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.
More 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.
Women everywhere suffered a loss on December 30 with the death of Kenneth Edelin, retired ObGyn and longtime champion of reproductive justice. Dr. Edelin died of cancer at his home in Florida. He was 74.
Photo Courtesy: LifeNews.com
Ken Edelin’s obituaries all lead with the story of his sensational manslaughter trial in 1973. As the New York Times reports, “Dr. Edelin (pronounced EE-da-lin) was charged with causing the death of the fetus of an unwed 17-year-old during an elective abortion in her sixth month of pregnancy. In a six-week trial in Boston that explored uncharted legal ground and made headlines across the country, Dr. Edelin, who was black, was vilified as a baby-killer and defended as a victim of racial and religious prejudice being tried for an action that had never been defined as a crime: killing a fetus that may or may not have been a “person,” and whose rights had never been specified by law.” He was convicted, but later acquitted of all charges.
Edelin’s long career, though, was much more than that event. It included teaching, writing, mentoring, and advocating for reproductive justice, especially for poor women of color. Among other honors and awards, he received the Margaret Sanger Award, its highest honor, from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 2008.
In the several times I spoke with Ken Edelin during research for Perilous Times (about his story, which appears on pages 109-111) and after its publication (to thank him once again) he was gracious, generous and supportive. He was particularly proud of the book he wrote about the Boston trial, Broken Justice: A True Story of Race, Sex and Revenge in a Boston Courtroom, and understandably a little miffed that it had not received the recognition he felt it deserved. It may have been too exhaustively detailed to find a major publisher or a host of readers, but Broken Justice makes certain that the full story of that episode is preserved.
It was an honor to have encountered Ken Edelin, even only in phone calls. He will be missed.
The first thing that dropped out of the Christmas card was a front page torn from The Flint (MI) Journal of September 5, 2013:
ABORTION CLINIC CLOSES; ONE REMAINS IN AREA read the banner headline at the top of the page.
My friends keep track of things for me. News and notes get saved — sometimes for three months — because holiday cards are still my generation’s catch-up communication of choice. Who went off to college, got married, landed a new job, took an exotic trip, (got sick or died) — news of the old year comes with good wishes for the new. This year’s news, for me, tended to focus on reproductive rights. Thus the clipping from The Flint Journal (on whose payroll Bud Johns appeared as a kid, and a young reporter.)
The story wasn’t one that would have made lasting news much beyond Genessee County, Michigan. An ugly report about a woman saying she was “forced” to have an abortion, a lawsuit, and that was the end of the Feminine Health Care Clinic.
It’s still possible to obtain an abortion in the area, though obviously now more difficult. The closing of FHCC brought the number of abortion-providing clinics in the area down from four not long ago to, currently, one. And that, according to Flint Area Right to Life Director Judy Climer who’s been leading this effort, “makes us feel we’re on the right track.” Climer’s track leads to total denial of abortion access. And the interesting point of the whole long, sad story is summed up later in the article:
This week will bring more cards. Next week will bring a new year. If miracles happen — and isn’t this the season of miracles? — the new year will bring some sort of rational public dialog about protecting the patient, i.e. pregnant woman, while somehow respecting those who blindly hold that her fetus is all that matters.
New Mexico is, so far, batting 500: the good citizens of Albuquerque voted down (on November 19) a ballot measure that would have denied women the right to an abortion after 20 weeks. Now a case is underway in a New Mexico district court to establish whether a dying citizen has the right to hasten his or her death with the aid of a physician.
On the surface, the two issues might seem to have little in common — other than both being in New Mexico and involving the two primary causes with which I’ve been concerned for the past several decades. But they are at the heart of similar social justice concerns: individual autonomy, the individual woman’s right to control her own body, the individual of whatever gender, race or religion to choose a humane and compassionate death. They are opposed by the exact same groups: those who say they want “less government” — yet would involve the government in these most personal and private matters, and those who say they want religious freedom — yet would have their own religion dictate to everyone else.
Sanity prevailed in Albuquerque last month. Late term abortions are the most difficult and painful of decisions, and account for only a tiny fraction (one or two percent) of all abortions. But the people who put the issue on the ballot saw this as one more chance to chip away at the already diminishing right to a safe and legal abortion in the U.S.
One can only hope that sanity will prevail again. The end-of-life case now being argued was brought by a 49-year-old woman named Aja Riggs who has advanced uterine cancer, and two physicians who want to be able to prescribe medications – without fear of prosecution – to terminally ill patients wanting to end life on their own terms. Riggs’ cancer is currently in remission, but she has gone through aggressive treatment and extensive periods of terrible pain and suffering and says, “I don’t want to suffer needlessly at the end.”
Would any of us? Would you?
Most of us would feel that decision – what to do as we face life’s end – is one we’d prefer to make with our loved ones and our physicians and without governmental interference. Just as many of us – well reflected in the Albuquerque vote – would prefer having women make their own decisions with loved ones and physicians and without governmental interference.
Maybe reason will win again – a win for New Mexico and the rest of us.
My Thanksgiving starts, as it’s done for nine years, with the Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Service — this year at the Buddhist Church. (Past services have been at churches, synagogues and last year the Mormon Stakehouse; it’s a learning experience and a lovely one.) And because thankfulness is indeed good for the soul, here are just a few of the things I’m thankful for… or not:
While the remarkable folks at places like St. Anthony’s continue to feed the hungry, Thanksgiving Day and every day, for which we can all be thankful, it’s hard to be thankful for Congressional Republicans who voted earlier this year to cut some $40 billion out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, which millions of Americans count on just to have enough to eat every day. But I’m thankful to live in a democracy and hopeful that a focus on the common good will eventually prevail over today’s focus on the one percent.
I am thankful for the slow but steady progress of the cause of death with dignity in this country. And that is thanks largely to Compassion & Choices, a fine organization if there ever were one. I’m not just thankful, but proud to have worked long and hard as a C&C volunteer for more than a decade.
Closer to my heart today is the cause of reproductive rights, partly because those rights are being relentlessly eroded. I remember so vividly what it was like to be a woman without such rights that it leaves me thankful beyond measure for those working so hard to protect them. People like –
Cecile Richards and everyone else connected with Planned Parenthood. Vilified because abortions are provided at some clinics (a tiny percentage of the services offered,) Planned Parenthood is now defending those who need insurance coverage for contraception. “Put simply, birth control is basic, preventive health care that millions of women rely on every day,” Richards wrote in a recent email. “Over 99 percent of sexually active women use birth control at some point in their lives, for a wide variety of reasons. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies are now required to cover contraception with no out-of-pocket cost, a landmark step for women’s health that gives many women access to affordable birth control for the first time. (But) now a handful of out-of-touch, mostly male employers want to take that coverage away — and force their own beliefs onto tens of thousands of employees…”
In other words, a fertilized egg must be protected at all costs… including the cost of women’s health? Go figure. It’s headed to the Supreme Court, and reason, sanity and women’s health are likely to lose. So I’m thankful that Planned Parenthood is here at least to fight the battle.
Or others, like –
Catholics for Choice President Jon O’Brien, whose recent letter to the New York Times pointed out one simple, obvious truth: “Catholics in the United States have abortions and support access to abortion services at the same rate as other women do.” Many of my Catholic friends are weary of themselves being vilified for a belief they do not hold — just because church officialdom insists on valuing their fertilized eggs more than themselves.
The Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Service always includes a reading of President Abraham Lincoln’s (somewhat tedious) proclamation of a national day of Thanksgiving, urging us all to be grateful for our multiple blessings “with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience.”Some things haven’t changed in the past century or so. But listening quietly to the historic proclamation, surrounded by a bunch of Americans of every imaginable race, creed and political persuasion, somehow makes one hopeful that human rights of all sorts — daily bread and individual choice to name a couple — will eventually win out.
It’s a not-too-encouraging new twist on the old baseball adage: win some, lose some, some get rained out.
Women’s health & rights recently won one – Albuquerque – lost one – Texas – and guess who still gets left out? The woman (and often her husband or partner) who simply wants to exercise a constitutional right to make a very personal, very private and usually very difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy.
The Albuquerque issue was a blatant attempt by right-wing ideologues to circumvent the law and ban late-term abortions outright. It would have immediately affected the entire state, since the only two clinics (and specifically the openly-advertising Southwestern Women’s Options) performing the procedure are in Albuquerque. Although late-term abortions are a tiny, tiny fraction of all such procedures, they are often the most wrenching, difficult and extremely private of decisions; for now, New Mexico women at least retain the right to make such decisions when necessary — and the access needed to carry them out.
Texas women fared worse. The Supreme Court turned down an appeal to block another blatantly anti-women law passed by Texas in July, which will force the immediate closing of as many as one third of the clinics in the state offering abortions.
Texas Governor Rick Perry proudly proclaimed that this means Texas women “are now better protected from shoddy abortion providers operating in dangerous conditions.” Excuse me? If I could get Mr. Perry to read my own story in Perilous Times, he might know what shoddy abortion providers operating in dangerous conditions are actually like. Tragically, because they are now denied access to safe and legal procedures, Texas women without resources may be forced to turn in similar directions.
Highly trained, dedicated physicians have been available to perform abortions in Texas clinics. Whether they have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of the clinic — as is now required — has absolutely no bearing on “the safety of Texas women.” But the law now enables one harsh, strident, anti-women segment of the state to impose its will on disempowered women. All but a handful of clinics in Texas will be forced either to close or to stop offering abortions. Some Texas women will be able to travel the long distances necessary to access safe procedures but others — women without money or power, desperate to end an unwanted pregnancy that could bring lead to unbearable hardship?
They not only lost one, they are now left out. My heart aches for those women.
I was pleased to be included in a panel on Advance Directives recently for the Bar Association of San Francisco, surrounded by three very smart women. Organized & moderated by SF Bar’s John O’Grady, the panel included Harriette Grooh of HGA Personal Care Consultants, Sara Stephens of Good Medicine Consult & Advocacy, and Attorney Elizabeth Krivatsy. The audience — in post-event evaluations — gave us mostly all fives out of possible one to five ratings, which would be a nice touch to my resume if I had a resume. I was there as writer on end-of-life issues, and acknowledged as the wearer of two hats. My death & dying hat alternates with the abortion hat, which I explained was how never to be invited to cocktail parties.
But this panel’s focus was on end-of-life decision making: how, if we consider it, would we prefer to die? Most of us say: At home, at peace. Physician aid in dying — now legal in four states and a movement that is finally gaining ground around the U.S. — is key to peaceful death for many of us, and significant to my work in the area. But opposition to this rational, humane way to die comes from two powerful directions: The Catholic Church (NOT most Catholics, certainly not the excellent folks at Catholics for Choice) and the far right — mostly religious fundamentalists who somehow believe that pain and suffering at the end of life should never be shortened.
The issue becomes one of who chooses: the dying individual, or religious and political powers.
My hats are interchangeable. Comprehensive, justice-rooted women’s health cannot put the fetus in control and cannot take the potential decision to choose an abortion away from the individual. But opposition to this rational, humane way to live comes from two powerful directions. You guessed it: Catholic officialdom and the religious/political right.
Happily, there’s progress, slow but sure, in end-of-life justice and my hat is off to all — Compassion & Choices in particular — who are leading this battle. Unhappily, my other hat might need to be a helmet to protect against the slings and arrows of those opposed to reproductive rights.
