Tag Archives: blog for choice

‘the act of marriage’ live-blog: abortion bonus post (the end)

21 Thursday Jun 2012

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See also: intro, ch 1, ch 2-3, ch 4-5, ch 6-7, ch 8-10, ch 11, ch 12, ch 13, ch 14.

As promised on Tuesday, here is the bonus post reproducing the section in The Act of Marriage which deals with abortion. It’s notable, I think, that a Christian book on sexuality deals with abortion only in the final chapter, in a question-and-answer section, rather than having either a) a chapter devoted to the subject, or b) addressing abortion in the chapter on family planning. This may seem odd to present-day readers, who are used to abortion being one of the rallying cries of the “family values” coalition. But actually, abortion did not become a major political issue for non-Catholics until the late 70s. So the way abortion is handled in The Act of Marriage is a fascinating sliver of post-Roe, pre-Operation Rescue abortion ethics for evangelicals. I’m reproducing the text here in full, with my interleaved commentary.

ABORTION: Is it ever right for a Christian woman to have an abortion?

Note immediately how the question is framed: “a Christian woman.” This phrasing pulls the question from the realm of law and politics and places it in the realm of personal, religious conscience. Since no one can be forced to be a Christian in the United States, and whatever the LaHayes say subsequently applies only to Christian women, there is no explicit coercion — no forced birth, at least in the legal sense. Obviously, a woman could be pressured and forced on a much more intimate scale by religious community, doctor, and family — but this is not being framed as a matter of law.

A crucial issue in today’s society relates to the morality of abortion. Ever since the 1973 Supreme Court ruling granted a constitutional guarantee of privacy in such matters and left the decision to the individual woman during the first six months of her pregnancy, legalized abortions have increased at a catastrophic rate. Many opponents of abortion warned that if it were made legal, it would result in promiscuity, infidelity, venereal disease, and guilt. Who can deny the accuracy of their forecast?

On the other hand, we do start out at the gate talking about Roe v. Wade. And it’s clear the LaHayes feel the decision led to general degradation. Notice what’s not listed in the results of abortion? That’s right: murder. They’re talking about sexual misbehavior, not about baby-killing. In a lot of ways, these are still the root concerns of sexual conservatives — they’ve just learned that “baby killing” is a much more effective rhetorical move. Basically, the concerns the LaHayes list here about abortion mirror the concerns they have about secular, humanistic, “un-Christian” sexual mores in general. No more, no less.

There are two kinds of abortions — natural and induced. Although medical science cannot always tell why, some women abort their pregnancies naturally, which may be nature’s way of dealing with birth defects or other prenatal complications. Induced abortions are medically simple if performed by a competent doctor in the early stages of pregnancy.  

The way miscarriage and abortion are grouped together here,  and the accurate observation that early-stage abortions are “medically simple” and can be performed safely by a trained physician, serve to reassure the reader, to normalize the idea of abortion. This is not a passage designed to frighten or shock.

There are two reasons for inducing an abortion: (1) when such action is necessary to save the life of the mother — called “therapeutic abortion”; and (2) for the convenience of the mother because she is either unmarried or does not want the child. In such cases those making such a decision must bear the moral responsibility for their actions.

So they’re creating two distinct categories here, and it looks as if category one (“therapeutic abortion”) is deemed “necessary” and not at moral issue here — and even the second category, abortion for “convenience” is not automatically decried.

Christians as a rule know that the Bible condemns murder; consequently, many use the sixth commandment as justification for condemning all forms of abortion. The problem is that the Bible is not clear as to when the fertilized egg becomes a person — at the moment of conception, or when the embryo develops into a fully formed human being at three to six months. If one regards the fertilized egg as just “a living cell” that has potential to become a human, it is easier to approve of some form of abortion than if he believes that the soul enters at conception.

Throughout The Act of Marriage the LaHayes are careful to differentiate between moral parameters they find support for in the Bible (homosexuality; adultery) and those which they don’t necessarily approve, but about which the Bible is silent (oral sex; birth control). They make no exception for abortion, suggesting that Biblical censure of abortion hinges on whether abortion equals murder — and notice that they leave that question open-ended!

We faced this problem initially when a mother of four who thought she could not have any more children became pregnant. Because of a rare blood condition, her doctor advised, “If you do not get an abortion, the birth of this child will take your life.” If we had relied only on the sixth commandment, our response would have resulted in murder either way — the mother or the unformed child. After much prayer we counseled the couple to follow their doctor’s recommendation.

The modern-day anti-choice movement rarely, if ever, places the pregnant woman’s life at the center of the story in this way — let alone articulate the notion that two lives may be at stake here: the pregnant woman as well as that (potential) life of an “unformed child.” The abortion debate has sidelined women’s lives in the interest of focusing on what happens inside the womb, as if it were somehow disembodied from the woman who must decide (or be forced) to carry the pregnancy to term inside herself.

I think it’s also notable that the example above is of a woman who is already a parent. Often, in the anti-choice rhetoric of today, women-who-have-abortions and women-who-give-birth-and-parent are imagined as two separate populations; in this instance, they are found (as they most often are) in the same person.

Another case involved an innocent fourteen-year-old rape victim. The crime occurred while she was coming home from school, and investigation disclosed she had never seen the man before.

Ah perfect-victim-stranger-rape, how we miss hearing about you … oh, wait.

We felt that she had been through enough trauma. Certainly a loving God would not require an innocent girl, victim of a man’s bestial appetite, to drop out of school, endure nine months of pregnancy, and inaugurate motherhood before her fifteenth birthday. We found that her pastor’s approval was very important for her mental and spiritual rehabilitation. To this day only about six people know of this tragedy, and now, some years later, she is a happy, well-adjusted wife and mother.

Again we see the melding of women-who-have-abortions and women-who-are-mothers. Yes, the approval of abortion as an option in this instance is predicated on the “stranger rapes innocent girl” trope, but these days many anti-choicers argue against exceptions for rape/incest and the life of the mother.

Still another case concerned a couple who had a retarded child and were expecting again. A chemical analysis indicated that their unborn child would also be malformed in some way. After much prayer and soul-searching, we advocated a therapeutic abortion. Admittedly, we may some day have to account to God for these decisions, but to our best understanding of the Bible and the peace we had in our hearts at the time, we have no regrets.

I find it fascinating that they hold up these decisions difficult, human decisions for which there may be no fully right answer. They may “some day have to account to God” for the way they counseled families to seek abortions, but they “have no regrets” about encouraging families to choose abortion, even when the life of the mother was not immediately at stake. Particularly in this last instance, their decision-making process included a much more comprehensive understanding of family well-being and caretaking capacity than is normally up for discussion in present-day anti-abortion circles.

Through these experiences we have developed the following opinion on the subject.

Once again, the distinction between Biblical truth and the LaHayes’ (albeit pastorally-authoritative) ethics.

We oppose abortion for all personal or selfish reasons, but accept therapeutic abortion in those rare cases in which a Christian doctor, minister, and the girl’s parents prayerfully agree that it is in the best interest of either the mother or the unborn child. If a girl or woman is immoral and becomes pregnant, she should bear the responsibility for her actions by giving birth to the child.

Slut shaming in all its glory!

If she is a minor, we recommend that a Christian couple who desires a child be found and the child be adopted immediately after birth; the man involved should pay all necessary expenses plus room and board for the girl during her pregnancy. We do not believe that a forced marriage is always a solution, for it depends on the two people’s ages and whether one is an unbeliever. We have observed that unless the couple is mature enough to marry, they start out with so many strikes against them that marriage becomes a tragic mistake following an unfortunate sin. Better that they confess their sin in God, then responsibly do what is best for the unborn child (235-237).

They don’t articulate it in so many words here, but I think it’s telling that — in the mid-1970s! — they’re still assuming that an underage teenager will be sent to an unwed mother’s home for the duration of her pregnancy (why else the need for “room and board”?). And while this is obviously far from a liberal-progressive position on teen pregnancy, I appreciate the changing mores that allowed the LaHayes to encourage their readers not to pressure teens into shotgun marriages before the baby was born, in fact suggesting that “what is best for the unborn child” may, in fact, not be a childhood spent in an unhappy household.

So there you have it: fundamentalist, evangelical Christian abortion ethics, circa 1976. If only we could make our way back to even that narrow window of opportunity!

first, we’d actually have to find a pro-choice politician … [blog for choice 2012]

22 Sunday Jan 2012

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For previous Blog for Choice posts see 2011, 2010 and 2008. This post has also been cross-posted at The Pursuit of Harpyness. 
Thanks to all the Harpies who contributed to the discussion that led to this post.
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The theme for the 2012 Blog for Choice action day is “what will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?” Which frankly is something I don’t have a whole lot of energy to blog around. 

Bad feminist activist me.

I’ve voted Democrat in every election since I could vote, so it’s not like I can make the radical decision to start voting “pro-choice.” And I’m not a big political organizer, so door-to-door canvassing is pretty much out. And to be be perfectly honest, most of the politicians out there aren’t speaking my language anyway. I talked with my mother on the telephone last Sunday and she asked when my partner and I were going to make plans to move to Canada. It was a joke, but only quasi in jest, since my mother and I — though not identical in our political thinking — share a politics that’s to the radical left of the Obama administration, and certainly shares little in common with any of the Republican candidates.

So how do you go about taking action to “help elect pro-choice candidates” when, essentially, you don’t feel there are any pro-choice candidates?

via

You work to change the culture. Which sometimes has the feeling of being that dung beetle from Microcosmos. It’s a long, slow slog and you’re probably never going to get the majority of folks to agree with you. At least, I know I’m not. If I woke up one morning and the majority of Americans suddenly shared my priorities for health and well-being I’d be flabbergasted, gobsmacked, and tongue-tied — not to mention bewitched and bewildered. But, you know: Not going to happen. And I accept that — or, at least, have learned to live with it the way one learns to live with a bum knee.

And this isn’t even a question of “feminists” vs. “everyone else” ’cause it’s clear that self-identified feminists are anything but 100% unified on the question of abortion, on the question of reproductive rights and justice, on the question of what “pro-choice” politicians should emphasize. When I asked Harpy readers to describe their ideal pro-choice politician, here are some of the responses I received:

  • Drahill: “The first thing I’m going to look at is whether they support policies that make it easier to be a mother… to be pro-choice, a candidate needs to support comprehensive maternity leave reform, favor WIC, favor food aid for mothers, favor comprehensive healthcare reform, favor reforming housing laws to make it easier to own a home and stay in your home, favor educational reform to make it easier for women and children to go to school, be invested in promoting preventive and mental health services… you get the idea “
  • BearDownCBears: “My fellow Americans, as of this morning I have exercised extraordinary executive privilege by dissolving the United States Congress and establishing martial law. All private insurance will be nationalized and reorganized and doctors’ medical debt will be socialized to make up for the lower compensation they will receive. Publicly funded parental leave will be instated and an abortion clinic will be available within every 100 miles.”
  • baraqiel: “Pro-choice has to come with pro-the ability to make choices to be meaningful … for example, pro-comprehensive sex ed (required in public schools, private schools, homeschooling…). Pro-education about contraception and access to contraception. Pro-enthusiastic consent.”
  • Jenn_smithson: “I want a candidate who understands that the right to control my own body is the foundation of all other rights …  Any candidate who is prochoice needs to not only understand this but needs to articulate it as well. My rights are not a bargaining chip, full stop, and I’m sick of them being treated as though they are.
  • BeckySharper: “It’s essential that we keep the church, the state, and everyone else OUT the business of policing women’s uteri.”

While I won’t replicate the whole conversation here, since it went to 50+ comments, the salient difference that emerged in our own little corner of the feminist blogosphere was the divide between those who focus on abortion rights qua abortion rights and those who see the issue of abortion access as part of a much larger, densely interwoven, set of issues surrounding reproduction, family formation, and human rights. This exchange captures, in a nutshell, the larger disagreement:

mischiefmanager argues that: 

Historically, the term “choice” was used by women’s advocacy groups to avoid the loaded word “abortion.” If you want to expand it to mean other things, that’s your own personal interpretation. Check the websites of pro-choice groups and you’ll see that although safety net questions are sometimes discussed, the focus of their work is on keeping abortion legal and accessible. That’s hard enough these days without bringing anything else into the equation.

to which Drahill responded:

Pro-Choice, now, is a political slogan. That does not mean that’s what pro-choice SHOULD mean. It sounds better and softer than “pro-abortion rights.” Let’s face it. Just as pro-life sounds nicer than “anti-abortion rights.” But that’s what they are, and I don’t see how you can argue otherwise. I’d really suggest you take up reading some blogs (seriously, Womanist Musings) that address pro-choice as reproductive justice. Because that is all about helping women in whatever choice they make. In reproductive justice, if a woman who wants to parent has an abortion because she fears not being able to find a place to live, the movement is regarded as having failed her. Because the movement did not fight for her choice and what she needed to exercise it. That’s why just defining pro-choice as abortion rights is easier – because once you look at reproductive justice and what it means, it’s so HUGE it can feel hopeless. But I think we still have an obligation to those women who want to parent. It’s thinking about all the women you DON’T see at the clinic and their families. 

So on the one hand, we have folks who argue that “pro-choice” equals eliminating legal barriers to reproductive care and abortion specifically. So: focus on keeping abortion legal, obstructing fetal personhood amendments, keeping Planned Parenthood and other women’s health clinics open, and critiquing the misinformation campaign of Crisis Pregnancy Centers. All of this is important, obviously. Yet in my mind it stops short of what a robust “pro-choice” agenda should look like, because it does nothing to address pre-existing inequalities. Keeping abortion services legal, safe, and available across the nation is awesome and important — but that alone doesn’t ensure that those without resources or with constrained autonomy (prisoners, minors, women in the military, trans* folks, women of color, immigrants, those with limited financial resources, disabled women, queer women … the list could go on and on) will be able to access those clinics.

We always have choices, but our ability to make meaningful choices is limited by our material circumstances, by knowledge, and by fear. Some choices are over-determined by the systems (sociocultural and material contexts) in which we live and deliberate. As Talk Birth so eloquently argues, in a recent post on birthing and informed consent:

While it may sound as if I am saying women are powerlessly buffeted about by circumstance and environment, I’m not. Theoretically, we always have the power to choose for ourselves, but by ignoring, denying, or minimizing the multiplicity of contexts in which women make “informed choices” about their births and their lives, we oversimplify the issue and turn it into a hollow catchphrase rather than a meaningful concept. 

Women’s lives and their choices are deeply embedded in a complex, multifaceted, practically infinite web of social, political, cultural, socioeconomic, religious, historical, and environmental relationships. 

And, I maintain that a choice is not a choice if it is made in a context of fear.

(via Molly @ first the egg) 

I’m with Drahill and others on the discussion thread, then, when I argue that to be “pro-choice” in our world can and should mean actively fostering an environment where women will be trusted to make decisions, and have the material ability to meaningfully act on the choices they make. Our material resources — as individuals, as a society, as a globe — are not infinite. Many people on the comment thread pointed this out, and I agree. Yet our ability to prioritize, to re-shuffle the cards and place human health, well-being, and individual agency at the top of our list of what government at its best can ensure for its citizens … that is endless and constant. To return to the rhetoric of “choice,” we — as a society — have chosen to prioritize certain types of activities (wars of aggression, banking, environmental plunder) over others (sustaining human and environmental well-being). I believe as a society we aren’t hostage to those previous choices — though some of the consequences will continue to ripple for generations to come. We can make new choices, and craft new priorities. 

That’s what I will continue to push for in 2012: The ideas of those people — inside and outside of the political machine — who want us to build a future in which all human beings will be able to make meaningful choices about their lives, their families, and their futures.

blog for choice: on the privilege of having real choices

21 Friday Jan 2011

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Today is Blog for Choice Day 2011 in which folks around the blogosphere take a moment to write about abortion access and reproductive justice. You can read my previous contributions for 2008 (the radical idea that I am a person) and 2010 (the radical act of trusting others) by clicking through. This year’s prompt was: “Given the anti-choice gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about choice in 2011?”

It’s a tricky word: “choice.”

I believe that human beings always have choices, and thus we must always make choices. Most of the time, we make those choices, decisions, based on complex internal and external equations of risk vs. benefit, right vs. wrong — equations we often aren’t fully aware of laying out and solving before we say: “this. this is my choice.”

Yet we move through the world making choices. Some small (what to wear to work today; what to have for breakfast) and some large (whether to speak up when a colleague bullies you; whether or not to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term).

Philosophically and ethically speaking, I’m a big supporter of the concept of “choice” and the recognition that people are moral agents constantly making moral choices. Even in situations where there seem to be few or no options — or no good options — left. As I wrote last year, one of the most radical acts we can choose to perform on this earth is the act of trusting other human beings (even those we do not know and have no control or influence over) to make decisions about what is right (and moral) for them.

Yet the language of “choice” can also be used as a weapon, as a judgment. “Whatever; that’s their choice”; “They’ve made their bed, let them lie in it.” With increasing frequency, I hear the language and concept of “choice” being used in ways that punish those with the least agency, the fewest options, and those who are facing the highest cost for exercising their decision-making abilities. I see people being punished for brazenly acting as though they had moral agency, as if they expected the people around them to trust them to make moral choices for themselves and their families.

You see, while everyone has the ability to exercise their freedom of choice, only some people are considered worthy enough to actually exercise that ability without being judged. Rich, white, straight folks to be exact. People with enough material autonomy to act independently (and thus privately), without needing to rely on extensive formal and informal support networks to actually access the resources they need to follow through on the moral decisions they have made.

You need help and support to follow through on your choices? You need some public assistance to raise the child you decided to give birth to? You need your health insurance to cover that abortion you decided was best for your family? You need affordable daycare? A job with flexibility in order to balance the demands of care-giving and career?

Fuck you: Having kids was just a “lifestyle choice” … why should we as a society help you out?

Fuck you: You “chose” to have sex when you know the only completely reliable method of birth control is abstinence. If you can’t afford to pay out of pocket for an abortion? Tough.

As I said, it’s a tricky word: “choice.”

The pro-choice movement has been advocating for decades now that we recognize women as moral decision-makers when it comes to their reproductive health and choices. This is all well and good, but I think it’s important to realize that those who are anti-choice, anti-abortion, anti-reproductive justice are perfectly willing to recognize that women can make choices.  Anti-choice politicians and activists just want to make sure that we lack the ability to follow through on those choices in a meaningful way.

So you bet I’m “concerned about choice” this year, as I am every year. I’m concerned at the way our culture and our political system seem unable (or more likely, I suspect, unwilling) to take a long, hard look at the way in which we collectively constrain access to meaningful choices for the majority of the population. Particularly the way we target already-vulnerable populations and strip away their ability to be moral decision-makers who can actually act on their decisions in ways that promote well-being. Children and adolescents, people of color, people living below the poverty line or on severely limited incomes, immigrants, people without health insurance, folks without job security, folks in non-hetero-normative families. As a nation, we should be making it possible for all of these folks to make — and follow through on — moral choices for themselves and their families.

Instead, we seem hell-bent on stripping those abilities away even further. And I see the rhetoric of “choice” in some ways aiding and abetting that evisceration. Because, after all, if someone is “free” to “choose” … then what do they need from us?

It’s the responsibility of those of us who are pro-choice on abortion and reproductive health to articulate what people do need to follow through on their choices. Because if we don’t, we might have a “choice” … but not much of a chance to act on it.

Blog for Choice: The Radical Act of Trusting Others

22 Friday Jan 2010

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Today is Blog for Choice Day 2010, coordinated by NARAL Pro-Choice America. I somehow missed the 2009 action day, but you can read my 2008 Blog for Choice post, The Radical Idea that I am a Person, in the blog archive.


So when I told Hanna that this year’s theme for Blog for Choice Day was “trust women,” her first response was “Are you fucking kidding me?! What a ridiculous statement! Jeeze — ask anyone who’s gone through a dyke break-up. Never trust women! Especially when they have the ability to make vital documents, irreplaceable vhs tapes, and cookbooks disappear!”

Which made me stop and think about what the theme implies. Because, to be honest, my own first response to the exhortation to “trust women” was not unlike Hanna’s: what do you mean “trust women”? Just . . . because? Because they’re women? Why should I? ‘Cause women are only human after all: some trustworthy, some profoundly not. Which, to me, is both [the most obvious and the most radical claim of feminism]: that women are only human. And human beings run the gamut from completely trustworthy to completely untrustworthy and every point between. Ergo women, as individuals, are only as worthy of trust as our individual past and present actions warrant.

So why, then, is it important for pro-choice activists to make the case for trusting women? And what, exactly, does it mean to “trust women” in the specific context of reproductive rights?

I would argue that it is precisely because women — particularly pregnant women — as a class are not really seen as fully human that the idea of trusting them with moral and medical decision-making continues to be such a radical notion. Setting aside for a minute the question of abortion per se, within the past week I have seen multiple stories about pregnant women’s right to bodily integrity and ability to consent to medical procedures challenged or violated with the support of the state. There was the story of Samantha Burton whose doctor got a court order to confine her in a hospital bed against her will when she disagreed with him about how best to proceed with her pregnancy care. A woman in Australia was visited by police when she resisted having her labor induced with the controversial drug pitocin. There have been a number of stories concerning the physical restraint of birthing women in prisons, who are often not able to labor in optimal positions because they’re shackled to their beds. As I’ve written previously, women shouldn’t have to give up their basic rights to bodily integrity and medical decision-making when they become pregnant, but the legal and cultural climate in the United States is such these days that many of us fear that’s precisely what will happen.

So when we chellenge folks to “trust women,” in part we’re demanding to merely be treated with the amount of trust that adult citizens in America have a right to expect: a legal and social framework that “trusts” individuals with decisions regarding their own personal physical well-being and medical decision-making. That trusts us to make informed decisions. Yet over and over again, anti-choice activists have made it clear that they don’t trust women. They fight to pass legislation that mandates physicians lie to us about our bodies, they harass us at clinics that provide health services and attempt to mislead us by dressing as clinic workers. If we trust women with the power to make decisions about their own well-being, these anti-choice activists seem to imply, the world will disintegrate before our very eyes.

Which brings me to the other implication of choosing to “trust women” with their reproductive agency. And I use the phrase “choosing to trust women” deliberately. Trusting other people with the agency to live their own lives is not necessarily something that comes easily to us: as human beings we often thrive on feeling in control of our environment (and by extension the people around us). Control can make us feel safe. But life simply doesn’t work like that: we could drive ourselves mad attempting to control the lives and decisions of others — and in the end, it would not make our lives richer or safer.

Choosing to “trust women,” then, is choosing to “trust others”: letting go of the burden of decisions that are not ours to make, and allowing those whose lives they directly affect (and who are best positioned to understand the ramifications of a given choice) to bear that responsibility. Because that’s what being human requires: rights and responsibilities.

Last sunday I shared a link to a beautiful essay from The Guardian by a vicar, David Bryant, who had recently counseled a woman trying to decide whether or not to seek an abortion. His essay is worth reading in full, but I would like to quote here the final two paragraphs,

One of the blessings of our humanity is that we have a conscience. To opt out of using such a priceless gift is irresponsible. Of course there are immense dangers here. We may make ill-guided decisions. Our thinking may be warped and skewed. On occasion we will follow a course of action so crass or unsociable that it brings us up before the magistrate. But if we allow the church, the nanny state, the media or popular opinion to become our conscience, we lose our moral integrity.

I had no easy answers for the woman. All I could offer was compassion in her grief and sympathy for the agony of choice that lay ahead. We fixed a meeting for the following day, but I never saw her again. True, I had been non-directive, but I could be none other. “I am responsible for my very desire of fleeing responsibilities,” said Jean-Paul Sartre. I believe he was right. That is why I could not decide the fate of the foetus for her.

What I appreciate so much about Bryant’s argument is that he refuses to retreat to the (legitimate, but limited) language of legal rights, instead challenging us to see that trusting women with the responsibility of making deeply challenging moral decisions is not only a legal imperative but a moral (dare I say “religious”?) one.

So when a pro-choice activist says to you “trust women,” pause for a moment and hear it for the truly radical challenge it is: a call to let go of the all-too-human impulse to control, and to allow some of the burden of responsibility to be lifted from your shoulders and taken on by someone else — someone whom you might not know enough to personally trust, but whom you must share this earth with, and who may well surprise you with her ability to make the decision that is, in the end, the most life-giving for us all.

After all: in the end, what other choice do we have?

*image credit: amor! by slickerdrip @ flickr.com.

Quick Hit: Blog for Choice 2010 (Jan 22nd)

15 Friday Jan 2010

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I just signed up for NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Blog for Choice Day 2010. The theme for this year is “Trust Women” and bloggers are asked to write a post about what the statement means to them. Now I just have to think what I’m going to say! Check out NARAL’s information about the action day for guidelines and to register your blog.

Booknotes: Girls on the Stand

31 Sunday May 2009

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As news was breaking about the murder of Dr. George Tiller, and abortion provider and pro-choice activist, I sat down to read Helena Silverstein’s Girls On the Stand: How Courts Fail Pregnant Minors.

A professor of government and law, Silverstein details the real-world effects of parental notification and consent laws have on the ability of minors to exercise their rights to abortion access as currently granted under U.S. law. Specifically, Sliverstein is interested in the viability of the “judicial bypass” option that the U.S. Supreme Court requires such parental involvement laws to contain: that is, if a pregnant minor does not wish to inform her parents of her pregnancy, she must have the ability to petition, confidentially and with the help of court-appointed counsel, for an exception. Focusing on the practical workings of the judicial bypass procedure in three states, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, Silverstein found that pregnant minors faced ignorance, bureaucracy and outright ideological obstruction in their pursuit of timely and medically-safe abortions.

For example, after systematically phoning courts in her three targeted states for information on how to initiate a judicial bypass, Silverstein and her research assistants faced a wide range of responses, from the adequate to the under-informed to the intentionally misleading. Whether malicious in intent, answers to an initial query that fail to clearly affirm the minor’s right to confidentiality, a timely hearing, and most importantly free assistance in navigating the court system, “portray the bypass as a road the minor must travel alone and risk sacrificing the minor’s right to her own vulnerability” (61). Even more egregiously, some anti-abortion judges, with the discretion granted to them under current law, have employed such intimidation tactics as requiring pro-life, Christian counseling for all minors seeking the bypass, or even appointing a guardian for the fetus who has the responsibility of challenging the petitioner at the hearing and attempting to persuade her against choosing an abortion.

“The argument of this book,” Silverstein writes, “is directed at those who have made a good-faith compromise on the parental involvement issue,” seeking to ensure that minors wishing to terminate pregnancies are given the information and support they need, both pre- and post-abortion, while still protecting their constitutional rights to privacy and bodily autonomy (157).

Those compromisers, a group to which I once belonged, have in mind a picture of what a world with such mandates would look like. Pregnant minors will be encouraged to seek guidance from parents, and courts will protect those who choose otherwise. We have seen, though [in this book], that many courts are not prepared to do their duty, whether due to ignorance, recalcitrance, or incompetence. We have seen judges who are willing to employ hardball tactics to get minors to bend to their will. Whatever the Supreme Court might decide about how much implementation failure is too much or what obstacles too burdensome, it is up to the good-faith compromiser to decide whether the reality of parental involvement mandates sufficiently approximates her picture [of reality] to warrant continued support. This is a personal decision. To my mind the case is clear. I invite the reader to be her own judge (157).

Sadly, Silverstein’s book is not as narratively compelling as I would have hoped, even to someone like myself whose heart usually quickens a the prospect of a book or an article dealing with the intersection of feminism and the law. Her prose feels clunky, and the reporting of her research — while providing the evidence necessary to make her case — nonetheless caused me eyes to begin glazing over, even at a brief 180 pages (excepting endnotes and bibliography). Given its narrow scope, a meaningful reading likely requires a fair amount of background knowledge in recent abortion politics and law.

Still, I’m glad to add it to my repertoire of resources on reproductive health and rights. The struggle over women’s right to bodily autonomy is not going to disappear any time soon, as Tiller’s murder today dramatically and tragically illustrates — and young women are among those particularly vulnerable to having their reproductive choices taken from them, given their relatively lack of experience and financial resources. Silverstein reminds us not to assume that what looks good on paper will likewise be sound in actual practice.

Goodbye Global Gag Rule!

24 Saturday Jan 2009

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I didn’t participate in the 2009 Blog for Choice event this year, marking the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. However, following quickly on its heels comes a reason to celebrate: President Obama has signed an executive order reversing the Bush policy of denying U.S. funding to international health and family planning organizations that provided any information, counseling, or referrals related to abortion. Lifting the gag order will save women’s lives.

Oh, and have a mentioned recently how much I love Frances Kissling?

To ask . . . women to wait another day for Obama to reverse this policy in order to satisfy the fake “common ground” prolife religious progressives suggest – prevention without contraception – is disrespectful of women’s lives, let alone their moral autonomy.

When Abortion was Illegal

26 Saturday Jan 2008

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As a follow up on Blog for Choice day . . .

I posted this (in a slightly different form) on a comments thread over at feministing yesterday, and thought perhaps some of you would be interested in it as well. Another reader wrote:

It wasn’t until I read Back Rooms : Stories from the Illegal Abortion Era that I truly understood the importance of being pro-choice. We have to share those horrific, graphic, terrifying stories and images with kids, because the pro-life movement has some pretty ghastly images that work in scaring kids into a pro-life stance. Why don’t we use the same tactics? Do we not want to stoop to their level?

I wrote in response:

Part of the success of the movement to legalize abortion in the mid-20th c. came from the fact that women were able to deploy those images . . . and many more people in that era (just after the advent of the pill, remember) had personal stories about women in their family who had attempted home- or back-alley abortions and been damaged or disfigured.

Since abortion has been legalized, the number of unsafe abortions has (thankfully) dropped significantly . . . though of course not been eliminated. But I think it’s more invisible than it used to be to those in the decision-making positions. White, middle-class women with money aren’t flying to Cuba for back-alley abortions, they’re able to drive to the next state to the clinic of their choice.

. . .I’m not necessarily for using the shock tactics of the anti-choice movement, since they often involve using misleading images and false information. But I do think we can do a better job of highlighting the bodily risks to women–and the impact on their families–if the country continues to strengthen anti-choice policies.

Here’s an amazing audio documentary that was honorable mention at the Third Coast Audio Festival this year:

BEST DOCUMENTARY: HONORABLE MENTION
The Search for Edna Lavilla (Australia)
by Sharon Davis and Eurydice Aroney with sound engineer
Russell Stapleton

In 1942 Edna Lavilla Haynes died from a backyard abortion. After her death Edna was never mentioned again. More than sixty years later Edna’s granddaughter looks for clues – a search that leads through police files and government records and down Sydney’s back alleys of the 1940’s, where one in four pregnancies ended in abortion and sometimes death.

The Search for Edna Lavilla first aired on ABC Radio National’s Radio Eye.

It can be found online at this website, currently sixth story from the top and it’s about fifty minutes long. Really amazing stuff.

Blog for Choice: The Radical Idea that I am a Person

22 Tuesday Jan 2008

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Today is the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision and NARAL Pro-Choice America has asked all of us in the blogosphere to write posts about why it’s important to vote pro-choice. Welcome to Blog for Choice Day 2008. Here are my thoughts.

“Childbirth is, by definition, a loss of control over the body . . . but in the hospital, the surrender is usually of the body to the provider. Women often lose control over what’s done to the body, rather than over what the body does.”

–Jennifer Block, Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care (165) [1].

Today, I am terrified of being pregnant or giving birth in the United States. I am not frightened of the physical experience of being pregnant. Nor am I intimidated by the difficult moral decisions I may face if that pregnancy is unplanned or if something goes tragically wrong. I am not afraid, as Jennifer Block so eloquently puts it, to “lose control over [what my] body does” when pregnant. No.

What wakes me from nightmares, sweating, in the early hours of the morning is the knowledge that, as a pregnant woman, I will lose my right to determine what is done to my body. What knots my stomach is the knowledge that, under current legal precedent, when I become pregnant I could be stripped of my rights to bodily integrity—including the ability to consent to or refuse medical procedures. What terrifies me is the knowledge that as a pregnant woman I could, at the discretion of a doctor or a judge, be treated as an individual whose medical decisions and right to self-determination have no merit, whose personhood is less worthy of consideration than the personhood of the developing child I carry within my body.

I didn’t always feel this way. When I hit puberty and began to menstruate I was awed (as I still am) by my body’s new capacity to sustain pregnancy and give birth to a child. The women whom I knew and read (thanks Mom!) described women’s reproductive lives in feminist terms: they placed women, their laboring bodies, and their self-determination at the center of pregnancy and birth narratives.

Over the last twelve years, however, I have been forced to recognize how fragile my right to bodily integrity and self-determination is. I have gotten the message loud and clear from politicians, judges and activists: My personhood is conditional. My body is not my own. I am one broken condom, one impulsive sexual encounter, one sexual assault, one anti-abortion, conscience-ridden pharmacist away from becoming less than a person in the eyes of the law.

The modern political and legal struggle over abortion rights, and reproductive rights more broadly, has developed a hyper-focus on the question of fetal rights [2] and the definition of when life begins [3]. We have forgotten to consider an equally important question: regardless of how we determine when human life and constitutional rights begin, when do women’s basic human rights end? I ask this question of anyone who supports anti-abortion, fetal rights policies: do I somehow become less of a person in the eyes of the law the moment I become pregnant?

The right to bodily integrity is fundamental to our social contract here in the United States. The belief that we are all separate beings, existing within our own skin, and that no one has the right to violate our separateness without our consent, has been built into our legal framework. This respect for the human right to bodily integrity is so profoundly important to our legal and social framework that it actually supersedes our right to live. No one can be compelled against their full and free consent to give of their body for another human being–even if that other human being will die as a result of consent being withheld.

As Jennifer Block writes, “there is never a situation where the court can compel an adult to undergo a medical procedure for the perceived benefit of another human being” (255). We may make the case that it is the ethical thing to do, to donate blood or to put our own lives at risk to rescue someone from drowning. But despite making a moral argument that it is the right thing to do, we don’t compel individuals to perform these tasks: they must make the final decision themselves. At no point does their body cease to be their own.

Yet pregnant–and even potentially pregnant–women find that this basic right to bodily integrity is routine breached by medical professionals, politicians, and judges who determine what they may or may not do—or choose not to do–with their bodies. Marsden Wagner, former Director of Women’s and Children’s Health of the World Health Organization, documents in Born in the USA [4] the way in which pregnant women’s decisions regarding their own medical care are routinely ignored. Women who have expressly stated their desire for non-interventionist births are subjected to drugs without their knowledge, mutilated by unnecessarily episiotomies, or denied the right to attempt vaginal births after cesarean section. These practices are contrary to basic legal rights nationally and many human rights standards worldwide.

As Melody Rose details, in her book Safe, Legal, Unavailable? [5], in the thirty-five years Roe v. Wade has technically protected women’s right to terminate a pregnancy, opponents of abortion and women’s rights have chipped away at women’s legal standing by creating a systematic network of regulatory policies and legal restrictions [6]. While the developing child–and even the potentially fertilized egg [7]–slowly gains legal rights to constitutional protection, women are jailed to protect a fetus, punished for what they put into, or do with, their bodies [8], forced to continue pregnancies against their express wishes or made to seek the permission to end those pregnancies from lovers [9], estranged parents, or hostile judges [10]. They are denied birth control [11] and punished for its failure. They are denied the right to choose where, with whom, and how they give birth or denied the right to birth at all [12].

An entire class of people are being stripped of their right to bodily integrity simply because of the bodies with which they were born. Increasingly, women are told not only that their rights are less important than the rights of the fetus they carry, but that they are too ignorant or vulnerable to make their own medical decisions. Last year’s Supreme Court ruling, Gonzales v. Carhart [13], is only the latest example of the misogynistic paternalism [14] that has come to characterize the legal and political landscape of reproductive justice. As Sarah Blustain wrote last year in The American Prospect:

The finding of activist conservative judges or radically anti-abortion legislatures, no matter how local, help accrue new definitions of the unborn that make it incrementally easier to successfully ban abortions. Perhaps even more troubling is the idea that these cases could slowly build a new judicial and legislative definition of women, as a childish and barely competent moral decision-maker for whom legal abortion becomes a menacing option from which she needs protection [15].

Access to safe and legal abortion may only be one small part of the landscape of reproductive justice [16], but it is a crucially important one. As Linda Paltrow has pointed out, anti-abortion activists have succeeded–through their focus on fetal rights and paternalistic protectionism–in establishing a precedent of abusive intervention into the lives of women and their families:

At least one federal court has said that sending police to a woman’s home, taking her into custody while in active labor and near delivery, strapping her legs and her body down, to transport her against her will to a hospital, and then forcing her without access to counsel or court review to undergo major surgery [cesarean section] constituted no violation of her civil rights at all. The rationale? If the state can limit women’s access to abortions after viability, it can subject her to the lesser intrusion of insisting on one method of delivery over another [17]

This is why I lie awake at night wondering if I’m brave enough to become a mother. I know that to become pregnant in the current legal climate will mean that I wake up every morning with the knowledge that my right to bodily integrity may be violated by doctors and politicians who disagree with my medical decisions, and that many judges will uphold those violations in a court of law.

I vote pro-choice because I believe that to legislate away women’s meaningful access to a full range of reproductive options–from birth control to abortion to the right to give birth where, with whom, and however she chooses–is to effectively curtail our ability to participate in the political and social life of the nation [18].

I vote pro-choice because I believe that the freedom of consenting adults to form sexually intimate relationships, whether or not they can–or desire–to have children, is a basic human right, not a privilege.

I vote pro-choice because I believe pregnancy, childbirth, and the decision to start a family should be a responsibility fully and freely chosen, not a punishment for sexual expression.

I vote pro-choice because I believe in women’s ability, as women and as human beings, to make practical and moral decisions regarding our health care and family lives.

I vote pro-choice because I believe pregnant women have the same rights to bodily integrity and full and free consent as any other human being.

I vote pro-choice because I don’t want to be forced to choose between motherhood and my own human rights.

Most of all, I vote pro-choice because of my belief in the radical notion that women are people.