dr. George Tiller was assassinated and the space was needed for other things. This piece is probably very toned down from what I would write today. I am even less convinced than ever that Obama’s common ground efforts are really going to advance women’s reproductive rights or reproductive health or reproductive justice. His recent appointment of an anti-abortion advocate to HHS does not bode well for women. It would be nice to end the culture wars and shut those prudish, murdering antis up once and for all, but they are never going to agree that women have a fundamental human right to express their sexuality and to determine the course of their own lives - and if we can’t start with that as a premise…well, I frankly, don’t see the point.

–>

We all breathed a collective sigh of relief when Obama was elected President in November. Not only was his election a moment of historic significance, but it signaled a light at the end of a dark, dark tunnel for women’s rights. But as Cynthia Thacker said, Obama didn’t say “yes, I can, he said yes, we can. As hard as many of us worked to get Obama elected, the work is far, far from over.

The past eight years have been a struggle just to maintain. Now it is finally time for us to push forward. As Marlene Gerber-Fried, a long time reproductive rights activist and scholar, has said “Roe was meant to be the floor, not the ceiling.” The gains of the Roe v. Wade decision were the beginning of women’s liberation, not the final victory. There is still much work to do to guarantee women’s human rights. The Obama Administration has already demonstrated it’s commitment to women’s reproductive freedom, by ending the global gag rule, cutting funding to abstinence-only sex education, reversing the HHS regulation that threatened women’s options with regard to birth control, and stating clearly that a woman’s right to decide what to do with an unintended pregnancy must be respected.

But Obama’s record is far from perfect. In an attempt to win Republican votes for his economic stimulus package, he cut funding for family planning from the bill. He also failed to remove the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortion, from the budget. While it is refreshing to see a political leader try sincerely to reach across the aisle and work toward solutions for everyone, it is not heartening to see compromise reached at the expense of the needs of women.

Obama’s call for finding ‘common ground’ on the abortion issue to end the ‘culture wars’ and put an end to the ‘stale and fruitless debate’ is one to be watched closely. On the one hand, the endless debate between the anti-abortion movement that seeks to deny women access to any and all abortion and the reproductive justice movement that seeks to ensure all women’s access to safe and legal abortion has gotten us nowhere. However, it is not yet clear that the ‘abortion reduction’ agenda is the common ground that it claims to be.

On the surface it seems that reducing the need for abortions in this country is a goal we could all agree on. Those of us in the reproductive justice movement are certainly in favor if improving women’s access to contraception and improving young women’s knowledge with better sex education programs. Both of these strategies have been shown to reduce the rate of unintended pregnancy which then leads to a reduction in the need for abortion services. Of course, there would also be a need for improving women’s access to education, childcare services, paid maternity leave and better paying jobs – all of which would enable more women to choose to carry a pregnancy to term if she wished. Ending violence against women, improving single women’s chances to get out of poverty, and ending the punitive nature of welfare for single mothers would also be important pieces of this ‘abortion reduction’ agenda.

Unfortunately, abortion opponents seem to be focused on reducing the number of abortions performed, through such nebulous strategies as providing incentives for pregnant women to carry to term and facilitating adoption services. Indeed, the conversation on abortion reduction seems to lack any sense that access to abortion is fundamental to ensuring a woman’s human right to determine the course of her own life. Meanwhile this national conversation is also taking place in the midst of continued efforts at the state level to restrict women’s access to abortion, through mandatory waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, mandatory counseling and attempts to declare fertilized eggs as ‘persons.’
At a minimum, any strategy for abortion reduction must include:

• funding for comprehensive, evidence-based sex education, improved access to contraception,
• access to abortion services, regardless of ability to pay, and
• support for families with children through access to childcare, access to healthcare, living wage jobs and paid family leave.

It is unclear at this time whether there is any common ground to be found in the abortion debate. It is however refreshing to not have to argue whether or not abortion should be legal. Hopefully, these discussions will lead to policy changes that will help women prevent unintended pregnancies and provide support to women who choose to be mothers. It is exciting to be having conversations about how to advance women’s reproductive rights rather than fighting tooth and nail to prevent the erosion of the rights we have. There is still much work ahead on the road to reproductive justice, but we may finally have the space to do that work.