parenting

What organizations work with feminist mothers?

MZP3 Comments

I often get questions from readers via email, and figured that some of you might have the same questions. So I’m going to share them here if I think they might be useful.

A question from a soon to be mom last week:

Can [you] point me in the directions of any organizations that work with feminist mothers? Most of my activist work has been with victim/survivor rights of sexual assault, and now that I’m going to be a mother I am interested in working with other feminist mothers on important issues. If you have any advice I’d really appreciate it!

My answer:

Two that came to mind were the Big Push for Midwives and Moms Rising. The Big Push is national, and great if you are interested in midwifery advocacy. They are pushing legislation around the country to increase access to Certified Professional Midwives, who focus on out of hospital birth. They are working with coalitions around the country. http://www.thebigpushformidwives.org/

The other that came to mind was Moms Rising. I don’t know if they identify specifically as “feminist” but they seem to do cool work on a slew of mom-related things (like toxic toy campaigns for example). They are also national. http://www.momsrising.org/

Lovely Radical Doula readers, do you have any additions? Leave them in comments! And feel free to include orgs that work with parents more generally, and not just moms.

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Immigrant woman reunited with child after losing custody

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A story I wrote about last June, looks like it finally has a happy ending. A year later, Cirila Baltazar Cruz has been reunited with her daughter.

Cirila gave birth in a Mississippi hospital, and initial reports indicated that the hospital staff deemed her unfit to be a parent because she couldn’t communicate with an interpreter. Cirila speaks an indigenous language from Oaxaca, explaining the  inability to communicate with a Spanish language interpreter.

So sad it took a year, but so happy for this mother and daughter to be reunited. According to the Native American Times, they are headed back to Mexico and the Mexican government has gotten involved.

A news release from Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs said Cruz’ situation was “a clear case of discrimination and violation of the most basic human rights of a Mexican citizen.”

Seriously.

Via VivirLatino

Worried about women of color? Thanks but no thanks anti-choicers. We’ve got it covered.

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I have another piece up at RH Reality Check today. Apparently it’s my week for publication! This one has a lot more opinion and snark than yesterday’s. I was responding to the recent efforts on behalf of the anti-choice community to argue that abortion is being used by groups like Planned Parenthood as a form of eugenics against women of color.

Latinas and other women of color don’t need to be protected by paternalistic ideologues motivated by a political agenda that disregards the needs of women of color and their families. So thanks for your concern, anti-choicers, but I think the women of color advocates working within the reproductive justice movement have got it covered. We’re working in those clinics you attack, we’re helping to shape policies and provide services in our communities, services that allow us to decide what our needs are.

We know whom we can trust to make decisions about family creation: women themselves. We don’t need limits on what services we can access.  And we don’t need your ideological bullying.

The next time one of your crisis pregnancy centers, one of your dramatic billboards, or one of your bogus pieces of “sex and race selection” legislation actually works to support women through whatever choice they make for their families—we’ll talk.

Read the rest here.

Large baby denied insurance coverage, headlines force retraction

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I first saw this story over at Unnecesearan, and I’m happy to say that by the time I got to posting about it, some resolution was reached.

You can see a video of the news coverage, but basically a baby in the 99th percentile for size was denied coverage by a health insurance company.

Thanks to a ton of news coverage (possibly fueled by the father’s job as a newscaster in Colorado) the insurance company has reversed it’s policy. The company called it a flaw, but we all know that these kind of denials are pervasive and not going to go away on their own.

New research series: Parenting with Dignity

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The Center for American Progress has a new series of articles out called Parenting with Dignity.

The first article is titled Labor Pains: Improving Employment and Income Security for Pregnant Women and New Mothers and I’m really happy to see the class/economic justice angle on parenting.

Check it out!