I’ve been at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s annual conference, Creating Change.
I’ve posted a few blogs from the workshops over at Feministing. Go check them out, there were some great conversations about gender identity.
On the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade
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.
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape
I have a piece in the new anthology, Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape. My piece is called “When Sexual Autonomy Isn’t Enough: Sexual Violence Against Immigrant Women in the US.”
More about the anthology to come, but if you happen to be in Philly, you should come to our reading tonight! I will be there along with the editors Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman.
The reading is at Robin’s Bookstore. Come check it out if you’re in town. Also, Robin’s is closing down next month (after 73 years!) so you can visit the store for one of the last times. Robin’s Bookstore, 6pm 108 S. 13th St, Philadelphia PA 19107. Hope to see you!
Univision refuses to run condom radio ads
The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (full disclosure: that’s my day job) and Catholics for Choice recently ran two Spanish language radio ads in NYC, scheduled in conjunction with World AIDS Day.
You can listen to the two ads here and here, but here is a summary:
The radio ads appeal to people of faith with one of the 60-second spots noting that: “I’m Catholic and there is nothing more important to me than protecting family and love. That’s why I talked to my grandson about condoms.”
The first ad features a grandmother speaking about her grandson, a gay man, who hears that Catholics are not supposed to use condoms. She tells her grandson, “I took care of you because I love you and if you love that man, you’ll take care of him, too.”
The second ad features a couple and models language that couples can use when discussing the importance of love, faith and condom use in their relationship. The ad concludes, “We are Catholics and people of faith and we know sex is sacred and that we need to take care of each other. And this means using a condom every time we have sex.”
Pretty tame right? Well not according to Univision. They refused to run the ads on three of their radio stations in NYC, despite the fact that these organizations were willing to pay for them. To add insult to injury, Univision recently received an Cable Positive award for their work on HIV prevention with the Kaiser Family Foundation. Apparently HIV prevention is cool, but talking about condoms is a no go? Or maybe it was the queer theme of the first ad that caused the rejection.
Anyways, if you want to send an email to the President and COO of Univision Radio telling him he should run the ads, go here.
Cross-posted at Feministing and Nuestra Vida, Nuestra Voz
Some thoughts on doula certification and DONA inspired by maia
Maia from Guerrilla Mama Medicine has some greats thought up from the International Center on Traditional Childbearing Conference. She also talks about her own experience with DONA, the primary organization that trains and certifies doulas:
but i never finished getting my DONA certification. something about DONA rubbed me wrong when i was in my 3-day workshop. i guess, it was the protocal. the protocal that says i am not supposed to contradict the doctor or midwife or nurse. the code of ethics and the scope of practice that describes ways to communicate that are presented as ideals of respect when they are really white culture-centered forms of respectful expression. also the workshop and training programs never require for doulas to deal with issues such as race, class, sexuality, etc.
but i kept convincing myself that i needed to complete my DONA certification because i had already invested so much money and time and energy into DONA. even if i did feel a little dirty inside about it all.
DREAMS
i have been having dreams of birth sisters…women who support women through birth, no matter what. revolutionary sisters. women who will go to jail for a birthing person. someone who will support you as much or as little as you need. through an herbal abortion. a miscarriage. on the phone during an unassisted birth. without insurance.
when i told midwives while i was preggers that i wanted an unassisted birth, they thought that it was because i didnt have the money to afford a home birth. it wasnt that at all. i wasnt desperate. i was confident in my body. and the level of racist and classist condescension i received from midwives in minneapolis (which is supposed to be such a mecca midwifery in the states) makes me cringe for the future of professional legal midwifery.
help me think of a name…and we can start a fire that burns all of the pretentious midwives who go to mexico as midwife students, but then return to the first world and finance their upper middle class lifestyle by giving birth to upper middle class women’s babies with the skills that they learned from the bodies and strength of brown women whom they only see now washing dishes and pushing strollers. brown women who usually cannot afford such professional expertise birthing professionals.
I have had similar thoughts and feelings about DONA over the years. I did my training with a DONA certified trainer (the now famous orgasmic birth advocate Debra Pascali-Bonaro). I really like Debra, and I think she is a great birth advocate. But what Maia says is true. We never talked about race, class or other issues that impact the women we might work with. There was also a focus on the “business” side of doula-ing. I never had any interest in being a professional doula, in making money from the work. For me, it’s a form of activism, a way to support and accompany women through their labor. Women who are in need, immigrant women, young women, low-income women, incarcerated women. I think that all the doulas out there who work for professional women, with class privilege and the ability to really choose their birthing environment are great. Necessary. Important. All women deserve to be supported during their births.
But I, like Maia, yearn for a community of radical doulas who want to use their doula work as a way to impact the larger systems that oppress us. Who want to empower women of color, young women, incarcerated women. Who want to talk about systems of racial oppression, sexual oppression. Who want to support and be supported by radical queer, trans and gender non-comforming doulas. Who want to re-center our medical system around the needs and wants of the people in our community, who have historically been abused, marginalized, manipulated.
I did my DONA training, but I never completed my certification. This process takes a few years, a significant amount of money and A LOT of paperwork. The paper work was my biggest deterrent. The only doula work I have ever done was as a volunteer. After offering my services to women in a public hospital, I felt that it was unfair of me to then ask them to fill out paperwork about my role as a doula. I didn’t want to do my doula work in a way that was self-serving. It wasn’t about me, it was about them. So I never became certified, and I hope that the day I begin my work as a doula again, this will not stand in my way.
Transgender Day of Remembrance
I like what Bear said:
It’s Trans Day Of Remembrance. We lost thirty this year. Mostly transwomen and transfeminine spectrum people, mostly women of color, mostly savagely beaten or stabbed for being too challenging to understand, assimilate, classify.
For the first time the NYT wrote about the murder of a transwoman of color in a way that suggests that her death is to be taken seriously, and did so before a well-meaning white non-trans person made a film about it. But it is hard to understand this as progress.
I’ve seen a variety of kinds of vigils and memorials for TDOR, but the one that is most vivid for me is one I saw at Wells College, a few years ago. The students there wrote the names of each of the trans dead on a slice of paper that they taped to the back of a dining hall chair. Suddenly it became clear that in the seven years (I think) since count had been kept, a huge hall’s worth of transpeople had been killed. Sitting in the chairs was emotionally intense, and if you were quiet you could hear the chatter of the ghosts, making friends. I sat in Rita Hester’s chair, and missed her.
Please take a moment, even if it’s just a breath right now, to remember. If you’re the praying kind, a prayer couldn’t hurt. If you’re the doing kind, tell someone else it’s Transgender Day of Remembrance, and what that means. If you’re the giving kind, make a donation to National Center For Transgender Equality – they can always use it. If you’re the writing kind, write about who you have lost, or found, and post or publish it if you’re able. And whatever other kind you are, please also be the kind who interrupts transphobia. Because it’s killing us, you see? It’s killing us.
Doulas on the Today show
By the eighth month of my pregnancy, I had become accustomed to the blank stares and raised eyebrows I received at each mention of my doula. Maybe it was the “doo” or maybe it was the “lah,” but there was something about the tone and feel of the term that rendered the uninitiated people in my life either instantly confused or quickly judgmental.
If a rain-stick dance is what I felt I needed to enhance my birth experience, there’s a good chance that a doula would deliver. But my reasons for enlisting the services of a doula were much more simple, going back to the origin of the word.
Since they focus solely on nonmedical care, doulas can spend their energy comforting and encouraging the mother and her family and helping them navigate the slew of questions and decisions that often need to be addressed during labor and delivery. “When I’m working with parents as a doula I want my role to be uncomplicated by the clinical aspects of birth,” says Young. “I’m there to meet their emotional needs, physical comfort needs, to help them with information.”
Home birth in the NYTimes, minus class analysis
An article from this weekend’s NYTimes chronicles the rising trend in home births in NYC. It partially credits the recent Ricki Lake documentary, The Business of Being Born.
The article does a good job of addressing the different challenges for women giving birth in their NYC apartments. It takes about space concerns, neighbor issues, clean up and hospital transfers. The article is also accompanied by a slideshow of photos from various home births.
What the article doesn’t address is the huge class divide in these types of births. I, as a doula and general advocate of midwives and out of hospital births, am a huge supporter of home births. I think they are better for moms and babies who have low-risk pregnancies. I think moms feel more comfortable and are away from the stress and pressure of a hospital. She is on her own time line, no questions asked.
But the huge drawback to promoting home birth is that it is primarily an option for upper middle class women. Not everyone has a home that is safe to birth in. This could be because of family circumstances, overcrowding, lack of support from partners or simply lack of adequate space. There are also obvious financial barriers since most insurance companies won’t cover home births.
It’s unfortunate that an article about birth in NYC didn’t address this issue at all, seeing as it is such a diverse city, in terms of both class and race.
Also, once again an article about women’s health is marginalized, this one was placed in the Home and Garden section. At least it wasn’t in Fashion and Style this time.
Cross-posted at Feministing
Fundraiser at NYC Babeland for new Manhattan birth center
Lynn Paltrow: Can There Be Justice for Pregnant Women if the Unborn Have “Human Rights?”
From Lynn Paltrow’s piece at RH Reality Check:
This summer, the question of abortion and the rights of the unborn once again took center stage as a presidential campaign issue. In August, at the Saddleback Civil Forum, Pastor Rick Warren asked both presidential candidates: “At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?” Senator John McCain’s answer, “at the moment of conception,” immediately established his anti-abortion bona fides.
But the right answer, as a matter of international human rights principles and simple justice, is: human rights attach at birth, not at conception.
This is the only position that ensures that upon becoming pregnant, women do not lose their human rights.
Political candidates of all persuasions should rest assured that to oppose the recognition of human rights before birth is not to deny the value of potential life as matter of religious belief, emotional conviction or personal experience. Rather, it is to recognize the value of the women who give that life.
Right on.
Radical Doula 
