Beware of the Superbowl Commercials

How does one ruin the Superbowl for everyone? Run anti-abortion commercials!

Randall Terry, everyone's favorite anti to hate, is running for President. He has no chance and knows that. So why would he run you ask? Part of the FCC Telecommunications Act says that candidates' ads must be run and can't be altered if aired within 45 days of a Presidential primary. As long as Terry can get the money together (and apparently has in 13 television markets), he can run whatever he wants. If you live in these areas, you can prepare to see some graphic fetus porn. Because I refuse to link directly to Randall Terry's website, I will link to a CNN article. While these ads could be worse, I still don't know too many people who want to see this while they have family and friends gathered for food and football (pro- or anti-choice).

I did go to his website to view the ads, and I saw that he's raising money to air the ads. Undoubtedly there are many misguided people out there who are ok with this crap airing on TV. I wish I could do something to prevent people from donating to this nut job. While I may not be able to do that, I can try to do something to encourage people to donate to his opposition. Below I've listed some fabulous pro-choice options for donations.

EMILY's List
NARAL Pro-Choice America
Planned Parenthood
National Abortion Federation
National Network of Abortion Funds

Let's offset Randall Terry and show him that we will not be silenced or deterred.

When Ads Get a Little Too Personal

All of us internet users are well aware of the amount ads we get as well as the personalization of them. When you make an any kind of account - through gmail, facebook, myspace (does anyone still use myspace?) - you're tracked through what you write, what you post, and what websites you visit. You then get ads that are designed to fit you. Sometimes these ads are perfect, sometimes they're totally off, and sometimes they're downright creepy.

I get a lot of these ads on facebook, and I tend to just ignore them because they're so prevalent. They're usually for becoming an ultrasound tech, which based on my abortiony nature isn't all that surprising. They all have pictures, usually an ultrasound photo. Makes sense for an ultrasound tech ad, right? The other day I noticed an ad to become a social worker. The picture seemed a little weird to me though.


What does a giant baby have to do with becoming a social worker? I mean, babies and social workers make sense, I suppose. It's a little weird. And I'm sorry, but the giant baby kinds of weirds me out.

Then today I noticed another ad for becoming a social worker except the ad was a little less relevant and a little more...well....creepy.



Not only is this irrelevant to becoming a social worker, it would also turn me off if I was considering becoming a social worker. Why would you use this picture? I know many people pro- and anti-choice alike who are turned off by plastic fetuses. This just seems like bad marketing to me. I also am noticing an alarming trend. These pictures are getting more creepy and anti-like. Is there an anti-choice group or marketing agency following me around on the internet?

Have you all noticed your facebook, gmail, etc ads? If so - start if you haven't - what kind of strange/creepy ads do you get?

Hump Day

Dear Readers,

To get you through this Wednesday, I bring to you a collection of my favorite anti-choice propaganda. Unfortunately for us, it seems that anti-choice signs contain fewer typos than teabagger signs, so I'll have to give credit where it's due. Still, the logical fallacies remain.




This one infuriates me most of all. DUH. Nobody who was aborted is here. If I were aborted, how would I know? Would we be here having this conversation? WHAT'S YOUR POINT???!?!?!! Also, it's Uncle Sam. Why? Because women who have abortions are unpatriotic? Stupid.



Reason enough to keep an unwanted pregnancy, yes? Maybe your daddy raped your mommy, or maybe your daddy is conspicuously absent, but baby, you've got his eyes!



Melodrama: the anti's calling card. If you wanted to do this correctly you would say "Dead babies cry to me from the ground." Whether or not you believe that fetuses can cry, blood certainly cannot.



Not a typo per se, but this acronym is poor at best. Could you not have thought up "Not-born" for the "N" space? Man, I should be making these things for you guys.




Distressed sigh. How did Catholics go from being at the forefront of human rights issues (even liberal!) to this? Pro-death? I don't even know what that means.



Oh gee, well now I REALLY want to worship him.




I understand quite well the part about not shooting men in church.



Has anyone ever seen a Jew wielding this sign? I triple-dog-dare any anti to march up to a Holocaust survivor and tell him that abortion is comparable to what he went through. No really, go ahead. And if you don't get punched in the face I will pay out of my pocket to print 100 more of these.

Happy Hump Day, folks!

Want to talk about black women and abortion? Here, have some facts. (Or, I Can't Believe We Have To Say This Again.)

Edit 2: I made a couple late-night errors (swapping "birth rate" for "pregnancy rate" and writing 180% when I meant 87%) which have now been fixed, at lines marked with **. Thanks to @mjbyars for prompting a re-check. 


Hey everyone, happy Monday! How was your weekend? Mine was great, except then I read about something stupid. So, remember those Atlanta billboards reading "BLACK BABIES ARE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES"? The ones that caught the attention of the nation for being so fucking dumb and offensive?

Apparently, the first round of ads were "so well received" that the Radiance Foundation and Georgia Right to Life have decided to roll out Phase 2, namely, Operation Yet More Offensive Billboards!

You know, "Black and Unwanted" is the kind of slogan that should accompany a campaign against employment discrimination, or racially-biased adoption practices*. Do these valiant anti-racist crusaders really want to waste a good catchphrase on fallacious insinuations that black women have abortions because they don't want their children to be black? The claim is absurd.

As Anti-Anti wrote last week, people who make this argument are also making a number of inaccurate and offensive errors. Most clearly, they're saying that by having reproductive rights, black women are colluding with racists to harm "black people" (which i suppose really leaves only black men). Or that they are harming themselves, too, and that someone else knows how best to handle their lives and particular situations. There's lots of wrongheaded stuff in their position, in terms of philosophy and rights, all of which were said before; but for a fun change why don't we take a look at its factual underpinnings this go-round?

Yes, let's talk real-live, grownup statistics for a minute. The Radiance Foundation's website claims its work is needed because of the fact that 13.5% of the US population is black, yet 38.5% of the abortion-having population is black. So black women have abortions disproportionately; fair enough! But they omit several other statistics that add a lot more complexity to the situation. I even made you some pictures, so have a look:

-13.5% of the US population is black, yet 21% of the pregnancy-having population is black.

-13.5% of the US population is black, yet 30.9% of the unintended-pregnancy-having population is black.

-13.5% of the US population is black, yet 26.6% of the unintended-birth-having population is black.

-Among women facing an unintended pregnancy, 60% of black women had an abortion, compared to 50% of white women, which is not necessarily a huge difference (I couldn't calculate statistical significance from the figures available):

-Among women who gave birth, black women were 1.87 times as likely (87% likelier)** to consider the birth unintended compared to white women:

-Black women have both a higher total pregnancy rate (1.65 times as high, or 65% higher) and a higher unintended pregnancy rate** (2.79 times as high, or 179% higher) than do white women. Their intended pregnancy rate is 20% lower:

And here's a view of the overall distribution of pregnancy outcomes by race (excluding miscarriages since I didn't have that info -- though black women are at higher risk for miscarriages than white women, something like twice as much [!], so it'd be nice to get miscarriage data too for completion's sake):

So you know, I calculated all these figures using data from a 1998 Guttmacher spreadsheet, simply because it was something I already have on my computer, but today's rates and proportions are similar. (I've been having internet connection problems, but if I can get the latest data sometime this week, I'll update this post.)

The fact is, although black women have more abortions on average than white women, they also bear more children on average than white women. PLUS, they also carry more unintended pregnancies to term on average than white women do. So...maybe black women are actually extremely pro-baby!

Or -- and this is just a crazy thought, I mean really it could be anything else, it could be that black women are stupid and slutty and hate black babies and enjoy seeking abortions, it could be that Zombie Poltergeist Anthony Comstock is flushing black women's pills down the toilet, but let's just consider this idea for one moment -- maybe black women have less power on average to control their own reproductive destinies than white women do. (Maybe it's related to having worse access to safe and reliable methods of birth control, maybe it's related to being more at risk for sexual coercion, maybe it's related to having diminished resources and external support for raising a family, maybe you should have done your homework and included these on your website.) And maybe (just bear with me here), maybe THAT'S a symptom of racism that everyone should be billboarding against. Fuckers.


---
Edited this morning because I had more to say (if you don't want to see me ranting, pretend that was the end of the post):

About six months ago, the Radiance Foundation's website even claimed that "14 out of 14 clinics in Georgia are located in majority-black neighborhoods," which they must have gotten by counting up 14 clinics in majority-black neighborhoods and then stopping at 14, because the implied truth (that the same goes for 100% of the state's clinics) is categorically untrue and I can disprove it in a heartbeat. But I can't find it on the website anymore, and it's been replaced by less categorical sentences like this one: "The majority of Georgia’s abortion clinics are located in urban areas where blacks reside, which reflects the national trend (94% of all abortion clinics are located in urban areas)." This "accusation" strikes me as hilarious: do they think clinics should be located only in suburban areas? Or only in whatever urban areas are home to no black people? No shit you're going to locate your clinic in a place where many people need access to a clinic, like maybe a densely populated area! It would be fucking unjust to do otherwise. (And that's why we need clinics in the country AND the city. And in the suburbs too, of course.)

Then they say some bullshit about how therefore, the Guttmacher Institute and the rest of us are lying when we claim there's a disparity in access -- the clinic is right down the street, you'd have to be stupid not to be able to "access" it! Har har. Then they say it's "intellectually insulting" to say that women have a hard time affording birth control, since they have "more than enough money to pay the $400-5000 for an abortion."

Fuck them. Fuck them fuck them fuck them. I dare them to spend a day observing the calls that come in to an abortion fund's hotline, stories about how you're pregnant because you couldn't not buy diapers for your baby girl and you thought maybe for one month you could get her dad to wear condoms when he came around. Or whatever. Shit that people shouldn't have to deal with. Fucking Radiance Foundation and Georgia Right to Life think that just because they've got one biracial man in their midst who was lucky enough to be adopted and survive into (presumably) a healthy adult, they know just how everyone else's life is. Fuck them for not even taking the time to truly listen to people who aren't just like them. Speaking of which, here's the first news report I've seen about the new ads. It actually interviews a real live black woman who isn't on the payroll of fucking Georgia Right to Life. They should try that!



*Actually, I think there's a lot of complexity that gets erased when people talk about adoption practices, including when some pro-choicers say that antis "should adopt black children languishing in foster care" if they are so gung-ho about adoption. (A) it would suck for a kid to get adopted by an anti just to prove they were totes anti-choice enough; and (B) the majority of families in a financial position to formally adopt are white, and transracial adoption can be extremely difficult for adoptees; and also (C) it's really not as simple as whisking away a foster kid and calling him yours, or at least it shouldn't be. For a much more comprehensive perspective on this thorny issue, you can start at Harriet Jacobs' blog.

You know what also stops a beating heart? Murder.

This past Sunday, I was driving home to spend Memorial Day with my family, my handbag on the seat beside me with a Dr. Tiller memorial button pinned to it. I wear the button daily, when I go to work at the clinic and even when I end up in the rural south for whatever reason (When I'm in the rural south, I wear it just as proudly, but I steel myself.), but on Sunday, I wore the button differently, anticipating, dreading the first anniversary of Dr. Tiller's death on Memorial Day, itself.

Heading home to the family that doesn't need to be reminded of what day May 31st will always be, to the family that has never made choice seem like anything but a fact of life, to the family that is a safe haven, I passed under an enormous billboard on the side of the interstate that featured a woman covering her face in anguish. Next to her image, in yellow, the words, "1 DEAD, 1 WOUNDED." Maybe there was a website or a phone number, too, but I didn't need more details to know what it was all about. I raised my middle finger at the billboard ineffectually, and I felt good about the work I do, thankful that flipping off an inanimate object isn't all I can do.

And in my mind, I replaced the anguished woman's face with my own and with my co-workers' and with my co-bloggers' and with all the allies of choice and with the faces of the women who have had abortions and who aren't sorry. In my version, the woman has a cartoon-style thought bubble with Dr. Tiller's face in it. The caption is still there, but it reads, "1 DEAD, MILLIONS WOUNDED." Let me show the world how to appropriate that language, and let me show what it is to be wounded. Let me fight in the REAL war on terror. Let us all show what it is to be wounded and to carry on a legacy and to work harder than ever.

What's Your Sign?

I have seen A LOT of stupid anti-choice signs, posters, comics, etc over the years. Here are some of my favorites:


So... you were designed by God? Cool. I heard God designed a lot of stuff. Trees. Grass. Animals. Bagels. Apparently World War II? Isn't everything in the world a part of "God's Design"? If it's so bad to kill stuff God designed, why do you eat meat? And kill doctors?


AH! Yes, Mary. Full of life. The lady who magically became pregnant without having sex. She is definitely a good example of a normal woman's circumstance. I will definitely not have an abortion if I get pregnant without having sex.


EVERY baby is a blessing? What about the 12 year old who is pregnant with her father's child? That strikes me as unfortunate.


Ok, this is actually pretty good. Hahaha.


Well, people who supported slavery also supported the disenfranchisement of women. And anyone else who wasn't a white dude. Also just because I was born doesn't really mean I should therefore decide if other women get to carry unwanted pregnancies to term?


Um. Well first off all, nobody has elective third trimester abortions. NOBODY. And women aren't flippantly going around having abortions. It's a deeply emotional, difficult decision. So yeah....

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