Reproductive rights Archives - Page 8 of 9

June 28, 2013

Hearing Wendy’s voice – & others

Mandatory pre-abortion waiting period laws in ... — Mandatory pre-abortion waiting period laws in the United States of America. Mainland U.S. edited from a 600px map by Jared Benedict at Libre Map Project and non-continental states from http://www.uscourts.gov/images/CircuitMapoutlined.eps by the United States Department of Justice. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gail Collins, in her traditionally precise prose, wound up a recent column on Wendy Davis‘ now historic filibuster in the Texas legislature thusly:

“A few years back, Davis told me about an incident during a debate when she had asked a veteran Republican a question about a pending bill. Dodging her query, he said: “I have trouble hearing women’s voices.”

“I guess they can hear her now.”

Amen.

There’s something about hearing women’s voices that can make men, especially men who would like to tell women what they can or cannot do with their own bodies, too uncomfortable to listen.

In one poignant story included in my new book Perilous Times: An inside look at abortion before – and after – Roe v Wade (plug intended) Karen Mulhauser tells of the time when she testified before a congressional committee about being brutally raped in her home. She was trying to make the point that had a pregnancy resulted she would not have wanted it to continue. But Congressman Ed Patten (who died at 89 in 1994, after serving 17 years in Congress) “appeared to be asleep.” Representative Silvio Conte (1921-1991; then a Republican from Massachusetts) turned his swivel chair away from her to face the wall. Mulhauser, former head of NARAL Pro-Choice and current chair of Women’s Information Network, was angered — but not silenced.

Some voices, those of women without resources who are facing unwanted pregnancies in states where safe abortion is de facto impossible, are going unheard. And those women are doing desperate things.

But it is for them that Wendy Davis, and Karen Mulhauser, and every woman and man who believes in a woman’s right to choose, is raising her own voice of encouragement and support. And those voices will be heard.

General interest

June 23, 2013

Decisions Congress shouldn’t make

by Fran Johns

A recent New York Times op ed piece by Judy Nicastro tells the wrenching story of an abortion she had at 23 weeks.

The decision — which involved aborting a fetus that would have faced only suffering if it survived — was made after agonizing weeks. It was informed by sonograms, an M.R.I., tests, studies and extensive discussions between Nicastro, her husband and many medical professionals.

The decision to tell her story was prompted by the House vote on June 18 to ban abortion after 22 weeks. No one among those who voted for the bill (which is not expected to pass the Senate) has experienced anything like the agonizing struggle Nicastro and her husband went through, or even just a troubled pregnancy — most of the votes were cast by men, after all.

The decision was anguished, soul-searching, unique — and above all, private.

Which raises the question:

Should a decision about an unintended or unadvised pregnancy be made by the woman involved, with advice from medical professionals, after discussion with her partner, in consideration of the unique circumstances that apply?

Or by the U.S. Congress?

General interest

June 17, 2013June 17, 2013

Eleanor Roosevelt on reproductive rights

by Fran Johns

I love channeling Eleanor Roosevelt.

Recently the Wall Street Journal ran a letter of mine about an encounter with the great and gracious lady in 1953. It was fun recalling that event, but even more fun was hearing from my friend Milt Moskowitz who shared a story of his own:

“In 1962 I was working at what was then the largest market research firm in the country, Alfred Politz Research, founded and run by an alcoholic German, Alfred Politz, who was a serial womanizer. Knowing my politics to be on the left side of the spectrum, he frequently berated me about liberals. And one of his prime examples was Eleanor Roosevelt, who had a syndicated column, My Day. She was a typical liberal, he said, afraid to come out for abortion rights for fear of irritating the Catholic church. “You don’t know that,” I said. I then wrote a letter to Eleanor, asking if she had the time for an interview. She replied that she did and soon I found myself having tea with her in her brownstone on the East Side of Manhattan. I told her what my boss had said, and then she said that she was a fervent supporter of abortion rights for women. When I returned to work, I relayed this information to Alfred, who scoffed, saying she would never go public with this support. Well, a week later, the “My Day” column carried Eleanor’s eloquent support for abortion rights. I bought a dozen copies of that edition and dumped them on Alfred’s desk. For one of the first times in his life, he was speechless. “I was delighted that he had brought it up since it enabled me to meet a gentle lady with a very strong spine.”

Mrs. Roosevelt’s “My Day” columns were among the first things I read in the morning papers; they were never timid. I don’t remember this one — having pushed the whole issue of abortion far down into the depths of my psyche — but I’m not surprised. Would that her calm, strong voice were here to speak today.

General interest

June 13, 2013

Rape doesn’t cause pregnancy? Excuse me?

by Fran Johns

Well, according to Rep. Trent Franks, the incidence of pregnancy resulting from rape is negligible, so probably we don’t need to consider allowing abortion when rape or incest is involved. Franks is not big on considering women at all, or the issues women face.

Franks would have us consider only the fetus. His Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, currently being discussed by himself and a lot of mostly men in Washington, would ban abortion after 22 weeks.

Franks was himself unborn when I became pregnant after an incidence of workplace rape. Such occurrences are probably less common today, progress having been made in workplace protection since 1958. But I would be willing to bet they still happen. I wonder if Franks cares. I wonder if he has heard about sexual abuses in the military? Or unreported date rape? They happen; unintended pregnancies happen. I wonder if Franks is able to get his mind around the fact that there is a woman before there is a zygote?

I appreciate Franks’ concern with the unborn; I just want him to consider the already-born. They are real, live women facing difficult, complex issues that no one — NO ONE — could possibly understand but they themselves.

Abortion is a difficult and complex issue. I personally wish it would never be necessary. But for Franks and his fellow ideologues to inch it back toward criminalization, as they would like, is a violation of the basic rights of the women whose existence they prefer to ignore.

General interest

May 16, 2013

Social justice & the American Bar Association

by Fran Johns

In the land of the free, says American Bar Association President Laurel Bellows, there are hundreds of thousands of individuals who are today unfree. They include men, women and children forced into labor or sex for the benefit of others, in a multi-million dollar industry that extends into virtually every corner of the U.S. But if Bellows and the ABA task force formed to combat human trafficking have their way, this will change.

Bellows spoke recently to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, outlining two of the top concerns of her current focus. The other, the cyber-war against individuals, business and governments, is hardly brighter: hackers are at work around the clock seeking to play tricks, steal identities, control the electric grid, spread terror or commit an endless variety of criminal acts…”and our own government says we’re not prepared.”

Laurel Bellows, though, believes “in the power of community, the power to change our world or preserve it – and the rule of law.”

Among the potential solutions for which the ABA is advocating are uniform state laws (“There are two people responsible for prostitution: the woman, and the john”), “Safe Harbor” laws and the use of employment manuals in fighting human trafficking. She also cites the Polaris Project, a national non-profit working to combat human trafficking through, among other things, a national hotline, 1-888-373-7888.

In an allotted 65 minutes including the Q&A, covering the territories of her passion was not an easy task. But Bellows, a diminutive (4’11”) blond whose high energy and crackling intellect quickly erase any just-a-pretty-face image notion her audience might have, tossed in one more for good measure: gender equity. On every level, from manual labor to corporate boardrooms, she says, women are still paid less than their male counterparts.

Bellows’coverage of a depressing array of thorny problems carried at least a few reassuring hints of possible solutions. Maybe, among its nearly 400,000 members, the American Bar Association will find a few problem-solvers; and if so, they will have the support of everyone who’s pulling for social justice in our struggling land of the free.

Trafficking In Persons Report Map 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This writer votes for Caitlin Borgmann and her Reproductive Rights blog for the ABA Journal – even if Laurel Bellows didn’t get time to dig into that one.

General interest

April 13, 2013

Re-emerging into the cyberforest

by Fran Johns

If a blog tree falls in the forest of cyberspace, does it make a noise? Probably not. Cyberspace may not even notice – which is a good thing.

A few months ago this blogger fell into the depths of downsizing purgatory: clearing out, packing up, moving house, selling house, the whole catastrophe. The goal was to move myself and mobility-limited husband out of the four-story Edwardian house he bought in 1973 and into a 1600-square-foot condo. This might have been easier if the good husband had ever disposed of ANYthing in those 40 years. Or if he had not celebrated the move by falling and winding up wheelchair bound two days post move, but here we are. Felled, like a couple of Monterey pines.

That’s the end of my tale of woe, until I start a new book on downsizing. (PS, the actual new book: Perilous Times: An inside look at abortion before – and after – Roe v Wade will be out, from YBK Publishers, on May 20!)

It seems that cyberspace got along just fine without a word from this corner. For all I can tell, even Facebook and Twitter got along without me, a downed blogger not even posting or liking or tweeting into the void.

But back in the more or less real world now there is plenty to be blogging or posting or kvetching about: serious stuff like small victories in end-of-life rights or egregious losses in reproductive rights; ridiculous stuff like women having foot surgery so they can wear fashionable shoes; and utterly incomprehensible stuff like the Winklevoss twins and their bitcoins . Since every one of these is of concern to boomers and beyonders, this blogger now looks forward to resuming occasional comments, a sort of one-tree revival in the cyberforest. Tree-huggers will always be welcome.

General interest

December 10, 2012

Plan B and America’s future

by Fran Johns

Much is being made of a recent recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics that Plan B One Step, or Next Choice, be more widely available to teenagers younger than 17. The recommendation is, specifically, that pediatricians talk to their young patients about the “morning after” pill, and send them home with a prescription. And it is, as New York Times reporter Roni Caryn Rabin writes, “the latest salvo in the contentious debate over access to emergency contraception.”

That debate is part of the broader debate about reproductive rights, abortion (though Plan B prevents conception, and is not an abortifacient) and America’s children.

In a perfect world, the theories of abstinence only and efforts of the National Abstinence Education Association would prevail, girls under 17 would not have unintended pregnancies and all babies would be wanted. But for now, we live in an imperfect world. The better we care for teenagers now and ahead, and for the unwanted children already here, the less imperfect it will be.

Bravo for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

General interest

October 10, 2012

Mothers, daughters & Gloria Steinem

by Fran Johns

The big guns, gender-neutrally speaking, were all out at the recent DCCC Women’s Power Lunch in San Francisco: former (and this crowd hopes future) Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, an assortment of other House members including Congresswomen Barbara Lee and Jackie Speier, honoree Nan Tucker McEvoy and most of everyone who is anyone progressive in Northern California. But MC Gloria Steinem, 78 and proud of it (and looking pretty darned good to this 79-year-old) was still the star.

Steinem spoke with characteristic vigor about women’s rights currently very much in jeopardy, suggesting that many of the country’s economic issues could be solved simply by raising women’s pay to the level of men’s, and that fixing other inequities wouldn’t be a bad idea either. She also homed in on the Republican pledge to overturn both Obamacare and Roe v Wade. If a constitutional amendment were passed declaring the fertilized egg a “person” with full rights, Steinem said, women would not only lose their own rights but face serious endangerment. Such as: a pregnant woman thought to be inclined toward trying to abort could be physically restrained through the remainder of her pregnancy.

In a few poignant moments Steinem spoke to the largely female audience of the special relationships among women — mothers and daughters, sisters, grandchildren. “We are living the lives our mothers coul

d not,” she said, and working to protect the lives of our daughters and granddaughters.

I feel certain that my gentle, righteous mother would not have supported for a moment my being forced to continue an unplanned pregnancy and bring an unwanted child into the world. I hope, partly through my support for women’s rights, my granddaughters will have the right to make their own safe choices.