TPM: How To Ditch Hyde Anti-Abortion Law And Win Elections

Our friends over at TPM (Talking Points Memo) have published a proposal to all politicians. The article is a response to the 37^th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment, abortion access, women in politics, and the importance of funding reproductive healthcare.

“How to Ditch Hyde Anti-Abortion Law And Win Elections” is an Op-Ed article collaboratively written by Forward Together’s Executive Director Eveline Shen, and Reproductive Health Technologies Project’s President and CEO Jessica Arons. Below is a short excerpt of the insightful piece,

“There is a new generation of activists rising up and they are looking for leaders who are bold, for champions who are unafraid to buck convention and stand up for what is right. They want elected officials to address their needs and the needs of their communities. They want action not platitudes. And opposing the Hyde Amendment, believe it or not, just might give lawmakers that opening. 

The Hyde Amendment, a law that withholds Medicaid coverage for abortion care from low-income women, turns 37 today. Spurred by the purported rationale that taxes should not go toward abortion, the measure has not only been expanded over the course of nearly four decades to deny abortion coverage to virtually any woman who receives health insurance or care from the government; it has become one of the most entrenched policies of all time.“ 

Head over to TPM to read the rest of the article. You may also follow our coverage of the Hyde Anniversary on Twitter and Facebook. 

An Abortion Story Both Radical and Ordinary

By Cynthia Greenlee 

This piece is published in collaboration with RH Reality Check and was originally published there.

For more than 20 years, the New York Times’ Vows column has shared newly hitched couples’ idiosyncratic paths to marriage. Vows has followed Wall Street wunderkinds down the aisle as well as a flame-throwing bride, a couple who admitted they fell in love while meeting at their children’s pre-K class (and while married to other people), and countless stories about partners whose first meetings did not foreshadow connubial bliss.

In a September 1 Vows column titled “Taking Their Very Sweet Time,” the paper profiled a couple who talked openly about their shared abortion experience. It’s an atypical abortion mention for the Times, where coverage is more likely to focus on state-level efforts to restrict the procedure. And, indeed, it would be rare in most newspapers, where formulaic wedding announcements often contain little more than references to wedding fashion and family trees.

At first glance, the wedding announcement of 32-year-old stay-at-home mom Faith Rein and 33-year-old Miami Heat basketball player Udonis Haslem fits the mold of many Vows columns: a meeting in college, stumbling blocks, and an extended courtship. Athletics helped them bond despite the differences in her suburban upbringing and Haslem’s hardscrabble Miami childhood; she ran track at the University of Florida, while Haslem was a Gators basketball standout.

But in the column written by Linda Marx, Rein and Haslem described the unplanned pregnancy that threatened to derail her junior year, his NBA draft plans, and their educations. Haslem was already a father and said that while “I am not a huge fan of abortion,” they had sports careers to think about and very little money to start a family together. Haslem’s support of Rein solidified their bond. Rein said, “I saw another side of him during that difficult time and fell deeply in love. He had a big heart and was the whole package.”

The announcement’s matter-of-fact tone and the couple’s understanding of their abortion as just one important event in their relationship makes the article remarkable, says Tracy Weitz, a public health professor and director of the University of California, San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) research group and think tank.

“From my perspective, what is amazing about this story is that the abortion is not the beginning or end of the story—the way we usually tell abortion stories,” she said.

The usual abortion story often unfolds in this way, according to Weitz: “Here’s a woman in crisis. She doesn’t get the abortion or she does. Either way, her whole life trajectory is determined by this one event. Maybe she’s 21 weeks’ [pregnant] and there’s a fetal anomaly, and it’s a terrible situation. The story isn’t actually about the woman, it’s about the abortion.” The Vows article, by contrast “was really about the couple. Part of their story was about the abortion, part was about professional athletics, and part of it was about their class differences.” It reflected the totality of their lives and not just a single moment.

As extraordinary as the inclusion of abortion in a wedding announcement is, the Timesarticle is just one of many abortion stories to be publicized. For example, the Oakland, California-based group Exhale addresses the emotional well-being of men and women after abortion and sponsors abortion “storyteller” tours. Films like I Had an Abortion to initiatives such as the Abortion Conversation Project have all tried to open a broader, more constructive conversation about abortion in small, intimate groups or larger public venues.

The New York Times itself has weighed in on the public sharing abortion of stories. In June, its Room for Debate series offered different perspectives—from, among others, an artist who integrates her abortion experience into her performances and an Anglicans for Life representative—about whether or how women should share their abortion stories.

In a society where abortion is deeply stigmatized, sharing an abortion story is often a political act aimed to a specific objective, such as supporting insurance coverage for the procedure or advocating for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment. Advocates for sharing abortion stories suggest these conversations can debunk abortion myths, shift rancorous and impersonal debates that vilify abortion seekers, and ease abortion decision-making for women and men who may know little about the procedure and fear the responses of disapproving loved ones.

With most abortion polling asking whether abortion should remain legal and in what circumstances, there’s little research whether media stories about abortion or personal stories sway U.S. attitudes about abortion.

Yet the Vows announcement is a potent reminder of how common an experience abortion is for U.S. women. According to the Guttmacher Institute, one in three U.S. women will end a pregnancy in her lifetime.

It’s also a counterpoint to conventional wisdom that Black Americans (Haslem is Black and Rein biracial) are more likely to object to abortions than counterparts in other racial and ethnic groups. While anti-choice groups have stepped up efforts to position abortion as “Black genocide,” a 2012 Public Religion Research Institute poll found that some 67 percent of African Americans polled wanted abortion to be legal in all or most cases.

Anu Kumar, executive vice president at the global women’s health nonprofit Ipas and an abortion stigma researcher, said that the wedding announcement documents “the relationship of two highly accomplished and loving people,” but also reflects the experience of women facing an unintended pregnancy.

“Like many women, Faith got pregnant. She was fortunate enough to have the resources and to live in a place where she could have safe abortion care. He helped her through it, and they moved on. She wanted to have a career, and she went on to have a sports reporting career,” she said.

“Abortion is part of the reproductive life course, and it should be treated as something that happens. People make the best decisions they can at the time. She went on to have children and a marriage. He already had a child, he knew what it meant to be a parent, and he wanted to be a good parent. And so did she,” said Kumar. “People forget this about abortion, that many women who have abortions already have children and will have them in the future.”

But Weitz acknowledges that one wedding announcement does not signal the end of anti-choice sentiment or the beginning of more productive dialogue about one of the nation’s most contested legal, political, and social issues. Their honesty about their abortion may attract criticism and has already been covered by an anti-choice news outlet.

“This kind of inclusion helps to put abortion into the context of people’s lives, which is a vital first step to the United States finally starting a rational conversation about abortion,” said Weitz. “However, I don’t think we can say what effect it has on abortion stigma. Part of that will be determined by the response to this disclosure. If they receive a great deal of negative feedback, it may teach others not to take the risk. Only time can tell.”

Cynthia Greenlee is a participant in the Strong Families project Echoing Ida. She is a doctoral candidate in history at Duke University, a Southerner by birth and choice, and a reproductive rights advocate based in North Carolina. Follow her on Twitter at @CynthiaGreenlee.

Appropriate Cultural Appreciation

By Renee Bracey Sherman

If you’ve been watching the news, watching your Twitter feed, or posts on Facebook, many people have been discussing Miley Cyrus’ recent MTV Video Music Award performance in which she attempted to “twerk” on stage and on singer Robin Thicke during their duet of his song Blurred Lines. Lately much has been discussed about the rape culture language in his song and the sexual awkwardness of their performance in general, but most of the conversation has been about whether or not her performance was an appropriation of Black culture. As I perused through the social media conversations, I noticed a common thread: not everyone knows what cultural appropriation is.

So, let’s discuss and learn – what is cultural appropriation?

The short answer is when one from a privileged community uses something (a justice movement, style of clothing, dance, language, etc.) that is a part of a minority community’s culture and uses it as their own without citing credit, and often doing it wrong. In school, we have a similar idea called plagiarism, and students are held accountable for it. Cultural appropriation happens a lot. So much so, that we often don’t notice it when it happens.

Remember Madonna's famous ‘Vogue’ song? Of course you do. It topped the charts and still gets played…everywhere. Did you know vogueing, which originated as a style of dance performed by gay men and transwomen of color in NYC in the '80s, was a form of connection, community, and celebration of self for the queer community who were often rejected their families for their femininity, love of fashion, and sexuality? Madonna didn’t give you the history of or culture of vogueing, and she didn’t tell you that the houses in which the vogue competitions were held were safe havens for homeless youth. She just sold you the song on her album. Also, she did it wrong - no duck walk, no wrists, no spins, no cat walks. Today, vogueing is alive and well, check out this great video of queer youth of color vogueing at the Ruth Ellis Center in Michigan. Need more history, watch 'Paris is Burning' – a great documentary of the lives of the vogue houses in New York City.

Remember the Pepsi Super Bowl commercial of the “Harlem Shake”? The actual Harlem Shake is a dance that Black folks have been doing since the ‘80s and became popular again in the early 2000s when Missy Elliot and P. Diddy highlighted it in their music videos. It originated as a dance in Harlem, New York, and the challenge was to be able to do it well (which is hard enough) on a moving bus (even harder). When it was appropriated on the commercial, they did it wrong and didn't explaining that it was already a dance or use the dancers who know how to do it. Melissa Harris Perry breaks it down on her show, with actual Harlem youth.

In Cyrus’ case, not only is what she's doing not correct in style, but she erased its history and roots. Twerking has West African roots, made famous by Josephine Baker in the 1920s. As the Crunk Feminist Collective noted twerking was a ‘90s coming of age anthem for many teens: “twerk music from local New Orleans based musicians DJ Jimi and DJ Jubilee was always played on the radio.” It's also frustrating to Black women who have traditionally been called "hoes" or "video vixens" for dancing in such a way (and barely get paid to survive and have to work in a very sexually charged work environment), but when Cyrus does it, and creates a hashtag as if she created it, it's considered "cute" and her "sexual coming of age”. Not to mention she's getting paid, very well, to perform. It's White privilege at its best, and perhaps folks are having a problem seeing it because we've been watching it since the dawn of time…Elvis, jazz, yoga, the headdresses from the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, just to name a few.

It’s an ongoing problem, but what do we do about it?


We call it out when we see it. By countering the larger narrative that shows whichever dance, traditional ethnic clothing, food, etc. is being appropriated as a ‘new’ repackaged thing, we demonstrate that we do not tolerate it and we educate the larger community about the antiquity of our ancestors. We make sure our community is seen, not for someone to market and profit off of, but to celebrate our histories.

But what happens when we don’t realize when we ourselves are on the profiting end of the appropriation? Often it shows up as us becoming defensive regarding on the issue. Think about how we feel when people who haven't lived our lives use our stories for things that we haven't approved AND don't cite us as the source - It feels stolen, repackaged, and inauthentic.

For me, when I'm often being challenged by something, I try to take a moment and think about why I'm feeling so challenged. Then I take a breath, unclench my jaw, and start my research. I stop reading the articles written by the privileged group that keep me feeling safe in my current belief, and read articles by those who are calling out the appropriation. I listen to their stories and experiences because they are the voices less heard and are feeling the appropriation. They are the ones who have done the research on the historical and cultural context and can articulate how and why this is a pattern. It's then that I often realize, the issue usually is: I was uncomfortable with having my privileged checked. I didn’t like the realization that I was complicit in a system that was oppressing those closest to me. And that’s how privilege works, even though we may know that we have it, we still benefit from it in society and we can’t always see all the ways. When communities call it out, we need to take a step back and look for what is invisible to us. It doesn’t feel good to be called out when you’ve messed up, but it’s part of being an ally and creating a more just world. Acknowledge, accept, and educate.

This is probably not the last time that we will see cultural appropriation on stage, and probably not the last time we’ll see it this week. But when we as allies come together with communities to challenge cultural appropriation we are refusing to accept society’s plagiarism. We are ensuring that dances, foods, and cultures are preserved in their authentic form – not a watered down version for mass consumption. Our music and dances are complex, with long histories, sorrows, and joys. Our foods are from our ancestors, with rich stories to be shared over a meal with a community you love. I am not saying that those who want to explore cultures they are not a part of can’t; I am saying that when you do, do it with someone from the community by your side. Hold their hand and their heart. Don’t do it because it’s this week’s fad to be thrown away with next week’s trash or because it’s something fun to get you street credit. Do it because you truly want to invest in the growth of culture, cultural exchange, and are in it for the long haul. Learn the history and the stories, and then share the genuine meaning with others. Give credit where credit is due. There’s no need to stamp your name on everything, let others share their cultural expertise and open more minds. When we accept the melting pot version, everyone loses out, because no one has the chance to experience something deep and authentic: our lives.

Renee Bracey Sherman is a contributor to Echoing Ida, a project of Strong Families. She is a reproductive justice activist who shares her own abortion experience to encourage others who have had abortions to speak out and end the silence and stigma. She's shared her story on the BBC Newshour, Feministing.com, The Atlantic.com, and various college campuses and is frequently featured on RH Reality Check.