Women Vote GOP. Yes, We Do. #IStandWithPP

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Uppity Woman (Child) #21: A Profile in Courage

From the Muslim Times, Veronique De Viguerie / Getty Images, file

From dictionary.com- 

Uppity: rebelliously self-assertive; not inclined to be tractable or deferential.

I know of no person who better embodies the spirit of the amazing women on my list of "Uppity Women" than Malala Yousafzai. Yet Malala is a child of only 14. She is "uppity" because she dared to blog, under a pseudonym, about the atrocities committed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Swat Valley for the BBC, that bastion of apostasy, in 2009, at the amazing age of 11. Her blog espoused both her desire and firm belief in her right to an education, and her outrage at the destruction of schools and the violence visited on peaceful Pakistanis who wanted their daughters to be educated or those who wanted to educate all children. The Taliban in the Swat Valley are clearly very threatened by the idea of educated females, and by Malala in particular, because yesterday two of their thugs proudly got on her school bus in Mingora, Swat and after asking which girl was Malala, shot her in the head and neck, then shot two other education righteous-thinking girls for good measure. Malala has survived the shooting, although just barely. Reports still insist the bullet did not penetrate her brain.

Malala, who was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize in 2011,  won the Pakistani National Peace Prize in December, 2011. The Government School for Girls was renamed the Malala Yousafzai School earlier this year. Her attempted assassination, for certainly she was a well-known and charismatic figure, has brought immense sorrow, anger and embarrassment in various circles in Pakistan. But among the Tehrik-i-Taliban there is only the consternation that she is the girl who lived, albeit precariously so at this point. Their leader, Ihsanullah Ihsan has said tersely, "Let this be a lesson," and promised they will try to kill her again for the obscenity of her desire for her rights and Western-tainted values. 

The Pakistani National Airline has said they are ready to fly her to any facility in the world for further medical care but she is evidently not stable enough to be moved. Meanwhile, demonstrators flooded the streets, as evidenced by the many photos on Al Jazeera and other Islamic news outlets. This morning the government of Pakistan offered a 10 Million Rupee bounty for the men that shot Malala and her friends, an extraordinary sum. Roads are barricaded, streets bear signs decrying the shooting and Pakistani PM Pervez Ashraf said of the attack, "She is our daughter." Journalist Nadeem F. Paracha said in a positively brutal tweet on Twitter, "Come on brothers, be REAL MEN. Kill a schoolgirl." Yet, the Karachi-based Paracha's column in today's Dawn lays the blame for Malala's suffering not just on the Taliban but on Pakistanis themselves, who he paints in stark contrast, due to their apathy, to brave souls like Malala.

A friend asked me this morning about whether Malala couldn't get asylum in the West. I guess the US or the UK would be able to grant her asylum. Surely there is ample cause. But imagine uprooting your entire family and struggling to rebuild their lives so far from home. Why should she, or they, have to seek asylum, is my thought. Why can't a 14 year old girl be safe on a school bus or in her government school? Why should she or her friends live in fear? Why should any of the lessons she's learning have to do with grown men shooting children? Why can't she study as long as she wants to, and whatever she wishes to? 

Malala, who was named after a Pashtun poet and warrior woman, clearly saw the risks of opposing the Taliban, based on her direct experience and as detailed in her blogging. And yet, she was a child and children never internalize risks as adults do. Perhaps her courage will galvanize her elder compatriots and make them see, yet again, that the very future of their country is being brutalized and terrorized. Demonstrators in Benghazi, Libya took matters into their own hands, striking against, and routing, the Ansar-al-Sharia who killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. Maybe the people of Swat Valley need to make their voices, and their will, clearer to the Tehrik-i-Taliban? Maybe the bravery of "their daughter" will be the catalyst for the change that Malala believes in. 

The world, excepting a pack of barbarians, wishes this child a full recovery.

Demonstrators protesting Malala's shooting in Peshawar.

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No Honor Here...

I guess I must just be on a tear with Pakistani treatment of women and children. Lest we think the Taliban is the only problem facing Pakistani women, or the sole factor in the mindset that women are mere chattel, we need only consider the case of Shafilea Ahmed. This honor killing, which occurred in 2003 and is finally facing justice, took place in England. About a week ago, her parents were finally convicted of Shafilea's grisly murder, on the basis of her younger sister's testimony against her parents. Her parents had been living in the UK for more than a decade by the time they killed their 17 year old daughter for being too Westernized.

Shafilea Ahmed's teachers deserve kudos for trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to help this child. Just like recent killings in Canada however, the child welfare system seems to find it difficult to safeguard young women in these difficult situations. You can watch the CNN video report on the welfare failure here:

And meanwhile, I encourage anyone who wants to spend a bit more of their time *headdesk*-ing to check out the comments on the Pakistan Express Tribune's Facebook posting of their article on Rifta Masih, the poor 11 year old Down's syndrome child who is charged with blasphemy (punishable by death) for burning pages of the Koran. As it turns out, her mother was with her when she was jailed. But of course, the rest of the family had run off and abandoned the mother who stood by her child. The police now deny the mother and child were "tortured." Since a later Pakistan Express Tribune article opens with the statement that the child was severely beaten, I'm wondering exactly what the police mean by "not tortured." A later article still says that Islamabad police have registered a case against the Muslim cleric in Rifta's village for encouraging a village mob to set the child on fire. Reportedly, the police intervened before that could occur.

---

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This Slut Votes

This Slut Votes

Since so much of the furor has died down, I just wanted to say that I ordered my bumper sticker and my t-shirt, and hey, "Republican Party Males Who Want to Roll Back Time to the 1900's, I Mean 1950's," I remember all that legislation you proposed, passed and have tabled until you think no one is watching anymore.


When it comes to the rights for my daughter and quasi-daughter-in-law, I think you'll find that my attention span is fecking infinite.

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Unsafe Abortion (Warning Graphic Details, Graphic Imagery)

Russian Abortion Poster circa 1925, National Library of Medicine

Translation of text at top: "Miscarriages induced by either trained or self-taught midwives not only maim the woman, they also often lead to death." Caption for upper-left picture: "Visiting the self-taught midwife" Upper-right picture: "Consequences of miscarriage" Lower picture: "Death from miscarriage" Text at lower left: "Any miscarriage is harmful." Text at lower right: "Any trained or self-taught midwife who induces a miscarriage is committing a crime."

I have been shocked to learn that my youngest child, who is 16, did not fully understand the consequences of unsafe abortion. I hadn't really planned to talk much further on the matter right now because my piece on Submissiveness and Backsliding on women's reproductive rights is pretty much self-contained and it's not a piece that's just about abortion, but rather a piece about women's rights. (Although, I was very annoyed to find that I forgot to mention US Representative Richard Hanna, R-NY, speaking last month at an ERA anniversary rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C. telling women to contribute to Democrats, not Republicans, because their hard-won rights were under attack.)

Anyway, here's the deal. I'm now aware that there are at least a generation of young people out there who are so far removed from the days before legalization and Roe v. Wade (1973) that they haven't heard what it was like, what could happen to women who got desperate, to women who couldn't afford to be pregnant, either because of their social or financial or familial circumstances. That's a generation of people who don't understand what the image below represents to women of my age and older. So I'm going to post some info on unsafe abortion. It won't be pretty, people.

Image from: The Coat Hanger Project

Unsafe Abortion- Here, There, Everywhere

The best source for examining what happens with unsafe abortions is to look at abortion in developing countries (think much of Africa), or even developed countries where abortion is largely illegal (think developed countries in Latin America).


First, let's deal with the basic and indisputable facts about abortion. Later, we'll get to the above mentioned graphic details.

Guttmacher Foundation is an organization whose stated mission is "advancing sexual and reproductive health worldwide through research, policy analysis and public education." They work in frequent collaboration with the World Health Organization. Directly from their policy brief, 

Facts on Induced Abortion Worldwide (emphasis mine):

ABORTION LAW

• Highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower abortion rates. For example, the abortion rate is 29 per 1,000 women of childbearing age in Africa and 32 per 1,000 in Latin America—regions in which abortion is illegal under most circumstances in the majority of countries. The rate is 12 per 1,000 in Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. [1]

• Where abortion is permitted on broad legal grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is highly restricted, it is typically unsafe. In developing countries, relatively liberal abortion laws are associated with fewer negative health consequences from unsafe abortion than are highly restrictive laws. [2] [3]

• In South Africa, the annual number of abortion-related deaths fell by 91 % after the liberalization of the abortion law. [2]

• In Nepal, where abortion was made legal on broad grounds in 2002, it appears that abortion-related complications are on the decline: A recent study in eight districts found that abortion-related complications accounted for 54% of all facility-treated maternal illnesses in 1998, but for only 28% in 2008–2009. [3]

• Between 1997 and 2008, the grounds on which abortion may be legally performed were broadened in 17 countries: Benin, Bhutan, Cambodia, Chad, Colombia, Ethiopia, Guinea, Iran, Mali, Nepal, Niger, Portugal, Saint Lucia, Swaziland, Switzerland, Thailand and Togo. Mexico City and parts of Australia (Capital Territory, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia) also liberalized their abortion laws. In contrast, El Salvador and Nicaragua changed their already restrictive laws to prohibit abortion entirely, while Poland withdrew socioeconomic reasons as a legal ground for abortion.

UNSAFE ABORTION

• The World Health Organization defines unsafe abortion as a procedure for terminating a pregnancy that is performed by an individual lacking the necessary skills, or in an environment that does not conform to minimal medical standards, or both.

• Between 1995 and 2008, the rate of unsafe abortion worldwide remained essentially unchanged, at 14 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44. [1]

• During the same period, the proportion of all abortions that were unsafe increased from 44% to 49%. [1]

• In 2008, more than 97% of abortions in Africa were unsafe. Southern Africa is the subregion with the lowest proportion of unsafe abortions (58%) [1]. Close to 90% of women in the subregion live in South Africa, where abortion was liberalized in 1997.

• In Latin America, 95% of abortions were unsafe, a proportion that did not change between 1995 and 2008. Nearly all safe abortions occurred in the Caribbean, primarily in Cuba and several other countries where the law is liberal and safe abortions are accessible. [1]

• In Asia, the proportion of abortions that are unsafe varies widely by subregion, from virtually none in Eastern Asia to 65% in South Central Asia. [1]

• In Western Asia, the proportion of abortions that are unsafe increased from 34% to 60% between 2003 and 2008. [1]This increase is likely due to improved measurement of unsafe abortions and to a steady decline in abortions (partly due to the increasingly widespread use of effective contraceptives) in countries where abortion is legal and safe.

• Worldwide, medication abortion (a technique using a combination of the drugs mifespristone and misoprostol, or misoprostol alone) has become more common in both legal and clandestine procedures. Increased use of medication abortion has likely contributed to declines in the proportion of clandestine abortions that result in severe morbidity and maternal death.

CONSEQUENCES OF UNSAFE ABORTION

• The estimated annual number of deaths from unsafe abortion declined from 56,000 in 2003 to 47,000 in 2008. Complications from unsafe abortion accounted for an estimated 13% of all maternal deaths worldwide in both years. [4]

• Declines since 2003 in the annual number of deaths from unsafe abortion, along with concurrent increases in the annual number of unsafe abortions performed, indicate that the risks associated with clandestine procedures may be decreasing.

• In the United States, legal induced abortion results in 0.6 deaths per 100,000 procedures. Worldwide, unsafe abortion accounts for a death rate that is 350 times higher (220 per 100,000), and, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the rate is 800 times higher, at 460 per 100,000. [4]

• Almost all abortion-related deaths occur in developing countries, with the highest number occurring in Africa.

• Unsafe abortion is a significant cause of ill-health among women in the developing world. Estimates for 2005 indicate that 8.5 million women annually experience complications from unsafe abortion that require medical attention, and three million do not receive the care they need. [5]

• Treating medical complications from unsafe abortion places a significant financial burden on public health care systems in the developing world. According to a 2009 study, the minimum annual estimated cost of providing postabortion care in the developing world is $341 million. [6]

• In developing countries, poor women have the least access to family planning services and the fewest resources to pay for safe abortion procedures; they are also the most likely to experience complications related to unsafe abortion.

• Unsafe abortion has significant negative consequences beyond its immediate effects on women’s health. For example, complications from unsafe abortion may reduce women’s productivity, increasing the economic burden on poor families; cause maternal deaths that leave children motherless; cause long-term health problems, such as infertility; and result in considerable costs to already struggling public health systems.

UNINTENDED PREGNANCY: THE ROOT OF ABORTION

• The uptake of modern contraceptive methods worldwide has slowed in recent years, from an increase of 0.6 percentage points per year in 1990–1999 to an increase of only 0.1 percentage points per year in 2000–2009. In Africa, the annual increase in modern contraceptive use fell from 0.8 percentage points in 1990–1999 to 0.2 percentage points in 2000–2009. [7]

• An estimated 215 million women in the developing world have an unmet need for modern contraceptives, meaning they want to avoid a pregnancy but are using a low-efficacy traditional family planning method or no method. [8]

• Some 82% of unintended pregnancies in developing countries occur among women who have an unmet need for modern contraception. [8]

• In the developing world, women’s reasons for not using contraceptives most commonly include concerns about possible side-effects, the belief that they are not at risk of getting pregnant, poor access to family planning, and their partners’ opposition to contraception.

• Reducing unmet need for modern contraception is an effective way to prevent unintended pregnancies, abortions and unplanned births.

References cited in this paper can be found in the article itself, at the bottom of the page.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Many Pro-Life supporters may likely say that if a woman is grievously harmed or dies as a result of an unsafe, prohibited abortion that she deserves what she gets. (I note for the umpteenth time that Pro-Choice women believe women should have a choice in pregnancy: keep their baby, keep their pregnancy and offer their baby for adoption, or terminate their pregnancy. Pro-Choice is about having those choices, not all about abortion. Many Pro-Choice women have never had an abortion and might never choose to have one but feel the right to control your body is every woman's right, just like it's every man's right.)

What are some of these complications of unsafe abortions? Pretty Horrifying.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Abortion I. F. Noel from the National Library of Medicine

Complications of Unsafe Abortion.

Well, I'm sure any woman who can envision sticking something inappropriate into her  vagina, trying to get it through a tight cervical opening and neck and then swirlingly that object around a bit to scrape her uterine walls as if she was getting a nice D&C, can envision a myriad of things going wrong with an unsafe abortion. Cynical Nymph found this article by Dr. Jenny Gunter to describe an experience with a woman who came into an ER with a perforation that ruptured the uterine artery, an often fatal complication in which the woman bleeds out. (You can read further about the severity and fiscal cost of unsafe abortions at Guttmacher Foundation, here.) 

Taking a nice, neutral British source, we find the following, from an Education for Choice Fact Sheet for British Teens:

(Figures sourced from the World Health Organization, 2008)

• Between two million and seven million women (worldwide) each year survive unsafe abortion, but sustain long-term damage or disease.

• The most frequent complications are incomplete abortion, infection (sepsis), haemorrhage and injury to the internal organs, such as puncturing or tearing of the uterus.

• Long-term health problems include chronic pain, pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility.

• About 95% of unsafe abortions take place in developing countries.

• In many African countries, up to 70% of women treated for abortion complications are under 20 years old.

• Unsafe abortion is responsible for one in eight maternal deaths.

It is rather startling to read these figures and remember that they are largely talking about developing countries, and are not contemplating countries that are among the largest and most successful in the history of this planet. Should they be? Hmmm. Go back and read that first fact from Guttmacher on Abortion Law:

Highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower abortion rates.

This is because women who are desperate not to have a child do desperate things. How does it go when things really go wrong? You can die. You can be maimed. And you can end up in situations in which what the physician delivers is something like this: (Don't you DARE look away!)

Resected gangrenous intestinal segment that escaped through perforated uterus.

(Source: Journal of Family and Community Medicine)
Caution is strongly advised before following the link!

The 30 year old Indian mother of 6 children, who formerly was attached to this  intestine, miraculously survived, after major surgery to remove three feet of small intestine, two days on a ventilator, 3 units of packed RBCs, and 14 days in the hospital on broad spectrum antibiotics. What a hale and hearty soul. Most women would have died. Still, I wonder how she absorbs nutrients, since I'm more than passingly familiar with the damaged small intestine nutritional problems. (Celiac issue) Her desperation not to have a seventh child may yet claim her life.

Let's think about how much that same level of botched-abortion healthcare would cost in the USA, shall we? 

Of course, it's possibly cheaper than a state raising a child given up at birth. Not betting on it, though. A woman may have further, long-term complications, beyond just the acute ones of an unsafe abortion. Or she may die. But hey, it's only a woman, and if she dies having a backstreet abortion, she probably deserved it. She was wrong for having sex (even if raped or victim of incest) if she didn't want to get pregnant and wrong for not wanting to stay pregnant if she got pregnant, and wrong for not having enough money to pay for all the expenses of her legal abortion even if you made it as expensive as possible for her to get, and finally wrong for not having enough wherewithal to just get herself to some state or country where she could get an affordable abortion. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

So I'm going to close this entirely wrong post now. With a few very wrong links. I know it's almost as wrong of me as the wrongness of wanting control over my body (which is so very wrong of me...) and wishing the same for my wrong-headed daughter.

Support Planned Parenthood. Last I checked, affordable and accesible contraception prevents abortions.

Join Emily's List and support women for elected office who promote women's reproductive rights and choices, and legislation that improves the lives of women and families nationwide. Even if you're a man, you can join. Know who you're voting for.

And know what's going on out there. Track legislative proposals that infringe on women's reproductive rights at Trust Women. It's a PAC. When I find other women's rights PACs, I'm going to contribute to them, too.

But that's because I'm am irredeemably wrong.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2012

Fifty Shades of Backsliding

from HBO's Game of Thrones

Over the past few days, I've been having an interesting discussion, both on and off a private book discussion thread on GoodReads. A young woman who used to be a member of a book discussion board I ran for several years innocently asked if anyone was reading Fifty Shades of Grey. I guess she's pretty sorry at this point that she ever mentioned it, a fact which I kind of regret. But only kind of. (She denies that, btw, just now as I started writing this post, she posted a sweet reply in the discussion thread saying the conversation has been interesting and informative to her.) The discussion has definitely helped to frame and clarify in my mind some of the various feelings I've been having about the "War on Women" in my country in this election year. On my private Facebook page, as well as my Bright Nepenthe Facebook page, I've been posting steadily about some of the truly egregious erosion of women's rights going on in conservative states in this country. How does that tie in with Amazon's current #1 Besteller in Books? Let me tell you.

I first started hearing about the book several weeks ago. All I knew about it was that it was supposed to be an erotic romance that deals with BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism).  I didn't know much more than that, but I then started hearing that it was apparently being targeted to a female young adult audience because the author's work grew out of fanfiction inspired by the Twilight series, (a series of books for which I bear no love whatsoever for giving my daughter and her peers a passive heroine, Bella Swan, who looks for and latches onto the weird, dominating and paranormal guys, one of whom becomes her sole purpose in life, which, oh, by the way, she loses, becoming his immortal love and wife at the tender age of 18 and why would she need to go to college, etc. See here for more criticism.) Anyway, something about the idea of Fifty Shades of Grey bothered me. What bothered me has been crystallized by two things. First, there was Maureen Dowd's blistering column on the book and it's implications. And then the young woman mentioned above writing that she'd heard it was the "next hot trilogy", possibly in reference to our group's shared love of the Hunger Games trilogy, which in contrast involves a heroine who takes the lottery-selected place of her younger sister in a battle-to the-death, gladiator-type event mandated by her government to punish its citizens. But something tells me that young, virtuous and clever Katniss Everdeen, who refuses to submit to pretty much anything including tyranny and the threat of her own death, is very different, no doubt, from young, virtuous and not so clever Anastasia Steel (surname irony?), who after graduating college (yay!) signs a contract with dashing billionaire Christian Grey, giving him complete control over her life, person and body, becoming his submissive, sharing his "Red Room of Pain." (On the plus side, Christian reportedly gives her safe words, like Yellow (caution!) and Red (stop!), but more on that later.) BTW, I'm not the first to envision this comparison.

First, don't get me wrong here. I have no problem with the BDSM aspect between consenting adults. I have friends who are into BDSM (yes, I do, people) and who find it exciting and fulfilling. They are adults, older, and whatever they get out of it, it's their private life. Ironically, two of them are quite politically vocal and one is really politically active. I don't know or care whether they are dominant, submissive or whatever. Their private business. But I do really care about the hype and power of these books, which I don't think are a simple symbol of sexuality and freedom at all. No, I pretty much went postal in my discussion about the idea of putting forward money to purchase this book and the power that its being a bestseller gives to the idea that these fictional women are no longer just passive, but submissive. The idea of promoting women being submissive (even in fantasyland) at this juncture, here in the US, is very troubling to me. It's been interesting to explore why I feel that way with my bookish friends. Several friends in this discussion group are from other countries. One's in New Zealand, one in Scotland, one in Australia, and one, a Saudi national, is currently living in Switzerland. Meanwhile, I've got friends in other countries still, like Norway, Sweden and Germany, for example, who are just flabbergasted when they see the stuff I'm posting on my Facebook pages these days. One Iranian friend, and the Aussie friend mentioned above, pointed out it was easier and more affordable to get birth control in Iran than it is in the USA! But in general, women friends from around the world are incredulous at what's going on here in the US.

For instance, let's look at a proposed bill in Arizona that would allow employers to fire women who want to use birth control for contraception because that conflicts with the employers religious beliefs. The bill would mandate that employers could gain full access to an employee's medical records (how that doesn't violate HIPAA, I have no idea) and that if the employee refused (like, saying hey, there's this federal law that makes that info private info and I'm not giving it up) the employer can fire them. It also gives the employer the right to just refuse them insurance coverage for contraception to prevent pregnancy, or, if they're not happy that the woman now won't be able to get pregnant if she's having naughty sex while she's being treated for endometriosis or ovarian cysts, hey, they can still just refuse to pay, because contraception is wrong! As Cynical Nymph said to me, isn't it kind of troubling that in the eyes of these employers, it's okay that a woman could get the pill for her acne but not in order to prevent a pregnancy if she isn't ready to start or expand her family? Hello? The Arizona  ACLU has had a field day with this issue. The Arizona House of Representatives passed the bill but the Arizona Senate, especially after some very vocal remarks against it by US Senator John McCain among others, voted it down. But it's already been promoted for a revote (no date yet). Only two more votes are needed to pass this awful bill.

The issue of women and contraception has received a huge amount of media time in recent weeks, in no small part due to Sandra Fluke's brave and wonderful testimony before Congress after first being turned away, and the subsequent attacks aimed at her by Rush Limbaugh, who, without even knowing that her testimony was about a friend losing an ovary because she was unable to afford contraception prescribed for her ovarian problems, called Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a prostitute who needed birth control because she was "having so much sex  she can't afford the contraception" (certainly suggesting more than a bit of ignorance about how birth control even works!) and suggested that she ought to make video footage of herself having sex available to everyone, including especially him. (Interesting that he's scrubbed his comments from his website... Think we'll forget them, Rush? Think again.)

One of my friends has expressed amazement at the extent of the gender wage gap here in the US, which currently, according to the 2010 census, sites that a woman makes only $0.77 for every $1.00 made by a man in the same profession. And yet, a recently released National Bureau of Economic Research paper cites contraception as one of the leading factors closing the wage gap. Hmmm, you know that whole "barefoot and pregnant" thing could really make the gender gap irrelevant if women would just get out of the work place and stay at home, wouldn't it? Only, as Jezebel pointed out just today, denying women contraception and the subsequent costs of all those pregnancies and C-sections (unless we're going to legislate against those, too?) and all the lost work and parental paid leave time might really make the economy take a hit, you know? Yes, and contraceptive coverage translates to lower healthcare costs. Read it here, on Bloomberg. So why do we have politicians like Mitt Romney saying we need to get rid of Planned Parenthood, which is the largest provider of contraception to poor and disadvantaged women in the US? Why are Republicans trying to make it so hard for women to plan families so they avoid abortions? They say that Americans should work hard to get out of poverty. How are women supposed to do that if they can't easily obtain contraception or if their employer could fire them for using it for the wrong reasons?

But there's so, so, so much more heinous stuff out there.

As if the mandate of enduring a transvaginal ultrasound being performed (even on rape victims or pregnant children) in order to receive an abortion in Texas or Virginia isn't bad enough (other ultrasound mandate states are listed at the Guttmacher Foundation, or forthcoming ultrasound legislation at Mother Jones), or Kansas proposing charging a huge sales tax (even to rape and incest victims or to women bearing a fetus with genetic defects) on abortions, which of course aren't covered by Medicaid, your own insurance or any state funding for family planning, weren't enough of an assault on a woman's right to choice, there's the "knowing something's wrong" factor. One way to make sure a woman doesn't seek an abortion is to make sure she doesn't hear anything that might make her want one.

In Arizona and Oklahoma there are already enacted laws, making it legal for a gynecologist/obstetrician to not reveal anything wrong with a woman's pregnancy that might cause her to seek an abortion. You know, after all, fetal defects are God's will, as are maternal complications like eclampsia. (Because, hey, that baby is way more important than the mother, even if that mother has other children who are already here and need her or her husband loves her more than a potential child. Daddy can always get a new mommy for those chickadees!) A discussion of Arizona's shiny new law, from the ethics of the medical malpractice standpoint, can be found here. Both Kansas and Arizona have tried to move swiftly on these types of laws. Kansas is seeking similar legislation that, in one version, actually mandates that doctors not inform women of problems with their pregnancy and additionally mandates doctors to inform women that abortions can cause breast cancer, which isn't even true. (Actually Kansas is just a crucible of anti-woman and anti-choice legislation right now. The Trust Women PAC has a great summary of the stuff going on there, including, for instance, passing a law that allows doctors to refuse to make referrals, or Miami County in Kansas becoming the first county to disallow funding of contraception distribution in its family planning program [because hey, the last thing you want to do in preventing abortions is prevent conception!], or possible threats to the accreditation of the University of Kansas Medical School because of their teaching gynecology and obstetric students how to perform abortions as part of the curriculum.) The issue of wrongful birth/wrongful life is a difficult one. If a doctor makes a mistake or doesn't urge you to terminate the pregnancy of a defective fetus after telling you it's defective, should he be held liable? But what if the doctor doesn't believe in abortion personally and just doesn't want to tell you something is wrong with you or your baby? Should we indemnify doctors who simply don't want to tell their patients the truth? The central point to me here is what these laws are doing to erode the doctor-parent relationship and trust in that relationship and what they are doing to women's right to honest information about their health and body. Whether a doctor or a patient is pro-life or pro-choice, all women have a right to full and honest information, about their body, about their pregnancy and about the state of their fetus. As Cara Batema at SpecialNeeds.com puts it, laws such as these permit doctors to put their personal values above their patients' welfare.

Then there are the women's privacy issues. Of course, there's that issue of your employer being able to look at your medical records and reasons for using contraception in Arizona that still might pass. But what about Tennessee wanting to publish all the information about a woman's abortion other than her name. (Great if you lived in a small town, where someone could figure out that you had an abortion from the information published.) The bill was withdrawn after much contention but is being reformulated. The reason for its withdrawal dealt mostly with the Tennessee Medical Association's concern about the safety of doctors performing abortions if their names were published. Oklahoma tried to do the same thing in 2009 but the law was blocked after passage, by legal injunction. Tennessee was evidently sure the concept can be tweaked a bit and maybe women will tire of fighting for their rights on so very many fronts. 

By the way, Arizona now also wants to tell you when your pregnancy started. No matter what that mandated-by-law ultrasound (that maybe you didn't want to have) says, your pregnancy started at the date of your last menstrual period according to pending legislation in Arizona. That means the 20 week limit for an abortion is now cut to 18 weeks. Too bad if your amniocentesis showed that familial genetic disorder you were so worried about took too long to get back. (Could you even trust your doctor to tell you the results?) God wanted your baby to have Tay-Sach's Disease or Down's Syndrome and he wants you to have the baby, whether you can handle it or not. Really, he does. And if you can't afford to have a baby with a serious problem, hey, you shouldn't have been fooling around with your spouse like that. An Italian friend, from my grad school years, lives and works at a tenured job in Arizona. She has two young daughters and I wonder about the state they will shortly be coming to adulthood in. What other rights will they lose over their health and reproductive lives?

And, to make the current environment for women in this country even more supportive, recently the legislatures in some states have had this livestock thing going on. For instance, in February, a bill, The Ultrasound Opportunity Act, coming out of the Illinois State House Agriculture (yes, you read that right) Committee mandated ultrasounds and viewing of the imagery for women seeking abortions, and the women had to sign documentation about refusal to have an ultrasound if they refused. Angry constituents showed up at a House hearing of the bill wearing "Women Are Not Livestock" t-shirts. And then Illinois State Representative Kelly Cassidy motioned for an amendment to the bill that requires men who want to receive prescriptions for Viagra to watch a graphic video about the complications of using Viagra. Said Cassidy: "If they’re serious about us not being about to make our own health care decisions, then I’m just as serious about them not being able to make theirs.” This bill is tied up in the Rules Committee currently, no doubt because a lot of male representatives don't want to watch a bunch of penises getting injected because of priaprism and learn about all potential complications of that treatment, like necrosis of penile tissue, if there's anyway around it. 

And then there is Georgia State Representative Terry England's failing to sympathize with women who have the devastating experience of losing their fetus late in their pregnancy. Even terminating the pregnancy in the instance of a dead fetus is out of the question in his mind. Said England: “Life gives us many experiences…I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive. Delivering pigs, dead or alive. It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.” That's right Terry, it breaks our hearts to have dead babies inside us, just waiting for them to come out the natural way and hoping we don't become septic before that happens. Georgia's bill, banning abortions beyond 20 weeks, even in the instance of rape and incest, finally passed with an exclusion for medically futile pregnancies (irreversible chromosomal or congenital anomaly that is incompatible with sustaining life after birth) and, oh my gosh, are those Georgia girls cherished! in the case the of the mother's life or health are threatened. (Suicidal and mentally ill women, you're out of luck, though...)

Again, as with the contraception issue and the way Sandra Fluke was treated, the doctor telling his patients the truth issue, the real point here is women's rights to  truth, to have control over their bodies and the way these men, like Terry England and Rush Limbaugh, think and speak about women who want to make choices about their bodies, their lives, their healthcare and their children. To call a woman testifying before congress about the desire for more affordable birth control and easy access to it in a Catholic institution a slut and a prostitute, to compare a woman suffering a fetus dying inside her and having to just wait until it is expelled, to pigs and cows- this is how things are for women in America? It's a disgrace and not one that women with any sense should tolerate. Republican, Independent or Democrat, pro-life or pro-choice, all women deserve the truth, deserve respect and deserve the right to make their own healthcare choices without government interference in their medical care. That's what liberty is really about about, what Alice Paul and Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray and Shirley Chisolm and Gloria Steinem fought so hard for. They wanted liberty for all, not liberty for some.

Laela Zaidi, a savvy teen from Missouri, sees the lay of the land- the environment in which women's rights to contraception and reproductive choices is eroding:

"As a female and member of a younger generation, it is not only discouraging, but actually frightening to see what is happening across the nation." 

I applaud her interest in public policy and women's rights. Many young women, including my own daughter, who is in pharmacy graduate school, are often too busy to pay attention to some of what's been going on in this country. Although, last fall, my daughter expressed concern to me about hearing that some pharmacists refuse to fill emergency contraception prescriptions (the so-called Plan B) because they interfere with conception. Isn't that the whole point of the medication, to prevent the possibility of need for an abortion, she asked me? I haven't asked her yet about her thoughts on Kansas' proposed legislation that would give pharmacists an out on dispensing contraception at all. (A number of other states, including my own state of Florida, already have laws with broad language covering the moral objection to dispensing any contraceptive or even contraceptive devices.) 

I understand how busy many young women are establishing themselves or still gathering their education and that sometimes they want to escape into a titillating world of fantasy. They have grown up and reached adulthood in a world in which all they have ever known is that women have equal rights, and the right to a voice and choice. They (hopefully not falsely) assume those rights will be there for them when it comes time for them to plan their families and have careers and have a say. These are rights that were hard fought for by my mother's generation, enjoyed by mine and which are now eroding for my daughter's.

My 16 year old son is angry that I'm writing critically about a book that I haven't read in complaining that Fifty Shades of Grey is promoting an erotic fantasy of submissiveness. (A good friend says it's promoting the Republican dream!) He says it's quite out of character for me (it really is, he's right) and that it's wrong of me. I see his point, but also see that I don't want to put a single dollar into the revenue stream for this item, even by resale. Perhaps when the young woman who kindled this conversation is done with her copy, I'll borrow it, so I'll have a chance to read what I'm criticizing. She says that she doubts a book like that can influence her thinking. I do think that what we read influences us, whether we want to admit it, or not, though. And so, I want the young women around me, all women around me, to be like Katniss Everdeen, or Daenerys Targaryen. To be acutely aware, and to fight for their rights.

All I can say about even fantasizing about being submissive in these times is RED.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2012