In Tennessee, our legislators this session have promoted and pushed bills to intimidate women seeking abortions and terrorize their doctors, to enact restrictions on abortion providers in the name of “safety” that have nothing to do with women’s actual safety, to subject women and other welfare recipients to needless drug tests rooted in racism and classism, and to potentially violate the privacy and even make criminals of women who are victims of crime or who have miscarriages.

All over the country, it’s the same story. Instead of working to improve education, the economy, and other issues that could benefit the whole country, the mostly-Republican-led legislators have focused their agenda on enacting laws to strip rights from women, from voters, from workers.

This Saturday, protests are going on around the country to object to the part of that agenda that is focused primarily on the reproductive rights of cis women, in the Unite Women demonstrations taking place in many, many states around the country.

In Tennessee:
Saturday, April 28
Rally on the North Lawn at the Belvedere. Rally for Women’s Rights, HealthCare, and Equality. There will be Speakers, Music, and protesting! Come Join Us!
Keynote Speaker: Ms. Park Overall
There’s an event page on Facebook.

Other state events may also have Facebook pages, and events across the country can be found at UniteWomen.org

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

The last few weeks have seen Tennessee on several “worst of” lists for women. The popular iVillage ranked us #40 among the “worst states for women” – for our lower rates of college degree completion, lower earnings, low levels of representation of women in state government, poor health, attacks on women’s rights, and other factors.

This week, Forbes named Knoxville, TN (home of Stacey Campfield) #3 in its list of Most Unfair Cities To Be A Working Woman because of disparities in pay between men and women.

And I missed this last month, but the blogger at Lavender and Cheese writes about another embarrassing finding that got basically no media attention here – Black women die more from breast cancer than white women, and that’s more true in Memphis, Tennessee than in any of the nation’s other largest cities. In Memphis, a Black woman is more than twice as likely to die as a white woman.

As that blogger explains:

We know what these numbers mean: black women are not getting the same access to cancer treatment that white women are. This is not a genetics problem; it’s a care problem, it’s an education problem, and it’s a socioeconomic problem.

And it’s exactly this kind of care inequality that the healthcare reform bill is supposed to alleviate.

The fact that this study has gone unreported and apparently unnoticed in Tennessee has to be a result of two things: laziness and cowardice.

I was born and raised in Tennessee. I chose to come back here after college. Like B, there are absolutely things I love about this state, from the big beauty of the landscape to smaller pleasures of local businesses and institutions and people. It’s not all about politics – but our politics are seriously messed up here right now.

We have Democrats in power who can’t bring themselves to denounce a State Rep when he publicly threatened to “stomp” any transgender woman he encounters. We have bills specifically trying to shame and intimidate women getting legal abortions and their providers, transformed into a bill to limit access in another dishonest way.

We have serious economic problems and disparities, a long list of problems that are getting us on other people’s “worst of” lists that we could tackle. Meanwhile, our state legislators are focused on saggy pants, making sure it’s okay for creationism to be discussed seriously in science classes, and pushing the racism and classism of trying to drug test all welfare recipients. And our Governor, Republican Bill Haslam, had the nerve to blame the media for covering this nonsense, instead of doing his job as a leader and taking on the state legislators for introducing and pushing said nonsense.

Welcome to Tennessee. Although we need you here, if you’re a woman, or poor, or not white and straight and cis and Christian, or you have a decent handle on science, you might want to pass on through, unless you have a lot of energy and patience for the fight. At least for now.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Cancer, Ethics, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

HB 3808, the so-called “Life Defense Act,” would have threatened the safety of women and abortion providers by releasing identifying information and potentially making them targets for anti-abortion extremists. The bill has since been amended and passed in the House, and is currently on the Senate Judiciary Committee calendar for the coming week, April 10. Tennessee folks, write your state Senators now.

The bill was amended by removing the requirements related to collecting and releasing information on the women getting abortions and their providers. However, it has the following, problematic provisions as passed:

(1) A physician may not perform an abortion unless the physician has
admitting privileges at a hospital licensed under title 68 that is located:
(A) In the county in which the abortion is performed; or
(B) In a county adjacent to the county in which the abortion is
performed

Admitting privileges bills have been introduced across the country as a means of restricting abortion access. As is often the case with bills intended to restrict abortion access, the typical claim is that it’s needed for women’s safety. The frequency of such complications and mortality with early abortions (the majority of them), is extremely low, and is much lower now that Roe is in effect and the procedure is legal. No compelling evidence is available that women in Tennessee are suffering medical harm because of the status of individual abortion providers and their hospital admitting status.

When a need for emergency hospital care arises, there are two ways to get admitted to get that care – 1) your provider has admitting privileges to a certain hospital and checks you in that way, and individually continues your care; 2) you go through the emergency department. Nothing about the potential complications of abortion requires the specific abortion provider to be the one to follow up, or to be able to admit you directly to a specific hospital.

Like many ob/gyn complications, it is normal practice for women to follow up via the closest emergency department – if you have an ectopic pregnancy, complication of a home birth, or other abnormal vaginal bleeding, you go to the emergency department, and they and their associated hospitals should either have the expertise to treat you, or the ability to stabilize you until they can transfer you to a more advanced hospital. In none of these cases is the expertise of a single, identified-in-advance provider necessary in order for a woman to receive appropriate medical care.

Additionally, other “ambulatory surgical centers” in Tennessee are not required to have their providers individually have admitting privileges. They have to have a “transfer agreement” in place with a hospital, meaning that the clinic has a general agreement in place with a local hospital that they may send patients there. This is different from requiring individual providers to have admitting privileges, in that it puts a plan in place for any transfers between the clinic and the hospital, without having to set arrangements for every possible provider.

It’s particularly notable that Tennessee abortion clinics are now being held to a higher standard than outpatient surgery facilities, because one recent approach to trying to restrict abortion has been to try to implement the standards for ambulatory surgical centers, that may not be appropriate or necessary for the type of care provided at abortion clinics. These are called TRAP laws (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers), and that HB 3808 meets the characteristics of a TRAP law is another tip-off that it’s about abortion restriction, not women’s health.

In some parts of the country, there are no providers so one from another state flies in on certain days to provide this legal medical service to women. It is very unusual for a hospital to grant admitting privileges to a provider who is based out-of-state. HB 3808, then, is partially meant to keep women in Tennessee from having access to an abortion provider who might come in from elsewhere if the state succeeds in reducing our access to this degree. An example of the effect is happening right now – in Mississippi, where only one clinic in the whole state provides abortion, a similar hospital admitting law may cause that clinic to shut down completely.

As Representative Gary Odom observed:

“I think it’s intended to do one thing and one thing only, and that is to place another requirement on a physician that makes it more difficult for a woman to seek out the services that they want that are legal in the state of Tennessee.”

It’s clear what this is about, and it’s not about women’s safety. As Representative Jeanne Richardson concluded:

We have made it painfully clear to the women and men in Tennessee who is in charge of women’s bodies and their health care decisions, and the decisions ultimately about their lives

Tip: it’s not the women themselves, according to the Tennessee state legislature.

See Also:
Tennesee House Passes Bill Requiring Admitting Privileges for Doctors Who Perform Abortions – Robin Marty at RH Reality Check.
Red State Round Up: Tennessee – at Trust Women
Thanks to both national sites for bringing attention to this bill.

Another update: I previously sent an open letter on the bill to all of the House Health and Human Resources Committee members and officers, including my own Representative, Mary Pruitt. I also sent it to my Senator, Douglas Henry, who could be expected to support the bill. I did not get a response from any of them, including my own representatives.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

Here’s the letter I’m sending to relevant politicians in Tennessee regarding a bill to collect very specific abortion data, with little consequence for those who disclose it illegally, and creating targets for violence out of women, their children and spouses, and providers, their families, coworkers, and other patients.

I am writing to express my opposition to HB 3808, the so-called “Life Defense Act,” which requires the collection and reporting of detailed data about women having abortions and their providers.

Data is already collected about the number of abortions provided in the state. It is reasonable to make that data available in aggregate, as the state already does. Reporting more specific data by the county level is much more likely to allow identification and targeting of specific women and their families, as Tennessee has many rural counties in which crossing the categories of race, education, age, and other demographics can get you close or exactly to a specific woman if you have an interest in terrorizing her. Such identification is a violation of privacy, and likely to incite harassment of women and their families.

Although the proposed law includes some provisions that are superficially intended to protect privacy, it also makes clear that the consequences of disclosing such data is simply a misdemeanor, a relatively mild consequence when we’re talking about people whose plans may include harassment, stalking, and violence. The barrier between collection and disclosure is thin, and the consequences for any leaker of the data are small. Regardless of the final form of the actual data reporting, though, the law will serve the purpose of intimidating women seeking a legal medical procedure with implied threats of these consequences.

Publishing the names of all providers is also likely to result in violent consequences. Just in case you think that people who provide abortions are bad, made a choice, and deserve whatever consequences they suffer – these are not “shunned at the church supper” consequences. These are “shot in the face at home” consequences.

Anti-abortion extremists are well-known to have threatened, stalked, kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered providers and have committed crimes against their homes and family members. They make online hit lists of providers to make it easier for anti-abortion terrorists to target, harass, and murder doctors throughout the country.

These expected violent consequences will not just affect abortion providers themselves – they will affect spouses, children, and other loved ones. The children of known providers have been barricaded into their homes, stalked at school, and subjected to other harassment and threats, and this bill endangers them, their friends, and their families. While supporters of bills like this often claim to be protecting “babies,” HB 3808 could in reality incite a threat against the born children of both women choosing abortion and their providers.

It would also not just affect the much-demonized providers at Planned Parenthood. When a woman experiences a pregnancy complication, in some cases a non-clinic provider will perform a necessary abortion out of compassion for and duty to the patient. This might occur in a hospital or private medical practice. These are providers who have not elected to life a life of wearing bullet-proof vests and constantly worrying about threats of violence. They are physicians who provide a legal service to a single woman in a time of need. Making their names potentially public will cause some of these providers, their spouses, their children, their everyday non-abortion patients, and their coworkers to be subjected to the same threats of and actual violence.

This is of course the point of this provision in the bill – to intimidate doctors into not providing needed medical care, and it is unacceptable. When a physician is deciding how to best provide care for a woman with a pregnancy complication, his or her first thought should never be, “If I provide needed and legal medical care, that my patient and I both agree is the best course of action, will I be putting myself and my family in danger because of the Tennessee state legislature?”

There are other problems with this bill. Because threats of violence have so limited the number of providers in the first place, many areas of the country only have providers who travel in to perform this legal medical service. The admitting privileges provision is not for a medical purpose, as facilities and providers capable of handling unexpected complications exist throughout the state. This provision is specifically designed to prevent such providers from offering legal abortions to under-served areas.

I urge you to reject HB 3808. Let’s be clear – the intent of this bill and bills like it has never been to collect better data about abortion. It has always been to intimidate women and providers making personal, legal choices with implied threats of privacy violation and violence. The Tennessee state legislature should not be in the business of harassing its citizens and making them targets for anti-abortion terrorists. Vote no on HB 3808.

I’ll be sending this letter to the members of the Health and Human Resources Committee, who are expected to consider it tomorrow (including bill sponsor Matthew Hill), as well as my own House reps. Find your TN legislator here.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Ethics, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

Here’s my note to the local Nashville, TN newspaper, The Tennessean, which decided not to run this week’s Doonesbury strips that focus on forced ultrasound for abortion. I’m sending a copy via email in addition to posting here.

I am writing to express my disappointment that you chose not to publish this week’s Doonesbury strips in the print edition of the paper. You explained that the Wednesday strip was not published due to “graphic wording,” but it is baffling as to what the supposedly offensively graphic word might have been. I can only assume it was “transvaginal,” but The Tennessean has previously permitted this word in at least three previous articles, including a recent one on papers electing not to carry the strip.

Tuesday’s installment, in which a woman is called a “slut,” was obviously not too provocative to carry in print, yet the proper name of a medical procedure being forced upon women seeking abortion apparently offended your sensibilities. It’s okay to call women seeking abortion disparaging names, but it’s not okay to mention their vaginas?

Doonesbury is meant to be provocative, political, and satirical, something you surely realize in carrying the strip. Many papers place it in the opinion section for this very reason. There is an argument to be made, I think, about not carrying Thursday’s strip in the comics sections, given the concluding line about rape. Many people believe that rape should never be a punchline. There is legitimate debate to be had about whether its use in this instance is inappropriately meant to be “funny” or is simply a reflection many women’s expressed perspective – that being forced to have an object inserted in one’s vagina for non-medical purposes to serve the agendas of anti-abortion politicians is indeed a form of rape or assault.

The Tennessean did not choose to run the strip and allow it to foster debate about this question or questions of abortion, politics, or the ethics of forced ultrasound. Instead, The Tennessean decided it was important to protect print readers from being exposed to medical terminology and a real rights issue facing women who choose to terminate pregnancies. When our local newspaper is deciding that its readers can’t handle the subject of a national debate, concerning itself more perhaps with advertisers sharing space with even slightly provocative content, and determining that “slut” is okay but “transvaginal” is not, it simply reinforces the perception that real Tennesseans are not being served by the newspaper sharing their name.

You can see the strips over at Slate, write your paper with thanks if they’re carrying it or complaints if they’re not. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which has been fighting the Texas forced ultrasound law, is asking people to sign a letter of thanks to papers that are carrying the strip, and to let them know about papers that aren’t.

I also have a post on the Doonesbury controversy over at the Our Bodies Ourselves blog.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Ethics, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

Photo by Stacy Lynn Baum and used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 licence.

While debate has been raging about women’s access to birth control and employers’ coverage of contraception, I’ve mostly been unable to write about it. Strange, I know. But every time I heard some ridiculous thing out of woman-hating Rick Santorum or Rush Limbaugh, I was really just too full of sputtering rage to coherently post. After several quick arguments with other folks online, though, below are responses to some common arguments I’ve heard. For more in-depth discussion, I highly recommend any recent clips from The Rachel Maddow Show, where it has been very well handled.

But you can live without birth control.
There are many items of covered medical care people can “survive” without having – orthopedic surgeries for painful injuries or disabilities, vasectomies, prenatal care. People can “survive” without many types of preventive medicine (including birth control) and even cancer treatment – for a while. What is appropriate for insurers to cover has never been based on “what you can’t live without,” and it’s a pretty poor standard to have.

Women who don’t want to get pregnant should just not have sex.
This is extremely hostile to women, and to the male partners of heterosexually-partnered women. It assumes that the sole purpose of sex is procreation, any time is the right time for a child, and as many children as possible are welcome. There may be some religious sects who technically support this belief, but we know that even among Catholic women, rates of birth control use are very high. For most people, it’s unreasonable to suggest that they never have sex if they’re not willing to be pregnant all the time or at any time. This perspective also puts women in the constant, stereotypical position of being the ones to fend off sexual advances, rather than supporting the idea that a man and a woman can be equal partners who both desire sex and make responsible choices about preventing unintended consequences. It denies women the agency of having their own desire, and puts them squarely in “aspirin between the knees” territory. Let’s be clear. Humans have sex, women can seek and enjoy sex, and women have purposes other than making babies.

Women who don’t want to get pregnant could just have a hysterectomy – those are probably covered.
Hysterectomies of course are not an equivalent to contraception, as they permanently prevent pregnancy, rather than allowing a woman to best time pregnancy to her own economic and health situation. It also ignores the non-contraceptive medical uses of birth control drugs, as well as historical inequities that inform which women get to choose hysterectomy and which women have had hysterectomy forced upon them.

Pregnancy is not a disease. So it’s not medical care to prevent it.
No, pregnancy itself is not “a disease” – neither is birth. But pregnancy can and does injure and even kill women. Pregnant women can require frequent medical care, and may encounter any number of complications over the course of pregnancy, from morning sickness so severe it requires hospitalization to eclampsia. So while pregnancy itself is not a “disease,” it is a medically vulnerable state for women that can necessitate frequent medical attention and can indeed result in disease and death.

Churches shouldn’t have to cover birth control.
Churches were not going to have to cover birth control. Period. Religiously affiliated institutions like Catholic churches and hospitals were going to have to cover it, but were given a generous out in which employees would be covered but the employers would not have to be the ones providing that coverage. These are institutions which in many states are already required to provide birth control coverage, and many individual institutions across the country do so in the absence of any requirement. Why? Because these employers need to attract talent, and they can’t or won’t get that talent purely from the pool of professionals who adhere to their own institutional religious affiliations (and even most Catholic women in the U.S. use birth control anyway). Catholic hospitals for example may hire doctors and nurses from any or no faith, because they need qualified people to provide the services that make them money and keep the doors open. They also recognize that providing employees with easy, cheap access to contraception is much cheaper than paying to cover pregnancies and a lifetime of medical coverage for numerous children and their mothers.

No employer should have to provide coverage for things they’re morally opposed to.
I have the slightest bit of sympathy for this perspective, but suspect it’s an extremely slippery slope. With absolutely no requirements for coverage, employers could stop covering lots of different things for economic reasons and claim moral objections. Employees would also be at the mercy of mergers and acquisitions. Imagine finding your company bought by another that would no longer cover blood transfusions, health care for LGBT individuals, any care related to any outcome of premarital sex, psychiatric drugs, or other common therapies. Of course, if employers started gutting already reduced service/higher cost insurance coverage based on their “moral objections,” we might actually start to see more widespread public support for movement away from employer-based coverage to a federal/universal model, so just chew on that.

Women who want to use birth control are just wanting to be irresponsible.
In a country in which half of all pregnancies are unintended, the active choice to prevent pregnancy until it is medically and financially viable is an extremely responsible choice. It actually represents a woman assessing her current situation and thinking explicitly about whether it is appropriate for her to be pregnant and potentially become a parent at this time. Unintended pregnancies also are associated with worse outcomes such as from delays in accessing prenatal care, quitting smoking, or resolving other health issues, the possibility of upsetting women’s ability to earn an income to support their existing families, and other economic, health, and social adverse effects. Many women have health conditions which make it very important to prevent or time pregnancy, and access to birth control makes it possible for them to be the most responsible for their own bodies and the bodies of potential offspring.

Also, the tip off that what we’re really talking about is controlling women’s abilities to make their own choices and to have sex without pregnancy, it’s extremely rare to hear an argument that grocery and drug stores should stop selling condoms, or that men should not have such easy access to condoms, because it just enables them to be irresponsible. Rush Limbaugh is not going to come out saying that men just want easy access to condoms because they’re sluts, I guarantee it – because he and his ilk don’t think *men* should just not have sex if they don’t want to get someone pregnant.

Nobody has a right to birth control.
Well, sure, if you don’t think healthcare is a human necessity and right (a point on which I disagree). What we’ve really been arguing about over the last few weeks, though, is not so much about whether healthcare is a fundamental right, or whether all the specific pieces of usually un/covered healthcare is a right, but about birth control specifically. The politicians and pundits have not been arguing over healthcare as a right generally, but specifically about women’s ability to time and prevent pregnancies, and their ability to have sex without high risk of having a pregnancy *just because some groups of men think women should not be able to have sex without risking pregnancy.* Note that we have not been arguing over whether gestational diabetes screening, HIV testing, domestic violence screening, or lactation support are “rights” – and these are all other services the Institute of Medicine said should be covered as preventive care for women under healthcare reform. Why’s that? Because this debate was never about what care people have a “right” to – it was always about who gets to have a say over women’s control over their own bodies and reproduction.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Contraception, Drugs, Government, Women’s Health

and if you don’t like abortion
don’t have an abortion!
and teach your children
how they can avoid them
but don’t treat all women
like they are your children
compassion has many faces, many names
and if men can kill
and be decorated instead of blamed
then a woman called upon to mother
can choose to refrain

This is from the newest album, ¿Which Side Are You On?. The full lyrics of this song have some women-as-mothers stuff that the Little Folksinger has been on about since she had her own child, and which I’m not particularly fond of. Regardless, I think this is still her best album in years.

The post title is a nod to “Feel Good Friday,” for which some people post music.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances

First, some recent posts at Our Bodies Our Blog:

Pink Ribbons, Inc. – A Closer Look at Breast Cancer Marketing – I’m really looking forward to seeing this film, especially after all the recent Komen/Planned Parenthood controversy. It’s going to show in several U.S. cities at various events this spring. Pink Ribbons, Inc. people, if you’re reading this, you totally want to hook me up with the showing at the Nashville Film Festival.

Christine also covered Komen and Planned Parenthood and stupid, sexist “barstool sports,” and Judy has something on Planned Parenthood and the Catholic bishops.

Finally, Good Vibrations selected Our Bodies Ourselves as one organization it’s supporting during February and March. If you buy something from their website or in stores, select OBOS during checkout to make a donation that goes entirely to the organization. Go on and buy yourself a Valentine’s present. Or, hey, buy me something, since I don’t otherwise have a tip jar.

Now, onto to other things:

Judy Stone has a great guest post at the Scientific American blogs, Molecules to Medicine: Plan B: The Tradition of Politics at the FDA. Stone ultimately looks at Kathleen Sebelius’s decision to override the FDA’s approval of over-the-counter access to Plan B, but also provides a review of past political decisions and appointees at the FDA, and U.S. government interference in sexual health care and information generally.

Soraya L. Chemaly has something at The Feminist Wire in response to that ridiculous recent piece in the New York Times about girls and “hysteria.”

Flanagan closes with the particularly ironic advice that what girls need is “protection from the most corrosive cultural forces that seek to exploit her when she is least able to resist.”…What girls really need is not to be characterized as inherently mad or inclined to the irrational.

Nick Baumann at Mother Jones writes about The Republican War on Contraception:

…in the past six months, social conservatives have widened their offensive, and their new target is clear: Not satisfied with making it harder to obtain legal abortions, they want to limit access to birth control, too.

I’m pretty sure a lot of women have seen this coming for a while.

I don’t agree with absolutely everything in Nicholas Kristoff’s NY Times piece, “Beyond Pelvic Politics,” but let me just highlight this:

A 2009 study looked at sexually active American women of modest means, ages 18 to 34, whose economic circumstances had deteriorated. Three-quarters said that they could not afford a baby then. Yet 30 percent had put off a gynecological or family-planning visit to save money. More horrifying, of those using the pill, one-quarter said that they economized by not taking it every day.

and this:

If we have to choose between bishops’ sensibilities and women’s health, our national priority must be the female half of our population.

Rachel Maddow has a piece on the birth control nonsense as well.

Nationally, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan has introduced a national forced ultrasound bill, which I think I’ll start calling a “forced vaginal insertion of an object” bill. We should require all members of Congress to participate in a simulation display of a transvaginal ultrasound, although I’d be kind of afraid of their reactions.

A national forced 24-hour waiting period for abortion has also been introduced, this one by South Carolina’s Jeff Duncan.

Neither of these things is based on medical evidence; both are purely for the purpose of making it more difficult for women to obtain safe, legal, timely abortions. Dr. Jen Gunter talks about what happens to women exposed to inexpert abortion attempts when safe and legal isn’t an option.

And in Tennessee, Planned Parenthood has sued the state, which previously awarded the organization grants for STI and HIV prevention, but in December yanked the funding without providing an explanation, or an alternative route for those services. One of the affected Memphis sites was reportedly the only place around to get HIV testing done after daytime work hours. Pressed on the issue, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam refused to provide any real explanation of the decision, saying, “The commissioner felt like there were other people who could provide that service just as well.” There was no explanation about why, if that were the case, those others didn’t get the grant during the competitive process last year, and as far as I know, none of those other “just as well” services have actually been awarded the funding.

Mary at Hoyden About Town has a cool post on soliciting research participants, with a lot of good points on what should be communicated to potential study participants and what researchers owe them for their participation.

And completely unrelated to anything, I cannot stop looking at these underwater dogs.

[note: I modified the title after I realized a possible mis-reading of it]

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Cancer, Contraception, Drugs, Government, HIV/AIDS, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education

Recently, TN state rep Richard Floyd declared he would “stomp” any transgender woman who happened to be around him and his family. This past week, he complained mightily about the reaction he’s getting, and declared,

I never said anything about violence. I said what I would do personally if my family was involved, and I meant every single word of it….Do I regret saying it? No, I don’t regret saying it. Would I do it? Yes I would.

No, you don’t get to threaten to “stomp” a segment of your constituency just for being around, then claim you “never said anything about violence.” You did, on the record, to a reporter. And then you immediately reiterated that you would in fact attempt violence and don’t regret saying so.

I’m also extremely bothered by the silence from other politicians on this matter. I sent a message to leadership folks in *both* parties encouraging them to denounce his statements, which read in part:

It should not be controversial in the least that politicians should expect rebuke when threatening physical violence against our citizens simply for existing. When an elected state Representative declares publicly his plans for violently attacking certain types of Tennessee residents because of his own discomfort with how they are, that should be an obvious target for disapproval, from either side of the aisle… all people deserve to be free of threats of violence from the people who are expected to represent them.

Here’s who hasn’t bothered to respond:

• House Speaker Beth Harwell, Republican
• TN Republican Party Chair Chris Devaney
• TN Democratic Party Chair Chip Forrester
• House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh
• House Republican Leader Gerald McCormick

That would be everybody who received the message in the first place.

I see that someone has also put a petition online asking that Floyd resign.

Meanwhile, state senator and misogynist-in-chief Stacey Campfield (R) claimed that it’s “virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex” (among other misinformation he spread while speaking on the topic).

Let me be clear: this is absolutely, demonstrably false. In our own state, heterosexual transmission is thought to account for nearly a quarter of AIDS cases, and if you look at women living with HIV/AIDS specifically, it accounts for 65% of cases among white women and 74% of cases among black women. While men having sex with men have been disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, transmission via men and women having sex is a significant and growing category, one that puts women and especially non-white at risk when we ignore it. Or, as B notes, “Oh, I See. ‘You’ Doesn’t Include Women.”

Campfield has been called on it by local public health and AIDS education folks – people who know HIV/AIDS and know the stats.

In the face of being corrected by experts, Campfield responded: “I didn’t say I was a gay/AIDS historian. I didn’t say I know the facts backwards and forwards I just said what I’ve heard and the facts back me up.”

Well, actually the facts don’t back him up. That’s the whole problem.

Send ‘em a letter:
Campfield’s contact info
Floyd’s contact info

In other state issues, I’ve been mulling over how to prevent a bill barring telemedicine for abortion from taking effect early, and then how to overturn the already-passed law doing this. See my Blog for Choice Day post for background and why I think this law is a bad idea. Are any of you readers part of medical, nursing, reproductive health, telemedicine, informatics, or other health or technology organizations (either in Tennessee or nationally) that might sign on to a letter framing it as inappropriately stifling technological innovations in healthcare delivery and inappropriately interfering with clinical practice?

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Government, HIV/AIDS, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, News Round-Ups

The theme for this year’s Blog for Choice Day is: “What will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?”

I have to confess, I’m extremely bad about helping people get elected. I will write blog posts and letters to elected officials all day long, but have not historically been very active in either donating to candidates/causes or taking actions like canvassing on their behalf. This year, taking in-person action might be even more difficult due to living car-free, but I’m alarmed enough by the apparent uptick in anti-choice legislative activity that I think I need to do better and more.

I’m also going to need to focus some of that attention more specifically at the local level. It seems somewhat easier to get the word out about national threats, and there’s a bigger pool of people who can raise objections. So many serious effects on choice happen at the state level, though. This is where waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, forced delivery of medically inaccurate warnings, and other unnecessary restrictions happen.

In my own state of Tennessee, a bills is in a subcommittee to require any abortions past “viability” to occur in a hospital. There’s also a bill to move up the effective date of a law that would forbid the use of telemedicine for abortion. An obvious question is “how do you do surgery without your hands on a patient?” The answer is that this is already being researched and done for other surgeries.

But what we’re really talking about for abortion right now is something more like having a videoconference, with a patient who is getting a medication abortion, and using that technology to talk to them about their wishes and consent, how to properly take the medicine, and any potential complications to watch out for. It’s something a doctor or nurse practitioner can do from any connected location, potentially having other nurses, medical students, etc. do any needed vital sign checking and form-signing in person. It’s something that’s considered very safe.

It’s something that could really help women in rural/remote locations, and across states with few abortion providers, by increasing the geographic range a provider might be able to reach. In some states, a single provider has been known to fly in from out of state one day a week; telemedicine could seriously relieve this logistical problem and relieve provider shortages for the cases in which medication abortion is appropriate and desired.

And the state legislature is the place to prevent it, if you don’t want providers using new technologies to provide women with increased access to legal medical care.

The bill to forbid telemedicine for abortion in Tennessee passed last year. I pay attention to these things, and I’m pretty sure I missed it. And now they’re trying to make it take effect this year instead of next year.

They’re making it illegal for your physician, if he or she thinks it’s appropriate, to advise you on taking a pill via a videoconference. Where you can talk to and see one another, and your provider can use her/his judgment about your care while talking with you. And it’s only abortion that is being targeted; nobody is trying to forbid providers from delivering other legal care in this way.

So, Tennessee, can we start here? Let’s make sure the bill to move up this interference doesn’t pass, and then we can see what we can do about getting rid of the original, and supporting in real ways politicians who stand against such nonsense.

See my Blog for Choice day posts going back to 2007, and NARAL’s list of participating blogs for this year.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

HHS Affirms Contraception as Covered Preventive Service – I’m glad I didn’t have to take back this post, although the Plan B bullshit was probably more responsible than a successful appeal to reason.

Participate in the Virtual March for Trust Women Week – Think reproductive rights are an important human right? Sign on to the virtual march to send a pro-choice message. More than 9,000 people already have.

Webinar: New Report on Breast Cancer and the Environment – Breast Cancer Action is holding a couple of webinars next week to talk about the IOM’s recent report on breast cancer and the environment.

See also Ayesha and Judy’s Can We Choose to Move Forward on Reproductive Justice? And How? and get details from Christine on how you can help a midwife get to Haiti to help with obstetric emergency preparedness – an interview with the midwife is provided.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Contraception, Government

Tennessee State Representative Richard Floyd has introduced a bill that would make it a crime for people to be in a sex-specific bathroom or dressing room (i.e., one designated for men or women) that doesn’t match the sex given on their birth certificate.

Tennessee does not allow transgender people to have their birth certificates changed, so if the bill were passed, there would actually be no legal bathrooms for transgender men and women to use in any state government building. (It’s unclear to me whether this might also apply to other public restrooms in non-governmental buildings)

Practical people have noted other problems with this bill. It would be impossible to enforce, because there is no chance we’re going to set up checks outside of restrooms. It could hypothetically criminalize parents who need to take a child into a restroom, other caregivers in similar situations, maintenance workers, and others.

But let’s be clear – mom taking her male-appearing son into a women’s restroom is not the target of this bill. Transgender men and women are, because of the small-minded bigotry of Floyd and others like him.

To make that point perfectly clear, Floyd said this, clearly illustrating his bullshit fears and hatred of transgender women:

I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry.

You know, because transgender women are really all predators out to harm cis women, a belief Floyd emphasized by continuing, “Now if somebody thinks he’s a woman and he’s a man and wants to try on women’s clothes, let them him take them into the men’s bathroom or dressing room. Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk.”

This is not a secret email remark made by Floyd. It’s not a comment he thought was off-the-record, between friends. This is what he said on-the-record, for public consumption.

So, Chattanooga, who are you going to run against this asshole this year? And if this nonsense is not quickly withdrawn or defeated, who wants to go pee in the “wrong” bathrooms in the state capitol building with me?

[Note: it looks like the Senate version of the bill has already been withdrawn after public reaction began; it could potentially be reintroduced by someone else, and Floyd's House bill remains. Here's Floyd's contact information if you'd like to let him know what you think of him and his bill.]

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

HR 3699, the Research Works Act, has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives to undo progress made in increasing taxpayer access to research funded by our tax dollars.

Introduced by California’s Darrell Issa and New York’s Carolyn Maloney, the bill would prevent the government from requiring that papers resulting from taxpayer-funded research be deposited online for free access to those taxpayers. In other words, it’s meant to protect the income streams of publishers, even when that income is derived from publishing the results of research studies funded by the government, works that should logically belong in part to the U.S. people who paid for them.

Practically, if passed, this bill would reverse the huge strides made in recent years for taxpayer access to federally funded medical research. A few years ago, it became a requirement that papers reporting results from research funded by the federal National Institutes of Health be deposited online in PubMed Central for free access. Because a huge amount of U.S. medical research is NIH-funded, this has meant that many articles about research affecting the public’s healthcare have become freely available online to that public that paid for it.

This NIH Public Access Policy generously gave publishers a one-year grace period for each article, meaning that any person, library, researcher, or even state and federally-funded institutions needing access to the most current research findings would still have to pay the publisher for access to those articles.

This is apparently not enough of the pie for publishers, who have fought for years against such taxpayer access. The Association of American Publishers is lobbying hard for this restrictive new bill, claiming public access policies are unwarranted interference with the private sector. Not surprisingly, one of Rep. Maloney’s top donors is Reed Elsevier, an AAP member and perhaps the biggest publisher of medical research (with $1.6 billion in profit in 2010) through its Elsevier division.

Find your Representative and her/his contact information and send a message at https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml. Several societies (such as the American Medical Association and American Nurses Association) and university presses are also members of the AAP – if you’re a member of these organizations or affiliated with a university whose press belongs to the AAP, you might also contact them to express your opposition.

It’s not just scientists who should oppose this legislation – it’s patients, educators, librarians, providers, and caregivers – anyone who believes that when the government funds medical research ultimately for better knowledge about people’s bodies and how to treat them, those people should be able to access that information. Write your Rep today.

Some other useful posts I liked on this topic:

• Elsevier-funded NY Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney Wants to Deny Americans Access to Taxpayer Funded Research – Michael Eisen at It Is Not Junk
• Why Is Open-Internet Champion Darrell Issa Supporting an Attack on Open Science? – Rebecca Rosen at The Atlantic
• Raising the barriers: restricting access to scientific literature will hurt STEM education – Sandra Porter at Discovering Biology in a Digital World at ScienceBlogs
• The Research Works Act: asking the public to pay twice for scientific knowledge – Janet Stemwedel at Scientific American’s Doing Good Science
• Scientists, Fight For Access! – Kevin Zelnio at Scientific American’s EvoEcoLab
• Why does the University of California Press support reactionary legislation opposing public access to scientific research? – Michael Eisen at The Berkeley Blog
• Calling on Publishers to Resign from The Association of American Publishers Re Anti-Open Access Stance, and YHGTBFKM: Ecological Society of America letter regarding #OpenAccess is disturbing – Jonathan Eisen at The Tree of Life
• And for even more, check this roundup from John Dupuis of ScienceBlogs, Around the Web: Some posts on The Research Works Act (Updated!), at Confessions of a Science Librarian

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Government, Libraryland

[Originally posted at Our Bodies Our Blog. Speaking of, did you know the OBOS 40th anniversary edition book is one of Library Journal's Best Books for 2011 in the consumer health category?]

This week, Health and Human Services head Kathleen Sebelius interfered with the FDA’s decision that emergency contraception could safely be made available over the counter (OTC) without a prescription to women and girls of all ages.

The drug is already available without a prescription for women 17 and older, after years of political wrangling. Advocates have worked to ensure OTC access because emergency contraception is most effective when used as soon as possible, and time, distance, money, and privacy can be serious barriers to getting a prescription and obtaining the drug in time to prevent pregnancy.

The FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) had completed a review of the issue and concluded that Plan B One-Step emergency contraception should be available OTC to younger women, which Commissioner Margaret Hamburg explains:

Based on the information submitted to the agency, CDER determined that the product was safe and effective in adolescent females, that adolescent females understood the product was not for routine use, and that the product would not protect them against sexually transmitted diseases. Additionally, the data supported a finding that adolescent females could use Plan B One-Step properly without the intervention of a healthcare provider…CDER experts, including obstetrician/gynecologists and pediatricians, reviewed the totality of the data and agreed that it met the regulatory standard for a nonprescription drug and that Plan B One-Step should be approved for all females of child-bearing potential.

That’s when Sebelius stepped in and blocked the findings of CDER from taking effect. In her letter [PDF] overruling the FDA’s findings, Sebelius objected that “The label comprehension and actual use studies submitted to the FDA do not include data on all ages for which the drug would be approved and available over-the-counter.”

That data is not available for the vast majority of over-the-counter drugs on sale to all age groups without a prescription. Many OTC drugs (like acetominophen and aspirin) can have serious, even fatal, effects if taken inappropriately because of deliberate misuse or misunderstanding the label and instructions. You will not find data on safety and label comprehension for every possible age group for these medicines, yet they are readily available OTC in adult doses to consumers of any age.

Former FDA official Susan Wood – who resigned after a previous round of political interference in emergency contraception – agrees:

“They don’t do this for pain medication, headache medication, cold medication,” she said. “That’s not part of how we assess products. Are we going to go and now do this with all products, or are contraceptives once again being singled out for this special treatment and this extra standard when we’re talking about a very safe and very effective product that can really help women?”

Change.org has a petition up urging Sebelius not to let politics trump science, and objecting to the HHS leader’s focus on very young girls who may access the drug:

The fact that the HHS and the Secretary are focusing on this extremely young age group is bizarre. Less than 1% of 11 year olds are sexually active, where over half of adolescents have had sex before their 17th birthday.

This decision is illogical and unfounded. Physicians around the country agree that Plan B is incredibly safe and effective for all ages, helping to decrease the number of unintended pregnancies.

Further reading:
This NPR coverage provides a succinct timeline and political explanation of the controversy over accessibility of emergency contraception.

Statement from Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health stating that the Obama administration’s “put[ting] politics before science and responsible health policy…is appalling.”

Heather Corinna at Scarleteen urges young people to speak up in protest of this action.

Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check, who reminds us that the previous administration wasn’t the only one playing political games with reproductive rights:

…no amount of proof it seems can make up for the fact that, despite all the evidence, even President Obama and Secretary Sebelius appear to think young women are too stupid to make their own decisions or that they are just chum to be thrown to the religious right in an election year. As the saying goes, with friends like these, who needs the far right?

Added: Email the White House directly.

.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Contraception, Drugs, Ethics, Government, Women’s Health

A few things that have caught my attention over the last couple of weeks:

Over at Nature, which is *supposed* to be a respectable publication, Ed Rybicki wrote some utter unfunny bullshit in Parallel Processing, in which men hunt, women gather, and HA HA, WOMEN are so good at SHOPPING because they can ACCESS A PARALLEL UNIVERSE. Because of how women and men are just so inherently different in a binary, unknowable-to-men way. LOLLERSKATES. Christie Wilcox over at Scientific American’s Science Sushi has the more mature response.

At another Scientific American blog, Kate Clancy talks about menstrual synchrony and why women might not really synchronize their cycles.

Rock Center has a segment on involuntary sterilization in North Carolina that disproportionately targeted women of color.

Health News Reviews takes a look at media coverage of a study on preventive mastectomy.

The draft research review for Closing the Quality Gap Series: Quality Improvement Interventions to Address Health Disparities is online (free) and open to public comment through Dec 15. (via BHIC)

eeshap at the Crunk Feminist Collective writes about diamonds and conflict, and why care in purchasing is not enough – we must make choices that devalue the diamond in society and therefore reduce diamond mining-related incentives to cruelty.

A clear photographic example of the way products for children reinforce gendered steretypes, in the form of magnetic words for boys and girls. Here, boys get the moon, a wizard, and a dragon, while girls get a diamond, perfume, and make-up. Oh, and bunnies.

Lena Chen has a guide to/review of some sex toys. The separate files for this article are totally unwieldy, but there is some good info therein.

I haven’t spent much time on the site yet, but here is the inevitable OccupyHealthcare. One thing they’re talking about is health information and responsibility for health literacy.

Jill Filipovic talks at the Guardian about the long game for personhood amendments.

The FDA revoked its approval of Avastin for metastatic breast cancer treatment.

Kotex has recalled a whole bunch of tampons.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Cancer, Drugs, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education

Over the last couple of weeks, many women’s health, feminist, and reproductive rights-oriented organizations have been running campaigns and articles urging people to contact the White House to preserve the no-cost coverage of birth control as part of the preventive services covered under the Affordable Care Act.

I understand why they’re worried.

The Roman Catholic Bishops met with the President, and one of them came away saying, “I left there feeling a bit more at peace about this issue than when I entered.” The big worry, and what people are supposedly hearing, is that Obama might back off on birth control coverage requirements, and that’s why the Bishops feel better now.

Obviously this would be a bad thing and would generally piss me off.

Now let’s take a few minutes for optimism:

The CDC released its 2008 abortion surveillance data. These reports are full of info on who has abortions at how many weeks of pregnancy and after how many previous live births, but I want to highlight this rather long Public Health Implications section of the Discussion. I’ve removed reference numbers, added some breaks for ease of reading, and bolded some key points (see the original):

According to the most recent national estimates, nearly one fifth of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion. Multiple social, cultural, economic, and political factors are known to influence the incidence of abortion: the availability of abortion providers; the adoption of state regulations, such as mandatory waiting periods and parental involvement laws; increasing acceptance of nonmarital childbearing; shifts in the racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. population; and changes in the economy and the resulting impact on fertility preferences and access to health-care services, including contraception.

However, in spite of these multiple influences, efforts to reduce the incidence of abortion need to focus on preventing unintended pregnancy. Indeed, nearly all abortions are preceded by an unintended pregnancy, with most recent estimates suggesting that intended pregnancies account for <5% of all abortions, including those which presumably are performed for maternal medical indications and fetal abnormalities. Providing women with the knowledge and resources necessary to make decisions about their sexual behavior and use of contraception can help them avoid unintended pregnancies. However, efforts to reduce unintended pregnancy in the United States have been challenging. Findings from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), the primary national source of data on unintended pregnancy in the United States, suggest that unintended pregnancy decreased during 1982–1995 in conjunction with an increase in contraceptive use among women at risk for unintended pregnancy. However, data from the 2002 and 2006–2008 NSFGs suggest that no additional improvements have occurred: contraceptive use among women at risk for unintended pregnancy has decreased; only small gains have been made in the use of the most effective forms of reversible contraception, such as intrauterine devices and hormonal implants; and no additional progress has been made toward reducing unintended pregnancy.

As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the U.S. Department Health and Human Services charged the Institute of Medicine with identifying which preventive services are important to women’s health and should be covered at no cost to patients. Following the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation, the full range of FDA-approved contraception methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for women with reproductive capacity will be covered without cost sharing in new health plans beginning in August 2012. The removal of cost as one barrier to correct and consistent contraceptive use might contribute to a reduction in the number of unintended pregnancies and consequently the number of abortions that are performed in the United States.

What if this is the message the Bishops got, and they feel better not because the birth control coverage is going away, but because they were sold on an argument that the provision would reduce a stalled out abortion rate?

I have huge, huge problems with my argument here. Most of the folks currently advocating to keep no-cost contraception coverage are about a million times more politically connected than I am. They’re more likely to have inside information, and also more able to mobilize on delivering voters in response to either a birth control win or loss. I’ve read some stuff on the internet and thought about it, and decided not to be completely cynical in this one case. To be even more explicit: I’m in a position of knowing less than people I’m disagreeing with.

Also, the CDC report is attributed to a bunch of MPHs, people who in my experience tend to be very practical about public health in a way that gets read as “liberal.” They have their own opinions, and may have expressed them in this surveillance report with absolutely no input from the Administration. The 2007 abortion surveillance data was the subject to political scrutiny even before it was released, so there must be an awareness that this simple government report has become politicized and more widely known, but that doesn’t suggest there was any high-level coordination on it’s content.

And sure, the Bishops are against birth control. They’re against abortion, too, but also against birth control. A “let’s increase use of birth control” argument is a hard one to win with them, even though most women, including Catholics, do use birth control at some point. They’ve specifically campaigned against the birth control coverage provision.

But.

I think it’s just *possible* that what made that Bishop come away feeling more at peace is a clear argument that increasing access to contraception has the effect of reducing abortions. I could see the case being made that, “Look, abortion is no longer declining. Contraception use is. These are women who would use birth control anyway, they don’t share your perspective, and this way we get them birth control instead of abortions.” And the Bishops were reasonable enough understand and agree to some mutually beneficial politically expedient course of action once the “we’re keeping birth control” announcement is made.

Whew.

Okay, my supplies of optimism and willingness to make a possibly absurd argument have been exhausted for about the next two weeks. Later.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Contraception, Government

Today marks Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is “set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.”

Transgender people face increased risks of violence and other adverse effects of discrimination. According to a recent report [PDF]:

• The report’s sample was nearly four times more likely to have a household income of less than $10,000/year compared to the general population.
• “Over one-quarter (26%) reported that they had lost a job due to being transgender or gender non-conforming and 50% were harassed.”
• “41%…reported attempting suicide compared to 1.6% of the general population, with rates rising for those who lost a job due to bias (55%), were harassed/bullied in school (51%), had low household income, or were the victim of physical assault (61%) or sexual assault (64%).”
• “One-fifth (19%) reported experiencing homelessness at some point in their lives because they were transgender or gender nonconforming; the majority of those trying to access a homeless shelter were harassed by shelter staff or residents (55%), 29% were turned away altogether, and 22% were sexually assaulted by residents or staff.”

This page provides some ideas for actions you can take to support the human rights and safety of transgender people. What the statistics above – and the action suggestions focusing on schools, police, prisons, housing, and healthcare – make clear is how anti-transgender hatred and discrimination affects every part of life for a transgender person. How inescapable the possibility of being crushed in everyday life might seem, and how such pervasive oppression deserves my and our attention.

The names of the people being remembered this year (since last Nov 20) are:
Luisa Alvarado Hernandez  (Comayaguela City, Honduras)
Lady Oscar Martinez Salgado (Tegucigalpa, Honduras)
Reana ‘Cheo’ Bustamente (Tegucigalpa, Honduras)
Génesis Briget Makaligton (Comayagüela City, Honduras)
Krissy Bates (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Fergie Alice Ferg (San Pedro Sula, Honduras)
Tyra Trent (Baltimore, Maryland)
Priscila Brandão (Belo Horizonte, Brazil)
Marcal Camero Tye (Forrest City, Arkansas)
Shakira Harahap (Taman Lawang, Jakarta, Indonesia)
Miss Nate Nate (or Née) Eugene Davis (Houston, Texas)
Lashai Mclean  (Washington, D.C.)
Didem  (Findikzade, Istanbul)
Camila Guzman (New York, New York)
Gaby (Jalisco, Mexico)
unidentified male dressed in women’s clothes (Paris, France)
Gaurav Gopalan (Washington, D.C.)
Name Unknown (Gaziantep, Turkey)
Shelley Hilliard (Detroit, Michigan)
Jessica Rollon (Bergamo, Italy)
Astrid Carolina López Cruz (Madrid, Spain)
Cassidy Nathan Vickers (Hollywood, California)

See also: Natalie’s post at skepchick.

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances

Some things that caught my attention this week, with bonus “this week in misogyny” content.

I don’t know how many people noticed, and I assume it won’t go anywhere, but Michele Bachmann introduced a forced ultrasound for abortion bill in the House. It’s been sent to the Subcommittee on Health.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has launched a new website, Bedsider, about birth control and says it’s intended for women ages 18-29 years. I haven’t looked through it thoroughly, but it includes comparisons of different methods of preventing pregnancy by factors like cost, immediacy, STI prevention, ease of getting and using the method, ease of hiding it from a partner, and degree of mistake-proofed-ness. It is focused through a pregnancy prevention lens, so the site is focused on penis-in-vagina sex, not other forms of sex or prevention. I haven’t reviewed the site thoroughly, but let me know what you think. Some of the language seems a little, uh, teen magazine-y for my tastes and for a target audience that is actually made up of adults, but perhaps it’s my advanced age talking there (early 30s).

Over at OBOS, between C and I we’ve covered Mississippi, personhood, and reproductive justice, and new research on in vitro fertilization and ovarian cancer risks.

The CDC released the final data on 2009 births [PDF] in the United States. It’s full of data on the number of births, birth rates by things about women, like their age and marital status, and rates of cesarean (another all-time high), low birth weight, preterm, and out of hospital births. [hat tip to Jill]

Jaclyn Friedman, who I met briefly at the Our Bodies Ourselves 40th, has a new book out, What You Really, Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety. I haven’t read it yet, but there’s a Twitter chat happening at 9pm Eastern tonight using the hashtag #shamefreesex.

B points out the ridiculousness of news coverage taking the “vodka-soaked tampon” story seriously. Notably, liquid-soaked tampons expand and are not exactly convenient for insertion. Aside from which, alcohol+mucous membranes would probably hurt. And the likelihood of it being widespread for teenage boys to be inserting said vodka-soaked tampons rectally is just absurdly small. And then there was the follow-up to B’s post, which takes a quick downward spiral in the comments to “if we take your picture without permission but link to you, you should be glad of the traffic”-land.

The FDA released a new statement on Makena, a drug intended to help prevent preterm birth. It has been the subject of controversy because versions of the same ingredient in Makena has been available for pretty cheap through compound pharmacies for a long time. FDA’s approval of Makena with it’s extremely high price, have generated strong reactions and concerns about access. The FDA’s new statement basically says, “The company that makes Makena says those vastly cheaper compound pharmacy products vary in their strength and purity, so we’re going to look into it.”

The agency also approved the first therapy derived from cord blood cells.

Jill at Feministe had a note left in her suitcase by the TSA when she checked what she’s referring to as a “personal item.” A note that read, “get your freak on girl.” Jill follows up that the TSA agent who left that note has been suspended, and Jill responds to the lack of response to the real problem here: “…I get no satisfaction in hearing that someone may be in danger of losing their job over this. I would much prefer a look at why ‘security’ has been used to justify so many intrusions on our civil liberties, rather than fire a person who made a mistake.”

This week, the CDC is running a campaign focused on the smart and appropriate use of antibiotics. Go to the website to learn more about why you don’t always need antibiotics and why it’s bad for all of us to use too many.

Transgender Day of Remembrance is coming up on November 20th.

The Abortioneers ask when to speak up, when to keep your mouth shut, and how to know the difference.

The fact that women prisoners often get shackled during labor is discussed at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, in an interview with a fiction writer who covered this practice in a book.

Sometime this week, I stumbled across #occupyhealthcare and the accompanying website. The contributors seem to be mostly healthcare providers and adjacents, focused on increasing access to healthcare.

The government has issued a “Leading Health Indicators App Challenge,” soliciting developers to create apps that promote the use of key measures of health (“indicators”) to improve the health of communities.

The Census released new data with the headline, “Half of First-Time Mothers Receive Paid Leave, Census Bureau Reports.” Before you get too excited, “paid” leave included not just official paid maternity leave, but using up your own existing balance of paid sick and/or vacation leave, if you’re fortunate enough to have that. They also noted that women who got some type of paid leave were *more* likely to return to work within 3-5 months, making me wonder if they are often returning to work when they exhaust their reserves of paid sick or other time. Then there’s this limitation: “Given that FMLA and other leave policies in the United States do not allow for leave for more than 12 weeks, it is not entirely surprising that new mothers return to work relatively soon.”

ePatientDave writes about how impossible to understand an “explanation of benefits” document can be and how we’re prevented from stopping errors and reducing costs because of this lack of transparency.

This week in misogyny:
Rick Perry’s “departments I would close” gaffe has received most of the news coverage, but in the same GOP candidate debate, Herman Cain referred to Representative/former Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “Princess Nancy.” He or his team reiterated this remark on Twitter, before offering the fauxpology that he “probably shouldn’t have” made the remark, but “was trying to make a point.” A point that required a gendered diminishing and dismissal of a powerful woman politician, apparently. I guess he thought he had built up too much goodwill with women over the course of his sexual harassment scandal.

Using the #mencallmethings hashtag (which Sady Doyle apparently started), feminist women bloggers took to Twitter to talk about some of the vile things that have been said to them in the course of their writing, including rape and death threats. I contributed a rape threat I received through the comments here because I had the temerity to dislike a rape joke on tv. Just another humorless feminist who deserved threats of violence because of it, right? @metalmujer and others pointed out that the hashtag itself would be better focused on misogyny rather than “men.” Yes, most of the excessively hateful and threatening remarks I’ve been subjected to have been made by men, but the problem is not something about all men, it’s the misogyny these particular men have carried out and a culture that encourages them to do so.

I also keep seeing this image on Facebook intended at a critique of dubstep and its fans. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about the actual quality of dubstep or its fans over time, but I do know that when the main critique is presented as “it was good when it was a bunch of men standing around, now it sucks and is by/for little girls,” that’s misogyny.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Contraception, Drugs, Events & Observances, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education, Web Resources

Update: the ballot initiative was defeated, 58% to 42%. Kudos and thanks to everyone who worked in Mississippi to defeat this measure.

Today and tonight, Mississippi voters will go to the polls to determine whether a fertilized egg is a “person.” Initiative 26 would:

…amend the Mississippi Constitution to define the word “person” or “persons”, as those terms are used in Article III of the state constitution, to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.

There are any number of problems with this approach, among them:

• It would make abortion illegal. Women will have abortions anyway, so either women or doctors or both could become criminals, women will have to go out of state even more than they already do (in a state with one abortion provider) – disproportionately affecting poor women, and/or women will have unsafe abortions in these kinds of conditions.

• Emergency contraception, some IUDs, and even some “regular” oral contraceptives could become illegal if they prevent implantation of fertilized eggs. Most oral contraceptives *don’t* work mainly by preventing implantation, but they *hypothetically* could.
• Potentially subjecting women who have miscarriages (also extremely common) to additional scrutiny, perhaps even including criminal investigation. I worry that women with citizenship issues or other legal concerns, or simply women who belong to groups routinely targeted for oppression, will forgo medical care during miscarriage for fear of such investigation. This is not far-fetched.

This is all aside from the fact that a *huge* percentage of fertilized eggs never implant, and there is no way to actually detect a fertilized egg. The medical definition of pregnancy involved an implanted, fertilized egg because a) implantation is *required* to establish and continue a pregnancy, and there are no detectable bodily changes (because there’s no pregnancy…) until implantation.

Similar efforts in Colorado and by a former HHS leader have already failed. Honestly, even if it passes, I don’t think it will hold – lawsuits are pretty much guaranteed, and the Center for Reproductive Rights has pledged to take it to court.

Loretta Ross points out that the initiative is likely to punish women of color much more so than white women, in Race, Class, and Rights in Mississippi: How A Reproductive Justice Campaign Can Save the Pill and Save the Vote:

Women of color will be the first and majority of the casualties of the Personhood Initiative if women are investigated for miscarriages. Mississippi already has the highest rate of infant mortality in the country. If the Voter ID Initiative passes, it is highly likely that the voters most affected will be voters of color. We know this in our guts. Now we have to believe it with our higher reasoning brains.

Loretta also asks, “To be heard, do black women have to bring Nina Simone back to sing her famous song about Mississippi?” I have to say, that’s the song that’s been running through my head ever since I heard about the initiative.

Further reading:
What Happens If the Mississippi Personhood Amendment Passes? – The Atlantic
A ton of coverage at RH Reality Check
What the Mississippi Personhood Amendment Can Teach Us About Organizing Around Reproductive Rights and Justice – Christine at Our Bodies Our Blog
Why a Fertilized Egg is Not a “Baby” – A Gardener’s Analogy – yours truly

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Contraception, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Pregnancy

Recently, Our Bodies Ourselves was featured on the NBC Nightly News, and there are some great clips – like Susan Love saying, “Our Bodies, Ourselves really set the stage for my whole career.”

Wow. I’ve been meaning to write a summary post of my time in Boston/Cambridge for the OBOS 40th anniversary, and how inspiring it was for me to be around so many fantastic women with so many strong things to say. I left inspired and reenergized. Susan’s commentary reminds me all over again, as does that from some of the other prominent women interviewed for the piece, including OBOS’s own Judy Norsigian. Hearing Brian Williams call it “a groundbreaker, a game changer” makes me pretty proud to be associated with OBOS in my own little way, too. I’ll have to forgive him the “plumbing” intro.

Posts from Christine with embedded video and commentary:

• The Legacy of “Our Bodies, Ourselves”: Sex, Plumbing and Menopause – The main video

• Judy Norsigian on “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” Past, Present and Future – Judy! Judy! Judy! Judy is a tireless advocate for OBOS, and why it matters into the 21st century and beyond as more than just a book, but a tool for knowledge and change.
• Susan Love on the Impact of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” and Why Breast Cancer Should Focus on Breasts – Susan (of Army of Women) reminds us how women’s bodies were viewed and taught when *she* was in medical school, and how OBOS played a role in transforming that mindset of women as “small men who have babies.”

There was also a nice review from Ms. Magazine recently. I love the end of the review, which again reminds us that OBOS is more than a book:

OBOS is a complete resource–or the closest to one that I can imagine–for women’s health and activism. Not only does the reader find clear, trustworthy information about her body, but also a thorough introduction to the politics of having that body. When you read OBOS, you join a community, one that is growing and changing (as each editions’ increasing thickness testifies to) and that provides the resources to start and keep talking.

OBOS certainly did that for me when I first encountered it, so I’m pretty excited that the new edition may provide that experience for a whole new set of women and girls.

Note: the NBC/MSNBC sites are really iffy about which videos they provide transcripts for. I didn’t see them on the OBOS videos.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Women’s Health

Yesterday, Tennessee’s Governor instituted new rules limiting public demonstrations in Legislative Plaza (state public land) to specific hours and requiring daily approval of permits which will cost $65. After stating that the permit process would not be in place until this morning, the government sent police in in the middle of the night to remove Occupy Nashville demonstrators under the guise of a newly implemented curfew. 75 state troopers were sent to arrest 29 protesters. Below is the text of the letter I just sent to the Governor’s office in response:

Governor Haslam,

I am writing to express my concern about the sudden implementation of limited demonstration hours in Legislative Plaza and insistence on permits and curfews in this public space. While many areas do require permits for large events in public spaces, the creation of these rules mid-event suggests a desire to specifically interrupt Occupy Nashville efforts. It is profoundly disturbing to consider whether permits may be required or denied based upon whether the demonstration’s focus finds favor with state government, especially when the focus of dissent is the government itself. The suggestion by Bill Gibbons that others using or traveling through the Plaza outside of curfew hours would get a pass depending on their circumstances further suggests an intention to enforce the new rules inequitably.

I am also disturbed by the contradiction between clear reports that enforcement would not happen until today, and the frankly sneaky manner in which the curfew issue was employed to provide cover for removing people who had a reasonable belief that they would not need to clear out of the public space until today, and to do so when the least possible media would be present.

I’ve already viewed elsewhere the generic response sent to others who have written on this issue, the meat of which is:

“While this administration wholeheartedly supports freedom of speech, assembly and petition, it is our responsibility to keep people safe on state property. Abiding by these hours allows for a safe event, while ensuring the people’s right to peaceably assemble.”

I am certain you don’t mean to imply that it is only possible to keep people safe on state property during the hours of 9am to 4pm, the hours for which permits may ostensibly be approved. If so, I would expect that safety should also be a concern during the additional non-curfew hours,* 4pm to 10pm and 6am to 9am. There is no apparent rationale for the failure to align these hours and allow permits for assembly during the full 6am to 10pm time frame. The most charitable reading of this mismatch is a governmental unwillingness to provide for the proper security during some hours for those in exercise of their Constitutional liberties on public land. A less charitable read of this mismatch would suggest that it is the specific intent of the Governor’s office to limit the exercise of free speech and assembly by forbidding such activities on state land during the hours which most people have off work, thereby reducing the numbers of people who may participate in such activities.

Free speech and assembly are perhaps the most sacred rights of Americans, the tools which provide for all other rights to be acquired and defended. Interfering with these rights in such a manner is unconscionable. I urge you to rescind this misguided action and restore the exercise of constitutional freedoms to Legislative Plaza.

Regards,
Rachel R. Walden
Nashville, TN

*Added: above, where it says, “during the additional non-curfew hours, 4pm to 10pm and 6am to 9am” – I don’t think my wording was clear initially. Those are the hours in which people are allowed to be in the Plaza and not under curfew, but demonstrations are not being allowed.

I’d like to also offer my thanks and kudos to Night Court Magistrate Tom Nelson who refused to sign criminal trespass warrants for the protesters taken into custody.

Here’s what some other folks have had to say. I am particularly enjoying Aunt B’s writings on the subject.

First up, links on the Memphis/family planning situation I wrote about last week. As a brief reminder, Title X family planning funds have been assigned to a Christian religious organization that has expressed an intent to deny services, information, and referrals to women based on the organization’s religious beliefs.

LeftWingCracker points out that three Democrats voted for this nonsense. Also: CCHC is going to need more than prayers; CCHC is talking out of both sides of their mouth.

Aunt B, in Early November is in Two Weeks, looks at Christ Community *complaining* because patients are being sent to them and they don’t have the capacity to deal with them yet.

At the DowntownMemphisBlog, Planned Parenthood Responds to the CCHS Debacle – includes suggestions for action.

Wendi Thomas at the Commercial Appeal: “Poor patients seeking family planning care have lost access to free services at the familiar agency that had been federally funded to provide them for more than 35 years, and the new, evangelical one isn’t yet able to help.”

On to the rest…

Look, I think we all said profoundly obnoxious, ill-informed things as young people. Some of us continue to say profoundly obnoxious, ill-informed things well into adulthood. If you’re a nursing student, though, you probably ought to think twice about expressing extreme animosity towards women and their healthcare needs in a public forum. Ema at the Well-Timed Period covers the case of Ben Cochrane, ECU nursing student who wrote that women getting birth control through the campus student health clinic should “Go read your Redbook in the lobby of a specialist as you wait to get your lady-bits inspected. Leave Student Health for those of us that are in actual need of medical attention.” See Ema’s two posts.

Birthing Beautiful Ideas makes a list of What Pregnant Women Want, and Deserve.” I’d add a lot more race, justice, and privilege-related things to it.

On that note, Miriam Zoila Pérez writes about work to stop women prisoners from being shackled during labor.

HealthNewsReviews critiques recent coverage of a mammography/false positives study.

A baby health thing: the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that parents should not use any type of crib bumper pad: “Bumper pads should not be used in cribs. There is no evidence that bumper pads prevent injuries, and there is a potential risk of suffocation, strangulation or entrapment”

Wal-Mart is reverting back to providing no and shitty health insurance coverage for its workers. Hey, if people can’t find other jobs, might as well screw ‘em, right Wal-Mart?

Gender Focus lays out some reasons Why Abortion Care Needs to be Fully Funded.

From Latoya Peterson at Racialicious: The Tits Have It: Sexism, Character Design, and the Role of Women in Created Worlds – “And there it was, the truth about character design that so many players know but most designers wouldn’t usually articulate: most of the egregiously sexist character designs are based on fuckability, rather than playability.”

Renee at Womanist Musings points to a calendar in which men are posed in ways that women are stereotypically posed as objects for viewing. It’s easy to see how awkward, unnatural and ridiculous these poses are when you see men performing them. She also has a great post on a controversial, bullshit poster from one of the SlutWalk events.

It’s about time: “The subcommittee recommends a broader definition, to include anal and oral rape, as well as rapes involving male victims.” – FBI may expand its definition of rape.

On the abysmal state of LGBT curricula in medical schools: “The median reported total time dedicated to LGBT topics in all four years of medical school was five hours. 76 percent of programs self-rated their curriculum as “fair” or worse.”

This week’s edition title: After going to Boston for Our Bodies Ourselves’s 40th anniversary shindig, I caught a cold/respiratory infection that has left me feeling awful for the past two weeks. I actually took sick time from work, which I’m lucky to have but almost never use. I skipped my drawing class, wouldn’t drink coffee, and sat around complaining about how I couldn’t hear out of my right ear. Things are mostly back to normal now.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Body Image & Eating Disorders, Contraception, Government, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy

In Memphis, TN, Title X family planning funds have been awarded to Christ Community Health Services, a religious health provider which has indicated that it may refuse to provide information, referrals, and some kinds of health care to Shelby County’s women.

Title X funds have historically gone to Planned Parenthood in Memphis; the move to give the funds to an anti-choice organization is part of nationwide efforts to defund Planned Parenthood because PP provides abortions. Existing laws already clearly prohibit Title X or other federal funds from being used for abortion services – the money goes to provide necessary services like contraception and cancer screenings.

Reports indicate that Christ Community has no intention of providing referrals to women who choose to have abortions, whether that is for personal or medical reasons. From a report by a Memphis newspaper (emphasis added):

[Christ Community CEO] Waller initially said the clinic refers patients to abortion providers if they request it, but he and Dr. Rick Donlon, a founding physician at the clinic, later called the newspaper to change that statement.

“We really try to provide women with other options and make sure they have those possibilities. And if they at the end still want a pregnancy termination, we know they know where to go,” Donlon said.

“They know where to go.” That doesn’t exactly sound like a professional provider of medical services to me. The clinic leaders obviously made a point of contacting the newspaper to make sure it was clear that they would *not* provide referrals, demonstrating a clear intent to put religious belief ahead of the medical care of women who may consider or require abortions.

Christ Community has also said it will not provide emergency contraception, only doing so through a third party. No details are available about how this will happen in practice, and how much additional time, travel and cost women may be subjected to in order to access this legal, previously available, and non-abortifacent medical care. This change clearly creates an additional burden for women seeking emergency contraception, and the women of Memphis currently have no guarantees that the third party provision will happen in a timely way, while timely administration of emergency contraception drugs is absolutely crucial for them to work.

I have not seen this discussed elsewhere, but it is also not readily apparent to me whether Christ Community would or could ever decide that any other forms of birth control are off-limits because of purely theoretical possibilities of preventing fertilized egg implantation. If we’re already providing the Title X money to a provider who can pick and choose services because of religious beliefs, I don’t see that refusing other forms of contraception is completely out of the question.

The organization also is reportedly working to install “crisis pregnancy centers” at its locations; these centers are well known for providing false and misleading information about abortion and exist to convince women not to choose abortion. Title X rules require “nondirective” counseling about abortion, and Planned Parenthood and other reputable providers who do provide abortions (using other, non-federal money) have processes and counselors in place to check whether women are certain of their decisions without pushing them in either direction.

Given the interest in installing deliberately biased in-house counseling and the stated intention to refuse to refer women out to other providers for abortion, it seems unlikely that Christ Community will be able to or has any intention of meeting the rules requiring factual, nondirective counseling. Women who cannot afford to access family planning care elsewhere will be subjected to a provider who clearly wishes to influence women’s choices, rather than providers who are committed to medical accuracy and offer women a full range of choices, supporting their right to individual decision-making about their bodies.

One woman reports that “Christ Community provides high-quality medical services, but that they sometimes come with a ‘sermon.’” She says she was told by a Christ Community provider, “If only my relationships with people and God were right, I would have fewer health problems.”

You have got to be f***ing kidding me.

In addition to these concerns, there may be other issues with Christ Community’s administration of the Title X funds. I’m not personally familiar with CCHS’s existing health clinics and services on the ground. A Memphis local informed me Christ Community does not take appointments – patients must show up first thing in the morning and wait to be seen, and may even have to come back the next day if too many people show up. This is obviously not a good model for providing family planning services, especially when emergency contraception or other urgent services are needed or when women must take time off from jobs, school, or childcare in order to wait around for care. Although the organization’s website does have an “appointment line,” it indicates that this is to find out which clinics provide which services; I’d like to hear from others about whether this matches their experience at Christ Community clinics.

Another serious concern is that Christ Community’s proposal to provide these services clearly indicated that they would provide less care to fewer women than would Planned Parenthood. Steve Ross, of Memphis and blogging at Vibinc, has an excellent series chronicling the whole debacle, from the Tennessee state government pressuring the Memphis health department to take the funds despite their lack of capacity for family planning through to the current funding of Christ Community (parts 1, 2, 3, and 4). In part 2, he lays out the numbers and apparent relative deficiencies of the Christ Community proposal, including their lower numbers for proposed services and inconsistencies in how the proposals from Christ Community and Planned Parenthood were scored by local officials.

In Part 3, Steve points to the questions asked by the potential providers – Christ Community, Planned Parenthood, and a third non-religious applicant. Although they are unattributed, we can only assume that the following questions were asked by Christ Community, the only applicant with an explicit religious mission and on the record about refusing services because of beliefs. I think these are very telling about the intentions of the leadership of the organization that asked these questions, and how they plan to approach women’s health:

In providing information about pregnancy termination, is it sufficient to have the referral information in writing? [My interpretation: In other words, do we even have to bother to actually have a conversation with women about this?]

If the information about pregnancy termination is provided, is the contractor allowed to indicate in wiriting (NOT coerce) – on a referral sheet or in the office that it does not provide that service because of its beliefs.

If a contraceptive method is not provided on site by a provider because of the provider’s ethical beliefs, can the provider refer the client to another Title X provider who offers this method? If so, does the referring provider have to pay for the service?

The answers to these questions explicitly state that emergency contraception must be provided, the organization cannot choose not to provide forms of contraception because of its beliefs, and they are not allowed to talk about refusing abortion and referrals because of beliefs. Yet everything we’ve heard – as mentioned above – indicates that Christ Community plans to do exactly that.

As Steve writes:

To be honest, these three questions left me flabbergasted. Certainly individuals and associations of people are allowed to hold their own beliefs. Certainly, different physicians and networks of physicians have different preferred treatment plans. There’s plenty of room for this diversity out there in the private sector. However, when you choose to enter the public sector by seeking a contract for public dollars, you are bound by the requirements those public dollars place on you. If those requirements are unpalatable to you, then perhaps you shouldn’t seek them.

Honestly, I’m sure this whole thing will end in lawsuits, and I wouldn’t be unhappy if HHS would intervene. In the meantime, poor women suffer.

I will leave you with this excellent rant from Sig at DowntownMemphisBlog:

Public policy needs to be based on reason and fact, not feelings and faith. Abortion is a legal medical procedure. Any organization that aspires to hold a government contract in the area of family planning needs to present all options and perform all medical procedures, not just the ones it agrees with or likes. Not just the ones that make them feel warm and fuzzy inside. Not just the ones that fit into the narrow world view defined by their archaic religious beliefs.

See also: Aunt B

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Contraception, Ethics, Government, Women’s Health

SlutWalks are marches protesting the blaming of victims of sexual assault, often with tired refrains about whether women were “asking for it,” such as by what they wore or looking like a “slut.”

While the anti-victim-blaming message is a good one, the walks not uncontroversial or unproblematic – I found this Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk particularly compelling. In it, anti-violence advocates make clear that naming oneself “slut” is an action of privilege, one that is not safe for many or most women of color and which flies in the face of a long legacy of work against attitudes, languages and actions that sexually objective and violate women of color.

From the letter:

As Black women and girls we find no space in SlutWalk, no space for participation and to unequivocally denounce rape and sexual assault as we have experienced it. We are perplexed by the use of the term “slut” and by any implication that this word, much like the word “Ho” or the “N” word should be re-appropriated. The way in which we are perceived and what happens to us before, during and after sexual assault crosses the boundaries of our mode of dress. Much of this is tied to our particular history. In the United States, where slavery constructed Black female sexualities, Jim Crow kidnappings, rape and lynchings, gender misrepresentations, and more recently, where the Black female immigrant struggle combine, “slut” has different associations for Black women. We do not recognize ourselves nor do we see our lived experiences reflected within SlutWalk and especially not in its brand and its label.

As Black women, we do not have the privilege or the space to call ourselves “slut” without validating the already historically entrenched ideology and recurring messages about what and who the Black woman is. We don’t have the privilege to play on destructive representations burned in our collective minds, on our bodies and souls for generations. Although we understand the valid impetus behind the use of the word “slut” as language to frame and brand an anti-rape movement, we are gravely concerned. For us the trivialization of rape and the absence of justice are viciously intertwined with narratives of sexual surveillance, legal access and availability to our personhood. It is tied to institutionalized ideology about our bodies as sexualized objects of property, as spectacles of sexuality and deviant sexual desire. It is tied to notions about our clothed or unclothed bodies as unable to be raped whether on the auction block, in the fields or on living room television screens. The perception and wholesale acceptance of speculations about what the Black woman wants, what she needs and what she deserves has truly, long crossed the boundaries of her mode of dress.

I would encourage you to read and think about the entire letter.

A Nashville, TN SlutWalk happened last weekend. I didn’t attend, and didn’t have to make a decision about whether to attend, by way of being out of town for the Our Bodies Ourselves 40th anniversary symposium. One website has some compelling photos from the event. In checking out the photos post-event, I was particularly taken by an image of a walker with a sign reading, “I was 4 years old and wearing overalls and tennis shoes. Clothes are irrelevant. Rapists cause rape.” Another woman held a sign reading, “This is what I was wearing when I was assaulted. Was I asking for “it” too?” Yes, there are a lot of apparently white women in full set of photos. The problematic aspects aren’t erased, but I wanted to point to a couple of images I found powerful from the event. Imagine how much more powerful they could be if all women felt included in visible actions against sexual assault.

Also in Nashville, there is coverage at the local alt weekly’s blog of some of the vile comments left on stories about the event. Comments that blame victims for “tempting” violence, that encourage women to change their dress so “he might choose a different target.” Ugh. As a reminder, let me point everyone to these excellent tips on how to prevent rape and sexual assault (origin unknown to me). For example:

If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.
If a women is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.

The usual tips to dress a certain way, be in certain places, etc. aren’t intended to stop rape – they’re intended to make women feel that there is something they can do to encourage rapists to pick a different victim, and that they’ve done something wrong if a rapist picks them.

Please be aware that comments here are moderated and anyone suggesting that women “ask for it” or that anyone except rapists is responsible for rape will be deleted/unpublished.

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances

SlutWalks are marches protesting the blaming of victims of sexual assault, often with tired refrains about whether women were “asking for it,” such as by what they wore or looking like a “slut.”

While the anti-victim-blaming message is a good one, the walks not uncontroversial or unproblematic – I found this Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk particularly compelling. In it, anti-violence advocates make clear that naming oneself “slut” is an action of privilege, one that is not safe for many or most women of color and which flies in the face of a long legacy of work against attitudes, languages and actions that sexually objective and violate women of color.

From the letter:

As Black women and girls we find no space in SlutWalk, no space for participation and to unequivocally denounce rape and sexual assault as we have experienced it. We are perplexed by the use of the term “slut” and by any implication that this word, much like the word “Ho” or the “N” word should be re-appropriated. The way in which we are perceived and what happens to us before, during and after sexual assault crosses the boundaries of our mode of dress. Much of this is tied to our particular history. In the United States, where slavery constructed Black female sexualities, Jim Crow kidnappings, rape and lynchings, gender misrepresentations, and more recently, where the Black female immigrant struggle combine, “slut” has different associations for Black women. We do not recognize ourselves nor do we see our lived experiences reflected within SlutWalk and especially not in its brand and its label.

As Black women, we do not have the privilege or the space to call ourselves “slut” without validating the already historically entrenched ideology and recurring messages about what and who the Black woman is. We don’t have the privilege to play on destructive representations burned in our collective minds, on our bodies and souls for generations. Although we understand the valid impetus behind the use of the word “slut” as language to frame and brand an anti-rape movement, we are gravely concerned. For us the trivialization of rape and the absence of justice are viciously intertwined with narratives of sexual surveillance, legal access and availability to our personhood. It is tied to institutionalized ideology about our bodies as sexualized objects of property, as spectacles of sexuality and deviant sexual desire. It is tied to notions about our clothed or unclothed bodies as unable to be raped whether on the auction block, in the fields or on living room television screens. The perception and wholesale acceptance of speculations about what the Black woman wants, what she needs and what she deserves has truly, long crossed the boundaries of her mode of dress.

I would encourage you to read and think about the entire letter.

A Nashville, TN SlutWalk happened last weekend. I didn’t attend, and didn’t have to make a decision about whether to attend, by way of being out of town for the Our Bodies Ourselves 40th anniversary symposium. One website has some compelling photos from the event. In checking out the photos post-event, I was particularly taken by an image of a walker with a sign reading, “I was 4 years old and wearing overalls and tennis shoes. Clothes are irrelevant. Rapists cause rape.” Another woman held a sign reading, “This is what I was wearing when I was assaulted. Was I asking for “it” too?” Yes, there are a lot of apparently white women in full set of photos. The problematic aspects aren’t erased, but I wanted to point to a couple of images I found powerful from the event. Imagine how much more powerful they could be if all women felt included in visible actions against sexual assault.

Also in Nashville, there is coverage at the local alt weekly’s blog of some of the vile comments left on stories about the event. Comments that blame victims for “tempting” violence, that encourage women to change their dress so “he might choose a different target.” Ugh. As a reminder, let me point everyone to these excellent tips on how to prevent rape and sexual assault (origin unknown to me). For example:

If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.
If a women is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.

The usual tips to dress a certain way, be in certain places, etc. aren’t intended to stop rape – they’re intended to make women feel that there is something they can do to encourage rapists to pick a different victim, and that they’ve done something wrong if a rapist picks them.

Please be aware that comments here are moderated and anyone suggesting that women “ask for it” or that anyone except rapists is responsible for rape will be deleted/unpublished.

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances

I know I’ve been posting infrequently when I get an email from a reader saying they thought I might be on vacation. I’m not. That message was about updates in the Juana Villegas case, which I’ll post about separately later this week. In the meantime, here are some things that have caught my attention recently:

New York City is going to make sure middle and high school students get at least a little sex ed as part of their health education classes. Good.

Maternal mortality for Black women got a bit of attention at BET.

The New York Times explores the issue of pregnancy reduction when there are twins/two fetuses. “Selective reduction” is pretty well accepted (but not uncontroversial) when there are many fetuses, but it apparently seems more complicated to some folks when there are fewer/two.

More race-focused anti-abortion billboard crap (via Trust Black Women). The billboards offer a link to a site that Jesse Jackson has betrayed Black people by supporting abortion rights and implying that something is necessarily wrong *about abortion* when Black women have a higher percentage of the abortions in a state than their percentage of the population (i.e., if Black women are 15% of the state’s population but have 30% of the abortions). Of course, nothing on the site explores the systemic reasons Black women might choose *for themselves* to have abortions.

From Wisconsin’s Journal Sentinel: “Wisconsin’s attempt to ban hormone therapy for transgender prison inmates is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.” It was apparently the only state with such a ban on this specific medical treatment for prisoners.

NPR covered birth control and religion in Pakistan.

In Murfreesboro, TN (where I used to live), two women were arrested and charged with reckless endangerment after their babies were born with opiates in their system and needed special care for opiate withdrawal. I feel pretty strongly that – while drug use in pregnancy can have negative affects on both woman and child – criminalization of pregnant women with drug use/addiction problems may cause these women to actually avoid medical care, making the situation worse for everyone involved. I think treatment is a much better option. National Advocates for Pregnant Women is a great resource on this issue – see their website for further exploration of the topic.

This item at Microaggressions reminds those of us who ever have input into website creation to think about what we’re doing when we force people to select a gender to participate, and only give them the binary choices.

At Queer Musings, “How to Be a Friend to Trans Folks Without Putting Your Foot in Your Mouth: A Short Guide for Cis People” (via Womanist Musings).

Renee at Womanist Musings also has an important post, “A Forced Eugenics Survivor Speaks Her Truth.”

I recently watched the documentary, “12th & Delaware” – the title is a reference to the Florida corner where a “crisis pregnancy center” sits across from an abortion clinic, the focus of the film. Anybody else seen it?

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Birth, Contraception, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education

This week, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and other organizations have been observing the second annual Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice:

This year’s theme is Caminamos: Justice for Immigrant Women. We’re inviting everyone to join us in moving toward a brighter future for immigrant women and their families. Mean-spirited enforcement, workplace exploitation, and the criminalization of basic rights like education and health care are just a few of the challenges that have forced immigrant women into the shadows and ignored the crucial, positive role we play in our communities.

Action items for the week include calling for a review of the 287(g) program and online discussion on the theme, “what’s the real problem behind the targeting of immigrant women?” – including a blog carnival with lots of great posts worth reading, and NLIRH’s posts at their blog Nuestra Vida, Nuestra Voz.

I haven’t read all of the posts yet myself, but one I particularly liked is at Abortion Gang, where the writer talks about appropriate reproductive health care requiring more than just Spanish-language services:

…if we want to provide “culturally competent” health care services (and I’m not just talking about abortion care), we need to be constantly learning from and with our patients. We have to be more than “culturally competent.” We need to be culturally fluent…a lack of understanding of the diverse Latina/o cultures keeps immigrant women from getting the care they need. Lack of cultural understanding breeds intolerance and scapegoating. We need to speak more than Spanish; we need to comprehend the language of experience.

Another good one is What’s the Real Problem? Some families are valued while others are demonized at the NLIRH, blog, which criticizes devaluing of families of color generally and my least favorite libertarian Ron Paul specifically, for his views on protecting fetuses and denying citizenship to American-born children of immigrants via the 14th amendment:

The two different approaches to the Fourteenth Amendment reveal a subtext of whose children are wanted and valued. The fetuses of white women are offered constitutional protection, while the lives of immigrant women of color are dismissed and demonized. In the United States, immigrants are denied benefits while being blamed for environmental degradation, the recession, and lack of jobs. They are also portrayed as coming to the United States solely for the purpose of having children who are then raised to be terrorists. Anti-immigrant advocates are the same people who spout pro-life rhetoric and claim to be protecting family values.

Go check out the blog carnival for more.

While not reproductive justice-focused, Aunt B points to and remarks on this 287(g)-related story out of Nashville, in which a teenage girl just about to graduate from high school was taken to jail and spent almost 3 days there for driving without a license (which I don’t believe she could have obtained under state law). The 18 year-old, who was brought to the U.S. by her parents as a child 9 years ago and has hopes of attending college and med school, may be deported. The local implementation of 287(g) has been criticized for being heavy-handed in targeting Latino/a immigrants for deportation for such non-violent crimes as driving without a license.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Ethics, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Women’s Health

CC BY-SA 2.0, dain of the iron hills

Until I started trying it myself, I honestly did not understand why food deserts are defined in such a short radius – surely people 1-2 miles from a grocery story, even without a car, can’t really have *that* hard a time getting to food, right?

Wrong.

I have been without a car for about 3 months now, and have to spend a good chunk of time planning around and acquiring food. There are a number of challenges to getting around a city like Nashville – not known for great transit options – without a car. Below, I’m sharing some of my methods, challenges, helpful supplies, and privileges that make things easier for me but which suggest how difficult getting to food in a food desert can really be. It’s clear to me that some of the tools I use to make things mostly work are not available to everyone, and that access to fresh food you can cook at home is a real challenge when one is car-free by necessity or choice.

How I Get Around: workplace shuttle; walking; taxis; rides from gracious people; ZipCars; city bus.

Despite having a graduate degree, I sometimes find the bus schedules confusing – I can’t imagine what they are like for someone with low literacy or other difficulty processing that type of information. Our local city transit authority has two “route finder” tools on its website, and they each give different results, times, and route recommendations in response to the same input. Some buses – including one close to me – don’t run at all on weekends. I have typically found that it’s faster to actually walk to the nearest grocery store than it is to get to and ride the bus.

Walking obviously presents challenges in extreme weather, and raises issues of pedestrian and neighborhood safety. In general, I have to do much more planning for how to get to and from everything, and can’t really spontaneously just go pick up this or that thing. This is good for reducing my consumerism, but bad when there is one thing I need and it’s not available anywhere nearby. There is no simple, quick running out to pick up a key ingredient here – it may not even be available anywhere within a reasonable walking distance.

How I Get Food
Once a month or so, I’ll get a ZipCar, go to the grocery store, and stock up on non-perishable items like cat food, toilet paper, and freezer and pantry items. When I’ve done this trip walking, it’s an hour each way with spotty sidewalks – I definitely recommend having more than one person or one of those grocery carts if you’re going to walk. My aunt, who is a bus driver, says that some people use rolling luggage, which seems like a reasonable, if weird-looking, idea.

There is farmer’s market on the workplace campus once a week, but I have to make sure not to get carried away. It’s easy to pick a few things that are surprisingly heavy (like watermelons and milk in glass bottles) without thinking about how hard it will be to walk with everything. I can really only use this farmers’ market to supplement my bulk purchases, but it’s nice to support local farmers through these purchases. After the monthly stock up, the farmers’ market is how I keep fresh produce in my diet. Still, there is less than I’d like, because everything has to be planned in advance and can’t just be picked up as the mood for some particular good meal strikes.

I also walk to nearby international and convenience markets – I’m in an area of town with a good number of these. A lot of the products here are pretty much the polar opposite of local goods, but many of these are locally owned small businesses. I can find things like some produce, condiments and canned goods, and even fresh sandwiches or frozen fish.

Sometimes, I just have to have a pizza delivered. There are pretty much no really healthy delivery options in this town, especially for small orders outside of lunch hours, so it’s pizza or Chinese when I need food brought to me. GoWaiter, a restaurant delivery service, has become available in Nashville, which provides a few more healthy options from a limited set of restaurants – the costs can add up quickly if ordering too often, though. There used to be a grocery delivery service, but it closed a couple of years ago, and prices were typically a little higher than I think would be reasonable for regular use in a neighborhood like mine (which is not a high-income area).

Some privileges I have that make it easier, which not everybody has access to:

• Two thirtysomething bodies without asthma, disability, or any limitations that make it especially unsafe to deal with extreme heat and heat-related air pollution or make us unable to get around by walking – often with the need to carry things.

• Access to ZipCars, which are only located at university campuses in Nashville. I happen to work at one of those campuses, and am able to take a shuttle or city bus to it for free. I also got a discounted subscription rate for ZipCar thanks to my university affiliation.
• Money to sometimes just take a taxi.
• No kids, so no little people who have to be watched while I take up to three hours to get to the store and back, or who have to tag along with no sidewalks and 90+ degree temps.
• Constant access to the internet at work and home. This makes it easy to quickly look up walking routes, directions, and the dreaded bus schedules. When I need to figure out to/if I can get somewhere, I turn to the internet.
• Friends and colleagues with cars, who give me rides when it’s just too hot or hailing or I way overdid it at the farmers’ market.
• Initial access to a rental car in order to do the first stock up on food and other supplies at the beginning; money to buy those supplies and more than a week’s worth of food at a time. I get paid monthly – if I got paid weekly, I think it would be a lot harder to make sure to save up a chunk for monthly stocking up.

Without these things, it would be much harder for me to even approach a semi-healthy diet. When you can only make limited trips to the store and have to stock up, it’s hard to stock up on healthier foods like fruits and vegetables, which go bad faster, and there’s only so much freezer space for those.

Helpful Gear:
These are some of the things I picked up or had on hand that really help. This is the summer list – in the winter I’m going to need to make sure to have gloves, a hat and scarf, a good coat, and the like.

• backpack, and/or luggage or cart for hauling the actual groceries

• umbrella – smaller type that fits well in the backpack
• rain jacket – I suggest *both* the umbrella and rain jacket. It’s hard to overestimate how wet you can get walking home in a downpour.
• wide brimmed hat with a chin strap – I don’t wear sunglasses a lot because I wear regular glasses, but a hat helps. The strap is useful so you don’t have to tie up a hand keeping your hat on your head on windy days.
• good walking shoes (so much for “good” – the pair I bought two months ago has already ripped at one seam, and customer service hasn’t responded)
• sunscreen
• reusable water bottle

Have questions? Tried car-free in a food desert yourself and have tips to share? Let me know in the comments.

Note: technically, according to the USDA’s food desert locator, my particular neighborhood is not a food desert, although we are right next to one. This may be because more people in my neighborhood have a car or have slightly higher incomes, parts of the equation for determining whether an area is considered a food desert. The nearest grocery, however, *is* more than a mile away, and I would consider my neighborhood to have serious problems of access to healthy food, especially without a car. We are one area that has been targeted in the past by local efforts to increase access to healthy foods. Effectively, a food desert.

PS-If you use the referral link to the right to sign up for ZipCar, available in most major cities, we can each get a $25 credit. I don’t have any financial relationship with the company except being a member/customer.

Added: there is some good discussion in the comments now about bicycles, which is something I didn’t address in the post because I haven’t acquired one yet and am not sure how well I would do on a bike.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Health, Miscellaneous

I haven’t done one of these in a while, having been distracted by the heat, the carless situation, dad’s cancer, mom’s hip replacement re-replacement, work, leveling my first character in Warcraft (now a level 71 undead frost mage – I don’t want to duel you!), and life in general. Tonight, though, I’m at my parents’ house (sitting with mom after said re-replacement), in a town with <30 thousand people that gets really, truly dark at night, World of Warcraft won't run on this computer, and I think I've reached the end of the internet. Might as well do something.

The FDA has issued a warning not to use emergency contraception labeled as Evital. The agency says,

These products may be counterfeit versions of the “morning after pill” and may not be safe or effective in preventing pregnancy. Evital has not been approved by the FDA for use in the United States. This potentially ineffective and suspect counterfeit emergency birth control may also be in distribution in some Hispanic communities in the United States.

The FDA announcement linked above has an image of the packaging for the drug in question and further details.

The FDA is also proposing guidelines for mobile medical apps (like you use on a smart phone). I haven’t fully parsed the implications of the proposal yet, but public comment is being accepted through October 19.

CNN has a piece on breast ironing in Cameroon. This is not a custom I know much about, and I’m always hesitant to jump in where I know so little, but I feel comfortable saying that this must be a painful procedure that doesn’t achieve the apparently desired goal of preventing sex ad pregnancy.

The New York Times talks about Title IX, the law requiring that women and girls have equal access to participation in school sports, focusing on a lack of investigation and enforcement when schools are thought to not be following the law.

Washington became the first state to specifically provide for offspring from donated eggs and sperm to access the donors’ medical history and names once the offspring turn 18. This is an issue I’ve written a tiny bit about at Our Bodies Our Blog.

Shockingly, Bill O’Reilly is kind of an uninformed jerk about unintentional pregnancy and birth control. The professional blowhard stated that “Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex and are not going to use birth control anyway.” Right. Half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned, and it’s obviously just because women are too drunk and high to use contraception. A lot of attention has been paid to this comment, but O’Reilly also stated in the same segment that HHS should pay for “everybody’s birth control, all the women in the world, or here in the United States, or maybe both.” Yeah, we’re going to pay for birth control for *all the women in the world* – even those women in the many countries with lower rates of teen and unplanned pregnancy. Sure, that seems likely and logical and fact-based, doesn’t it? *headdesk* Media Matters has more, including response from the National Women’s Law Center.

C-section rates apparently hit an all-time U.S. high of 34%. I feel like “new high” is the news we get every year now on c-sections.

Al Jazeera English has a short piece on the ethics of clinical pharmaceutical research in India, where research participants may not clinically benefit from drugs being tested and may be vulnerable to exploitation.

Max Barry has a nice piece about gender through the lens of how we gender animals and the gender of Smurfs.

Kari Paul at the Ms. Blog explores the topic of sexual assault on campuses and the lack of arrests or serious addressing of this problem.

Connecticut added gender identity and expression to the state’s anti-discrimination laws. Good job, Connecticut!

Anita Sarkeesian talks about the “mystical pregnancy trope,” especially in sci fi/fantasy, in which women are used for their reproductive capacity and often forcibly impregnated. I hadn’t really noticed it as much as I should, maybe you haven’t either – check out the video (via Sociological Images).

Hey, it’s World Breastfeeding Week.

Honestly, I can watch True Blood as a bit of fluff and as somebody who likes to see on-screen adaptations of books. There are a lot of problems with it. Watching tonight’s episode, I really wondered how many gratuitous rape scenes one show can possibly have, especially after Alan Ball’s comment on the serial rape of Jason that he’s basically getting what he deserved for his sexual history. Feminist Frequency also has some TB commentary and links to more.

Relatedly but not surprisingly, the blogger at The Frisky wrote critically today about how True Blood handles rape, and the very first comment is of the “relax/don’t watch then” variety. Don’t worry your pretty little head! *predictable-but-disappointing-argh*

I’m proud of our Nashville students who came out to protest stupid, offensive, and mean “don’t say gay” legislation in Tennessee.

Apparently one place in Minnesota has similar “don’t say gay” rules in its schools; CNN covered the issue and the National Center for Lesbian Rights has a letter you can sign onto to express your support for students in the affected school district who are trying to change the policy.

The CDC is talking about antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.

Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail into a Planned Parenthood of North Texas clinic. The clinic provides health care, including birth control and screenings, but doesn’t even provide abortions. Alex Pareene at Salon’s War Room points out that nobody seems to care about this form of domestic terrorism.

Last but not least, everybody wish Hilary luck on her last board exam and subsequent residency application process.

1) It’s the attack kitty edition because, in noting on Facebook that I am away from home, I told the Internet not to get any ideas – the house is guarded by the spouse, attack kitties, and weirdly commandable suits of armor.
2) Yes, I suspect there are some conversations we could have about gender and Warcraft. If you want to talk about that, we can do so in the comments.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Breastfeeding, Contraception, Drugs, Ethics, Events & Observances, Global Issues, Government, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Products, Technology, & Devices

The Institute of Medicine released its recommendations of which women’s health services should join the list of copay-free preventive services under the Affordable Care Act health care reform legislation. Birth control was included, along with services related to STIs, breastfeeding, and domestic violence. Over at OBOS, I have more information and links to some good commentaries and coverage of the news.

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Breastfeeding, Contraception, Government, HIV/AIDS, HPV