Month: March 2007

Making the connection between pro-choice activists and birth activists

MZPLeave a comment

Lynn Paltrow, the Executive Director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women and a pioneer in the reproductive justice field, has a great article in TomPaine today which eloquently clarifies why there needs to be more coalition work between abortion rights activists and birth activists.

Both pro-choice advocates and birthing rights advocates are challenged by decreasing access to services: the former struggles with the fact that 87 percent of all U.S. counties have no abortion providers; the latter struggles against policies at over 300 hospitals around the country that deny women who have previously had c-sections the right to even try delivering vaginally.

And both have been negatively affected by growing claims of “fetal rights.” While these are advanced as part of the campaign to outlaw abortion, they have begun to effect the lives of women who personally identify as “pro-life.” Christian fundamentalists have been told that they must have unnecessary c-sections to protect the rights of the fetus; pregnant women opposed to abortions have been arrested as child abusers in the name of fetal rights for things they did or did not do during pregnancy.

Read the rest of the article here.

Science meets pregnancy, guilt and abortion

MZPLeave a comment

The first thing I want to say about this story in the NY Times, is why the hell was it put in the Fashion and Style section?!?! I hate the way women’s issues get shelved into these sexist categories, especially when they have NOTHING to do with these categories. This article is more about science than anything else. But moving on, it brings up a lot of interesting points about science, pregnancy, motherhood, infertility and abortion.

The article, entitled My Triplets were Inseparable, Whatever the Risks, tells the story of a mother who discovered she was pregnant with triplets after tens of thousands of dollars worth of infertility treatments and years of attempting to get pregnant. They don’t react well to the news, and the doctor recommends they consider “reducing” to one or two fetuses since triplets have such a high risk of complications.

In the end they decide not to reduce, and the pregnancy is as complicated as the doctors had predicted, ending early with the birth of three premature children. Suzanne clearly states her feelings as the two pound babies are born: “I had not kept my babies safe. I had failed as a mother.” She continues, “I was afraid to be involved, to fall in love with my babies. In my mind, science had taken over, and like a mother bird that loses a chick from her nest, my instinct was to stay away, to keep my distance.”

This story mostly draws questions to my mind:

Continue reading →

Plastic Surgery…for your vagina?!?!

MZP2 Comments

Check out this post at Feministing about the scary prospect of “vaginal rejuvenation” surgeries. Eww. Apparently the Washington Post considers it “Comestic Surgery’s New Frontier.” If this isn’t the final frontier…I don’t want to know what is.

I think the thing that scares me the most about this is how it points to the way our society is really becoming a plastic surgery society–we seem to be willing to go under the knife (even our genitals) at the drop of a hat. Not only are these procedures costly and dangerous…but they are definitely not solving the real problems at hand, which are our over-zealous standards of beauty and our intense focus on physicality.

And to make it even more interesting, there seems to be a relationship between rates of cosmetic surgery and cesarean section rates–best example: Brazil. There, the elective c-section rate is up to 80% (SCARY), even though the WHO recommends a c-section rate of around 10%. Many people speculate that rate has been contributed to by the intense culture of plastic surgery. Maybe that’s the direction in which we’re going…although I personally hope not.

Blog against Sexism Day!

MZPLeave a comment

Blog Against Sexism Day

So, in commemoration of International Women’s Day (which I want to make a plea for us all to have as a holiday–let’s replace Columbus day, come on) it is also Blog Against Sexism Day, or Blog for Gender Liberation. I personally like that title the best, and will interpret it in my own way.

I like the opportunity to bring up this subject, because it’s one of the main reasons I identify as a radical doula. It’s also one of the reasons I pulled back from the midwifery/birth activist community a few years ago. As I got deeper into theories about the social construction of gender and sex (particularly Judith Butler), I started to push back on the rhetoric used by midwives and birth activists about women’s bodies.

How did some of this logic fit into an understanding that the biological difference between men and women is really socially constructed? How do birthing women (and the ability to reproduce) fit in? Butler has some interesting responses to these ideas, which I admit are kind of obtuse and difficult to decipher. But once you get through the intense academic language, there are some important ideas there. Bear with me.

The midwifery/birth activist movement is very heavily based on embracing femininity and the female body, particularly its perceived reproductive capacity, as the necessary center of the movement toward gender equity. This idea is kind of problematic, particularly if you believe that we need to move beyond these perceived biological differences.

Keep reading for more explanation…

Continue reading →

“Drugs, Knives and Midwives”

MZPLeave a comment

Check out this great article by Elizabeth Larson, just published in Utne. It does a good job of giving an overview of the politics of birth in the US today and identifying many of the problems that exist with our current overly medicalized system. She talks about Marsden Wagner’s new book Born in the USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First (University of California Press, 2006), which I haven’t read, although I did hear him speak at NAPW’s summit. It also happens to share a title with the documentary that brought me into the birth activist world–I highly recommend it. I dare say it changed my life.

The good thing she does in her article is point out the problems that exist with the polarization of the two birth camps–the highly medicalized OB-GYNs and the anti-medicine midwives. I agree that we need to work on creating birthing options that support women and give them the ability to make informed and supported decisions about their births, regardless of what those decisions might be.

Lesbian parents just as good as straight ones!

MZP2 Comments

Interesting article in Bay Window’s, a New England LGBT newspaper, about new research about gay and lesbian parenting. Turns out not only are we not worse, we might actually be better!

…Representatives from the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of Social Workers, and the American Counseling Association to set the record straight with regard to the research on LGBT parenting. Each of the representatives affirmed that the body of credible research on LGBT parenting shows that children raised by two committed LGBT parents develop just as well as their peers raised by married heterosexual parents.

Much of it has been done in response to a campaign by Focus on the Family, who has been taking other researcher’s studies and distorting their findings as proof that children do better when raised by heterosexual parents.

You can check out this website: www.respectmyresearch.org for more information.

In the News: Midwife ban leaves family scrambling

MZP2 Comments

Check out this interesting article about midwifery in Missouri. It explains that MO is one of ELEVEN states where midwifery is illegal–and considered equivalent to practicing medicine without a license (a felony). Columbia physician Elizabeth Allemann, states “People have told me it would probably be easier to do a drug deal in Missouri than to find a midwife.” Now THAT makes a lot of sense.

What’s most interesting about this is the logic used by Senator Chuck Graham, an opponent of the legalization of midwives, who has in the past filibustered a law that would allow midwives to practice who had been certified by the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM). So rather than allow the Congress in his state to even vote on a bill possibly legalizing the practice, he has taken it upon himself to decide that “There are so many things that can go wrong with the birthing process.” Why do politicians like to pretend they are scientists and doctors when it comes to women’s reproductive health?

(I mis-posted this last week, erroneously stating the Senator Louden, who is actually sponsoring the bill, was the Senator in opposition. That is actually Senator Chuck Graham. I apologize for the mistake.)