Category Archives: reproductive rights
Beat, Rape… Whatever It Takes To Control Women
A teenage girl stepped outside an Indian night club after an evening with friends when:
A group of 10, perhaps 15, men surrounded the girl, beating and stripping her for the next 20 minutes. By the time the television crew and the police showed up, the mob had grown to about 40 men.
The attack resembled this 2008 Mumbai scene:
Two women were alleged to have been attacked by 14 men as they left the Marriott Hotel with their friends. When the police arrived, the mob assaulting the women as they lay pinned down on the ground had grown to more than 50 men.
The New York Times explains that these sex crimes are a tool to rein in women’s freedom in India.
Several stories point to that common theme.
Consider the police response to sexual assault. When a female journalist was shot and killed while driving home women were warned against driving late at night without escorts. And when another woman was raped the municipal administration recommended that women not work after 8 p.m.
Some village leaders banned young women from using cell phones and wearing jeans.
Even discussions of these assaults revolve around questions of:
How far women’s freedoms should extend. What kinds of jobs or working hours are considered respectable for a woman? Can a woman go to a bar or restaurant with friends without inviting censure or sexual advances? If a woman is out in a public area after dark, is she, to use a term that often crops up, a “loose” woman? The question of how much freedom a woman should have, and who should control that freedom, underpins the debate over sexual violence.
Sex crimes have also been used against women fighting for democracy in the Arab Spring, with female journalists (symbols of power) and protestors, alike, assaulted and beaten.
But women can be punished and controlled over nothing. In Afghanistan a 22-year-old woman was killed in the name of purity for being sexually involved with two men, “either through rape or romantically.” In fact, she was tortured and killed to settle a dispute between the two men. As the shots rang out a crowd cried, “Long live Islam. Long live Mujahideen (holy warriors).” Men may do whatever they wish. Women may not.
In South Africa lesbians are attacked with “corrective rape” as men shout, “You are not men” – implying that women do not deserve male privilege – including rights over their own bodies.
Similar attitudes exist in the U.S. where rape is about men feeling dominance over women. Next, the community may blame women for their rapes – they were drinking or dressing immodestly or staying out late at night – acting as though they were free.
Constraining reproductive rights works the same way. “Pro-lifers,” who don’t care if women (or the poor) die, assert that men – and not women – must control women. Keep them barefoot, pregnant and dependent so that men may more easily stay in charge.
Yes. There’s a common theme.
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God-Wrestling Nuns
Nun kicks a heavy bag in a gym. Photo by Martin San/Getty Images.
U.S. Nuns are grappling over a response to Vatican concern with their doctrinal loyalty. Church leadership wants them denouncing abortion and gays more than saving the lives of women and children, and affirming God’s love for all of humanity.
One sister explains:
We have a differing perspective on obedience. Our understanding is that we need to continue to respond to the signs of the times, and the new questions and issues that arise in the complexities of modern life are not something we see as a threat.
The sisters are in line with Bible heroes.
When Jacob wrestled with God he received a new name, Israel, meaning “He struggles with God.” At the end of the tussle God “blessed him there.”
God blesses one who struggles with Him?
Or, Job questioned why God made him suffer. His companions admonished him, demanding he accept God’s judgment.
Yet God did not think highly of the friends who spewed standard lines about submitting to divine will, repenting and being humble. God said, “You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.”
And then Job conversed with God, proclaiming, “I knew of you with the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes have seen you.” He got to know God, and this would never have happened had he taken the standard “counsels of piety” and played the submissive, unquestioning part his friends advised. It was only by being authentic in his doubts and questions that he could bring enough of himself to have a chance to get to know God.
These Bible stories speak well to the nuns’ intentions.
Go get ‘em girls!
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Mississippi Morals: So What if Women Die?
When I was 20, exactly 20 years ago this past October 25th, I was abducted, raped, and shot twice by two teenagers on a car-jacking spree. I did not get pregnant, thank goodness. But if I had, and something like Initiative 26 had been in place, I would have been forced, by the state of Mississippi, to bear that child. Giving birth might have killed me physically (the gunshot wound to my lower back was life-threatening), if not emotionally.
That’s from Cristen Hemmins, who became a political activist in Mississippi with Initiative 26 (the “Personhood Initiative”). If that law had passed a woman would not have been able to get an abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or if her life were endangered. Miscarriage could have become a police investigation. And at least some (possibly all) forms of contraception would have become illegal.
Now Cristen is fighting to keep the last abortion clinic in the state open as a new law — ostensibly protecting women’s health – requires providers to have admitting privileges to a local hospital.
She says this standard is both unreachable (the clinic has had no luck getting the hospital to send the necessary forms) and medically unnecessary.
“Medically unnecessary” is an understatement. It is dangerous.
If women must save money to travel out of state, they risk having the procedure when the pregnancy is further along and more dangerous.
Others will resort to back alley abortionists or use coat hangers on themselves.
This is healthier than current Mississippi law?
Dr. Douglas Laube, board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, wrote a letter to the editor warning that the law will harm women. He says that doctors in his organization, “know that when women seeking abortion are denied safe, legal procedures, they look for other ways to end their pregnancies.”
In fact, before Roe v. Wade doctors were at the forefront of the movement to make abortion legal, having seen too many women die.
But Mississippi State Rep. Bubba Carpenter doesn’t give a hoot:
They’re like, “Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.” That’s what we’ve heard over and over and over. But hey–you have to have moral values.
So these Mississippi pro-lifers are fine with a law that will cause young women to die.
That’s moral?
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Are You Pro-Life, Or Just Want To Control Women?
When I first heard feminists say that pro-lifers actually wanted to control women, not prevent abortion, that didn’t make sense to me. Now it does. I don’t think that everyone who is pro-life is disingenuous. But some are.
Take Plan C, emergency contraception. Plan C can be taken up to five days after unprotected sex, and is 98% effective when properly used. The drug stops fertilization by preventing eggs from being released.
Some pro-lifers protest that Plan C brings us one step closer to “over the counter abortions,” though medical studies prove otherwise.
These same folks say stem cell research equals abortion. Yet they don’t worry that fertilized eggs are thrown in the garbage if they aren’t used for research. But then, garbage isn’t constantly publicized, helping to make “killing” fertilized eggs seem okay. If they really thought that destroying fertilized eggs was abortion, they’d be up in arms about humans being murdered and thrown away.
Pro-lifer, George W. Bush, didn’t seem to have a problem sending young men to die in Iraq and Afghanistan, either. But as one cartoonist put it, “No stem cells were hurt.”
I once heard Christopher Reeve pose the following question: if you were in a research lab with a two-year-old and a fire broke out, would you save the child, or would you leave her to die so that you could save thousands of stem cells (people)? I suspect most of us — all of us — would save the child.
Utah Senator, Orin Hatch, says it’s fine to use fertilized eggs for research. But destroying eggs implanted in a woman’s womb equals murder. In one case a woman’s body is controlled. In the other, it isn’t.
Pro-lifer, Pat Robertson, opposes a woman’s right to choose in America. But he supports forced abortions in China. Once again controlling women is the only common denominator.
Pro-lifers don’t seem to be too concerned with making sure poor women get prenatal care, or that their babies have food once they are born, either.
Pro life? Looks like it’s all about controlling women.
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Men Rule… Because They Make the Rules
I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina,
but ‘no means no.’
That quote from Michigan state Rep. Lisa Brown has gotten plenty of attention, along with her banishment from the House floor for uttering the word “vagina,” a perfectly natural, normal part of female anatomy. A word that was attached to legislation under debate. And as Rep. Brown points out, if you can’t say “vagina” you shouldn’t legislate it.
Yet while saying “vagina” is off limits, it’s just fine to propose laws that threaten women’s lives and health?
That’s right, inane Michigan legislators want to forbid health care providers from following the cheapest and most advanced medical practices for administering drugs to end a pregnancy. And they want to bar doctors from supervising the procedure via videoconference.
Next, Rep. Barb Byrum was banned for recommending vasectomies be regulated, in an attempt to show how ludicrous legislating women’s vaginas is.
Really, the men who barred Brown and Byrum from speaking rule only because they make the rules, not because their rules make any sense.
Same with Catholic Bishops scolding nuns for helping the poor and promoting health care when “obviously” they should be spending their time spewing hate toward gays and letting women die from back ally abortions.
It’s all part of the War on Women that seeks to control our bodies, minds and voices.
But women aren’t sitting back and taking it. Soon after the banishments thousands of women gathered at the Michigan State Capitol to hear their Reps perform The Vagina Monologues, where the word was uttered – and shouted — more than a hundred times.
As Rep. Brown put it, “Vaginas are here to stay.”
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Crying Religious Intolerance While Violating Rights
Last week Notre Dame and more than 40 other Catholic institutions announced they are filing lawsuits suing Obama on the contraception mandate. As usual, they’re claiming that the government is running all over their religious rights.
Meanwhile, bills have been proposed claiming to protect the conscience of employers to opt out of providing coverage that goes against their religious convictions, including the Bunt Amendment and a similar bill in the Arizona Legislature.
Are Catholic Bishops and other employers the only people who hold religious beliefs? Or the only ones whose religious beliefs count?
You’d think so to hear the debate on the matter.
In the face of this war on women progressives have rarely questioned whose religious rights are in play. And so conservatives have undisputedly argued that employers – Bishops or otherwise – must be free to follow their conscience. But that leaves women forced to follow the conscience of their employers. The argument is then framed as “right to contraception” vs “religious rights” which makes the latter stronger since that is undisputedly in the constitution.
Maybe women’s religious beliefs are ignored because the perspective of the powerful tends to trump the perspective of the powerless. The powerful have a history of airing their beliefs and they can bully from their pulpits. The Catholic Church has historically been powerful. Women have not. Business leaders have historically been powerful. Women have not.
I was heartened to hear Salon editor, Joan Walsh, finally make the reverse argument last week, five months after the start of this debate. She pointed out that the Priests have religious freedom backwards as they try to force their religion on everyone else. They and the Republican Right are working to impose their religion on the country. Maureen Dowd and the New York Times editorial page have thankfully followed suit.
Shouldn’t the pious be the ones to sacrifice for their convictions instead of asking everyone else to sacrifice for their beliefs?
And when there is a conflict, the religious beliefs and conscience of those whose bodies, health and well-being are directly affected should certainly trump the conscience of those who simply hold the purse strings.
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Child Rape: Not As Bad As Contraception
Raping children is better than using contraception? Raping children is better than ordaining women priests? Raping children is better than using fertility treatments? Raping children is better than aborting a child to save a woman’s life? And priests raping boys is better than homosexuality and gay marriage?
It appears the Vatican thinks so, raising a furor over everything but child rape. That’s right, a nun was excommunicated for saving a woman’s life by allowing an abortion while pedophile priests were simply transferred to new parishes to abuse new children or were, at best, defrocked. Pretty sad when Vatican officials, including the future Pope Benedict, failed to defrock a priest who had molested a couple hundred deaf boys.
When the crimes of pedophile priests are investigated a nation may be rebuked for stifling church autonomy, as happened in Belgium. Or church leaders become defensive, as when Cardinal Timothy Dolan begrudged a global shaming, since only a few priests were involved in the scandal.
Most recently the Vatican admonished nuns for spending too much time caring for the poor, supporting health care reform, confronting bishops and questioning teachings on male-only priesthood — and not spending enough time fighting abortion and homosexuality.
Interesting that, as the Times’ Maureen Dowd put it, “Church leadership never recoiled in horror from pedophilia, yet it recoils in horror from outspoken nuns.”
Most anyone would find the moral priorities outrageous. Nonsensical even.
Yet one thing makes sense of it all (logically, not morally) and that is patriarchy: rule of the fathers, or here, church fathers.
In its earliest manifestation patriarchy meant the rule of old men over young men, boys, girls and women. This is the world that now stands behind Vatican walls. Old men do as they please and young boys take what they get. Old men who know little of the lives and hearts of women allow them no power over parishes, their bodies, or even their own lives should they become threatened by pregnancy. Anything that imperils the patriarchy must be battled. Anything that sustains the patriarchy is just fine.
Old men control all. And in a manner that is not very Christ-like.
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Forced Births in the Bad Old Days
By Mijita @ Daily Kos
Judy was born in 1950 to an Irish Catholic family. When she was 12 her uncle began molesting her.
Like a lot of girls of that time, Judy didn’t understand sex, or what was happening to her. She liked the attention, but felt ashamed and couldn’t talk to her mother. At 13 she started getting sick, not just in the mornings, but all day long. Her mother took her to the doctor, and she learned she was pregnant.
As the doctor and her mom questioned her the truth came out. Judy remembers the doctor being very kind, and as he left he asked the nurse to “talk to her mother.” The nurse told them there was an option to childbirth. Judy’s mother felt that would be the right thing, but wanted to pray about it.
So they went to their parish priest, where her mother tearfully recounted what happened, and warned that if her husband found out, he would kill her brother. She also told the priest about the “other option.”
The priest, who had been kind and comforting, now turned harsh. He warned that abortion was both illegal and a mortal sin. It could not be considered.
And he told Judy that if her father learned of the molestation and hurt or killed her uncle, she would be responsible.
The priest then announced that Judy would be sent to a St. Anne’s, a home for unwed mothers in a city fifty miles away. She would have her baby and give it up for adoption.
Judy was terrified. She didn’t want to have a baby and she didn’t want to be sent away. She cried and begged her mother to let her stay at home. The priest said there was nothing else they could do and that it would be alright.
That night, Judy waited upstairs as her mother told her father the news. He yelled at her mom but never asked how she had gotten pregnant. And in fact, Judy wasn’t entirely sure — her body and sex were outside her understanding.
After the conversation Judy began pleading to see the nurse who had promised to help because she did not want to leave her home. When that failed she threw herself down the stairs, trying to kill herself or the baby. She only broke her arm.
She was sent to St. Anne’s. But because she was suicidal she was not permitted above the ground floor, was not allowed anything long or sharp, and was watched all the time.
But one day she heard some of the girls talking about self-abortion. Desperate, she tried pushing her hand as far inside herself as she could. When she was caught she was made to sleep tied to the bed. And because she was sick, she was kept in bed for most of the last two months.
Giving birth without her mother, in pain and among strangers was agony. She screamed so much that the doctor finally put her under. When she woke up the baby – a boy – was gone. She told the nurses she didn’t want to see him.
After she recovered and went home the pregnancy was never spoken of. And she never felt close to her mother again.
Judy left home the week she graduated from high school, moving as far away from her family as she could get. She never returned and never spoke to them again. She even missed her parents’ funerals.
Her son eventually contacted her through an attorney, but she refused to see him. She didn’t want to tell him he was the product of child rape, incest and forced birth. “Whatever he thinks can’t be as bad at the truth,” she said.
As terrible as the molestation had been, Judy feels that being forced to give birth against her will was far worse. And something, she believes, she will never get over.
She worries about the trend in politics today against contraception and abortion. She does not want other girls to undergo her ordeal.
As Judy told me, “Never, ever again.”
This edited piece was originally posted on Daily Kos and reprinted with permission. Go here to see the full original version.
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Spilling Sperm Harms Unborn, Law Says
by Aviva Dove-Viebahn @ Ms.
Political and cultural debates over contraception and abortion loom large in the news these days, with a notable new twist. Instead of feminists being the butt of ridicule, the tables have turned. Comedians, pundits and even legislators are satirizing the extremism and sexism of anti-woman bills by flipping the gender script. Here are some recent legislative counter-proposalsby women lawmakers:
–In late January, Virginia state senator Janet Howell tacked on an amendment to the proposed transvaginal ultrasound bill requiring that men seeking erectile dysfunction medication submit to a required rectal exam and cardiac stress test at their own expense (mirroring the ultrasound bill’s mandating of an unnecessary medical procedure women seeking an abortion would have to pay for out of pocket). The amendment failed, but only by a narrow margin of 21-19.
–In early February, Oklahoma state senator Constance Johnson, added a “spilled semen” amendment onto the state’s proposed “personhood” bill. Obviously a sardonic protest rather than a true piece of legislation, it would deem “any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina … an action against an unborn child.”
–A week ago, Georgia state representative Yasmin Neal, backed by a group of other women legislators, authored a bill proposing that vasectomies should be made illegal, also in response to legislation restricting women’s access to abortions.
It is patently unfair,” Neal writes, “that men can avoid unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly, while women’s ability to decide is constantly up for debate throughout the United States.
What’s particularly smart about these legislative interventions is how they call into question the government’s ability to infringe upon the rights of an entire class of individuals based on the idea that they’re not fit to make decisions for themselves. Remarkably, faced with these inversions of their own restrictive policies, many in the anti-contraception crowd still don’t see the irony. Let’s hope, though, that most Americans do.
This was originally posted on the Ms. Blog
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Rush’s War on Women is No Fluke
Women’s right to contraception has been challenged by Catholic Bishops and members of Congress who voted on a “Blunt Amendment” allowing employers to deny healthcare, like contraception, that they deem immoral. (The amendment was defeated in the U.S. Senate by a mere three votes!)
When Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke told Congress that contraception should be covered by insurance, Rush Limbaugh called her a whore:
What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex… she’s having so much sex she can’t afford her own birth control pills and she agrees that Obama should provide them, or the Pope.
If Rush is so vexed at supporting other people’s sex lives, why doesn’t he tackle insurance-covered Viagra too?
By attacking Ms. Fluke as a slut, Limbaugh reveals that he – and other right-wingers — are not concerned with shielding Catholic Bishops’ conscience. No. They seek to control women’s sexuality.
But if Rush can’t limit it, at least he wants to watch (another sort of control). Even as he claims to uphold “conservative values,” he rants:
If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.
Since when were “traditional family values” pro-porn?
Rush is all about silencing women: Be afraid of slut-shaming. Be very afraid!
Men can speak out. And Viagra-infused men can enjoy sexuality. But women must not.
Bishops, and employers more generally, must be free to follow their conscience. But women must follow the conscience of Bishops and their employers.
Conservatives claim to guard individual freedom.
Apparently, women aren’t actual people. They don’t count.
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