January 22, 2009
From RH Reality Check:
RH Reality Check: What is the significance of Roe to you and to the women you serve?
Miriam Perez, Senior Advocacy Associate at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health:
For the women we work with, many of whom come from countries in Latin America where abortion is still criminalized, Roe has the potential to have a huge impact on their lives. Roe has the potential to make reproductive health services just like any other healthcare need a woman has, it has the potential to make a usually clandestine procedure safe and accessible. Unfortunately for them, the Roe decision has been weakened and diluted by subsequent legislation. The Hyde Amendment, in particular, has seriously stunted the potential of Roe. Because of these laws, we have a long way to go for low-income and immigrant women to really feel the full affects of this historic Supreme Court decision.
RH Reality Check: Is Roe enough? What does our country need in addition to Roe to ensure reproductive justice for all women?
Miriam Perez:
Roe isn’t enough because privacy is not enough. That narrow legal framework has only barely protected our legal right to access the procedure. It says nothing about access, about funding, about autonomy and barriers. It says nothing about justice. It has not addressed those who based on moral and religious convictions try to limit the health care women can receive. It has not addressed those who want women’s bodies to be manipulated in service of a religious agenda and who want the fetus’s rights to be placed about those of the mother. We need a lot more than a shaky legal framework to stand on if we want to achieve reproductive justice.
Read other advocates comments here.
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Posted by radicaldoula
October 8, 2008
I’m really excited to be writing this post, announcing that NYC has a new abortion doula project. I’ve written about the idea of abortion doulas before (see these old posts). Also I wrote an article for RHReality Check a year or so ago about some other abortion doula projects around the US.
Doula care is expanding across the United States as more people become familiar with the concept and more women seek out their services for labor and delivery. As this expansion continues as a part of the wider movement to change the standards of maternity care in the United States (by lowering intervention rates, increasing midwifery care and educating women about birthing options), there are doulas trying to apply their skills to another arena of women’s reproductive lifecycle: abortion care.
While I was living in New York City, I connected with two other doulas, Mary and Lauren, about the idea of starting an abortion doula project in NYC. I thought it could be a great way to provide this service (on a volunteer basis) to women receiving abortions in New York City, and also serve the political purpose of broadening the scope of doula care. We worked together on the foundations of this project up until I left NYC in February and I am happy to say that the project is almost up and running! They are going to be training a group of women in a few weeks and have begun providing support to women receiving abortions at Bellevue Hospital.
Stay tuned for more updates about the project, and a Radical Doula profile about Mary!
Interested in learning more about the project or getting involved? Email marymATprotectchoiceDOTorg.
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abortion, activism, doulas | 
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Posted by radicaldoula
September 5, 2008
I don’t know how many of you are keeping up with the political circus that is the last few weeks (it’s pretty hard to avoid) but I know I can’t really ignore it since I live in our nation’s capital, where everyone is obsessed with politics.
This Open Letter to Sarah Palin by Lynn Paltrow of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women was a refreshing bit of logic in the last few weeks of fury around this Republican VP candidate.
Your last pregnancy, the one that has become the topic of widespread discussion and speculation provides an important opportunity to demonstrate how this could be true.
According to press reports your water broke while you were giving a keynote speech in Texas at the Republican Governors’ Energy Conference. You did not immediately go to the hospital — instead you gave your speech and then waited at least 11 hours to get to a hospital. You evaluated the risks, made a choice, and were able to carry on your life without state interference. Texas Governor Rick Perry worried about your pregnancy but didn’t stop you from speaking or take you into custody to protect the rights of the fetus.
After Ayesha Madyun’s water broke, she went to the hospital where she hoped and planned to have a vaginal birth. When she didn’t give birth in a time-frame comfortable to her doctors, they argued that she should have a C-section. The doctors asserted that the fetus faced a 50-75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. (Risks of infection are believed by some health care providers to increase with each hour after a woman’s water has broken and she hasn’t delivered).
The court, believing like you that fetuses have a right to life, said, “[a]ll that stood between the Madyun fetus and its independent existence, separate from its mother, was put simply, a doctor’s scalpel.” With that, the court granted the order and the scalpel sliced through Ms. Madyun’s flesh, the muscles of her abdominal wall, and her uterus. The core principle justifying an end to legal abortion in the U.S. provided the same grounds used to deprive this pregnant and laboring woman of her rights to due process, bodily integrity, and physical liberty. When the procedure was done, there was no evidence of infection.
According to the press reports, instead of going straight to a hospital you chose to get on a long airplane flight back to Alaska.
Paltrow goes on to make the important connection between anti-choice fetus rights activism and women’s ability to control how, when and by what means they give birth. Paltrow, as usual, is right on. Read the rest of the letter here.
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abortion, activism, birth | 
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Posted by radicaldoula
May 22, 2008
While many of us spend a lot of time fighting against anti-abortion legislation, crazy lawmakers and their ballot initiatives, there is a whole other group of people pro-actively working to ensure women’s access to abortion–by providing them.
Last week I was at the National Coalition of Abortion Providers Conference (talking about abortion doulas) and Dr. Susan Wicklund spoke about her new book. Dr. Wicklund is an abortion provider living in Montana, and has written a touching memoir of her life as a provider. She lives in Bozeman, MT currently and wants to open up a new clinic (in an area with few options for women) but has run into a lot of hurdles. Building owners who won’t lease to her under pressure from anti-choice people mainly.
So to help Dr. Wicklund some of the attendees of the conference opened a paypal account in her name, to help her open her clinic (possibly by buying a building). Want to chip in? Email supportsuewicklund@gmail.com and ask for information about how to donate!
Cross-posted at Feministing
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Posted by radicaldoula
January 22, 2008
So today is the anniversary of Roe vs Wade. If any of you are in DC, unfortunately you will notice that it’s also a huge day for the anti-choice community. Tons of people come from all over the country on this anniversary to lobby Congress and rally for the rights of fetuses. Meanwhile the members of the pro-choice community celebrate today as a milestone in the fight for women’s reproductive rights, since the Roe vs. Wade Supreme court case decriminalized abortion in the United States.
So in honor of the anniversary of Roe vs Wade, I’m blogging today about a new Guttmacher report that was just released about the status of abortion today. Abortion levels have now fallen to back to 1974 rates, continuing a decline from the spike in 1981. The steady decline in abortion providers is also leveling off, in part due to the increased provision of early medication abortions (like RU-486) which many providers are only offering.
It’s hard to know if this is good news or bad. Are women getting less abortions because they have better access to things like emergency contraception and birth control? Or are they getting fewer abortions because 83% of counties have no abortion provider, restrictions like the Hyde Amendment prevent low-income women from obtaining abortions (the report said that the average cost for a 10 week abortion was $413), and anti-choice sentiment around the country is making women feel shamed into carrying these unwanted pregnancies to term? Not to mention recent clinic violence, increases in medically inaccurate abstinence only education funding as well as a rise in crisis pregnancy centers–now two for every one abortion provider.
The answer is I don’t know. The jury is still out on this one–it’s a really hard thing to determine. We know that 1 in 5 pregnancies in still ending in abortion, and that half of all pregnancies are still unintended. What we don’t know if if those unintended pregnancies are also unwanted. No one is asking women as they give birth, “Oh, by the way, did you want to have an abortion but weren’t able to?” and who knows if they would provide an honest answer.
So until then, I say we need to continue to fight for wider access to services for all women–both “prevention” focused things like birth control, comprehensive sex ed, and emergency contraception as well as abortion services. My hope is that the abortion rate will one day reflect exactly that–how many women need and want that form of pregnancy termination.
PS If you want to go to a Roe vs Wade anniversary event, look here for a sampling of whats going on in your city.
2 Comments | abortion | Permalink
Posted by radicaldoula
January 16, 2008
Next week is the Anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision which upheld a woman’s right to an abortion. In preparation I’m going to blog about some more reproductive rights centered topics leading up to next week.
First off is a shout-out for the just released NARAL Pro-Choice America report Who Decides? The Status of Women’s Reproductive Rights in the United States. The report gives a state-by-state breakdown of the laws affecting women’s ability to choose abortion, access emergency contraception, get insurance coverage for reproductive health services, among other things. They give each state a grade that corresponds to these issues.
For example, my lovely home state of North Carolina receives a D+ from NARAL for a variety of reasons including that 83% of counties in NC have no abortion provider (which is consistent across the country, by the way). You can see what grade your state gets here.
They also have some awesome maps that give an overview of certain restrictions across the country, like this scary one about states with almost total abortion bans (even though they are unconstitutional) on the books.
What would be really awesome is if next year, NARAL could add some information about birth–which states allow midwives to practice and which allow home birth. I know a lot of you would agree that how you birth is a fundamental reproductive right as well.
1 Comment | abortion, birth, family creation, pregnancy | Permalink
Posted by radicaldoula
October 29, 2007
Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion (Paperback) by Karen E. Bender (Editor), Nina De Gramont (Editor)
I went to Bluestockings last week to hear from the two editors and one contributor to this new book called Choice. It originally intrigued me because I thought it might be a broader take on what the term choice means for people in the United States. While I haven’t read the whole book yet, from the three contributions read last week and the editors remarks, it expands the concept of choice, but not as far as I would have liked. As a young queer woman, I didn’t feel particularly reflected or included in their stories, and from scanning the titles of the other essays, and looking at the biographies of the other contributors, didn’t feel compelled to keep reading.
While I think the book itself provides some interesting, thoughtful and well-written perspectives on what choice can mean for women, it misses an opportunity to really provide something new. I feel disappointed by these kind of publications frequently, and maybe that’s because of who is able to access publishers and agents, and who is in their circle of writers. It’s difficult for new writers (or even people who wouldn’t consider themselves writers, but have amazing things to say) to get publishedor included in these types of manuscripts.
I obviously need to read the rest of the selections to really be able to give my opinion, but in the meantime, you can check out this (kind of scathing) review of the book at SFGate.
For more from one of the editor, check out Karen Bender’s article at Huffington Post.
1 Comment | abortion, birth, books | Permalink
Posted by radicaldoula
September 4, 2007
This article from the Independent today announces that some politicians in the UK are looking to expand women’s access to early abortions by allowing nurses and midwives to perform them.
MPs from all parties are to launch a campaign to modernise abortion law. They want to allow women to have early abortions on an “informed consent” basis and to allow trained nurses and midwives to carry out early abortions for the first time. They also want to expand the number of clinics offering early abortions so that women are no longer restricted to using centres officially licensed to carry out terminations.
A first trimester abortion is a very simple medical procedure (as well as one of the safest ones out there) and this isn’t the first time I’ve heard the idea to expand the definitions of who can perform these procedures. I’m not as familiar with the UK abortion climate, but here in the US, many of the laws regulating abortion providers are really meant to limit women’s access to abortion, rather than for their safety and protection. In the US, we are looking at a serious abortion provider shortage in the near future, with medical schools and students not being taught how to do the procedure.
The more authority midwives can gain to do medical procedures, particularly ones that have historically fallen under doctors domain, but are relatively simple. Plus, it will be a huge step forward toward increasing access to this important (and one of the most common) medical procedure for women.
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Posted by radicaldoula
August 29, 2007
To mark the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez on Monday, Page Rockwell has a great piece up at Salon about what kind of legacy he is leaving behind.
Let’s recap:
- Torture
- Suspicous and unexplainable firing of US Attorney’s
- The first Supreme Court cases banning an abortion procedure
- Overall shadyness and misconduct
Thanks a lot Alberto. We won’t miss you.
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Posted by radicaldoula
