Ohio state Rep.: You poke it, you bought it

Hey, remember Highlights for Kids -- the magazine in the dentist's office that had the short stories and games in it? Well, sometimes I miss it, so here's a fun exercise: Can you find all the ways in which this attempt at legislation BLOWS? Draw a circle around each instance of misogyny. Draw an "X" through anything whose consequences are not well thought-out. Cut out any parts which seem just plain ignorant, and smear boogers on them. The dental hygienist will see you now!

A bill was introduced by a western Ohio lawmaker last week that would create a requirement to obtain paternal consent before an abortion may be performed in the state of Ohio.

That's PATERNAL, as in the "father" of the embryo or fetus. This country already has a few dozen "parental consent" laws, in which a pregnant minor must get her parent's (or parents') permission for an abortion (see Sparky's latest post), but laws requiring an adult woman to get permission for reproductive decisions have already been struck down as unconstitutional.

Well, encouraging communication about reproductive decisions, that's all well and good, but you can't enforce something like that...Can you?

[House Bill 252] would state that no person should induce or perform an abortion on a pregnant woman without the written informed consent of the fetus' father.

Providing a false biological father would be a first-degree misdemeanor the first time, which means not more than six months and jail, and a maximum $1,000 fine," [Rep. John Adams, R-Sidney, who introduced the bill] said. "And on the second occasion, providing false information would be considered a fifth-degree felony."
...
When asked what a woman wanting an abortion would do if she could not locate the father, or if she did not know who the father was, if the bill were to become law, Adams said, "She would then not be able to have an abortion."

...Oh.

Actually, Rep. John Adams of Sidney, Ohio, has experience with these things. He introduced an almost-identical bill back in 2007! At that time, he was also saying that a woman seeking an abortion would have to provide "a list of possible fathers" who would be DNA-tested for a match. Sadly, at the time he didn't realize that you cannot do DNA testing of a pregnancy before the tenth week of pregnancy at the very earliest (via chorionic villus sampling at 10-12 weeks, or via amniocentesis at 15-20 weeks), that over sixty percent of abortions take place in the first eight weeks of pregnancy (and another thirty percent between eight and twelve weeks), and that CVS and amniocentesis carry a risk of miscarriage (around 1%) and are actually discouraged unless the potential benefits outweigh that risk.

But I guess someone pointed out to Rep. John Adams of Sidney, Ohio, that making a woman who is 7 weeks pregnant wait three more weeks for a CVS -- or making a woman who is 13 weeks pregnant wait until she is 15 weeks for an amniocentesis! -- when everyone knows that the earlier an abortion is performed, the simpler a procedure it is and the shorter the recovery time, might seem counterproductive or perhaps cruel or maybe even like meddling in her medical care. Or maybe someone pointed out that the state would have to contact any number of men for genetic samples -- if one resisted, would the state have to subpoena him? -- and since men are whole human beings with rights and dignity, it would be unacceptable to routinely invade their privacy in such a way. In any case, Rep. John Adams of Sidney, Ohio, seems to have dropped the paternity-test idea for now, and admits the state might in practice have no other option but to actually take women at their word.

But at least the bill's sponsor is mostly honest about his intent:

"There needs to be responsibility for actions," Adams said. "As someone who is pro-life, this is also an attempt and a hope to keep the two people who have created that child together, and I suppose if you just go back to the simple beginning, there is merit to chastity, and to young men and women waiting until marriage."

Adams added that he simply does not believe abortion is an "avenue that we should pursue, and abortions should be rare," and he said HB 252 is one attempt to make sure they occur less frequently.

Adams said he would like to see HB 252 move through the legislature, and "at least open up the debate to keep young people together."

-Wanting to punish sexuality, because it's not fair for young people to have sex before marriage now that I am old: Check!
-Blatantly assuming that men are not up to the charge of respecting their partners' bodily autonomy, and are only "allowing" abortions to take place because current law says it's not their uterus, and that's why this bill is going to help stop abortions: Check!
-Preferring a miserable couple to an unpossessed woman as a matter of policy: Check!

What Rep. John Adams of Sidney, Ohio, is in fact trying to do is transfer legal ownership of the poked uterus from the pokee to the poker. Once I fuck someone, she is my personal babymaking oven, and it makes no sense for an oven to suddenly grow legs and walk itself to the abortion clinic, now does it? Really, I will always find it hilarious that when a woman's ovum and a man's spermatozoon, and the woman's uterus and the woman's blood and the woman's food and the woman's oxygen, come together to create a zygote>embryo>fetus, the man wants a 50% share (or more!) in all related decision-making. That's not how it works, buddy. You get out of it what you put in, and if all you put in was your penis then it sounds to me like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. Oh god, mixed metaphors, ice-cream headache.

On a more serious note, check out the concerned representative of the people, defender of the little guy, standing alongside Rep. John Adams:

Rep. Seth Morgan, R-Huber Heights, a co-sponsor of HB 252, said there are a "good number of fathers" who are left out of the decision-making process that leads to abortion. "I have heard a good number of horror stories when the father is left out of the process," Morgan said.

You want horror stories, Rep. Seth Morgan of Huber Heights? I'll give you a good number of fucking horror stories. Here's one from a friend of mine: "This reminds me of a woman [from Ohio, coincidentally] I talked to, who was going to have her abortion here, but she was in a domestic violence situation and it got really bad, so she finally packed a bag and took off and ended up with her cousin in Massachusetts. So she missed her appointment. Like these fucking assholes, who abuse women to the point where they have to run away, should make them have their kids." Should that woman have to go back to her abuser to ask his permission for an abortion?

And recently I worked with a woman in a very similar situation, except this one was in limbo between Florida and Virginia -- her court date for a divorce from her abusive husband was in one state, and the safe haven of her mother's house was in another. She already had two children as a result of his sexual abuse, and she was desperate to have an abortion before he found out about the third pregnancy. Every woman is singular and unique, but these stories are all too common and familiar. There was also the woman whose boyfriend held her prisoner, I'm not even joking, in their home when he realized she was pregnant. Should he have a say in her decision about starting a family with him?

And then there are the women, even girls, whose partners regularly try to sabotage their efforts at contraception: 26% of a small Boston survey, 51% of a large Chicago survey (PDF link). And there's the woman I counseled who was seeking an abortion because her partner was injuring her in the belly and had already caused one of her twin fetuses to miscarry. The truth is, by and large, decent men already are privy to their partners' reproductive decision-making processes, and I'll say on the record that as long as you're in a good relationship, that's ideal. But men who are not decent already use the threat of unwanted pregnancy and childbearing, as well as violence toward born children and wanted fetuses, as tools to control, possess, and terrify women. A bill writing their ownership of women's bodies into law, giving them the legal trump card over women's fates, is only likely to make it worse.

Don't get me wrong: I don't actually think this bill will pass -- it's ludicrous, unconstitutional, and would embarrass the state of Ohio if it did become law and was taken straight to court -- but there's just so much that this guy either has never even thought about or considers acceptable collateral damage in the war of cultural abstractions he's waging. He says promiscuity and irresponsibility are the enemies, and society's moral fabric is the victim; but his battle plan is to arm some sadists and give them the right to own slaves.


Whew! Sorry to get all pessimistic on you there! I'll just cap things off with another brilliant word from our co-sponsor:

I think it is not a bad idea to have a fully informed group making the decision," Morgan said.

Oh yeah? Here is what my partner had to say about that: "There should be an awesome version of that law, that allows fathers to have a say, but only if they participate in a televised game show where you spin a giant Wheel-of-Fortune-style device with a combination of horrible pregnancy mishaps. Like: sterility, losing life savings, the mom gets to leave you with sole custody of the kid and book it. The kind of amendment you could slip into a bill that people wouldn't notice."

And maybe the game show can have an "Ask The Audience" option, where they poll the fully informed group to make the decision:

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?

How do you live with yourself

Today a woman told me she had enough money to buy diapers for the rest of the month--laid-off for the past few months, homeless, living and eating with a friend, her child. The man involved is long gone. (yawn/ouch). She has sold everything she owns to make it to here. Pause.

Oh. That sucks, I say... But how much is that? Twenty dollars. She has twenty dollars. Her co-pay, right? :(. The surgery will cost from $250 to $7,000. No matter anything. No time. No loans. No payment plans or claims. Cash. Credit card. Money order. She’ll have to find at least $100 more than she couldn’t find yesterday and I will fall short of suggesting she offer sexual favors. Though, that solution may pass between us in silence when I tell her there is nothing left for me to do or suggest, that she’ll have to find that cash in her life amongst those she knows. Nevermind the diapers.

Suppose some abortions are meant to be. Sacrifices. Motherhood. Reflective. Not having an abortion means being a selfish mother. It's important women reclaim/frame this experience from within. The spirit.

Suppose some abortions are a tragic reminder that our society doesn't just fail some women, we burn them at the stake. Pointedly, women who are occupied with surviving--deemed unworthy of assets that float in space in their name, entangled by invisible webs lightly but chronically capturing their most basic human rights. Breaks the heart. Not the spirit.

Suppose I talk to one more woman who has less than $0 in her pocket. Suppose ground zero is different than the newscaster will tell you. Suppose I'll let you know when the recession bottoms out.