updated: LOUISIANA IS ABOUT TO CLOSE ITS ABORTION CLINICS AND NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT

EDIT 1/29/14: DATE AND ROOM CHANGE -- the hearing is now TUESDAY, FEB 4 AT 1PM, Room 173. Email fight4RJLA@gmail.com for info or to get more involved.


Oh, Lawd. I am online bright and early to share this news uncovered by some fellow abortioneers in Louisiana. It's scary and needs immediate attention, so please forgive this hasty reblog (from the folks at New Orleans Abortion Fund, with their permission) and take action quickly: show up for the hearing on Wednesday, or write a letter/email for DHH by Tuesday -- see details in purple below.
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URGENT: Hearing on "backdoor abortion ban," new clinic regulations in Louisiana

It may not be easy to get excited over 21 pages of Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals regulations, but you'll want to hear about this!

Just before Thanksgiving, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) issued new "emergency" regulations that overhauled the existing regulations on abortion clinics. These 21 pages of rules give DHH the authority to immediately shut down a clinic without opportunity for appeal, even for simple infractions. Clinics have stated that they would be unable to meet the burdensome and excessive requirements, and this would lead to the closure of all five clinics in Louisiana.

DHH's new regulations are another manifestation of the "TRAP" (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws that are sweeping the country. They represent an effective ban on abortion, especially for the low-income women that NOAF serves, who cannot afford to travel. Here are some examples of new provisions:

• Patients must have documented in their charts that hemoglobin and Rh factor lab tests were performed at least 30 days prior to the abortion procedure. This means that some patients will risk being beyond the 20 week deadline in Louisiana (and earlier than that at most clinics) to have an abortion, and will add to the procedure costs for all patients, as they will have to wait an additional month.
• Each clinic who is applying for a new license must submit a "certificate of need" to the State proving the need for their services. In many other circumstances, such as any change to the location or the ownership of an existing clinic, existing clinics must apply for a brand-new license and (re-)satisfy the certificate of need requirement. The subjective nature of these requirements allows the State to severely restrict new licenses and will provide the State with a mechanism for refusing to allow existing clinics to renew their licenses to operate.
• There is no right to appeal deficiencies to any unbiased body outside of the Department of Health and Hospitals. Therefore, every deficiency that a clinic is cited with will be allowed to stand, and those deficiencies are often later used to revoke a clinic’s license on the basis of being a “repeat” offender.
• The new regulations require that all facilities have very specific square footage requirements that are far larger than any currently operating abortion facility. They would be prohibitively expensive to construct, and the requirements have no medical necessity. If the regulations are allowed to go into effect, no clinic will be in compliance on the day the regulations are implemented, and the State will have the ability to shut down every existing abortion clinic in the State.

These regulations were originally enacted without public comment and with no clear indication of need. There will finally be a hearing on Tuesday, February 4 at 1:00pm in Room 173 of the Bienville Building, 628 North 4th Street in Baton Rouge. The New Orleans Abortion Fund and members of allied organizations will be testifying and presenting written comments from advocates, providers, and women who have recently obtained abortions at affected clinics at the public hearing.

The people of Louisiana need your support! Please consider attending this hearing and/or submitting written comments. We have created talking points and a sample letter [PDFs]. Feel free to copy and paste (and re-format if needed!), but please consider adding your personal thoughts.

Hearing details:

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 9:30am - get there early; we are packing the place!

Bienville Building, Room 118, 628 North 4th Street, Baton Rouge, LA 70802
NOTE: NOAF and our allies are wearing purple!

If you cannot attend the hearing, we can print and hand-deliver your written comments at the hearing -- you MUST include your full name and address. Email your letter to abortionfundnola@gmail.com by Monday, February3 at 8:00pm CST. 



Thank you! Together, we can fight back!

Guest Post: An Abortion Love Story, Chapter II

Welcome back to Rebecca, a fellow abortioneer who’s agreed to spin us a MOTA (mates of the abortioneers) romance for the ages. You can go back here to read about how they first had "the A-word talk." When you're done with that, read on below for Chapter II, which in my head I've unofficially but fondly titled "My Husband Sleeps With One Eye Open."
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At first, C didn't really "get" the security factor at work. You know: the protesters. He's European and from a secular country; and he'd lived overseas for years. He wasn't aware abortion was such a contentious issue in the USA because it wasn't in his country. (I also think that because he’s a guy, he probably didn’t pay much attention.)

He was surprised to see all the protesters we'd get sometimes and how they'd harass clients. We were lucky at our clinic -- we didn't have TONS of protesters like many others did -- but he was still shocked to see them.

When we had more than the usual number of crazies out, I didn't like leaving my car at work. The protesters were taking pictures of our license plates; my car was registered to my home address. (I know, I know. Not smart!) I didn’t exactly feel like getting followed. I lived alone in a smallish city and my car was fairly easy to identify.

Early on in our relationship, the clinic was experiencing one of those big protester days, so I asked C picked me up from work so my car wasn't left in our car park all day. As we approached my vehicle, he dropped the car keys. I noticed he took a fraction of a second longer picking up the keys than I thought he would, and that made me a little twitchy. I wasn't sure why.

Later, when I was ranting about protesters, C told me he was concerned about my safety. And then he admitted he had dropped the car keys purposefully .

Why? With his diverse background, including a military history and working in war-torn countries, he had learned certain skills.  It was a trick they used in some of the places he'd been: they'd drop the keys, bend down to get them, and steal a glance under the car to see if there was a bomb.

A car bomb? I was a bit shocked. My first thought was, "That’s not necessary! Nothing like that would happen here!" Yet it was instinctual for him to check.

He explained how surreal it was for him to be so immediately, intimately, acutely impacted by my work: all because of protesters. Part of me was like, "Yeah, well, welcome to our world."

His reaction had been jarring, though. I usually didn't tell family/friends about protester activity or security threats. I didn't want to worry them. Really, I didn't want to deal with their worries on top of mine. They would've told me to quit. This was the first time I saw how security issues at the clinic directly affected someone I cared for. I wonder whether all abortioneers experience that, and how.

Throughout the years, C was vocal about his security concerns. Because of his experience, he didn't think my clinic always took those risks seriously enough. He’d often say he'd do things differently, or thought things like a better alarm system would be a smart move.

He criticized the clinic when they stopped having guards on clinic days, especially when protester activity increased. We lived in the Pacific Northwest where it's pretty normal to carry handguns. The clinic guards regularly pulled guns and knives off guys.

It was hard for me to listen without feeling defensive and thinking he wasn't critical, really, underneath it all, about abortion, about my job, about work that I loved.

I now understand that wasn't the case: he was just genuinely worried sometimes. Which is a shame. It's a shame we have to work in conditions, in the United States, where our family worries about us because of some crazies. Have you had similar experiences?

Guest Post: An Abortion Love Story

Please give a warm bloggy welcome to Rebecca, a fellow abortioneer who’s agreed to spin us a MOTA (mates of the abortioneers) romance for the ages. Consider this Chapter I of the story of Rebecca and her husband C. I can't wait to read more. 
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I can’t remember how I first told him I worked at an abortion clinic. We met online, which was sort-of new territory 10 years ago. I had this rule that I wouldn’t meet anyone in person unless they were pro-choice. We’d talk online and on the phone, I’d gauge how liberal they were, ask lots of leading questions, then pop the big one: “are you pro-choice?”

Even if a guy told me he was pro-choice, I’d still wonder how pro-choice he was. Wonder if he was pro-choice enough to handle me working at a clinic. So I’m sure C and I had an initial discussion about abortion, but I doubt I immediately told him I worked at the clinic.

Isn't it strange that I don't remember the first time I mentioned my abortion work to my husband? I must've told him very soon after meeting him, though, because he came home with me the first day we met...and I had clinic the following day! Ha.

Here’s something interesting. I just asked C if he remembered when I “outed” myself to him about working in a clinic. He doesn’t. He thinks that tells a lot about his feelings/thoughts about abortion: it wasn’t a big deal to him, he just admired the work.

He also wants me to point out that he wasn’t exactly a typical guy (that’s for sure!). He’s not American, and he had been doing overseas development work in emergency situations. So he was aware of the consequences of unsafe abortion in developing countries. Providing safe abortion, from his perspective, was a no-brainer. He remembers we did discuss my interest in women’s global rights and health, so that all tied in to the big abortion reveal convo…Which wasn’t a big deal after all.

So, C was traveling around the USA when we met. He had been on the Afghan/Pakistan border during 9/11 and got a little burned out from doing aid work. He wanted to be in a country with smooth pavement, clean water, and good food. Within a week of arriving in the States, he was hanging out at my house.

One evening, I came home from a long day at clinic, feeling exhausted. It was one of those days where you felt emotionally drained afterwards. Well, more than usual. We were having protester issues, to complicate matters. I couldn’t wait to open my apartment door, get a huge mug of tea, and fill up the bathtub. This was my ritual: soak in the bath for ages, read a book, then make phone calls from the tub and talk. I lived alone and it's how I relaxed after work, decompressed from work. How I tried to leave work at work.

So that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t stop to hang out, say hello, or have a chat with C. Just went straight into the bathroom to run the bath. C didn’t know me well enough to realize this was my usual routine. And I didn’t realize it needed explaining!

You can see where this is going.

C was left wondering if he had upset me, had overstayed his welcome – if I was sick of him being around. It made him very uncomfortable and he asked if I wanted him to leave!

That wasn’t the case at all, of course. But I realized I had to communicate about my needs, about how I had to take care of myself, especially after a really stressful clinic day. Obviously this work can be very stressful at times. I had to learn to become aware of my ways of taking care of myself and how they might impact my partner. That was new for me, and a first step in the gradual intertwining of our lives.

Guest post: Caring for the Ones Who Never Call

I'm incredibly pleased to introduce a guest writer today. Amy Littlefield is a former abortion counselor and founder of The Provider Project: Stories From the Abortion-Providing Community, an excellent and groundbreaking endeavor that really strikes a chord with our own blog's founding mission.

Stay tuned to the Provider Project, where Amy's piece is cross-posted, and you might see an Abortioneers post there soon!

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Amy Littlefield

Caring for the Ones Who Never Call

It can be a scary prospect to call up an abortion clinic and make an appointment for what has become one of our society's most stigmatized -- and yet one of its most common -- medical procedures.

Which is probably why some patients don't immediately admit that's why they're calling.

As a former phone counselor at a clinic, I used to hear a lot of: "Um...I wanted to know how much it costs?" and "Hi...I'm looking for some information about...abortion?"

(This last one was spoken as a question, with the word "abortion" issued in a whisper, like a big, bad, ugly secret.)

I sometimes tried to use the word as much as possible when I answered those tentative calls.

"I would be happy to answer any questions you have about ABORTION! What type of ABORTION do you think you might be interested in having?"

Often, these patients weren’t simply calling for information; they knew they wanted an abortion, but they were scared and confused about what the process might entail.

I sometimes felt like women called just to test us out. Maybe they had always believed abortion was murder and they wanted to know whether we would tell them what they were doing was wrong or try to make them feel guilty. Maybe they were wondering whether the women who worked in the Big, Bad Baby-Killing Center were human beings like them. Many were scared they wouldn't be able to have children in the future, or that we would do something violent and terrible to remove their unwanted pregnancies.

They were certain we would judge them, just as others in their life had judged them. They were wondering whether they could trust us with their stories.

They ached to justify themselves.

"Look, I have to do this, I have a nine-month-old at home."

"I'm homeless and I already have two kids."

"I've never believed in abortion, but I just can't have a baby right now."

I was sometimes amazed at how relieved women were to tell their stories. To a stranger. Over the phone. And to have that stranger accept their stories Without judgment. Without telling them what was right and what was wrong. So listening became part of the process of making an appointment. When I finished booking the appointment and asked if they had any other questions, I could sometimes hear the relief in their voices.

Given how terrifying that first step can be for many patients, I often wondered how many women wanted to call, but never did.

The abortion rate has been declining among almost all groups of women across the country (although a recent study [pdf] showed that the global abortion rate has stalled after a period of decline). Many in the abortion-providing community believe this decline is a result of rising stigma, not of improved access to birth control or sex education (since, by and large, those things are not improving). Nor is it happening because women's economic situations have magically improved, since the abortion rate is still rising among poor women (which proves, by the way, that you can't advocate for reproductive justice without combating capitalist exploitation of the poor).

Brigit Ordway, a veteran counselor whom I interviewed as part of an audio project compiling voices from the abortion-providing community told me she thinks women face more stigma now than they did back in the decade or so after it was legalized.

She said:

"That's the biggest difference now -- women aren't telling each other about this. We all did and we got support, for the most part. Now, probably most women would get support from their friends and family, but they’re assuming that they won't. They're assuming that everybody is not pro-choice and that they're going to be judged and maybe even worse, you know, maybe somebody's going to come throw something at them. So women are silent about it now. They don't get the support of each other or society, because they don't talk about it, I think. It's a huge difference. It's all now secret and shameful for people."

So abortion counseling, for me, whether it was done on the phone or in person, became largely about trying to lift the burden of guilt that women thought they were obligated to feel for having an abortion. It was about helping them realize that they were still good, still loving, still worthy of respect. They drove past protesters and graphic posters of chopped-up babies to get into the clinic, but once they were inside, they were treated with respect.

Every so often we would get a call from a woman who wanted to come to the clinic, but couldn't bring herself to enter the doors after she saw the protesters' signs. Those women reminded me how limited my understanding of abortion is. I saw women who were beating themselves up emotionally for having an abortion they felt was necessary. But I never saw the women who were too scared to come in, too scared to even call.

One abortion provider whom I interviewed has found a way to help those women.

Dr. Deborah Oyer, who owns a clinic in Seattle, Washington, created a series of videos describing the process of an abortion at her clinic. In a soothing and straightforward voice, she describes the steps a patient goes through, from the moment she enters the door until she leaves. This is the kind of education I tried to do with patients over the phone -- but she has found a way to do it without requiring women to take that scary first step. Instead, wrapped in the Internet's comfy blanket of anonymity, they can learn that abortion is not as scary as they might have imagined.

The videos provide basic education about abortion and birth control that counteract common and harmful myths. They also show women that -- contrary to popular mythology -- the doctor who will be performing their abortion is a friendly and approachable woman, not a crazy, rabid devil-monster with horns (Oyer told me she often sees women relax visibly after she enters the room, since she is so un-monsterlike). She has one video that consists entirely of her introducing herself. That video, uploaded two years ago, has 550 views on YouTube.

The video about surgical abortion has 58,816.

The one on medication abortion has 27,668.

Clearly, people need this information.

I'm grateful to Deborah Oyer for putting her voice and face out there, despite the risks that it could mean for her in a world where abortion providers are targeted with hate speech and harassment, and even sometimes with bullets. I'm grateful that there is accurate information out there about abortion for everyone -- of every gender -- who wonders how it is done. But I’m especially grateful that there is education for the patients whom I never got to talk to -- for the ones who never call.

Listen to Deborah Oyer discussing the videos at The Provider Project, www.theproviderproject.org.

Guest post: Abortion Awakening

About a month ago, I was catching up with an old pal when my phone rang. I silenced it, and it rang again. And rang again. Three more times. Well, it turned out to be important. A young friend of mine was calling for advice. After all was said and done, my friend agreed to write about that experience for us.

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I’ve always felt strongly about the necessity of access to abortion care, but I recently knew someone, for the first time, who was having difficulty getting an abortion. I live in a place where it wouldn’t be uncommon for an 18-year-old girl to be thrown out of the house for seeking abortion, and although I’ve been aware of that reality, it didn’t really resonate with me until I met one who was facing this and needed to pay for and obtain an abortion without her parents’ knowledge.

A girl that I’ve been good friends with for a few years came to me for help. Her friend was trying to get an abortion, she told me, and they’d had an appointment at a clinic, but when they showed up, she had been turned down because the clinic could only provide abortions up to 16 weeks, and she was at 16 weeks and 4 days. She had already had to travel for this appointment, since she lived in a small town, and now not only would she have to travel again, she had to get an overnight dilation, so she would need a place to stay in addition to the procedure costing much more than she had originally expected.

The way this could suddenly become so much more complicated amazed me. All of a sudden she had a week to find a place to stay and a large sum of money and an excuse to tell her parents that she was driving to another town. I was impressed at how committed my good friend was to helping her friend with this, but I still felt so bad that she seemed helpless. I called my friend Placenta Sandwich to see if there was anything I could do to help.

The next day, the girl and I sat down and talked. We called several abortion funds, leaving messages. We found that the clinic that would be the easiest to get funding help for was the one she had already tried. We also talked about finding a place to stay, and my sister tried to find her a host for the night. Before she left, we hadn’t resolved any of these issues, and I had a moment of indecision. I had some money on me, not that significant a percentage of the abortion cost, maybe, but it could help. Maybe it could help with a place to stay or just a small part of the procedure. And I knew $40 was a lot of money to give to someone I barely knew, but I thought about what I would do with it otherwise, and nothing I could think of spending it on seemed to be as important as helping someone with such a small support system.

I gave her the money, she gave me a hug, and she left. Through the following week we kept calling the funds each day, kept working on where she could stay, but come the day of the appointment, we had nothing. She got half of the money from her ex-boyfriend and paid for a hotel with her friend. She thanked me later, saying just knowing she had my support was a great help, and she said she felt fine after the procedure and it all went well, but I couldn’t help but feel like I had failed.

I know that it wasn’t my responsibility, nor was there anything more I could have done, but it made me realize just how difficult obtaining abortion care is. Even if you find a clinic that can help you, you might need to travel for it, which means you need a place to stay, which often requires money, you need to pay for gas, you need to pay for the procedure itself, and sometimes, this is all compounded by having to keep it completely secret. I wanted so badly to be able to help.

I don’t know if I’m going to be an abortioneer. There are some other career paths I am considering, and I’m young. But this experience definitely made me feel like I might be called to do that. For now, I want to leave the area that I live in. But I want to come back and make it a better place for women. I want people to be able to get abortions without having to go to another city. I want girls not to be struggling to figure out how they’re going to pay AND keep it a secret. I want them to feel like they have people looking out for them, whether they live in a big city or the middle of nowhere. So maybe it doesn’t matter so much that I want to live in a city or that I might want a different job; maybe it’s worth some sacrifice.

Guest post: Telling my patients "No"

Happy Friday! Please warmly welcome Candid Cannula, a fellow abortioneer who's graciously joined us for a guest post this morning. I loved reading about her counseling dilemma -- one that we all grapple with, I think -- and hope you will too.

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“I hope this is the right thing to do,” my patient – let’s call her Nicole – said right off the bat, instantly setting off warning bells. I asked her to elaborate, and her next sentence did nothing to alleviate my concerns: “Well, I’m basically being forced to do this.”

Those two sentences told me all I thought I needed to know, and I was sure that Nicole was not going to be seen today. But I pressed further, asking her all the standard questions to get a better picture of her situation. How had she felt when she first found out she was pregnant? Who had she told? Who was forcing her to be there, and in what way? Had she talked to anyone who was supportive? Had she considered continuing the pregnancy? How did she think she would feel after an abortion?

My role as an abortion counselor has two distinct parts: providing informed consent for abortion procedures, risks, aftercare instructions and contraceptive options; and discussing patients’ decisions to terminate their pregnancies, ensuring that they are confident it is the right choice for them and that they are not being coerced. I have the awe-inspiring right to turn patients away if I feel the latter criteria are unfulfilled, and it is that right that I struggle with when faced with patients like Nicole.

Her story came out in bits and pieces as we continued to talk: like so many of my patients, she had always considered herself to be against abortion and never imagined that she would wind up across from me in this counseling room. She did not think she would cope well after the procedure and she was struggling with whether it was the “right” thing for her to do. At twenty-one, she was a few years removed from legal childhood yet still dependent on her parents, and she said that they were the ones making her terminate the pregnancy. “My parents will kick me out if I have a baby,” she told me. “I’ll be homeless. I won’t have anywhere to go.”

What would you do if your parents were supportive of you either way?

“Honestly,” she said wearily, “I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

Nicole was not going to have a procedure that day. I was sure of it. But when I brought up the idea of her leaving, her tune changed.

“No,” she said urgently. “I have to do this.”

You told me you’re being forced. You told me you don’t want to have an abortion. We can’t see you when you’ve told me those things.

“I’m being forced, but I have to do this. I don’t WANT to do this, but I HAVE to. You don’t understand! It’s my decision too. I came here for an abortion, and I have to have an abortion.”

Nicole, what you’ve told me worries me. We find that women cope best after an abortion when they’ve been able to come to terms with it as their decision. Take some more time. The procedure, the cost won’t change between now and next week. Come back next week if you decide this is the right thing for you. We’ll still be here.

“NO!” she exclaimed. “I planned for this today. I can’t come back next week. Nothing’s going to change! You don’t understand, I don’t HAVE a choice. Yeah, I’m going to feel awful afterwards, and yeah, I’ll probably regret it in a way, but it’ll be worse otherwise – I have to have an abortion today!”

I spent a very long time with Nicole gathering the pieces of her story, asking the same questions, asking different questions, offering her resources to be able to continue the pregnancy, alternately trying to convince her to reschedule her appointment and feeling terribly conflicted about whether that was the right thing to do. I had little doubt that she would end up having an abortion, but maybe she could be in a better place with more time to own the decision. Or maybe another week would only create additional obstacles and difficulty, needlessly complicating her life further.

Where does the patient’s constitutional right to choose an abortion intersect with the counselor’s responsibility to screen and refuse service due to perceived ambivalence or coercion? What do ambivalence and coercion mean for women who lack the emotional or financial support to continue a pregnancy they may otherwise have welcomed? I came to feel that Nicole’s claim of being forced to be there was her way of coping with needing an abortion so that she didn’t lose her family and her home. She may have made a different decision if her family supported her either way, but the reality was that they didn’t, and she wanted to keep them in her life more than she wanted to continue the pregnancy. Many women are “forced” to have an abortion by various life circumstances; does it matter whether those circumstances are other people or faceless considerations like financial constraints, age, or health problems?

I’ve turned abortion patients away who have returned a week or two later, grateful for the extra time to think about the decision and better equipped to cope afterwards. I know that sometimes, it truly is better to wait when ambivalence is detected; patients can’t change their mind after the procedure. But I struggle with exercising my right to turn patients away when they protest. How do I know which patients will truly benefit from it? Doesn’t the patient ultimately know what’s best for her? Why should it be my right to deny a patient the service she insists on accessing?

Nicole had her procedure that day. Like many of my patients, I imagine no pregnancy outcome would have been positive for her. Many patients will never feel 100% confident or at peace with the decision to have an abortion. But no one would have subjected her to an assessment of ambivalence or coercion in order to continue the pregnancy, and that’s one thing that makes abortioneering such a uniquely challenging kind of work. In the counseling room, it’s often a delicate balancing act: trusting the patient to know what’s best for her, and stepping in when I judge that she is simply not ready to take the step that day.

Guest post: Ryan, we miss you already

A few days ago, we all lost a friend and fellow abortioneer. He wasn't "famous" like some of those we've lost recently to violence or to illness, but his commitment and his great heart merit acknowledgement all the same. Today we're joined by a guest writer we'll just call Shiny Specula, someone who knew him personally and wants to speak in his memory. 

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This week marked another huge loss in the choice community. Ryan Christopher Goskie died Tuesday after being admitted to the hospital with a sudden illness. He was only 25.

Those of you who met or had even heard of Ryan probably knew that he was something of an abortion rock star. Growing up in Granite City, Illinois, he responded to the awful spectacle of the protestors outside the Hope Clinic there by becoming a clinic escort when he was just a high school student. That is where I met Ryan, and I remember being so impressed by his sense of social justice, his energy, and how much fun he was to hang out with at 6:30 on a Saturday morning.

Ryan became a nurse and worked in two different abortion facilities. He went to conferences and rallies and wrote. He made fabulous friends and fell in love. He gave time and energy to organizations that he cared about, and he withstood the attention he received from all the antis who targeted him because he was the proud man who kept coming back to the clinic despite their hate. Ryan did what we do, only he took it to the next level.

I kind of feel like, if you took all the activist energy in me and then multiplied it with all the passion of another abortioneer, you still wouldn’t equal anything the size of Ryan’s contribution to abortion care and choice efforts.

I hadn’t seen Ryan in years, but I always felt like the future of abortion in the U.S. wasn’t in that much peril, not when Ryan was out there. I am so sad that he is gone. It is just impossible to understand.

Guest post: Just go balls out, already

On Friday we hosted Steph's guest post about discovering that non-profit pro-choice organizations are not 100% enthusiastic about the prospect of having employees who engage in activism or community organizing outside of work. Sure, Steph could've just happened to interview with an unusual number of control freaks. Or, just maybe, she's found one limitation of a system that forces would-be agents of change to rely on the goodwill (and coinciding self-interest) of granting foundations whose endowments come from fundamentally change-averse corporations. Call it the nonprofit-industrial complex. 
A grassroots organization, called INCITE! Women of Color Again Violence, edited a book on this very subject and entitled it "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded." But if it won't be funded -- if we can't rely on billionaires to solve poverty (we can't even rely on employers to employ us!) -- how will we make any progress in ensuring that women facing problematic pregnancies can actually use the rights they supposedly have? Our Monday guest blogger, WentRogue, has plenty of good reasons for you to join her in grassroots fundraising. 

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Putting the fun in grassroots fundraising!

Last night as I was mulling topic options for my fifteen minutes of honorary tangential abortioneer fame: hmm, do I want to rail about the class warfare being waged, right now, on the bodies of the poor? (Seriously? How pedantic can I be?) About the darkest of language arts used so skillfully against us all by the likes of Frank Luntz? (What do I think I am, a semiotician?) Maybe I should just steal someone else's words, someone like Lynn Paltrow, who sums it up so perfectly that I tried to use this paragraph* as my defining Facebook profile quote for a while? WAIT, JUST WHAT AM I TRYING TO GET AT IN ONE PITHY BLOG POST ANYWAY? an email from a friend came in, a distraction amidst distractions:

Subject: Do you know of any resources for this woman?

And you KNOW what kind of resources she's going to be asking about.

And no, I DON'T know of any resources for this woman, who it turns out is majorly screwed by geography and circumstance. She's in a town on the far western side of South Dakota, smack in the middle of the country a good six hour drive from the only abortion clinic in her state and a little further still from the nearest clinics in Montana, Wyoming or Colorado. And even though she's only a couple of weeks into a pregnancy that she tried to prevent with a dose of emergency contraception she could barely afford—giving her a couple more weeks' time to scramble for $500, fast—how the hell is she going to get time off from the job she just started and who the hell is going to watch her three kids while she's gone on her twelve hour odyssey (not including pit stops or the entire day at the clinic)? And oh yeah, she doesn't have a car.

All of that is BEFORE her state's 72-hour "cooling off period" takes effect.

I HATE these emails. I HATE them. As an honorary tangential abortioneer, I don't directly provide abortion care but I do know that the abortion fund in Minnesota is nearly dry. I know that the abortion fund in South Dakota is, too. I've answered the phones at my local abortion fund hotline and I've heard the resignation in women's voices when the most we can pledge just isn't going to be quite enough. It is, as you can imagine, a horrible sound.

I work part time for the National Network of Abortion Funds. That may be what earned me an honorary tangential abortioneer post, and it may be why my friends forward emails like these, with the glimmer of hope that I just might know about a secret stash hidden somewhere in the supply room. But the only stash I know about is the one we're padding right now: the get-your-friends-and-lace-up-your-bowling-shoes stash.

A bowl-a-thon for abortion access?

Is that really the single answer to the wealth inequality gap? No! But it is a way to DO SOMETHING TANGIBLE, NOW. Last year, grassroots activists, including the beloved Abortioneers, bowled their hearts out and raised $180,000—that would pay for a lot of twelve-hour car trips—in the first ever national abortion access bowl-a-thon. And this year, we're aiming even higher, because the stakes are even higher. The beauty of it is that EVERYONE CAN BE A PART OF THIS EVENT, by joining a local, on-the-ground bowl-a-thon, or pledging to raise $100 in a virtual bowl-a-thon, or simply contributing to the event itself. And, well, it's the most fun you'll ever have in rented shoes!

*Today's highly politicized and polarizing abortion debate creates the false and destructive illusion that there are two kinds of women—women who have abortions and women who have babies. The reality is that they are all the same women and they are all increasingly facing state control, as well as limitations on access to care as a result of conflicts with professional organizations, imposition of religious directives in health care institutions, anti-abortion/fetal rights laws and rhetoric and issues concerning health care financing that interfere with their ability to make decisions regarding their pregnancies, birthing options, the childbirth process, their lives and their families' well-being.
Lynn Paltrow, National Advocates for Pregnant Women

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WentRogue is more than an "honorary tangential abortioneer": in offering women practical resources to obtaining abortion care, and speaking with them about their situations and needs, she is providing abortion care! When not organizing local, national and virtual communities to provide tangible support for women facing reproductive injustice, WentRogue can be found tweeting for abortion access and other vital things at www.twitter.com/WentRogue.  

Guest Blog: When the Movement Disappoints

A warm welcome to Steph, a fellow blogger at Abortion Gang and the founder of I Am Dr. Tiller, a site for abortioneers to make their voice heard. Steph is guest blogging at Feministe this week and has graciously agreed to cross-post here because the topic is so important to me, and one we've discussed privately many times. Expect to see more on this in the near future. Steph can be reached at twitter.com/iamdrtiller

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When the Movement Disappoints

I moved to Brooklyn from Philadelphia almost a year ago. My partner got his dream job here, so I left my decent reproductive health gig to live in the feminist mecca. I had high hopes – almost every major feminist and/or reproductive health organization has a presence in NYC. Surely, I thought, it will take me no more than a few weeks to find a job that I love.

You can imagine my excitement when over the course of a few months, I landed interviews at many of the big pro-choice organizations here. I don’t have to name them. You know who they are. I interviewed for jobs at these places that fit my experience, jobs at which I could’ve kicked ass. But each interview ended with some version of this: “I’m sorry, but you are too radical/too much of an activist to work for us.”

At one particular organization, a senior executive looked me in the eye and said, “If you work here, you have no voice on reproductive rights.”

Another organization wanted me to delete my twitter account. Some wanted me to stop blogging. Others said that because I have a published opinion on later abortion, I would be a liability. One wanted me to resign from all my volunteer pro-choice activism, namely being on the board of the New York Abortion Access Fund.

These requests were not implied. They were said to me in no uncertain terms.

I have a few theories about why this happened. Each theory deserves its own blog post, but I’ll summarize them in three bullet points.

1. New media is still, somehow, an intimidating enigma to these organizations, and they have no clue how to deal with it and with people who know how to use it well.
2. The thought of new leadership coming in means the old leadership has to go somewhere, and, well, where would they go?
3. Fear of the anti-establishment approach and of hiring someone who could potentially offend your board/donors.

Or I just could’ve been wearing the wrong outfit.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many reasons I could’ve been rejected from these positions. I’m not on some kind of vengeful rampage against these organizations. What I AM on a rampage about is this: how can a pro-choice organization tell a job candidate that her dedication to pro-choice activism disqualifies her from a job? How can you STILL, in 2011, not understand the activist potential of new media? The necessity of using anti-establishment approaches every now and then?

I can’t tell you how profoundly disappointed I was in the movement-at-large every single time this happened. Not because I’m special and deserve to be hired, but because I can’t be the only one having this experience. There is something perverse about not wanting to hire people who are so committed to the movement that they work in it in their spare time.

How many other young activists are being cast aside because we are “too radical”? How many people who do great work on their own are disqualified for being “too established?” How is a young, fired up activist supposed to pay her rent in this town without selling out?

It breaks my heart that so many of the organizations I admire mirror the corporate world: they are just as hierarchical and scared of the power of young people. We should not have to apologize for our experience or our passions. I ultimately got lucky and found a job at a place that does great work AND doesn’t force me to compromise my extracurricular activism. I remain furious that young people are treated this way, this profoundly un-feminist way, in our own movement. If your organization isn’t going to treat young, committed activists with respect and dignity, it has no future in the feminist movement.

"Schooling Chris Smith" on abortion's role in the UN's Millennium Development Goals

Good evening! Just wanted to let you know that Kelly, the brilliant and gracious creator of Schooling Chris Smith, is hosting a cross-post of sorts by yours truly.

Before I get ahead of myself-- do you know who Rep. Chris Smith is? Well, number one, he's a douchebag, and number two under-informed and number three not very good at rhetoric; let's just say all that up-front before you read his op-eds and injure yourself trying to understand what the fuck he's going on about.

Number four, he's also a member of Congress (R-NJ4), and among other things he's the ranking member (second only to the chair) of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs's Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health. What does all that mean? Well, as Schooling Chris Smith puts it, it means he gets "to be seen as a strong proponent of human rights despite his complete opposition to full human rights for women." To continue quoting Kelly:

Back in September, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Chris Smith urging activists not to sidetrack the U.N. summit on global poverty by talking about abortion (which is kind of hilarious, considering this is one of the guys who sidetracks women veterans' health care into abortion politics). His op-ed obviously speaks for itself by claiming all abortions cause psychological damage for women and implying that human trafficking and child soldiering are caused by abortion (I have to admit, that's a new one for me).

Some letters were published in response to this piece, but one wasn't. [That's mine! -PS]

So, yeah, being ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs's Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health (takeanotherbreath) also means he gets to say things about global health and international development policy and have them published in newspapers. Even though he hasn't done his research, doesn't know his facts, and can't string together a logical argument. (Am I bitter that I do ALL these things but don't get published in the paper? Not at all!) The Post published a couple responses that (rightly) pointed out Smith [a] was dragging abortion into the conversation from out of nowhere and [b] had glaringly omitted mention of the life-saving importance of contraception. But those responses themselves completely omitted mention of the many errors and false claims Smith made about the role of abortion in saving lives.

Even though it's well past September now, the inauguration of Schooling Chris Smith got me thinking that I shouldn't let a good letter die unread. (If I do say so myself.) Without further chitchat, here it is:

Re: "Abortion does not further children's health," Chris Smith, op-ed 9/19

Rep. Chris Smith's op-ed was long on claims, but short on facts. Having engaged in research, education and service provision in the field of reproductive health, I am left wondering on what evidence Rep. Smith based his assertion that abortion harms children's and women's health (the focuses of the UN's Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5). His attempt to exclude abortion from MDG efforts, discarding established medical evidence in the process, is the real threat to the health of women and the children they already have.

The statement that abortion is "by definition, infant mortality" is silly, as all abortions are, "by definition," performed before birth, which precedes infancy. Terminology aside, Smith's concern for embryo survival leads him to overlook the actual women who die when safe abortion care is out of reach: some develop severe pregnancy complications; some have ectopic pregnancies; others drink bleach, insert sharp objects, or jump from tall heights in an attempt to end pregnancy themselves. Each year an estimated 50 million women worldwide obtain abortions, half under unsafe conditions; worse, the vast majority (95%) of those unsafe abortions take place in the developing world where treatment for complications is harder to obtain. As a result, around 70,000 women die each year due to unsafe abortion, and millions more suffer nonfatal injury and illness. Yet abortion performed by a trained provider in a sanitary setting is one of the safest medical procedures in existence -- much safer than carrying a pregnancy to full-term delivery, as a matter of fact! Contrary to Smith's insinuation, repeated and rigorous cohort studies demonstrate the error in claiming that properly-performed abortion causes physical or psychological complications.

Disregard for the value of human life, as Smith calls it, is made manifest in the poverty, illness, and avoidable death experienced by families who cannot afford another mouth to feed or who lose a caretaker to eclampsia, hemorrhage or sepsis. If safe abortion is struck from the agenda, then unsafe abortion will simply continue to kill women and orphan their children.


placenta sandwich, A.D.D., I.B.S.
Vice-President of Irritated Blogging and Letter-Writing
The Abortioneers
Credentials Out The Ass

(Actually, I gave them my real name and my real credentials-out-the-ass.)

There was so much more I had wanted to say, but brevity is the soul of getting published, I was told. (Am I bitter that I chopped a bunch out but didn't get published? Not at all!) Like I also wanted to say that there's empirical evidence at the family level that maternal morbidity and mortality (for example from unsafe abortion) results in greater child mortality. Not a shocker. And also that anyone who knows anything about health infrastructure can tell you that women in Chile and Ireland survive (mostly survive) their countries' abortion bans because they have access to doctors trained to treat complications of illegal/DIY abortion, not because they've stopped having abortions! Anyone who thinks an abortion ban would not increase mortality in a country with poor health infrastructure and lots of remote rural area -- like, say, Ethiopia or Zambia -- would surely not qualify to be on anyone's Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, right?   Oh... wait. (Still not bitter!!)

I'll leave it there and ask you to head over to Schooling Chris Smith to discuss Kelly's question: What would your letter in response look like? What else has been left out?

What's your Story?

Please enjoy this one last wise blog by our guest guru, deliverance:

“How can you feel so much for another person, a complete stranger?”

Recently this question was posed in my Abnormal Psychology class. It resonated with me because it seems to articulate one of the most significant obstacles in the

complex world of abortion, which is that we see each other as separate.

"She is different," the woman says, who is 6 weeks and was in the waiting room with another woman who is "showing." "How can she do that to a baby?"

"They aren't like me. I am 40 and done having children. I've never planned on coming here," she explains, as if all other patients have visions of their reprodutive futures.

"I am different than them. I care," she tells me, angered by patients in the waiting room who have the nerve to laugh in an abortion clinic.

Nobody plans to have an abortion at 22 weeks, or at 40 years old. The way people deal with having to make tough decisions is not uniform; some laugh, others cry, and a few might not even acknowledge the difficulty of making such decisions until years later.

When I began training for my job, I also wondered what it would be like to talk about intimate details of a "stranger's" life. When I found myself invested in the most essential part of my job, though--making sure patients are listened and attended to--all such reservations disappeared.

I suppose what I'm saying can be put into two words: Trust women.

Sympathize, imagine, discuss, do what you have to do--but I am as you are.

There are differences among us, such as class, race, and most importantly in this case, gender, but we all want to feel like we are creating happy and fulfilling lives for ourselves and those we love.

If we are supplying someone else's ability to live, and decide we cannot continue to do such, know that it isn't easy--but it's also not your place to judge. At the risk of sounding preachy, let go of that which you cannot control (and how sad it is that control over women's bodies has become sanctioned by law).

If I had to identify the single most important thing abortion care has taught me in the precious 13 months I have been benfitting from it, it is that we should never judge others, for we never know another person's story, unless we ask.

Image: One Heart, One World

Service

Thank you to deliverance, who joins us for another guest-blogging stint this Thursday morning!
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"Serving, like healing, is mutual. There is no debt. I am as served as the person I am serving. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction. When I serve I have a feeling of gratitude."
-Dr. Rachel Remen


Abortion work is draining.

Most service professions are, but the stubbornly looming abortion debate is inescapable.

Every once in awhile, unknowingly, my patients provide some much needed fresh air.

Last week I was assigned the role of Patient Support. This job includes assisting doctors in procedure rooms, ensuring equipment is clean, but most importantly, making sure patients have someone to help them through an abortion procedure.

Unlike many outpatient surgeries, abortion comes with a myriad of emotions. It is different than a typical surgery, because there are intangible parts of a person which need attention and care.

Many women walk in the door having absorbed persistent rhetoric meant to make a common medical procedure much harder than it should be—"Abortion is murder," "'Mommy,' I love you," "You are heartless."

Having the opportunity to make an abortion experience comfortable and safe for a woman reminds me of why I am in abortion care.

A patient affected me last week by gushing, "Thank you, you are so kind. Thank you for being there for me." Another held my hand until her procedure was finished. Another told me that our clinic was lucky to have me, and offered a complimentary pass to her yoga studio.

Abortion work may be draining, but patients are endlessly gracious.

They serve me just as much as I serve them.

Guest post: Sons

A warm welcome-back to deliverance, who joins us again with a new guest post :)

********************************

“wishes for sons” by Lucille Clifton

“i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
i wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later I wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn’t believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.”

Male privilege is something I encounter on a daily basis at my job. It often comes in the form of a phone call with a curious son on the other line—“If my girlfriend and I had sex on the 8th, but she also had sex with someone else on the 12th, how could it be *my* child?!” In this process of protecting himself, he is avoiding the responsibilities which come with being a sexually active adult.

Women don’t have the option of walking away. Our bodies are bound to such consequences.

In other instances, male privilege oozes from the walls of the waiting room. Impatient sons position themselves on our comfy couches in ways which look all too forced—they appear pouty, bothered, and cast rude stares. “What takes this long? I have things to do!” If only he could know how inconvenient it is to have something unwanted growing inside of you.

When I was in college, one of my Women’s Studies professors shared with me one of her hopes for third-wave feminists: “You need to involve boys and men. We need to make them aware of how gender roles influence their own lives, too.”

Lucille Clifton and my college professor both were communicating something similar: These are our sons. We need to be teaching them better.

Every once in awhile I am reminded. A son comes into a session, scoots his chair close to his partner’s, and listens intently. He does not interrupt her, talk over her, or insert his own opinion wherever he feels compelled to make his voice heard.

He does, however, sincerely ask—with open and interested eyes—“What can I do to take care of her?” This kind of son sometimes asks a myriad of medical questions, about the process her body has to go through. He holds her hand, the entire time.

There are sons who are concerned about the well-being of women. There are sons who honor women. I just wish there were more.

Guest post: Pro-Choice? Pro-Abortion.

Today is a very special Friday, as it marks the first official guest post this blog has hosted! Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser is a prolific writer and longtime activist for reproductive rights. She's also the author of the really lovely blog Standing In The Shadows, where last week she wrote a post in response to one of our posts (Desembarazarme's, actually), and we've been happily chatting about it since then. Sarah, thank you for letting us reprint that post here today!

I spent some of a cloudy Sunday afternoon walk thinking about whether to write another piece about abortion access, and how I am really, truly PRO-abortion not pro-choice. Earlier this month I participated in the National Network of Abortion Funds’ Bowl-a-thon and Blog-o-thon. I wanted an excuse to give readers the link to donate one more time (my former work was as a reproductive rights organizer so what can I say: will-raise-money-for-important-causes, check).

Then, I read a wonderful post on the Abortioneers’ blog. This group blog talks about the daily work of people providing abortion services. Theirs isn’t always easy daily work, especially in a political and social climate that has essentially turned abortion into a bad word. Remember how then-Senator Hillary Clinton (in 2005) called abortion “very sad and very tragic?” The possibility that abortion might be one of many reproductive choices—take guilt off the table, please, and while you’re at it, unless the entire situation is tragic, take tragedy off the table, too—without such a sense of taboo and secrecy and shame has become quite radical these days. The post was called Utopia.

Here’s an excerpt:

Today’s the kind of nearly-perfect day that makes me think about what would be absolutely perfect: A world where Sunday means nothing but relaxing with a cat and books and tea, no matter how warm it is outside, and also, a world where OF COURSE everyone wants abortion to be included in the new healthcare plan, where woman talk about their (positive) abortion experiences in the same breath as they talk about the frozen yogurt they had last night, where Medicaid pays for all abortions, where birth control is affordable and accessible and side effect-free, where abortion providers are heroes to all, where every child is wanted, where every termination is a blessing, and where no woman has to panic or give up her dignity or feel complete despair because she doesn't have the money or the means to terminate her unwanted pregnancy. Oh, and also a world where I am 5'9" and I have chocolate pouring out of my kitchen faucet and I have a unicorn.

**

Well, I thought to myself; she said it beautifully—and even with a lighthearted touch. So, I did what I often do when I love something I’ve read; I posted it on Facebook. I wrote this: I heart this, the idea that utopia INCLUDES abortion access. I had been mulling a post about how my ideal world includes abortion, but now I don't think I need to write it: thank you Abortioneers!

I didn’t bargain on negative comments, which were along these lines: abortion is not to be defended with zeal. At best, it’s a necessary evil.

I strongly disagree. And here I am, writing.

My utopia isn’t exactly like the one described in the Abortioneers’ post. That’s to say, in my twenties, when I worked in the field, most of my peers were, like me, childless and our support for abortion rights often came personally—we’d had abortions or otherwise had our own reasons for feeling strongly about the option—and we were very much guided by feminism as our shared rallying point. By feminism, in this context, what I mean is that we believed strongly that for women to be equal in society, agency over reproduction—our bodies—to be essential. Punctuate that with a period. Actually, cap it with an exclamation point! It wasn’t an apologetic stance; it was a celebratory one. I think it more closely resembled the wonderful utopia described in the post I'd just read.

Two decades later, I know people whose views about abortion (from support to opposition or strong discomfort) have changed after 1) having a child, 2) losing a pregnancy or a child, 3) struggling with infertility, or 4) adopting a child. That hasn’t been the case for me. My sense of urgency about abortion rights hasn’t faded one bit over time. It has, though, been altered by parenthood.

What’s changed is that I now see all choices—and that’s really to say, our lives—as messier and more chaotic than I once did (I think I harbored some fantasy that when you truly grow up, you figure “stuff” out, something I now know to be just that, fantasy). I realize in a way that I didn’t back then when getting pregnant seemed to be the easy part—and lucky me, in my case, that remained so for all three babies I gave birth to—that so many things are complicated, amongst them getting pregnant or staying pregnant, not to mention the whole huge black hole of potential hardships raising children… I’ve garnered a new and vast appreciation for life’s complexities and how they don’t necessarily get solved.

And given the sheer weight of that responsibility—parenthood—along with the lack of adequate support for it—no paid parental leave, no single payer health care, women making much less than a man’s dollar, and that’s just for starters—in this country, I would never assume that it’s fair or reasonable or respectful of women to foist that awesome (as in, immense) responsibility upon any woman. I feel that is a tragic situation, although in the same breath, I absolutely know that for many individuals, an unexpected pregnancy and child can turn out to be the greatest of blessings. The one does not change the other.

So many years into the wash of pregnancy, infertility, babies, and children, I appreciate that each of us has a lot to carry and it turns out that how we carry our own experiences is a pretty complicated endeavor, too.

**

My belief given all these givens is that every woman should be very free to make her very own personal choice. Please imagine me, as a potential adoptive mother when Saskia’s birth (or first, or just plain) mother was pregnant with Saskia told me that she considered abortion but couldn’t have pursued it because she didn’t the money. To clarify here: she did not say that’s what she’d have chosen, only that she couldn’t even consider it due to cost. I said (and I cannot make this up): Had I known you, I could have helped you find the money. Why? I knew where money was. I’d worked with—helped to found—the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts and because I knew, too, of the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund in Boston. And I meant it, much as I was waiting, and italics can’t adequately convey how fully I was waiting, for that baby, because by then, hers was a pregnancy with an intention and that intention was the baby I love more than I have words to describe.

While I feel, as the mother to Saskia, particularly because the warmth of our open adoption makes our personal story one of the happier ones, exceedingly fortunate, I also know that not all adoptions are so positive. Ours isn’t an easy situation always for all (and our daughter is two; we don’t yet know how she will feel over time about her situation).

No one decides upon placing a child for adoption and goes forth without looking back, as far as I can tell. My friend, Susie Book, wrote on her blog about participating on a panel with other birth mothers. One question was, “How often do you think about your placed child?” Susie wrote: “I think she (the adoptee) got the answer she wanted: Every day. Even the woman who relinquished better than fifty years ago said it immediately: Every day.” The bottom line is this: parenthood is a huge deal. And there are no easy answers.

I believe our best choice is to acknowledge that given the complexity and the responsibility, we must, must envision a world that supports women to make their own choices, without the hubris of shame or the crushing taboos that cast silence atop our most intimate—and sometimes painful--experiences. Now that I am raising a daughter, I want her future to be that much freer than the present. So, I’m going to continue to challenge us all to look beyond what we carry with us—important as those experiences are—to what it means to try to make this choice for another person. I’m not just going to hope for this; I’m going to work hard to try and ensure that you keep your hands off my daughter’s body.


Like it? You can find Sarah writing regularly at Standing In The Shadows.