Some days I can't bear to look

I know I haven't been around much. Frankly, keeping up with the insane and nonstop political assaults on abortion and related care has been nearly too much to bear. You'd think I'd be writing nonstop, because SO MANY FEELINGS, but at times the feelings kinda drain my emotional energy. I know some of my co-bloggers have been feeling that same drain, lately, in various ways -- and I bet fellow abortioneers in the field have, too.

So it seems almost futile to single out one law and one group of politicians. But if any law has earned that, I guess it'd be the latest restriction out of the magnolia state. Mississippi, come on down!

Maybe you've heard? The lawmakers who passed Mississippi's House Bill 1390, while claiming to be motivated by a desire to protect women from dangerous abortion providers, are also cheering the fact that the bill will have the effect of shutting down the only existing legal abortion provider in the state.

Sen. Kenny Wayne Jones (D-Canton) asked Sen. Dean Kirby (R-Pearl), who chairs the Senate Public Health Committee*, whether ending abortions in the state would force women to resort to dangerous, back-alley abortions.

"That's what we're trying to stop here, the coat-hanger abortions," Kirby replied, in reference to the abortions provided at the clinic in Jackson. "The purpose of this bill is to stop back-room abortions."

*I would also like to call your attention to the fact that Sen. Dean Kirby chairs the Senate Public Health Committee. Presumably, that is a Senate committee on public health. But maybe it's...a Senate committee against public health? I guess the title isn't super specific.

Oh, speaking of the Legislative Brotherhood Against Public Health, see also the breathtakingly cavalier Rep. Bubba Carpenter announcing afterward:

"We have literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi. Three blocks from the Capitol sits the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. A bill was drafted. It said, if you would perform an abortion in the state of Mississippi, you must be a certified OB/GYN and you must have admitting privileges to a hospital. Anybody here in the medical field knows how hard it is to get admitting privileges to a hospital.

"It's going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all -- but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to-- Roe vs. Wade. So we've done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They're like, 'Well, the poor pitiful women that can't afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.' That's what we've heard over and over and over.

But hey, you have to have moral values."

Wow. Was that a sneer I just heard? And then...a shrug?

He has a point, right? Sure there might be some poor pitiful women who can't afford to go out of state for their medical care and end up injured or dead using coat hangers and home remedies -- but aren't we pro-choice people (the other side) just talking about those women to score political points? I mean, why else would you bother talking about them? We say it over and over and over because we don't have better talking points, I guess. But hey! Those deaths are so trivial we can mock them and the people who talk about them.

(Later, Rep. Carpenter also shrugged off his coat hanger 'quote' as "just some language that some of the African-Americans used.")

(You thought I made up that last bit, didn't you? But no. He really did. I mean, it sounds like he's saying that therefore those accounts amount to nothing worth examining? But hey! That's okay, because African-American women (and other black women, and other women of color) definitely don't have even more experience with unsafe abortion than white women.)

Gosh, wonder why I feel so tired?

Abortion is soooo gay

My running team happens to be a local member of an international LGBT running club. I ran a half-marathon on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade this year, and as I was getting to the start of my race, I ran into a friend from the running team:

(Note: I am on a running team that is a local member of an international LGBT running club.)

Friend: Happy Roe v. Wade anniversary!

Me: Thanks! I wanted to put something on my shirt about Roe v. Wade but just didn’t get around to it in time.

Friend: That would be a lot of different messages on your shirt since our team logo is already on the front…and people might think our team has an official pro-choice stance.

Me: Ha, yeah, but I hope most people on our team are pro-choice.

Friend: Yeah but how will we recruit all those gay Republicans to join our team then?

Me: Hey you never know, they could be pro-choice Republicans...I mean they are already Log Cabin Republicans so….


One of the things I find interesting about the reproductive rights and LGBT movements is prevalence of the word “choice” and how one embraces it and one defends against it. CHOICE is synonymous with abortion in my mind and the reproductive rights movement has really latched onto this term because it acknowledges bodily autonomy and a woman’s control over her own self. However, the LGBT movement has had to fight off their opponents who say it’s a CHOICE to be gay, transgender, etc. Reproductive rights are all about CHOICE; it’s not being anti-baby or pro-abortion, but about wanting to have a CHOICE. The LGBT movement vehemently opposes the notion that being gay is a CHOICE and argues against those who say they can just as easily CHOOSE to be straight (after all, it just takes a little ‘Ted Haggarding’ to become an “ex-gay”, aka anyone can pray away the gay with the right amount of training and determination!).

When you Google “abortion homosexuality” the second link that shows up leads to a piece called “Abortion and Homosexuality Movements Are Linked in their War Against Life and Marriage”. Funny, I’ve always believed that the movements are intersected and linked too, but for very different reasons. For me, LGBT rights and reproductive rights are both about bodily autonomy. People can do whatever the fuck they want with their bodies!

There are the obvious alliances between the two movements. We are fighting the same enemies and share similar allies. The groups who hate and fight against one of these movements often fight against the other (Umm Westboro Baptist “Church” anyone?). And then there are the LGBT singles and couples that seek to get pregnant and delve into the world of assisted reproductive technology (which has grown thanks to the reproductive rights movement). The clinic I worked at provided abortions in the same space where (mainly) lesbians came to get assistance with pregnancy. Many of these women get on birth control to regulate their period. And then there were even a few times where women who were artificially inseminated unfortunately had to seek out an abortion due to a fetal anomaly or health risk.

And lets not forget about all the lesbian women out there who never plan on needing birth control but take hormonal contraceptives in order to manage their period or decrease acne! I include my own sister in this group and I still find it funny to talk to her about oral contraceptives.

But then you have groups like this who clearly disagree with me and it just blows my mind:
http://www.plagal.org/

They state on their website:
Towards this end PLAGAL was formed: to challenge the notion of abortion as acceptable, to bear witness to the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered (GLBT) community that abortion rights and GLBT rights are not one and the same, and to work towards those alternatives that are life-affirming as well as pro-woman.

By the way PLAGAL=worst acronym ever

I’ve heard the argument from anti-abortion gay groups that if/when a “gay gene” is discovered then people will do selective abortion based off of sexuality. Anyone have thoughts on this?


Final thought: Clearly our movements need to work together. We both face challenges from those trying to control us, from the religious right, from the healthcare system, from politicians, and from assholes like Eric Rudolph who CHOOSES to use violence to express his hatred for abortion and homosexuality.

We Will Keep Our Clinics Open!

In the last year (+) several abortion clinics around the country have closed for a myriad of reasons. We often mention that a vast majority of abortion doctors are "aging out" and fewer medical students currently coming out of school are motivated to provide abortions. Several clinics have also closed after inspections by the Department of Health and Human Services or similar state agencies (DHH, DHS). Abortion provision is challenging and comes up against many blockades on many levels. 

In Fayetteville, Arkansas, the Fayetteville Women's Center closed its doors because the doctor is facing health problems. Several other doctors have become ill, died, or simply reached the age, or well beyond the age, of retirement. Dr. Eugene Glick and Dr. Tiller are two doctors who come to mind who have passed away. Of course, Dr. Tiller did not die of old age or a disease, he was murdered by anti-abortion radicals.

Several clinics have closed after DHH inspections. This is challenging because when a clinic is shut down or its license is suspended, the fairness of DHH is always in question. A few months in Montgomery, Alabama, the Beacon Women's Center had its licence suspended after a DHH inspection. More recently in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Hope Medical Group for Women was shut down after a DHH inspection. Based on a recent law signed by the Louisiana governor, any abortion clinic with any defiency at all must suspend operation immediately and the appeals process to reopen can take months -- here is an article from RH Reality Check to help give a little perspective. According to that article, the owner of Hope Medical Group is going to challenge this law in court. In the northeast, at least two doctors have had to close their doors because of problems found by DHH.

When clinics are closed because DHH finds problems, it is challenging. If DHH came into abortion clinics and advised staff on how to run better medical facilities, that would be great. For example, at my clinic we are constantly striving to improve our patient care and services. The problem is that in reality, very often  DHH inspectors walk into abortion clinics with the intent of finding something wrong. When I read a news story about a clinic being ordered to close, there is no way to know if the problems cited are problems that actually warranted (medically or otherwise) shutting the clinic down. In states like Alabama or Louisiana where the social environment is conservative, it's very possible that both the DHH inspector and the person who wrote the news article are anti-choice. Really, I guess that is possible in Anywhere, USA.

Where I work we spend day after day stressing over what DHH might try to make into an issue. We know we run a clinic that offers safe medical care. Yet instead of focusing on improving our overall patient care and services, we must worry over which piece of our policies and procedures DHH might decide to pick apart if an anti-choice inspector shows up one day.

Abortion care is under seige in this country. Roe v. Wade may never even be overturned, but folks who are in power and against abortion continue to attempt everything they can to make it as difficult as possible to seek abortion care. My boss, who has worked in abortion provision since Roe v. Wade, often mentions that liberals are not as organized as we once were. Women who are of reproductive age today were not alive or not of reproductive age during pre-Roe years. Sometimes I wonder how many hoops women will have to jump through to get a simple medical procedure before folks are ready to get back out and yell, "We will keep our clinics open, enough is enough!"