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Proposed Bill Makes Pregnant Rape Victims Evidence Incubators

24 Jan mkb020712j

In what can only be described as a completely heinous, ridiculous and inhumane act, a New Mexico lawmaker has introduced a bill that would criminalize abortion for rape victims.

Yes. You read that right.

Normally, these anti-choice politicos like to make themselves appear less nut-so by including rape exceptions in their attempts to curb abortion access. But not Rep. Cathrynn Brown (yes, a WOMAN!). If she has her way, a rape victim who ends her pregnancy would be charged with a third-degree felony for “tampering with evidence.”

According to the Huffington Post, the bill stipulates:

“Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.”

Third-degree felonies in New Mexico carry a sentence of up to three years in prison.

Because further victimizing and criminalizing pregnant rape survivors is clearly the way to reduce abortion. Never mind things like contraception, free childcare and comprehensive sexual education. And let’s not overlook the fact that this places the burden of proof on the victim, not the perpetrator, which is completely ass backwards.

Sound off and let Rep. Brown know this is unacceptable and cruel. Email her at cath@cathrynnbrown.com.

 

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Quick Hit: World Contraception Day

26 Sep contraception

On this World Contraception Day, I’d like to give a shout-out to birth control in all its forms. It gives me freedoms to and freedoms from, all of which I appreciate on a daily basis: freedom to determine the size and spacing of my family (one 9-week-old is enough right now, thankyouverymuch), freedom to follow a career trajectory of my choosing, freedom to enjoy sex without worry, freedom from horrendous menstrual cramps (this may seem like a minor inconvenience to some, but please believe it is not), freedom from being perpetually pregnant, freedom from STIs, and freedom from limited social and economic opportunities. Really, the list goes on and on. I owe my independence in large part to birth control.

What does birth control mean to you? Please add your thoughts in the comments section below, and hop on over to Population Council’s website to contribute to their word cloud.

Also be sure to check out these great posts in honor of World Contraception Day:

 

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A Brief History of the Pill

30 Jul bc pills

Today’s post comes from Claire Payton, a research assistant at New York University’s Margaret Sanger Papers Project.

Of the millions of women who take the pill each day, most think about it only during the second or two it takes to swallow it; for the most disciplined among us, taking it requires no thought at all. We pop it out of simple packages in pastel colors, but where did the pill really come from? The story of the pill is much more complex than the packaging suggests.

A few weeks ago marked the 52nd anniversary of FDA approval of the first birth control pill in 1960. Within five years, more than six and a half million women were using it to regulate their families! This new medication completely revolutionized relationships, society, and the workplace by allowing women to postpone having children. The pill seems entirely commonplace today, a benign if essential prop in our social landscape, yet its development was entirely dependent on the intertwining lives of a few key personalities, one of whom was Margaret Sanger.

Continue reading →

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Letting Women Die?

5 Dec no-more-coat-hangers

If you’re anything like me, you might be wondering if somehow you’ve been transported back in time, to when family planning was inaccessible and abortion was illegal. Incredulously, it is 2011 – not 1950 – and here we are, fighting for reproductive rights as if we never even had them. If Congress has its way, that’s exactly what 2012 will bring: a complete reversal of these rights. From the proposed 2012 budget that cuts funding for family planning services to a bill that outright denies women lifesaving abortions, we are in the midst of the biggest uphill battle in recent history.

H.R. 358, the “Protect Life Act” (or as I like to call it, the “Let Women Die Act”), which allows hospitals to deny women abortion care even if it means they will die without it, passed in the House this October. This reverses decades of precedent. Under current law, all patients are protected by the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, which requires hospitals to provide treatment to any patient in an emergency, regardless of ability to pay. This new bill creates an exception for pregnant women. If that isn’t discriminating against a specific class of people, I don’t know what is.

The bill also sets out to ban all insurance coverage for abortion by denying federal subsidies to plans that cover abortion, even though private funds must already be segregated to cover any abortion care. This will ultimately result in a ban on abortion coverage for individuals and small businesses accessing coverage through the health care exchanges, and threatens all private insurance coverage of abortion.

It doesn’t end there, either. H.R. 358 vastly expands conscience clause protections so that anyone involved in the provision of abortion services – from receptionists who make appointments to insurance company employees that process claims – can refuse to provide services on any grounds. So much for being able to make private medical decisions with your doctor; any anti-choice cog in the health care wheel can obstruct you from obtaining an abortion.

Every single Republican voted in favor of H.R. 358, as did 11 Democrats. While the bill is not likely to pass in the Senate, it serves as a stark reminder that to many elected officials, women’s health is nothing more than a political bargaining chip. This bill is not about funding or protecting life. It is about cutting abortion access so that only a small, privileged percent of Americans can afford it. These politicians are willing to do whatever it takes to keep abortion out of reach, even if it means women must forfeit their lives. Call me crazy, but I don’t see how letting women die is in any way, shape, or form “pro-life.”

Keeping true to form, the House leadership’s draft Fiscal Year 2012 Labor, Health and Human Services appropriation bill also takes a stab at abortion and family planning, in complete defiance of the thousands who protested across the country and descended on the Capitol to save family planning funding in the 2011 budget. The proposed budget rehashes a lot of what the House has already tried to accomplish through extreme bills and budget cuts. According to RH Reality Check, the new budget would prohibit federal funding for Planned Parenthood through programs such as Medicaid, which provides low-income women with preventative health care; eliminate funding for the Title X Family Planning Program, which provides access to family planning that helps millions of low-income women avoid unintended pregnancies; ban insurance coverage of abortion in the new health exchanges under the Affordable Care Act; eliminate new benefits in the Affordable Care Act that cover women’s preventative services like mammograms, cancer screenings, and birth control; and cut the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative by $65 million, stipulating that $20 million of that money must be used to provide abstinence-only education, which was proven ineffective in a Congressionally mandated nine-year study in 2007.

Once again, the House leadership defies common logic. If you want to reduce the rate of abortion, decimating access to family planning and culling resources for abstinence-only education is not going to help achieve that goal. Conservatives are finally showing their cards: it’s not just about abortion. It’s about fundamentally controlling women’s lives, from the bedroom to the doctor’s office. What else could explain the attacks on birth control (which 99% of women use at some point in their lives), comprehensive sex education, and even general preventative health care?

It is a sad and revolting time when ideological agendas trump medicine and basic human decency. If our current Congress’s record doesn’t provide a compelling example of why it’s important to vote for pro-choice and pro-women candidates, I don’t know what does. With the 2012 Presidential election on the horizon, it’s absolutely critical that we shout our demands:

We demand access to comprehensive health care, including preventive services, family planning, and abortion. We demand the best available medical care, especially if our lives are at stake. We demand that our concerns be heeded by the politicians elected to serve us. And we demand that women’s lives be at least as valued as much as the life of a fetus.

This article originally appeared in NOW-NYC’s Winter 2011 newsletter.

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What Right to Privacy?

7 Jun 682billboard

The right to privacy is the foundation upon which abortion rights (and I’d argue more broadly, health rights) are founded — it is enshrined in Roe v. Wade, not to mention basic logic. However, as we’ve seen over and over and over again, anti-choice groups consistently try to undermine this right. Now, we can add to the list of right to privacy violators a disgruntled ex-boyfriend.

The AP reports that Greg Fultz commissioned a billboard accusing his ex-girlfriend of killing his baby:

Hell hath no fury like this guy: Greg Fultz lashed out at his ex-girlfriend with a billboard featuring a picture of him holding the outline of an infant reading, “This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!” The ex-girlfriend—whose friends claim she had a miscarriage, not an abortion—took Fultz to court for harassment and violation of privacy, and a court official has recommended the billboard’s removal. Fultz’s attorney claims that’s a free speech violation. Fultz himself isn’t entirely sure the fetus was aborted.

Wow. Can you imagine being that woman and seeing said billboard on the way to work? How humiliating — and violating. Even if she DID have an abortion, it is her right to privacy that protects her decision. As far as a free speech violation goes, it is my belief that one right (speech, for example) should never be used to violate another (privacy). That negates the point of having rights. So why the court recommended the billboard’s removal — not even definitively ruling one way or the other — is beyond me. To add insult to injury, pending further legal action, the billboard is to remain up for the next three months.

So I repeat… what right to privacy??

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HR3 Up For Vote Tomorrow

3 May capitol-hill

I know, it feels like a nightmare replaying over and over again. HR3, one of the most anti-woman pieces of legislation in Congress right now, is up for a vote tomorrow.

As a refresher, here’s HR3 in a nutshell:

  • It manipulates the tax code to push forward an anti-choice — and anti-woman — agenda
  • It would make it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new health system to offer abortion coverage to women (it eliminates tax credits for any insurance plan that covers abortion care)
  • It denies pregnant women access to life-saving procedures via expanded conscience clauses

This bill is likely to pass the House; so likely in fact, that I’d bet my life savings on it. But, there may be a light at the end of the shitty conservative tunnel. If HR3 passes the House and went on to pass in the Senate, Obama’s senior advisors are recommending he veto it.

Here’s what the Office of Management and Budget had to say about it:

The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 3 because it:  intrudes on women’s reproductive freedom and access to health care; increases the tax burden on many Americans; unnecessarily restricts the private insurance choices that consumers have today; and restricts the District of Columbia’s use of local funds, which undermines home rule.  Longstanding Federal policy prohibits Federal funds from being used for abortions, except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered.  This prohibition is maintained in the Affordable Care Act and reinforced through the President’s Executive Order 13535.  H.R. 3 goes well beyond these safeguards by interfering with consumers’ private health care choices.  The Administration also strongly supports existing provider conscience laws that have protected the rights of health care providers and entities for over 30 years, and it recognizes and supports the rights of patients.  The Administration will strongly oppose legislation that unnecessarily restricts women’s reproductive freedoms and consumers’ private insurance options.

If the President is presented with H.R. 3, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill. (Via RH Reality Check.)

Let’s hope Barry does the right thing.

While we wait, however, YOU can do the right thing by contacting your Congress representatives and telling them to vote NO on HR3!

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Lessons From a Stranger

6 Apr trustwomen

I spent my morning yesterday doing “clinic defense” in the Bronx. What does this mean? Basically ensuring that patients entering and leaving a woman’s health clinic were free from harassment. And, as with most feminist endeavors, I re-learned a very valuable lesson: you can’t presume to know every woman’s story.

It’s too bad the anti-choice harrassers haven’t yet learned this lesson. Case in point:

One man, who was accompanying a female patient, started to  engage with the protestors who were — unsurprisingly — urging the woman not to “kill her baby.” The interaction was quickly squashed and the man showed more control than I could have in his position. It was clear he was troubled, however, and he began to open up to me about why they were there.

Earlier in the week, the woman’s doctor informed her that she absolutely needed an abortion. She had nearly died giving birth to her first child, and this fetus was stuck and growing in her fallopian tube. If it was left to grow, it would likely explode, and she would face irreparable harm and possibly  death. Since she has no insurance, she couldn’t afford to have the procedure done at a hospital, which brought her to the clinic. She was devastated by the news and, already a mother, very much wanted to have this baby. But her health and life depended on not having the baby.

My point here is that every woman’s story is different. Nothing about abortion is black and white, and everyone — both pro-choicers and anti-choicers — should bear this in mind.

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Back Up Your Birth Control!

30 Mar EC

Happy Back Up Your Birth Control day of action!! Today marks the 10th anniversary of the campaign, which aims to raise awareness of and expand access to Emergency Contraception (EC).

Before I began expounding on why you should back up your birth control, let me first address a couple of misconceptions about EC. First and foremost, THIS IS NOT THE ABORTION PILL. EC does not interfere with established pregnancies. Rather, it helps prevent pregnancy if taken up to 120 hours after birth control failure or unprotected sex (the sooner the better, of course).

Second, it is not dangerous or harmful to your health. As Planned Parenthood explains,

Emergency contraception is safe. Even though it’s made of the same hormone as the birth control pill, the morning-after pill does not have the same risks as taking the pill or other hormonal birth control methods continuously. That’s because the hormone in the morning-after pill is not in your body as long as it is with ongoing birth control.

Millions of women have used emergency contraception. It has been used for more than 30 years. There have been no reports of serious complications.

So, why back up your birth control with EC? Simply put, because accidents happen. You can be responsible and use a condom and suddenly find yourself on the receiving end of a “holy shit, the condom broke!” moment. Which, trust me, is no fun. It’s my personal version of hell.

And you know what? Even if you choose not to use birth control and engage in unprotected sex, it’s still your right to obtain EC. (Although there are plenty of folks out there who would love to judge and accordingly dispense EC only to “responsible” women whose birth control failed — or not at all, for that matter.)

And lest we not forget, rape also happens. Unwanted, unprotected sex happens every single day and I can’t think of anyone more deserving of EC than a rape victim.

The bottom line here is that you can’t control your destiny without control over your fertility. I firmly believe that the ability to choose if and when to become a parent is one of the most determining factors in one’s future success. So back up your birth control, ladies! EC is a friend, not a foe :)

To learn more about EC, go here. And for a chuckle, check out EC e-cards!

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Senate Rejects House’s Attempt to Defund PPFA!

9 Mar capitol-hill

Hats off to the Senate, which today rejected the House’s budget proposal that aimed to defund Planned Parenthood and family planning. WOO HOO!

According to an action alert I received from NARAL Pro-Choice America, the organization is planning a national lobby day as the War on Women continues:

Believe me, this is not over – not by a mile. We have to harness that energy to stop the entire anti-choice War on Women. That’s right – we still face extreme bills in Congress that could change women’s access to abortion and birth control forever. In fact, today a key House committee scheduled a third legislative hearing on H.R.3, the extreme “Stupak on Steroids” legislation, for next week.

Our next step is organizing a 5,000-person pro-choice lobby day in Washington, D.C. on April 7. We will be joined by our partners at Planned Parenthood and other major pro-choice organizations.

Great job — and many thanks — to all the pro-woman, pro-family planning activists who spoke out against the House’s attempt to defund Title X! Let’s keep it up!!!

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House Advances Anti-Woman Agenda: HR3 Heads for Full Vote

3 Mar capitol-hill

Today, the House Judiciary Committee celebrated Women’s History Month by passing the vile piece of legislation known as HR3 out of committee. It will now proceed to the House for a full vote.

According to Talking Points Memo, 22 Republicans and one Democrat (Puerto Rico Del. Pedro Pierluisi) voted to approve HR3 in committee.

In case you aren’t familiar with the naming of legislation, HR3 literally means this is the third piece of legislation the Republican House has taken up. Call me crazy, but shouldn’t JOBS and the ECONOMY be in the top 3? And correct me if I’m wrong, but there aren’t any job openings in my uterus…so why do Republicans have to get all up in it?

In the event that you’ve forgotten all that HR3 encompasses, let’s refresh:

  • It manipulates the tax code to push forward an anti-choice — and anti-woman — agenda
  • It would make it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new health system to offer abortion coverage to women
  • It denies pregnant women access to life-saving procedures via expanded conscience clauses

This bill is downright dangerous, especially when combined with its counterparts, HR358 and the recently passed Pence Bill (to de-fund Planned Parenthood).

Rep. John Conyers (D – Mich.) put it perfectly:

this bill seeks to expand restrictions in current law and to impose an unprecedented penalty — by use of the tax code — on privately funded healthcare choices made by women and their families. Its goal — and effect, if ever enacted — is to make abortion and coverage for abortion services completely unavailable.

What a way to honor women and all of our collective achievements! The very achievements that, incidentally, would not be possible without the opportunity to control our fertility. Just saying.

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