Amanda excoriates misleading media reports on the anti-choice movement, explains why reproductive justice is a first amendment issue, and interviews the fabulous writer of novels and comic strips Lynn Harris.

Links in this episode:

Broadsheet on rape
To The Contrary
The First Freedom Ad #1
The First Freedom Ad #2
Breakup Girl
Virginia anti-choicers work to increase abortion rate
WCAV TV’s coverage
Cuccinelli’s long list of freedoms
This is not a health center
Bound4Life

Transcript:

This week on Reality Cast, I’ll be interviewing writer Lynn Harris about the return of her comic Break-Up Girl, talking about how reproductive justice is a freedom of religion issue, and how one Virginia news station is misleading its viewers about the Planned Parenthood funding debate.  Also, the S&M side of the anti-choice movement. 

A shout-out to our friends at Salon’s Broadsheet, who offer a daily dose of engaging feminist blogging.  They’ve recently added vlogging to the rotation, and I was impressed with this video from Tracy Clark-Flory about how strange it is that no one ever warns men about the problems that crop up when raping someone.

• insert broadsheet *

The comment section can get nasty over there, and they’re always happy to have more positive feminist voices.

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So, let’s talk about religion.  Yes, I talk about it sideways all the time on this show, because considering the subject matter, I have to.  But I don’t think I’ve ever really done a segment just on the intersection of the religious vs. secular debate and reproductive justice.  I’m going to rectify that right now, because I think one of the most powerful arguments that we can make for ourselves is to point to the first amendment of the Constitution and the principles of religious freedom.  Also, there’s some recent news items that give me an opportunity. 

The PBS podcast “To The Contrary” addressed a recent Pew Forum study showing that Americans feel very free to switch religious affiliations or even to have none at all.

• insert pew contrary 1 *

I think what this research shows is that Americans feel very free in their religious beliefs, which is a good thing.  The first amendment is not just an idea written on paper, but a lived experience for Americans.  We enjoy a great deal of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, and to show that, we will gladly church shop or leave a church altogether if it’s not suiting our needs. 

The discussion on “To The Contrary” is fascinating and well worth listening to.  For our purposes, I think this comment from Patricia Sosa is the most relevant.  The lead-up is from the host, and then Sosa.

• insert pew contrary 2 *

This is where we really begin to see how the reproductive justice movement needs to be intertwined with a broader insistence on freedom of religion. People are allowed, thank goodness, to leave a church that isn’t conforming to their values.  But religious freedom is about more than that.  It’s about not letting churches dictate the law based on religious dogma.  If people are leaving the Catholic church because they don’t like the teachings on, say, contraception, then how it is helping their religious freedom then to see those religious teachings become the law that affects everyone, regardless of personal beliefs?

What we’re really struggling with, by and large, when we push against the anti-choice movement is a religious movement that is intent on making their personal beliefs the law that everyone has to live by.  It’s true that there’s a vanishingly small number of non-religious people out there who are opposed to abortion rights, but that’s mostly because they’re uncomfortable with female sexuality and are hazy on the actual science.  But the belief that life begins at conception is mostly a bit of religious dogma.  What you believe about the soul is a private matter, not up to government dictates.  And that’s central to this debate.  If you believe that it’s a person with a soul upon conception, then feel free not to get an abortion.  But don’t put that belief on women who don’t share it. 

This is also why people who do feel personally uncomfortable with abortion or contraception should nonetheless be pro-choice.  Because your freedom to believe how you want to believe depends on my freedom to believe what I wish to believe.  It’s not freedom of religion if it’s revoked because you don’t believe what you’re told to believe, duh. 

This is why I was glad to see that the religious freedom campaign the First Freedom is using the same language about privacy rights that draws a direct line to the pro-choice movement.  This is from their ad with Catherine Dent.

• insert first freedom one

 The group doesn’t have an ad about reproductive health, though they have a page linking the issue with the secular democracy issue.  (But they do have an ad addressing the related issue of end of life care, using the same language about privacy and choice that’s critical here.

• insert first freedom two *

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• insert interview with Lynn Harris *

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While looking around for information on the Virginia Senate’s vote to defund Planned Parenthood completely, depriving low income women of cancer screening and setting up the state for an uptick in abortion, I found good evidence as to why the voters of Virginia are rolling over for such wingnuttery.  Their local media seems to be all screwed up.  WCAV TV of Charlottesville, VA had a terrible, misleading report on the bill.  Let us investigate the myriad of ways they are deceiving their audiences. 

• insert Virginia media 1 *

I’m sure this isn’t technically false, but it strikes me as misleading to bring abortion up at all.  The news report is insinuating—hell, outright stating that this is about abortion—and it’s not.  And the representative from Planned Parenthood does not actually say this is about abortion, but about other women’s health services, including contraception, which, may I remind you, prevents abortion. 

• insert Virginia media 2*

Excuse me?  Did she say prevention?  I think she did.  She did not say abortion.  So why bring it up unless you want to downplay the fact that the senator who introduced this is attacking popular services, like STD and unplanned pregnancy prevention. 

Once again, we have media outlets refusing to tell the whole story about the anti-choice movement, which is that they are not “pro-life” at all, but anti-women’s rights and anti-sex. 

I decided to do what the local news reporters apparently don’t have the time to do, which is examine Cuccinelli’s record to see if he’s just anti-abortion, of if he’s got a larger social conservative agenda based around dismantling women’s health care and pushing for mandatory rigid gender roles.  Surprises, surprise.  Cuccinelli introduced a bill to remove the requirement for girls to get the HPV vaccine.  What does increasing cervical cancer rates have to do with being “pro-life”?  Nothing, but it’s great for punishing women for sex.  He also tried to restrict the right of Virginians to get divorces, which has nothing to do with saving babies.  He’s also against gay marriage, though gay sex is an excellent way to avoid abortion.  On his issues page, he lists the two whole personal freedoms he believes people have.  Two!  It’s so many!  What are they?  The right to carry a gun and the right of a pharmacist or doctor to refuse to offer treatment, i.e. the right to deprive a woman of her rights because you don’t approve of her sex life. 

It took 10 minutes of googling to show that Cuccinelli is opposed to women’s rights and health care in general, and it’s not limited to abortion rights, but WCAV TV didn’t take that time.  They must have been too busy interviewing this dude at a crisis pregnancy center.

• insert Virginia media 3 *

 
Boo-hoo, they don’t get state funding and they’re anti-abortion.  Why, god why?

Well, I’ll tell you why, and once again, it took 3 seconds of googling to find out.  It’s because the Pregnancy Centers of Central Virginia are NOT health services.  In order to be a health service that lives up to the name, they should provide health services, and they don’t. They give you a pregnancy test that you could buy at the grocery store and a lecture on how bad abortion is.  Just to make absolutely sure, I called up the center and asked if they provided the most basic women’s health care service, the Pap smear.  The volunteer hedged a bit and admitted that they don’t actually provide services in their center.  But she said they had the names of some doctors.  Pretty loose definition of a health care center.  Under that definition, the phone book is a medical center.  The state doesn’t give them money because they don’t provide services. It took me about a minute and a  half of googling and phoning the center to figure that out.  So why isn’t this in the ostensible news report on this?

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Now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts.  ProLifeNews interviewed Cathy Coburn from the aptly named Bound4Life in Atlanta.  From the name of her organization to her rhetoric, she’s refreshingly straightforward with her belief that without the actual binding of women and forcing childbirth on us, there won’t be any babies at all.

• insert coburn one

Seriously, to hear her and other anti-choicers talk, you would literally think that giving women the right to birth control and abortion has meant an end to all childbirth.  That maternity wards are going empty, schools are closing down, and obstetricians are out of work.  In reality, there are about 4 million babies born a year in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.  4 million is a big number to ignore, and yet here you have rhetoric that would make the stockholders of Toys R Us to panic. 

Of course, this isn’t about the absolute numbers.  Coburn tips her hand later to what specific kind of baby the anti-choice movement wants to see more of.

• insert coburn two *

Ah, it’s the lack of adoptable babies that’s the issue here.  Well, I’ll admit that significantly fewer women are put through the trauma of giving up or being forced to give up a baby because it was born out of wedlock.  And I agree with Bound4Life that as long as you aren’t binding women for life, or at least binding them to the delivery table inside a maternity home, that’s probably going to be the case.  I just disagree that women should be bound to make babies for others to adopt.