Adventures in Bodily Autonomy, ed. Raven Belasco

 

 I'm pleased to announce the release, in both print and e-book editions of Adventures in Bodily Autonomy, an anthology of science fiction, fantasy and horror stories edited by Raven Belasco. It's available now from Aqueduct Press at  http://aqueductpress.com/.

 

The fourteen tales in Adventures in Bodily Autonomy flow across alternate universes and through space and time to consider the issues of reproductive justice through a fresh perspectives. There is an adventure here for everyone.

 

An astronaut on her way to Mars discovers she’s pregnant — can she keep her baby? Bee-like entities try to force a human to be their queen. In 1930s Philly, a vampire offers a novel form of birth control. From a ghost, lessons learned too late. Women who cannot find a comfortable fit in their mythic realities. Future worlds where reproductive choices are different, but individual choice and external battles for that choice are just as real. 

 On October 16, 1916, in Brooklyn, New York, Margaret Sanger opened the country’s first birth control clinic. Just nine days later police shut down the clinic, and Sanger served 30 days in prison.

For over 50 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels — including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and postpartum care, and paid family leave—for every body. 

 Authors include Kathleen Alcalá ~ Elizabeth Bear ~ Raven Belasco ~ Tara Campbell ~ Anya De Niro ~ Jaymee Goh ~ Cynthia Gralla ~ K Ibura ~ Ellen Klages ~ Annalee Newitz ~ Nisi Shawl ~ Sonya Taaffe ~ Cecilia Tan ~ Helena María Viramontes

One hundred percent of the royalties from sales of Adventures in Bodily Autonomy are being donated to Reproductive Freedom for All to help them continue their vital fight for women’s bodily autonomy and basic human rights.

Advance Praise

“So satisfying to read a volume of new speculative fiction stories centered on women’s experience, women’s lives, women’s choices! You’ll find a pleasurable variety here: hard sf, fantasy, ghosts, vampires, horror, sweet lyricism and steel- edged noir — stories from well-known names, and stories from writers you've never encountered before. I guarantee that at least one story in this volume will make you punch the air in triumph, and another will work its way into your dreams, and not let go.”
 ——Elizabeth Lynn, World Fantasy Award Winner

“I’m absolutely blown away. Featuring so many authors who I love, this is a stunning anthology with many different approaches to the subject of bodily autonomy. Readers are going to be captivated by its range and variety. This anthology will be a breath of fresh air in the ongoing fight for the right of women to control and make decisions about their own bodies.”
 —Chinelo Onwualu

Adventures in Bodily Autonomy is a fresh and bold collection. In our current political climate, these stories and imaginings are desperately needed.
 —Myriam Gurba, author of Mean and Painting Their Portraits in Winter

Reviews

For this distinctive anthology, the royalties from which will be donated to NARAL Pro-Choice America, Belasco (Blood Ex Libris) brings together 14 thoughtful speculative tales centered on issues of reproductive freedom and female agency. The opener, Nisi Shawl’s stirring “Queen of Dirt,” about a Black teen at summer camp, explores racial bias and questions about what makes a family, demonstrating that the anthology has more on its mind than a medical procedure....Tones vary throughout: some stories are bleak, presenting hard choices or pyrrhic victories, but others sound more hopeful notes. These timely tales both draw readers in and have the potential to advance important conversations.   (Read the whole review)   —Publishers Weekly, July 2023

 Is there anything scarier this Halloween than the loss of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy? (Okay, this may be only one of the scariest things happening right now, but…) Raven Belasco has assembled this inspiring collection....So get yours and one for each of your friends!--Ms. Magazine, October 2023

Coming Soon: Adventures in Bodily Autonomy

 

I'm pleased to announce that Aqueduct Press will be publishing an anthology of fiction, Adventures in Bodily Autonomy, edited by Raven Belasco, later this year, in support of abortion rights. 

  The fourteen tales in Adventures in Bodily Autonomy flow across alternate universes and through space and time to consider the issues of reproductive justice through fresh perspectives. There is an adventure here for everyone.

An astronaut on her way to Mars discovers she’s pregnant — can she keep her baby? Bee-like entities try to force a human to be their queen. In1930s Philly, a vampire offers a novel form of birth control. From a ghost, lessons learned too late. Women who cannot find a comfortable fit in their mythic realities. Future worlds where reproductive choices are different, but individual choice and external battles for that choice are just as real. 

Adventures in Bodily Autonomy will be released on October 16th, 2023, a date important in the history of women’s healthcare rights. On October 16, 1916, in Brooklyn, New York, Margaret Sanger opened the country’s first birth control clinic. Just nine days later police shut down the clinic, and Sanger served 30 days in prison.

For over 50 years, NARAL Pro-Choice America has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels — including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and postpartum care, and paid family leave—for every body. 

 Join the authors in supporting
NARAL Pro-Choice America
Kathleen Alcalá ~ Elizabeth Bear ~ Raven Belasco
Tara Campbell ~ Anya De Niro ~ Jaymee Goh
Cynthia Gralla ~ K Ibura ~ Ellen Klages
Annalee Newitz ~ Nisi Shawl ~ Sonya Taaffe
Cecilia Tan ~ Helena María Viramontes
~ ~ ~

One hundred percent of the royalties of Adventures in Bodily Autonomy are being donated to NARAL Pro-Choice America to help them continue their vital fight for women’s bodily autonomy and basic human rights.

The Monday after

Okay, we've gotten out into the streets in numbers. We did that to lift our spirits, show us we're not alone, and to gird our loins. More than one journalist who's worked in Russia has advised USians that one of the most effective weapons in the autocrat's arsenal is misdirection. Senior accomplices in this administration's dissemination of disinformation and misdirection, Spicer and Conway have been loudly proclaiming "alternative facts" that at least half of the US public already know are lies. In the meantime, the White House has been busy issuing executive orders that need our attention. Today, "surrounded by other white men," as the Huffington Post puts it, "President Donald Trump signed an anti-abortion executive order that has far-reaching consequences for women's reproductive health access world-wide." If you're old enough, you'll probably remember the despicable gag order that the Reagan Administration first initiated; this order forbids anyone at an NGO receiving grants from the federal government from even mentioning abortion to the women it serves. (Needless to say, it's not a matter of federal money actually paying for abortions.) The PotUS also signed an order freezing federal hiring. And one of the very first orders he signed, on Saturday, halted a planned rate cut for government-backed mortgage insurance.  

Of course, other news is of interest, too: Today, a group of constitutional-law professors filed suit against the PotUS on the grounds that he is in violation of a the Foreign Emoluments Clause, a provision in the US Constitution. I'm feeling doubtful that this suit will get very far, since the professors will probably not be granted standing, and if they are, will face a barrage of objections to anything but the narrowest interpretations of the clause brought by the army of attorneys who've long been living handsomely off their employer's highly litigious habits. But I'm glad they did. This PotUS has more conflicts of interest than an ordinary mortal could keep track of--besides being the only president in recent history to refuse to make his tax returns public.

In the meantime, allow me to point you to three excellent pieces to feed our spirits. First, The Guardian has printed a transcript of the speech Angela Davis gave in DC on Saturday. She begins, "At a challenging moment in our history, let us remind ourselves that we the hundreds of thousands, the millions of women, trans people, men and youth who are here at the Women’s March, we represent the powerful forces of change that are determined to prevent the dying cultures of racism, hetero-patriarchy from rising again..." Read the rest here.

Second, let me point you to Mistinguette Smith's "Some Notes on Resistance." She begins:

Three days ago, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Within hours, he delivered an ominous, nationalist speech and presided over a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue; signed a vague Executive Order to reduce the costs of the Obamacare to insurance and drug companies; and removed all references from the White House web page about health care, LGBT equality and civil rights. The next day, in response, almost three million people across the globe — half a million of them descending upon Washington D.C. — demonstrated for women’s freedom, self-determination and human rights. Among the largest protests in US history, long time feminist activists and women new to organizing and street protest unleashed their voices and power in a collective vow to resist.But today is Monday. Many of us are putting away our pink pussyhats, wondering what we can do to prevent settling back into business as usual. 

And finally, Tananarive Due gives us this powerful essay: "Surviving President Tr*mp: Lessons from the 1960s & Octavia E. Butler." She begins:

In the late Octavia E. Butler’s near-future novel Parable of the Sower, a teenage girl,  Lauren Olamina, is the only person in her thinly protected community who sees how fragile their way of life is, how susceptible to destruction—and no one will listen until it’s too late.

In a way, my late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, who braved jail and teargas in the 1960s, was like Lauren Olamina: warning of dire consequences if communities and organizations didn’t work to stop the threats of Jim Crow, segregation and voting restrictions. My mother and father, “Freedom Lawyer” John Due, were willing to die for a better future for their children. My mother forever warned of efforts to “turn back the clock.”

Well, the clock has turned. Now another Really Bad Time has come. It’s the time Butler warned us about, when even the fascistic presidential candidate in her novel Parable of the Talents (the second Parable novel) used the phrase “Make America Great Again.”

Karen Joy Fowler's The Science of Herself

Have you read Karen Joy Fowler's The Science of Herself, a new volume in PM Press's Outspoken Authors series? The publication date is 2013, but I only recently read it. This series, if you don't know of it, includes, among other slim volumes the size of Conversation Pieces, Nalo Hopkinson's Report from Planet Midnight and Ursula K. Le Guin's The Wild Girls. The Science of Herself contains a brand new story, "The Science of Herself," two reprinted stories (the searing "The Pelican Bar" and "The Further Adventures of the Invisible Man"), "More Exuberant Than Is Strictly Tasteful," a characteristically snappy interview conducted by Terry Bisson, and "The Motherhood Statement," an essay combining fire and irony.

By the time I finished reading the second page of "The Science of Herself," which opens the volume, I'd fallen hard for it. The seaside village of Lyme Regis in the first decades of the nineteenth century? How could any voracious reader not think first of Anne Elliot watching Captain Wentworth as he fails to catch Louisa Musgrove when she willfully throws herself off the stairs, in Jane Austen's last novel, Persuasion? Fowler takes Anne Elliot's visit to Lyme Regis as her point of departure, leading to imagining Austen herself walking that beach and not seeing (yes, yes , not seeing) a young girl who was often to be found on that beach. "Strangely dressed, lower class, odd in affect, and desperately poor, she was not really the kind of girl who wanders into an Austen novel." (2) But then Fowler quickly goes on to note that Austen's visit to Lyme Regis had actually been made to see this girl's father, Richard Anning, a cabinetmaker. The connection between the unnoticed young girl and Jane Austen, though virtually invisible to the casual eye, is actual.

Anning, besides being a cabinetmaker, was also a fossil hunter; more interestingly, his daughter Mary proved to be not only a more redoubtable fossil hunter than he, the person who recovered the first complete ichthysaurus ever to be found, but also a sharp paleontologist whose contributions to the field were only belatedly awarded public acknowledgment when the British Royal Society named her on their list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science. "The Science of Herself" tells a story about Mary Anning's life that "wouldn't have made sense [in Austen's novel] with her bits of gothic history, her lightning, her science, her creatures. She wouldn't make sense in any story until the story changed." (25)

 I've long been interested in the problem-- one that Fowler has been mining for some time-- of stories that don't fit "the story" that is the template for how stories are told. It's a problem faced by writers wishing to write stories that don't fit the limits or language or assumptions of the current conventions, and a problem for readers longing for such stories and virtually unable to find them anywhere (and so often resort to ingenious methods for reading what is there slant). That template is, fortunately, always shifting. "The Science of Herself" is as much an exploration of how the stories that could be told about Mary during her lifetime were constrained and limited--how her life overflowed those constraints. The form Fowler uses to tell the story is what? It's prose, certainly. But is it fiction or nonfiction?

I'm particularly interested in the question of the form Fowler uses to tell Mary Anning's story because I've been sporadically working on a story about Emilie, the Marquise du Chatelet, for years now, struggling against the form it seems determined to take. The only form in which I seem able to cast the story of Emilie bears no resemblance to the forms in which stories about historical women are usually told. And I've been fighting that form because it resembles the form taken by "The Science of Herself," aware as I am that many readers would reject it as not really fiction (much less science fiction). I don't want to write an essay about Emilie. I want to imagine and explore aspects of her life as a woman of science in the same way in which I imagine and explore aspects of the lives of the characters I invent. In this sense, "The Science of Herself" is not an essay. Or is it? I'm thrilled that Fowler put this story out there, defying the demands that the writer choose one or the other. I think it will embolden me to finish the story. And I will say, for myself, that I'm increasingly uncertain about whether any clear distinctions can be drawn in every case between fiction and nonfiction. Obviously, some fictions are clearly, unequivocally fictional. But as someone trained in history, I've long been aware that because history is composed of narratives, it must always partake of the uncertainties (and distortions) of representation and won't ever be certain. Though based on "facts," imagination is the glue that makes those facts meaningful. In the end, we come down to story, and what stories can be told under this or that set of circumstances.

"The Science of Herself" plus "The Pelican Bar" alone would make this a bold book for a volume so slim, but "The Motherhood Statement" pushes it into the red zone. The book's second entry, "The Motherhood Statement," takes as its point of departure "The Motherhood Statement" in the Turkey City Lexicon (which Fowler describes as "a primer for science fiction workshops." "Motherhood" in this statement, like "apple pie," exemplifies "conventional social and humanistic pieties." Fowler, as anyone familiar with her work knows, is all about challenging comfortable conventions and "pieties."In principle, she's in agreement with the statement. But.

It's the specifics that give me pause. Apple pie, okay, fine, whatever. But motherhood? Nothing, absolutely nothing, appears to me more contested in our political and social and private lives than motherhood. Any woman who has ever had children can tell you it is no picnic of affirmation. Any woman who has not had children can tell you that that, too, is a controversial place to be. Neither is much admired. (28)

Fowler reminds us of something most science fiction (particularly that written by men) has not, until very recently, taken note of: "Motherhood is a concept that changes from culture to culture and over time. Sometimes it's set in opposition to mothering--motherhood, in this schematic, is the sacred duty of women, an artificial construct which underlies the whole system of patriarchy."(28)

Of course tarring "motherhood" with the brush of conventional social pieties has been a longstanding woman-bashing tradition for fiction written by US men in the twentieth century. It was a part of a concerted (highly successful) program for ejecting fiction by women from the upper echelons of literature in the US.* Fowler doesn't go into that, though, but focuses more closely on attitudes toward women vis-a-vis childraising, before paying tribute to the explorations made by feminist sf in the 1970s and then concluding with attending to the ferocious, on-going twenty-first-century attack on women's reproductive rights and how the free exercise of such rights has become a story many people and venues approach (if at all) with timidity at best and repulsion and censorship at worst. "I can remember no other time in which the attacks on women's freedom have been so widespread, so sustained, and so successful," Fowler writes. "Or half so scary... An argument that begins by positing women valuable only as mothers will end by suggesting that, even as mothers, women are not valuable at all." (32-33)  

Fowler ends the essay by returning to "The Motherhood Statement": "The easy assumption that motherhood constitutes some easy assumption is neither accurate nor serving us well. " (34)

She has a lot of good lines in her interview, but I'll offer you one here: "I believe that the learning in workshops happens to the critiquer not the critiqued." (72) Now go read this sharp little book yourself, if you haven't already.
_______________
*See, for instance, Paul Lauter, "Race and Gender in the Shaping of the American Literary Canon: A Case Study from the Twenties" (Feminist Studies 9,3 Fall 1983).

More theater of the absurd--

-- this time in Texas. Due to the success of Wendy Davis's filibuster of legislation that would have virtually ended legal abortion in Texas, the governor felt the need to call a special session of the legislature to push it through. According to Katherine Haenschen,, who is liveblogging the session, one "Senator Bob Deuell made the charming remark that low-income abortion seekers are "unsophisticated patients" who need the legislature's help. Yes, Senator Deuell actually said that poor and less-educated women need the legislature to make decisions for them." So far the Democrats opposing the bill have been focusing on procedural issues.

But what has captured the most attention for the national audience is that women wanting to watch the session from the gallery are being searched for tampons and sanitary napkins, which when found are being confiscated-- unlike, say, guns, which are legally allowed in the chamber. Progress Texas has duly produced this graphic (which is flashing madly across Facebook, thanks partly to the Daily Kos, and partly to women tired of such now-commonplace ironies):

Vaginagate

Vagina what? Yeah, vaginagate. If someone had told me that legislators in Oklahoma, Arizona, or even Texas had banned (women) representatives from using the word "vagina" when talking about legislation determined to control that anatomical organ, I wouldn't have first thought that the story was a hoax. (Yeah, you guessed it, once again I'm reporting a piece of ideologically-driven insane political behavior that sounds like something out of a dystopian sf novel.) But no. This is Michigan behavior. (You know, Michigan, where the governor is dismantling elected municipal governments and replacing them with supposedly non-governmental corporate authority whose only interest is making as big a profit as possible without respect to public interest.) Here's the story, in case you haven't already heard it:

Two female US politicians were banned from addressing the Michigan house of representatives after one used the word "vagina" and the other tried to argue for regulating vasectomies during a debate over a controversial anti-abortion bill.
The house bill, which was passed by 70 votes to 39, will introduce new rules and insurance requirements for abortion providers, make it an offence to force a woman to have an abortion, and regulate the disposal of foetal remains.

It is part of a package of proposed legislation that has been described by critics as one of the most hardline recent attempts at passing anti-abortion legislation in the US.
Lisa Brown – the Democratic state representative for West Bloomfield in Michigan – found herself gagged after house Republicans took exception to her language.

Brown, who has three children, said that the bill's proposals ran contrary to her Jewish beliefs. But it was the manner in which how she concluded her speech: on Wednesday that infuriated Republicans.

"Mr Speaker, I'm flattered that you're all so interested in my vagina, but 'no' means 'no,'" she said.

Her use of the word "vagina" led house Republicans to prohibit her from speaking on school employee retirement bill.

Brown then called a press conference and demanded: "If I can't say the word vagina, why are we legislating [on] vaginas?" she asked. "What language should I use?" If you think this is a fluke, think again. Another woman legislator was banned from speaking, too:

Barb Byrum, the a fellow Democratic state representative for Onondaga, also caused a disturbance on the floor of the house after Republicans refused to allow her to introduce an amendment to the bill that would ban men having vasectomies unless the procedure was needed to save their lives – a key clause of the anti-abortion bill. She was ruled out of order after protesting that she had not been allowed to speak on her proposal. "If we truly want to make sure children are born, we would regulate vasectomies," Byrum told reporters.

On Thursday, Ari Adler, a spokesman for the Republican speaker of the house, said Brown and Byrum would not be allowed to speak on the floor of the house that day because of their conduct on Wednesday. Their "comments and actions", he said, had "failed to maintain the decorum of the house of representatives".

However, both women hit back at house Republicans, accusing them of censorship and misogyny. "Both Representative Byrum and I were gavelled down without cause yesterday while voicing our opposition to the Republican's war on women here in Michigan," Brown told the Detroit Free Press. "Regardless of their reasoning, this is a violation of my First Amendment rights and directly impedes my ability to serve the people who elected me into office." Byrum said she had been ignored and prevented from speaking on an amendment that would hold men and women to the same reproductive standards.

This tactic of insisting that officious governmental control of deeply personal decisions and choices be applied in some way (though usually much more mildly) to men whenever it is applied to women-- a tactic we're seeing in state legislatures more and more these days-- is, in my opinion, brilliant. It demonstrates graphically just what the politics of such legislation is about. Look! they are saying. Women, like men, have an interest in reproductive freedom! If you're going to take this prerogative away from women, then you're also going to have to take it away from men. Is that what you really want?

And that linkage is just what the Republicans don't want to allow into the public sphere (much less the public record). You can tell just how desperate these people are to keep such a comparison out of people's minds. (After all, the propaganda has always been about appealing to people's emotional identification with embryos and fetuses rather than with the women who must risk their lives and human potential to gestate, bear, and raise them.) It is no surprise that banning speech that illuminates just how vicious these attacks on women are has become a desperate strategy for maintaining the momentum of the relentless Republican campaign to dehumanize women. It's a fitting irony that controlling who can talk about women's vaginas and uteri is both tactical as well as perfectly symbolic of the Republicans' campaign as a whole.

Mind-bending ontology

My brain is tying itself up in knots trying to grok how "life" can "begin" two week before conception. The certifiably insane legislators and governor of the fine state of Arizona have passed and signed into law new, draconian, women-hating legislation that among other things declares that pregnancy does indeed "begin" two weeks before conception. Considering that pregnancy often results from a spontaneous, unplanned union of zygotes, a union that cannot be predicted by anyone (human, anyway), and that determining when pregnancy begins is itself a sketchy business even for obstetricians, I'm having a heck of a time trying to imagine the ontological basis of such a law. When I mentioned to Tom that the lunatic governor had just signed this law, he scoffed at me and said that I'd been taken in by a hoax. I hadn't-- though I do admit that I keep doubting much of the news I read about what governments (especially in the US) are up to, and having to double-check. (As I did with this.) This law is known as as the "egg drop"bill. It bans all abortions after 20 weeks-- which is to say, in actuality, 18 weeks (i.e., 20 minus the two before conception). Here's TucsonCitizen.com:

Planned Parenthood of Arizona lobbyist Michelle Steinberg called the law the country’s “most extreme piece of anti-abortion legislation.”

She said the law defines pregnancy in a way that bans abortion two weeks before the other seven states with similar laws, because it calculates gestational age starting with the first day of the last menstrual period rather than the date of conception.

During the hearings on the bill, doctors said many women don’t discover their fetus has a severe or life-threatening problem until an ultrasound at about the 20th week. The doctors — and several women who had faced this issue — testified that this law would arbitrarily cut off the right for these women to have an abortion.

“My heart goes out to the families that will be impacted,” Steinberg said. “Women are being forced to carry children that they know will end up dying within hours of birth.”

Debate on the bill was emotional.

Rep. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, who sponsored the bill, said the goal was to protect both the health of women and that of the fetus.

“The state has a compelling interest to protect women from the serious health and safety risks of abortion,” Yee said.

Brewer in a news release said the new law is consistent with her support of anti-abortion measures.

“Knowing that abortions become riskier the later they are performed in pregnancy, it only makes sense to prohibit these procedures past twenty weeks,” Brewer said in her release.

Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Tucson, said the new law was “a horrible thing to do to women.”

“Once again, (Brewer) and the Republicans in the Legislature have decided that they know better than women,” she said. “They are again saying that women are incapable of making those decisions.”

I'd say that the law "is consistent" with Brewer's history of supporting hateful, narrow-minded, and idiotic legislation designed to render the state a miserable place to live for the majority of its population. A new question: will medical textbooks need to be rewritten now? I fully expect a whole slew of insane legislatures to follow Arizona's lead. State legislatures, as the Texas legislature has brilliantly demonstrated, are perfectly capable of altering "facts." I can hardly wait to see what the next whacko idea coming out of the state will be now that they've broken the Ontology Barrier.

Resistance

Here's a brief follow-up to my post of the other day, Institutionalizing cruelty and ignorance, noting currents of resistance. John Scalzi has posted a physician's manifesto of outrage at the very idea of being required to use a medical procedure for strictly ideological purposes:

I do not care what your personal politics are. I think we can all agree that my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins.

I do not feel that it is reactionary or even inaccurate to describe an unwanted, non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound as “rape”. If I insert ANY object into ANY orifice without informed consent, it is rape. And coercion of any kind negates consent, informed or otherwise.

This physician (who is known to Scalzi personally but prefers to remain anonymous) advocates physician civil disobedience.  

Read the entire manifesto here. (It is short and powerful.)

Abby Zimet, at Common Dreams, notes another form of resistance:

With Virginia Republican - and avid supporter of the state's personhood and ultrasound bills - Ryan McDougle so psyched to get all up into the lady parts of his constituents, they generously obliged him by taking to his Facebook page to offer detailed reports on their menstrual cycles, IUDs and vaginal discharge. His office tried to delete them; too late.

Zimet offers a screen capture of two examples.

Institutionalizing cruelty and ignorance

In the US, laws that institutionalize cruelty are nothing new. Such laws not only underwrite suffering and injustice to be administered by the state, but also inure us to suffering and injustice, normalizing and justifying suffering and injustice. Lately, though, on both the federal and the state level, mostly republican law-makers have launched wave upon wave of laws or proposals for laws that institutionalize cruelty against women and the parts of their lives that distinguish them from men.

Thus, in Georgia, a bill has been proposed that would forbid doctors to remove dead fetuses from women's bodies, on the presumption that if cattle have to suffer through labor to abort dead offspring, then women should too. Therefore, the reasoning of those who have proposed this legislation goes, women carrying a dead fetus ought to wait until it is "naturally" expelled from her body. (And too bad if she dies before that happens: such deaths are, of course "natural." Which suggests it's only a matter of time before we start getting legislation requiring women to give birth out in a field, on their own...) The only purpose such a law could serve is to institutionalize cruelty and, possibly, to make it clear to women that in the state's eyes, they are not full human beings entitled to human dignity.

In several states, law-makers are quite taken with forcing women who want early abortions to undergo the painful, expensive, purely gratuitous procedure of a transvaginal probe. The point, as a recent (widely censored) Doonesbury strip points out, is to shame the woman who seeks an abortion. The governor of Pennsylvania, approving of this, advises women undergoing this to "just close their eyes."

In Texas, In order to oust Planned Parenthood from the Women's Health Program (40% of which is administered by Planned Parenthood), the governor is giving up a $35 million federal grant, which means that Texas's Women's Health Program will be dismantled (since the state of Texas would never dream of providing healthcare themselves to poor women). The governor's decision will likely cut off 130,000 women from basic health care they can't afford to get elsewhere.

In Arizona, it looks as though the Arizona legislature is not only going to make contraception coverage in employee insurance plans up to the employer to determine, but also make the very use of contraception a valid reason for firing an employee. Here's today's Arizona Republic:

Do you have birth control pills in your purse or a condom in your wallet?

Careful, that might get you fired.

The Republicans who control the Arizona Legislature are pushing through a bill that would make it OK for both religious and secular employers to deny health-care coverage for contraception if the employers object for moral or religious reasons.

But apparently that's not all.

HB 2625 in its current version also eliminates the following protection for employees:

"A religious employer shall not discriminate against an employee who independently chooses to obtain insurance coverage or prescriptions for contraceptives from another source."

That language was in the law, passed in Arizona in 2002, that allowed religious employers to opt out of providing contraception services to their workers. In the most recent version of HB 2625, the provision outlawing discrimination is removed.

What does that mean?

According to ACLU of Arizona Public Policy Director Anjali Abraham, it means that an employer may be able to discriminate against an employee if he finds out that she (or he?) is using contraception.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2012/03/15/20120315montini0316-should-birth-control-firing-offense.html#ixzz1pVMotvZO

This last week, the US Senate has been in an uproar over the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The Seattle P-I reports:

The pending legislation would provide money to local law enforcement, particularly for dealing with violence on Indian reservations and in rural areas. It would increase legal assistance to victims. It would extend protection to cases involving domestic violence between same-sex couples.

Republicans are uneasy with the bill, but equally uneasy about their image among American women.

They recently championed an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, that would given businesses, on grounds of moral objections, sweeping power to deny contraception coverage in health insurance to women employees.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voted for the Blunt amendment, only to hear blunt criticism from Alaska women on a trip home. She shared the experience at a Senate Republican Caucus luncheon earlier this week.

Discussing the Violence Against Women Act, Sen. Blunt told the Times: “Obviously you want to be for the title.”

Longtime conservative crusader Phyllis Schlafly has charged that the law has been “used to fill feminist coffers” and that its provisions promote “divorce, breakup of marriage and hatred of men.”

Cantwell said American women are asking different questions, adding:

“They want to know how something that has been so bipartisan in the past . . . that’s usually passed with great bipartisan support, may not meet its deadline for being reauthorized.”

Other laws are additionally designed to force doctors to lie to their patients (thus institutionalizing ignorance, as well):

New Hampshire Bill Would Force Docs To Lie About Abortion, Breast Cancer Link

In New Hampshire, a Tea Party-happy House of Representatives has passed a bill that would require doctors to tell women that abortion causes breast cancer—despite the fact that it’s untrue.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Jeanine Notter, states that “it is scientifically undisputed that full-term pregnancy reduces a woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer” and “women facing an abortion decision have a right to know that such medical data exists.” Therefore, doctors must inform pregnant women that “there is a direct link between abortion and breast cancer.”

But no link between abortion and breast cancer has been proven. The consensus in the scientific community, in fact, is that abortion does not cause breast cancer—a statement supported by the World Health Organization, the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

One reason some previous studies may have showed a link is because the more periods a woman has over a lifetime, the greater her breast cancer risk, crudely. A woman who has 5 children—thus 5 pregnancies, and 5 long stretches with no menstruation—has a lower lifetime risk of breast cancer than a similar woman who has no children. A woman who has an abortion could have a higher lifetime chance of developing breast cancer relative to a woman who has been pregnant—assuming, of course, she never has or will have children.

Full-term pregnancy does reduce a woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer. Which does not mean that abortion, per se, causes it.

Someone should explain this to Notter. According to the Huffington Post, she has said in the past that she believes abortion and birth control pills cause spaces in breast duct tissue to allow for the growth of cancer cells. She also believes birth control pills can cause prostate cancer in the male offspring of women who’ve taken them.

Notter’s bill would also institute a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions, and require doctors provide a series of fetal pictures taken at two-week intervals, a list of agencies that assist women during pregnancy and childbirth, material on paternal support obligations and a presentation on the possible medical side effects of abortion. Another bill that passed the N.H. house Wednesday would change the timing for judges to decide whether a minor can have an abortion without parental notification. The fates of both bills in the state Senate are uncertain.

Some states, while not ordering doctors to lie, are permitting them to do so. Oklahoma is one of those places:

In Oklahoma, Doctors can legally lie to you because of their personal beliefs. And, make no mistake, they will be lying. When I (and every other mother I know) was pregnant the one question I asked at every OB-GYN appointment was, “Is everything okay with the baby?” I can’t imagine a doctor telling me anything but the truth. I can’t imagine not being prepared for every parents’ worst nightmare.

But it seems that informing women in Oklahoma is situational.

The Oklahoma Legislature voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to override vetoes of two highly restrictive abortion measures, one making it a law that women undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus before having an abortion.

Amazing. Angry Mouse sums it up best…

In other words, if you’re a woman in Oklahoma seeking a legal medical procedure, you will first be forced to have a completely unnecessary procedure so the doctor can show and describe to you your beautiful, healthy little bundle of joy.

This is Oklahoman for “informed consent.”

But if that bundle of joy isn’t so healthy? Tough shit. The doctor doesn’t have to say a word.

At this rate maybe Oklahoma doctors can start issuing sugar pills in place of birth control pills without telling the patient.

Of course, the tactic of forbidding doctors to give their patients the information they need is not directly only against women. Pennsylvania just passed a damnable law directed at its entire population:

A new Pennsylvania law endangers public health by forbidding health care professionals from sharing information they learn about certain chemicals and procedures used in high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. The procedure is commonly known as fracking.

...

about 650 of the 750 chemicals used in fracking operations are known carcinogens, according to a report filed with the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2011. Fluids used in fracking include those that are “potentially hazardous,” including volatile organic compounds, according to Christopher Portier, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, a part of the federal Centers for Disease Control. In an email to the Associated Press in January 2012, Portier noted that waste water, in addition to bring up several elements, may be radioactive. Fracking is also believed to have been the cause of hundreds of small earthquakes in Ohio and other states.

The law, an amendment to Title 52 (Oil and Gas) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, requires that companies provide to a state-maintained registry the names of chemicals and gases used in fracking. Physicians and others who work with citizen health issues may request specific information, but the company doesn’t have to provide that information if it claims it is a trade secret or proprietary information, nor does it have to reveal how the chemicals and gases used in fracking interact with natural compounds. If a company does release information about what is used, health care professionals are bound by a non-disclosure agreement that not only forbids them from warning the community of water and air pollution that may be caused by fracking, but which also forbids them from telling their own patients what the physician believes may have led to their health problems. A strict interpretation of the law would also forbid general practitioners and family practice physicians who sign the non-disclosure agreement and learn the contents of the “trade secrets” from notifying a specialist about the chemicals or compounds, thus delaying medical treatment.

The clauses are buried on pages 98 and 99 of the 174-page bill, which was initiated and passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly and signed into law in February by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.

“I have never seen anything like this in my 37 years of practice,” says Dr. Helen Podgainy, a pediatrician from Coraopolis, Pa. She says it’s common for physicians, epidemiologists, and others in the health care field to discuss and consult with each other about the possible problems that can affect various populations. Her first priority, she says, “is to diagnose and treat, and to be proactive in preventing harm to others.” The new law, she says, not only “hinders preventative measures for our patients, it slows the treatment process by gagging free discussion.”

I can think of other recent instances of laws designed to render women and men ignorant and inflict unnecessary suffering on them, but I think these examples suffice for one post. The institutionalization of cruelty and the institutionalization of ignorance are proliferating in the US today. It'd take a full-time staff using maps with pushpins to keep track of all the insidious legislation aimed to make our lives worse. The word that comes to mind now when I think about politicians is "contempt." Their contempt for most of us, and our contempt for them. Where, I have to wonder, will this all end?

Planned Parenthood and Me

Since the Susan G. Komen Foundation lost its reputation for being "apolitical" when its decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood's breast cancer screening program for low-income women came to light last week, I've spent time recalling, with gratitude, my own long-ago personal acquaintance with Planned Parenthood. It began in 1971, during the months that I received food stamps. I was working then as a cleaning woman, and Tom (who had started back to graduate school) and I were living on my earnings cleaning houses and a small student loan that with all the scrimping in the world couldn't be made to cover our living expenses. (We just made it with the food stamps, $54 a month, as I recall.) Since I had dropped out of school, I had no access to the university's student health center. I had never heard of Planned Parenthood until a friend, learning that I couldn't afford to see a gynecologist to get a prescription for oral contraceptives, told me about their clinic-- and that they had a sliding scale.

I remember bicycling to the clinic, in Urbana. It was in the basement of a building and distinctly makeshift-- the person doing reception sat at a card table (and indeed, all the "desks" were folding tables of one sort or another), the examination cubicles had curtains rather than doors, and the amenities were nothing like any doctor's office I had ever been in. But the doctor, a woman with a heavy German accent, astounded me with her deftness and gentleness with the speculuum. (I'd had only a few experiences with pelvic exams before that one, and they had all been painful.) Most astonishing, though, was that she did something that has now become standard practice, but certainly wasn't back then: she told me everything she was going to do before she did it, and what she was doing as she did it. And she explained why. She made me--all of me-- part of the process (unlike the male doctors I'd previously had who talked about the weather or a skiiing trip they'd recently taken or else just breathed hard or grunted as they poked around inside my body). I hadn't yet encountered Our Bodies, Ourselves, but when I later did finally see it in the bookstore and buy it, I recognized the attitude and approach to women's health care. It is an approach that puts the woman herself at the center of the process, and seeks to increase her sense of agency. My experiences in that clinic gave me a different idea of what gynecological examinations could be like. When two years later I resumed my undergraduate course work and had the option of getting my health care from the university's student health center, I never gave doing that a thought. And that's probably a good thing, since it was through my annual exams at Planned Parenthood that I learned that estrogen was raising my blood pressure.  When lowering the dosage, which was the first response to the problem, wasn't sufficient to lower my blood pressure, the doctor discussed other options with me, and then introduced me to my first diaphragm. She did this in a way that countered my dismay and sense of helplessnes at learning that oral contraceptives would be deleterious to my health. The people at the clinic also, of course, taught me self-breast examinations. Back in the 1970s, this was unusual. Certainly it wasn't something that was ever done in an ordinary gynecologist's office. I only stopped going to Planned Parenthood when I moved to another city.

My gratitude for the good care of me taken by the people at that clinic is only part of the reason I've been a long-time monthly supporter of Planned Parenthood. As the attack on women and women's agency has escalated over the last few years, Planned Parenthood has been a primary target. The attitude of those attacking the organization is: How dare they give women options? How dare they educate and care for low-income women? At a time of escalating costs of health care and an ongoing campaign of dis- and misinformation about women's contraception, abortion, and women's health issues generally, Planned Parenthood is a bulwark we cannot afford to lose.

The Komen Foundation has (temporarily at least) restored the funding it had been providing for the breast cancer-screening program at Planned Parenthood. But Planned Parenthood is under attack on other fronts. If you can afford to make a contribution to them, please do. This is no time for Planned Parenthood to be forced to cut back its services. I am fortunate that they were there for me when I needed them.

Fresh Outrages in the War on Women in the US

Topkea, Kansas, has repealed its domestic violence law-- supposedly to save money-- and to keep Shawnee Country from passing the buck for prosecuting domestic battery. Which means, of course, that they're flashing the green light to batterers in that city: telling them that in Topeka, domestic battery is no longer against the law. Here's a snippet from the McClatchy Newspapers report by Joe Lambe:

Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said that around the country, prosecutors are being forced to prioritize certain types of cases, but these decisions are rarely discussed in public.

“Usually no one comes out and says that starting today I’m not going to prosecute that crime, which sends a message of failure and tells the community you’re free to commit that crime,” he said.

Joyce Grover, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence, said the situation in Topeka demonstrates that its politicians need to give domestic violence a higher priority.

“For the city and county to say this is about economics seems disingenuous to me,” she said.

Seems disingenuous to me, too.

Sarah Seltzer reports for AlterNet that Congress is debating Let Women Die legislation:

Today's installment of the War on Women is brought to you by Congressman Joe Pitts, whose HR 358 is finally being debated in the House this week. The bill is an extreme and sweeping anti-abortion measure that would decimate insurance coverage for abortion and gamble with women's lives. It's so drastic that it's been nicknamed the "let women die" act.

At Jezebel, Erin Gloria Ryan explains why this title is totally apt (emphases mine):

The bill has been lovingly nicknamed the "Let Women Die" act, as it would allow hospitals that receive federal funds but are opposed to abortions turn a woman seeking an abortion away in all circumstances, even if an abortion would save her life. It also proposes to outlaw any federal funds from going to health plans that cover any abortion services. Finally, it would make it impossible to block federal funds from going to health organizations that don't support abortion rights, hence the hospitals' freedom to "Protect Life" by refusing to perform a procedure that might save a woman's life. HR 358 was penned Joe Pitts, a Pennsylvania Republican and a vocal member of the House's Pro-Life Caucus. For those of you keeping score at home, Joe Pitts does not have a uterus.    Read more

Links for a Friday

--Anent the New York Times's coverage of the gang rape in Cleveland, Texas, which a couple of us posted about a few days ago, an update is in order. Not only did the New York Times article blame the victim, but it also excluded race issues from its report. In her post at Colorlines, The Gang Rape of a Latina 6th Grader, and a Horrific Community Response, Akiba Solomon does a superb job of discussing the rape, community reaction to it, and reactions to the reactions to the reactions-- without ignoring race issues. (Link thanks to Suzie at Echidne of the Snakes, who also posts at length on the complications of the situation omitted from the Times' article.)

--A bill sponsored by the Republicans, expected to pass easily in the US House of Representatives, will instruct the IRS to police how abortions are paid for:

To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. And one tax expert says that the measure could even lead to questions on tax forms: Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?

In testimony to a House taxation subcommittee on Wednesday, Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee, confirmed that one consequence of the Republicans' "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" would be to turn IRS agents into abortion cops—that is, during an audit, they'd have to detemine, from evidence provided by the taxpayer, whether any tax benefit had been inappropriately used to pay for an abortion.

[...]

[D]uring Wednesday's hearing, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) highlighted the IRS enforcement issue, which has until now flown under the radar. He asked:

Would a woman have to certify that the Health Savings Account funds she spent on birth control pills or for a doctor's visit weren't used to pay for an abortion? If a woman were audited, would IRS agents be at her house demanding court documents or affidavits proving that her pregnancy was the result of rape or incest?

Barthold replied that the taxpayer would have to prove that she had complied with all applicable abortion laws. Under standard audit procedure, a woman would have to provide evidence to corroborate facts about abortions, rapes, and cases of incest, says Marcus Owens, an accountant and former longtime IRS official. If a taxpayer received a deduction or tax credit for abortion costs related to a case of rape or incest, or because her life was endangered, then "on audit [she] would have to demonstrate or prove, ideally by contemporaneous written documentation, that it was incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger," Owens says. "It would be fairly intrusive for the woman."

Not everyone has "contemporaneous written documentation" that a pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. And, as Owens notes, adults sometimes pay for abortions for their children. If H.R. 3 becomes law, parents could face IRS questions about whether they spent pre-tax money from health savings accounts on abortions for their kids. "It would seem there would have to be a question about that [in an audit] and maybe even a question on the tax return," Owens says.

Read the whole Huffington Post article here (including several updates).

--Justin Snider's interview of Finland's Minister of Education, Henna Virkunnen, appears in the Huffington Post as Keys to Finnish Educational Success: Intensive Teacher-Training, Union Collaboration. In Finland, see, people want to be teachers, but only "the top students are offered the chance to become teachers." The interview explores why that is, and offers some sense of why Finland's educational system is so successful. It makes me want to cry, as I consider how privatization is destroying what is left of the US's existing educational system. I figure I may as well be reading about a fictional utopia. (And god, how I'd like to rub a few governors' noses in it.)

--Chris Rohman reviews Andrea Hairston's Redwood and Wildfire for the Valley Advocate. A snippet:

Hairston's work, on stage and page alike, insistently searches for signs that humans can overcome their divisions and oppressions, both external and self-inflicted. This book's geographical, emotional and spiritual journeys, spanning the early years of the 20th century, are odysseys of self-discovery and healing from wounds of the body and soul. The novel mirrors the eclectic, cross-cultural composition of the Chrysalis company and Hairston's own background—a multiracial poet-playwright-actor-musician-scholar who draws nourishment from diverse traditions.

--At Val Grimm's Portal, Jaymee Goh reviews Gwyneth Jones's The Universe of Things. The lengthy reviews begins thus:

The Universe of Things is a difficult anthology to review, since it is populated by some very difficult writing, and I don’t mean the language is hard to understand. By this, I mean that the stories are very challenging, and not straightforward at all. Gwyneth Jones’ writing is unsettling, which can be interpreted as a sign of her skill as a writer.

--And finally, don't forget to get a good look at tomorrow's "supermoon" (weather permitting). The moon will be both full and closer to the Earth than it has been for 18 years. This is from Space.com:

In a statement released Friday, noted NASA scientist Jim Garvin explains the mechanics behind the moon's phases and the causes of the supermoon. Garvin is the chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"'Supermoon' is a situation when the moon is slightly closer to Earth in its orbit than on average, and this effect is most noticeable when it occurs at the same time as a full moon," Garvin wrote in the NASA statement. "So, the moon may seem bigger although the difference in its distance from Earth is only a few percent at such times." [Photos: Our Changing Moon]

The full moon of March will occur next Saturday on March 19, when the moon will be about 221,567 miles (356,577 kilometers) away from Earth. The average distance between the Earth and the moon is about 238.000 miles (382.900 km).

"It is called a supermoon because this is a very noticeable alignment that at first glance would seem to have an effect," Garvin explained. "The 'super' in supermoon is really just the appearance of being closer, but unless we were measuring the Earth-Moon distance by laser rangefinders (as we do to track the LRO [Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter] spacecraft in low lunar orbit and to watch the Earth-Moon distance over years), there is really no difference."

Raging Maniacs in Oklahoma Prevail over Governor's Veto

The State of Oklahoma has just enacted some horrific legislation that if allowed to stand will make life harder and meaner for women of childbearing age.

This is from AFP's report:

Oklahoma lawmakers overrode their governor's veto Tuesday to enact tough abortion laws that force women to undergo invasive ultrasounds and allow doctors to withhold test results showing fetal defects.

Even women who are victims of rape or incest will be required to listen to a detailed description of the fetus and view the ultrasound image prior to terminating a pregnancy.

They will also likely be required to undergo vaginal rather than abdominal ultrasounds as doctors are required to use the method that "would display the embryo or fetus more clearly."

The second bill shields doctors from "wrongful birth" malpractice lawsuits brought by parents who would have aborted a fetus had they been informed about its genetic or other defects.

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the constitutionality of the ultrasound law, which it said "profoundly intrudes upon a patient's privacy."

A similar Oklahoma law was struck down last year.

"Politicians have no business making medical decisions," said Stephanie Toti, a staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights.

"Another round in the courts won't change our strong constitutional claims against the law, it will only waste more of Oklahoma taxpayers' time and money."

Democratic Governor Brad Henry tried to block the bills last week, but the Republican-dominated Oklahoma legislature overwhelmingly overrode his veto with the help of Democrats.

Henry said that while he supports "reasonable" restrictions on abortions, the laws had serious constitutional flaws and represented an excessive intrusion of government into the private lives of its citizens.

"It is unconscionable to grant a physician legal protection to mislead or misinform a pregnant woman in an effort to impose his or her personal beliefs on his patient," the governor said in his veto message.

"State policymakers should never mandate that a citizen be forced to undergo any medical procedure against his or her will, especially when such a procedure could cause physical or mental trauma," he added.

Abortion foes hailed the veto overrides as a victory for the unborn.

But that's not all. They've also enacted the requirement that any woman seeking an abortion report on her marital status, education, miscarriages, previous abortions, method of abortion, reason for the abortion, and method of payment, which is then to be posted on the Internet for all the world to see (and presumably anti-abortion fanatics to harass). [ETA: As Nancy Jane Moore notes in the comments, the legislature hasn't yet overturned the governor's veto on this measure.] Here's the Tulsa World's description of it:

House Bill 3284, by Rep. Pam Peterson, R-Tulsa, and Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, requires women seeking an abortion to report a host of information about themselves to be displayed statistically on a website run by the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

Information to be reported by the woman includes: marital status; education; miscarriages; abortions; method of abortion; reason for the abortion; and method of payment.

Jolley said the information is needed to help policy makers determine how to prevent abortions. Wilson said the measure is a way to intimidate women so they won't get an abortion.

Sen. Debbe Leftwich, D-Oklahoma City, called the measure a "gross invasion of privacy," adding that it was an intrusion into the relationship between a woman and her doctor.

These guys are seriously warped. It's all a waste of money, since presumably just about any court would throw these laws out as unconstitutional. But I suppose making women and civil liberties groups spend money contesting insane laws is a primary purpose of the exercise.

ETA: A video by Newsy's Multisource Video News Analysis can be seen here.

Utah Will Soon Not Be A Good Place For Pregnant Women

When I read today that only Republican Gov. Gary Herbert's signature is lacking to enact into Utah state law a bill that will make pregnant women subject to even more stringent surveillance and control than they already are in US society-- a law that would make them vulnerable to being charged with murder when they miscarry-- I flashed on the measures the Nicolae Ceausecu regime took to enact its plan to increase the population of Romania from 23 to 30 million by the year 2000.

While the main thrust of the law is to enable prosecutors in the majority-Mormon state to pursue women who seek illegal, unsupervised forms of abortion, it includes a provision that could trigger murder charges against women found guilty of an "intentional, knowing or reckless act" that leads to a miscarriage. Some say this could include drinking one glass of wine too many, walking on an icy pavement or skiing.

15-20% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage-- without intervention.

The Ceaucescu regime, of course, went much farther than Utah's new law does, but the underlying attitude is rather similar:

[Ceaucescu] began his campaign in 1966 with a decree that virtually made pregnancy a state policy. "The fetus is the property of the entire society," Ceausescu proclaimed. "Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity."

The underlying attitude being: "The fetus is the property of the entire society." That is, after all, what the Utah legislature is saying by criminalizing miscarriage. The Ceaucescu regime began the campaign with banning abortions and sex education.

Books on human sexuality and reproduction were classified as "state secrets," to be used only as medical textbooks. With contraception banned, Romanians had to smuggle in condoms and birth-control pills. Though strictly illegal, abortions remained a widespread birth-control measure of last resort. Nationwide, Western sources estimate, 60 percent of all pregnancies ended in abortion or miscarriage.

Lots of places in the US ban sex education for teenagers. And some of the same people who have campaigned to ban sex education for teenagers would like to see contraception banned altogether. The ideology may be different, but the attitude toward who owns (mostly female) people's bodies is identical.

Here's what really horrified me about Ceaucescu's persecution of women back then, every time I read or heard about it:

The government's enforcement techniques were as bad as the law. Women under the age of 45 were rounded up at their workplaces every one to three months and taken to clinics, where they were examined for signs of pregnancy, often in the presence of government agents - dubbed the "menstrual police" by some Romanians. A pregnant woman who failed to "produce" a baby at the proper time could expect to be summoned for questioning. Women who miscarried were suspected of arranging an abortion. Some doctors resorted for forging statistics. "If a child died in our district, we lost 10 to 25 percent of our salary," says Dr. Geta Stanescu of Bucharest. "But it wasn't our fault: we had no medicine or milk, and the families were poor."

Presumably state legislatures-- even Utah's-- won't ever go this far. Still. I lived in Utah once, and I was of child-bearing age at the time. This is creepy stuff. Deeply creepy.

Dire Consequences

On the health reform front, according to an article by Jonathan Allen on Politico.com, it looks as though Stupak, the anti-abortion amendment to the US House of Representatives health care bill, goes much, much further than originally supposed:

Stupak and his allies, including every House Republican, a quarter of the chamber’s Democrats and the Vatican, say that it simply extends an existing prohibition on federal funding for abortion — an annually renewed policy called the Hyde amendment — to the health care exchange that would be established for the uninsured under the health care bill making its way through Congress.

But lawmakers who support abortion rights contend that, if the Stupak amendment’s logic is extended to the $250 billion in tax breaks Americans get to buy coverage through employer-based plans, it could strip abortion coverage from tens of millions of women who already have it.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, said that the next step beyond Stupak for the anti-abortion movement will be to make sure that “if that federal wand has been waved over your insurance, then you don’t get to get abortion coverage.

Many Americans may not know that the money used for their employer-based health plans is untaxed, because it doesn’t show up on their paycheck and they don’t have to worry about it at tax time. But Congress’s bean-counting Joint Tax Committee calls the break “the largest tax subsidy” on the books and reports that it “represents by far the largest portion of total tax expenditures for health.”

This is how it works: The health benefits most Americans get at work are a form of income. But federal law excludes that income from taxation — and lets businesses write its cost off as an expense — providing an incentive to workers to buy health insurance and for employers to offer it as compensation.

For better or for worse, that tax-free foundation of the employer-based system props up the insurance industry. Without it, the government would be about a quarter of a trillion dollars richer each year — enough to pay for the House health care bill twice over the next decade.

More important for the abortion debate, Congress considers the income tax exclusion to be a massive “tax expenditure” — a subsidy — for individuals to buy insurance.

The effects the article discusses might be even farther reaching than that, involving nonprofits (including Planned Parenthood). Women in the US have steadily been losing access to safe, legal abortion. Cunning stealth attack or simply inadvertently sweeping in its consequences, it's obvious the Stupak Amendment would go even further in returning us to the actual, if not the legal, conditions of the pre-Roe vs. Wade days. Think that sounds alarmist? Here's another excerpt from Allen's article:

The combined data of a pair of studies conducted by the Guttmacher Institute and the Kaiser Family Foundation strongly suggest that most women who currently are covered by employer-based insurance plans have abortion coverage.

They would be in danger of losing abortion coverage if the Stupak principle is ever applied to the existing health care system, according to abortion-rights advocates.

“The next step after that will be to say that anybody who gets a plan purchased by an employer that gets tax relief can’t have abortion coverage,” DeGette said.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) sees the argument bleeding into federal subsidies in other policy arenas, according to the Iowa Independent.

“You can take this on down. You could just say that anybody that got a federal loan for housing could not get an abortion,” Harkin said. “You can take this and just keep going on and on and on with no end in sight.”

Sometimes I wonder if I'm living in Bizarro World

Gah. Health Care Reform in the US? What a hard, mordant laugh. By the time the crassest and sleaziest politicians in the House had had their way yesterday, women's reproductive rights had taken a major hit and, as Dennis Kucinich put it,

The "robust public option" which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.

Here's what Lee Stranahan says in the Huffington Post:

Progressives should be every bit as upset that President Obama lied to us to get his historic health bill. The citizens of this country did not have a seat at the table. Proponents of the Single Payer didn't have a seat at the table. Under the guise of health care reform, we watched as the insurance industry got a bill passed that entrenches and enriches them.

Don't let anyone fool you that this bill is a good start. It's got a poison pill "Public Option" that is designed to fail. As the brilliant RJ Eskow wrote recently about the House bill's public option,

The plan will have low enrollment and little power to negotiate, causing the CBO to state as fact what I've long considered possible: That the public option could become a dumping ground where private plans jettison sicker people, while lacking the efficiencies of scale or negotiating power to get better rates or administer itself more economically.

As a result, says the CBO, a public plan's premiums might be higher than private insurance. While the CBO's word isn't gospel, it's entirely possible that they're underestimating the cost of any "public option" we're likely to see this year. The likeliest political outcome, once the House and Senate bills are combined, is a non-robust "public option" with a state-by-state opt out. The CBO didn't consider the opt-out when it came up with its shocking (to some) estimate.

Even if it passes in its weak form, this Public Option will be the target of the GOP for years and they won't rest until it is dead. As the Public Option kicks into gear, they will find stories of 'rationing' and denial of care they can highlight, true or not. They will use the higher costs as proof of the Public Option's folly. They will grind away at the Public Option relentlessly but they will leave the Individual Mandate alone. If anything, once the Mandate is in place, the Republicans will make sure the insurance industry is 'free to compete' and unrestricted.

I can hardly wait to see what the Senate does with it.

Tactics of Plausibility

The Winter 2008 issue of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society has a fascinating article on the activist art of Women on Waves, "Twelve Miles: Boundaries of the New Art/Activism" by Carrie Lambert-Beatty. Noting that "while political art represents political subject matter, activist art does politics," Lambert-Beatty cites Lucy Lippard's distinction ["Trojan Horses: Activist Art and Power" (1984)]:

Although "political" and "activist" artists are often same people, "political" art tends to be socially concerned and "activist" art tends to be socially involved.... The former's work is a commentary or analysis, while the latter's art works within its context, with its audiences."

Women on Waves carries a portable gynecological clinic operated by two physicians and a nurse from port to port on a ship they rent with a largely female crew, flying the Dutch flag. The clinic is funded largely by the Mondriaan Foundation (a Dutch arts foundation dedicated to the visual arts and design):

In port it offers legal and medical workshops, sex education, and contraception; on the way out to sea it gives sonograms and counseling; and in international waters it provides the abortion pill to women who want it. Its missions have been controversial enough to earn its doctors and volunteers not only bombardment with eggs and paint but also court cases and even death threats; it was radical enough in its challenge to national sovereignty to move the Portuguese government to launch warships to protect its populace from the feminist invasion. As a result, Women on Waves has spurred debate on aboriton law where such debates had not occurred for years. Its visits galvanized the local groups of activists that invited the abortion boat to each country, and more such pro-choice groups were formed in its wake. A Polish government survey in 2003 found that popular support for liberalizing abortion law had gone up 12 percent in a year and cited the Women on Waves visit that summer as a source of the change.

Lambert-Beatty compares Women on Waves to the Yes Men. The Yes Men, in case you've forgotten, are those devious, ingenious parodists who create strange and wonderful moments in the corporate business of the day. They declare, on their website:

The Yes Men agree their way into the fortified compounds of commerce, ask questions, and then smuggle out the stories of their hijinks to provide a public glimpse at the behind-the-scenes world of business. In other words, the Yes Men are team players... but they play for the opposing team.

In 2004 the BBC mistook one of them for a spokesperson for Dow Chemical and broadcast the "breaking news" that Dow had decided to own up to its responsibility for Union Carbide's poisoning of the population of Bhopal and offer compensation to the multitude of victims (whose lives have been wrecked by Union Carbide's criminal negligence). The Yes Men provided a more frivolous moment in 2006 at the Catastrophic Loss Conference when claiming to represent Halliburton, they unveiled the "SurvivaBall":

"The SurvivaBall is designed to protect the corporate manager no matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way," said Fred Wolf, a Halliburton representative who spoke today at the Catastrophic Loss conference held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida. "This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate change," he said to an attentive and appreciative audience.

Here's where I think Lambert-Beatty's article gets really interesting:

To me there is still no more moving statement of faith in the revolutionary force of imagination than the one on the streets of Paris during the uprisings of 1968: "Under the cobblestones, the beach." But "twelve miles from the beach, the Netherlands," Women on Waves might respond, for the project is driven by a similar determination to replace what is with what could be. Instead of the 1960s vision of liberation, however, it imagines something concrete: a world in which women have access to safe and legal abortion no matter where they live. And instead of symbolically promoting change, the project's method is to make it so: to use maritime law and the concept of international waters to actually create--however temporarily and provisionally--the dreamed-of situation. This, the performative quality of Women on Waves, was captured in 2001 by critic Jennifer Allen. The project "does not thematise, represent, or illustrate the problem of abortion," she wrote, "it imposes a new geo-political reality that challenges [the] status quo in ways that cannot be fathomed, let alone controlled."

It is at this point that she makes the comparison to the Yes Men. After which she argues:

From one perspective, the opposition between the legalistic, earnest Women on Waves and the mischievous, hoaxing Yes Men is as complete as that between the genders in their names: as clear as the difference between real and virtual,between what one group calls campaigns and the other hijinks. [...] And yet, while they do not have the power to make real the changes they announce, the Yes Men nevertheless have real effects--on Dow's stock price that day in 2004, for example. And for its part, Women on Waves lists toward the unhappy performative more than one might think. For the fact is that two of the group's three campaigns to provide legal abortions were thoroughly thwarted. [...] And yet this does not mean the project failed--far from it...Indeed, its brilliance is in recognizing the special power of doing both [i.e., media politics and medical service] at once: of using bodily care to do representational work.

Lambert-Beatty describes this as "the politics or aesthetics of plausibility":

By providing opportunities for belief--however fleeting, and no matter how stymied--such tactics of plausibility provide especially rich, emotional experiences of "what-if." The art of the plausible works to edge an imagined state of affairs from the merely possible to the brink, at least, of the probable.

Lambert-Beatty insists that "the category of activist art starts from [the] belief that the aesthetic is not a retreat from the real but is in and of it." "Those of us who believe in a political and activist art," she says, "want to eat our cake and have it too."

We do not accept that art is an apolitical space apart from worldly pressures, and yet we want it to be a zone of special freedom. This is either an embarrassing lapse or, as Jacques Ranciere would suggest, a structuring paradox for political art today. According to Ranciere, there is a constant tension in modernity "between the logic of art that becomes life at the price of abolishing itself as art, and the logic of art that does politics on the explicit condition of not doing it at all." But consider a corollary: the possibility that the category of activist art is not just defined against but actively requires its nonactivist counterpart--it needs borders around art so that it might sail through them; or, so that, as Ranciere puts it, "the border be always there yet already crossed."

Lambert-Beatty concludes her article by discussing the "political unconscious" of the Women on Waves project, which is characterized as some critics as having colonialist undertones or by others as being meolilberal. All in all, it's a fascinating piece. Check it out if you get the chance.

International Patriarchy Sez:

I'm recovering from a cross-country move. In the meanwhile, I invite you to contemplate this remark, overheard across international boundaries, wherever men seek control and that control is not yet absolute.

International patriarchy sez:

Women's deaths are a useful goad for keeping other women in line.

Discuss.