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

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

Walk for Choice events will be held in cities all across the United States this Saturday to show support for abortion rights in response to recent anti-choice legislation — especially HR 3, The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.

The Nashville Walk for Choice event is being held this Saturday, February 26 from noon to 3 pm. The route for the Walk should be announced around noon on Friday. More details are available on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=126279230779223, where you can indicate that you will attend and send invitations to your other pro-choice contacts on the site.

For more information on the Walks, including info for other cities, visit walkforchoice.tumblr.com. There is also a Twitter profile and hashtag (#walk4choice) for the event.

Notes:
Officially, the event is not a “march” — which would require parade permits and such. Organizers have encouraged planners to select routes that people can walk around and drop in and out of at any time, rather than a walk with a set start and end point.

Routes are not being released until noon on Friday, so it is not yet possible to tell about the accessibility of the route. Organizers were instructed to select routes that included safe places for individuals to sit or stand.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice

Some of my recent posts at Our Bodies Our Blog:

Breast Implants and Possible Risk of Rare Cancer – links to FDA information on the possibility of a link between breast implants and a rare cancer.

Leapfrog Group Releases Data on Early Elective Births – rates of early (37-39 weeks) induction and early cesarean without a medical indication from hospitals around the U.S.

Surgeon General Releases Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding – link to the call to action and a brief overview of its contents, which include not only encouraging women to breastfeed, but a call for workplaces, fathers, grandmothers, and communities to work to reduce barriers to breastfeeding.

Upcoming Event: EQUAL/OBOS House Party in Palo Alto – in three days, OBOS’s Judy Norsigian will be in California; come to the party and support the organization!

Upcoming Conference: The Body and the State – details on this February conference in New York City.

Quick Hit: New Guttmacher Report Details U.S. Abortion Trends, Availability – data! trends! 2008!

Also, co-blogger Christine has Do You Trust Women to Make Their Own Choices About Reproductive Healthcare? on a multi-organization pro-choice effort.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Body Image & Eating Disorders, Breastfeeding, Cancer, Government, Miscellaneous

Yesterday was the sixth annual Blog for Choice day – officially, I missed it, but I think the issues raised in yesterday’s post on the Kermit Gosnell abortion clinic atrocities are important ones to discuss. Today (the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade), I’m getting with the official program to attempt to answer this year’s theme question: Given the anti-choice gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about choice in 2011?

Of course. Of course.

Of course I’m concerned at the national level. Efforts to change provisions of health care reform or penalize people and companies when their health insurance covers abortion may have serious effects, and represent further anti-choice efforts to mislead people about “federal funding for abortion.” I hope that most of these attempts will not only pass the House, though, having little chance for real implementation – although we’d have to count on our Democratic Senators voting pretty uniformly for the pro-choice position, and I don’t think we can count on that.

I’m more concerned at the state level. Here in Tennessee, some of the most egregiously anti-choice and anti-woman legislation used to get stuck in committee. This, I’m afraid, will no longer be the case.

Hell, on November 5, 2008, I wrote that pro-choice advocates needed to start paying attention to what was happening in Tennessee, that we were going to need your attention and help. That is only more true now, as Republicans now control the state House, Senate, and Governor’s office. The new Republican House speaker has reworked the committees, assigning Republicans to head all of them, with Glen Casada selected for the Health and Human Services committee – typically one first stop for any abortion-related bills. Casada is currently working to block a non-discrimination ordinance, opposed gay marriage, and pledges to “work to change Tennessee’s laws so that the most innocent have the same constitutional right that you and I have, the ‘right to life.’”

Tennessee anti-choice politicians have been trying to pass a constitutional amendment to state that nothing in our state Constitution protects the right to an abortion for years – of course I’m worried that this will be the period in which they are actually able to do so.

Forced ultrasounds, death certificates for abortion, more restrictive waiting periods and other regulations – I’m guessing it’s all on the table, that our state Republicans would rather work on these anti-choice political “wins” than addressing jobs, education, infrastructure, or other pressing issues. We already get a “D” grade from NARAL Pro-Choice America, which estimates that 94% of our counties already have no abortion provider.

Welcome to Tennessee. Please check your reproductive rights at the state line.

Other participating blogs are listed at http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/get-involved/online-day-of-action/bfcd11-main.html with links to their sites. I will soon be overfeeding my RSS reader with lots of sites I hadn’t seen until now. A couple of posts I liked (after randomly clicking on blogs with intriuing titles and a few familiar ones):

• Ethiopian Feminist: “I feel that the growing influence of the extreme right and related anti-choice gains at the domestic level will soon thereafter have a spill over on international policy.”
• Shark-fu is concerned *and* encouraged
• The Feminist Librarian – how did I not see this blog before now?? “It’s the responsibility of those of us who are pro-choice on abortion and reproductive health to articulate what people do need to follow through on their choices. Because if we don’t, we might have a ‘choice’ … but not much of a chance to act on it.”
• Also, here are my 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 Blog for Choice Day posts.

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

Some of my recent posts at Our Bodies Our Blog are highlighted below. Don’t forget the upcoming 40th anniversary of the landmark book; a new edition will come out next year to celebrate the milestone! In the meantime, catch up with health news and commentary over at http://www.ourbodiesourblog.org

Election-Related Repro Rights Round-Up – a collection of commentary from reproductive rights advocates on what the recent election may mean for women.

NPR Takes on Pink Ribbon Fatigue: Views from Komen, Breast Cancer Action – NPR talked to a representative of Breast Cancer Action, which has criticized pink ribbon campaigns for breast cancer, and a representative of Komen, which kind of thrives on them.

Meeting Dispatch: Resources from the CUE/Cochrane/Campbell Colloquium – Includes links to plenary session videos from speakers including Susan Love and former Rep. Patricia Schroeder, as well as online resources for health information.

Letters Respond to Lancet Home Birth Editorial With Feminist Perspective – snippets from letters responding to an editorial that proclaimed that “Women have the right to choose how and where to give birth, but they do not have the right to put their baby at risk.” Oh hell yeah we do. Ahem.

And also, from our fearless leader Judy Norsigian: Share Your Story: What Have You Learned About Your Body from a Women’s Health Nurse-Practitioner Or Other OB-GYN Clinician? – a call for clinicians to share their stories of educating women about their bodies, and for women who have benefited from clinicians who really take the time to explain what’s going on with their bodies to tell those stories as well. See the post for further details.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Boobs, Cancer, Events & Observances, Government, Miscellaneous, Web Resources, Women’s Health