Guest post: Abortion Awakening

About a month ago, I was catching up with an old pal when my phone rang. I silenced it, and it rang again. And rang again. Three more times. Well, it turned out to be important. A young friend of mine was calling for advice. After all was said and done, my friend agreed to write about that experience for us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve always felt strongly about the necessity of access to abortion care, but I recently knew someone, for the first time, who was having difficulty getting an abortion. I live in a place where it wouldn’t be uncommon for an 18-year-old girl to be thrown out of the house for seeking abortion, and although I’ve been aware of that reality, it didn’t really resonate with me until I met one who was facing this and needed to pay for and obtain an abortion without her parents’ knowledge.

A girl that I’ve been good friends with for a few years came to me for help. Her friend was trying to get an abortion, she told me, and they’d had an appointment at a clinic, but when they showed up, she had been turned down because the clinic could only provide abortions up to 16 weeks, and she was at 16 weeks and 4 days. She had already had to travel for this appointment, since she lived in a small town, and now not only would she have to travel again, she had to get an overnight dilation, so she would need a place to stay in addition to the procedure costing much more than she had originally expected.

The way this could suddenly become so much more complicated amazed me. All of a sudden she had a week to find a place to stay and a large sum of money and an excuse to tell her parents that she was driving to another town. I was impressed at how committed my good friend was to helping her friend with this, but I still felt so bad that she seemed helpless. I called my friend Placenta Sandwich to see if there was anything I could do to help.

The next day, the girl and I sat down and talked. We called several abortion funds, leaving messages. We found that the clinic that would be the easiest to get funding help for was the one she had already tried. We also talked about finding a place to stay, and my sister tried to find her a host for the night. Before she left, we hadn’t resolved any of these issues, and I had a moment of indecision. I had some money on me, not that significant a percentage of the abortion cost, maybe, but it could help. Maybe it could help with a place to stay or just a small part of the procedure. And I knew $40 was a lot of money to give to someone I barely knew, but I thought about what I would do with it otherwise, and nothing I could think of spending it on seemed to be as important as helping someone with such a small support system.

I gave her the money, she gave me a hug, and she left. Through the following week we kept calling the funds each day, kept working on where she could stay, but come the day of the appointment, we had nothing. She got half of the money from her ex-boyfriend and paid for a hotel with her friend. She thanked me later, saying just knowing she had my support was a great help, and she said she felt fine after the procedure and it all went well, but I couldn’t help but feel like I had failed.

I know that it wasn’t my responsibility, nor was there anything more I could have done, but it made me realize just how difficult obtaining abortion care is. Even if you find a clinic that can help you, you might need to travel for it, which means you need a place to stay, which often requires money, you need to pay for gas, you need to pay for the procedure itself, and sometimes, this is all compounded by having to keep it completely secret. I wanted so badly to be able to help.

I don’t know if I’m going to be an abortioneer. There are some other career paths I am considering, and I’m young. But this experience definitely made me feel like I might be called to do that. For now, I want to leave the area that I live in. But I want to come back and make it a better place for women. I want people to be able to get abortions without having to go to another city. I want girls not to be struggling to figure out how they’re going to pay AND keep it a secret. I want them to feel like they have people looking out for them, whether they live in a big city or the middle of nowhere. So maybe it doesn’t matter so much that I want to live in a city or that I might want a different job; maybe it’s worth some sacrifice.

Sweet land of liberty

Happy Independence Day.

Between the 4th of July and the Republican primary campaign and anti-tax posturing in general, "freedom" has gotten a lot of lip service lately.

But I don't know what it means, really. What do they mean when they say it? Freedom for the powerful to do as they please at the expense of everyone else?

Meanwhile, everyone-else is seeing their dreams for their own life recede farther and farther out of reach. Or they don't dream anymore, they just try to make it through each week without a disaster, putting out one little brush-fire after another, choosing between new shoes for their quickly-growing kids or keeping the power on, between $$ they don't have each month for reliable birth control or the odds of $$$$ down the road for an abortion. Meanwhile, I almost hope everyone's abortion lottery-number comes up sooner rather than later, because the possibility of getting a needed abortion a few years from now is looking dimmer and dimmer and dimmer.

We exploded bright beautiful fireworks. Huge ones, the real kind. For one day I didn't think about the $$$ that they cost, which we could have put toward everyone's abortion. Probably I should have.

Certain people talk "freedom" but also want to make abortion impossible. They have never explained: If the law were to abide that our very bodies be subjugated to the demands of another entity -- fetus, man or whoever -- then how could we ever be free? How could the remaining liberties mean anything? And if only some are free, is there such thing as justice?

Here in Abortionland these days, temporary injunctions have become our way of making it through each week narrowly staving off disaster, the blanket on these brush-fires that can't be doused, because actually the powerful were pouring gasoline. My feeling is that this year's long parade of anti-freedom legislation is just a way to distract from the total void where economic redress was promised, and to distract from the ever-yawning divide between the powerful and everyone else. Meanwhile, everyone-else is more and more disempowered, with our freedom, supposedly inalienable, actually increasingly contingent on disaster staying at bay, on the odds landing on some other poor bastard and not us.

Where's our revolutionary spirit when we really need it?

More thoughts on the NPIC (and on "When the 'movement' disappoints")

Recently we hosted Steph's cross-post with Feministe (go read it there) about her weird experiences as a freelancer trying to find fulltime employment among, as she called them, the "big-girl organizations" of the reproductive health/rights/justice movement. It's well worth reading the thread there -- she got both support and pushback in the comments, and both provided some good points as well as some fodder for dismay.

While I was drafting a long follow-on post, a panel in New Hampshire was saying it all much better than I could. The very excellent @ClinicEscort livetweeted "Careers in the Movement," a session at Hampshire College's Civil Liberties and Public Policy conference on reproductive justice this weekend.

The words of Andrea Ritchie complicated the whole thing. In her activism to end violence against women and LGB&T people, she's worked within non-profits and outside of them, and her career is a good argument for being thoughtful and critical of the non-profit world we probably all picture when we think about a "Career in the Movement." (Let's bear in mind going forward that "the movement" is erroneously equated with the assortment of 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations that are its professionalized face.) From the livetweet: "Nonprofit-industrial complex is a subtle form of social control. Funders set agendas & can be driven by priorities outside the movement." "It's easy to find yourself doing work tailored to funder agenda & preferences, not the community the organization is meant to serve." 

Maybe this sounds super cynical or just far-fetched. The first time I heard such ideas, that's how they sounded to me. Non-profit employment was supposed to be a values-driven, agenda-free, "helping people and doing good" environment. But most 501(c)(3) orgs are grant-funded, and many of those grants come from foundations, and foundations have historically served as a tax shelter for the extra money of families who got very wealthy from owning a company. Say you run a reproductive health or rights organization and your operating funds come from a foundation like that. What are the chances you'll feel safe rocking the boat of capitalism by talking about how unjust labor practices affect reproductive health, or how even Democratic legislators would only vote for a Health Care Reform Act that preserved the role and profit of insurance companies because all legislators are owned by corporate donors? And so forth.

So maybe you don't want to hire anyone -- writers, activists, other freelancers -- who've ever had a public opinion on such topics; after all, guilt-by-association is a popular tactic in this country's informal politics. You might even shy away -- even if your whole mission is abortion-related -- from hiring someone who's written matter-of-factly about the existence of and need for second trimester abortion, as Steph has, because second-trimester abortion must be handled delicately lest someone out there twist it wrong (they always will) and must be discussed only 0.1% of the time since as we already know it only accounts for 10% of abortion procedures anyway. Maybe you'll ask prospective employees to give up writing, blogging, twitter-ing, and even volunteering for grassroots abortion organizations, just in case it makes them a liability in some nebulous way that you're reluctant to spell out up-front.

Steph reports that after blogging about her hiring misadventures, she received some personal communications from some big-girl orgs' reps intimating that she had "messed up" by talking about this publicly.

(O RLY? I didn't know you were reading blogs these days, big-girls! Maybe if you were reading them 6-12 months ago you'd have noticed the furor you ignited by claiming that young women just aren't interested in doing pro-choice activism? Maybe you wouldn't have even said that in the first place? Maybe you would have gone down to the intern pod where some eager young women were making your photocopies and your coffee and asked them what they thought of this hypothesis? But instead you talked shit about them to the media as if they weren't even there; and thank goodness there was no one to call you up and admonish you that you "messed up" for talking about this publicly.)

Here's the problem. Raising questions or criticism, even with the best of intentions, about a systemic issue within the field is so often written off as "infighting" and "distraction" because we "need to focus on the real problems" (or the enemy at the gates or what have you), etc. And yeah, we do have important work to be doing, and I'd love to get to it with 100% attention. But maybe if these conversations didn't devolve into defensiveness and secret phone calls over things that should've been out in the open in the first place, it wouldn't BE a waste of time and energy and a distraction, but an opportunity for progress and for strengthening our movement.

Because they overlook this opportunity, sometimes I really worry about the established orgs in the field: maybe they're so used to being on the defensive externally that the best they can do within the movement is defend their position as "leaders," and fight to keep the movement, and its unofficial hierarchies, just as they are. In a parallel way, the leaders of these orgs may falter in creativity and end up mostly working to keep their own positions as leaders. But in doing this, the professional organizations of our movement (and other movements, progressive and not) are replicating power structures that some of us thought we were aiming to undo. (More from Andrea Ritchie: "was a Greenpeace canvasser as first movement job; learned there that organizing a union at your nonprofit workplace will get you fired." Hell to the yes it will, and discovering that will fuck with your mind.)

I've said before that some older orgs seem to engage new technology only if they feel able to "manage" it, and so it is with web 2.0 platforms -- they tweet sanitized and non-conversational tweets, they publish "blog posts from the CEO" that are really just press releases written by the communications associate. And maybe in a similar way they only use new people if they feel they'll be able to "manage" us (does this mean use us as warm bodies and footsoldiers? mold us to their style of leading before allowing us any agency? what else?).

...These are some thoughts I keep coming back to over the years, and not intended as an exhaustive thesis. Which means I'll be back with more, soon enough. But I'd rather hear your thoughts on my thoughts -- those of you working inside and outside of nonprofitland -- and ideas on how we can push past this disappointing state of affairs: how activists can claim authentic leadership in our own movement; how we can maybe do meaningful work AND have a comfortable bed (I know, that's a whole can of worms). Anyone?


I owe all these thoughts to a lot of other activists and writers but most persistently to the INCITE! collective whom I always mention and to bfp, who discussed and argued with me over at Feministe but probably has no idea how much her writing has shaped my perspective and values since I first found her old blog (RIP) about five years ago. I'd be embarrassed to tell her directly.

Stripped

I went to a strip club this weekend. I don't go to strip clubs often but on occasion, typically at another friend's request I end up in a strip club. I rarely have an amazing time in strip clubs but this weekend was especially disturbing. I walked into an all black strip club located in a a area with a several other multiracial strip clubs and a few predominately white clubs. In the club I entered there were at least 30 women working in a one large room, with one stage. One woman danced on stage while the others lounged or tried to work the audience. I had no money and I was with a group of 4 other people, one of those people and I were the only white people in the bar.

I felt guilty for being in that space without money to give the women dancing. I had not planned to end up in a strip club. The women were not turning me on, really I had no desire to tip them beyond a sense of obligation because I was in the bar. Tipping is the point of being in a strip bar. I grew very uncomfortable, here I was with over 2 dozen black women working their bodies because that is how they make money. It would be very rude to go into a restaurant, sit down, and proceed not to order anything. In fact I would be asked to leave. As a white person I knew I took up space that no one else in the bar took up. Lots of people were tipping the women a dollar here or there, way less than any of the women's worth. When I say I took up space that no one else did its for me to explain. White people are privileged in this country. So there is an assumption that I have access to resources such as money. I don't think any one should go to a strip club unless they are ready to tip the dancers. Due to systemic racism, as I white person I most likely have access to certain resources that a black woman may not have access to. Thus making it even more important that as a white person in an all black strip bar I go ready to tip.

There were dozens of black men in the bar who were not tipping. For me, this did not justify my inability to tip. I did not want to do what those men were doing and I have no idea if the same men who were not tipping the woman on stage had at least paid for a "lap dance" in the back. My discomfort was about my relationship to that space. It felt reminiscent of a slave auction block, and yet I did not even have money to justify my voyeurism or participation. I did not want to participate in that kind of exploitation of black women's bodies. I am not against strip bars, sometimes I even have a good time. I think the thing that bothered me most is that I had no money to tip and the people I was with had very limited money to tip. Essentially the money my friends had was not enough to justify a group of 5 people inhabiting that space. Strippers don't strip for fun generally, they strip to earn $$$.

I voiced my discomfort to my friends, including the other white person. I was not heard by my friends and we stayed for a while before we left. I woke up thinking well if nothing else at least I have something to blog about. I definitely felt disappointed my friends are OK with being in that space with little money to compensate the women for their work. I was in a group of both people of color and white people, as well as straight people and queer people. So for each of us the space we take up in this particular situation varies and I cannot speak to whether they should have been in that space or not but I knew that personally I did not have any reason to be there without money. Had I been in a group of people who had big $ and could "make it rain", maybe the dynamic would have changed. For me it was not right to be in this strip club with a group of people who had little to no money to tip the dancers.

Someone I know is making a documentary about black strippers in gay communities who strip for gay people. Once she said part of what her documentary looks at is "how work shapes identity". I think about this statement partly because she was referring to how work as a stripper and entertainer helped shape the identity of the people she followed in her documentary. For me working in abortion has shaped my identity. I did not know I had so much feminism hiding in me until this weekend. I identify as a feminist but I have never had this kind of anger arise as a result of the objectification of women's bodies, at least not that I could really identify in real time.

I can not disconnect my work in an abortion clinic from experiences like this one. I kept on thinking of the stripper I got into a conversation with at work a few weeks ago. I kept hoping none of these women would end up in the clinic and remember my face because I watched and did not tip. My work has informed my identity as a feminist and anti-racist woman.

Another FAQ: "Why did she wait so long?"

Yes, it's a frequently-asked question, and I kinda hate it. Like she "waited" around until her schedule cleared up or something. If a woman finally makes it to an appointment at 18 weeks, it's safe to assume she wasn't "waiting," she was being delayed. 

This came up for me yet again last month when Frances Kissling, who formerly led Catholics for Choice, controversially questioned whether we really know anything at all about why some women have later procedures.* To make a long story short, Kissling said we don't know how many abortions are done because of fetal anomaly,** said that "there is no evidence regarding shame over sexual abuse leading to pregnancy denial, indecision etc as a major factor," and asked "Do we really think women who do not have the money for a first trimester abortion find the larger amount needed for a later procedure in any significant numbers?"

Apparently, even people (like Kissling) who have experience providing abortion care and emergency abortion funding for second-trimester patients may feel this way. But that baffles me, honestly. Because I have those experiences too, and I've spent so many days/weeks/months, yes months, working with the same women who are still trying to obtain treatment for the same pregnancy, and heard all of the trials and tribulations along the way. How could someone who's done this still feel they "don't know" why women "wait until" the second trimester, while I feel I know it all too well?

Here is your frequently-given answer:

Women DO suffer, sometimes terribly, from shame and denial -- young women especially. They don't tell their parents, who might beat them, throw them out of the house, or simply 'be disappointed' about either consensual sex or rape (outrageous but not uncommon) or the pregnancy itself; imagine how much more complicated and traumatic when abuse by a trusted relative or family friend is involved. Will they even believe her? How can she bring herself to speak up?

Then there's the surprising number of women who simply don't realize for a few months that they're pregnant: they have urgent things on their mind, like keeping their children clothed and fed, where outgrowing their shoes can be an unaffordable problem, and maybe to scrounge up some shoe-money they'll forgo lunches at work, so feeling tired and slightly sick all the time is nothing new; you get the picture. Or they keep getting their "period" (actually implantation bleeding, 1/3 of women have it through the first trimester) or are in some other way among the "lucky" women who barely have any symptoms.

And yes, HELL yes, women do spend months getting the money together. In my area, most of the quality providers charge around $500 for a first-trimester abortion; some places are able to discount $100-150 with proof of Medicaid. This is low compared to most out-of-pocket medical costs, and has barely kept up with inflation since 1973, but of course if you're on Medicaid you probably don't have $350 in your pocket. Sure it doesn't "make sense" to try to get $2700 instead of $350, as Kissling says, but the logical conclusion of that view is If they can't get the $350 right away, why are they bothering at all? Yet we know women are much more determined to decide their pregnancy outcomes than that. Plus, when I work on funding, a lot of the second-trimester patients I talk to got their price information when they first called a clinic in the first trimester, and had a terrible shock when they called back several weeks later and the price was higher.

Then, if they are lucky enough to find out about emergency funds, which many clinics don't even know about (!), they will still be disappointed to learn that the fund can't always pay everything they are missing. "Can you pawn your TV, get a predatory payday loan or a loan for your car title, can you borrow ten dollars from everyone you know, can you find five houses to clean after work this week?" (It sucks to talk about these options -- even more so if they've already been checked off.) They painstakingly set that money aside. Then, maybe, a drug-addicted relative steals it from them. (Yes, really.) They're back at square one. Or they have to help their family move before the eviction date and the delay takes them from week 12 to week 13, and they've moved to another neighborhood/town and have to find a new clinic with a new price, or a ride to the old clinic. And so on.

The funny thing is that when I mentioned all of this in a comment on Kissling's article, I felt shy and embarrassed, because someone with her experience has surely heard it all before! But why do the detailed memories come back to me so readily whenever this subject comes up, and not to her? These stories and examples are not statistical evidence (which might be what she was calling for without naming it as such), but they are not nearly rare, either. I've heard them for years -- sometimes alldayeveryday -- but never lost my trust in women and girls' good-faith efforts to TCB as efficiently as they were able, or implied that their own words about "why" the delay (not that I was owed an explanation at all) were not reliable enough.

The entire post I just wrote is only a small handful of common examples, in a health care context where abortion is mostly privately provided and privately paid for. There's no one Major Reason (or 3 or 5) explaining the course of all women's pregnancies up til their appointments. To sum it up in different words: the British Pregnancy Advisory Service reviewed a full month's worth of requests for abortion past 22 weeks in the UK. The article where I read about this, A Moral Defence of Late Abortion, is fantastic in itself, but if you want to get to the details of the audit, scroll down. There you go: your frequently-given answer, woman by woman.

Prolixly yours,
Placenta Sandwich

PS: I don't hold it personally against Kissling. I still like other things she's written. Like this article, for example, that I think everyone supporting abortion rights ought to take to heart this new year - Twelve Things You Can Do To Help Increase Abortion Access.***


*The main point of Kissling's article was to address the calls for "honesty" from pro- and anti-choice camps alike; she stated she isn't comfortable with some pro-choice advocates' rhetoric, like typical characterizations of "reasons" for the 10% of abortions that occur beyond the first trimester. By way of example, she quoted Catherine Epstein writing that major reasons for the vaguely-defined "late abortion" include fetal anomaly, shame or denial following sexual abuse, and the struggle to get enough money for the abortion. 
**What we know about abortions sought because of fetal anomaly is that they represent less than 1% of ALL abortions, but probably much more of what are vaguely referred to as "late abortions" (I'll try to find exact percentages, but the reporting is not uniform across states). Between Epstein's and Kissling's articles, the distinction between "second trimester" abortions (after 12 weeks) and "late abortions" (after 20 or 21 or 22 weeks, depending who you ask, when fetal anomalies are more often detected) became blurred in the arguments. 
***Even though, as the National Network of Abortion Funds pointed out, many clinics and doctors DO already forgo payment to provide urgently-needed abortions. I had to go and be argumentative, didn't I? 

Manipulate household finances and personal security to get the desired result from your female appliances.

The last few weeks have brought up a lot of issues around affording one's abortion care. First Mr. Banana Grabber described some of the difficult situations we hear about at holiday times when mothers are juggling the cost of the heating bill, toys for the kids, their outgrown winter coats and, oh yeah, the abortion appointment. 

A few days later, Mr. Banana Grabber is hella bummed out, because some anti-choice blogger, who's so disconnected from reality she appears to not even know any poor people, says she doesn't believe that women would return, pawn, or sell their kids' holiday gifts over a stupid little abortion (why not just wait til January?!). An anti-choicer not trusting women's knowledge of their own experiences? Shocker! 

And last week Anti-Anti took up the topic again, discussing the privilege of being able to afford an abortion and the importance of recognizing that others may be in very different situations. UneFemmePlusCourageuse commented to say that even the hard work done by donation-based abortion funds doesn't nearly plug all of the cracks: 

If someone is married, and their spouse makes fairly good money, but she can't tell him that she wants/needs an abortion, then many abortion funds won't help her cover the procedure... just because someone seems to be financially comfortable overall doesn't mean that paying for an abortion wouldn't be difficult for them.

As I said in reply to UneFemme's comment, I'm confused/curious about this statement. It's true way too many women are still struggling to find assistance, or enough assistance, despite fund staff's efforts. But I've worked on abortion funding, too, and haven't run into a specific requirement that a woman discuss the appointment with her partner -- in general the funding groups I worked with recognized that (a) disclosure isn't a woman's "obligation" and (b) disclosure isn't always safe. 

One thing I have heard, and said myself, in the course of financial counseling is, "If you can't borrow money for an abortion, can you maybe borrow money by saying that it's for something else?" Not just for partners, but also when women [understandably] balk at discussing their situation with parents, friends or neighbors. So if a woman's finances are 'comfortable' but controlled by her spouse, a fund volunteer might ask her to try requesting money for an acceptable but non-routine purchase (for instance to replace an ostensibly worn-out pair of shoes for their child); put her utility money toward the abortion fee and then ask a neighbor for help with an unexpectedly-high gas bill; or in some other way shuffle "allowable" money around. 

It sucks that women have to lie to the people around them. What sucks the worst is to see women aware, or quickly becoming aware, that they're not taken seriously as moral agents, that they have to lie to be able to do right by themselves, and that if their loved ones can use money as a tool to dictate their choices, they will. Our government certainly does.* And it's disgustingly objectifying. 

I know I shouldn't say "women" as though it's a universal truth for all of us. For example, personally, I'm lucky to have at least some people in my life whose support for me is unencumbered by that kind of bullshit. But variations on this theme happen so goddamn often that it's hard, after all, not to see this as a collective problem for women. Indeed, every time a woman tells me she can't talk to anyone because she fears being beaten or thrown out on the street by her asshole of a partner or parent -- fears that her only "choice" is between her need for bodily self-determination and her need to not bleed or freeze to death -- I feel like that asshole is vitiating the moral agency of us all. 

*"I would certainly like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion: a rich woman, a middle class woman, or a poor woman. Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the HEW Medicaid bill." (Henry Hyde, 1976)

**Disclaimer: My linking to NNAF should not be interpreted as a statement that I work or have worked for NNAF. (Just like my linking to the Hyde Amendment should not be interpreted as a statement that I currently work or have worked for the jackass.) 

Kitchen Sink

Abortions are expensive.

For my part, I have insurance that covers the procedure at a facility that I know and trust. Failing that, I could use my credit card, or even dip into my savings. But with the median personal income at something like $32K for adults 25 and over, it's easy to see why women are often screwed when they need to finance abortions. $400 might not seem like a whole lot to me or even my Abortioneering counterparts, who were fortunate enough to go to college or even grad school, who have worked full-time and have had employer-sponsored insurance and could get our acupuncture and zit creams for little more than a $30 copay. At the same time, we are not millionaires. Even though my income exceeds the median it's not by much, and I'd be pretty unhappy to have to shell out that much cash for an abortion. So imagine what it's like for those below the median, or making nothing at all.

NEWSFLASH: This is a reality!

Women DO ask their partners/baby daddies for money. Women DO pawn jewelry bequeathed to them by grandmothers. Women DO sell their hair. Women DO commit petty larceny. Women DO trim down their children's Christmas lists!

I think a lot of antis are antis not because they have a moral or religious opposition to abortion, but because they hold some sort of prejudice against poor people who they likely have never even associated with. This capitalist wasteland that is the United States fosters the ideology that if people have financial troubles they are a) just exaggerating and whining, and b) they must have done something to deserve it. Well, you low-hanging fruit, I am here to shed some light on your egregious misconceptions. Try some compassion-building activities this holiday season:

-Visit a shelter or food kitchen
-Volunteer on a charity drive
-Deliver meals to the elderly
-Volunteer on a hotline (any one) and actually talk to people who are different from you
-Clean up a messy neighborhood
-Take a walk on the other side of the tracks and just observe

I have dealt with so many folks who feign understanding but simply don't know the score. Educate yourselves!

"Why don't you..."

Ensure women are confident in the decisions they make about their problem pregnancies
Help women leave their abusive partners so they can have that baby
Combat domestic violence
Provide women with contraceptive services to avoid unplanned pregnancies
Find a job developing more effective forms of contraception
Prevent rape and sexual violence - so that "the innocent ones" don't have to have abortions, natch
Find counseling for assault victims
Throw them baby showers so they'll have "all the supplies they need"
Offer to adopt her children so she'll have time and energy for one more
Buy her kids the damn Christmas presents so she won't have to have the abortion (What?? Please work on distinguishing between a problem and its symptom, OK?)
Help her with the cost of a new baby
Pay their utility bills
Help them find safe cheap childcare...

*

Dear devoted denialist antis, regular know-it-alls, and well-meaning strangers/friends/family/bloggers who just think abortion "shouldn't be used so thoughtlessly": 


Thank you for your suggestions. We regretfully see that you consider yourselves geniuses for having hit on the one magic solution that no one has tried.


In order to keep this letter brief, I leave to your own heroic efforts the task of identifying which of these things we ALREADY DO that you just assumed we don't do, which of them we would NEVER DO because you are not adequately informed to dream up effective strategies ("tell her to Just Leave him!"), and which ones we would LOVE to do but lack the resources and/or magical patriarchy-busting power to do.


In fact the purpose of our reply is simply to ask you a question, since you brought it up.


Why don't you?


No, seriously. Why don't you do those things? Answer me, each of you, about your individual practices. And society-at-large, you answer me too. And when you've all answered why YOU don't do these things, I'll understand you a little better, and then one day maybe we can "discuss reasonable solutions" as you have proposed but are currently unprepared for.


We regret that we will not be working with you at this time but encourage you to submit future proposals that meet the minimum thoughtfulness standards.


Good luck,


Placenta Sandwich
VP of Irritated Blogging
The Abortioneers

Tis the Season (To Support Your Local Abortion Fund) :)

Around the holidays, most of us start thinking of presents we want for Christmas, gifts we are giving to others. Anticipating holiday parties, fun gatherings with those that we love, perhaps traveling somewhere to visit relatives.

Unfortunately, this time of year can be particularly difficult and trying for low-income women who are pregnant. Like most, they too are in the process of holiday shopping. Many of these women already have children and are already at or below the federal poverty line. They are already scraping by. Trying to make Christmas happen for their kids is going to be hard enough as it is. Plus, it's colder, so electric bills can be higher. The kids have a couple weeks off school which means daycare has to be found if she wants to work. The list go on.

On top of that, having an unwanted pregnancy. I have talked to women who had to pawn their kids' Christmas gifts to raise money to pay for their abortion. There is nothing more heartbreaking than listening to a woman cry because she cannot provide for her children, even at Christmas.

A glimmer of hope -- one way many of these women seek additional assistance is through local abortion funds. They can tremendously help out these women in very desperate situations.

Some funds that are worth your time (and money if you are so inclined) include:

The DC Abortion Fund

The Chicago Abortion Fund

Make A Difference Fund

National Network of Abortion Funds

Texas Equal Access Fund

Third Wave Foundation

And a bunch more here.

Trust

I'm not an optimist by nature, but by God, I force myself to be one. There's enough negativity in and around abortion care; no one needs me to be a grumpy, jaded provider. I dance at work and joke with clients and hype up my co-workers and proclaim my love for the clinic from the rooftops. And sometimes, it's the most exhausting part of the work I do.

I wear a "Trust Women" button like the one worn by Dr. Tiller. I believe it with all my heart and it's the reason I go to work every day, ignoring the protesters, ignoring my lower back pain and sciatica after 12+ hour days. I've sacrificed relationships and friends and sleep and food and health and leisure time and luxuries and vacations for this job. I do it because I trust and love every woman who enters my clinic, and I value the work I do. And I know that the clients appreciate all of us providers. But they don't always trust us.

Women constantly ask us if our clinic is clean, if real doctors perform the abortion, if they'll be infertile, if they'll get breast cancer. They call afterward and accuse us of "leaving something inside of me," they blame their stubbed toe on something we did, they call us money-hungry whores because we can't secure enough funding for them. And it hurts so much and it makes me so angry to constantly be the enemy, no matter what. Providers aren't perfect, but we're good and selfless people and we deserve trust and respect.

I'm sorry I can't be your regularly scheduled, sunny Desembarazarme, but I'm human and I struggle, and I trust you to be here for me.

Burn-out

Thank you to deliverance for joining us again as guest blogger today!

*******************************

I was talking with a co-worker yesterday about our work in abortion care. "We should all work part-time here, and then part-time somewhere else, like…an ice cream shop!"

What a great idea, I thought.

Burnout has gotten me down and it is harder than ever to self-motivate. A sanctuary-type environment where I used to continually stumble upon joyful moments, has become a normal office building with boring tasks.

It's not the absence of all joy or gratification, but those moments have become few *and* far between.

Part of it is repetition--the same stories ("I feel like I am killing."), the same obstacles (poverty), and less patient interaction in my current position.

It's also about money. Recently I called a few clinics to get an idea of how much others charge for abortions. There was a clinic a few states away charging over $600.00 for first trimester abortions. Considering how challenging it is for patients at our clinic to pay for procedures, I can't imagine how difficult it is to come up with twice as much money. Then again, women in that state probably don't have any other option.

According to the National Abortion Federation, women cannot access abortion in 88% of counties in the U.S., and that percentage rises to 97% for women in rural areas (http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/access_abortion.html). It doesn't take a genius to figure out why we need people who have a ton of passion and motivation to work in abortion care--this right is, and has been, on the brink of extinction.

I have met and waved goodbye to numerous abortioneers who have flung their entire selves into abortion care, but when it comes down to it (and I really do hate to say it), what we make isn't sustainable. If you want to have a family, go back to school, travel to get away from such stressful work, while also meeting rent, buying groceries, and paying off student loans (a Bachelor's degree is required for many positions at clinics)--good luck.

There is an effort on many of our parts to not only be happy, but to thrive with less--we don't need most of the shit we buy anyway--but fair pay is surely a feminist issue, one which many clinics want to avoid discussing. "Everyone needs a raise," is a reply I've gotten quite often, but I don't think that's so true when looking at wages for administrators and doctors.

Despite all of this, there are still some abortioneers who stick around. They have worked at clinics in the same position for 7 or 8 years, and although many clinics don't have much room for advancement, they hang on because our work can be that important and fulfilling. Some go to medical school to become providers. Others study midwifery, so they can deliver babies as well as provide abortions, in the few states where midwives are able to do such comprehensive care. A few play the game of working their way up to an administrative position.

When I realized I wouldn't be one of those people, I started to make plans to "move on," as people call it (even though I will take this work everywhere with me). I feel guilty for knowing I will one day leave, and resentful for what could've been.

For those of you who stay for the duration of your working life, thank you for being the backbones of our movement. Your amount of commitment and dedication is astounding to me.

Keeping my feet on the ground

("...and I don't go to sleep to dream")

Thinking about money again.

In my non-abortioneer job, we've been working hard to finish a proposal for a bunch of money that would enable organizations in low-resource settings to prevent death and disabilities due to unsafe abortion. (If you're curious about this, the immediate strategies are [a] averting unwanted pregnancies, [b] improving the quality of abortion care, and [c] training health providers in how to treat women presenting with complications from unsafe abortions.)

So yeah, big grant proposal means late hours in the office trying to figure out what the donors want to hear and how we can use their money for the things we specialize in, writing the perfect proposal that will win their hearts, and trying to negotiate the budget section and which partner organizations will get what-size chunk for how much work. Sometimes in the midst of all the math, I wonder how all that hypothetical money went so fast.

I also marvel at the higher rungs of the wider not-for-profit world -- from CARE to the American Cancer Society -- where salaries seem comparatively luxurious and the projects move comparatively slowly and the schedules seem like they're mostly meetings and luncheons or something. Sometimes it seems like the institutions all around me are wordlessly shuttling me in that direction, too.

It's what I was afraid of the first time I left my job in a clinic and thought I might try policy or advocacy -- that there'd be less interacting with the people I'm trying to be there for, more isolation at a desk hoping that my abstractions might do something useful like increase contraceptive access a little or reduce wait times for post-abortion care a little.

At the same time as your goals are getting more abstracted, you're also trying to "advance your career" so you can have more responsibility, help formulate goals, or make a unique contribution... And to be very honest, sometimes it's too easy to think of earning power as shorthand for getting somewhere, and that can make you accept others' values as your own, forget what you came here to accomplish, or in some other way lose perspective.

I'm not saying I'm sure my own perspective is perfect, only that on the other hand it's quite simple to keep on track when I am working with clients directly. It reminds me what matters right now, keeps me humble about all that I still need to learn, and gives me a healthy outsider's view of the weird process of trying to find a place for myself in the inevitable hierarchy.


In my imagination the thing I really fear looks like me sitting at a desk pushing paper -- stressing about donor-pleasing language, navigating five different colors of "track changes" in a document, going to an endless string of meetings to plan work that will always be postponed for more meetings -- not seeing any concrete results that make people's lives easier, and managing to make money off it. And that's another reason I love being an abortioneer and don't want to trade for an "easier," "better," or "more important" job: to me those other jobs seem like none of the above.

Now...how will I pay off my grad school loans? (The question that makes the world go round, right?)

Reading and ranting: when theory doesn't meet practice

So I'm reading this paper. It's about desired and actual fertility levels in developing countries. And it's written by...an economist.

No offense to any economists reading this, but y'all say a lot of funny things. You base a lot of your reasoning on the idea that people make "rational decisions" and everything else follows logically from there, but underneath that you have a very restricted sense of what rational decisions might be.

An example: this paper posits that there is "a very small influence of contraceptive access on fertility levels .... The decision to have another child is simply too important and too costly for contraceptive costs to play a major role." 

I kind of hesitate to name this paper and author, because in fact it's a very interesting paper with some thoughtful research behind it and some good points to make. But I just need to say it: are you fucking kidding me? 

Sure, it's easy for you to say from your armchair, "It just doesn't make sense to behave any other way; if a woman can't afford birth control, she certainly can't afford a child, so she should be sure to get on birth control because it's a tiny investment compared to the cost of a kid." Well, duh. 

But I mean: has this guy EVER spoken with an actual woman of reproductive age (as they say) during his career? Here in the first world, where theoretically there is a pharmacy around every corner and Medicaid for poor people, I have met SO MANY women who would have loved to buy contraceptives in the month they got pregnant, but couldn't afford it because diapers or seizure medication or a new (used) tire had to come first. The thing is, if you can't afford birth control this month, the fact that you could even less afford to have a child doesn't matter -- you still can't afford birth control right now. And then accidents happen. 

This doesn't even get into all the pseudo-consensual sex that occurs even in the U.S. -- not to mention more resource-poor countries -- meaning you may be afraid of getting pregnant and unable to get birth control but you may also have little agency in sexual decisions. Your abusive partner is actively trying to get you pregnant as a control tactic. The guy you depend on for child support comes around every few weeks and maybe gets a little pushy. You support your four siblings by trading sex for food. You live on the street and cops routinely harass you until you'll fuck them! 

I'm just saying. The fact that it's cheaper doesn't always mean birth control is cheap enough. 

The paper goes on to use other, more sound arguments to propose that the well-known idea of "unmet need" for contraceptives is more or less moot, because "actual fertility" levels are nearly identical to "desired fertility" levels in most developing countries. Really, they are interesting points, but then he doesn't even address the extremely high rates of unsafe abortion in those same countries -- a pretty strong indicator of desperately not wanting to be pregnant, I'd say, and of a need (an unmet need, if you will) to avoid pregnancy in the first place. I mean, stuff like that: WTF, economists?

So I am still trying to understand how a person can write about the real-life problems of real-life individuals, overlook critical aspects of the situations many of them are in, and write off an entire sub-field of health as irrational or unnecessary. I mean, I feel like if someone asked the author about the abortion thing, he'd dismiss it by saying he is only looking at the "big picture" of births per woman, and his point is that women on average are still having as many children as they say they desire and that point still holds, and micro-level issues such as death and disability due to unsafe abortion are only details to be worked out by someone else who takes an interest in that stuff. And that's as may be -- perhaps you just wanted to show something interesting about these national-level birth-related indicators -- but really, even if it's just carelessness, you shouldn't let your theory errantly piss all over others' actual practices. 

Better strategies:
1) Acknowledge that there is an unmet need for contraception so long as unsafe abortion is widespread, or
2) Acknowledge that abortion is an important part of your finding that women are meeting their "desired" fertility levels, and include in your recommendations section that it be made safer and more accessible.

To put it less wordily -- those women your science can't understand: they are nevertheless real and you haven't managed to math them away.

Money, money, money

It's been a while since we've had a fund spotlight, and many funds are really hurting right now. As I'm sure many if not all of you know, abortion funding is a real problem in this country. Federal funding for abortion care is outlawed due to the Hyde Amendment, a law that has been renewed annually since its inception in 1976. There are 15 states that, by law, fund some abortion care through their state Medicaid program. Some of these Medicaid programs are better than others but none of them go far enough. It's difficult to qualify for Medicaid, it can take a lot of time, and not all women know how to adequately advocate for themselves through the government "red tape".

This is where private abortion funds step in. There are abortion funds throughout the country, some that help women nationally and some that help women in a local area. These funds do the best they can, working hard to fundraise as much as possible. However, due to their extremely limited resources they have to restrict who they can fund money to and how much they can give per person. This leaves many women out of luck. Right now many, probably most, of these funds are in dire straits and desperately need help to continue on.

National Funds - those that help women across the country.

The Make a Difference Fund is 100% volunteer run and all of the money they raise goes to help women.

The 3rd Wave Foundation runs programs aimed at women and transgender youth, 15-30 years old. One of the programs they run is an abortion fund for women in need under 30 years old.

The Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project. They help women of all ages going to clinics that are part of the National Abortion Federation and/or the National Coalition of Abortion Providers.

Local Funds

There are too many local funds for me to fairly list them here, but the local funds are in particular need of help. They help women in a specific state or part of a state and often work very closely with the clinics in their area. Because they're local, fundraising can be more dificult, particularly if they are located in a more conservative area. Visit the National Network of Abortion Funds to find a local fund near you that you can help.


I know times are tough for everyone, but these funds need our help. Nothing is too small, even $10 a month would go a long way.

Legislators think they are our daddies (and good daddies make things harder on their children)

Happy Fathers' Day! I was going to write you a post about dads, but it'll have to be tomorrow, because I got distracted by an entirely different kind of paternalism. Today I'd like to direct your attention to this post at The Curvature: Anti-Choice Ultrasound Laws Don’t Change Abortion Rates, But Continue Getting Tougher. It's about the wave of state-level legislation that's been passed in the last year or so, much of it having to do with forcing a woman to pay for a medically unnecessary ultrasound, look at it, and/or hear a description of it from the sono tech.

Now, many clinics use ultrasound as a way to determine at what point in the pregnancy the abortion is going to be performed -- there are important technical distinctions between, say, six weeks and sixteen weeks, though ultrasound is not the only way to figure this out -- and I'm all for patients having access to their own medical records if they want it. However!

(a) There is really not that much to see on a sonogram that's made for the purpose of determining gestational age. The screen is pretty dark, the image is fuzzy, and 90% of abortions are performed in the first trimester, a time when all the print-out shows is a roundish grey blur. 

(b) Instructing, as some laws now do, that the technician must turn the screen to face the woman but the woman "may avert her eyes" is pretty ludicrous. So is the idea that a woman averting her eyes must still hear the doctor or tech "describe the fetal development at that stage" (no provision for "averting her ears" in such laws!). If it's in some way relevant to care, a doctor should -- and would -- explain this sort of thing. If it's not relevant to care, well then, it sounds to me like legislators are trying to alter medical practice for political purposes, and as we know that's not OK. Actually it sounds to me like our state reps are practicing medicine without a license -- which happens to be illegal, you know? 

(c) Most of the laws make no provision for victims of sexual trauma who may be re-traumatized by this process. In fact, the Oklahoma bill which was vetoed by the governor even specified that if the abortion is taking place very early in pregnancy, the ultrasound must be done with an intra-vaginal wand, rather than over the abdomen, to "give a clearer image." I was struck to the core when I read this. Like the state was mandating a second rape -- yes, that's what it's called when someone puts something in you that you don't consent to -- if you wanted an abortion. 

(d) Most strikingly: I have never seen a patient change her mind about her abortion because of an ultrasound. My clinic does perform a sonogram before every procedure. By law, clients fill a form indicating whether they want to see the image, listen to the "fetal heart tones if present," both, or neither. We get back forms with all sorts of answers, meaning plenty of clients do choose one or both, but I don't know of anyone who has said, "Oh my god, you know what? I had NO IDEA there was an embryo in there! I thought an abortion was something to do with my bladder! Now that I know, there's no way I can go through with this." 

(e) Which brings us back to the conclusion at The Curvature: it's probably not at all about changing patients' minds, but simply yet another approach in the campaign to guilt, shame, isolate and traumatize women who choose abortion. To punish them for having made this choice that we know she will go through with, because women are not stupid and women are not children, they understand their lives better than a stranger ever could and they already know in their guts what they are capable of at this moment. 

Sometimes that's giving birth and giving her parental rights to another family. 

Sometimes it's leaving high school or going on public assistance in order to afford a wanted, or perhaps unwanted, child. 

And sometimes it's selling her furniture to scrape together 400 or more dollars (have you ever had someone count dollars and nickels on your desk for a medical appointment?), facing a crowd of clueless shame-mongers, listening to maudlin scripts written by state legislators while her pants are down and a high-tech stick is moving around in her vagina, watching a video about a screaming fetus, spending six hours in a crowded waiting room, and having a safe five-minute procedure before going back into the world, back through the clueless crowd, back to her loved ones and not asking them for reassurance that she is still a worthy human being, because they might rebuke her, because they might not understand, because they've heard from ten thousand shame-mongers that anyone in their right mind who's seen an ultrasound would change her mind and leave the abortion clinic. Yes, sometimes women are capable of all that. But god forbid we make it any easier on them. 

Voting with my wallet?

I hate getting my hair cut. I loathe going to the dentist. I dread calling my apartment's maintenance people. I have such disdain for these events partially because they involve coming out as an abortioneer when the stylist breezily asks me what I do, when I hand my insurance card with the clinic name to the dentist's receptionist, and when the maintenance man sees an apartment that's basically a shrine to abortion (a plush smiling uterus hangs from my freezer door and every bookcase is full of abortiony titles). But I've mostly learned to handle those circumstances. What's tricker is gauging how comfortable I am giving my business to people who might end up not to be so abortion-friendly.

One of my dear friends and co-workers once told me that she makes a habit of questioning contractors or proprietors about their attitudes toward choice. If she's giving them money, she reasons, she should know exactly what she's supporting, directly or indirectly. I can get behind that. As funny as it is go to out to brunch with a fellow Abortioneer and say, as we each plunk down a Visa card, "This meal paid for by abortion!", how do we really know that our hard-earned abortion money isn't going to fund a trip to Hobby Lobby (I'm not choosing that store arbitrarily. Hoo boy, are they ever Christian. But I'm also not giving it a link.) to get supplies for fetus porn that will appear outside of my clinic?

I've never been able to bring myself to ask about a business owner's views, though. The closest I got was when I was a friend's wing woman at a party and to ascertain whether she would be going home with the right guy, I blurted out, "Are you pro-choice?" (He was, he was lovely, but she ended up not going home with him.) I manage to surround myself with abortion-loving people and I know (thanks to Facebook) who's in the local choice community. But I think I fall short of the comfort level that would let me question it, point blank. What about you, readers? Have you ever vetted establishments for their worth as allies?

Evolution of my choice

For a while, I was "pro-choice." It's the pretty, socially acceptable to say it. When I started working at the clinic, I became "pro-abortion." And the longer I worked at the clinic, the more I became "pro-reproductive justice." It tends to evolve like that. And while I was in a (heterosexual) relationship, I was absolutely in favor of abortion for myself. I've never wanted to have kids and I'm fairly certain that I would go crazy (literally) if I had to carry a pregnancy past 6 weeks, and even that is pushing it. So, we used birth control pills AND condoms and I took monthly pregnancy tests at work just in case. And all the while, I knew, with some wonder and fascination, that if I had wanted to have a child (for some reason), I could. Rather, we could. It wouldn't have been the easiest or most affordable thing in the world, but it sure could have been more difficult. With our powers and incomes and backgrounds combined, we had support and money and resources.

What I did, instead, was abort that relationship (see what I did there?), and now, I'm subsisting on my meager hourly wage, living solo in a tiny apartment, any conception would be immaculate, and I am still certain that I never want to be pregnant. But when it occurred to me that if I got pregnant and wanted to have a child (for some reason), I couldn't anymore. For all intents and purposes, my critical demographics shifted and if I had a baby, I would be a single parent with an income that only supports one, and this weird, hypothetical kid and I would suffer. Don't get it twisted, I don't WANT a kid, but it was a strange, rude awakening to know that my prospects as a parent or not flipped upside down with such a simple life change. In a matter of days, really, abortion became less of a choice and more of a necessity. I would make the same choice as before, of course, but it would be a little bit less just. And if that's the way it is for a white girl with a upper-middle class background, just imagine how it is for some other populations. Actually, I don't even have to imagine it...I wish it were just imaginary.

Education Sunday.

I decided to post an excerpt from a paper I wrote. In case you didn't know the specifics, now you do.

On March 24, 2010, President Obama issued an Executive Order that prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion services (except in cases of rape, incest or life endangerment of the woman).[1] This provision continues the ban on federal funding of abortion that was set in place more than 30 years ago by the Hyde Amendment. Proponents of the Hyde Amendment assert that it is their democratic right as policy leaders, to express their opinion and be able to exert their beliefs in the health care debate.

Currently, six million women of reproductive age obtain health care coverage through the Medicaid system.[2] Federal bands on funding for abortion services have severely restricted access to safe abortion care for thousands of low-income women who depend on the government for their health care. Poor women especially, are unable to exercise their constitutional right to choose abortion when public funding is restricted. An estimated 18-35% of Medicaid-eligible women carry their pregnancy to term because they cannot afford an abortion.[3] While Medicaid does not allow federal funding for abortion, it does provide funding for childbirth.[4] Medicaid insures one-fifth of the nation’s children and pays for one-third of all childbirths.[5]

Under current health care policy, the federal government is willing to pay for some of poor women’s reproductive health but not all. In turn, the Hyde Amendment is negatively impacting poor women’s lives on the basis of policy leaders moral and ethical beliefs about abortion. Should Congress members and policy leaders be able to put their moral beliefs above the health and well being of its citizens? Low-income women often face serious hardship when trying to raise funds for abortion services. Many women use money they should have spent on rent, food, bills and clothing for their children. A significant amount of women resort to pawning household items, and some resort to theft and prostitution in a desperate attempt to have a legal, medical procedure.[6] The 1983 AGI study found that Medicaid-eligible women wait on average 2-3 weeks longer than women with economic means to have an abortion. As a woman gets farther along in her pregnancy, the cost of the abortion starts to rise, and it becomes more difficult to raise the necessary funds, creating a vicious cycle.

The Hyde Amendment is a discriminatory policy that targets poor women, who are disproportionately women of color. Women who are not covered under the Nation’s Medicaid system, are either not enrolled in the program, undocumented citizens, or not eligible under the Federal Poverty Income Guidelines. Women who can afford to pay for an abortion on their own, ranging from approximately $300-$500 for a first trimester procedure, are mostly unaffected by the Hyde Amendment’s restrictive policy. An estimated 18-35% of Medicaid-eligible women carry their pregnancy to term because they cannot afford an abortion.[7] There is a huge disparity between impoverished women and middle/upper class women. In 1983, AGI researchers found that “nearly 60% of Medicaid recipients said that paying for an abortion caused serious hardship, compared with only 26% of non-Medicaid-eligible women.”[8] Although Roe v Wade gave women the constitutional right to have an abortion, they are unable to exercise this right when access and affordability of services is denied. The Hyde Amendment makes real reproductive “choice” a privilege for those that can afford it, rather than a constitutional right guaranteed by the Supreme Court.[9]

---

[1] Raising Women’s Voices. (March 30, 2010). Health Reform and Reproductive Health: Positive and Negative Effects. Available: http://www.raisingwomensvoices.net/storage/RWV%20on%20Health%20Reform%20and%20Reproductive%20HealthFINAL3.30.10.pdf.

[2] Boonstra, H., A. Sonfield. “Rights without Access: Revisiting Public Funding of Abortion for Poor Women.” The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy. April 2000: 8-11.

[3] Fried, M. (2007) “Hyde Amendment: The Opening Wedge to Abolish Abortion.” New Politics. 11(2): 82-85.

[4] Annas, G. J. “Abortion Politics and Health Insurance Reform.” The New England Journal of Medicine. December 31, 2009: 2589-2591.

[5] Weil, Alan, "There's Something About Medicaid," Health Affairs (Jan/Feb 2003).

[6] Boonstra, H., A. Sonfield. “Rights without Access: Revisiting Public Funding of Abortion for Poor Women.” The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy. April 2000: 8-11.

[7] Fried, M. (2007) “Hyde Amendment: The Opening Wedge to Abolish Abortion.” New Politics. 11(2): 82-85.

[8] Fried, M. (2007) “Hyde Amendment: The Opening Wedge to Abolish Abortion.” New Politics. 11(2): 82-85.

[9] Boonstra, H., A. Sonfield. “Rights without Access: Revisiting Public Funding of Abortion for Poor Women.” The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy. April 2000: 8-11.