Tag: abortion rights

Abortion/Health/Healthcare/Medicine/Reproductive rights/Women
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Celebrating abortion providers

by Fran Johns

This essay first appeared on Huffington Post

You’d think, what with the incessant campaigns to hobble, harass and vilify them, that abortion providers would be somewhere right up there with ax murderers, and at least lying low under the radar. But you would be wrong.

The National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers is at hand. It is officially celebrated on March 10 by Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice, assorted other reproductive rights organizations and every woman whose life has been honored and restored following the decision to have an abortion. The day comes exactly 21 years after the murder of Dr. David Gunn at his clinic in Pensacola, Florida, a tragedy that was followed by the killings of Dr. John Britton and clinic escort James Barrett in 1994, Dr. Barnett Slepian in 1998 and Dr. George Tiller in 2009.

The irony of such losses is that abortion providers – who still face serious risks – save the lives of countless women every day. Is a day of appreciation enough? One day, in return for all the millions of days of life returned to millions of women? I vote for celebrating at least throughout the month of March.

My own abortion, a back-alley experience following a 1956 workplace rape, was emblematic of a time when there were no such people to honor. Luckily, I got my life back. No one will ever know how many women did not, how many were left maimed or dead because they had no safe, legal option. Since 1973, thanks to passage of Roe v Wade (but no thanks to those who are trying to send us back to the dark ages) they have had trained professionals motivated by compassion – and stories of women like me.

Early on there were individuals like Dr. Harry S. Jonas, now retired after long years of medical practice, teaching, and advocacy for family planning. Jonas speaks of a woman he met when doing an Ob/Gyn residency some years before Roe v Wade. She was dying of massive infection and multiple abscesses from a botched self-induced abortion after having endured 14 pregnancies. “I still remember that patient,” Jonas says, “I remember what she looked like. I remember the bed she was in on Ward 1418. I will never forget it.”

Today there are providers in heavily regulated states – most of whom remain anonymous for very good reasons – with similarly tragic stories. They tell of women who misuse abortion-inducing drugs because they can’t get to a clinic, or girls barely past puberty too frightened by protesters to access care that is their constitutional right. Of a 14-year-old incest victim pleading for help to reach the nearest clinic many miles distant. Of a sick, troubled mother of five having to choose between multiple required – and unnecessary – trips to the clinic and the job she desperately needs to keep. The physicians who are there for these women often face the need to treat their souls as much as their bodies.

Among those who choose to be open in their activism is my personal hero, Willie J. Parker. I have never met Dr. Parker, an African-American Ob/Gyn, other than on phone calls while researching Perilous Times: An inside look at abortion before – and after – Roe v Wade. He speaks with passion and conviction. Currently Associate Medical Director of Family Planning Associates Medical Group in Chicago, Parker grew up Southern Baptist, in a community which taught that abortion is wrong. His own views changed on hearing a sermon about the Good Samaritan preached by Martin Luther King, Jr. “(King) said that what made the good Samaritan ‘good’ was that instead of thinking about what might happen to him if he stopped to help the traveler, he thought about what would happen to the traveler if he didn’t stop to help. That led me to …place a higher value on compassion. I couldn’t stop to weigh the life of a pre-viable or a lethally flawed fetus against the life of the woman sitting across from me.” In addition to his day job, Parker offers help in other parts of the country where help is critically needed. He shrugs off questions about personal risk.

Almost any one of today’s providers could make more money, and have a far easier life, in another job. Instead, they choose to do what they do, so women can choose to control their bodies and their lives. That’s worth celebrating.

So light a candle. Write your congressperson. Send a few bucks to the nearest clinic and the organizations that fight for women’s reproductive rights. One national day is just a fraction of the appreciation abortion providers deserve.

Abortion/Family and Friends/Health/Healthcare/journalism/Lifestyle/Religion/Reproductive rights/Women
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Shameless theft from ThinkProgress: a great source for progressive truth, and some new insight into Arizona craziness

by Fran Johns

Every now and then, when you’re dismayed and distressed about having zero time to put down any thoughts worth someone else’s time, you remember the excellent thoughts of someone else. In this case, a blog about recent goings-on in Arizona that was posted last week by my friend and very astute reporter on reproductive justice, Tara Culp-Ressler, Health Editor of ThinkProgress.org.

Arizona actions are a little difficult to follow, but they have to do with large issues. Issues like: when does your right to your religion trump my right to be who I am? Or, can your religion control my life? As in, does your religion have the right to determine whether or not I may choose to abort an 8-week fetus?

There is also a great deal of word-play going on (see ‘On choosing one’s words’ below.) As a general rule in these Arizona debates, “religious liberty” can be translated “I really don’t like gay people.” And “protecting women’s health” usually refers to limiting access to abortion. It’s easy to get lost in the wording and inuendo, and that’s why I appreciate others’ careful reporting and analysis. Here is the beginning of a thorough explanation of recent happenings in Arizona, lifted from Tara Culp-Ressler’s ThinkProgress page, which you may want to bookmark.

“All eyes were on Arizona this past week, after the legislature approved an anti-gay bill that would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT individuals under the guise of preserving religious liberty. The intense national backlash culminated in Gov. Jan Brewer’s (R) decision to veto the legislation. But that doesn’t mean the lawmakers in the Grand Canyon State are putting controversial social issues to rest.

“Just one day after Brewer’s widely publicized veto, lawmakers in Arizona advanced new legislation to attack abortion rights. HB 2284, misleadingly named the “Women’s Health Protection Act,” would allow for surprise inspections at abortion clinics to try to catch them violating state law. The measure also stipulates that abortion clinics need to “report whenever an infant is born alive after a botched abortion and report what is done to save that child’s life,” inflammatory language that the anti-choice community often deploys to suggest that some doctors are committing infanticide.

“HB 2284 is being spearheaded by the Center for Arizona Policy, or CAP, the same right-wing group that was behind the controversial “right to discriminate” bill.

“State lawmakers gave the measure preliminary approval on Thursday. “I mean, for goodness’ sake, we even do unannounced inspections of Burger King and McDonald’s, but we’re not allowing them at abortion clinics?” Rep. Debbie Lesko (R), the bill’s sponsor, said during the legislative hearing on the measure.

“In reality, Lesko’s legislation is seeking to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist. Abortion is already one of the safest medical procedures in the country, and the clinics that perform these procedures are already highly regulated. There’s no good reason to single out abortion providers for this additional red tape. Enacting these type of laws simply gives abortion opponents the opportunity to trigger state investigations — and, depending on the political affiliations of the people who serve on state health boards, this can be an avenue to force clinics out of business.

“’As an organization, we support bills that truly protect patient safety, but House Bill 2284 opens the door to provider and patient harassment,’ Jodi Liggett, the director of public policy for Planned Parenthood Arizona, told ThinkProgress in a statement.

“HB 2284 is part of a coordinated strategy to close abortion clinics that’s advancing across the country. And it’s also a clear reminder that, regardless of Brewer’s recent veto, the fight against “religious liberty” legislation isn’t over. This line of argument is driving efforts to restrict LGBT rights in other states across the country — and it’s directly related to attacks on reproductive freedom, too.”

For the rest of the story, surf over to ThinkProgress. Click those buttons at the top of the page if you appreciate it as much as this writer.

Abortion/California/Death and Dying/End-of-Life/Family and Friends/Health/Law/Medicine/Reproductive rights/Women
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On choosing one’s words…

by Fran Johns

I was taken to task, rightly so, by a reader who categorized my saying “no one… has an abortion without anguish” (you can read B’s articulate comment, and my response, in the 2/22 Comments) as “hokum.” She might also have said “hogwash.” Mea culpa. “Anguish” was a poor descriptive choice. “Serious thought” maybe; “self-reflection,” “concern.” Actually, the decision does involve anguish for many women, especially those whose rights are being denied by lack of access or harsh state restrictions.

But one word can wreak havoc.

Take the hyphenated word “pro-life,” which has been appropriated by those who are ferociously anti-woman. As if the issue of abortion — always complex and private, and occasionally anguishing — involved nothing at all beyond the (potential) life of a fetus. I consider myself ferociously pro-life, it’s just that I value the life of a woman. And am pro-woman’s-life enough to honor and trust her ability to make her own decisions about her body.

Or the emotionally charged word “suicide.” Those of us who believe in the individual’s right to a compassionate and dignified death have worked hard to get that word out of the discussion. Suicide is the desperate act of a despairing person; “physician aid-in-dying” is a compassionate choice made by a terminally ill, mentally competent adult.

Word choices took much of the focus in a fascinating panel on “Defining Death” sponsored recently by the University of California San Francisco Medical School. More about that event on HuffingtonPost as soon as I can get to it. Cases under study included the tragic, ongoing story of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, and the equally tragic story of 14-week-pregnant Marlise Munoz, whose brain-dead body was briefly kept on “life” support because the hospital and the State of Texas placed the potential life of that pre-viable fetus above the expressed wishes of her husband, parents and even Munoz herself. The distinguished UCSF panel of experts on medicine, law and ethics spoke repeatedly of how much anguish — the word definitely fits here — might have been prevented if only a few, kind words could have replaced some of the jarring words that unfortunately must eventually be said.

Imagine you’re the patient, or family, or attending healthcare worker (try to leave the lawyers out of this.) When does a moments-ago-healthy person become a “corpse”? A “dead body”? Who decides if a pre-viable fetus is a “person”? How can the average person even understand “brain-dead”? If you bring the lawyers in, you encounter “property.” In more than a dozen states there are laws on the books that say that if a pregnant woman dies her body must be maintained until the fetus can be delivered… no matter what advance directives she may have that specify her wishes to the contrary. One family fought against this outrageous miscarriage of justice by claiming their dead loved one’s body — which was, in the eyes of the law, their “property.”

It’s a scary world we live in. But that word JUSTICE. If we can only hang onto that one.

 

 

Abortion/contraception/Family and Friends/General interest/Health/Reproductive rights/Women
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Reading the data on declining abortion rates

by Fran Johns

This essay first appeared on HuffingtonPost.com

Recently released figures from the Guttmacher Institute show a drop from 1.2 million abortions in 2008 to 1.1 million in 2011, and that’s something to cheer about.

The question is, who’s cheering, and why.

Anti-abortion forces are not even cheering very loudly. Instead, as reported in National Right to Life’s News Today, they are proclaiming that the new report “downplayed the role that public debate over the rights of unborn children have played in this trend.” Well, that role is, in itself, debatable. I would suggest that those on all sides of the issue might do well to put aside the fringes — “Abortion on demand and without apology!” as well as “The unborn must have rights!” — and focus instead on the good news: Fewer women are having abortions. Unintended pregnancy rates have dropped. Abortion has decreased to its lowest level since 1973 when Roe v Wade was decided.

As a woman who had a back-alley abortion in 1956, I hear that as good news on many counts. No one, I repeat, no one, has an abortion without anguish. The decision is always complex, difficult, unique and intensely personal. One woman may have been raped, another impregnated under equally horrendous circumstances. One woman might already have more children than she can adequately care for and know that continuing her pregnancy will threaten her own health and her children’s future. Another woman could have learned her pregnancy has severe fetal anomalies, leaving her heartbroken at the prospect of bringing a child into the world who will only suffer and quickly die. If she’s poor, her choices rapidly disappear. Like the young woman denied access and unable to end a tragic pregnancy in 2009 who told me tearfully, “we couldn’t raise the money.”

A decrease in stories like these is great good news.

But it will not happen by continuing to deny access to safe procedures or creating more and more layers of restrictions. It will not happen by rolling back access to the very things that can limit the unintended pregnancy rate in the first place, like sex education and birth control. Insisting that every woman in the U.S. must be compelled to carry every pregnancy to term will not prevent unintended pregnancies, and unintended pregnancies will always drive up abortion rates.

When I began work on my recently published book, Perilous Times: An inside look at abortion before – and after – Roe v Wade, I spoke first with women like me who had had no access to safe and legal abortion. Our stories are of frightening trips in strange cars, blindfolded and defenseless, to kitchen-table abortions performed by untrained criminals. But soon I began hearing equally distressing stories from young women today, like the distraught woman above who “couldn’t raise the money.” Or the pregnant 14-year-old who was rescued by Loretta Ross of SisterSong in Atlanta after the abused child — “she was still sucking her thumb,” Ross said — had been unable to terminate her pregnancy because of time limits in her home state.

Lower abortion rates will come from more widespread use of more effective contraception. And from educating women, and men, about how to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

How can effective, non-judgmental, accurate education happen? Not through the organizations that run “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” and spread misinformation, while telling women that abortion is “murder.” If education is to be effective, it can only happen in an arena of full truth, and be built on scientific fact.

Physicians for Reproductive Health is a good place to start. This professional organization keeps its focus on women’s health. Remember when trained doctors and healthy women were the heart of the debate rather than unscientific data and political rants? The National Abortion Federation, which has a strong educational arm, is another. And finally there is — gasp — Planned Parenthood. Targeted as the Essence of Evil by anti-abortion forces because some Planned Parenthood health centers offer safe and legal abortion, in reality Planned Parenthood is the logical place to begin advocating for… planned parenthood: safe, informed ways to avoid unintended pregnancies and promote healthy women and children. The organization is already providing extraordinary services. According to PPFA’s website, “every year, more than 700 Planned Parenthood health centers provide birth control to more than two million patients from all walks of life.”

The latest Guttmacher report could be a catalyst for change. But only if those on both sides of the highly polarized and overly emotional abortion issue will use it for the good of women. And I, an eternal optimist, am not holding my breath.

Abortion/General interest/Health/Reproductive rights
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Millennials and abortion rights

by Fran Johns

If abortion rights disappear, it’s the millennials who will be most affected. Some of them are worried. Many of them are unaware and unconcerned — but more of them are beginning to take up the fight for reproductive justice. Or, at the least, beginning to pay attention.

I got my first anecdotal glimpse of how the issue is playing out when I spoke to a class at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, VA recently. It was, by and large, heartening. The students listened attentively to my own story of an illegal abortion that took place when their grandmothers were young. Most were somber or nodded in sympathy; one young woman put both hands to her cheeks, partially covering her eyes and shaking her head as if in disbelief. I read that with encouragement: maybe if more of the millennials realize how dangerous those pre-1973 days were for women they will help prevent a return.

The several young men in the class turned out to be the most vocal in support of abortion rights. I asked one of them why. “Because I don’t believe anyone should tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her own body,” he said. He knew several women of his generation who have had abortions, and he believed it was nobody’s business but their own.

Then I asked if anyone in the class — which did seem generally supportive of abortion rights — felt differently. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not being judgmental or argumentative; everyone’s got a right to his or her own opinion. I’d just like to hear from anyone who does not believe abortion should ever be permitted.” One courageous young woman raised her hand.

“I know three people who have had abortions,” she said in response to my request for explanation. “Two of them later had regrets, and it has ruined their lives.” And on that basis she feels no one should be allowed to have an abortion? “Yes.”

It would be ridiculous to draw any conclusions from one brief encounter with several dozen bright millennials, but I have some theories. One is that the anti-abortion spokeswoman, in addition to knowing several women “whose lives are ruined,” is rooted in a religious community that reinforces this view. It’s the stance of the religious and political right that abortion is murder — and if you’re in such a community and have an abortion you would undoubtedly feel ruined afterward. Forever? I hope not.

A second theory is that the articulate young man has been around a lot of people who encouraged him to ask questions and think things through. While the young woman was not anxious to elaborate on her views, he seemed perfectly ready to defend his.

My hopes are on the millennials who are thinking things through.

Abortion/contraception/Family and Friends/Health/Healthcare/teens/Women
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Roe v Wade: an anniversary to celebrate

by Fran Johns
right to choose
Photo Courtesy: CRoberts5, ieTheRevolution

The day has just passed, but it’s worth celebrating for a while. Especially while “Marches for Life” are going on around the country.

Aren’t we all wanting the same thing? Life?

Even those whose focus is only on the life of the fetus: many of them are at least interested in the lives of women and girls, some of them support education, family planning, healthy people. Some of them will talk about contraception, our mutual wish to make abortion rare, our mutual interest in everyone’s health. Life.

Forty-one years ago the Supreme Court made it legal: women (and girls) like me would never again face the shame, danger and often death that came from trying to end an unintended pregnancy. Though it came too late for me, I was lucky; I survived a back-alley abortion, even to have healthy, wanted children. I mourn those who did not, or who wound up maimed. I am saddened and dismayed by the efforts today to send us straight back to those dark days. It is my hope and prayer that we can find ways to make abortion rare — through diligent work on things like education and contraception — while keeping women and girls safe, healthy and autonomous with protection of the right to choose what happens to their own bodies.

Which brings us back to the celebration, of Roe v Wade.  Of life.

Abortion/courts/Death and Dying/End-of-Life/General interest/Health/Reproductive rights/Women
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Faces of hope for women’s rights

by Fran Johns

The universe may, after all, be unfolding as it should (apologies to Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata.)

This could be encouraging.

Within the past several days I’ve been to a number of events concerning our rapidly disappearing reproductive rights; I’ve discussed end-of-life options with a friend newly diagnosed with ALS; and — this one puts things into a new perspective — listened to the remarkable nuclear arms experts Eric Schlosser (Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety) and Joseph Cirincione (Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late) explain how easily we could obliterate one another.

StethoscopeMore on compassionate dying and nuclear weaponry later. I just finished talking with about 40 young medical students and healthcare professionals about reproductive rights. Many are students, and members of an excellent organization, Medical Students for Choice. They are committed to protecting women’s health, educating other healthcare providers and the general public about women’s health needs, and making sure that women everywhere have access to safe, legal abortion.

These young people can make believers of you. Belief, that is, that women’s rights will indeed be protected and that lack of access will not lead again to women dying from botched abortion. The articulate president of MSFC (who bought a copy of Perilous Times and said everyone should know these stories; no wonder I’d follow him anywhere) told me he was certain that each and every member of MSFC would continue to provide safe procedures even if abortion becomes illegal again; but he also said, “I don’t believe that will ever happen.”

I wish. But even though I am a hopeless optimist I’m not optimistic about Roe v Wade staying in place once it’s challenged at the Supreme Court level, which is likely to happen soon. Many of the young healthcare professionals were also upbeat with the belief that women don’t stand to be harmed as severely as pre-Roe “because medical abortion is so simple now, and misoprostol (the abortifacient pill) so readily available.” I wish again. Many, many women today are already facing harm because they take misoprostol without proper supervision, in improper dosages or too late. But these women are — as obvious in the statements of the young professionals at this seminar — essentially invisible. They are poor, disempowered and living in remote (even not so remote any more) areas where they have no access to safe abortions. They’re not dying in droves — one of the things that prompted passage of Roe v Wade — but they are often harming themselves… or having more unwanted babies.

I’m siding with the students. Their dedication and commitment are an inspiration and their hope for the future admirable. My hope is just that they are right… and the universe will continue unfolding, with justice, as it should.

Abortion/General interest/Reproductive rights/Supreme Court/Women
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Devious ways to cancel rights

by Fran Johns

A Supreme Court decision in 1973 affirmed the right of women in the U.S. to make their own choices about reproduction, including the choice of having an abortion.

But oh well, never mind.

Those who oppose this constitutional right have chosen to negate it by going around the law: forcing clinics to close, layering restrictions, inserting unnecessary road-blocks, passing medically inappropriate or erroneous state laws, denying access to women who might want to exercise their right. So the right remains, but the justice is gone. If a woman has money and resources she may still choose to have an abortion. But if she’s poor, or without power, in well over half of the country she effectively is forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy no matter what. Or to try something that can leave her sick, maimed or dead.

“I think it is more difficult to get an abortion in the country today,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, in one of the better understatements of the year so far. To the members of this organization, this is very good news.

To poor, suffering, desperate women unable to exercise their own right — life and liberty included — the news is increasingly bad.

But it’s another group that’s getting me down. The New York Times reported in a recent story that Americans United for Life sees this flood of new laws as “life-affirming legislation designed to protect women from the harms inherent in abortion.”

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PROTECTING WOMEN. This has strictly to do with elevating the right of zygotes and fetuses above and beyond the right of women. HARM IS NOT INHERENT IN ABORTION. (It’s very hard not to scream.) Harm is inherent in the denial of women’s right to control their own bodies. Can these good folks not learn ANYTHING from history? Millions of women were maimed, sickened, left sterile — or dead when abortion was illegal. It will happen again. It’s already happening in much of the country.

Meanwhile, about that constitutional right to choose? Oh, well, never mind…

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