Sweet Tooth Sez Who?

Check out this REALITY-BASED pie chart of services offered by Planned Parenthood. Nom Nom (we're still hungry)

NYC Abortion Rate

A report (1) was released recently from the Bureau of Vital Statistics that indicated that 39% of pregnancies in New York City and the surrounding boroughs end in abortion. According to the report, there were 225,667 pregnancies in 2009, with 87,273 ending in abortion. To put that in perspective, Guttmacher reported in 2008 that 19.6% of all pregnancies nationwide were ending in abortion (2). So the rate in NYC is twice the national average.

If you split the data up by borough, it looks like this:

Percentage of Pregnancies Ending Abortion
Bronx - 47.9%
Brooklyn - 39.3%
Queens - 38.7%
Manhattan - 37.9%
Staten Island - 32.2%

And just for fun, I looked up the poverty information for those areas:

Percentage Living Below the Federal Poverty Line (as of 2009)
Bronx -28.5%
Brooklyn -24.2%
Queens -14.6%
Manhattan -16.6%
Staten Island -10%

Percentage Living Below 50% of the Federal Poverty Line (2009)
Bronx - 13.7%
Brooklyn - 11.6%
Queens - 7.3%
Manhattan - 6.8%
Staten Island - 5.3%

So the areas with larger numbers of impoverished people also have higher abortion rates. This is not a coincidence. If someone is already struggling to make ends meet, pay bills, put food on the table for the kids she already has, how is she supposed carry an unwanted pregnancy to term and pay for all the expenses that come a long with a baby? Further, when you factor in the unemployment rate, the economy sucking for that past couple of years, etc, it shouldn’t really be that surprising women choosing to have abortions.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan said at a press conference, “That 41%(3) of New York babies are aborted, a percentage even higher in the Bronx and among our African-American babies in the womb, is downright chilling.” He then proceeded to criticize sex education programs that promote condom distribution (!).

Dolan’s statement is painting these poor, low-income women as some sort of villains. Using the language “downright chilling” in the same sentence as “babies in the womb” reminds me a lot of “cold blooded murder.” Not that I think that’s what he is necessarily saying, but, you get my point.

I’m sorry, but whose 'fault' is it that these women need abortions? How did they get pregnant? Families from poor areas are more likely to receive NO sex education (4), so they are less likely to be informed about birth control. They are less likely to be able to pay for birth control. They are less likely to have resources to go to a doctor to get their BC prescription refilled. I could go on. Getting resources like Medicaid, food stamps, etc. requires breaking through absurd amounts of red tape. Yet, antis will stop at nothing to prevent these women from obtaining abortions. Sorry, but a basket of baby formula and a few blankets isn’t going to get up in the middle of the night and check on a crying baby. Coupons for discounted diapers aren’t going to pay for new clothes every couple months as the baby grows.
As I looked through the report one thing that struck me was the abortion rates have actually been pretty consistence for the NYC region.



Since the 90s, the number of miscarriages, abortions, and live births has actually declined. However, what is happening in NYC is not a new phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination. New York has had higher abortion rates for the past couple of decades. Why?

I would guess for a bunch of reasons:
• New York has a high number of abortion providers, whereas most places in the US do not.
• Access there is much easier also with the expansive public transportation system.
• New York has a high number of young people. Younger women are more likely to have abortion.(5)

So, what do we take away from this?

First, I think that these religious groups are approaching this in the wrong way. Speaking of this situation in a negative way further stigmatizes abortion. Women go through enough when they have an abortion; they don’t need anyone from our society making them feel shamed or bad about it. If people truly want to reduce the abortion rate, they need to turn to birth control. Access to and proper use of birth control is the easiest and most effective way to reduce unintended pregnancies. Abstinence education does not work.(6) If you want women who do end up getting pregnant to carry the pregnancy to term, expanding social welfare programs to enable her to actually provide for her children would be a good step. Of course, that would require antis to pay more taxes (re: not happening).

What do you guys think? What else can be done to help improve the situation for pregnant women in NYC?

(1) http://cbsnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/2009sum.pdf
(2) http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/USTPtrends.pdf
(3) This group included spontaneous miscarriages (aka, natural, natured-produced miscarriages) in their abortion numbers for some reason. I guess because 41% sounds a lot scarier than 38.6%? Anyway, 87,273/225,667 = 38.673%.
(4) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/24/AR2008032401515.html
(5) I am not suggesting that college chicks get knocked up and get abortions as a method of BC (ala any of those stereotypes). Women under 20 have 18% of all abortions, ages 20-24 is 33%, ages 25-29 is 24%, ages 30-35 is 14%, ages 35+ is 11%.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/US-Abortion-Patients.pdf
(6) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/13/AR2007041301003.html

Labor Day

It’s a vacation day/bbq day/sleep-in day, so I’ll make it short, but sweet.

On this Labor Day, let’s not forget what a group of people can accomplish together. Today, we acknowledge over 100 years of coalitions showing strength in numbers and fighting for the rights of their colleagues.

The reproductive health movement has many parallels to those in the labor movement. We must remain vigilant in the face of fear-mongering and continue to make our voices heard. In this age, politics plays a huge part in our reproductive decisions. Currently, government representatives are battling between what should and should not be covered in the health reform bill-including birth control.

Together, we have the power to change the direction of reproductive health access and abortion services in this country. Together, our voices can rise up as a powerful, unified force. We are not scared and we will continue to fight for reproductive freedom for all.

The purse strings are so close, yet so far: Abortion coverage and DC sovereignty

Yellow = no lifesaving needle-exchange programs. White = go for it!

I used to live and work in Washington, DC, a place where you'd think people are powerful and have the ability to make important decisions. But the city of the District of Columbia is not the same as what people call "Washington" when they are thinking of Congress and the White House and the Supreme Court and, you know, the halls of power.

Not everyone knows that the residents of DC do not have a single vote in Congress. (They have one non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives, Eleanor Holmes Norton.) Also, not everyone knows that until 1973, DC did not even have an elected mayor or city council, but was directly administered by federally-appointed commissioners -- and Congress can take away that privilege at any time. Congress also has the power to decide how the District can and cannot spend its own income, i.e. money raised from city taxes. Of course, if DC were a state, this would all be very unconstitutional, but the Constitution dictates that the District of Columbia be governed in this way.

It might seem very arcane or very trivial -- why would senators and House reps from other parts of the country care to get involved in someone else's city budget issues, and if they did would their decisions really be so bad for residents anyway? Unfortunately, the residents of DC do indeed feel the repercussions of this lack of sovereignty, repercussions which often hit the poorest among us the hardest.

Every year, Congress writes and passes a new federal budget. And every year, members of Congress use DC as a place to make cheap political statements about where they "stand" on "issues." A timely example: since the late 1990s, DC was prohibited from using its own money to pay for needle exchange programs to combat the spread of HIV, while several of the "real" states were supporting such programs using not just their own funds but federally-allocated funds as well! Basically, conservatives scored political points with their constituents back home using citizens who are politically impotent and thus expendable; meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that "At least 3 percent of District residents have HIV or AIDS, a total that far surpasses the 1 percent threshold that constitutes a 'generalized and severe' epidemic".

In 2007, Congress finally reversed that ban, but now the House is considering a bill with an amendment that restricts where DC can locate needle exchange sites: they cannot be "within 1,000 feet of a public or private day care center, elementary school, vocational school, secondary school, college, junior college, university, public swimming pool, park, playground, video arcade or youth center." The image you see at the top of this post is a map [pdf] 0f what those restrictions would look like: in the white parts it's OK to provide clean needles in exchange for used ones, but not in the yellow parts. (And, um, the blue is water.) How many people can that possibly reach?

OK, so what does this have to do with abortioneering?? As you might guess by now, abortion is another favorite controversy to take out on the residents of DC. Until 1988, the District was using some of its own funds to include abortion coverage as a Medicaid benefit. Since that year (with a brief break 1994-96), Congress has prohibited the District from spending any of its own revenue to pay for abortions, despite the fact that its residents and city council clearly appear to favor it. Again, conservatives scored political points with their constituents back home using citizens who are politically impotent and thus expendable. This year it appears that the Democratic majority in Congress may finally reverse that position and allow DC the choice to resume covering some abortions, and the city probably will choose to do so.

When I worked in DC, most of my clients were on Medicaid, and the vast majority of those were not from jurisdictions that allocated funds for abortion care. They were on Medicaid because their government acknowledged they were too poor to afford health care, but they were going to have to afford an abortion all on their own. Yet abortion care is a part of health care, and we don't suddenly get richer when we have an unwanted pregnancy! It broke and still breaks my heart to know that so many of my neighbors are getting screwed over by people who go to work just a couple blocks or a couple miles away from them.

Living in the nation's capital, you constantly pass monuments, walk right by the White House, and see other stuff that should make you feel like huge decisions are being made in your backyard; yet all that proximity never gets you any closer to meeting those decisionmakers or participating in those decisions. In fact, aside from the euphoria of Election Day and Inauguration, I doubt any of my clients ever thought about the federal government. So maybe it's no wonder that Congresspersons are making terrible decisions about the drug addicts, pregnant women, gay couples and cancer patients of DC as though the latter lived in some tiny shit village thousands of miles away that no one expected Congresspersons to care about in the first place: they don't feel any closer to the residents of their host city than their hosts do to them.

Yes, Congress legally can do all these things. But it still feels like your landlord showed up at your door, set up camp in your nicest bedroom, then went around to all the other rooms and shat on the carpets. Don't forget rent is due on the first.




EDIT: Also, don't you love it when the House minority leader posts a "Statement of Republican Policy" on the party's more-or-less official site for Congressional workings (hosted at a .gov address) and it's got typos and bad logic and unflattering cut-n-paste aesthetics and everything?!

democracy is a virtual reality

President's day reminds me of all the old boys--the lawyers and doctors, farmers and merchants that gathered to sign this government's birth certificate. The pioneers and differently devout that claimed a land mass when they felt unsettled over the Atlantic. Of all those years when mere boats full of settlers, and the natives they maliciously impressed upon and invaded, speckled the east coast. 

Pregnancies after pregnancies were welcome into families going forth and multiplying and termination and birthing processes were virtually unregulated and performed by women specialists. 

President's Day reminds me of a government virtually completely full of wealthy white men with questionable roots making decisions about a potent muscle I happen to have that they don't. It reminds me how they cop regulations on my ovaries, uterus, cervix, vagina, ass and breasts like these precious things should be reported on my tax forms, like they rear their children like god and their wives are still virgins. 

We call them the men involved. Though currently, they are involved in virtually all the wrong ways. 

Please have a listen...