Sterilization: Abuse vs. Access

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This recent post on the very popular feminist blog Feministing.com generated a lot of discussion among their readers, and got me pretty angry at the same time. It dealt with the story of one 20-something woman and her search for a doctor who would sterilize her, because she knew she never wanted to have children. Pretty much everyone refused to perform the procedure, for varying reasons, most of which revolved around not trusting her to make the irreversable decision at such a young age.

This is not a new dilemma. Mostly white, middle class women have dealt with these challenges since the procedure was developed–doctors not wanting to sterilize them based on age, number of children, even permission from husbands. Women have even had problems getting doctors to give them long-term birth control, like IUDs, for similar reasons.

But there is a flip side to this debate, which I attempted to add to the discussion that arose from the Feministing post, but had little impact overall. The flip side is sterilization abuse: women who are forcibly or unknowingly sterilized against their will. Here is what I commented on the feministing post:

I think that you will find that for women of color, low income women, or immigrant women, this issue is completely different. Rather than having trouble getting sterilization surgeries, they are being FORCIBLY sterilized.

There is a long history of this in the United States. In the 1970s, it was discovered that hundreds of Mexican-origin women were being unknowingly sterilized at an LA hospital. They were being told the operation was reversible and given forms they couldn’t read (because they were in english) to sign.

These abuses promoted a campaign by a group called CESA (Committee to End Sterilization Abuse), spearheaded by Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias that was able to pass federal guidelines regarding sterilization–requiring forms in the person’s native language, and a waiting period to give consent. Many times these women were being asked if they wanted the procedure while in labor.

This created an outrage among white feminists, for exactly the reasons Ann mentions above–they felt it was an infringement on a woman’s right to choose sterilization and was a barrier to her access.

It’s a great example of when the feminist movement gets divided along racial lines–white women and women of color are experiencing this issue in opposite ways.

There are a number of more “legal” ways that women of color and low-income women continue to be subjected to coercive reproductive control policies. Undocumented women in PA were allowed access to tubal ligations (without cost) but no help for other shorter term birth control methods.

Generally I love the debates and discussions on Feministing, I think they provide a wide range of perspectives and foster great dialogue. I was really disappointed by this post however, and even more disappointed to see that in the more than 100 comments posted (mine was 20-something) only one other person even acknowledged the flip-side of this issue for women of color, low income women, and immigrants.

There are seriously racist and eugenist philosophies at work here, for both cases. Doctors don’t want to sterilize young smart white women, partially because these are the people everyone wants reproducing. Just take a look at egg donation advertising for further proof of this. And the government wants to sterilize young undocumented and poor women of color because they are all of the things I just mentioned: of color, undocumented and poor. Plus they are reproducing at a higher rate than white people, who are barely replacing themselves. So let’s call this what it is–racism at work on our access to reproductive health technologies.

Mom’s right to placenta upheld

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Check out this story from Nevada about a woman who was almost refused ownership of her own placenta by a hospital, who alleged that she was going to consume it and it was a biohazard.

A judge upheld her right to the placenta, and she was allowed to take it home, where she reports she buried it in her backyard.

 See the full story here.

Women sues over pain caused by Pitocin IV

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Now this is interesting…a woman in St. Louis is suing a hospital and nurse for negligence in regards to the pain she was suffering at the hands of a bad pitocin IV. I’m not sure if there is any precedence for this type of thing, but from my own doula experience I know that IVs can be extremely painful.

I had one woman tell me that the IV was more painful than the contractions. Top that all off with the fact that pitocin just makes the whole thing more painful, and maybe I can see why she’s so upset. She’s also claiming that she was unable to care for her child and go about her duties after the birth due to painful after-effects of the IV-gone-bad.

She’s suing for $150,000 in damages. What is different about this I believe, is that this malpractice suit is not about something wrong with her child, but rather about something that had a negative impact on her birthing experience and her health. Many times, things that go wrong with the birth are overlooked if the baby is healthy. Maybe more women will fight for their rights in birth, but malpractice is already being a huge issue, exacerbated by these types of cases.  

Blogs that makes me think

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There has been a recent series of post entitled “Thinking Blogs.” I’m kind of new to the concept, but it seems that if you get mentioned in someone’s list of blogs that make you think, you’re supposed to post your own. Bean from Lawyers, Guns and Money (thanks Bean!) linked to me in her series a while back…so now its my turn. 🙂

I’m supposed to link here, and then list 5 (?) blogs that make me think. I’m kind of new to the blogosphere, so I don’t have a long list of surprising and undiscovered blogs. But here is my short list anyway:

1) No Impact Man: I haven’t put him on my blog roll, because it feels too distant from the issues I write about here, but I read his blog everyday. He (and his family) are doing a one year experiment on no-impact living, meaning trying to have a zero sum impact on the environment. It means a lot of things for them, including all locally grown food, no electricity consumption, no waste creation, no driving, to name a few. Check it out if you want to be forced to think about your impact on the environment in a very thoughtful way.

2) Feministing.com: Not a surprising choice, I know, but they are still my constant and ever thought-provoking source for daily news and witty feminist critique.

3)Dykes to Watch Out For: This might be a non-conventional choice, because its not really a political blog, a more of a live journal style site. But graphic artist Alison Bechdel is awesome, particularly her recent highly-acclaimed graphic memoir Fun Home. Read it, it will blow you away. Oh, and in her strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she once had a character named Miriam (my first name) who was a crunchy lesbian midwife. It definitely felt like a sign from above.

So I’m going to leave it at that. Enjoy!

When Three Parents are Better Than Two

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There was an Op-Ed last week in the NYTimes in reaction to a court case in PA recently, where a state Superior Court ruled that three parents were obligated to provide child support for two children. The children were conceived by two lesbian parents with the sperm of a friend. The couple is no longer together, and all three parents were given visitation rights and child support obligations by the court.

In her Op-Ed, Marquardt argues that these types of rulings (and there have been similar ones made in foreign courts in the past) are bad for children. She argues that it leads to instability for children, who can get shuffled between multiple homes (maybe now even five!). She cites a study she completed that found that even children in good divorces, where both parents stay in their lives, “grow up too soon.”

Then she attacks polygamy–based on the idea that these triple parents might want to live together, and that turns into the possibility for group marriage protections. Her piece ends with a plea for the defense of the two person legal parenthood.

The Op-Ed definitely made me think. Should more than two people be given legal rights over a child? Courts have already expanded the definition of parenthood–it no longer is based solely on biological relationships. If two people are married, and one gives birth to a child, the husband is automatically placed on the birth certificate (without proof of paternity). Step-parents adopting their step-children is becoming common place, and more and more children are being raised by just one parent. So why should we fight people who want to find new ways to parent?

It’s the legal protection that always becomes the issue–when should the courts mandate or protect someone’s right as a parent. These debates are inevitably going to be played out as LGBT family creation and marriage equality continue to press the issue and courts are forced to make decisions. If people are parenting in alternative situations, picking and choosing which two people get to be legal parents isn’t going to make the situation any easier for kids.

While I understand Marquardt’s arguments that these situations can create instability (I myself am a product of what she classifies as a “good” divorce situation), what’s the alternative? Two stable households are definitely preferable to one unstable (and unhappy one), and while I did have to adjust to two different value situations, I was also able to benefit from two different support systems and parenting styles. And kids growing up to fast? Look around us Elizabeth, at television, video games, the internet. I don’t think the courts can reign that in, no matter how hard they try.

Menstruation Optional

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After all the recent buzz about the new birth control pill Lybrel, which gets rid of the traditional “sugar pill” week and allows women to skip menstruating all together–the pill is finally on the shelves this month.

Karen Houppert has an Op-Ed about it at the NYTimes today, and she points out the interesting ways the menstruation as proof of inferiority has been used to certain groups advantage. She points out that when women were needed in the factories during the World Wars, they were told that having their period didn’t matter, and they should “buck up.” But when it comes to having a woman in the White House, its not uncommon to hear PMS and emotional instability thrown around like character flaws.

So we’ll see how Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Lybrel, decide to try and market their new pill. But in my own, non-biologist opinion, I have some immediate concerns about these new technologies:

  • All those synthetic hormones? I personally am wary of all hormonal birth control, I’m not sure if I believe that there are no negative side effects to them. I’ve also been told that when you introduce synthetic hormones into your body, your body doesn’t make any of its own hormones–so you might be subsisting at a level that is too high or too low for you, which can have side effects like bone loss. Also let’s remember the Hormone Replacement Therapy fiasco.
  • What about the good effects of the sloughing of the uterine lining each month? I think of it as rejuvenatory, allowing new and healthier cells to grow in its place. Could this have an impact on risk for uterine cancers?
  • Lastly, when I think of missing periods, or amenorrhea, I think of it being an indicator of something else wrong with the body–bad nutrition, stress, (or pregnancy). How can something that indicates a bodily imbalance be a good thing?

There could be a lot of other arguments about how great menstruating is, and how it connects us with mother earth, la pacha mama or the lunar calender. I’ll spare you all of those, and leave it at my concerns above.

All of this controversy reminded me of a great piece written by Gloria Steinem, called If Men Could Menstruate. Read it. While published in 1978, I think it has particular resonance today.

I’d love to hear what other doulas and midwives think about this new pill.

Woman gives birth in jail cell

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This story from the Times-Tribune today, is a chilling reminder of the horrible criminal justice system (ironic that they use the word justice) which regularly abuses the people caught up in it. The Tribune reports that a Pennsylvania woman being held at a county jail for minor drug charges was refused transfer to a hospital during labor, and was forced to give birth to her child in her cell. According to the woman’s grandmother, a female warden cut the umbilical cord with her fingernails.

One of the most repulsive things about this story is the reaction of prison officials, who refuse to confirm or deny this story based on the woman’s supposed rights to privacy. So all of a sudden when it helps protect prison image they are all about defending her rights? What about her right to medical care and equal treatment? This is an obvious human rights violation, and it scares me to think about what other violations are being carried out in our growing prison system.

For more information about prisoner’s rights work, check out the ACLU or Critical Resistance, a campaign to end the Prison Industrial Complex. Also check out my post about the Prison Doula Project.

Interesting thread about abortion on doula site

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I found a thread on alldoulas.com about the article I wrote a while back about Being a Radical Doula, and specifically, how birth activism and abortion advocacy go hand in hand.

It’s interesting to see how doulas react to this discussion of the connections between the movements. I highly recommend checking it out.

Oh, and by the way, the tagline for the site is: AllDoulas.com - The Doula Megasite

I would say supporting women who have abortions falls under that category nicely…but you all know that already.

Here are some highlights that I think are interesting:

it *ABSOLUTELY* reflects my views and my experience as a doula & reproductive rights activist, and im super excited to have read it, and to see it on alldoulas! this is another kind of dialogue that helps us learn from each other, and im excited to welcome it into our community…my 2 deepest interests in this world are definitely birthing and abortion, both of which i support adamantly and am deepy committed to women’s right and access to…ive never mentioned the word abortion here before, and i dont think i ever would have unless id read this post today.

A less supportive one:

I’m also what might be considered more of a ‘baby activist’ than a ‘woman activist’, if that makes any sense? I don’t judge those who choose abortion because I have NOT walked in their shoes and it’s not my place to judge. I do, however, feel that they should be counseled…not necessarily against it, but to know where their baby is developmentally, to see it on an u/s, to KNOW what the entire process entails physically, emotionally, mentally. I just hate hearing women say ‘they told me it wasn’t a baby’ or whatever and no one ever told them what was really going on OR that they had more choices than just having an abortion. There is support out there for women who don’t have great families or partners, etc. There’s also adoption (but I know this is a whole other topic where women, esp young girls, could potentially be taken advantage of and made to feel inadequate…) Anywho…the moral of my story is I’m all for women being EDUCATED!

I hate that argument, that women don’t know what they are doing when they make a decision to have an abortion. Totally untrue–and just shows a misogynistic view of women, just like Justice Kennedy in his Abortion Ban decision.

And another not-so supportive opinion:

This will probably be my only post on this thread, as this is a topic that so saddens me. I am an advocate for moms and babies. Aborting babies is totally opposite from that in my view. As much as I believe in a mothers right to choose in how she will give birth, I also strongly believe in the baby’s right to live. If you could ask him/her, I’m sure that they would choose to live. We are even talking about baby girls…who should be our future women…whose rights have been stripped away.

When I was new in this doula work, I started out assuming that most in the childbirth field would naturally be pro-life. It was very hard for me to comprehend how doulas and midwives could be pro-abortion. It still is, actually. I guess that I’m not a radical doula by description of this article, and that is quite ok. I will go on supporting moms and their babies, which in my very strong opinion is anything but what I just read in that article.

Check out the complete thread here.

And thanks to the person who posted my article on the site, this is exactly the kind of dialogue doulas need.

Teen birth rates decline due to increased condom use

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A study released by the Federal Interagency forum on Child and Family Statistics last week showing that teen birth rates on are the decline, continuing a downward decade-long trend. While the number of teens engaging in sexual behavior has stayed the same, birth rates have gone down, seemingly due to an increase in condom usage (up to 63% reporting using condoms during their last sexual encounter).

One thing we can’t conclude from this study–that abstinence-only education can take ANY credit for this decrease. If anything, it shows that what will bring down teen birth rates (if that’s even our goal) is safer sex, not a no-sex message. Another thing not mentioned in the articles about this study are abortion rates, which could also account for the decrease in teen birth rates (note that it’s not teen pregnancy rates, but birth rates).

The study also reported that more teens are finishing high school (88%) and more teens are being incarcerated for violent crimes (17 per 1000 teens).

Exciting Event Next Week: New York Healthy Birth Fair

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Saturday, July 21st, from 11AM to 7PM in Union Square South (14th Street between University Place and Broadway).

Events include:

• The release of the 2nd edition of The New York Guide to a Healthy Birth

• The launching of the New York City pilot of The Birth Survey

• Announcement of the plans for Manhattan’s new freestanding Birth Center

• The distribution of information regarding women’s rights and options in childbirth

• Raising awareness of issues and trends in maternity care

• A red tent where women can relax, share their birth stories, and participate in prenatal yoga

• A community art project which will enable participants to contribute to a birth-themed installation piece

• A craft tent for kids

• … and more!

Choices in Childbirth, The Grassroots Advocates Committee of CIMS and Friends of the Birth Center are greatly looking forward to joining forces with other mother-friendly organizations at The New York Healthy Birth Fair, and we look forward to your participation in this exciting event.