Eric Keroack resigned Thursday as Director of the Office of Population Affairs (in charge of Title X, family planning funding). I'd love to tell you it was because of the public outrage at his ridiculous positions on birth control and family planning (among other things), but it looks like it's because the Massachusetts Office of Medicaid is taking action against him. Hmmm... sounds like there's some dirt there.
When FIFE, as in feminism is for everyone, a campus group invited me to speak at the University of Virginia, I was immediately on board. What I hadn't entirely absorbed was that this wasn't a straight up lecture with questions and answers, my usual gig, but a debate orchestrated by the conservative minded Intercollegiate Studies Institute about the validity of Women's Studies. The planners wondered—Are We Getting It Right?—and posed this question to myself and my debate partner, Jennifer Roback Morse. Morse, who describes herself as your coach for the culture wars, opposes the existence of Women's Studies, arguing that tax payer dollars would be better spent supporting a Men's Studies program. In formal debate speak, I was described as the affirmative debater, which was funny since the genesis of the evening was the Network of Enlightened Women, a regressive contradiction of an organization, their premise being that Women's Studies was discriminatory.
Safe and legal abortion has been widely available in the United Kingdom since the passage of the 1967 Abortion Act, a piece of legislation that accomplished for British women what Roe v. Wade would accomplish six years later for their sisters in the United States. The 1967 Act made abortion legal through the 24th week of pregnancy, provided that two doctors certified that continuing the pregnancy "would present a risk to the physical or mental health of the woman or her existing children." In cases where a woman's life is threatened by the pregnancy or in cases of fetal malformation, there is no time limit.
Twenty years ago this month, one of the most powerful activist movements was born—the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power—better known as ACT UP. ACT UP has accomplished many things in 20 years but perhaps the most powerful is the lessons that it has to offer the reproductive justice movement in the current political climate.
ACT UP was born in New York on March 10, 1987 after activists at a meeting at the LGBT Community Center decided that political action needed to be taken to respond to AIDS. Two weeks later, ACT UP held its first demonstration to protest the high price of AZT—the sole AIDS drug at the time. Activists, made up of those living with HIV and their allies, held a "die-in" on Wall Street and disrupted the opening bell. ACT UP put the national spotlight on the high cost of AIDS drugs. Before long, ACT UP became known for their media-savvy political actions targeted at the pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices.
Imagine being a child bride, no older than 14, sexually inexperienced, married to a much older man, becoming pregnant quickly, and going into labor all by yourself. Isolated from any possible medical help and safe birthing interventions, you labor alone for days on end, screaming in excruciating pain. The fetus gets stuck in your small, too narrow pelvis during this agonizing prolonged and obstructed labor. The severe pressure of the fetal head against your pelvis cuts off the blood supply to the tissues of your vagina and your bladder (and/or frequently your rectum too), causing the tissues to die and a perforation or hole, known as a fistula, to form.
Such is the reality of obstetric fistula, which is now unknown in the United States because of the surgical intervention of Cesarean sections. But in the developing world, access to any kind health care, including obstetrical care, is rare, and fistula is common. As a result, the girl/woman is left with chronic incontinence and the baby is almost always born dead, compounding the tragedy.
I want to talk about abortion. Or more specifically, I want to talk about how we talk about abortion. Two recent developments around abortion have generated lots of buzz in our community. Reproductive Health Technologies Project (RHTP) released the findings of a research project which presents new messages for how activists can talk about abortion, as well as how we can build greater support for abortion. Exhale launched a series of electronic cards to support women who have had abortions. Both RHTP and Exhale are providing the movement with new tools that broaden the dialogue around abortion and address the stigma surrounding it. Now obviously, any tool is only as good as our ability to use it to connect with people meaningfully and to galvanize them to take some action. And yet, I think that Exhale and RHTP present us with interesting opportunities to re-examine how we think about, and ultimately talk about abortion.
Bad news for the 39 percent of female college students currently trying to avoid unwanted pregnancy by taking the pill: thanks to the far-reaching effects of a 2005 bill that took aim at Medicaid from multiple angles, their contraception may soon become unaffordable. According to an AP story published last week, the 2005 bill—which took effect this year—makes it more expensive for drug manufacturers to participate in Medicaid, while simultaneously removing the incentive for them to provide deep discounts to campus health centers for things like contraception. The result? Women at Kansas State University who used to pay $10 a month for pills will now pay $30. At Texas A&M, prices are expected to triple. And at Indiana University, women are now paying $22 a month instead of $10 for the same pills. These are just a few examples. As this latest development proves, the 2005 bill was a slap in the face for millions of sexually active college students currently struggling to work, study, make ends meet, and exercise responsible control over their reproductive lives.
When the Supreme Court set standards for legal abortion in all 50 states 34 years ago, no one expected the marches on the mall and demonstrations on the courthouse steps to last this long.
But abortion still regularly makes the news—around votes on Capitol Hill, in state legislatures or for state ballot measures, mostly on proposals to ban certain aspects of the procedure. Then there's the obligatory Sunday morning talk show question to everyone running for office: where do you stand on abortion? Rudy Giuliani gets it every time: "Can a Republican who supports abortion make it through the primary?" It's as though abortion were the only important social issue we face.
But we all know that it isn't. What about other important life decisions we all make every day related to our reproductive health?
Texas State Senator Dan Patrick introduced a bill earlier this month that would legalize "human trafficking", at least that's how Pat Mitchell Executive Director of the Center for Choice in Mobile, Alabama sees it.
SB 1567, referred to the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee last week, proposes to pay a pregnant woman $500 to carry her pregnancy to term and then give the baby up for adoption.
But Senator Patrick has no visions of charity, no deep-hearted faith in the beauty of adoption. This bill is one more smoke-and-mirror trick for an anti-choice fanatic desperate to deflect attention away from his true mission of crushing women's basic human rights.
I recently saw one of Merck's "One Less" commercials that depict ethnically diverse, physically active, and attractive women discussing the importance of being vaccinated against cervical cancer. All of these women want to be "one less" woman with cervical cancer. They urge everyone to share information about this vaccine with loved ones so that they too can be "one less" woman with cervical cancer.
The new vaccine, Gardasil®, manufactured by Merck Pharmaceuticals, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for young women, ages 9-26. Clearly Merck is putting a lot of money behind promoting this vaccine to young women. But this captivating commercial can lull young women into a false sense of security about their reproductive health.
