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!

The Great Macy's Fourth of July Abortion Sale: Get 'em while you can! (offer valid only in Mississippi until 7/11/2012)

This is actually a breadline, not a bank run or a premodern Black Friday. But when I thought about it, the breadline matched the vibe of the clinic waiting room better than those. People are there -- with their spouse, mom, kid, infant -- because they really need to be. 

So...

Remember my last post, where I was kinda sick and tired of legislators playing doctor (and not in the sexy way) (but also, is playing doctor actually sexy to anyone?), and I was writing about the last abortion clinic in Mississippi being legislated out of existence, and about Rep. Bubba Carpenter, and how he was talking in what I imagine is a too-bad-so-sad wah-wah voice about how the other side talks way too much about "some poor pitiful women" who might risk their health and lives trying to end their pregnancies by any means available, and I think I might have blacked out shortly after that as an internal defense mechanism?

Yeah, I know: oof. But let's talk about Mississippi some more!

So the bill passed and was signed by the governor and its stipulations include that abortion providers must have hospital admitting privileges -- something Bubba Carpenter noted was notoriously difficult for anyone to obtain, not just abortion providers -- and that means that this last clinic in Mississippi, which has not been able to secure admitting privileges, will have to close. But then, since as Bubba Carpenter noted this law is not trying that hard to be constitutional, a judge stayed the new law until a court hearing planned for July 11 -- giving the clinic a reprieve of, uh, about a week.

And here's something that interests me as an abortioneer.

But it has also created a rush of women from across Mississippi wanting to have abortions. The clinic's three doctors normally perform about 40 abortions a week, but received more than 100 calls in one day last week from women trying to schedule appointments. Two of the doctors live out of state and will fly in to perform abortions this week, said Diane Derzis, the clinic owner.

"What women are hearing is, You may not be able to have an abortion soon," she said. "If you're pregnant and you don’t want to be, you’re thinking, 'By God, I've got to get in there fast.'"

Seems kind of weird, doesn't it? Like a run on the banks, as my arm candy quipped. You'd think that the need for abortion care is pretty much static over the course of a year, since pregnancy can occur in any season and any abortion clinic is the potential provider for at least several million people of reproductive capacity. But demand for services really does seem to have a certain flux to it. While I can't remember hearing of a run on the clinics (though I guess it's not hard to understand), I have noticed other ups and downs and maybe patterns.

I've mentioned before that I had many clients who were able to finally secure their abortion care when their tax refund came back -- and even some who specifically filed early in order to make sure they raised enough money before they reached 12 weeks when the fee would start progressively increasing. Those patients were very resourceful and very on top of it. And I sympathized with their certainty that they made little enough to be owed a refund -- my full-time job qualified me for both a tax refund and assistance from an emergency abortion fund should I ever need it.

But demand also seems to drop on holidays, especially big ones. It's hard to seek an appointment while hosting extended family, driving to grandma's, juggling your parents' or grown children's multiple Thanksgivings after a divorce, entertaining your school-aged kids at home, or arguing with your teenager about sharing the family car over winter break. You don't have as much privacy, time, or energy for taking care of yourself. Shit's hectic.

Then, weeks after a holiday, demand bounces back to levels even higher than before. Phones ring off the hook at the emergency abortion fund, they ring all day although you have multiple phone lines and someone answering every line. Same thing happening at the clinic, which is also jam-packed with people -- you have to bring more chairs into the waiting room -- and clients want to know what is the point of making an appointment if you still have to wait all damn day. (The answer is you struggle with turning people away from care, and wish there was such a thing as walk-in care, but in your state there's a law requiring advance appointments so pregnant people can take time to "cool off" and think hard about their impulsive and flighty decisions. As Sarah Silverman says, maybe they're not as hungry as they think they are.)

I say "weeks" after a holiday but we'd often remark that it seemed to be about four to six weeks after a holiday. Kind of joking, because that's how long it takes from fertilization (four) or last normal menstrual period (six) to the earliest point in pregnancy that most clinics are able to offer abortion care. Kind of not joking, because it really happened. At least three years I noticed that after a December-January lull, we'd have the most insane February and March. That's the time of year that I first became an abortioneer, actually. At first I thought that was just how it was -- that we'd have 100 appointments per day forever. (On the plus side, a lot of those were double-bookings or ambivalent patients who ended up going to another clinic for prenatal or abortion care. We didn't actually check that many patients in per day.)

I could surmise that stereotypically hectic and overburdened times (Thanksgiving/Christmas) or stereotypically romantic times (New Year's/Valentine's) or stereotypically hedonistic times (spring break, New Year's again) lead to unintended pregnancy. And surely the delaying of one's own needs during family-heavy holidays would explain part of the resurgence of appointment requests afterward. But I don't really know and I don't think there's any way to find out on a large scale. It'd be interesting, though, to ask individual women to recount the story of what prompted them to seek abortion care when they did, and why. If only such questions weren't so politically loaded, so likely to suggest there's a right and a wrong answer, maybe we'd hear a lot of honest and interesting stories.

Blegging for a good cause

Hi everyone. I just have a quick request today. Please help me honor the life and work of one of our own.

Ryan Goskie's death earlier this month was a blow to many of us who worked in this field, and I for one am still trying to get my head around the idea that someone with so much energy and heart is just gone and won't be coming back.

His partner let us know that donations are being raised to build a small memorial in Ryan's favorite park. It's no substitute for the man himself, but it will be a nice way to mark his existence in the world. I donated last week and am happy to see the fund has nearly reached its goal, so I hope our readers can be the ones to help push it over the top. Please contribute whatever little bit you can!

You can also donate toward abortion care for a woman who can't afford the whole cost on her own. Consider giving in Ryan's honor to the local fund for Missouri, the state where Ryan worked as a volunteer patient escort, an administrator, and a clinical assistant.

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.  

Who Has Appreciation? We do!

From the bottom of my heart I thank all abortion providers for all that they do. You endure harassment, even death threats, new laws restricting your job, news articles denouncing you and what you do, and even more. Through all of this you continue to go to the clinic, day after day, to help women access choice.

You spend hours calling funds, discussing her finances, and looking for ways where you can discount the cost. You do all of this to help low income women access choice.

You volunteer your time to answer phone calls, before, work, after work, on your lunch break, on the weekends. You listen to her story and try to give her as much money as you can to help her. You participate in activities to fund raise more money. You do this to help women piece together they money they need, so they can access choice.

You get up early to wait outside the clinic and are yelled at by protesters, pushed around, harassed. You do this to help women get into the clinic.

All of those that work in abortion care - doctors, nurses, counselors, receptionists, clinic escorts, local funds, and all of those that I missed. You are amazing. You are the reason women have access to safe, legal abortion care. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Money, money, money

It's been a while since we've had a fund spotlight, and many funds are really hurting right now. As I'm sure many if not all of you know, abortion funding is a real problem in this country. Federal funding for abortion care is outlawed due to the Hyde Amendment, a law that has been renewed annually since its inception in 1976. There are 15 states that, by law, fund some abortion care through their state Medicaid program. Some of these Medicaid programs are better than others but none of them go far enough. It's difficult to qualify for Medicaid, it can take a lot of time, and not all women know how to adequately advocate for themselves through the government "red tape".

This is where private abortion funds step in. There are abortion funds throughout the country, some that help women nationally and some that help women in a local area. These funds do the best they can, working hard to fundraise as much as possible. However, due to their extremely limited resources they have to restrict who they can fund money to and how much they can give per person. This leaves many women out of luck. Right now many, probably most, of these funds are in dire straits and desperately need help to continue on.

National Funds - those that help women across the country.

The Make a Difference Fund is 100% volunteer run and all of the money they raise goes to help women.

The 3rd Wave Foundation runs programs aimed at women and transgender youth, 15-30 years old. One of the programs they run is an abortion fund for women in need under 30 years old.

The Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project. They help women of all ages going to clinics that are part of the National Abortion Federation and/or the National Coalition of Abortion Providers.

Local Funds

There are too many local funds for me to fairly list them here, but the local funds are in particular need of help. They help women in a specific state or part of a state and often work very closely with the clinics in their area. Because they're local, fundraising can be more dificult, particularly if they are located in a more conservative area. Visit the National Network of Abortion Funds to find a local fund near you that you can help.


I know times are tough for everyone, but these funds need our help. Nothing is too small, even $10 a month would go a long way.

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.

Tax time

Sorry, I know you've seen this one before. It's just so apt. 

Did you file your taxes on time? I did, but just barely, because unlike the last couple of years, life was just way too crazy in January, February, and March to even think about anything beyond the coming week.

So I was doing the April-Fifteenth hustle and feeling anxious to hear how much I'd be getting back, because my bank balance has been dropping steadily over the weeks, much to this over-scheduled, under-employed wage-worker/student's dismay. And I thought of my funding clients -- the women who were struggling to make one paycheck stretch to the next, couldn't quite scrape together the full cost of their abortion care, and turned to local or national funds in hopes of pleading for the difference.

A couple springs ago, I was fully immersed in funding cases and found myself really impressed at all my clients who were so on top of their shit that they had already filed their tax returns. At some point it dawned on me that they HAD to be on top of their shit -- and they HAD to get an H&R Block "refund anticipation loan" or something similar, and give the preparers a cut of the return -- so that they could count on their tax return to help pay for their abortion services.

To so many of my clients, the idea of having savings for health emergencies is a nice dream. As shitty as it is to be faced with an unwanted pregnancy at any time, the spring clients could at least say, "Thank God this didn't happen in December," when obligations like traveling home and finding your kids a gift and keeping the gas account open would have made it even harder to raise the needed money for themselves. At least, since it was happening in February, they could get to work on a refund advance right away. Even if the tax people do turn it into a 15%-interest loan.

I can't tell you how sick I got of hearing, during this health-insurance reform circus, the petty selfishness of "Why should my tax dollars pay for abortions?" Even as people say that shit, thousands and millions of women out there are diligently filing their taxes each spring, hoping their measly take-home was measly enough to warrant a refund check to serve as non-existent health savings account, because "we" can't be bothered to provide a basic, extremely-common health service with "OUR MONEY."

This is all a very long, roundabout way of saying: Please fucking donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds Bowl-a-Thon. Even if it's just twenty, ten, or five dollars. Then email it to at least three people who might care. Can you do that? Please? It's the least we can do, living in this country full of very pious people who'd rather save their dollars to be dipped in the blood-bath of foreign wars and police abuse than see one cent of public "support" for the fact that women may choose not to be pregnant.

Utopia

I'm sitting here in my apartment, looking out the window at the trees dancing in the spring breeze. My cat walked by and gently rubbed my foot as I took a sip of tea. I have no obligations for this day except for writing this post and reading my books in time to get them back to the library. It'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.

I'd give up my Sunday afternoon leisure and all the tea in my kitchen (the new version of "all the tea in China," because I'm pretty sure I have more, and who talks about China like that anymore?) if I never had to hear another potential patient sob about how she couldn't possibly continue this pregnancy because she had no job and no support and her kids were already wearing clothes that were too small, so how in the world would she be able to get the hundreds or even thousands of dollars needed to have an abortion? And I would love to see someone merrily purchasing Tory Burch Revas (How do I even know about those?) without automatically, bitterly thinking, "Enjoy your flats. Clearly, they will help the average American woman much more than anything else you could possibly spend your money on."

I'm no Tory Burch buyer, and I'm not even a Chuck Taylor buyer--I can only afford the One Stars at Target. But I pledge to forgo my little splurges on coffee, Lush shampoo, clearance rack earrings, and unicorn in favor of making a donation to the NNAF Bowl-a-thon. Dear reader, will you please pledge to do the same?

Bowling for Abortion Access

She’s a single mom with two small children. She can’t find a job, and her unemployment will soon run out. If she can barely take care of herself and her kids now, how will she support another child? She’s a teenager who’s afraid to tell her parents. If she has a baby, what will happen to her? What will her parents do? Will she be able to graduate high school? She was raped, and she’s scared. She hasn’t told anyone what happened because she fears they won’t believe her. Her family and friends don’t agree with abortion; what would she say to them? She’s a mom who found out her daughter is pregnant. She wants to be supportive, but she can barely pay her bills as it is.

She’s you.

She’s me.

She’s your friend.

She’s your sister.

She’s your co-worker.

She’s any one of us.

What can I do to help? What can you do to help? As Sparky posted yesterday, the National Network of Abortion Funds is organizing a bowl-a-thon. Local and national funds are participating in it, individuals, and bloggers like us. What can you do to help? You can donate to the cause. Anything helps – even small amounts add up. Our bowl-a-thon goal is $1,000, and the idea is to raise money by the 16^th – THIS FRIDAY. We need your help to reach this goal. All of the money goes directly to the NNAF who will then use the money to assist these women in exercising their choice to have reproductive freedom.

Empire State of Mind.

Spring has sprung. The time has come to support your local abortion fund! Abortion funds are local, grassroots organizations that raise money to support women in need of abortion services.

In honor of my current home, I am highlighting the fabulous New York Abortion Access Fund!!

"NYAAF is a volunteer-run, 501(c)3 non-profit organization that provides financial assistance to low-income women in New York State who cannot afford to pay for an abortion." They are an affiliate of the National Network of Abortion Funds and believe that abortion services should be available to all women, regardless of their ability to pay.

Why New York (you may ask)?

Yes, New York is what abortioneers call a 'Medicaid state' -- in other words, low-income women who are eligible for Medicaid (public health insurance) and can provide documentation can have their abortion paid for, up to 24 weeks (in some cases). Yes, abortion access in New York is better than in most other states (there are no parental consent/notification laws or state-mandated waiting periods). In New York, no metropolitan area lacks an abortion provider.

Even so, many women struggle to come up with the funds for basic reproductive health care. Whether it's because they are undocumented and cannot get on Medicaid, fall in the "donut hole" where they aren't eligible for Medicaid but can't afford private insurance, or a slew of other reasons, the need for abortion funds is substantial because many women fall through the cracks.

NYAAF supports not only women who are from NY, but also women who have to travel there from states where they cannot have the termination because they are too far along, or if it is less expensive in NY than in their own state. NYAAF has made grants to women from New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and even Texas! From 2008-2009, "NYAAF provided over $43,000 in assistance to support 77 women."

What can YOU do to help?

1) Make a donation directly, http://www.nyaaf.org/how-you-can-help/

2) Volunteer to help with fundraising, technical assistance for the website, stuffing envelopes and other tasks.

3) Host an event to raise money.

4) Join their Board.

Thank you, NYAAF and all the other wonderful, dedicated abortion funds across the country that help women access their reproductive rights everyday. Without you, many women would not have the means to exercise their right to healthcare.

Fund Spotlight

As we all probably now know, the United States House of Representatives passed their version of health care reform Saturday night. In order to get the bill passed, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi sacrificed women by allowing an amendment banning the purchase of health insurance that has abortion coverage for those using the public option - even when using private money, such as money generated from premiums. Watching the health care reform debate and the frustrating vote of the Stupak Amendment this weekend made me think of the struggles many women face (and that many more could face) with trying to quickly pay for an abortion. We know that with the Hyde Amendment still in force, federal money cannot fund abortions. With this amendment added to the health care reform bill, now even private insurance coverage could now be in jeopardy.

While we know we cannot count on government support of women in some of the most trying and difficult times of their lives, there are people out there that do their best to fill that void. These people run and work for abortion funds - the small local and national groups throughout the country that low-income women can call to get some help with paying for their abortions.

In this blog post, I would like to spotlight the CAIR (Community Abortion Information and Resource) Project. The CAIR Project is based in Seattle and serves women from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska. In addition to funding assistance the CAIR Project also has information and resources on getting Medicaid funds (where that's available) as well as finding a provider. Funds like the CAIR Project are struggling to keep up with the demand for their help now, so imagine how hard it could be if the healthcare reform bill, as it stands right now, becomes law. Please help abortion funds like the CAIR Project in any way you can.

Every Woman Has a Story

I work almost every day with women who are trying to get an abortion. Many of my conversations are brief and to the point. I get them what they need, and they’re on their way. I have so many people to talk to in a day. Sometimes they seem to blend in, lost their job, getting evicted, on food stamps. They seem the same, woman after woman, but they are all individual women with their own stories.

Today I spoke to a woman in Illinois. She’s 18 trying to go to school, while working at K-mart and helping her grandma with the bills. When she found out she was pregnant, she started working on getting the money together. She even got help from the man involved, her boyfriend. Unfortunately, neither of them have much money, so she had to do the infamous price chase. She is now well into her second trimester, and the clinic doesn’t have its own anesthesiologist, so she has to wait next week when they can get one in. Even with funding help, she hasn’t gotten all the money together. We talked about her fundraising options. She has already taken out two loans – one for school and one to help her grandma pay bills, she has no other family to get help from, her boyfriend gave her all the money he had, and she already put up the title to her car to help out someone else.

For the past couple of days I have been speaking to a woman, whose story started out pretty simple, pretty ordinary. She was about 7 or 8 weeks by her last menstrual period. She had her appointment, had all her money together. She was all set. Except there’s something else. She was pregnant by an abusive man. The abuse got so bad that she had to leave. She packed a bag, got on a plane, and went to the only safe place she knows. This made her miss the appointment she had and caused her to spend the money she set aside for her abortion on a plane ticket. Now she’s in an unfamiliar city, with no job, no money, and she’s still pregnant. She’s now about 13 weeks. She needs to get seen because now her price will only continue to go up. She now has to rely on the people she is now staying with to get her to the clinic and help her pay for the abortion.

Both of these women and so many others are depending on people they know and small abortion funds to be able to get access to reproductive health care. This is a shout out to abortion funds, and if you don’t already, please consider donating to a local abortion fund in your area or a fund like this one – The Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project. They are a national fund, helping women all over the country, and work directly with clinics to help fund women in need. Times are tough for everyone, you, these low-income women, and these small abortion funds. Really any assistance you could give would be appreciated.

Failure

I wrote this a while ago and kept it in a place where only my closest friends could see it. Because I felt ashamed and because there was no right place to make something like this public. But this, among other things, is what this blog is for. So now in the interest of being really honest, I will share the story of failing to help someone, and the privilege of going to bed with my life un-fucked afterward.

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Friday turned out to be maybe my worst day in abortionland, ever. I was working with a woman who was traveling out of state to have an abortion, and she ran into problems at every turn (money, escort, gestational age, new escort, clinic staff, money again), and each time she and I would pull things together and get her out of her bind, and then at the last minute, just short of me being able to do anything to fix it, she got fucked over one last time. And now she needs to start getting prenatal care, because in a few months she is going to have twins.

Yes, I know there are a lot of reasons she was not able to have that abortion. I know that I couldn't have known, before all this stuff happened, how badly she needed me to break the rules for her, how badly things would go if we complied with the logic that a client should try all the most affordable options first, and waste precious time in the process. There are a lot of ways to absolve myself of all of this, none of them completely honest. Everyone is telling me these things: it wasn't your fault that x, y, z happened; you couldn't have known what would go wrong; you can't do everything for every client; you succeed at helping people more times than you fail.

All these people are both right and wrong. These are things that people in the social-service fields tell ourselves because we need to justify putting away the client files after a day of failures, and we need a reason to open them up again in the morning. They are true things to say, but they are also not enough sometimes. Around 7 I collected myself, left my office with a couple of colleagues, and proceeded to get drunk, meet up with several more people, have a fun and noisy time, and stumble into bed at several o'clock in the morning. Then I woke up and it was Saturday and I thought about the rest of my weekend and how Monday was after that and then I suddenly couldn't bear the thought of going back to work.

And Monday I did go to work, and I couldn't bear being there. I heard myself being a horrible person every time I picked up a patient's call, slumped low in my chair, thought about how soon I could drop this gig. Couldn't humor my coworker who makes terrible jokes that I usually laugh at. So I arranged to take the day off today. And my partner called in sick to stay home and take care of me: because I need taking care of, like I am sick or something. We spent all day in bed then went out to get a book my partner wanted, and now I'm making an apple pie. I know I am really lucky to be able to give myself a vacation for fucking up. Where me fucking up means a woman's life will be changed forever; she is barely getting by with just her own mouth to feed, and now she will have three. How do I reconcile these things and go back to my work?

The right to choose?

What does it mean to have the right to choose? You hear this phrase thrown about like having “the right” is the end all. Don’t get me wrong, I believe strongly in having this right. But what is this right if you can’t exercise it? What does it mean, if you can’t afford to exercise it?

In the last post I made, I did a spotlight on a particular abortion fund. I want to take this time to talk about abortion funds more generally, what they do, and how all of us can support funds in our local areas. There are some small, local and a few national abortion funds scattered across the US, part of the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF). These funds are run by volunteers, with their own day jobs, who spend many of their evenings and weekends fundraising, working hard to help poor women exercise their right to choose.

For some women, it is hard enough just to find a clinic near them that does abortions. They may not own a car or have reliable public transportation, so they have to find a ride. Maybe they have kids and have to find childcare because some clinics are not able to accommodate small children in the waiting rooms. Then they make an appointment and find out the cost that could be or seem completely out of their reach. Unlike other countries, we do not have universal health care that covers abortion; so many women are uninsured or have insurance that doesn’t cover abortion. In some states Medicaid does cover the cost of an elective abortion, but even then some women have to jump through hoops to get on it and have to hope they can get on the right kind (I believe there are states where certain types of Medicaid do cover and certain types do not cover elective abortion). Then there are women who have the Medicaid or get the money together, only to find out they are further along than they thought and have to travel out-of-state (where their Medicaid will not cover them, and they have to get travel expenses together as well). I can only imagine how personally devastating all these barriers must seem.

Luckily there are individuals out there like the volunteers of these local funds, who will answer questions, brainstorm, and do what they can to fundraise. They do this work for women they do not know and will never meet, but they do it because they believe that every woman, no matter her financial circumstances, should have the right to choose. She should have access to the same health care that those of us who are lucky enough to have insurance coverage or various resources, have.

If you are interested in learning more about donating to or volunteering for a fund in your area, please go to the NNAF website. By donating to one of these funds you can make a huge impact on women’s lives all over the country and where you live.

Your total is $3165. Would you like to pay with credit card, money order, or your soul?

If working at an abortion clinic isn’t adventurous enough, try taking money at an abortion clinic. Two out of five days a week, I’m counseling, advocating, interpreting, and doing all of the miscellaneous admin stuff that you come to expect at a non-profit. But three days a week, I am the one to hate.

The anti-choicers feed everyone lines about how abortioneers are just in it for the money. I’m sure I could earn more by working at a pizza joint, but that makes me look sort of selfless and caring and things that abortioneers cannot possibly be. And when an abortion is your first exposure to the wide world of reproductive justice, you, the client, are going to believe the hype. A disproportionate amount of our clients are women of color without much money, which doesn’t surprise anyone who does know RJ. And then there I am: a professionally-dressed (when I’m not wearing striped knee socks and a mini skirt) white woman asking them to hand over thousands of dollars that they probably don’t have.

A coworker recently mentioned to me that she couldn’t see herself working as a counselor because she’s not the “nurturing type.” I don’t know about “nurturing” as my primary descriptor, but I’m empathic, caring, and concerned. On payment days, I consciously have to shed that layer of myself as I walk into work. I rarely have backup on payment, and I’m responsible for keeping the clinic flow going and making sure clients are seen in a semi-reasonable amount of time. I have five minutes, tops, with each of our thirty-plus clients, and I have to be friendly (“I love your hat! Are you doing OK?”), efficient (“I’m listening to you. I’m just entering this information into the computer real quick.”), and the biggest bitch (“No. We are not haggling. I’m sorry the sonogram measurement was further than you thought, but I need your payment within the next fifteen minutes or you cannot be seen.”) all at the same time.

And I’ve had boyfriends wearing rosaries around their necks literally throw cash at me, I’ve been “cussed out,” as they say in the south, I’ve been scammed, I’ve been threatened, and I’ve been flat-out told that I “don’t want to help; [I’m] just trying to take people’s money!”

I’m a small person and I look a good eight years younger than I am, and I’ve learned to recognize where I really do need to act “tough” in order to be taken seriously. And of course, I understand that my post is collecting payment, and that’s a huge bone of contention for our clients because it represents a good deal of their struggles pre-appointment. And my reactions and the clients’ reactions aren’t personal. I’ve also come to terms with “difficult” clients. I would not still be working there if I didn’t realize that just because I’m risking my life (to a degree) to work in the clinic doesn’t mean that the clients don’t have every right to treat me however they want to. They don’t owe me anything. But it also doesn’t mean that I don’t resent being treated like dirt when I ask for payment. I sometimes almost hate my coworkers who are counseling that day and who never take money, when they talk about how much they were able to help and connect with a client.

The other day, I called taking payment “the most passive-aggressive counseling session in the world.” I am the face of the enemy; the client gets an opportunity to lash out; when it isn’t acceptable to yell at the woman who’s aborting “your” 24 week “baby,” it’s acceptable to yell at the person who’s taking your money. And in those cases, I’m not making a noble difference in women’s lives. I’m one of those inflatable clown punching bags. And it doesn’t matter that I’m even wearing a button that says, “Don’t let politics trump medicine,” because I’m just in it for the money.