Originally posted at Truthout on January 25, 2013.
By Malika Redmond
While celebrating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must also mourn the staying power of rhetoric demonizing women who seek reproductive autonomy—especially the young, the poor, rural women, and women of color—and the legislation that blocks their ability to access abortion. Battles over the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are only the latest example, following two earlier victories that targeted these vulnerable populations both at home and abroad: the Helms and Hyde amendments.
The lesser known Helms Amendment to the 1973 Foreign Assistance Act blocks U.S. funds from use for abortion care abroad, even if abortion is legal in that country as in the United States, exporting the right-wing agenda to other countries. In a country like Nepal, which eased its abortion restrictions in 2002, Helms puts up arduous barriers to access by forbidding USAID-funded medical equipment and facilities from use for abortion services.
Back on the home front, the 1976 Hyde Amendment ended federal funding of abortion care through Medicaid, the “largest healthcare program in the United States,” with difficult to exercise rape, incest, and health exceptions. Hyde set in motion the strategy of using legislation to chip away at Roe and deprive poor women (disproportionately women of color) of access to abortion. Thirty-three states replicated the federal amendment, and of the seventeen that use state funds to cover abortion under Medicaid, all but four do so under court order.
Continue reading...
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
January 28, 2013
January 25, 2013
Why Abortion Matters to Me
Abortion is the kind of issue you can lose friends over, it is the kind of issue that leads to never ending arguments from both sides of the spectrum. People fight against the right to have abortion, simply citing religious beliefs.
The problem is, it isn’t simple, not by a long-shot. The right to have an abortion is not important to me because it is a woman’s right to have control over her body, nor is it the right to “terminate a life.” The right to have an abortion is a right to equity, it is the right to choice and is a right to allow a women to make the best decision she can about her situation without handing over the reigns to the judgment of others to make that decision on her behalf, often against concerns for her own safety.
Today, Asian and Pacific Islander (API) women are undoubtedly affected by limitations on our “right to choose.” First, insurance coverage bans prevent poor and low-income API women from being able to afford the procedure. This forces many of our sisters, especially those from disadvantaged communities like the Hmong, Bangladeshi, Vietnamese and Cambodian communities, to struggle with difficult decisions— do I make my rent payment this month, or take care of my health? Second, there are bills being considered that target API women and would make getting an abortion harder for us by criminalizing doctors for “sex selective abortions.” Of course, API women are the ones proponents claim are choosing such abortions, since it happens widely in some Asian countries. This law would mean we could be denied abortion care because a doctor assumes we are choosing to abort a female fetus, simply because of our ethnicity. This is not new legislation, there has been similar legislation promoting racist stereotypes for years. Have you heard of the deceptively named “Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act”? It failed in the U.S. House, but similar versions are being proposed in the states.
What scares me is the prospect that API women in the U.S. will meet the same fate Savita Halappanavar did. Savita was an Indian woman who died after being refused an abortion to terminate her life-threatening pregnancy. Savita was an API woman in Ireland, but API women in this country could face similar fates if the right to have an abortion is taken out of their hands.
The right to have an abortion is also important to me because I know banning abortions will not prevent them from occurring. It will only drive them underground, where equity in terms of choice will be vanquished. It will go back to the good old days, where rich, mostly Caucasian women who wanted an abortion could get one discreetly by arranging a visit from a doctor, while poor women and women of color were either forced to have a baby or get dangerous abortion procedures in back alleys. The undeniable truth is when abortions were illegal they were still happening. When it comes down to it, the attacks on reproductive health we are seeing would ensure that privileged women have access to abortions while poor women, including a high number of women of color will NOT have that access.
Moreover, I believe that there needs to be emphasis on contraception—even from those that claim the ‘pro-life” label. Did you know that according to the Guttmacher Institute [1], global abortion rates have fallen in countries that have had legalized abortion for years? Western and Northern Europe has had legal abortion for decades and widespread access to contraception use. These areas now have the lowest abortion rates in the world. Many Anti-Choice movements are against abortion access and comprehensive sex education, with little or no emphasis on contraception. This kind of mentality would only increase unwanted pregnancies and abortions. This kind of mentality could put women’s lives at risk.
Abortion rights are women’s rights, social and economic equity, and women’s health. If you support those three things, then you can understand the value of the right to an abortion and see why it is imperative that it be kept legal, safe, and accessible.
Nadia Hussain is a Bangladeshi American activist, poet, blogger and photographer with a passion for human rights work and progressive politics. She lives in Oakland, CA, where she works with refugee and emerging API communities.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
On Her Fortieth Birthday, What Does Roe Mean for Me and Mine?
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| Shivana Jorawar |
At 40 years old, Roe is in a midlife crisis. She has given so much of herself to so many people, and she’s proud of that. But aging has put her out of touch.
This year, we mark the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in the United States. Reflecting on that important decision and what it means for me and mine, I feel conflicting emotions. As a woman with privilege who has depended on the law, I am grateful for it. As a queer, Indo-Caribbean from an immigrant family in the Bronx, I remember that laws often require less than justice does. If we are truly going to have justice for women, we are going to need more than Roe.
I come from an insular and under-resourced subpopulation of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (API) community that is so small we are rarely mentioned even in API literature. Our size and our unique, troubled history of indentureship in the Caribbean make us all very close. Elders are “aunties” and “uncles,” and peers are often called “cousins.” Because of this bond, I cannot think of my work outside the context of my people.
Is Roe enough for the teenager who calls me didi (older sister) and never learned about safe sex or communicating consent? No. She probably doesn’t have the money and will be beaten and kicked out if she asks her parents for it. Is Roe enough for my undocumented aunt who already has children and is struggling to make ends meet? No. She has no health insurance and will have to make a decision between rent and health this month. Is Roe enough for the trans men most of us never see because they hide from the community in fear? No here as well. Routine employment discrimination means they may not be able to afford the procedure and medical staff are likely to be insensitive.
My people need more, and we are demanding it. We are courageously breaking taboos so that young women and queer folk will one day not have to suffer in silence. In lieu of real comprehensive sex education in schools, brave women are teaching teens how to care for their bodies and have healthy relationships—with others and themselves. We are having conversations with mothers and daughters about the value of family dialogue around sex and sexuality, and how to have it. In safe spaces and open forums, we are coming out and showing our community we are people, just like them. API community advocates are pushing for immigrant inclusion in health care and public insurance coverage of abortion, so that everyone can afford abortion care. We are also pressuring the government to provide contraceptive access for young people, so pregnancies are prevented and there is less need for abortion.
Talking about anything related to reproduction, when it does not relate to heterosexual male desire, is not safe or popular in my community. But we do it anyway, because we know we are marching closer and closer to a future where we are liberated, not only by law, but by justice.
I am proud of the activists and advocates in my community, for refusing to cynically bow out of what could be seen as uphill battles and instead operating with hope in their hearts. On her 40th birthday, Roe needs to look at the new world around her and broaden her horizon. Today, Roe and the people who support her need to call not only for rights, but resources and respect—with genuine resolve, audacity, and perseverance.
Shivana Jorawar is an Indo-Caribbean feminist and reproductive justice advocate. She is passionate about uplifting the status of women in communities she identifies with, and has a background in legal advocacy and community education around issues of gender-based inequity and violence. She is the Reproductive Justice Program Director at the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum and a co-founder of the Indo-Caribbean women’s organization Jahajee Sisters, where she is now a member of the Steering Committee. Shivana holds a B.A. in Political Science from Fordham University and a J.D. from Emory University School of Law.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
January 22, 2013
The New Roe
Originally published at the Huffington Post on January 22, 2013
By Kierra Johnson
The more I sit and consider what the Roe v. Wade decision means at 40 years, the more I am sure that it actually means the same thing now as it did then.
The fight for abortion rights is not, nor has it ever been, about vaginas or babies. It is about power, quality of life, and the role of government. The right to own property, the right to vote, the right to contraception as married and then as single people, the right not to be sterilized, the right not to be enslaved and treated as baby-making machines were all legal battles that women fought and won. Winning the legal right to abortion is but one more of the battles that made it possible for a woman to get a little closer to full autonomy over her body and her mind.
In 2013, the fight for power and agency continues.
Having been born after 1972, I am among the millions of people spared from witnessing the results of back alley abortions firsthand. And yet, like many of my peers and those of the generation that came after, I found myself drawn to do this work. The nostalgia for the 70s is not what propelled me to do my first research about NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Concern about my potential future need of abortion didn’t get me to an informational meeting of the Colorado NARAL. I respected Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Shirley Chisholm (and still do) as amazing leaders, but I didn’t aspire to be them or be like them.
It was my 16-year-old sister’s unplanned pregnancy and her decision to parent that catapulted me into this work.
To continue reading, click here.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
By Kierra Johnson
The more I sit and consider what the Roe v. Wade decision means at 40 years, the more I am sure that it actually means the same thing now as it did then.
 |
| Kierra Johnson |
The fight for abortion rights is not, nor has it ever been, about vaginas or babies. It is about power, quality of life, and the role of government. The right to own property, the right to vote, the right to contraception as married and then as single people, the right not to be sterilized, the right not to be enslaved and treated as baby-making machines were all legal battles that women fought and won. Winning the legal right to abortion is but one more of the battles that made it possible for a woman to get a little closer to full autonomy over her body and her mind.
In 2013, the fight for power and agency continues.
Having been born after 1972, I am among the millions of people spared from witnessing the results of back alley abortions firsthand. And yet, like many of my peers and those of the generation that came after, I found myself drawn to do this work. The nostalgia for the 70s is not what propelled me to do my first research about NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Concern about my potential future need of abortion didn’t get me to an informational meeting of the Colorado NARAL. I respected Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Shirley Chisholm (and still do) as amazing leaders, but I didn’t aspire to be them or be like them.
It was my 16-year-old sister’s unplanned pregnancy and her decision to parent that catapulted me into this work.
To continue reading, click here.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
40 at 40: My Lifetime with Roe
Originally posted at California Latinas for Reproductive Justice on January 22, 2013.
By Laura Jimenez
On January 22 of this year, women’s health advocates and our allies will be celebrating the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade case that made abortions legal in the United States in 1973. A few weeks later, I will celebrate my 40th birthday. I learned of this coincidence 10 years ago when Roe turned 30 and I was contacted by someone who was writing a piece about feminists who were celebrating the same age as this groundbreaking decision. At that time, I was still enjoying the adrenaline rush of being the mother of an almost 2-year old daughter and at the same time was fully involved in the birth of the Reproductive Justice movement.
I was raised in a family with feminist ideals, had attended my first pro-choice rally by the age of 16, and knew about women in my own family who had decided to have abortions (pre- and post-Roe), so I was clear about the impact of Roe in my life. As a budding RJ leader, I was also certain that Roe was incredibly significant in the context of the lived experiences of women of the nation.
Many people today and throughout this month will share their reflections about the impact of Roe as we collectively call for increased access to abortion services and for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment which restricts Federal abortion funding for indigenous women served by Indian Health Service, federal employees, disabled women on Medicare, women in federal prisons and Peace Corps volunteers. Today I ask myself – what does Roe mean for us?
Let me explain. When I turned 30, I expected that I would feel self-realized, more self-assured, and I would know what my life was about and where it was going. I didn’t feel any of these things. Today, as I am on the verge of celebrating my 40th birthday – it feels as if I have turned a corner – I know myself in an intimate way and I see the work that lies ahead. Roe v. Wade is 40. Maybe we have spent all these years interpreting the decision as the culmination of years of feminist struggle, just to “turn the corner” in the last ten years and realize that within the reproductive justice framework, the struggle for abortion rights is inextricably linked to other issues and that there is much more work ahead of us?
In my reproductive justice work, as well as in my personal life, I honor the hard work that was done to achieve this victory. AND, I also recognize, that for many of us, it is part of what we are working towards in achieving reproductive justice. Roe was not intended to apply only to those women who can afford a private doctor – LEGALITY ≠ ACCESS. Reproductive justice activists continue to work to ensure that ALL women are able to access safe, quality, and affordable abortion services.
As we turn this corner together on the 40th anniversary of Roe, we must recognize that it not only legalized abortions, but that it also established the legal principle that women are the ones who should make decisions about our own bodies. At California Latinas for Reproductive Justice it is important to our communities que echamos pa’lante in our work to secure our rights to have children, to not have children, and to parent the children that we have. It is equally important to us that we have access to contraception and that our families’ integrity is respected under immigration law as it is to ensure abortion rights.
Happy Birthday Roe – may you celebrate many, many more years of protecting women’s health AND may you continue to get better with age. Our daughters need you.
Laura Jimenez is the Executive Director of California Latinas for Reproductive Justice.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
By Laura Jimenez
I was raised in a family with feminist ideals, had attended my first pro-choice rally by the age of 16, and knew about women in my own family who had decided to have abortions (pre- and post-Roe), so I was clear about the impact of Roe in my life. As a budding RJ leader, I was also certain that Roe was incredibly significant in the context of the lived experiences of women of the nation.
Many people today and throughout this month will share their reflections about the impact of Roe as we collectively call for increased access to abortion services and for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment which restricts Federal abortion funding for indigenous women served by Indian Health Service, federal employees, disabled women on Medicare, women in federal prisons and Peace Corps volunteers. Today I ask myself – what does Roe mean for us?
Let me explain. When I turned 30, I expected that I would feel self-realized, more self-assured, and I would know what my life was about and where it was going. I didn’t feel any of these things. Today, as I am on the verge of celebrating my 40th birthday – it feels as if I have turned a corner – I know myself in an intimate way and I see the work that lies ahead. Roe v. Wade is 40. Maybe we have spent all these years interpreting the decision as the culmination of years of feminist struggle, just to “turn the corner” in the last ten years and realize that within the reproductive justice framework, the struggle for abortion rights is inextricably linked to other issues and that there is much more work ahead of us?
In my reproductive justice work, as well as in my personal life, I honor the hard work that was done to achieve this victory. AND, I also recognize, that for many of us, it is part of what we are working towards in achieving reproductive justice. Roe was not intended to apply only to those women who can afford a private doctor – LEGALITY ≠ ACCESS. Reproductive justice activists continue to work to ensure that ALL women are able to access safe, quality, and affordable abortion services.
As we turn this corner together on the 40th anniversary of Roe, we must recognize that it not only legalized abortions, but that it also established the legal principle that women are the ones who should make decisions about our own bodies. At California Latinas for Reproductive Justice it is important to our communities que echamos pa’lante in our work to secure our rights to have children, to not have children, and to parent the children that we have. It is equally important to us that we have access to contraception and that our families’ integrity is respected under immigration law as it is to ensure abortion rights.
Happy Birthday Roe – may you celebrate many, many more years of protecting women’s health AND may you continue to get better with age. Our daughters need you.
Laura Jimenez is the Executive Director of California Latinas for Reproductive Justice.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
Reproductive Emancipation
By Heidi Williamson
This January marks the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 40th Anniversary of the landmark decision of Roe vs. Wade respectively. Both had and continue to have a profound impact on the lives of black women and our struggle for reproductive justice.
On January 1, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which declared all persons “held as slaves within the rebellious states are, and henceforward shall be free." The document didn’t apply to the states that remained loyal to the Union, but it was no less a crucial first step towards liberating millions of enslaved Africans in the Deep South. For Black women, life beyond chattel slavery, rape and forced reproduction not only offered the possibility of individual freedom, but reproductive autonomy and bodily self-determination.
The institution of slavery depended heavily on black women’s ability to produce and reproduce. Black women worked in the fields, as well as bore the responsibility of bearing future generations of human beings to sustain the institution of slavery itself. Both were expected and both were delivered. In theory, the Proclamation inched Black women and the larger black community toward legalized humanity. Female slaves had no right to autonomy over their own bodies. This justified slave owners forcing women to breed with other slaves to conceive more children, using rape as a tool of subjugation, using their children to coerce mothers, and usurping mothers’ ability to parent their own children. Upon Emancipation, many Black women were hopeful in what self-determination and rights before the law could offer.
More than a hundred years into the future though, a new emancipation came for Black women. It was not part of a strategy to end a war, nor was it handwritten by the President for the world to see. It was the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe vs. Wade, which held that the right to privacy included the right to choose whether or not to end a pregnancy. This ruling allowed the millions of women seeking abortions to do so safely, and prevented a multitude of deaths as a result. This was especially true for Black women. Simply put: the day Roe was decided, Black women stopped dying.
Black women, particularly the poor, often lacked the resources to prevent unintended pregnancies or provided for additional children. Abortion, for many, was the only option, despite the risk. Though not slaves, black women were in some ways just as vulnerable and reproductively oppressed at the time. Prior to Roe, the maternal death rates for black women seeking illegal abortions in the South were as high as fourteen times that of white women. Often demanding access to contraception, Black women wanted control over their fertility and the right to explore unfolding opportunities. Simultaneously, they had to resist the insidious programs and medical professionals who forcibly sterilized women, promoted contraceptives expressly to limit black births, and enacted punitive policies targeting poor women and families.
Since 1973, the Roe decision has been compromised. The upholding of the Hyde Amendment, which denies federal insurance coverage for abortion, in Harris v. McRae as well as other decisions that created barriers to abortion access such as Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services and Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, have placed hardships on the most vulnerable communities seeking abortions, particularly poor women and teens. It is clear: the right to choose an abortion is NOT the same thing as the ability to obtain one. Celebrating these two anniversaries collectively is critical. It offers us glimpses into the American consciousness when our government attempted to embrace and codify the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These ideals can never ring true until all women regardless of race and class are treated equally under the law and have the ability to determine their own reproductive destiny.
Heidi Williamson is the Senior Policy Analyst for the Women’s Health and Rights program at American Progress. She is also a founding member of the Trust Black Women Partnership, a strong network of African American women organizations and individuals, who mobilize to defend the human right to have a child, not have a child, and parent for African American women in the United States.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
On January 1, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which declared all persons “held as slaves within the rebellious states are, and henceforward shall be free." The document didn’t apply to the states that remained loyal to the Union, but it was no less a crucial first step towards liberating millions of enslaved Africans in the Deep South. For Black women, life beyond chattel slavery, rape and forced reproduction not only offered the possibility of individual freedom, but reproductive autonomy and bodily self-determination.
The institution of slavery depended heavily on black women’s ability to produce and reproduce. Black women worked in the fields, as well as bore the responsibility of bearing future generations of human beings to sustain the institution of slavery itself. Both were expected and both were delivered. In theory, the Proclamation inched Black women and the larger black community toward legalized humanity. Female slaves had no right to autonomy over their own bodies. This justified slave owners forcing women to breed with other slaves to conceive more children, using rape as a tool of subjugation, using their children to coerce mothers, and usurping mothers’ ability to parent their own children. Upon Emancipation, many Black women were hopeful in what self-determination and rights before the law could offer.
More than a hundred years into the future though, a new emancipation came for Black women. It was not part of a strategy to end a war, nor was it handwritten by the President for the world to see. It was the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe vs. Wade, which held that the right to privacy included the right to choose whether or not to end a pregnancy. This ruling allowed the millions of women seeking abortions to do so safely, and prevented a multitude of deaths as a result. This was especially true for Black women. Simply put: the day Roe was decided, Black women stopped dying.
Black women, particularly the poor, often lacked the resources to prevent unintended pregnancies or provided for additional children. Abortion, for many, was the only option, despite the risk. Though not slaves, black women were in some ways just as vulnerable and reproductively oppressed at the time. Prior to Roe, the maternal death rates for black women seeking illegal abortions in the South were as high as fourteen times that of white women. Often demanding access to contraception, Black women wanted control over their fertility and the right to explore unfolding opportunities. Simultaneously, they had to resist the insidious programs and medical professionals who forcibly sterilized women, promoted contraceptives expressly to limit black births, and enacted punitive policies targeting poor women and families.
Since 1973, the Roe decision has been compromised. The upholding of the Hyde Amendment, which denies federal insurance coverage for abortion, in Harris v. McRae as well as other decisions that created barriers to abortion access such as Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services and Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, have placed hardships on the most vulnerable communities seeking abortions, particularly poor women and teens. It is clear: the right to choose an abortion is NOT the same thing as the ability to obtain one. Celebrating these two anniversaries collectively is critical. It offers us glimpses into the American consciousness when our government attempted to embrace and codify the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These ideals can never ring true until all women regardless of race and class are treated equally under the law and have the ability to determine their own reproductive destiny.
Heidi Williamson is the Senior Policy Analyst for the Women’s Health and Rights program at American Progress. She is also a founding member of the Trust Black Women Partnership, a strong network of African American women organizations and individuals, who mobilize to defend the human right to have a child, not have a child, and parent for African American women in the United States.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
Happy 40th: 5 Ways Roe v. Wade is Undermined in Mississippi
By Jazmine Walker
As a Mississippian, I have watched government officials, church leaders, anti-choice activists, and citizens fight tirelessly to criminalize abortion in my home state. Though I am grateful for the positive impact Roe v. Wade has had for women across the nation, I can’t help but find celebrating its 40th anniversary bittersweet. In Mississippi, we sorely lack meaningful and sustainable help in the fight for full reproductive justice for poor families and women of color. To add insult to injury, while Mississippi continues to be a battleground over women’s rights, pro-choice discourse and activism surrounding the state too often implies that we are “backwards.”
Mississippians can no longer afford to have these conversations continue in isolation. As out-of-towners come into Mississippi this weekend to protest the closing of our sole abortion clinic, I want them to understand the complexities of the reproductive issues in this state and remember that white, middle class women are not the only ones impacted.
In observance of this day and in solidarity with my people in Mississippi, I have compiled a list of issues that demonstrate the intentional undermining of Roe v. Wade in the state—by making abortion inaccessible, and creating stigma around women’s sexual and reproductive choices.
1. Mississippi’s sole abortion clinic is on the verge of closing.
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant and his conservative cronies in the legislature have managed to pass a law stipulating that only obstetricians and gynecologists with privileges to admit patients to a local hospital may perform abortions. It is no secret that Bryant’s personal goal is to make Mississippi an “abortion-free” state; the doctors at the lone abortion clinic do not have those privileges (which, according to them, are not’ medically necessary). Though a U.S. district judge temporarily blocked the state law on July 1, 2012, the abortion clinic remains under threat of closure.
2. Teenagers are blamed for abstinence-only sex ed’s failure.
Mississippi retains the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, yet many school districts teach abstinence-only courses, and it is illegal for teachers to instruct students on how to use contraceptives. Despite these institutional shortcomings, Governor Bryant told reporters he believes that “the problem is teenagers do not care enough” about using birth control. A quick word to Phil: it isn’t that teenagers don’t care about using birth control; you and your Bible thumping gang don’t care to teach them how to use it. Bryant favors shame and fear-based tactics instead of productive, educational conversations about sex. At a conference of 200 teens, Bryant told participants, “If you want to fail in life, if you want to end up being on Medicaid—CHIPS and Medicaid and food stamps the rest of your life—if you never want to have a career, then all you’ve got to do is drop high school and have a baby…And I can almost assure you that’s what’s going to happen to you.”
3. Despite its failure in 2011, personhood legislation is back to haunt Mississippi.
On November 8, 2011, Mississippians faced a seemingly simple question on their ballots: “Should the term 'person' be defined to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof?” The proposed amendment sought to undo laws that protect abortion rights, stem cell research, in vitro fertilization (IVF), and even some forms of birth control. This could have resulted in the systemic criminalization of women who experience miscarriages, stillbirths, or even women who decided to save their own lives, rather than that of the fetus. Fifty-five percent of the voters rejected this dangerous, precedent-setting initiative.
But the fight for personhood legislation lives on. State Representative Andy Gipson has proposed a concurrent resolution that will give full legal rights at the moment of conception, despite science’s inability to pinpoint that exact moment. Adapting their strategy since the previous personhood campaign, anti-choice legislators (like good ol’ Andy) have made it so that the new amendment will not apply to IVF treatments, ectopic pregnancies and other treatments for life-threatening ailments or "birth control not killing a person." Still, the measure is no less dangerous. If passed, Mississippi will battle personhood on the ballot once again in 2014.
Unfortunately, personhood is not the only upcoming anti-choice. Governor Bryant recently announced that he will support a bill that will ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected. Limiting choice is Bryant’s personal crusade, and as we continue to see, he is willing to take away women’s rights by any means.
4. Low-income families’ human rights are being compromised.
Sometime this year, Mississippi will implement a new system, Mississippi eChildcare, where families who receive childcare vouchers will have to use a finger scan so the state can track attendance at daycare and preschool. The Department of Health claims the main use of the system is to better track attendance of children receiving federal vouchers for childcare and “reduce false attendance claims” by childcare providers. However, the new system will make it more difficult for families to access childcare. With childcare vouchers already hard to obtain, the difficulty is increased by a new arduous process that requires watching a video about the program and attending a training session at DHS. Aside from the stigma created around families receiving government assistance, this model compromises families’ right to privacy while costing tax payers millions to cover the costs of policing said privacy.
5. Rennie Gibbs is still facing murder charges.
Rennie Gibbs, who was 15 when she became pregnant, was indicted under Mississippi’s “depraved-heart murder” statute for taking cocaine while pregnant. If convicted, Gibbs faces a mandatory life sentence because Mississippi prosecutors insist that her drug use caused the stillborn death of her baby even though there is no legitimate, forensic proof that use of narcotics, such as cocaine, can cause stillbirth. If Gibbs’ prosecutions are upheld, the precedent will not be limited to pregnant women who use drugs. The precedent set will be that eggs, embryos, and fetuses are persons and that any pregnant woman who was unable to guarantee a healthy birth outcome could be charged with murder or manslaughter, thereby judicially enacting personhood.
The list goes on. Which remind me yet again, that Mississippians need long-term support, not activists who want to swoop in superhero-style and “save” us. Truly celebrating Roe means holding our state and federal governments accountable, but not at the expense of alienating and silencing the needs of local communities and women, especially women of color.
So, here’s to you Roe. Just as they work tirelessly to see you defeated, we will continue fighting to see you upheld. And Mississippi, though many social justice activists use you as the measuring stick for the extent of their successes and failures, I love you deeply and look forward to the day you stop hurting. You motivate my activism, while Roe gives it legal precedent.
Jazmine Walker is a participant in the Strong Families' project, Echoing Ida. She lives and works in North Carolina for Rural Support Partners. Her personal blog is Furious and Brave. Follow her on Twitter @JAZonyaMine.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
As a Mississippian, I have watched government officials, church leaders, anti-choice activists, and citizens fight tirelessly to criminalize abortion in my home state. Though I am grateful for the positive impact Roe v. Wade has had for women across the nation, I can’t help but find celebrating its 40th anniversary bittersweet. In Mississippi, we sorely lack meaningful and sustainable help in the fight for full reproductive justice for poor families and women of color. To add insult to injury, while Mississippi continues to be a battleground over women’s rights, pro-choice discourse and activism surrounding the state too often implies that we are “backwards.”
Mississippians can no longer afford to have these conversations continue in isolation. As out-of-towners come into Mississippi this weekend to protest the closing of our sole abortion clinic, I want them to understand the complexities of the reproductive issues in this state and remember that white, middle class women are not the only ones impacted.
In observance of this day and in solidarity with my people in Mississippi, I have compiled a list of issues that demonstrate the intentional undermining of Roe v. Wade in the state—by making abortion inaccessible, and creating stigma around women’s sexual and reproductive choices.
1. Mississippi’s sole abortion clinic is on the verge of closing.
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant and his conservative cronies in the legislature have managed to pass a law stipulating that only obstetricians and gynecologists with privileges to admit patients to a local hospital may perform abortions. It is no secret that Bryant’s personal goal is to make Mississippi an “abortion-free” state; the doctors at the lone abortion clinic do not have those privileges (which, according to them, are not’ medically necessary). Though a U.S. district judge temporarily blocked the state law on July 1, 2012, the abortion clinic remains under threat of closure.
2. Teenagers are blamed for abstinence-only sex ed’s failure.
Mississippi retains the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, yet many school districts teach abstinence-only courses, and it is illegal for teachers to instruct students on how to use contraceptives. Despite these institutional shortcomings, Governor Bryant told reporters he believes that “the problem is teenagers do not care enough” about using birth control. A quick word to Phil: it isn’t that teenagers don’t care about using birth control; you and your Bible thumping gang don’t care to teach them how to use it. Bryant favors shame and fear-based tactics instead of productive, educational conversations about sex. At a conference of 200 teens, Bryant told participants, “If you want to fail in life, if you want to end up being on Medicaid—CHIPS and Medicaid and food stamps the rest of your life—if you never want to have a career, then all you’ve got to do is drop high school and have a baby…And I can almost assure you that’s what’s going to happen to you.”
3. Despite its failure in 2011, personhood legislation is back to haunt Mississippi.
On November 8, 2011, Mississippians faced a seemingly simple question on their ballots: “Should the term 'person' be defined to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof?” The proposed amendment sought to undo laws that protect abortion rights, stem cell research, in vitro fertilization (IVF), and even some forms of birth control. This could have resulted in the systemic criminalization of women who experience miscarriages, stillbirths, or even women who decided to save their own lives, rather than that of the fetus. Fifty-five percent of the voters rejected this dangerous, precedent-setting initiative.
But the fight for personhood legislation lives on. State Representative Andy Gipson has proposed a concurrent resolution that will give full legal rights at the moment of conception, despite science’s inability to pinpoint that exact moment. Adapting their strategy since the previous personhood campaign, anti-choice legislators (like good ol’ Andy) have made it so that the new amendment will not apply to IVF treatments, ectopic pregnancies and other treatments for life-threatening ailments or "birth control not killing a person." Still, the measure is no less dangerous. If passed, Mississippi will battle personhood on the ballot once again in 2014.
Unfortunately, personhood is not the only upcoming anti-choice. Governor Bryant recently announced that he will support a bill that will ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected. Limiting choice is Bryant’s personal crusade, and as we continue to see, he is willing to take away women’s rights by any means.
4. Low-income families’ human rights are being compromised.
Sometime this year, Mississippi will implement a new system, Mississippi eChildcare, where families who receive childcare vouchers will have to use a finger scan so the state can track attendance at daycare and preschool. The Department of Health claims the main use of the system is to better track attendance of children receiving federal vouchers for childcare and “reduce false attendance claims” by childcare providers. However, the new system will make it more difficult for families to access childcare. With childcare vouchers already hard to obtain, the difficulty is increased by a new arduous process that requires watching a video about the program and attending a training session at DHS. Aside from the stigma created around families receiving government assistance, this model compromises families’ right to privacy while costing tax payers millions to cover the costs of policing said privacy.
5. Rennie Gibbs is still facing murder charges.
Rennie Gibbs, who was 15 when she became pregnant, was indicted under Mississippi’s “depraved-heart murder” statute for taking cocaine while pregnant. If convicted, Gibbs faces a mandatory life sentence because Mississippi prosecutors insist that her drug use caused the stillborn death of her baby even though there is no legitimate, forensic proof that use of narcotics, such as cocaine, can cause stillbirth. If Gibbs’ prosecutions are upheld, the precedent will not be limited to pregnant women who use drugs. The precedent set will be that eggs, embryos, and fetuses are persons and that any pregnant woman who was unable to guarantee a healthy birth outcome could be charged with murder or manslaughter, thereby judicially enacting personhood.
The list goes on. Which remind me yet again, that Mississippians need long-term support, not activists who want to swoop in superhero-style and “save” us. Truly celebrating Roe means holding our state and federal governments accountable, but not at the expense of alienating and silencing the needs of local communities and women, especially women of color.
So, here’s to you Roe. Just as they work tirelessly to see you defeated, we will continue fighting to see you upheld. And Mississippi, though many social justice activists use you as the measuring stick for the extent of their successes and failures, I love you deeply and look forward to the day you stop hurting. You motivate my activism, while Roe gives it legal precedent.
Jazmine Walker is a participant in the Strong Families' project, Echoing Ida. She lives and works in North Carolina for Rural Support Partners. Her personal blog is Furious and Brave. Follow her on Twitter @JAZonyaMine.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
Wading in Uncomfortable Waters: Abortion and the Politics of Experience
Originally posted at Feministe on January 22, 2013.
By Taja Lindley
Forty years after abortion became legal in the United States we are still wading in waters that run deep.
Arguably, abortion runs as deep in our modern human history as pregnancy does. Our ancestors had ways of terminating pregnancies long before the U.S. Supreme Court existed. And while we commemorate and celebrate the 40th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, we know that it does not mark an anniversary of the beginning of this family planning method. Abortion has been, and will continue to be, part of a wide array of methods that we use to control our bodies and fertility, regardless of its legality.
In today’s binary political system, however, abortion has become oversimplified. Although fraught with social, economic, cultural, and political meaning, abortion has been reduced to a singular and isolated issue in the political arena. And yet, just below the surface of political silencing, those of us whose experiences with abortion do not fit neatly into didactic sound-bites and talking points for pundits and policymakers in their public debates about our bodies, the waters of human experience still run deep.
Continue reading at Feministe.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
By Taja Lindley
Forty years after abortion became legal in the United States we are still wading in waters that run deep.
Arguably, abortion runs as deep in our modern human history as pregnancy does. Our ancestors had ways of terminating pregnancies long before the U.S. Supreme Court existed. And while we commemorate and celebrate the 40th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, we know that it does not mark an anniversary of the beginning of this family planning method. Abortion has been, and will continue to be, part of a wide array of methods that we use to control our bodies and fertility, regardless of its legality.
In today’s binary political system, however, abortion has become oversimplified. Although fraught with social, economic, cultural, and political meaning, abortion has been reduced to a singular and isolated issue in the political arena. And yet, just below the surface of political silencing, those of us whose experiences with abortion do not fit neatly into didactic sound-bites and talking points for pundits and policymakers in their public debates about our bodies, the waters of human experience still run deep.
Continue reading at Feministe.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
Masculine of center voices on Roe v Wade
By Zerandrian Morris
To date, fewer moments in American History have been more wrought with divisive and cataclysmic energy than 40 years ago this month. On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion. On that day, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the landmark decision that women should hold the ultimate power to control their own bodies. Well, kinda sorta. Tacked on to the decision was a provision stating that the right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting women's health.
One might have hoped that the 1973 landmark decision would put all debate around abortion to rest. In fact, over the past four decades, women’s reproductive rights have been one of the most widely debated and most divisive topics around. This is due in part to the language of Roe v. Wade, which left plenty of room for debate on the legality of abortion. But perhaps the court’s decision in the case of Roe v. Wade has created such a lasting fight precisely because of what it did make clear, that the law was designed for only a narrow slice of women—those with the means to access their right.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
Framed as government’s “legitimate interests,” ongoing dramatic disparities in accessible health care, available quality information, and protection of reproductive rights based on race, ethnicity, gender, disabilities, and language have devastated communities of color and queer communities and have made abortion a central battleground for a new wave of reproductive justice. For more than 600 years women of color have fought (genocide, slavery, forced migration and denied immigration, and culturally based sterilization) to build and sustain families that are healthy and whole, free from a much more elaborate state control of their bodies. This legacy, and the host of health barriers that flow from it, are still not politically and culturally salient in the world of reproductive rights. But issues like economic, cultural, and immigration barriers to accessing services; ongoing efforts to sterilize poor women of color; reproductive rights for queer and trans people of color; and intense medical discrimination against women of color with disabilities are galvanizing more and more people to action to put the debate to an end and create true freedom of choice.
We believe that the debate around abortion has festered on, in large part, because of the silence of men and masculine of center women of color on this issue. As those whose reproductive rights, though also threatened, are rarely targeted (save the occasional Viagra commercial), our disinvestment is actually fueling a war against the bodies of women, trans and gender nonconforming people, and people with disabilities in our communities. When we don’t talk about our stories of reproductive justice we allow the conversation to remain one-sided, creating an untruth that passes as reality. Though we may benefit outwardly from standing on the sideline and allowing this untruth to pass, when reproductive rights are trampled on and women are attacked or denied access, we are deeply and profoundly impacted as well.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
For Brown Boi Isabel Sousa, this realization led to fury: “I have a furious love for my mother. Furious because I ‘met’ my mother for the first time when I was six years old, having been kidnapped by my father and smuggled across a border so that my mother wouldn't be granted custody after their divorce. Furious because I understand from this experience that to take away children from their mothers against their will, across national borders…and to use children as collateral in extortion is a crime against mankind and should be prosecuted as such. So yes, I do think reproductive justice is a very personal issue for me. It’s a matter of life or death. It’s a matter of justice for my mother who was denied a visa for 12 years in a row, and kept by government agencies from seeing the children that were kidnapped from her. It’s a matter of basic respect for the lives and autonomy of the women that made existence possible for all of us. My love for my mother is furious and I would fight for her rights to reproductive justice with every last fiber of my being, as an equal right that not only women deserve, but that we are all entitled to.”
To expand the reproductive justice lens means increasing access to tools that keep our bodies and our families healthy and secure whether that is access to abortion, immigration reform and protection, disability justice, or transgender-specific resources. Moving beyond the sole focus of a woman’s body and abortion does not deny that Roe v. Wade was a watershed moment in our movement’s history and efforts.
While we are indeed ‘Still Wading’ 40 years post-Roe v. Wade, we are now wading with the anticipation and expectancy that those sitting at the table of change will reflect the entire spectrum of persons receiving care, not just those holding the most power and privilege. Until then, The Brown Boi Project will not remain silent. We are committed to pushing a conversation that addresses the needs across our community, allowing us to build Strong Families in queer, trans, and straight communities of color.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
The Brown Boi Project works across race, gender, and sexuality to build a national conversation on gender justice. Working with queer, trans, and straight people of color along a masculine spectrum.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
To date, fewer moments in American History have been more wrought with divisive and cataclysmic energy than 40 years ago this month. On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion. On that day, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the landmark decision that women should hold the ultimate power to control their own bodies. Well, kinda sorta. Tacked on to the decision was a provision stating that the right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting women's health.
One might have hoped that the 1973 landmark decision would put all debate around abortion to rest. In fact, over the past four decades, women’s reproductive rights have been one of the most widely debated and most divisive topics around. This is due in part to the language of Roe v. Wade, which left plenty of room for debate on the legality of abortion. But perhaps the court’s decision in the case of Roe v. Wade has created such a lasting fight precisely because of what it did make clear, that the law was designed for only a narrow slice of women—those with the means to access their right.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
 |
| By Amaryllis Dejesus Moleski |
Framed as government’s “legitimate interests,” ongoing dramatic disparities in accessible health care, available quality information, and protection of reproductive rights based on race, ethnicity, gender, disabilities, and language have devastated communities of color and queer communities and have made abortion a central battleground for a new wave of reproductive justice. For more than 600 years women of color have fought (genocide, slavery, forced migration and denied immigration, and culturally based sterilization) to build and sustain families that are healthy and whole, free from a much more elaborate state control of their bodies. This legacy, and the host of health barriers that flow from it, are still not politically and culturally salient in the world of reproductive rights. But issues like economic, cultural, and immigration barriers to accessing services; ongoing efforts to sterilize poor women of color; reproductive rights for queer and trans people of color; and intense medical discrimination against women of color with disabilities are galvanizing more and more people to action to put the debate to an end and create true freedom of choice.
We believe that the debate around abortion has festered on, in large part, because of the silence of men and masculine of center women of color on this issue. As those whose reproductive rights, though also threatened, are rarely targeted (save the occasional Viagra commercial), our disinvestment is actually fueling a war against the bodies of women, trans and gender nonconforming people, and people with disabilities in our communities. When we don’t talk about our stories of reproductive justice we allow the conversation to remain one-sided, creating an untruth that passes as reality. Though we may benefit outwardly from standing on the sideline and allowing this untruth to pass, when reproductive rights are trampled on and women are attacked or denied access, we are deeply and profoundly impacted as well.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
For Brown Boi Isabel Sousa, this realization led to fury: “I have a furious love for my mother. Furious because I ‘met’ my mother for the first time when I was six years old, having been kidnapped by my father and smuggled across a border so that my mother wouldn't be granted custody after their divorce. Furious because I understand from this experience that to take away children from their mothers against their will, across national borders…and to use children as collateral in extortion is a crime against mankind and should be prosecuted as such. So yes, I do think reproductive justice is a very personal issue for me. It’s a matter of life or death. It’s a matter of justice for my mother who was denied a visa for 12 years in a row, and kept by government agencies from seeing the children that were kidnapped from her. It’s a matter of basic respect for the lives and autonomy of the women that made existence possible for all of us. My love for my mother is furious and I would fight for her rights to reproductive justice with every last fiber of my being, as an equal right that not only women deserve, but that we are all entitled to.”
To expand the reproductive justice lens means increasing access to tools that keep our bodies and our families healthy and secure whether that is access to abortion, immigration reform and protection, disability justice, or transgender-specific resources. Moving beyond the sole focus of a woman’s body and abortion does not deny that Roe v. Wade was a watershed moment in our movement’s history and efforts.
While we are indeed ‘Still Wading’ 40 years post-Roe v. Wade, we are now wading with the anticipation and expectancy that those sitting at the table of change will reflect the entire spectrum of persons receiving care, not just those holding the most power and privilege. Until then, The Brown Boi Project will not remain silent. We are committed to pushing a conversation that addresses the needs across our community, allowing us to build Strong Families in queer, trans, and straight communities of color.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
The Brown Boi Project works across race, gender, and sexuality to build a national conversation on gender justice. Working with queer, trans, and straight people of color along a masculine spectrum.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
The story that's taken ten years to tell: On abortion, race and the power of story
Originally posted at Crunk Feminist Collective on Jan 22, 2013
by Shanelle Matthews
“Are you in college?” The doctor could tell from my face I wasn’t at all interested in having a conversation. “You speak well. I mean, you’re articulate.” The wrinkles in my forehead deepened. I wrung my fingers tightly around the scratchy, blue exam gown and briefly thought about the woman who wore it before me; what was she like? I looked at him, desperately wanting to not have to actually speak, wishing he could just read my mind. “Yes. I’m in college,” I responded shortly. I was really thinking, “That’s none of your business and really, is this the time to make small talk? When your elbow is deep in my vagina?” But I was grateful for him so I frowned and looked away.
The room didn’t feel particularly uncomfortable. I mostly gazed at the ceiling tiles, counting square by square. Occasionally I peeked down. Over the long sheet that draped my knees I could see my feet, not really manicured, resting awkwardly in the titanium stirrups, straddling the doctor’s full head of curly hair. “We’re just about done.” I sighed out a breath of relief. My abortion was almost over.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
My abortion experience isn’t the kind that might be featured in a Lifetime movie. By that I mean I was 18, technically an adult. I consented to having sex, although I had never learned how to really protect myself. I lived in California, which is a state that provides emergency Medicaid for women who need financial assistance to help cover the costs of abortion care. The circumstances in which I found myself were not particularly difficult but only because at the time I didn’t know any better.
I was 6 months out of high school, a full-time student-athlete living away from home. I was privileged enough to be going to college and receiving some scholarship money to do so. One day during practice I found myself violently ill. Workouts were hard and often induced vomiting but not like this. I counted the days since my last period and realized I may be pregnant.
I was dating my teammate who was several years older than me. He was sexually experienced and while I wasn’t a virgin, I had dated mostly women and not been very sexually involved with men. He said he used protection. I believed him.
Upon receiving my pregnancy test results at the student health center the nurse searchingly said “Congratulations?” Her quizzical tone confused me. I gave her the side eye and told her that I was on the track team and wouldn’t be celebrating this pregnancy. She pointed me in the direction of Planned Parenthood.
I walked and sobbed. I could hear my dad’s harsh, deep voice. “Keep your legs closed! Boys only want one thing from you!” My parents meant well but in my home sex education was a combination of scare tactics, none of which taught me how to effectively and safely prepare for sex. I can’t remember learning in school the importance of contraception or the implications of becoming pregnant or getting an STD. I do vaguely remember coming to school some days and someone would be missing. The hallways were filled with whispers that “she’d gotten knocked up and sent to the school for pregnant girls.” In hindsight, how fucked up is that?
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
Abortions are expensive. I didn’t have any money and even though I knew my parents would probably help me, I was scared to tell them. They’d be so disappointed. Planned Parenthood sent me to see if I qualified for emergency Medicaid. I did. The office was bustling with people desperate to get financial assistance for themselves and their sick family members. The clerk was helpful but blunt. She couldn’t be bothered with details and why should she have to be?
I had to lie to my coaches. I couldn’t tell them I had an abortion. What would they think of me? I kept it from all but one or two of my teammates. I felt a lot of shame about my decision. Not because I thought it was morally wrong but because I had to hide it from so many people in my life. The stigma around abortion meant that I had to lie to people because telling them opened me up to unnecessarily punitive judgment. The hardest part about having an abortion was the stigmatizing environment in which I was having it. I knew it was the only decision for me and even though I didn’t know a lot of women who had them, I knew they were ashamed—so I was ashamed too. We’ve created a culture in which we’ve attached a certain set of feelings to a specific set of circumstances. I was ashamed and grieving out of obligation when all I really felt was relief.
Ten years later there is so much about my abortion story that’s more fucked up than I could understand then. The shame that is associated with abortion and other difficult reproductive health decisions forces women to display an act of grieving whether they feel that way or not. The alternative meaning you’re entirely morally bankrupt. The doctor’s comment about my being articulate meant he had made some assumptions about me, (and other women who sat straddling his head full of curls). What the implications of those assumptions are I didn’t know but it felt unnerving. Every day I work in reproductive justice trying to compel other people to be brave and share their stories but it has taken me a decade to tell this story and that’s because even within the “movement” there is stigma.
I identify as a Black, queer woman. My Blackness makes my story all the more problematic for some people. The assumptions that are made about Black women’s reproductive decisions mean that I will receive less compassion and acceptance than my white counterparts for having had an abortion—especially because I’m not repentant about it. As organizers we are not always aware of our implicit biases but there are plenty of white people who in an effort to make abortion safe and accessible are reaffirming negative stereotypes about women of color. This happens through negligent storytelling that says there is a right and wrong way to have the need to access an abortion.
The narrative that abortion gives women and transpeople an opportunity to live the rest of our lives, to become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever isn’t true for everyone. For some of us, abortion just provides one more day. One more day to live our lives exactly the way we want to. For some of us the decision isn’t political, it’s essential. It is essential to taking care of the children we already have, to circumventing difficult medical experiences or to just not be pregnant. There is nothing heroic about having an abortion. It is an essential part of reproductive health care.
Every year on the anniversary of my abortion I take off of work. Not to grieve but to celebrate: because of my right to choose, I am living my best life. Making the decision to have an abortion didn’t mean I had the rest of my life, it just meant that I had one more day to live exactly the way I wanted and for that I’m grateful.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
Shanelle Matthews is a creative, blogger and all around communications enthusiast. She is the Communications Manager at Forward Together and is participant in the Strong Families project, Echoing Ida. Follow her @freedom_writer
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
by Shanelle Matthews
 |
By Favianna Rodriguez, www.favianna.com |
The room didn’t feel particularly uncomfortable. I mostly gazed at the ceiling tiles, counting square by square. Occasionally I peeked down. Over the long sheet that draped my knees I could see my feet, not really manicured, resting awkwardly in the titanium stirrups, straddling the doctor’s full head of curly hair. “We’re just about done.” I sighed out a breath of relief. My abortion was almost over.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
My abortion experience isn’t the kind that might be featured in a Lifetime movie. By that I mean I was 18, technically an adult. I consented to having sex, although I had never learned how to really protect myself. I lived in California, which is a state that provides emergency Medicaid for women who need financial assistance to help cover the costs of abortion care. The circumstances in which I found myself were not particularly difficult but only because at the time I didn’t know any better.
I was 6 months out of high school, a full-time student-athlete living away from home. I was privileged enough to be going to college and receiving some scholarship money to do so. One day during practice I found myself violently ill. Workouts were hard and often induced vomiting but not like this. I counted the days since my last period and realized I may be pregnant.
I was dating my teammate who was several years older than me. He was sexually experienced and while I wasn’t a virgin, I had dated mostly women and not been very sexually involved with men. He said he used protection. I believed him.
Upon receiving my pregnancy test results at the student health center the nurse searchingly said “Congratulations?” Her quizzical tone confused me. I gave her the side eye and told her that I was on the track team and wouldn’t be celebrating this pregnancy. She pointed me in the direction of Planned Parenthood.
I walked and sobbed. I could hear my dad’s harsh, deep voice. “Keep your legs closed! Boys only want one thing from you!” My parents meant well but in my home sex education was a combination of scare tactics, none of which taught me how to effectively and safely prepare for sex. I can’t remember learning in school the importance of contraception or the implications of becoming pregnant or getting an STD. I do vaguely remember coming to school some days and someone would be missing. The hallways were filled with whispers that “she’d gotten knocked up and sent to the school for pregnant girls.” In hindsight, how fucked up is that?
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
Abortions are expensive. I didn’t have any money and even though I knew my parents would probably help me, I was scared to tell them. They’d be so disappointed. Planned Parenthood sent me to see if I qualified for emergency Medicaid. I did. The office was bustling with people desperate to get financial assistance for themselves and their sick family members. The clerk was helpful but blunt. She couldn’t be bothered with details and why should she have to be?
I had to lie to my coaches. I couldn’t tell them I had an abortion. What would they think of me? I kept it from all but one or two of my teammates. I felt a lot of shame about my decision. Not because I thought it was morally wrong but because I had to hide it from so many people in my life. The stigma around abortion meant that I had to lie to people because telling them opened me up to unnecessarily punitive judgment. The hardest part about having an abortion was the stigmatizing environment in which I was having it. I knew it was the only decision for me and even though I didn’t know a lot of women who had them, I knew they were ashamed—so I was ashamed too. We’ve created a culture in which we’ve attached a certain set of feelings to a specific set of circumstances. I was ashamed and grieving out of obligation when all I really felt was relief.
Ten years later there is so much about my abortion story that’s more fucked up than I could understand then. The shame that is associated with abortion and other difficult reproductive health decisions forces women to display an act of grieving whether they feel that way or not. The alternative meaning you’re entirely morally bankrupt. The doctor’s comment about my being articulate meant he had made some assumptions about me, (and other women who sat straddling his head full of curls). What the implications of those assumptions are I didn’t know but it felt unnerving. Every day I work in reproductive justice trying to compel other people to be brave and share their stories but it has taken me a decade to tell this story and that’s because even within the “movement” there is stigma.
I identify as a Black, queer woman. My Blackness makes my story all the more problematic for some people. The assumptions that are made about Black women’s reproductive decisions mean that I will receive less compassion and acceptance than my white counterparts for having had an abortion—especially because I’m not repentant about it. As organizers we are not always aware of our implicit biases but there are plenty of white people who in an effort to make abortion safe and accessible are reaffirming negative stereotypes about women of color. This happens through negligent storytelling that says there is a right and wrong way to have the need to access an abortion.
The narrative that abortion gives women and transpeople an opportunity to live the rest of our lives, to become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever isn’t true for everyone. For some of us, abortion just provides one more day. One more day to live our lives exactly the way we want to. For some of us the decision isn’t political, it’s essential. It is essential to taking care of the children we already have, to circumventing difficult medical experiences or to just not be pregnant. There is nothing heroic about having an abortion. It is an essential part of reproductive health care.
Every year on the anniversary of my abortion I take off of work. Not to grieve but to celebrate: because of my right to choose, I am living my best life. Making the decision to have an abortion didn’t mean I had the rest of my life, it just meant that I had one more day to live exactly the way I wanted and for that I’m grateful.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
Shanelle Matthews is a creative, blogger and all around communications enthusiast. She is the Communications Manager at Forward Together and is participant in the Strong Families project, Echoing Ida. Follow her @freedom_writer
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
5 Things I Learned About Abortion By Checking My Assumptions At the Door
Originally posted at Colorlines on January 22, 2013.
By Samara Azam-Yu
When it comes to the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I have this deep, yet complicated sense of gratitude to people who poured their hearts into the issue of making abortion a legal right. It is humbling to think about all the work that came before this moment in the civil rights, social change, and social justice movements.
As a young woman of color and an activist, it can feel like being a tiny, relatively unimportant drop in a formidable tide of change. But one thing makes me certain I must continue to do this work: somehow, women of color, young women, low-income women, immigrant women, and women in rural areas are still waiting while barriers to sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion, continue to trump legal rights and provision of health services, human dignity, and self-determination.
Continue reading at Colorlines.
By Samara Azam-Yu
When it comes to the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I have this deep, yet complicated sense of gratitude to people who poured their hearts into the issue of making abortion a legal right. It is humbling to think about all the work that came before this moment in the civil rights, social change, and social justice movements.
As a young woman of color and an activist, it can feel like being a tiny, relatively unimportant drop in a formidable tide of change. But one thing makes me certain I must continue to do this work: somehow, women of color, young women, low-income women, immigrant women, and women in rural areas are still waiting while barriers to sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion, continue to trump legal rights and provision of health services, human dignity, and self-determination.
Continue reading at Colorlines.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Choosing Jonah—a family history of abortion, choice and love
Originally posted at Autostraddle on January 22, 2013.
By Kristen Zimmerman
I have a photograph of my mother that I love. She is 21 standing in her graduation gown beaming expectantly at the camera. Round belly poking through dark drapes, it’s the first portrait of us “together”—me nested inside of her, a sliver of white pressing through the black folds that usually conceal its opening. As if I am graduating too. At this threshold you can see that she (we) just barely made it to this moment. While I irrevocably altered her life, she was fortunate that I arrived in the world about a month after her commencement.
My arrival was not a given. I came at a time of great change, upheaval, and risk, born in 1968, five years before Roe v. Wade became law. Politically the world was volatile and in the throws of great social movements. Two important leaders—King Jr. and Kennedy—assassinated.
My mother did not want a baby. With her eyes set on international relations she was ambivalent at best about her relationship with my father. I was not the plan, and so, like many young women of her time and class, she sought a way out.
Continue reading at autostraddle.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience, and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
By Kristen Zimmerman
My arrival was not a given. I came at a time of great change, upheaval, and risk, born in 1968, five years before Roe v. Wade became law. Politically the world was volatile and in the throws of great social movements. Two important leaders—King Jr. and Kennedy—assassinated.
My mother did not want a baby. With her eyes set on international relations she was ambivalent at best about her relationship with my father. I was not the plan, and so, like many young women of her time and class, she sought a way out.
Continue reading at autostraddle.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience, and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
January 21, 2013
Forty--not young, not old
40. This past summer I turned 40, a milestone year in my life. Not too young, not too old. I wonder which way I am headed next.
40. Significant also for the landmark Roe v. Wade decision 40 years ago that made it legal for women to obtain an abortion. I wonder, what is next for Roe v. Wade?
I’m a child of the civil rights and feminist movements. The year I turned 16, my mother, herself a lifetime activist/agitator, turned 40 and began sharing with me more of her history and her views on the issues. She told me about how she wasn’t able to attend the college she wanted to because my grandmother (another civil rights activist/agitator) was fearful of my mother going to school in the deep South. In 1966, the year my mother would have entered college, young Black women were facing grave dangers.
My mother spoke passionately about how she wanted more for me—she wanted me to have all that she’d worked for and to understand why she chose to fight and advocate. She talked to me about my right to a life full of “unending potential, possibility, and promise.” She talked about my right to choose, the various choices I would be making, and how I would make them. We always talked openly, honestly, and yes, with some difficulty, about sexuality, especially Black female sexuality. Our conversation reverberated with tones of the Middle Passage, American slavery, Jim Crow, segregation…and choice. We talked about how my life was my choice: my body, what I did with it, and who I decided to do things with were all mine.
In high school, several of my peers were pregnant and had to make a choice. Some left school to give birth and parent. Some opted for adoption. The few who exercised their right to terminate their pregnancy asked me to help advocate for them. I did, continuing the family legacy of being a youth-focused activist. I remember the stigma and shame these young women endured. It was a horrible and soul shaking experience. The images that were pushed on us as we walked into the clinic, the vile words that were shouted at us: “baby killers;” “whores who have no morals.” I hadn’t felt such tangible hatred from folks before. They had no clue about the personal situations that resulted in a decision to abort, and of course, none of them offered other ways to help, either.
At college, I continued to speak out and advocate for friends who chose to terminate pregnancies. During these years, I worked at a reproductive health clinic that provided health services, including abortion. As staff, we were required to receive training in bomb safety and self-defense just to go to work. It was a choice that I made, and without hesitation, I would do it again. Yet, the environment was hard, working to provide quality, compassionate care to women and their families/partners under threats of harm and violence. Although time has passed, the stigma and the hostile reality for women who exercise their right to choose still feel fresh and palpable.
40 years young and it strikes me deeply how the right to choose is still a question of whether women have a right to control their own bodies. I got a loud, resounding answer during this most recent election cycle. Women, their bodies, and choice were bandied around by white men who promoted their concept of “women” as a commodity, interchangeable with whatever parts fit the needs of those in power. I was disgusted with the conversations about rape, power, and choice—and the deafening silence about intersections of oppression that impact many women.
Because of my experience in the deep South, the reality of how difficult it is for women to access services without being harassed, stigmatized, disrespected or arrested is not lost on me. In places outside of the South, people might have the idea that it’s no longer so hard to gain access to abortion services. Women of color, immigrant women, and low-income women who are pregnant know, however, that access to reproductive health services (especially abortion) has many roadblocks. Consider what these women might encounter if they have issues with finances, transportation, immigration status, not having childcare/support, literacy issues, addiction, language barriers. All these issues shape the ability of women to seek access to quality care, including safe and legal abortions in a state that is considered a leader in health care reform. That is why a path to citizenship is a choice issue. Economic justice and educational equity are choice issues. Criminal justice reform is a choice issue. The list is long, yet important.
Roe v. Wade. 40. Not too young or too old. Right in the middle. Which way are we headed? What will be the legacy that is yet unwritten? How do we want the impact of this decision to ripple out for the next generation of women?
This year I turned 40. Not too young, not too old. Right in the middle. What I choose now in my life will certainly inform the life and legacy that I want to have. As I reflect back on my mother, and the hopes she expressed to me, I ask myself, what would I say to her? I would say to her, “Mama, I’ve chosen to remain committed to our family legacy of activism. I’ve refused to remain silent, and instead I am openly supporting other women in their decisions, whatever they may be. I’ve tried to live the life you imagined for me so many years ago in the hopes that I’ve made you proud.”
And so, I will always choose to fight for women’s right to make choices about their lives. I will always choose to make sure my reproductive choice is fully protected, honored, and available. I will always choose to see the complexity of that choice, and to find my place in the multiple and connected struggles for social justice, not only for me, but for my nieces and nephews, godchildren, sisters and brothers, cousins, and friends. And, especially for you.
Mariotta Gary-Smith, Western States Center board member, sexologist and public health educator
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
The Road to Roe
By Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell
Every year when the anniversary of Roe v. Wade rolls around, I am troubled by the loud silences in our triumphant tales of struggle. Our pro-choice creation myths—including true stories about 26-year-old Sarah Weddington facing the Supreme Court, the Jane collective of Chicago referring women to safe abortion care in the 1960s, and countless women who died from unsafe abortions—are largely narratives without the voices and contributions of African Americans.
As a history doctoral student who researches African Americans and abortion, the story I tell is quite different.
I frequently hear variations on these themes: “abortion is a white feminist thing,” “black people are against abortion,” or “abortion is black genocide.” When these ideas surface, I remind their proponents that almost a third of all U.S. abortions are currently performed on black women.
But the story must go farther back in time. And indeed, for much of American history, abortion was strongly associated with African Americans. During slavery, people of African descent were believed to have special knowledge of botanicals, such as cotton seed, tansy, and rue, that could cause abortion. Slave owners and doctors suspected that bondswomen curbed their births through abortions.
Historians can’t prove that definitively, and certainly poor health care, inadequate diet, and overwork set the stage for female slaves’ infertility and reproductive complaints. But we do know that, after slavery, white commentators traveled to the South and lamented that the black birth rate seemed to be slowing and sometimes blamed abortion. In effect, they were 19th-century forerunners to black nationalists who claimed abortion was a form of “race suicide.”
And we do know that, immediately before Roe legalized abortion in 1973, more than 90 percent of the women who died from illegal abortions in New York City were black and Latina. The human cost of making abortion illegal is evident in Jet magazine, once the most influential chronicle of the black middle class. It often detailed the deaths of black women such as 29-year-old Josephine Fuller of Washington, D.C.; the former beauty queen bled to death at home and left behind four children in 1953.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
The doctor who performed Fuller’s procedure—also black—was charged in her death. While abortion opponents often charge abortion providers with conspiring to create a Nazi-style “Final Solution” for blacks, African Americans also provided abortions to black and white women. These providers ran the gamut from licensed physicians, healers who drew on herbs and community traditions, midwives, and untrained quacks. Notably, while the whites-only American Medical Association pushed the criminalization of abortion in the late 1800s, the all-black National Medical Association did not take a stand either way on banning abortion. Yet black providers often felt the combined sting of law enforcement and racism during the illegal era between the 1880s and 1973; Chicago’s Dr. T.R.M. Howard was charged repeatedly, and when Columbia, SC, physician Benjamin Everett allegedly performed an abortion on a white woman in 1916, prosecutors asked the woman what she was doing at “a nigger house.”
But the road to Roe was paved not just with the bodies of women, but with the legal activism of African Americans. We can’t talk about Roe without nodding to the 1970 Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz case that triggered the liberalization of New York state’s abortion law before Weddington’s date with the justices. On the legal team was Florynce Kennedy, the National Organization for Women co-founder who argued pointedly—and for the first time in any legal case—that changing the state’s abortion law was not merely a matter of physicians’ right to practice, but also women’s rights. Kennedy gathered women’s abortion stories at her kitchen table, but there were also other black power brokers at the metaphorical table. Noted civil rights attorney Napoleon Williams was an assisting counsel, and Percy Sutton—a former Freedom Rider, Manhattan borough president, and Apollo Theater investor—signaled his support. Civil rights and reproductive rights were not mutually exclusive.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the first generation of black women elected to statewide office put reforming abortion laws on the legislative agenda—even in red states. In 1967, Dr. Dorothy Brown of Tennessee—a surgeon who ran back and forth between the hospital and General Assembly—introduced an unsuccessful bill to allow abortion in cases of rape and incest. While that initiative ultimately cost Brown her seat, Missouri Rep. DeVerne Calloway was elected in 1962, also co-sponsored a failed abortion reform but held office until 1982. Georgia’s Rep. Grace Towns Hamilton also pushed measures to legalize abortions in the first trimester in 1970 and 1971.
Their voices echo today in the efforts of black women state legislators such as Virginia Delegate Charniele Herring, who led the charge against her state’s proposal to require unnecessary “transvaginal” ultrasounds before abortion. They also echo in the grassroots mobilization of historically black colleges in Mississippi, whose students’ votes helped defeat the state’s dangerously sweeping personhood amendment in 2011. And they echo in the work of black abortion providers who challenge new abortion restrictions and serve in remote and underserved locations.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
As a historian, I amplify these echoes as reminders that the abortion movement was never monochromatically white. We can ill-afford these silences at a time when women’s actions during pregnancy—whether choosing home birth, drug use, or merely delivering a stillborn child—are criminalized. These silences cannot persist when keeping abortion legal and accessible is a constant struggle. And, as anti-choice factions assert that the most dangerous place for black children is in their mothers’ wombs, we must acknowledge that these battles are waged on the terrain of black women’s bodies. And that’s a terrain I’m not willing to cede.
Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell is a doctoral candidate in history at Duke University, and she was a founding member of the Carolina Abortion Fund, the only nonprofit abortion fund in North Carolina. She is a guest blogger for the Strong Families project Echoing Ida.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
Every year when the anniversary of Roe v. Wade rolls around, I am troubled by the loud silences in our triumphant tales of struggle. Our pro-choice creation myths—including true stories about 26-year-old Sarah Weddington facing the Supreme Court, the Jane collective of Chicago referring women to safe abortion care in the 1960s, and countless women who died from unsafe abortions—are largely narratives without the voices and contributions of African Americans.
 | |
|
As a history doctoral student who researches African Americans and abortion, the story I tell is quite different.
I frequently hear variations on these themes: “abortion is a white feminist thing,” “black people are against abortion,” or “abortion is black genocide.” When these ideas surface, I remind their proponents that almost a third of all U.S. abortions are currently performed on black women.
But the story must go farther back in time. And indeed, for much of American history, abortion was strongly associated with African Americans. During slavery, people of African descent were believed to have special knowledge of botanicals, such as cotton seed, tansy, and rue, that could cause abortion. Slave owners and doctors suspected that bondswomen curbed their births through abortions.
Historians can’t prove that definitively, and certainly poor health care, inadequate diet, and overwork set the stage for female slaves’ infertility and reproductive complaints. But we do know that, after slavery, white commentators traveled to the South and lamented that the black birth rate seemed to be slowing and sometimes blamed abortion. In effect, they were 19th-century forerunners to black nationalists who claimed abortion was a form of “race suicide.”
And we do know that, immediately before Roe legalized abortion in 1973, more than 90 percent of the women who died from illegal abortions in New York City were black and Latina. The human cost of making abortion illegal is evident in Jet magazine, once the most influential chronicle of the black middle class. It often detailed the deaths of black women such as 29-year-old Josephine Fuller of Washington, D.C.; the former beauty queen bled to death at home and left behind four children in 1953.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
The doctor who performed Fuller’s procedure—also black—was charged in her death. While abortion opponents often charge abortion providers with conspiring to create a Nazi-style “Final Solution” for blacks, African Americans also provided abortions to black and white women. These providers ran the gamut from licensed physicians, healers who drew on herbs and community traditions, midwives, and untrained quacks. Notably, while the whites-only American Medical Association pushed the criminalization of abortion in the late 1800s, the all-black National Medical Association did not take a stand either way on banning abortion. Yet black providers often felt the combined sting of law enforcement and racism during the illegal era between the 1880s and 1973; Chicago’s Dr. T.R.M. Howard was charged repeatedly, and when Columbia, SC, physician Benjamin Everett allegedly performed an abortion on a white woman in 1916, prosecutors asked the woman what she was doing at “a nigger house.”
But the road to Roe was paved not just with the bodies of women, but with the legal activism of African Americans. We can’t talk about Roe without nodding to the 1970 Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz case that triggered the liberalization of New York state’s abortion law before Weddington’s date with the justices. On the legal team was Florynce Kennedy, the National Organization for Women co-founder who argued pointedly—and for the first time in any legal case—that changing the state’s abortion law was not merely a matter of physicians’ right to practice, but also women’s rights. Kennedy gathered women’s abortion stories at her kitchen table, but there were also other black power brokers at the metaphorical table. Noted civil rights attorney Napoleon Williams was an assisting counsel, and Percy Sutton—a former Freedom Rider, Manhattan borough president, and Apollo Theater investor—signaled his support. Civil rights and reproductive rights were not mutually exclusive.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the first generation of black women elected to statewide office put reforming abortion laws on the legislative agenda—even in red states. In 1967, Dr. Dorothy Brown of Tennessee—a surgeon who ran back and forth between the hospital and General Assembly—introduced an unsuccessful bill to allow abortion in cases of rape and incest. While that initiative ultimately cost Brown her seat, Missouri Rep. DeVerne Calloway was elected in 1962, also co-sponsored a failed abortion reform but held office until 1982. Georgia’s Rep. Grace Towns Hamilton also pushed measures to legalize abortions in the first trimester in 1970 and 1971.
Their voices echo today in the efforts of black women state legislators such as Virginia Delegate Charniele Herring, who led the charge against her state’s proposal to require unnecessary “transvaginal” ultrasounds before abortion. They also echo in the grassroots mobilization of historically black colleges in Mississippi, whose students’ votes helped defeat the state’s dangerously sweeping personhood amendment in 2011. And they echo in the work of black abortion providers who challenge new abortion restrictions and serve in remote and underserved locations.
Chip in $5 to support our work in 2016 and beyond >>
As a historian, I amplify these echoes as reminders that the abortion movement was never monochromatically white. We can ill-afford these silences at a time when women’s actions during pregnancy—whether choosing home birth, drug use, or merely delivering a stillborn child—are criminalized. These silences cannot persist when keeping abortion legal and accessible is a constant struggle. And, as anti-choice factions assert that the most dangerous place for black children is in their mothers’ wombs, we must acknowledge that these battles are waged on the terrain of black women’s bodies. And that’s a terrain I’m not willing to cede.
Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell is a doctoral candidate in history at Duke University, and she was a founding member of the Carolina Abortion Fund, the only nonprofit abortion fund in North Carolina. She is a guest blogger for the Strong Families project Echoing Ida.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
Are We Our Choices?
By Christopher Roberts
What are we if not our choices? Every day in every aspect of our lives we choose different things. We choose what to wear. We choose what brand of toothpaste to buy. We choose to love. We choose to hate. Whether they are of the mundane or the monumental variety, we all make choices. And for my metaphysical crew, if we all are spirits sailing across this world, some of the most important choices we make are about the vessel by which we navigate the seas of this human realm; our bodies.
Forty years ago in the United States, Roe v. Wade institutionally recognized a woman's right to make choices about her vessel. The voyage of a woman's body is her own, and she is her own captain, able to follow whatever compass she pleases. However, there are efforts by some in the United States government to commit multiple acts of piracy against the vessels of the souls of women, especially women of color. In this attempt to seize navigational control of these vessels, a government based on the premise of the purity of the desires and morals of rich white straight men, to echo the sentiments of Audre Lorde, is doing what it was designed to do, and fulfilling the purpose of this particular tool of the master.
In the United States, power is largely about choices, and the tool of the Grand Old Party (GOP/Republican Party) has made it clear, via their rhetoric and policies, that it does not believe women are able to make choices about their own vessels. For women of color this assumption of an inherent inability to choose for oneself is compounded by the systemic belief about racial inferiority in the United States. One needs look no further than the phasing out of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in the U.S. recently. The major reasons for the expiration of VAWA, which had been active since 1994, were that it extended protections to undocumented women, and empowered tribal courts on Native American land—or rather, reservation spaces; the entire country is Native American land.
VAWA would have provided crucial support for Native American women against sexual abuse and domestic violence. In her op ed on Take Part, "Tribal Councilwoman for The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians,” Terri Henry does a great job of showing how the rebuttal of VAWA by Congress devalues the lived experiences of native women, and does is poignantly from an American Indian perspective. By allowing VAWA to expire, Congress has hamstrung the ability of these women to make choices about their vessels, to seek justice when that vessel—their temple—is violated. This disregard for the souls of Native American women and the sanctity of their vessels speaks to the larger belief within the United States government that women of color, and their respective communities, are not the best equipped to make choices about their own bodies, their own vessels, their own temples.
We all make choices. We choose to believe in a particular definition of life. We choose to believe in a particular definition of death. The purpose of this post is not to make a case against anything. The purpose of this post is to make a case for something. And that something is choice. The choice of a woman, especially a woman of color, is to follow the compass of her choosing and to venture through this human realm on her own accord. If we make major choices about other peoples vessels we are no better than pirates stealing ships. Abortion or no abortion is a choice, but that is not the choice of the United States government, that is not the choice of men. It is the choice of that soul housed in that vessel that is the body. Depending on the compass one chooses to navigate the seas of humanity, the choices one makes with regards to one’s vessel will be addressed at a particular moment in time. And as far as I'm concerned that choice is between a captain and the creator of her compass, whoever she believes that to be.
Smooth sailing.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
What are we if not our choices? Every day in every aspect of our lives we choose different things. We choose what to wear. We choose what brand of toothpaste to buy. We choose to love. We choose to hate. Whether they are of the mundane or the monumental variety, we all make choices. And for my metaphysical crew, if we all are spirits sailing across this world, some of the most important choices we make are about the vessel by which we navigate the seas of this human realm; our bodies.
 |
| By Kortney Ryan Ziegler |
Forty years ago in the United States, Roe v. Wade institutionally recognized a woman's right to make choices about her vessel. The voyage of a woman's body is her own, and she is her own captain, able to follow whatever compass she pleases. However, there are efforts by some in the United States government to commit multiple acts of piracy against the vessels of the souls of women, especially women of color. In this attempt to seize navigational control of these vessels, a government based on the premise of the purity of the desires and morals of rich white straight men, to echo the sentiments of Audre Lorde, is doing what it was designed to do, and fulfilling the purpose of this particular tool of the master.
In the United States, power is largely about choices, and the tool of the Grand Old Party (GOP/Republican Party) has made it clear, via their rhetoric and policies, that it does not believe women are able to make choices about their own vessels. For women of color this assumption of an inherent inability to choose for oneself is compounded by the systemic belief about racial inferiority in the United States. One needs look no further than the phasing out of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in the U.S. recently. The major reasons for the expiration of VAWA, which had been active since 1994, were that it extended protections to undocumented women, and empowered tribal courts on Native American land—or rather, reservation spaces; the entire country is Native American land.
VAWA would have provided crucial support for Native American women against sexual abuse and domestic violence. In her op ed on Take Part, "Tribal Councilwoman for The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians,” Terri Henry does a great job of showing how the rebuttal of VAWA by Congress devalues the lived experiences of native women, and does is poignantly from an American Indian perspective. By allowing VAWA to expire, Congress has hamstrung the ability of these women to make choices about their vessels, to seek justice when that vessel—their temple—is violated. This disregard for the souls of Native American women and the sanctity of their vessels speaks to the larger belief within the United States government that women of color, and their respective communities, are not the best equipped to make choices about their own bodies, their own vessels, their own temples.
We all make choices. We choose to believe in a particular definition of life. We choose to believe in a particular definition of death. The purpose of this post is not to make a case against anything. The purpose of this post is to make a case for something. And that something is choice. The choice of a woman, especially a woman of color, is to follow the compass of her choosing and to venture through this human realm on her own accord. If we make major choices about other peoples vessels we are no better than pirates stealing ships. Abortion or no abortion is a choice, but that is not the choice of the United States government, that is not the choice of men. It is the choice of that soul housed in that vessel that is the body. Depending on the compass one chooses to navigate the seas of humanity, the choices one makes with regards to one’s vessel will be addressed at a particular moment in time. And as far as I'm concerned that choice is between a captain and the creator of her compass, whoever she believes that to be.
Smooth sailing.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
Roe v. Wade and Recovering from Shame
By Mai Doan
In talking to the young women we work with through SAFIRE, I am reminded just how much low-income women of color have to carry in the fight for reproductive rights. Together, alone, in wholeness, and in pieces, they carry long legacies of hurt, ugly, and shameful insufficiencies. While education, safe and affordable care, and legal support are necessary to help all women access their rights around their bodies, young, low-income women of color are also growing the catalyst for a deeper transformation: shame resilience.
After making it past numerous financial and legal roadblocks, choosing an abortion is still not an easy thing to go through. There is still silence, shame, and sadness that may be connected to having an abortion, especially for working class, young women of color, who have yet to feel that dreamy vision Roe v. Wade seemed to promise 40 years ago.
When I asked one of our young women what she wished had been different, she said that she wished that when young women had abortions they could talk about it with pride. She said that young women who make hard decisions and pull together the strength within themselves and their communities needed to move through the abortion process—these women deserve to be proud of themselves.
The young women I have talked to spoke of loneliness, self-isolation, and confusion. They spoke of not knowing where to go for an abortion or how to access one. They spoke of the difficult conversations they had to have with partners, mothers, and friends. And they talked about the hurdles of money, paperwork, documentation, and transportation getting to and from the clinic.
But they also told me how all of these things felt mountainous on top of the already challenging demands of everyday life—work, school, family, homework, and relationships. They told me that although financial assistance to pay for an incredibly expensive procedure made the choice for abortion possible, the critical roles that friends had played in supporting them through their process was important both logistically and emotionally. They talked about how mothers showed up strong and lovingly and how youth program coordinators provided much needed space to talk openly and become whole again.
We are always surrounded by things bigger than us. At the same time, we are also filled with the bigness of ourselves, our strength to shift the narratives within ourselves to make more room for our own necessary truths. As a country, we need to show up for women making these difficult decisions, not just by addressing the physical challenges around abortion access, but by actively creating space for the shame and silence to unravel, for all that weight to dissipate, and for the burdens carried by working class, young women of color to transform into something much lighter and more reflective of their courage and resilience.
Mai Doan is a Youth Organizer at Forward Together. She has been exploring the integration of creative writing, cultural work, and youth organizing for the past four years. Through her work with SAFIRE, she continues to pursue her passion of developing transformative spaces for young people that lead to both self-empowerment and collective action.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
In talking to the young women we work with through SAFIRE, I am reminded just how much low-income women of color have to carry in the fight for reproductive rights. Together, alone, in wholeness, and in pieces, they carry long legacies of hurt, ugly, and shameful insufficiencies. While education, safe and affordable care, and legal support are necessary to help all women access their rights around their bodies, young, low-income women of color are also growing the catalyst for a deeper transformation: shame resilience.
After making it past numerous financial and legal roadblocks, choosing an abortion is still not an easy thing to go through. There is still silence, shame, and sadness that may be connected to having an abortion, especially for working class, young women of color, who have yet to feel that dreamy vision Roe v. Wade seemed to promise 40 years ago.
 | |
|
The young women I have talked to spoke of loneliness, self-isolation, and confusion. They spoke of not knowing where to go for an abortion or how to access one. They spoke of the difficult conversations they had to have with partners, mothers, and friends. And they talked about the hurdles of money, paperwork, documentation, and transportation getting to and from the clinic.
But they also told me how all of these things felt mountainous on top of the already challenging demands of everyday life—work, school, family, homework, and relationships. They told me that although financial assistance to pay for an incredibly expensive procedure made the choice for abortion possible, the critical roles that friends had played in supporting them through their process was important both logistically and emotionally. They talked about how mothers showed up strong and lovingly and how youth program coordinators provided much needed space to talk openly and become whole again.
We are always surrounded by things bigger than us. At the same time, we are also filled with the bigness of ourselves, our strength to shift the narratives within ourselves to make more room for our own necessary truths. As a country, we need to show up for women making these difficult decisions, not just by addressing the physical challenges around abortion access, but by actively creating space for the shame and silence to unravel, for all that weight to dissipate, and for the burdens carried by working class, young women of color to transform into something much lighter and more reflective of their courage and resilience.
Mai Doan is a Youth Organizer at Forward Together. She has been exploring the integration of creative writing, cultural work, and youth organizing for the past four years. Through her work with SAFIRE, she continues to pursue her passion of developing transformative spaces for young people that lead to both self-empowerment and collective action.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
Policing African-American Motherhood From Every Angle
By Alicia Walters
A study by Lynn Paltrow (National Advocates for Pregnant Women) and Jeanne Flavin (Fordham University) recently published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law elucidates a decades-long strategy to marry the War on Drugs and anti-abortion activism where low-income African-American pregnant women are—if not the primary targets—the majority impacted. Paltrow and Flavin identified over 400 cases from post-Roe 1973 to 2005 involving women of all races, in which the fact that a woman was pregnant provided an opportunity for major violations to her physical liberty. African-American women represented more than half of these cases. According to Paltrow, this is the new “Jane Crow.”
In order to arrest, incarcerate, and institutionalize pregnant women for legal acts like “noncompliance” with a doctor’s orders, prosecutors distort state homicide, child abuse, and “feticide” laws—the latter meant to protect pregnant women from violence. As a result, many women have endured gross violations of their privacy, religious liberty, and suffered from infection, wrongful conviction, and even death.
As mentioned, a disproportionate majority in the study’s cases were African-American women. African-American women in the study were more likely to be reported to the police by health care providers, arrested, and subject to felony charges. The study’s findings are consistent with reports of the racially biased application of the drug laws from disproportionate testing to well-documented targeting of pregnant African-American women in particular. The War on Drugs is manifesting quite systematically in the misapplication of child abuse and homicide law for the purpose of controlling women’s bodies, a disproportionate number of them Black, Paltrow and I believe, not coincidentally.
I often hear the question from African-American women, “What do they [the right] want? We either have too many kids or too many abortions. Which is it?” The truth is, to them, it’s both.
The current evidence is obvious. Racist anti-abortion billboards erected across the country for the past several years shaming Black women in their own communities and making such idiotic and offensive claims as, “The most dangerous place for a Black child is in the womb.” Media campaigns like this one that exploit Black folks’ tendency to distrust the health care industry in order to convince us that our right to choose abortion is nothing but brainwashing. This recent study is yet another confirmation that there is a systemic movement hell bent on our incarceration, the separation of our families, and ultimately, our loss of humanity. Whether the right is attempting to culturally shame and legally prevent our access to abortion or target us for incarceration, above all, they seek to police Black bodies and criminalize Black motherhood thereby limiting our power of self-determination and autonomy.
And yet, on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it would be nice if things were that cut and dry: good doctors are politically left and provide abortions, bad doctors are on the right and don’t support abortion. The truth is that for Black women, there is manipulation on both sides of the aisle, in all regions of this country. Racism and its manifestation in health care are not limited to the South or anti-abortion health care providers. When a Black woman walks into a doctor’s office, hospital, or clinic, just like everyone else, she wants help. She also wants to be seen as fully human and autonomous, capable of making good decisions for herself. Unfortunately, health care professionals on both sides often see a woman who is uneducated and unfit to mother—a myth this culture has successfully perpetuated. Why else would both the good and bad doctors so often find a way to make her NOT a mother by either assuming she wants or encouraging an abortion or incarcerating her when she desires to mother? The common denominator in this situation is racism.
I am disgusted, but not surprised that those who see all Black people as criminals have found sinister ways to pass and interpret laws that keep a disproportionate amount of Black folks behind bars. What I want is for our movement—the one about autonomy and liberation—to recognize the nuance, the underlying racism on both sides, be honest with each other, and find a new way forward. One that we determine collectively; that includes and is empowered by those of us this society constantly tries to disempower and disenfranchise. Now is the time to embrace the complexity, confront the reality, and combat the racism that compounds oppression in this country.
Alicia Walters is a participant in the Strong Familes’ project, Echoing Ida. She works as a consultant to reproductive justice organizations and lives in Oakland, California. Find her at creativejusticeworks.com. Follow her on Twitter @aliciamwalters.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
A study by Lynn Paltrow (National Advocates for Pregnant Women) and Jeanne Flavin (Fordham University) recently published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law elucidates a decades-long strategy to marry the War on Drugs and anti-abortion activism where low-income African-American pregnant women are—if not the primary targets—the majority impacted. Paltrow and Flavin identified over 400 cases from post-Roe 1973 to 2005 involving women of all races, in which the fact that a woman was pregnant provided an opportunity for major violations to her physical liberty. African-American women represented more than half of these cases. According to Paltrow, this is the new “Jane Crow.”
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| By Favianna Rodriguez, www.favianna.com |
In order to arrest, incarcerate, and institutionalize pregnant women for legal acts like “noncompliance” with a doctor’s orders, prosecutors distort state homicide, child abuse, and “feticide” laws—the latter meant to protect pregnant women from violence. As a result, many women have endured gross violations of their privacy, religious liberty, and suffered from infection, wrongful conviction, and even death.
As mentioned, a disproportionate majority in the study’s cases were African-American women. African-American women in the study were more likely to be reported to the police by health care providers, arrested, and subject to felony charges. The study’s findings are consistent with reports of the racially biased application of the drug laws from disproportionate testing to well-documented targeting of pregnant African-American women in particular. The War on Drugs is manifesting quite systematically in the misapplication of child abuse and homicide law for the purpose of controlling women’s bodies, a disproportionate number of them Black, Paltrow and I believe, not coincidentally.
I often hear the question from African-American women, “What do they [the right] want? We either have too many kids or too many abortions. Which is it?” The truth is, to them, it’s both.
The current evidence is obvious. Racist anti-abortion billboards erected across the country for the past several years shaming Black women in their own communities and making such idiotic and offensive claims as, “The most dangerous place for a Black child is in the womb.” Media campaigns like this one that exploit Black folks’ tendency to distrust the health care industry in order to convince us that our right to choose abortion is nothing but brainwashing. This recent study is yet another confirmation that there is a systemic movement hell bent on our incarceration, the separation of our families, and ultimately, our loss of humanity. Whether the right is attempting to culturally shame and legally prevent our access to abortion or target us for incarceration, above all, they seek to police Black bodies and criminalize Black motherhood thereby limiting our power of self-determination and autonomy.
And yet, on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it would be nice if things were that cut and dry: good doctors are politically left and provide abortions, bad doctors are on the right and don’t support abortion. The truth is that for Black women, there is manipulation on both sides of the aisle, in all regions of this country. Racism and its manifestation in health care are not limited to the South or anti-abortion health care providers. When a Black woman walks into a doctor’s office, hospital, or clinic, just like everyone else, she wants help. She also wants to be seen as fully human and autonomous, capable of making good decisions for herself. Unfortunately, health care professionals on both sides often see a woman who is uneducated and unfit to mother—a myth this culture has successfully perpetuated. Why else would both the good and bad doctors so often find a way to make her NOT a mother by either assuming she wants or encouraging an abortion or incarcerating her when she desires to mother? The common denominator in this situation is racism.
I am disgusted, but not surprised that those who see all Black people as criminals have found sinister ways to pass and interpret laws that keep a disproportionate amount of Black folks behind bars. What I want is for our movement—the one about autonomy and liberation—to recognize the nuance, the underlying racism on both sides, be honest with each other, and find a new way forward. One that we determine collectively; that includes and is empowered by those of us this society constantly tries to disempower and disenfranchise. Now is the time to embrace the complexity, confront the reality, and combat the racism that compounds oppression in this country.
Alicia Walters is a participant in the Strong Familes’ project, Echoing Ida. She works as a consultant to reproductive justice organizations and lives in Oakland, California. Find her at creativejusticeworks.com. Follow her on Twitter @aliciamwalters.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
Covering Our Base: Why I Fight for Affordable Reproductive Care
By Morgan Meneses-Sheets
Rachel Atkins once said, “There aren’t women who have abortions and women who have babies. Those are the same women at different points in their lives.” This hits home for me. I can remember like it was yesterday being a scared freshman in college walking up to the check-out line of a local pharmacy, averting my eyes from the cashier as I paid what seemed like an exorbitant amount of money from my work study job for a pregnancy test. I think I remember the cashier saying, “good luck”—a funny comment looking back.
Those three minutes or so waiting to find out if my late period really meant what I feared felt like eons. I had thought a lot about it before making that fateful trip to the store. My relationship wasn’t the best. We were high school sweethearts who seemed to be going in different directions. After growing up pretty sheltered in my small, rural town where there seemed to be a bar and a church on every corner and not a lot of options for the future, I was just starting to see the potential ahead of me. I had friends and classmates who had kids when we were in school and knew that they were doing their best. I supported their decision, but felt that it was not the right one for me. I knew that if that plus sign came up, I would seek an abortion.
Many years later, my spouse and I excitedly bought many pregnancy tests. We planned and hoped and crossed our fingers. When we saw that plus sign, we were elated and immediately took two more tests just to make sure that this joyous news was real. It was something that we both wanted desperately, having talked about kids from our first date.
In both of those moments, I distinctly knew what I wanted. I knew what was right for me—not for all women who might be like me, but for me. I knew that my family would support me if I sought an abortion or if (and when) I became a parent.
The problem is that there are politicians who want to interfere with these kinds of personal decisions by restricting access to insurance coverage of abortion in order to make care unaffordable. It is simply unconscionable to take what are already complicated moments in a woman’s life and make them that much harder by denying her coverage for the care she needs.
However a person feels about abortion, it’s not their place to make that personal decision for someone else. And it’s certainly not the place of our elected officials.
Politicians were not by my side as I went to get my birth control prescription in high school. They were not by my side while I made my way through college. My family was there. Politicians were not listening to me on the phone as I struggled to make my way up the career ladder and find a place for myself in the world. My friends were there. Politicians weren’t at my wedding when my spouse and I made a commitment to build a life together, a life that we hoped would include children. Our loved ones were there. There were no politicians at the fertility clinic with us as we worked to have a healthy pregnancy or in the delivery room when our beautiful daughter was born. No, it has always been my family and friends who have been there for me each step of my life. And it is my family and friends to whom I turn to for counsel. They are the ones I have made personal health and life decisions with, not politicians in Washington.
Only I know the circumstances of any given moment in my life and what is best for me, and every woman should make her own reproductive health decisions based on what is best for her. For each woman to be able to make a real decision—whether that is adoption, abortion, or becoming a parent—she needs to be able to afford it. That’s why we can’t let abortion coverage be excluded from health care benefits just for political reasons.
All health insurance plans—whether paid for by an individual or sponsored by an employer or through a government health program—should cover all pregnancy-related care, including maternity care and abortion care.
Morgan Meneses-Sheets is the Program Manager for the Reproductive Health Technologies Project (RHTP) where she manages the abortion program. She has spent the past thirteen years advocating on behalf of reproductive health, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender equality, environmental protection and health care access.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
Rachel Atkins once said, “There aren’t women who have abortions and women who have babies. Those are the same women at different points in their lives.” This hits home for me. I can remember like it was yesterday being a scared freshman in college walking up to the check-out line of a local pharmacy, averting my eyes from the cashier as I paid what seemed like an exorbitant amount of money from my work study job for a pregnancy test. I think I remember the cashier saying, “good luck”—a funny comment looking back. Those three minutes or so waiting to find out if my late period really meant what I feared felt like eons. I had thought a lot about it before making that fateful trip to the store. My relationship wasn’t the best. We were high school sweethearts who seemed to be going in different directions. After growing up pretty sheltered in my small, rural town where there seemed to be a bar and a church on every corner and not a lot of options for the future, I was just starting to see the potential ahead of me. I had friends and classmates who had kids when we were in school and knew that they were doing their best. I supported their decision, but felt that it was not the right one for me. I knew that if that plus sign came up, I would seek an abortion.
Many years later, my spouse and I excitedly bought many pregnancy tests. We planned and hoped and crossed our fingers. When we saw that plus sign, we were elated and immediately took two more tests just to make sure that this joyous news was real. It was something that we both wanted desperately, having talked about kids from our first date.
In both of those moments, I distinctly knew what I wanted. I knew what was right for me—not for all women who might be like me, but for me. I knew that my family would support me if I sought an abortion or if (and when) I became a parent.
The problem is that there are politicians who want to interfere with these kinds of personal decisions by restricting access to insurance coverage of abortion in order to make care unaffordable. It is simply unconscionable to take what are already complicated moments in a woman’s life and make them that much harder by denying her coverage for the care she needs.
However a person feels about abortion, it’s not their place to make that personal decision for someone else. And it’s certainly not the place of our elected officials.
Politicians were not by my side as I went to get my birth control prescription in high school. They were not by my side while I made my way through college. My family was there. Politicians were not listening to me on the phone as I struggled to make my way up the career ladder and find a place for myself in the world. My friends were there. Politicians weren’t at my wedding when my spouse and I made a commitment to build a life together, a life that we hoped would include children. Our loved ones were there. There were no politicians at the fertility clinic with us as we worked to have a healthy pregnancy or in the delivery room when our beautiful daughter was born. No, it has always been my family and friends who have been there for me each step of my life. And it is my family and friends to whom I turn to for counsel. They are the ones I have made personal health and life decisions with, not politicians in Washington.
Only I know the circumstances of any given moment in my life and what is best for me, and every woman should make her own reproductive health decisions based on what is best for her. For each woman to be able to make a real decision—whether that is adoption, abortion, or becoming a parent—she needs to be able to afford it. That’s why we can’t let abortion coverage be excluded from health care benefits just for political reasons.
All health insurance plans—whether paid for by an individual or sponsored by an employer or through a government health program—should cover all pregnancy-related care, including maternity care and abortion care.
Morgan Meneses-Sheets is the Program Manager for the Reproductive Health Technologies Project (RHTP) where she manages the abortion program. She has spent the past thirteen years advocating on behalf of reproductive health, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender equality, environmental protection and health care access.
This post is part of Still Wading: Forty years of resistance, resilience and reclamation in communities of color, a blog series by Strong Families commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.