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.

What Do C-Sections Have To Do With Abortions? Working toward a reproductive-justice perspective

the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, social, environmental and economic well-being of women and girls, based on the full achievement and protection of women’s human rights

don't we all deserve to decide our reproductive future? 

Recently I was going through patients' charts at the end of the clinic day, and was struck by the number of times I saw "MEDICAL ISSUES: c-sections." The details would list how many and how long ago.

I'm happy and proud to be associated with a clinic that can take on patients with all sorts of medical histories. All of our patients with prior c-sections did have the abortion they sought that day. But in other places, this might not necessarily have happened.

Why? Because cesarean sections can increase your risk of placental problems in future pregnancies, and those can make an abortion more technically difficult or risky. In placenta previa, the placenta covers the cervical opening; if there is complete previa, an abortion may require a hysterotomy. In placenta accreta, the placenta is too deeply attached in the uterine wall, which can cause hemorrhage during an abortion. Hemorrhage is also a risk if the placenta is growing embedded in an old c-section scar.

All of these risks are much GREATER if the woman carries to term and goes into labor, actually! But doctors often prioritize the individual, treatment-specific risk, and not in comparison with the alternative treatment if that alternative will be under a different doctor. It happens in all specialties, I think by the nature of the medical profession.

So some doctors will say "In light of your two c-sections, we'll need you to have a special ultrasound done at the local imaging center," and a woman might pay $200 for that ultrasound and if it shows a placenta accreta, the doctor might say "I'm sorry but we don't have hospital admitting privileges at this facility" and refer you to a hospital, and the hospital will say "We don't allow abortions at this facility," and the nearest non-Catholic hospital is three hundred miles away, or the nearest abortion clinic that is also an ambulatory surgical center may say "we can provide your procedure but must charge an additional $300 high-risk fee," and at some point the woman will run out of time and out-of-pocket funds and be stuck with a pregnancy that is more dangerous to her than the abortion she was seeking in the first place.

I tell you all of this as one example of why birthing rights are an abortioneers' issue. Even those of us who expect to never want children should care -- and many of us already do! -- about unnecessary c-sections and the right to attempt vaginal labor. You already know that reduce the c-section rate (which is triple what it ought to be in the US) will improve the health of birthing women and their children; it will also improve access to abortion care.

And I tell you that as one example of the interrelationships that "reproductive justice" is concerned with. Here's another:

Under the newly-passed health insurance reform law, immigrants have to wait five years before they can be eligible for insurance on the public exchange (yes, all immigrants, not just the undocumented who were used as the boogeyman to restrict coverage). Yet, as Public Health Doula explains, in some states with underfunded "pregnancy Medicaid," this means that pregnant women will suffer unhealthy pregnancies and give birth to less-healthy children -- who we'll then turn around and fully insure because they're American citizens, even though their care will now be costlier because we couldn't be bothered to care for their mothers.

Then there is the cruelty with which pregnant women are
-thrown in jail for struggling with a drug addiction (when many detox centers turn away pregnant women because of the liability!);
-arrested for falling down the stairs while ambivalent about their pregnancies (after a doctor violates confidentiality and a nurse lies about you to police, natch);
-detained in a hospital to compel them to follow bedrest orders;
-jailed for being HIV positive;
-forced to remain handcuffed to the bed while giving birth. If you live in Phoenix, Arizona, your sheriff publicly prides himself on the shackles thing, as well as on denying inmates pregnancy care and delaying emergency care that would have saved an infant's life.

What about those who can't even get pregnant? Lesbian or single women barred from assisted reproduction (adoption too), or women who can't get the endocrine-disruptor-spewing factories out of their neighborhoods?

And don't forget that until the 1970s, some states continued to perform unconsented sterilization -- the "Mississippi appendectomy" -- on women of color, poor women, and disabled women because they were presumed bad parents and bad genetic stock. That may be illegal today, but we still have lawmakers proposing to offer substantial-yet-insulting amounts of money to poor women to be sterilized (Brilliant! Why didn't we think of this before!) while white women's large families get the fascinated media treatment. We all have the right to have children, yet not even Nadya Suleman has experienced contempt like the average black mother of four black children (but did you know black women are far likelier to be infertile than white women?).

So there you have it. Just a few examples off the top of my head of why my commitment to abortion care goes hand-in-hand with concern for the rest of the spectrum of reproductive needs, rights, decisions, and battles. We all have our own expertise and area of advocacy, but together we can defend all women's right to decide whether, when and how to parent.

Please also check out this awesome article on black women's complicated relationship with fertility control by Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body; and these two papers explaining the origin, significance, and priorities of this "Reproductive Justice" business, courtesy of Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice and SisterSong, two of the coolest grassroots groups around.