Quick hit: when states abuse women

Here’s what a woman in Texas now faces if she seeks an abortion.

Under a new law that took effect three weeks ago with the strong backing of Gov. Rick Perry, she first must typically endure an ultrasound probe inserted into her vagina. Then she listens to the audio thumping of the fetal heartbeat and watches the fetus on an ultrasound screen.

She must listen to a doctor explain the body parts and internal organs of the fetus as they’re shown on the monitor. She signs a document saying that she understands all this, and it is placed in her medical files. Finally, she goes home and must wait 24 hours before returning to get the abortion.

“It’s state-sanctioned abuse,” said Dr. Curtis Boyd, a Texas physician who provides abortions. “It borders on a definition of rape. Many states describe rape as putting any object into an orifice against a person’s will. Well, that’s what this is. A woman is coerced to do this, just as I’m coerced.”

[nytimes]

Abortion Rights – Anti-choice counselling: tell your MP to say NO!

This might well be the most important thing I post all year.

PLEASE follow this link and write to your local MP.

We need you to stand up for access to safe, legal abortion and the right to impartial information.

The Department of Health is planning to introduce new counselling requirements for women seeking abortion, which could limit their access to impartial advice and delay access to services.

Based on amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill, the proposals strip abortion providers of the right to provide pre-abortion counselling, and could see anti-choice groups invited to offer pregnancy counselling in their place.

The purpose of these proposals is to limit access to impartial information and deter women from having the procedure. We believe they are damaging, unnecessary and should be rejected.

The amendments could be debated and voted on in the House of Commons as early as 6th or 7th September.

We want to make sure MPs know the facts about what these changes would mean for women and hear the views of the pro-choice majority who support the right to safe, legal abortion in this country.

What I’ve been reading – Indiana abortion laws, same sex marriage, Poppy Project

(I’m going to get back to my story of lapsed Catholicism soon, by the way. That sort of introspection takes time.)

• Recently in the US, the Indiana State Representative (Eric Turner) expressed his concern about an exception that may be written into legislation that makes abortion after 20 weeks legal only in cases in rape or incest. Turner is worried, apparently, that this will result in numerous women “crying rape” in order to gain access to an abortion. My instant reaction to this statement was, “Yeah, he’s right”. But I didn’t think that in the way you think I thought it. There’s a quote from somewhere I can’t now recall that says that women don’t want an abortion in the same way they may want a porsche (a criticism often levelled at us), they want an abortion in the same way a rabbit wants to chew off its own leg to get out of a trap (I paraphrase). It doesn’t and she doesn’t. Abortion is never an easy option, despite what the anti-choicers would have you believe. What it is, more often than not, is a necessary option. So, yes, if a woman knows that the only way she can have a legal and safe abortion is to lie about being raped, she’ll do it. And who could blame her? A quote from the abortiongang on this issue.

We know that women have died to get an abortion. Women self-aborted or had abortions by unlicensed practitioners in back alleys before abortion was legal. Even while legal, but often prohibitively expensive or with numerous hoops to jump through, women have died in unsafe clinics like ‘Dr.’ Kermit Gosnell’s in order to obtain an abortion. We know that a desperate woman will do anything to get an abortion – including risking her own life. Place yourself in the shoes of a woman in Indiana who finds out at 16, 17 or 18 weeks that she is pregnant and she needs an abortion. Maybe I didn’t know, maybe you ignored the signs because you were desperate for it not to be true. Somehow you’ve gotten to 20 weeks and abortion is only legal in 2 circumstances: rape or incest. Now you have a few choices: 1) carry to term, 2) self-abort and risk your life, 3) say you were raped. Option 3 gets you what you need without risking your life. Damn right you are going to do whatever you need to do to get that abortion; damn right you will say you’ve been raped.

I am NOT condoning lying about rape; I’m saying that this is what happens when you remove choices and force women into impossible positions. Turner et al should probably think about that instead of demonising and slut-shaming the women in their charge.

• From amptoons, it seems that most Americans now favour same-sex marriage. Well, that’s some good news at least! There’s a long way to go, of course, and we know that it often takes a long time for the public’s desires to make their way into the statute books, but every progress is good progress. I mean, of all the things in all the world to oppose, why would you oppose same-sex marriage? I have never understood the rationale behind that. (Please don’t tell me it’s because it’s written in the bible and if it’s written in the bible then it can’t ever be refuted. That sort of talk doesn’t wash around these parts.)

• Finally, from the f-word. You may have heard, recently, that the Poppy Project is losing its funding. The Poppy Project is a UK-based charity and does immensely important work for victims of sex trafficking and forced prostitution (yes, that’s right, despite what my idiot colleague says to turn himself on: the vast majority of women do not enter into the sex trade willingly and because it is their preference in a vast array of choices). If the Poppy Project goes, so too will the support for women who really, very badly need it. The f-word worryingly reports, however, that this is just the “tip of the iceberg” and that it is likely that that this is one of the many women-only projects which will lose funding in the coming months.

The decision to award the funding to the Salvation Army troubles me for several reasons but not least because I think this is likely to be just one of many women-only services that will lose funding over the coming years. With the Government tightening its belt – and forcibly tightening the belts of local councils across the country – specialist services are in grave danger. Public sector commissioners are wrestling with the conundrum – do we spend money on services that only one part of society can access, or throw what money we have left at generic services that are open to all? This clearly doesn’t just pose a risk to women-only services but also to services targeted at Black and Minority Ethnic communities and other equality groups.

In a time when sex trafficking is increasing (and that’s another iceberg whose tip is all we know yet), we can’t afford to lose services such as these. One does wonder how far it’s going to go…

What I’ve been reading – adoption discrimination, higher education fees, Nadine Dorries, and too much Kate

• I was shocked this morning to hear a report on Radio 4 that there is something of an “adoption apartheid” in Britain (reported by thetimes). White children in care are three times more likely to be adopted than black children, and the waiting time for initial decisions about black children is up to six months longer than it is for white children. Delays and discrimination are apparent at every stage of the adoption system, the report says. One would think that as the little brown babies are all the rage nowadays in some circles, young black children would not be discriminated against in this country, but perhaps the little brown babies are only desirable (read: fashionable) if they’re born to mothers more than 1000 miles away. The Times is subscription only these days, of course, but I’m sure there will be several other reports about this story throughout the day.

• How is this going to work? Nearly two-thirds of universities in England want to charge the highest fee available (£9,000) for all of their courses (BBC). Now, far be it from me to pass judgement (ahem!) but I can think of about four institutions in this country who would get away with charging nine grand a year, and the rest can sing for their supper. The government (in its infinite wisdom) initially stated that universities could charge £9,000 only in exceptional circumstances so I have no idea how two-thirds of England’s universities are going to argue that one. But there’s a larger and more important issue at stake here. If it wasn’t already blindingly obvious, higher education has, once again, become the preserve of the elite in England. There is lots of tokenistic chatter about continuing to widen participation and ensuring the less-well-off can still afford higher education, but at £9,000 a pop, we all know how ridiculous that is. The current social mobility rhetoric of David Willets et al is now bordering on offensive.

• Libby Brooks’ Guardian piece – beware the anti-abortionists’ tiny steps towards reform – discusses worrying progress being made by the anti-abortion movement in the UK (which has utilised some of the same movement’s tactics from the US).

The modest group of protesters standing vigil outside the office of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service may not initially appear to embody the alarming infiltration of US anti-choice tacticians into the rather less noxious abortion debate on this side of the Atlantic. But the presence of 40 Days for Life, a Texas-based, church-funded anti-abortion campaign, in London’s Bedford Square over Lent is a reminder that, with a coalition led by the traditionally choice-sceptic Conservatives, peddling a localism agenda that favours the involvement of voluntary, charitable and religious organisations, the concomitant dangers for British women may be more real than they seem.

These campaigns are being helped along, of course, by the now notorious Conservative MP Nadine Dorries who appears to be prepared to say and do anything to get abortion restricted in this country. It’s a pity (for her) that a recent report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists refutes many of Dorries’ favourite lies which claim that abortion always negatively affects mental health. It might not be enough to get her to be quiet but it might be a start.

In other “news”, while looking down my Comment is Free RSS on google reader, I must have noted at least ten pieces about Kate Middelton. Enough already! I don’t care. Who does care?! Seriously!

Fear dictates Ireland’s abortion policy

I’m very much behind on my posts and have too many posts sitting in drafts waiting to be finished or, at the very least, cobbled together.

This piece which was recently published in the Guardian resonates greatly with me. As a pro-choice and pro-abortion women who has spent most of her life so far living in Ireland, I know that there is such a climate of fear around abortion there that pro-choice and pro-abortion women (and men) are often frightened to speak their mind about abortion. The anti-abortionists/ anti-choicers in Ireland are very powerful, and they of course have the full backing of the Catholic Church and, by extension, the Government and legal system. Nothing changes in Ireland unless the Church says it can change. But it’s more than just taboo; it’s an unspoken and pervasive acceptance that it is very unlikely that abortion will ever be discussed rationally, fairly and purposefully in Ireland in our lifetimes. The anti-choice movement has become so prominent there that it has become almost impossible to stand up for abortion rights.

It has always taken guts to stand up for abortion rights in Ireland, north and south of the border. Straight off, you’re likely to be hit by a slew of strident invective from the pro-life lobby, trailing pictures of aborted foetuses in their wake, and nameless bloggers will fall over each other to brand you a baby-murderer. Sure enough, the three women trying to overturn the Irish abortion ban in the European court of human rights were immediately accused on anti-abortion sites of having “travelled abroad to have their children killed”. … Why expose yourself directly to such hatred? Such nasty outbursts could be dismissed as so much ridiculous hysteria, were it not for the fact that the anti-abortion lobby, with its scare tactics, “prayer vigils” and wild accusations, has effectively been allowed to define the situation in Ireland, shifting the entire discourse on to moral grounds.

It’s not just the anti-choice movement which suppresses debate, however; it is the Church itself. I have had numerous discussions about abortion (see also, sex before marriage, divorce, homosexuality, race, women’s rights) with the more sanctimonious members of my family and they were quite enough to make me wary of who I get into discussions with in Ireland. In short, Catholicism is allowed to rule all of these debates, and the Catholic Church is allowed to stipulate who discusses what  and where in the public domain. If you agree with the Church, you have free reign to be as outspoken as you like; if you do not, you will shut up. And the religious right is always secure in the knowledge that nothing it has this backing from the Church.

But the real issue here is not necessarily the debate, or the lack it it; it’s about the women who are not still not allowed to make a choice about abortion in Ireland. And these women, as the piece states, continue to travel in their thousands every year to England to abort. If there’s one thing we know about abortion, it’s that women will access it – legally or illegally – and will travel to wherever it is available, despite the variety of costs. It is also not news that abortion is often a difficult, emotional, and traumatic experience. Forcing women (many of them very young) to travel many miles to an unknown place to abort is not only wrong but completely reprehensible and it’s about time the Government of Ireland had the courage to stand up to the Church for the sake of its electorate.

So the situation in Ireland remains in stasis. Those who are pro-choice continue to be unable to air their views in public, those who are anti-choice continue to bully and harass those with whom they disagree, abortion is still illegal, choice is not available, and women continue to lose.