Abortion Abroad: Part 2

I visited a semi-rural reproductive health clinic in Kenya. Impressive! My org has done a great job recruiting talented clinic staff and outreach counselors to give women accurate information (save for one glaring translation typo!) and quality services that I myself have utilized. They even have a system for providing affordable services to women who would otherwise not be able to afford prenatal care or birth control. I donated anyway; do you know how far a measly few dollars goes??

I sat and discussed patient issues with the provider at one clinic: how many IUD insertions he completes in one month (a lot); how many women have them removed (none); how many women/babies had been lost during delivery (only one woman, due to a surprise post-partum hemmorhage). Naturally, I asked - knowing the answer in advance - if he had ever performed an abortion. He had not. But he had seen a handful of women who had sustained injuries or illnesses from clandestine abortions. Every village has its man or woman who has abortion secrets and serves dozens of women in the community. Injuries happen frequently, he explained, though few women present for treatment because they are a) afraid of being punished, or b) dead already. These village practitioners use herbs, potions, sharp objects, the usual. Of course, we in the "developed world" know how dangerous these methods are (right?), but by the time a woman actually presents for treatment from such complications her condition is more dire than this comprehensive, yet limited, clinic can accommodate. The provider sends those cases to the area hospital, many kilometers away from his clinic, down a dirt road with a heavily worn surface that makes for a very uncomfortable, perhaps deadly, ride. The provider was excited, though, about the advent of MVA in the developing world. He had never performed an abortion, nor had he been trained in the technique, but he was optimistic that rural women would be able to receive safe abortion care (where permitted) in low-tech environments without issue. However, he lamented, MVA can only do so much for botched procedures and life-endangering cases. Alas.

Kenya passed its new constitution within the last week, including some controversial language about abortion. This was the subject of debate for months, rife with anti-abortion rhetoric and TV infomercials akin to clinic-protesting signs (yuck). And I just hope that clinic providers like my guy above can band together to, at the very least, uphold the life endangerment clause. I have my doubts however; a female doctor in one of those anti commercials described, in her "medical opinion", that abortion is a "senseless death". I guess having a new perspective helps me appreciate the way things are in the Nifty Fifty.

It's a long road ahead, for all of us.

endangered species?

I woke up this morning to hear a new attack on women’s reproductive freedom…billboards have gone up around Georgia stating that black babies are an endangered species.

Yikes! What a disgusting ad…the antis are really desperate, aren’t they?

On MSNBC this morning, the pro-billboard woman was stating that black women are targeted for abortion and that abortion is affecting their fertility rate. Ugh-idiots! Seriously, this is the most ridiculous thing I have heard a in a long time. First of all, women make a choice to come in to the clinic to seek abortion services. We are not out on the streets soliciting women for abortions. Second, let us not forget that women who have abortions are usually mothers already-having already contributed to that fertility rate.

Unfortunately, for the Right to Life Georgia group, there is no data to support their outrageous claims. The CDC reports that Black women have higher than the national fertility rate (births per 1000 women in reproductive age) and it has gone up over the years.

The amazing executive director of Sister Song was quoted in the NY times saying “The reason we have so many Planned Parenthoods in the black community is because leaders in the black community in the ’20s and ’30s went to Margaret Sanger and asked for them,” Ms. Ross said. “Controlling our fertility was part of our uplift out of poverty strategy, and it still works.”

Hey anti-choicers, way to shame black women for the choices they make. By putting a message out there that black babies are “endangered species” you are sending a message to black woman that by having an abortion they are, in essence, committing a grave crime against their "species." You are sick. We are women, not baby-making factories.

Perhaps we can flip this message. Like Sister Song said, controlling one’s fertility-either through contraception access or abortion-is a way to lift women out of poverty. By putting this message out there, targeting black women, you want to keep the cycle of poverty going by decreasing their access and shaming black women, their families, and their communities.

Wow, antis, you must be so proud.


Picture from NY Times