Reproductive Health
Hillary Clinton Versus Chris Smith: No Contest
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH9rC0MaBJc[/youtube]
Read MoreJustice Ginsburg’s Right About Roe, Wrong About Solution
Several people have e-mailed me today to ask what I thought about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s comments about the Roe v Wade decision in today’s New York Times.
“The court bit off more than it could chew,” Justice Ginsburg said in remarks after a speech at Princeton in October. It would have been enough, she said, to strike down the extremely restrictive Texas law at issue in Roe and leave further questions for later cases.
“The legislatures all over the United States were moving on this question,” she added. “The law was in a state of flux.”
Roe shut those developments down and created a backlash that lasts to this day.
“The Supreme Court’s decision was a perfect rallying point for people who disagreed with the notion that it should be a woman’s choice,” Justice Ginsburg said. “They could, instead of fighting in the trenches legislature by legislature, go after this decision by unelected judges.”
It’s also old news that Ginsburg believes, as many others have said over the years that the Court’s decision in Roe leapfrogged over public opinion that was heading in the prochoice direction anyway, so they should have just waited for the legislative process to work.
Read MoreThe Yanks Are Coming–Back–Now What?
The road to the international agreements forged in Cairo and Beijing was long and fraught with cultural potholes, but nothing like the challenges that our own government placed in the path of women’s reproductive self-determination. Now, there’s been a 180 degree turn back to the future, and the world is relieved. But other countries have moved forward, so what’s the next step for the U.S.?
Linda Hirshman, author of Get to Work and columnist for Slate’s new XX among many other accomplishments, and I wrote this commentary. After we were rejected by the New York Times and the Washington Post (what else is new?), we decided it was too important an issue not to see the light of day. So we’re publishing it on RHREalityCheck, Huffington Post, and here on good ol’ Heartfeldt.
At the very moment the Obama administration’s decision to seek a U.S. seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council grabbed headlines, the United States quietly took the reins on the most important human rights issue for humanity’s future: sexual and reproductive rights. On March 31, State Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration, Margaret Pollack, told delegates to the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, meeting in New York, that America was back.
Marking a 180 degree turnaround from Bush administration policies that fought international efforts to enable people to control their own reproductive fate, the U.S. will once again defend the “human rights and fundamental freedoms of women” and support “universal access to sexual and reproductive health.” Abstinence-only sex education, the bête noir of health providers attempting to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, was Kung-Fu kicked aside. Human rights apply to all regardless of sexual orientation. The U.S. commits to ratify CEDAW, the women’s rights treaty already signed by 185 nations, and even endorses “equal partnerships and sharing of responsibilities in all areas of family life, including in sexual and reproductive life.”
The global sigh of relief was palpable. For with all its money and diplomatic resources, the U.S. is the 10,000 gorilla in international reproductive policy. Now the question is, while this is certainly change we can believe in, is it all the change we need?
Read MoreWhere Common Ground Gets Shaky
First, please read for yourself Rachel Laser’s “Conceiving Common Ground” over at the website RHRealityCheck (btw, if you don’t already have RHRC on your bookmarked blog list, do it now; they provide exellent information and provocative articles like this one every day. Dozens of times through the 30 years I worked for Planned Parenthood and in the several years since, there have been efforts to find the so-called “third way” or “common ground.” I’ve had the privilege to be involved in some profound conversations with people who come from a wide range of pro- and anti-choice perspectives. I learned a great deal from them and they helped me shape or sometimes deepen my own convictions by questioning them.
Somehow, though, these efforts fail on three points, and the quest for the third way becomes a fool’s errand.
Read MoreScience at Last Trumps Ideology and Politics
It’s been a way too long time coming, and who knows how many thousands of women women have been denied access to reproductive health care they needed during the delay?
But good news: Today, a federal District Court ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acted improperly when it “repeatedly and unreasonably” dragged its heels and failed to issue a decision on emergency contraception (EC), and that there was no basis in science (not to mention the FDA’s own expert advisors) to have denied over-the-counter sales of EC to those aged 17 and under.
Emergency contraception is simply a high dose of birth control pills–contraception–that can prevent a pregnancy from occurring if taking within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse. Predictability groups that oppose birth control labeled EC an abortifacient and alleged that access to it would “cause” promiscuity–an old canard about as reasonable as blaming fire engines for causing fires. If a woman is pregnant already, EC won’t work, nor will it damage a fetus. The worst side effect that has been determined after decades of use is nausea.
From RHRealityCheck’s report on today’s court ruling:
Read MoreMy Little Red Book
Today’s Women’s History Month post deals with one of the most universal women’s issues: menstruation.
Nora Ephron got this sage advice in her novel Heartburn: invest in something people use once and throw away. So she invested in tampons and made a lot of money.
I thought of that when I met a young woman named Toyna Chin, whose company produces Petite Amie, an appealingly designed kit containing a custom designed mix of products a tween or teen needs when she has her monthly period. Not only was Toyna investing in products people use once and throw away, she was packaging them as a stylish health and beauty product rather than a tacky sterile necessity that smacks of embarrassment when plucked from the shelf.
Petite Amie is perfectly in synch with changes in how girls approach menstruation now compared to previous generations. In the same way that girls today learn to compete because Title IX increased their access to competitive sports (Think Sarah “Barracuda” Palin), they are much more likely to embrace and talk frely about the tangible evidence of puberty than the women who birthed them, and certainly more than their grandmothers, for whom “the curse” was just that.
Read MoreSetting the World Aright for Reproductive Rights
My new post in On the Issues is up today. They call it “A Do Over for Reproductive Rights”. I had named it “Turning the World Upside Down to See Reproductive Justice”. I liked their alliteration, so I came up with “Turning the World Aright for for Reproductive Rights.” Anyway, I don’t believe in do overs. Here’s the commentary:
Lars Larson is a conservative radio talk show host with a following of four million listeners. His producer assured me, when asking me to appear for Roe v Wade’s 36th anniversary, that Lars is respectful, though he would take views opposite to mine. No problem, I said, as long as I can speak my piece.
My “piece” led me to talk about where I think the debate should be: squarely on women’s human rights to make their own childbearing decisions, access to preventive family planning services, and economic justice, as well as abortion. It flipped Lars out. When he couldn’t keep the conversation on pitting the innocent baby against the murderous woman who stupidly didn’t use birth control, he started spinning. He lectured me during the commercial break—in stern-father tones—that I was speaking my piece a little too much for his comfort. Perhaps I wasn’t being the desired foil.
.
Though he began by challenging me with the focus on the fetus, within seconds he shifted to peppering me with denigrating statements about women. What clearer example could there be of the sexism that puts all responsibility and blame for unintended pregnancy on women?
Liveblog: Pro-Choice Messaging for a New Era
2:52 AmieN: Welcome everyone to RH Reality Check’s second in our monthly series of live-chats on the reproductive health and rights issues facing the country today. Of course, today is the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and President Obama is at the helm. We have a lot about which to be hopeful (and thankful)…
Read MoreRoe v Wade Anniversary Thank-You to Sarah Weddington
Today, on the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade, I salute Sarah Weddington.
I first met Sarah, the lawyer who successfully argued Roe v Wade before the U.S. Supreme court when she was just 27 years old, in a church meeting room in Midland TX. Yes, the heart of George Bush country where we both had roots. It was around 1975, I was the relatively new executive director of Planned Parenthood of West Texas, then called Permian Basin Planned Parenthood, and the topic that brought together a number of family planning providers from the wide expanse of West Texas was legislation to allow nurse practioners to work in our health centers so that more women could get birth control and related health services to prevent unintended pregnancy and plan wanted ones. The demand from women desiring to plan and space their childbearing was clearly outstripping the supply of services available to them.
As a state legislator, Sarah continued her commitment to women by working tirelessly to make sure they could get access to reproductive health services. She understood that legality is one thing; access can be quite another, and rights without access are meaningless.
Sarah continues now to speak, write, teach, and work on behalf of women. Her accomplishments are legendary and too numerous to mention. But the most striking thing about Sarah is that she is such a great friend and a generous, devoted colleague in the continuing movement to secure the human rights of women to make their own childbearing decisions.
Read MoreTurnabout After Prop 8 Offers Delicious Irony
While I’m riveted like rest of the nation and indeed the world, watching the events leading up to Barack Obama’s inauguration tomorrow, a news item buried deep in the national news section of the New York Times today nearly caused me to fall, laughing wildly, off the treadmill where I was reading it.
Yes, multitasking three things at once always makes me feel like I am using my time wisely. But I digress.
The article, “Marriage Ban Donors Feel Exposed by list”, reports a lawsuit filed by supporters of California’s Proposition 8, passed last November, that made same sex marriage illegal by overturning the State Supreme Court’s May, 2008, ruling that same sex marriages are legal under the California constitution.
Frank Schubert, the campaign manager for Protect Marriage, the leading group behind the proposition, alleges that gay rights groups are checking out the names and addresses of donors to the Prop 8 campaign. “And giving these people a map to your home or office leaves supporters of Proposition 8 feeling especially vulnerable. Really, it is chilling,” Schubert said. So they’ve filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court seeking to prevent release of the names of donors who contributed late in the campaign and have not yet been revealed in campaign filings.
Well my, my. I do empathize even if I don’t sympathize, given that the same groups that supported Prop 8 also oppose reproductive rights for women. For the 30 years I was with Planned Parenthood, they dogged me personally, stalking, picketing me at home, and often sending threatening notes. Their harrassment of doctors who provide abortion services escalated over the years to violence; as a result 87% of U.S. counties have no abortion provider.
Chilling indeed.
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