Category Archives: reproductive rights
Why Do Right-Wingers Hate Sex?
Why do right-wingers hate sex? And why don’t they want the rest of us to get any? Okay, not all of them. Newt Gingrich, for instance, seems to be a fan. But what he likes isn’t something he’d necessarily want anyone else to do.
Rick Santorum is the reigning sex-hating champ – unless it leads to procreation, of course. He once warned that Satan was using sensuality to attack America and he disagrees with the Supreme Court decision to allow birth control. As columnist Maureen Dowd explains,
(Santorum) believes that America’s soul wounds include men and women having sex for reasons other than procreation, people involved in same-sex relationships, women using contraception… (He feels) contraception is “not O.K. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
Actually, those who lack contraception but don’t want pregnancy could still do anal and oral. Or, men could simply ejaculate on woman’s faces. So a lack of contraception may only encourage sodomy and other “perversities.”
And then there’s Santorum spokesperson, Foster Friess, who insists:
Back in my day, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees.
Or, conservative columnist Ross Douthat helpfully explains, “Monogamy, not chemicals or latex, is the main line of defense against unwanted pregnancies.”
So if a married couple only want two kids, how often should they have sex sans chemicals or latex?
Or how about this guy who responded to a post I wrote saying women should be able to follow their conscience on birth control, and not be bullied by Catholic Bishops:
Where’s the discussion of men’s responsibility to do what they can to control their own passions? Are men just dogs who cannot control themselves?
And does all this repression make the right-wing sex drive reemerge in creepy ways? One bill sought to force women seeking abortions to undergo ultrasounds via vaginal probe. Democratic Delegate Lionell Spruill says this is tantamount to rape: inserting objects into vaginas without consent. Women’s advocates say the procedure is meant to shame women, which is similar to a motive of rapists: degrade the victim.
But why so anti-sex?
Are these just church-going folk who’ve been warned against sexuality their whole lives?
Some worry uncontrolled passions will harm the social fabric: children bearing children… unwanted babies. But that’s what contraception is for. As conservative columnist David Brooks admits, despite more sexually liberal attitudes, teen pregnancy rates are down, abortion is down, and crime is down. “There are problems with the social fabric,” he says, “but they no longer have to do with the sexual revolution.”
Others think right-wingers simply cling to clarity and order, and crave control (a common bent among extreme conservatives). And indeed, some may feel a sense of power in controlling women’s bodies. They may gain a sense of control by reigning in the flesh and wild sexuality of themselves and others. And, they can gain a sense of clarity and structure by seeing women and men as different, each in their separate spheres with men on top and women below, barefoot, pregnant, and obeying men.
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Rick Santorum: Über-Religious but Lacks Humanity
Presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, thinks contraception is a danger to the country. He apparently feels the same about federal aid for the disabled. And the government should place limits on our wants and passions, he says. After all, gay sex is the same as incest or “man-on-dog” sex.
Other candidates bait the extreme right with nutty social issues but as Maureen Dowd points out, they do it “because it’s good politics; Santorum sincerely means it. His political philosophy is infused with his über-Catholicism but lacks humanity.”
Santorum wants to cut back on federal aid for the disabled. Instead, family, friends and neighbors can help.
But what if friends and family can’t afford the cost? Or refuse? If some suffer and die, well, too bad.
On another note, gays and lesbians must live lives of loneliness because God created marriage for procreation. Aside from the fact that many straight people have not procreated, what good comes from inflicting widespread loneliness?
And few Christians agree with Santorum on birth control. More than 99% of sexually active women have used contraceptives at some point. Birth control can even save lives when women’s bodies cannot tolerate pregnancy.
Many pursue religious ideals without humanity. The Spanish Inquisition tortured those who dissented. European and American religious zealots burned, crushed, and hung thousands of women accused of being devil worshiping witches. In parts of the Middle East today women are eagerly stoned to death.
I know some who are downright mean, but they won’t play cards, and especially not on Sunday, because that’s against their religion.
These individuals follow the letter of the law without catching its spirit, as if a selfish concern for their own rule-bound salvation trumps loving their neighbor.
Yet the greatest commandment of the Christian faith is to love God and second is like unto it: love your neighbor. I don’t see a whole lot of love in Santorum’s pious mindset.
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Should Organized Religion Have More Rights Than Women?
Right now Catholic Bishops, charities, schools and universities are demanding exemptions from new rules requiring that insurance plans cover contraception for women, free of charge.
And President Obama is listening, even as Congressional Democrats object.
The demand for exemptions is based on moral and religious grounds. Religious rights, it’s claimed. But about women’s religious rights? When women’s moral and religious beliefs conflict with the Catholic Church, why should the church win out?
Free contraception leads to healthier babies, too. The Institutes of Medicine recommended free birth control due to compelling evidence that it leads to healthier women and babies.
Women with unintended pregnancies are more likely to receive delayed or no prenatal care and to smoke, consume alcohol and be depressed during pregnancy. Unintended pregnancy also increases the risk of babies being born preterm or at a low birth weight, both of which raise their chances of health and developmental problems.
And when birth control is free, abortion rates drop too.
Then there’s the whole matter of financial survival. Poor women might want to avoid the poverty that can come from extra mouths to feed. And those who are better off might want to have only the number of children that they can afford.
Looking at the country’s finances, free contraception is a good deal, as well. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned, and one factor is the high cost of birth control. And unplanned pregnancies cost U.S. taxpayers more than $11 billion a year. Because of this, every dollar spent on birth control by California’s Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment program resulted in approximately $4 savings.
But returning to the question of religion, aren’t we supposed to sacrifice for our own religious beliefs, rather than asking everyone else to sacrifice for our religion?
So I ask again:
Why should organized religion have more rights than women?
Reposted on the Ms. Magazine Blog, Daily Kos, The AlterNet, Democratic Underground and Political Mosaic.
Also republished on Daily Kos by Feminism, Pro-Feminism, Womanism: Feminist Issues, Ideas, & Activism and Street Prophets .
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Corporations Are People; Women Not So Much
Mississippi’s measure seeking to grant a fertilized egg the status of “person” was defeated at the ballot box last week. Unfortunately, personhood advocates still plan to put the matter up for vote in five more states. Perhaps the next step should be granting women personhood.
Because as it is, personhood advocates feel that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses should have more rights than women.
If a fetus threatens its mother’s health and she aborts (in self-defense) to save her life, she should be called “murderer”? But if the fetus is linked to her death, that’s okay? Why not prosecute fetuses, too?
Factories have excluded women from earning a living so that no harm will come to an embryo. But if a woman starves from lack of income, that’s all right?
And why are women prosecuted for poor nutritional choices if pregnancy ends in stillbirth, yet when actual women lack proper nourishment, many of the personhood advocates back cutting nutritional assistance?
Why must a woman be forced to undergo surgery for the sake of her fetus, and risk prosecution if she doesn’t, yet if she can’t afford surgery to save her own life, well, too bad?
When a fetus, embryo or a fertilized egg’s rights conflict with a woman’s, why does she lose?
A pal of mine who goes by the name, lineatus, recommended that women regain control by incorporating their uteruses. The Supreme Court has declared that corporations are people. Why not women?
Plus, “It would be easier to get insurance,” lineatus continued. “You could get a nice group rate for your corporation, rather than the extortionate individual plan.”
“True,” I interjected, “And if women were people like corporations, and were thought to require the same level of freedom that extreme right-wingers think markets do, then women could finally be free.”
If corporations are people, and if some are struggling to make fertilized eggs people, shouldn’t women be recognized as people, too?
Crossposted @ Daily Kos and republished by Feminism, Pro-Feminism, Womanism: Feminist Issues, Ideas, & Activism and Abortion
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Markets Must Be Free; Women Must Be Constrained
Right wingers adamantly proclaim that free markets are necessary for freedom. So why do so many of these liberty lovers insist that women be constrained?
The right has been relentlessly pushing laws that limit women’s autonomy. The most extreme measure is on the November ballot in Mississippi. There, voters may amend the state constitution to define a “person” as “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.”
If this law passes, a woman would not be able to get an abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or if her life were in danger. Miscarriage could become a police investigation. And at least some (possibly all) forms of contraception would become illegal.
Similar measures are being planned for future elections in Florida, Montana, Ohio and at least five other states.
Slate’s XX Factor reports on the consequences of such a law being passed in Mexico:
The main result has been a doubling down in the criminalization of women who have abortions, or even miscarriages… The penalties for a woman who has an abortion range from six months to four years.
XX Factor goes on to report that one woman got a 23 year sentence for what she says was a miscarriage. Now consider that about one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage. (In the U.S. today women are prosecuted for stillbirths, even when prosecutors lack direct evidence linking poor health choices to the stillbirth.)
Personhood activist, Ed Hanks, says society isn’t comfortable yet with punishing women and their doctors for abortions, “because abortion has been ‘normalized.’” He hopefully adds, “As the Personhood message penetrates, then society will understand why women need to be punished just as surely as they understand why there can be no exceptions for rape/incest.”
When women aren’t being limited by penitentiary walls – or by their own deaths – another prison arises when contraception is banned – a goal pushed by plenty of conservatives. Some abusive men even destroy contraception hoping to trap wives or girlfriends into dependency by their need to care for children.
Last summer I wrote of despots who controlled women’s reproductive rights. But it bears repeating:
The 20th century’s most loathsome regimes focused on controlling women’s reproduction. The Nazis closed family planning centers and outlawed abortion, eventually making it a capital offense, says Steven Conn, Associate Professor of History at Ohio State. Stalin banned abortion. Ceausescu outlawed contraception and made miscarriage subject to criminal investigation. Today China forces abortion and sterilization. Conn observes:
The day after the evil Ceausescu had been executed, the National Salvation Front issued two decrees; it lifted the ban on the private ownership of typewriters, and it repealed the laws that policed pregnant women.
America’s right-wing extremists look eerily similar to these despots, lending an ironic twist to their claim of being all about freedom through free markets.
Markets must be free. But women must be controlled?
Reposted on Daily Kos November 7, 2011
Also republished in Daily Kos by Feminism, Pro-Feminism, Womanism: Feminist Issues, Ideas, & Activism, Pro Choice, and Community Spotlight.
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Sources of Power in Relationships
There are many sources of power in relationships, but a few stand out:
1. Higher education, income, and occupational status, especially in marriage relationships when men make more money. Both partners tend to feel that a man should have more say since he contributes greater resources to the family.
When wives are economically dependent and fear they can’t support themselves, husbands can become especially powerful. Some abusive men purposely get their wives pregnant (by destroying their birth control) to increase their wives’ dependency – and their control over their partners.
Women are less likely to become more powerful when they make more money because they generally don’t want to diminish their partners.
2. Relationship options. Perhaps a woman is economically dependent, but she is beautiful and she knows it. She also knows that if she leaves the relationship, she can quickly find someone else. This gives her a lot of clout.
3. Traditional gender roles. People who hold traditional notions about gender are more likely to accept male authority. While our society has achieved greater equality, men still typically have a bit more power in relationships.
Interestingly, young men today more often say they prefer equal partnerships.
4. Strong personalities. Even among the traditional-minded, some women just have stronger personalities. The couple will often deem the man, “head of home” when really, the woman is in charge.
5. Whoever cares least about the relationship has more power because the partner who cares more is more likely to cave in.
There are two ways of looking at this. On the one hand it may simply be a sad, but true, fact of life.
Yet there may be some poetic justice. If one person is poorly treated, he or she will be more likely to leave. And this can create an incentive to change. If the relationship moves back into a better balance of happiness, equality can be regained.
This was origninally posted Sept. 22, 2010
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Why Is the Right-Wing Attacking Women?
While protecting Big Oil and billionaires, right-wingers brazenly push cuts to programs – many life-saving – that largely affect women: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition programs for women and children (WIC), and prenatal care. A woman’s right to choose is under intense attack with Planned Parenthood and Title X on the chopping block, despite providing low income women with birth control, cancer screenings, and tests for STDs, including H.I.V. And then there’s Rep. Joe Pitts’ proposed bill allowing hospitals to refuse to terminate pregnancy even to save a woman’s life. All famously reported in a New York Times piece entitled “The War on Women.” Nothing’s gotten any better since.
Why attack women?
Balancing the federal budget on the backs of the middle-class and poor (where so many women reside) so that wealthy interests and campaign contributions may thrive seems like a good deal to many politicians.
But why the laser-like focus on limiting women’s reproductive rights? Not a lot of money in that. But it’s a vote getter. Still, why is this stance so appealing?
Karen McCarthy Brown, Professor of Anthropology of Religion at Drew University, suggests that limiting women’s reproductive rights creates a sense of stability and empowerment for many. In command of the bodies of women, the power of the flesh, and life, itself, it’s a big deal. Plus, those who value order and stability benefit by “understanding” that men are men and women are women, each in separate spheres, and each knowing their place. So the world becomes simpler and more manageable in black and white. It can all be a huge psychological relief to those doing the controlling and for those who feel the world is under control.
Pretty sad that some coerce others to gain this relief. Surely there’s a better way.
Relatedly, on an interpersonal plane, men who seek to feel empowered by dominating their partners sometimes destroy contraception, hoping their wives or girlfriends will feel more trapped and dependent by the need to care for children.
And then there are your political tyrants. Steven Conn, Associate Professor of History at Ohio State, tells us that in the 20th century the most despicable regimes were fixated on controlling women’s reproductive lives. Outlawing abortion and closing family planning centers were among the Nazis’ first moves. Eventually abortion became a capital offense. Stalin outlawed abortion in 1936. Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu banned contraception in 1966. By 1986 miscarriage became a matter of criminal investigation. China still coerces women into abortion and sterilization. Interesting that Conn observes:
The day after the evil Ceausescu had been executed, the National Salvation Front issued two decrees; it lifted the ban on the private ownership of typewriters, and it repealed the laws that policed pregnant women.
The eerily similar workings of right-wing extremists lend an ironic twist to their claim of being all about freedom through free markets. Women must be controlled, but markets must be free?
But what’s a little nonsensical hypocrisy among right-wing despots?
This post is part of a web carnival promoted by a coalition of women’s organizations to discuss the current attacks on historic gains for women and mobilize women voters in 2012. See the Twitter hashtag #HERvotes.
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Higher Suicide Rates in Conservative “Values Voters” States
Values voters. That’s what those who vote their principles on gay rights and abortion are called. So long as they vote anti-gay and anti-choice.
Really? Are those the only values? And are they good ones?
Why is voting to deny gays and lesbians equal rights a value, while voting to defend their rights is not? Why is voting against the right of women to control their bodies not a value? Abortion rates are about the same whether legal or not, so many girls and women die when safe and legal options are not available.
Are they called values voters because they vote their morals against their pocketbooks? Plenty of well-to-do liberals do the same thing, voting for greater equality and opportunity for women, people of color, gays and the poor against their own financial interests.
Why are progressive ethics seemingly invisible?
I got to thinking about this while looking over research that finds teen suicide rates are higher where values voters live.
According to a Columbia University study, suicide attempts by both gay and straight teens are more common in politically conservative areas, even among kids who weren’t bullied or depressed.
The difference in suicide rates might have something to do with differences in conservative and progressive principles.
Conservatives focus on tradition and authority.
Progressives recognize the worth and dignity of each human being, whether female or male; black, white, or brown; gay, straight, bi or trans. And progressives seek to avoid inflicting harm on others.
No wonder teens are less likely to commit suicide in communities that hold these ideals.
Interestingly, the Bible, which is a major source of conservative morals, contains a progressive message.
True, Leviticus 18:22 does say, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman,” which many interpret as banning homosexuality. But Leviticus 20:13 deems killing the proper punishment. Yet I don’t know anyone who insists on adhering to both points, leaving them inconsistent in relying on Biblical authority.
At the same time, Jesus declared the greatest commandments loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40).
When it’s all about love and the golden rule, good progressive values, there will surely be much less suicide.
Georgia Platts
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What Happens When “A Woman’s Place is in the Home”?
See anything odd in this argument about why rape should be illegal?
“Women’s power to withhold or grant sexual access is an important bargaining weapon… it fosters, and is in turn bolstered by, a masculine pride in the exclusive possession of the sexual object… whose value is enhanced by sole ownership.”
How about the lack of concern about women’s suffering from violence and violation? Nope; women are instead straightforwardly called sex objects that are owned by men.
Understanding the roots of this strange view brings me to a project sponsored by CARE, a poverty-fighting group who are discrediting “The Top 10 Myths about Women” for the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. To understand what went wrong with the above explanation on rape, it helps to consider this myth: A woman’s place is in the home.
What would happen if that wish actually came true?
If women are home, they’re missing elsewhere–among professors, researchers, law schools, courts, Congresses, media, business managers and religious hierarchies. And what happens when women are largely absent in the halls of power? Consider a few scattered examples:
* Turning first to the strange thesis on rape’s illegality, consider that the article was published in the 1952-53 Yale Law Journal, when the editorial board was 95 percent men, and lacking much female perspective. And, in the 1950s women’s psychology was not studied much because male researchers focused mostly on men.
* In the Old Testament (Judges 19:22-29) depraved men pound at a door, demanding a male guest be turned out to be raped. A concubine is sent out instead, to “use and do whatever you wish.” The woman is raped and abused throughout the night. At daybreak she staggers home, falls down and dies. No one seems too upset at her suffering. The concern back then was over defiled property (the concubine). Whether you take this story as historical fact, or simply as evidence of the writer’s bias, a male-dominant power structure is in play.
* In 2009 Arizona Senator John Kyle declared to an 83% male Senate that maternity leave needn’t be mandated since “I don’t need maternity care.” Well, if a man doesn’t need it, clearly it’s not important. You have to wonder if he’d be so brazen in a Congress that was half women.
* More recently, in the current 83.6% male House of Representatives, Rep. Bobby Franklin of Georgia introduced a bill to criminalize some miscarriages. Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Pitts feels hospitals should be able to refuse to terminate pregnancies even to save a mother’s life. Others want to slash support for international family planning and reproductive health care. Or as the New York Times summed it, a war on women is being waged.
* Soon after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor exited the Supreme Court, leaving an eight men and one woman jury, the ban on “partial birth” abortion was upheld. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the sole remaining woman, noted, the ban saves no lives, but makes the procedure more dangerous for women.
We need women out in the world in places of power. Not surprisingly, women med students are pushing for abortion training at Bay Area universities (most prominently UC San Francisco and Stanford) so that women’s lives can be saved.
When women’s place is in the home, women are at the mercy of the patriarchy’s ways of seeing. And that is more than a little scary.
Georgia Platts
March is Women’s History Month
A version of this article was originally posted on the Ms. Magazine Blog on March 4, 2011
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What Abusers and “Pro-Family” Conservatives Have in Common
Birth control sabotage has been revealed to be a common form of partner abuse. In a report released earlier this week by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 25 percent of women callers to the hot line, who voluntarily answered questions about birth control and pressure to get pregnant in their relationships, reported some form of reproductive coercion.
The callers said their partners hid birth control pills or flushed them down the toilet. Some refused to wear condoms or poked holes in them. One woman’s partner became furious when she recently got her period.
The study’s authors state firmly that reproductive coercion is a form of abuse. Family Violence Prevention Fund president Esta Soler says, “While there is a cultural assumption that some women use pregnancy as a way to trap their partner in a relationship, this survey shows that men who are abusive will sabotage their partner’s birth control and pressure them to become pregnant as a way to trap or control their partner.”
And physical and emotional abuse go hand-in-hand with birth control sabotage: Another study on reproductive coercion found that one-third of women using reproductive health clinics (of five studied), whose partners were physically abusive, also said their partners had pressured or forced them into pregnancy, often hiding or destroying contraception.
This tactic should alarm feminists and anti-domestic-violence workers. It also suggests a revealing political analogy.
It seems these ostensibly “pro-family” men, who are busily destroying contraception in pursuit of children, have a lot in common with the “pro-family” (read: anti-reproductive rights) political agenda.
So why aren’t we willing to call the anti-choice agenda abusive, too?
The conservative political agenda is anti-women working outside the home, anti-abortion, anti-birth control, and once upon a time, anti-battered women’s shelters (the better to keep women inside the home and attached to intact nuclear families). Each of these stances, in some way, disempowers women.
It’s easy to see how restricting shelters keeps women under the thumb of abusive men: It’s a no brainer. If there’s no safe place to go, you’re trapped.
The same holds for denying women access to birth control or abortion. If you’re pregnant with this man’s child, you’re attached–you’re trapped, again, by an unwanted pregnancy.
And women who don’t work outside the home tend to have less say within it. Not to mention that a lack of income makes it hard to leave an abusive partner.
The “pro-family” political agenda may claim to uphold “traditional” American values, but for for many young men claiming to want “normal” nuclear families, pregnancy coercion is a form of abuse and control. What kind of “family values” are those?
Georgia Platts
This post originally appeared in the Ms. Magazine Blog, February 18, 2011
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