Number of the Day

72: The number of hours in a mandated "waiting period" for abortion-seekers being proposed in Utah by state representative Steve Eliason, who is a Republican, of course.

Utah Rep. Steve Eliason (R) has proposed a bill (HB 461 [pdf]) that would require women to wait 72 hours before receiving abortion care, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Under current law, women must wait 24 hours before receiving abortion services. If approved, Utah would have the same waiting period as South Dakota, which currently has the longest waiting period in the U.S.

Planned Parenthood Association of Utah has filed a lawsuit to overturn the law, arguing that it violates Roe v. Wade. The group said South Dakota's 72-hour waiting period puts an undue burden on women, who often have to travel long distances to reach the two abortion clinics in the state.

Eliason said the extension would give women the same amount of time "to make a major life decision" as "any consumer has to consider cancelling a mortgage."

I am really running out of ways to make the point that women and other people with uteri are not infants who are ignorant of their options (even though Republican-favored abstinence-only sex ed programs endeavor to turn them into exactly that). We don't need time to "really think it through" or "consider alternatives" or whatevthefuck Rep. Dipshit and the rest of the nation's Mendacious Band of Anti-Choice Fuckheads are alleging will happen in the three days they delay us from terminating a pregnancy.

Forcing a person to wait three days will not change the fact that zie does not want to have a child. Even if it changes hir mind about terminating the pregnancy, it doesn't change whatever circumstances brought hir to an abortion clinic in the first place.

Zie'll still walk out just as devoid of choices, just as un- or underemployed, just as broke, just as in debt, just as uninsured, just as lacking daycare, just as unable to care for hirself and/or hir existing children, just as in need of medication that zie can't take while pregnant, just as enmeshed in an unhealthy or abusive relationship, just the same as zie was when zie walked in.

Zie'll just have been guilted into making sacrifices zie doesn't want to make, to honor someone else's mistaken perceptions about hir morality.

All of these absurd barriers to termination are utter hogwash, rooted in the damnable fairy tale that women and other people with uteri are incapable of making the best decisions for themselves and their own bodies (and, frequently, for the children they already have).

The reality is this: There is an inextricable link between the economy, the funding of social services, and abortion. If "pro-lifers" really wanted women to want to have babies, they would start arguing for universal healthcare, just for a fucking start, considering about one-fourth of women seeking abortions cite their own health or possible health problems with the fetus as reasons for the termination, owing to concerns including "a lack of prenatal care."

But they're not pro-life. They're just anti-women.

And they can caterwaul about how that's not true all they fucking want, but, the truth is, they refuse to listen to women, and other people with uteri, to the millions of women who are telling them they don't need waiting periods or ultrasounds or parental/spousal consent or anti-abortion counselors or any of the other disincentives being proposed to deter them from terminating unwanted pregnancy, but do need jobs and healthcare and childcare and parental leave laws and associated institutional framework that supports successful parenthood.

And when you refuse to listen to women, your argument that you're not explicitly anti-women holds precious little water.

Particularly when your state has failed utterly to fund a robust social safety net, but has been trying, with various degrees of success, to chip away at Roe virtually since the decision granted people with uteri the right to terminate pregnancies.

[Via Steph Herold.]

Woman's Work

For a very long time, Democrats' agreement with progressive women was this: Vote for us, and we will be your champion. In practical terms, despite important pieces of legislation like the Violence Against Women Act and the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, being women's champion has largely meant making sure that progress women made wasn't allowed to backslide by standing between progressive women and the enforcers of the Patriarchy in all their guises—conservatism, religion, tradition.

But decades have passed with women on average still making less than men, still widely and primarily victimized by sexual violence (and still vanishingly unlikely to see justice for those crimes against them), still disproportionately affected by the nation's failure to provide a comprehensive and robustly funded social safety net, by unemployment, by food insecurity, by the lack of universal healthcare, by the lack of equal opportunities, by the lack of sensible and fair family-work policies. What social progress does happen frequently comes at the expense of women's reproductive rights.

Women who have multiple axes of oppression—women of color, women with disabilities, women in same-sex partnerships, women who are trans*, fat women, poor women, et. al.—are at increased risk of being marginalized and under-served by their government.

A government whose national legislative body, meant to be representative of the people, is still less than 20% female.

In recent elections, the Democrats' promise to progressive women has been reduced to ensuring (and only when it's politically expedient) that Roe vs. Wade would not be overturned, even as the GOP diligently works to render that ruling an empty statute.

Last spring, Shark-fu and I were talking about the blitz of anti-choice legislation in state legislatures across the nation, and she was telling me about lobbying in Jefferson City, Missouri—one of the many places bills limiting abortion rights are being considered. (The following has been published with her permission.)

Shark-fu: Jeff City was a train wreck. SEIU and others were there trying to stop the right to work bullshit. We were there trying to stop the 20 week abortion ban. And a whole bunch of losers were there showering the House and Senate with praise for giving it to the works and taking away women's rights. Ugh. I had a state Senator tell me that he "has" to vote for abortion restrictions so he can get other stuff done. The price of entry into negotiations with the MO GOP is women's reproductive freedom. I'm disgusted and dreaming of Canada.

Liss: "The price of entry into negotiations with the MO GOP is women's reproductive freedom." This is so depressing. I just don't even know what to say anymore. As I'm sure you know, the same legislation is making its way through the statehouse in Indiana. I'm not only dreaming of Canada; I'm dreaming of menopause, so I don't have to worry about the possibility of ever needing an abortion.

Shark-fu: OMG, it's so funny that you mention menopause! On the drive back yesterday I decided to write a post about how amazingly liberating it is to no longer have a uterus—every time I read a heinous bill I realize that they can't touch me. Sadly, plenty of the bills still apply to my post-hyster self. But they can't force me to get pregnant and that's so damn liberating it's sad.

Liss: If the fact that diminished cis female reproductive capacity (whether via hysterectomy, menopause, or elsewise) feels liberating for feminist women doesn't plainly expose how TOTALLY FUCKED UP the GOP's war on uteri is, I don't know what possibly could.

And then we lolsobbed forever.

This, then, is the situation in which we find ourselves: We are demoralized to the point of imagining, if only in passing, life in another country, or in another body, because we have been abandoned by the only one of the two nationally electable major parties who were even ostensibly on our side, who have negotiated away our alliance because doing so is the price of entry into doing business with the other party.

There is a presidential election coming up. The Democrats will not only want our votes, but expect them. And male partisans, having not learned the lessons of the last election, will admonish any feminist/womanist voter who does not axiomatically promise to give her vote to the Democrats that she is a fool who doesn't even understand her own rights or recognize her own best interests. We will be excoriated for even considering abandoning the Democratic Party, as if the Democratic Party did not abandon us first.

But this is not a post about voting. This is a post about the way reproductive rights are regarded—by the women who are actually affected by them, and by the party who purports to be our ally, and the cavernous divide in between.

My right to control my reproduction—and the respect for my bodily autonomy, agency, and consent that is embedded within that right—is central to my sense of self and my worth to my community and country. I can't put it any more plainly that that. The value of my very humanity is predicated on that right.

That right is not some piece of shit bit of legislation to be used as a dangled carrot during elections and used as a bargaining chip to be negotiated away in between.

And I'm angry that the party meant to champion women's rights doesn't see it the same way. I'm angry that there are so many male Democratic partisans (and not a few women) who claim to be progressive and yet think that whether I am trusted to make the best decisions about my own reproduction isn't a big fucking deal. Or want to lecture me about what a Big Fucking Deal it is when they're trying to bully me into voting for the party whose indifference allows the GOP to chip away at the scope of that right.

If it's not a big fucking deal to you every fucking day, then don't come shouting at me about it every four years like you're Professor Roe V. Wade, foremost expert in Abortionology at Gliberal University.

And if it is a big fucking deal to you every fucking day, then get busy getting involved.

Believe me, I know: Getting involved stinks. You're forced to deal with people who, on the best end, are deliberately obtuse bullies and, on the worst end, spam your inbox with pictures of dead fetuses. These are not pleasant folks, and I'd like to avoid them myself.

Unfortunately, that would necessitate closing up shop, putting down my teaspoon, and going silent. And then, somehow, magically not being a woman who lives in a patriarchy anymore.

This is the hard truth for progressive men who care about reproductive rights: When you leave the public fight to others, you're leaving it mostly to women.

I'll give you a moment to contemplate the many ways in which treating the feminist/womanist fight for reproductive rights as "woman's work" is some fucked-up irony, right there.

*a moment*

Now here's the other thing about leaving the reproductive rights fight to the ladies: Misogynists don't respect women. They don't listen to women; they won't acknowledge a woman's authority on her own lived experiences; they're not going to learn anything from women, and certainly not feminist/womanist women.

Misogynist anti-choicers who believe women to be less than need to hear that they're terribly, infuriatingly, and demonstrably wrong from men. Publicly. Passionately. As loud as the loud, so very loud, voices on the other side. One of the ways their self-reassuring bullshit works is via the effective void of male dissension, which supports their erroneous belief that they are the "objective" arbiters of womanhood.

They count on feminist men never showing up en masse for the main event.

They count on the Democratic Party being too squeamish, too spineless, too unprincipled, too apathetic to stand up for reproductive rights, unyieldingly.

They count on reproductive rights being the first bargaining chip on the table.

They count on the still almost entirely male leadership of the Democratic Party and the vast number of male Democratic partisans giving themselves permission to not get publicly involved, or to get publicly involved only when it's convenient and not all that risky and not all that hard.

They count on men trading on that privilege of not having to get involved.

They count on Democratic partisans being more interested in hectoring dispossessed progressive women than in being their allies and fighting this fight alongside them, every day.

They count on reproductive rights being treated as Woman's Work, and thus being devalued as woman's work inevitably is.

They are trying to overwhelm and demoralize the (mostly) women to whom this work is being left.

If the Democratic Party wants to retain its alliance with women, they'd better send reinforcements. And soon.

By way of suggestion, I recommend that the allegedly feminist staunch defender of reproductive rights, President Barack Obama, who happens to be currently seeking reelection, give some of his fancy speech-making on behalf of the 52% of the nation whose rights are being eroded. The states enacting a record number of abortion restrictions last year seems like it warrants his comment. Ahem.

[This piece was originally published in similar form April 4, 2011. It's particularly relevant again lately.]

Chip, Chip, Chip...

[Content Note: Legislative encroachments on reproductive rights; invasive medical requirements; rape culture.]

Andrea Grimes reports that the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled Texas can enforce its forced trans-vaginal sonogram law while the heinous legislation is challenged in court.

I'll just refer you to the post I wrote when the same shit started in Oklahoma (where a similar law is being challenged, but which the state has been disallowed from enforcing in the meantime), and I'll reiterate here the basis of my unyielding objection: Compelling a person to undergo an unnecessary vaginal probe to acquire a legal medical procedure is fucking rape.

And that was true even before the US Justice Department revised its definition of rape to make it patently obvious that this is, indeed, rape—at least if the concept of consent is to have any real meaning at all.

A woman or trans man who cannot access a legal medical procedure without submitting hir body to a vaginal probe cannot be said to be meaningfully consenting. Consent requires a choice.

Consent requires a choice, because consent without a choice is not consent; it's coercion.

[H/T to @scatx.]

Chipping Away at Roe

[Content Note: Anti-choice legislation.]

In totally unrelated news to the post below (she said acerbically), the Guttmacher Institute has reported to no one's surprise that states enacted a record number of abortion restrictions last year.

In the 50 states combined, legislators introduced more than 1,100 reproductive health and rights-related provisions, a sharp increase from the 950 introduced in 2010. By year's end, 135 of these provisions had been enacted in 36 states, an increase from the 89 enacted in 2010 and the 77 enacted in 2009.

...Fully 68% of these new provisions—92 in 24 states—-restrict access to abortion services, a striking increase from last year, when 26% of new provisions restricted abortion. The 92 new abortion restrictions enacted in 2011 shattered the previous record of 34 adopted in 2005.

I know, believe me I know, that I am a broken record, but restricting abortion consigns women and trans men to use their bodies to carry pregnancies to term against their wills, which is an act of violence.

The anti-choice movement has gained momentum with the unilateral support of the Republican Party, turning what was once a radical fringe movement into nothing less than state-sponsored terrorism, in defense of an inherently violent ideology.

This issue must be a centerpiece of President Obama's campaign, or he is going to have to win without me. I will never hope that he does not resoundingly trounce whatever Mitt Romney eventually wins the primary and runs as the Republican nominee. Between President Obama and a Republican, I want Obama to win. But I will not be able in good conscience to actively and affirmatively support a candidate who does not meaningfully address a domestic terrorist campaign being waged against pro-choice women and our allies.

That is asking me to participate in my own marginalization, to support a threat against my own safety. And that I simply cannot do.

Please, Mr. President. Speak up for us.

Reproductive Rights Updates: Alabama, Wisconsin, Ohio, Kansas

[Content Note: This post discusses state-sponsored anti-choice measures.]

First up is Alabama where new legislation went into effect Sunday:

New abortion reporting requirements will also go into effect Sunday under a law passed in the final hours of the 2011 regular session by the Alabama Legislature.

The law, sponsored by state Rep. Kerry Rich, R-Albertville, bans abortions from 20 weeks after "probable post-fertilization" ex­cept in cases of medical emergency. Previously, abortion was banned after fetal viability, defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade as occurring be­tween the 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy.

The State Center for Health Statistics said 70 of the 10,280 abortions in Ala­bama in 2010 -- 0.6 percent of the procedures -- took place at the 20th week of gestation or after, the prior definition of abortion.

The ban went into effect in September; the added re­porting requirements go into effect Sunday. Among other changes, physicians who per­form abortions after 20 weeks will be required to list the medical reason for the abortion and whether the method used provided the opportunity to save the fetus.

So along with this new statute, Alabama is getting on the "personhood" train:

Republican State Senator Phil Williams is the sponsor of the Alabama personhood bill SB5 which has been prefiled for the February 2012 Regular Session.

“I personally believe that life begins at conception. I believe the majority of Alabamians also share that belief and I think it's high time that we did more than just talk in the privacy of our own homes about what we believe, but go ahead and act on that. That's why this particular bill is actually being revised. It will be substituted in the form of a constitutional amendment to allow the citizens of Alabama to vote on it," said Williams.

[...]

“The heart of the bill; ‘shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization and implantation into the womb’ is nonsense,” said Tipton [Sean, of American Society for Reproductive Medicine]. “There is no ‘moment’ of conception. It is a process that takes several hours at least. Implantation in the womb occurs at different time, and different place, than conception. So this wording is to say the least, unclear.”

"It's not okay because it's not an anti-abortion bill. It's not what they mean it to be it's ultimately affecting so many women's issues," said Jessica Sasser [volunteer with the National Infertility Association:RESOLVE].

Ms. Sasser, it wouldn't be ok even if it was "just" an anti-abortion bill.

***

In Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood has been shut out of providing or coordinating well woman care for some uninsured people:

Planned Parenthood will no longer be coordinating a local health-care program for uninsured women.

Winnebago County will be taking over outreach and education services for the Wisconsin Well Woman Program in a four-county area that includes Fond du Lac County.

The announcement was made Dec. 23 by Department of Health Services Secretary Dennis Smith. The program had been hanging in limbo since Dec. 1, when Planned Parenthood was contacted by an employee at DHS and told that as of the new year the agency would no longer be facilitating the program for Fond du Lac, Winnebago, Outagamie and Sheboygan counties.

Gov. Scott Walker said the move was made because Planned Parenthood is “too controversial.”

“There are many clinics that are not as controversial as Planned Parenthood, and our goal was to make sure low-income women had access to those sorts of screenings from other providers around the state that don’t carry the controversy you get with Planned Parenthood,” he told reporters.

So! Planned Parenthood is "controversial" to a particular segment of voters, therefore, you & your health department decided uninsured people cannot get necessary care there. I see.


***

In Ohio, anti-autonomy jackasses are celebrating a banner year while looking forward to enacting more measures to reduce women to less-than-persons status:

The anti-abortion movement scored an array of legislative victories in Ohio in 2011, but even after a record year, abortion foes are advocating for tighter restrictions in 2012.

[...]

On Friday, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine certified a petition by anti-abortion supporters allowing them to collect signatures for a “personhood” amendment that seeks to bestow fertilized human eggs with full personal rights.

[...]

“Never in the history of the pro-life movement have we had so many legislative measures enacted in one year,” Gonidakis [Mike, president of Ohio Right to Life] said.

New state laws prohibit public hospitals from performing abortions and ban abortion coverage in the insurance plans of local public employees.

Under new rules, the director of the Ohio Department of Health must apply for federal grants to fund abstinence education with the goal of cutting down on unplanned pregnancies. Anti-abortion student groups on college campuses now cannot be denied use of school funds or facilities.

Kasich also signed legislation that makes it harder for minors to get abortions without parental consent, and a law forbidding health insurance plans through the new federal health care law from providing coverage for abortions, except when the woman’s life is at risk or if she is a victim of rape or incest.

Lawmakers also passed a bill outlawing abortions that take place after 20 weeks if a doctor determines the fetus can live outside the womb.

This law was the “highlight” of the year, and imposes some of the most significant restrictions on abortions in decades, said Coudron [Paul, director], with Dayton Right to Life.

[...]

Emboldened by last year’s successes, Ohio Right to Life said it hopes this year to kill funding to Planned Parenthood, appropriate funds to centers that provide pregnant women with counseling and prenatal care and help elect a U.S. president and senator who share their views.

They say their goal is for an anti-abortion U.S. president and Senate to help seat Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.

Right to Life groups also want state or federal lawmakers to pass a bill that requires pregnant women to either hear or see the fetal heartbeat before having an abortion.

Ohio isn't the only state with pro-forced-pregnancy groups looking forward to pushing for less rights for actual people. Kansas, of course, is another.

***

Kansas, apparently feeling that spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight legislation in 2011 wasn't enough, is vowing to pass more legislation that will inevitably cost the state:

Anti-abortion leaders in the Republican-controlled Legislature said they plan to strengthen legal protections for physicians, pharmacists and other health care professionals who don't want to participate in abortions or dispense abortion-inducing drugs. They hope to prevent even indirect taxpayer support for abortions and to add new requirements to a law spelling out what information doctors must provide to women seeking abortions.

[...]

...[L]eading anti-abortion legislators and Kansans for Life, the group with the most visible presence at the Statehouse, want to concentrate on proposals that are far more likely to pass and making measurable gains that stand."This is like a good ground game in football," said Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, discussing its strategy of pursuing incremental legislative gains. "I don't believe that we have finished fleshing out every law that we can that is currently constitutional."

Chip, chip, chip. Anyone who dares to proclaim the tired ass phrase "But Roe!!!", needs to read that right there. Anyway:

Just as in 2011, Brownback, a Republican abortion opponent, doesn't plant to propose any legislation, preferring to concentrate on fiscal issues, but he'll sign anti-abortion measures that reach his desk, spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag said.

[...]

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lance Kinzer, an Olathe Republican, said he and fellow abortion opponents will push for a proposed "conscience" act to supplement a law saying no person can be required to participate in an abortion. Previous versions declared that health care professionals can't be punished by their employers for refusing to participate in abortions or dispensing abortion-inducing drugs and "artificial" birth control.

[...]

Kinzer also is promoting legislation to add to the state's general ban on taxpayer funded abortion by declaring that companies or groups can't get tax credits or deductions against abortion-related expenditures. [...]

Pilcher-Cook [Mary, Senator R-Shawnee] said she also wants to make sure that doctors give women seeking abortions a detailed description of each potential abortion procedure, including "what it does to the unborn child."

Oh 2012. You look so much like 2011.