Climate Change, Women and Hope

Gianturco & Sangster onstage at the Commonwealth Club

“Climate change is happening,” she says; “it’s real, it’s urgent.” The speaker is Paola Gianturco, a strikingly pretty octogenarian photojournalist/author, retired from a distinguished business career but decidedly not retired from anything else.

Adds her co-speaker ; “I learned about the water cycle (the continuous movement of water within the earth and atmosphere) and the carbon cycle (the process in which carbon atoms continually travel from the atmosphere to the earth and back) in fourth grade.” This would be high school freshman Avery Sangster, pointing out that those two cycles are keys to climate change.

The remarkable grandmother/granddaughter author/activist team spoke recently at an event celebrating their recently released book COOL: Women Leaders Reversing Global Warming

Photo by Melissa Bradley on Unsplash

The two spoke of the urgency of climate change in real-time stories. Alaska’s indigenous Inuit people, for example, have lived for centuries on the ice of the Arctic and subarctic regions where temperatures now reach 78 degrees and higher. “I’m not paralyzed with fear,” Gianturco says. She and her equally fearless granddaughter don’t want anyone else to be paralyzed; what they want is action. In search of climate action — and stories — they interviewed and photographed women and girls around the world who are “using intelligence, creativity, energy and courage to help stop global warming.” COOL documents the dedication and successes of several dozen of those women and girls.

They found, for example, Erica Mackie, Co-founder and CEO of GRID Alternatives, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. Asked what’s special about her company, Mackie told the authors, “Well, for starters, it’s the only nonprofit construction company on the planet that’s focused on combating global warming, racism, economic inequality and gender discrimination.” The COOL women don’t tend to think small.

The author with The authors

In Sri Lanka they found several women working with Sudeesa (Small Fishers Federation of Sri Lanka) who were among 15,000 Sri Lankan women planting mangrove trees. Should you think these are simply pretty trees that help the local population by attracting fish, “mangrove trees sequester about five times more carbon dioxide than other tropical trees,” while also burying carbon dioxide under the soil.

The information and quotations in this article are all from COOL: Women Leaders Reversing Global Warning. And this is only a small piece of the climate education available in Gianturco and Sangster’s colorful book.

Back in the U.S. again the photojournalist/authors found Miranda Massie, founder and Director of the Climate Museum in New York City’s Soho district. Massie credits her own “climate crisis unease” to Hurricane Sandy, the 2012 storm — still the largest Atlantic hurricane on record — that, according to Wikipedia, left 233 people dead across eight countries and did more than $70 billion in damage. “Our genius, inventiveness, ambition and creativity caused this climate crisis that could obliterate civilization as we know it,” Massie says. “It’s the greatest challenge the human species has ever encountered.”

If the above isn’t enough to inspire you to become a climate activist, this reporter recommends ordering a copy (or two or three or more for your friends and family) of COOL. On the inside page there are even QR codes you can scan for six ways to help reverse global warming. Super cool.

The Angry Woman’s Dilemma for Today

Photo by Mark Timberlake on Unsplash

I am known as a mild-mannered, peace-loving person. Maybe twice a year I lose my temper.

But I’m having trouble with anger management today. I don’t want to ride New York subways with a lot of nutty people packing guns. I don’t want to return to the dark days of the kitchen table abortion I had in 1956. I’m worried about climate change obliterating the planet.

In short, every time I hear those words Supreme Court my blood pressure rises.

I may reread Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger. Traister says that angry women aren’t necessarily crazy. She maintains that women’s fury at injustice has been a powerful force in U.S. politics and culture. That we madwomen have brought about progress and change.

So I’m working on the management angle. Stay tuned.

Watching Reproductive Justice Disappear

This is a downer essay. Much as I try always to end on an upbeat note, there are only long shadows. Still . . .

I am old enough to remember when, in 1973, Roe v Wade was ruled into law. I can also remember having a kitchen-table abortion, in 1956, after a workplace rape – in a time when both rape and abortion were too shameful – but only for the woman involved – ever to be mentioned.  So it is beyond distressing to watch reproductive justice disappearing. This is a current look at two pieces of that disintegration.

A tiny bit of qualified good news: recently Theodore Chuang, U.S. District Judge for the District of Maryland ruled that during the covid-19 crisis requiring women to travel to clinics for medication abortion – a matter of taking a few pills – presented a “substantial obstacle” for these patients. This is good news for women, and for telehealth. In this upside down time, those of us who have fought for reproductive justice over the past decades of its steady decline tend to glom onto any tiny bit of good news.

The problem is, such an overwhelming amount of bad news remains that it’s hard to feel optimistic for more than five minutes. The bad news includes an endless list of anti-abortion rulings by lower courts that have been filled with conservative judges at an astonishing speed over the past three and a half years, a constant onslaught of state restrictions making abortion access harder and harder especially for the poor or powerless, and even the proposed Democratic House spending bill for 2021 – which includes the onerous Hyde Amendment.

A few explanatory details on the good news. Mifepristone, the drug used in combination with Misoprostol to safely induce abortion up to ten weeks gestation, was approved by the FDA in 2000. Since the procedure is a matter of taking a few pills, it’s been increasingly used by physicians practicing telemedicine during the covid-19 pandemic. Judge Chuang’s ruling says this can continue. But once we’re past this public health nightmare, all those states requiring women to travel to clinics to take a couple of pills – often, especially for poor women, at a cost they can ill afford – will go back into effect. Mifepristone is many times safer than penicillin, but it is more heavily regulated than, for example, fentanyl. Go figure.

It is not hard to go figure if you have followed the political rhetoric of the past three and a half years. We are reaping what we sowed, electoral collegially speaking.  

As to the Hyde Amendment – which forbids use of federal funds for abortion services except in very narrowly specified circumstances like rape, abortion or when the woman’s life is in danger. It was passed in 1976. Like that of so many other restrictive laws, its harm falls most heavily on poor women and minorities. Assorted Democrats have, over the years, attempted to get rid of it, and dozens of groups are still fighting to get it removed from the spending bill. But Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), chair of the LHHS subcommittee (Labor, Health & Human Services, Education & Related Agencies) put it into today’s proper perspective.

Recently, after celebrating much of the spending bill, Rep. DeLauro turned with a measure of wrath to the inclusion of the Hyde Amendment.  “The Hyde Amendment is a discriminatory policy,” DeLauro said. “This is a long-standing issue of racial injustice and one that is routinely considered—every year as a legislative rider—but we are in a moment to reckon with the norm, with tradition, and view it through the lens of racial justice. So, although this year’s bill includes it, let me be clear we will fight to remove the Hyde Amendment to ensure that women of color and all women have access to the reproductive health they deserve.”

The sufferings and occasional deaths of countless women every day who are denied access to reproductive care will be the legacies of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.

This essay appeared earlier on Medium.com, an interesting site on which I’m enjoying writing.

Gag Rule Harms Millions of Women

Can you muzzle a million women? Really?

Female symbol

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the Global Gag Rule seeks to do. Reinstated by President Trump two days after the Women’s March on Washington (take that, women of America,) the Global Gag Rule stipulates that non-U.S. nongovernmental organizations receiving U.S. family planning funding cannot inform the public or educate their government on the need to make safe abortion available, provide legal abortion services, or provide advice on where to get an abortion. Thus, every one of the organizations working to provide critical, comprehensive healthcare to women around the globe who desperately need it must either promise never to mention the A-word, or lose the funding that allows them to continue. We’re talking nine billion dollars.

Never mind that Marie Stopes International has estimated that without alternative funding – not easy to come by – Trump’s GGR between 2017 and 2020 will likely result in 6.5 million unintended pregnancies, 2.2 million abortions, 2.1 million unsafe abortions, 21,700 maternal deaths and will prohibit the organization from reaching 1.5 million women with contraception each year.

Susan Wood IWHC
Susan Wood

Other statistics are equally mind-boggling. Ibis Reproductive Health data shows the harmful effects of the GGR around the globe. HIV prevention efforts suffer. Health clinics close. Rural communities lose access to healthcare.

This dangerous foolishness started with Ronald Reagan, who enacted it by presidential decree in 1984. Since then, every Democratic president has rescinded it, and every Republican president has reinstated it.

Two women with long experience and a deep understanding of the GGR and complex issues involved spoke at a recent event in Marin. Susan Wood, Director of Program Leaning and Evaluation for the International Women’s Health Coalition, and Caitlin Gerdts of Ibis shared the extensive bad news above – and a glimmer of good news:

Caitlin Gerdts-Ibis
Caitlin Gerdts

A bipartisan (though predominantly Democratic) group is behind a bill which would permanently end the Global Gag Rule. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Representative Nita Lowey (D-NY), along with an unprecedented number of original cosponsors, introduced the Global Health, Empowerment and Rights (HER) Act. The Global HER Act would remove dangerous eligibility restrictions on international recipients of U.S. foreign assistance and would ensure that U.S. foreign assistance prioritizes women’s health.

The Global HER Act would also:

  • Allow foreign organizations receiving U.S. aid to use non-U.S. funds to provide safe abortion and other medical services that are legal in the U.S. and in the respective countries.
  • Promote safe, ethical medical practices by removing discriminatory restrictions on essential health care services.
  • Support and encourage democratic participation and freedom of speech abroad.
  • Nullify any existing U.S. law or policy that interferes with these provisions.

After decades of yo-yo-ing U.S. political whims, this bill would finally put the health and safety of women around the globe on a steady footing. Miracles happen.

Protests, and Hope for the Future

We considered it a badge of honor. An event I engineered recently (with a LOT of help from my friends) in San Francisco drew luminaries from the interfaith community, women’s rights and reproductive justice groups – and several stalwart protesters holding signs aloft in the chilly drizzle. What’s a champagne reception without protesters?Dr. Willie Parker flyer jpeg

Actually, they were not protesting the champagne reception (though they were there before it started.) They were protesting the main event that followed: Reproductive Justice on the Front Lines. It was a conversation between Director of the UCSF Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health Carole Joffe and noted physician/author Dr. Willie Parker. Dr. Parker, a deeply committed Christian and an abortion provider, believes it is morally right for a pregnant woman to control what happens to her body. The protesters believe the fetus takes priority over the woman carrying it. To set the record straight, our protesters were hardly worth notice as far as Dr. Parker is concerned – he is used to being the target of threats and angry insults hurled by protesters who regularly surround the deep south clinics where he flies to provide service to mostly young, poor women of color seeking abortion care.

I appreciated our protesters’ civility, but rather strongly disagree with their dismissal of women like me. These sign-carriers would have opposed my back-alley 1956 abortion, demanding that I carry that rape-caused, life-wrecking pregnancy to term.march-crowd

Which brings up this current reality: there are protesters who want to destroy rights, and protesters fighting to keep them. There are sign-carriers wanting to send us back to the dark ages, and fighters for light overcoming darkness. Fighters for human rights, for the poor and marginalized, for the planet, for decency, sanity, truth.

I’m with the protesters who are fighters-for. Their movement aims to get us back to being a country of justice for all, and get the U.S., eventually, back to its long-held place of respect around the world. It’s a movement forward that I joined with the pure-joy Women’s March early this year. Happily those protesters are still out there in force: the Stand-Ups, the Indivisibles, the Occupiers, the MoversOn, the countless other groups all over the country. Young and old, male, female, gay, straight, black, brown, white, they embody that same Women’s March spirit of ebullient hope.

And they are my hope for the future.

Signs of Our Marching Times

march-crowd

The March was intended to be about women’s rights – workplace rights, immigrant and minority rights, the right to make our own reproductive decisions, all those rights that suddenly seem threatened. It turned out to be a celebration of the spirit.

march-tired-poor-better

It was hard to separate rights & purposes from our new president, and hard to ignore the mean-spiritedness that most marchers hope at least to diminish. But it turned out to be a celebration of everything he disdains.

march-umbrella

This writer has traditionally drawn the line at protest marching. In the past I’ve done talks, workshops, phone calls, emails, office visits and the occasional vigil; this year felt like it called for showing up. So along with several friends from the geezer house where I live, I struck out into the rainy San Francisco late afternoon along with a few hundred thousand others. Estimates vary, but we spilled into so many adjoining streets that 50,000 seems a minimal number.

march-im-with-her

The signs say it all. Or a lot of it.

march-super-callous-etc

If anyone’s spirits were dampened by the cold rain, you couldn’t tell. What you can tell, from the smiling faces among the umbrellas, is how it felt. Most of all, it was just heartening to be among all of the above, and among the many scattered signs saying “This Is What Democracy Looks Like.”

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Yossi Gurvitz on Flicker

A similar sign was photographed by Yossi Gurvitz in St. Paul’s Square during the Occupy London movement several years ago, a darker view of that phrase. But with enough joyful, celebratory gatherings such as those all around America on January 21, perhaps democracy will survive its current challenges — and look like government by the (sometimes jubilant) people.

justice

Willie Parker vs Reproductive Oppression

Dr. Willie Parker
Dr. Willie Parker

“The Racialization of Abortion,” Willie Parker titled his talk; “A Dirty Jedi Mind Trick.” He then spent about 45 lively, provocative minutes elaborating on the theme.

The occasion was a recent Grand Rounds presentation at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, where he addressed a standing-room-only crowd of (mostly) young interns for an event that more commonly draws a smattering of attendees. But when Willie Parker comes to town, it’s a good idea to bring in extra chairs. Parker is an African American physician, a provider of abortion and reproductive health services to women who would otherwise be denied them, current board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health, a ferocious defender of women’s rights and fearless citizen. He is also this writer’s personal hero.

Parker explained in his opening remarks that his “is heart work and head work. Dr. Martin Luther King said the heart can’t be right if the head is wrong. (King) also said we have guided missiles and misguided people.” On the podium, delivering a rapid-fire lecture in behalf of reproductive justice, Parker is akin to a guided missile consisting of equal parts passion, outrage and statistics. The youngest of six children whose mother sent them to church three times a week, he speaks with the cadence and conviction born of those roots.

“There are over six million pregnancies per year in the U.S.,” he says. “Half of them are unintended. Of the unintended pregnancies, half end in births; half in abortions. One in three women under 45 will have an abortion. While unintended pregnancies have fallen among the upper classes, they have increased 29% among the poor. Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately likely to have unintended pregnancies…”

And it is at this point that Parker’s inner preacher takes over. “People,” he says, “we’re gonna get ugly for Jesus.” It is his challenge to those who attack him, most often fundamentalist Christians, for protecting the reproductive rights of his mostly young, Black clients. Often they also accuse him of participating in “Black genocide.” It is this myth — that abortion is a government plot to eradicate the Black race – that leads to the Dirty Jedi Mind Trick theme.

“It is epidemiological mischief,” he explains. “They take data, put a spin on it that is not intended, and then start a ‘call-and-response’: You have white people saying abortion is racist, getting Black people to say Amen. They can put a cultural war in your framework. It’s important that we recognize the significance of this message, and debunk it.”

In addition to the epidemiological mischief there are outright lies. Former presidential candidate Herman Cain, an African American Tea Party Republican, said in one speech that 75% of abortion clinics were in Black neighborhoods, to encourage African American women not to have children. Parker says the correct figure, according to the Guttmacher Institute, is 9%.

“At its core,” Parker says of these efforts, “it is patriarchal and insulting. They assume a woman is not capable of making her own decisions about her own body.”

What’s needed now, to combat all this, Parker says, “is a new framework, to define this community problem as Reproductive Oppressionon. Reproductive oppression is the control and exploitation of women and girls and individuals through our bodies.” Parker cites the long history of reproductive oppression that includes “forced breeding during slavery, sterilizations, and human experimentation on Puerto Rican women for the contraceptive pill.

“Current examples of reproductive oppression,” he says, “include limiting access to reproductive healthcare, family caps in welfare, and federal and state laws restricting access to abortion.”

But there is hope. Parker cites Atlanta-based SisterSong and its formidable co-founder Loretta Ross as embodying the principals of reproductive justice. Parker lists these as:

1 – Every woman has the right to decide when to have children.

2 – Every woman has the right to decide if she will not have a child.

3 – Women and families (deserve) the resources to parent the children they already have.

4 – Every human being has the right to primary sexual pleasure.

Anti-abortion forces would certainly argue against at least the first two. Parker’s message to the young interns was that it’s not just argument, but twisted myths and dirty tricks that are being used to deny those rights. He maintains it’s the responsibility of the medical community, among others, to stand up for women who are suffering from being denied, to fight against reproductive oppression.

In all likelihood, Willie Parker will keep right on leading that battle.

  *   *   *   *

(Read Dr. Parker’s statement on the recent Supreme Court ruling against restrictive Texas abortion laws: http://prh.org/)

 

There’s Hope for Reproductive Justice

Art by Megan Smith
Art by Megan Smith

Let’s hear it – one more time – for the Millennials. Especially the youngest Millennials, just now reaching or approaching voting age. A generation unto themselves.

Invited to speak at a recent “Awareness into Action” day at Drew School, a private college preparatory day school in San Francisco, this writer went with some trepidation into a classroom set up for about ten high school students. Who – when she hasn’t been a high schooler in more than a half century – knows high school students today?

My workshop was on Reproductive Justice. Other choices the students could make included workshops on Mindfulness, Parks Conservancy, Anti-Racist Dialogue, LGBTQ issues and Immigration Law (to name a few.) I figured if 5 or 6 girls showed up it would be fine. By the time we were ready to start there were 14 girls and two brave (and handsome) guys around the table and sitting on chairs and tables in the back corner, plus one teacher keeping an eye on it all.

For openers, I’d written several facts on the whiteboard:

A woman dies of cervical cancer almost once every two hours. HPV vaccine prevents most cases of cervical cancer.

17 states mandate that women be given counseling before an abortion that includes information on at least one of the following: the purported link between abortion and breast cancer (5 states); the ability of a fetus to feel pain (12 states); long-term mental health consequences of abortion for the woman (7 states.) None of the above are true.

Then I told my own story. The story of a 22-year-old who had never had sex – after all, nice girls did not have sex before marriage in 1956. A victim of what would today clearly be workplace rape, I did all the dangerous things that women desperate to end an unwanted pregnancy are increasingly doing today. When nothing else worked, I had a back alley abortion by an untrained man who probably had not even washed his hands.

“I think,” I said to the roomful of attentive faces, “we’re going straight back to the dark ages.”

Not if these young people have anything to say about it.

Aware that they are among the lucky ones, they are concerned about the unlucky. They seemed a little taken aback by statistics like this one:

In 2006, 49% of pregnancies were unintended. The proportion of unintended pregnancies was highest (98%) among teens younger than 15.

. . . and by other data about how widespread is the denial of access to reproductive healthcare for poor women and girls (and men and boys) in more than half of the U.S. “It’s just wrong,” said one student.

So what do you think you can do to change things, I asked.

“Vote,” came the first answer, before I even finished the question.

“We have to learn to listen to people we disagree with,” said another student, who had been rather vocal in her description of political villains. “You may have to bite your tongue,” I said. “Yeah, I know,” she replied. “Because we have to learn how to have dialogue.”

“We just have to know the laws,” said another, “and work to change them.”

“We need to support these organizations, too,” commented another student, tapping the table with some of the materials I had distributed from groups like Advocates for Youth, Planned Parenthood and Sea Change.

For this writer, who lived through the worst of times, the workshop brought hope for the future of reproductive justice in the U.S. Returning to the worst of times is not on the agenda for these Millennials.

 

 

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