Plea from My Nerves on Election Day

Please vote, y'all. This brown woman's knuckles are turning white from the tension.

I don't even know if anyone DOESN'T vote because everyone on my facebook feed is already showing off their poll sticker and I'm feeling like a lazy ass for not having gotten to my station yet. (I'm heading there now!) But just in case anyone reading this was like "well, I dunno, maybe I won't bother this year because it's raining and the line is three hours long and I'm sure my district won't be swung one way or another by my vote," I'm writing this to implore you, do it anyway.

I was going to say, do it for me, but really won't you do it for us all?

Vote for the candidates and amendments and propositions and initiatives least likely to wreak havoc upon us -- upon our reproductive rights, of course, but not just that: also our access to health services, our ability to afford survival, our attempts to keep our families together and well-fed and well-educated and safe, and the respect we need from society to make our own choices in peace.

2011 and 2012 have been rough on this front; the years leading up to an election usually are. It would be easy to dismiss our politicians' hundreds of anti-choice bills of 2011 as transparent distractions from their daunting mandate to fix the economy...except for the actual damage these policies would do (or have started doing) to individuals, families and society. So we have had to play defense, and it sucks. How many times did we find ourselves "celebrating" with the chorus, "Hooray, we made a horrible bill slightly less horrible before it became law."

We're as tired of living on the defensive as you are. And the day after the election (or whenever the vote-counting dust settles) we'll be back, up and at 'em and energized to push forward for something positive.

Until then, please go to the polls and cast your vote to minimize today's potential damage.

Mississipians need your support!

Dear readers:

Please send love and well wishes to the women and families of Mississippi today, as they vote on a "personhood" amendment that will OUTLAW abortion and common forms of birth control, such as oral contraceptive pills.

Mississippians go to the polls today, and every vote counts: the most recent poll shows that 45% are in favor of the amendment, but 44% are opposed. 11% are undecided!

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Visit VoteNoOn26.org today to donate or volunteer your time. You can donate funds or call voters (as I have!) to tell them how important it is to vote NO ON 26!

Abortion is an option

Read that post title again. Perhaps twice more. Slowly, if you need to, to let it sink in and make sense.

Abortion is real. It happens. It is an actual thing. I didn't make it up just now.

I feel the need to belabor this point because lately I've been bitch slapped in the face with outright denials of abortion's awesomeness. What's more, I've had people straight up tell me that abortion is not a pregnancy solution. COME AGAIN?!

I've been thinking about abortion stigma lately, due in part to an upcoming series in the Gender Across Borders blog (check for it in a couple weeks!). Now, I have no delusions about being able to eradicate abortion stigma anytime soon. But the first step towards fighting stigma in any arena is just to get people talking about it. Get folks to the point where they can actually say the word "abortion" in public without giggling or lowing their voices. But how can we even get there if people won't even think of abortion as a real live option? And I'm becoming increasingly frustrated that it doesn't even come up in the family planning conversation, even as an idea that one might reject.

Remember: Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

What's funny is that a lot of the aforementioned "abortion denial" does not come from the full-on antis. No, they know abortion is real, and they make it very clear to everyone else how much they hate it. BUT HEY: at least they're talking about it! At least they use the word, even if it's in the [false] context of "Abortion is dangerous" or "Women regret abortion". So, in that respect, I have to applaud the antis for their awareness, if nothing else.

No, it's the middle-of-the-road, don't-care, would-never-happen-to-me-so-I'll-never-have-to-think-about-it types who, for whatever reason, have never talked about abortion. Sure, we've all talked about abstinence, and most of us have talked about contraception. But ask them what they know about abortion and they can't be bothered. And I suspect it's not a matter of distance from the problem. (Just see our latest poll, in which 100% of respondents report knowing someone who's had an abortion!) I think it's a matter of ignorance, of never having had the opportunity to ask questions, or to listen to someone else talk about it. Ignorance, notoriously, begets stigma and hatred and fear and all that, so I think it's super easy for someone who's never actually thought about abortion on a complex level (besides would you/wouldn't you) to think it's weird and scary and something you should never talk about, let alone post to someone's Facebook wall.

So, as an ally of both abortion and people who want to know more about it, I've tried to open myself up. I still face a small degree of stigma from people who learn that I'm pro-Abortioneering, but it's so worth it when someone finally comes to me and - even in hushed tones - asks what abortion is really all about. Is there really such a thing as "partial-birth abortion"? How much do abortions cost? Are all clinics like that one in Philadelphia?

Abortioneers far and wide, I feel your pain. But I also feel the joy of being a sounding board for curious fence-riders who simply want to know what's what. And being able to educate someone with factual, experience-based information to help balance out the tripe they read elsewhere is definitely worth the cost. Who knows; the heart you open up could be that of the next Abortioneer!

Abortioneering Parent? Or Soon-to-be-Parent? Or Someday, Might Wanna Be a Parent?

...if you answered yes to any of those questions, you've (hopefully), come to the right post. Those of us who are parents and who are abortioneers have different slants on the realities of direct service work from those of our non-breeding abortioneer friends. What, you ask? For starters, security/safety issues (parents are directly responsible for their little ones so when, say, bomb threats occur or you get threatened by a protester, it gets more complicated. Enter: Mama Bear). Other typical concerns are how NOT to get outted to neighbors, your kids' teachers, the PTA, and so on. Getting outted is no fun for anyone; however, with children, there are additional implications for them (being treated differently by teachers, peers, their coaches).

So, I want to do a twice monthly series called...."The Yummy Mummy's Guide to Abortioneering." Until interest dies off, I'd write about some of these topics that impact us as parenting abortioneers. Any interest? If so, comment to this post, on FB, Twitter, take our poll, whatever. Let me know of any particular issues you'd want me to bring up/discuss.

Let me also just state this disclaimer: though I am a parent, I am by no means pronouncing myself as expert in all things parental. Far from it. I will speak from my own personal experience and bring up topics that I hear other parents talk about and will ask for your thoughts, too! The point is to interact.

Must rush now. It's storytime in this house: The Cat in the Hat is on demand tonight.

Much love!

PS: If you think the Yummy Mummy title is a bit too non-inclusive and have a more inclusive thought for a title, hit me up.

Injuring and insulting women: legislative edition (Or, "Hereafter Known As The No-Good-Reason Act")

You need to know about this. Chris Smith, along with several other congressmen (many of them newly elected), feel that our representatives' first priority in the new Congress ought to be the passage of "insult plus injury"-style anti-abortion legislation. Enter the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." I want to discuss two especially stupid provisions, which this column summarizes nicely.

The tax credits that are encouraging small businesses to provide insurance for their workers could not be used to buy policies that cover abortions. People with their own policies who have enough expenses to claim an income tax deduction could not deduct either the premiums for policies that cover abortion or the cost of an abortion. People who use tax-preferred savings accounts to pay medical costs could not use the money to pay for an abortion without paying taxes on it.

I mean, this is purely symbolic for the legislators, and purely punitive for people who need an abortion! Republicans are going after tax deductions? Breezing right past that irony, let's consider: Does the fact that I can deduct my spending on medicine or a doctor's visit from my "taxable income" make me more likely to spend on those things? Not really, it just makes it slightly easier on me to afford the things I need without taking extra money from me at tax-time as though I had spent those dollars on "fun" stuff.

At my current income I don't actually have to pay federal income tax (shocker), but assume the default 20% bracket applied -- if I get to subtract, say, $500 spent on a first-trimester abortion from my total taxable income, I'll save $100 come April 15. Not enough to make me decide to have an abortion, and not enough to make me decide against an abortion if Chris Smith bans that deduction.

Another example, going further afield to tax credits, which really are a significant chunk of money credited to you directly (not just deducted from your taxable income base): if I have dependent minor children I can get $1000 taken off my owed taxes each year. Has that affected my decision to have or not have a child? Would it affect yours? Probably not; people decide to have children because they are ready to and want to, not because someone's giving them a coupon on it.

I know taxes are a drag, so we don't have to keep discussing, but you see the gist: this ban's purpose can't logically be to make people less likely to choose abortions -- it's only to injure them for it by taking out an extra $100 of their taxes (or more, depending on their income bracket), and to insult them by refusing to acknowledge that their abortion counts as a health-related expenditure. (Just like tampons and pads and menstrual cups don't count, either. Just like breast pumps don't count, either. I discern a fucking pattern.)

The Smith bill also would take certain restrictions on federal financing for abortions that now must be renewed every year and make them permanent. It would allow federal financing of abortions in cases of "forcible" rape but not statutory or coerced rape, and in cases where a woman is in danger of death from her pregnancy but not of other serious health damage. It would free states from having to provide abortions in such emergency cases.

FYI, as Sady Doyle notes, "70% of rapes are 'non-forcible.' Rapists consciously seek out people and situations where they’ll have to use a minimum amount of 'force'."

Currently I work in a state that doesn't provide any of its own funds for abortion coverage but supposedly abides by federally-funded Medicaid's mandate to cover abortions in cases where a pregnancy resulted from rape. Even the old-timers at my work say that they have never seen Medicaid cover a procedure, even when the rape was "forcible" (all rape is forcible, obvi, since that's the opposite of consensual, but by this Smith really means there must also be beating), even when prosecution occurred, even when the pregnancy was DNA-matched to the perpetrator. Many clinics don't bother trying to bill Medicaid anymore, so the state is passively stripping women of even the limited rights they supposedly have. Abortion patients whose pregnancies are a result of rape, even patients who do have Medicaid, overwhelmingly are already paying for their own abortion care (and often struggling to do so). And women who can't pay for their own abortion care overwhelmingly are already bearing their rapists' children. Doesn't that warm your Republican heart*? (Oh, a few Democrats too!)

So this provision, too, isn't going to prevent women from choosing abortion. If the federal government reverses decades of painstaking progress in legal thought, jurisprudence, and goddamn human rights, it isn't going to make women who were raped but just not beaten too feel that they deserve to remain pregnant any more than they did before. It's just going to bring written law more in line with the outrageous reality of states already not understanding rape or supporting rape survivors; add to the stigma of patients who choose abortion outside of the few 'acceptable' reasons (e.g. "I can understand it in cases of rape, but this wasn't even 'real rape'"); and in the process possibly fuck up criminal justice even worse than it's already fucked up.

Sorry, y'all: every time I tell myself I'll try not to rant, something comes up that just makes my brain start bleeding out my eyeballs.


*Update: also h/t Sady, these dudes aren't even in touch with their own supporters - in a November poll, "71% of American voters who voted for a Republican candidate opposed the Smith bill."

Update 2: Sorry, I should have included a What You Can Do!  The same post I linked above provides a handy-dandy link to your representatives' contact page and helpful hints (for a sample call, see rabbleprochoice):

Click on this, and it should take you to a page where you can find out exactly who your rep is, and what their contact information is. Look that person up on Wikipedia, to get a sense of who they are, if you don’t already know. Then, CALL THEM. Be polite; be professional; do not threaten or use violent or abusive language under any circumstances. Explain to them that their constituents don’t support this bill, explain how and why it’s a bad bill, and let them know that if they support or fail to oppose this bill, they can expect that to impact them in a very bad way when it comes to the matter of keeping their jobs.

Patient "support persons," and a reader poll!

Allied blog plug: If you aren't reading Every Saturday Morning, you should be! Last month, this post brought me close to tears, tears of anger at the way patients and escorts were subjected to not only simmering tension, creepy or violent threats, and verbal aggression, but also stalking and actual physical violence. Really, I just sat there afterward and felt like my bones were shaking from indignation.

But today I read this post that brought me to tears of gratitude, about a moment when strangers came together to help a woman in need -- not just the band of escorts and certainly not the band of "sidewalk counselors" (anti-abortion protesters and harrassers), but people inside the clinic, friends and drivers of other patients.

Now, I'm not saying I cry at the drop of a hat or anything, but another thing that always does it to me is seeing two patients' respective support people bonding in the waiting room, during the several hours the patient may need to be in the clinic offices -- for example moms sharing the experience of being a parent to a patient, or one offering to run out for some food for both of them or helping to entertain the other's grandchild who had to come along to the clinic.

We hear a lot about the isolation of needing a stigmatized procedure, and I certainly do see lots of women who don't want anyone to know, don't want to sit with "the others," come without a support person even if that means no Vicodin and no sedation, or cross their arms and avoid any eye contact with other patients. But when patients can reach out to each other, and when they have warm and committed support people who reach out to one another or even to other patients -- well, it does happen, and I still get wet eyes every time.


Question for readers! How many of you have been a woman's support-person during her clinic visit? What was it like for you -- were you uncomfortable? Did you make friends? Was the wait really long? Was it easy or hard to be supportive that day?

Or, if you've had an abortion and are comfortable talking about it in comments, did you have a support person, and if so how were they?

I'll post a poll on the right of the home page, if you want to tell us more anonymously, but consider ALSO telling us in your own words, which is always so great to read!

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:

The Dream Keeper

It is an incredibly strange thing to attend the annual conference for your former employer—an otherwise hostile work environment, trickling from the top to the bottom in strict linear detachment and communication via barking—and learn that the pain and dysfunction that seem to be crippling beloved abortion mavens, bohemian warrior doctors, women who abort, society at large, above all else—you, some of the ones you love most—that creeping feeling inside, that perpetual illness is *secondary* trauma seeping in.

You are choosing to work in a tornado because general consensus refuses to see how you see yourself hoeing in a garden.

So what: public opinion says support for abortion is on the decline in this country. I have never met a patient or man involved or mother, father, sister, brother, grandma, grandpa, aunt, cousin, friend, daughter, son, spiritual counselor or protestor who couldn’t get to a place where they accepted the humanity in their own abortion experience.

We needed an opinion poll about what people who submit to opinion polls think about abortion to prove that people who submit to opinion polls like abortion less today than yesterday or ever? Really? How much did that cost?

Can we conduct the next poll standing outside the abortion clinic recovery room? Sooner we can get there, sooner we can see your trauma and raise you a kite and a kaleidoscope, an open field for breathing deeply and rolling in grass and things.

The Dream Keeper, by Langston Hughes

"If you want to pray for me, Tell God to send me some money"

I wonder how many women keep a certain amount of money in their savings as their "emergency abortion fund"? I've had two friends mention that they do this, almost subconsciously, to the tune of $400 because they'd heard somewhere that that's how much it costs. That's not a bad estimate, for a first-trimester procedure, though prices vary wildly after that.

But with most people I know outside the field, the first thing they ask me when they find out what I do is "How much does an abortion cost?" (Most of the time they don't ask "How do you do an abortion?" right off the bat, I guess because they worry that they'll seem clueless. Which they are, but it's not really their fault.)

And of course, this doesn't even touch on the clients I've worked with in the field. Some of them knew how much it cost from a friend who went through this recently; some of them thought they knew how much it cost from a previous experience ten years ago, and are shocked that the figure hasn't stayed constant (abortion fees have risen less than general inflation, but they have still risen); others really had no idea. But no matter the expectation, for I'd guess at least half of them, the idea of several hundred dollars set aside for an abortion -- or for anything, really -- is laughable, or a nice dream maybe.

I wonder how many people reading this (arguably not a representative sample of the general population!) keep an emergency abortion fund? If you're out there, give us your two cents. I posted a poll to go along with this, but feel free to comment too.