The Mix

Perspectives, insight and news from AlterNet

The fight against misinformation
Posted by Maria Luisa Tucker on January 22, 2006 at 8:18 PM.

A few days ago, I drove across the plains of North Texas. Smooth flat lines of the winter yellow grass met the blue horizon for miles without interruption. I was so far from much of anything that my radio had slowly been taken over by static. I found only able to find a few islands of sound out there. The clearest voices came from the local Christian talk radio station. Sounding like a good-natured grandfather, the host of the show dispensed advice and news. Underneath the friendly veneer, however, was a campaign of lies meant to convince the flocks to join in a demonization abortion, contraception, and even information.

Among the many screeds against abortion, contraception, and safe sex, this particular radio show was railing against Planned Parenthood. The charge was that Planned Parenthood is not actually a women's health organization. No, according to the Christians who dominant airwaves in anywhere, Texas (and anywhere, USA), Planned Parenthood is an evil, baby-hating organization dedicated to killing human beings and brainwashing young women.

Hearing this, I sighed and turned of the radio. Like a lot of folks, I'm sick of screaming at each other from different sides of the aisle as the rising voices grow more insane in their rage. But more than anything, I am sick of the lies. I'm disgusted with the shrewd campaign of misinformation by the Christian Right.

I bring this up on this anniversary of Roe v. Wade because I think it is hugely important for us to stand up not only for our right to choose abortion, but also for the rights of the organizations that provide us with choices. Organizations like Planned Parenthood give us the tools to be able choose our destinies by providing an education that is so vehemently withheld in many schools and churches. It aids women in making smart contraceptive choices, and supports us when we choose to correct the life-altering mistake of an unplanned pregnancy. Yet, the Christian Right declares Planned Parenthood -- which offers prenatal care, low-cost exams to test for ovarian and breast cancer, infertility screening, testing and treatment for STDs -- to be unconcerned with health?

Five million people receive health services from Planned Parenthood per year, actually helping prevent abortions by giving women access to contraception and knowledge. Yet the Bush administration and his Christian cronies have fought to kill this institution for years. Without organizations like this, we would go back to days when women killed themselves along with their unwanted fetuses. Days when women would mutilate and harm themselves because the only other option was forced childbirth.

The fight about abortion has been framed in a variety of ways -- it is about choice, about control over women's bodies, about religion and secularism, contraception and education, children and the effects of forcing unwanted children into existence. But it has also turned into a more basic struggle about simple information. So on this day of protecting the right to have control over our own bodies, we also have to make it a day of protecting the truth and the organizations that give us reproductive choices.

Posted in conjunction with Blog for Choice Day.

This one goes out to N. and T.
Posted by Rachel Neumann on January 22, 2006 at 6:56 PM.

On the evening of the thirty-third anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this is for N. who woke in a cold room after "the procedure" to see, first thing, a cockroach floating in the sink. And this is for T, who had a daughter and wanted another child. On our way back from the ice cream store, she started cramping and bleeding and lost the baby. And this is for L., who doesn't have a child and doesn't miss one. And this is for my mother, Y., who at 65 still delivers a baby at least every week, usually in the middle of the night.

This is for X., my best friend from college, who has been put through a million hoops before she and her wife will be allowed to adopt. And for K., who has had three abortions, each one, she tells me, where people treated her "like scum." This is for my little sister E., who was told that the morning after pill would give her cancer. And this is for the nameless woman on the end of the line at the abortion clinic who patiently answered my questions and didn't ask any of her own and didn't judge when I had no idea what in the hell I was going to do.

This is for all the women I know who are always balancing biology and sociology, choice and circumstance. This is for all of us jerry-rigging something that works. May the day comes when we're not battling about our bodies. May there be a net beneath our balancing act.

Posted in conjunction with Blog for Choice Day.

Is "Pro-choice" the best we can do?
Posted by Joshua Holland on January 22, 2006 at 10:20 AM.

They call us baby-killers and blood-thirsty perpetrators of infanticide. They harass women trying to get a safe, legal medical procedure with horrific insults. They display disgusting photographs of mangled fetuses - the result of emergency, late-term abortions. They blow up clinics and shoot doctors in the head while they're eating breakfast with their families.

And we call them "anti-choice." Real tough, that comeback. Is it really the best we can do?

I think not. So I, for one, am done with it. The language of "choice" is weak, passive and poorly reflects the true parameters of the debate.

Our opponents are hypocrites, hucksters and snake-oil salesmen and their followers, while perhaps well-intentioned, are ignorant dupes that buy into every straw man argument their leaders spin.

They wouldn't know a culture of life if it kicked them in the ass. They're addicted to the death-penalty; they love the most gruesome of wars.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Access
Posted by Jan Frel on January 22, 2006 at 10:15 AM.

One of the most striking things about abortion rights in America to me is the lack of infrastructure -- facts on the ground -- that would give some material backing, and establish cultural "precedent" to the arguments supporting Roe.

What do I mean? Well, as "of 2000, 87 percent of U.S. counties have no known abortion provider; these counties are home to 34 percent of all women of reproductive age," according to Planned Parenthood. It's my humble supposition that this number has not increased since George Bush has taken office.

Posted in conjunction with Blog for Choice Day.

Fighting for Roe also means enforcing it
Posted by Deanna Zandt on January 22, 2006 at 9:55 AM.

It's the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the country is under siege. Conservative fundamentalists are dishing out anti-choice legislation and influencing social mores across the land -- check out Bush V. Choice's round-up of an anti-choice 2005.

Roe is just about three years older than I am, and now that we're both in our thirties, it's time to get down to business and the brass tacks. No more of this pussy-footin' around the Right; my colleague Joshua had some excellent thoughts on that topic this morning. We've been letting the conservatives and the fundamentalists have too many wins, and we're suffering from the continuing compromises of the Democrats. (I'm just not willing to party in the Big Tent.)

Many people my age, especially those of us clustered in urban settings, are lucky enough to not know what it's like to not be able to take care of ourselves however we see fit. But in Kentucky and Louisiana, it's as if Roe doesn't even exist for them. 98 percent of counties in Kentucky have no abortion services, and neither do 92 percent of counties in Louisiana. So, while we're out here spending so much of our energy defending it, there's women right here in our own country who don't even have their rights to begin with.

Maybe it's time we devote some of that energy to getting out on the ground and getting women the healthcare that's constitutionally protected by this big, looming law we fight so hard for year after year. Find out how your state ranks over at NARAL's "Who Decides?"

Posted in conjunction with Blog for Choice Day.

Now you're talking
Posted by Joshua Holland on January 22, 2006 at 9:32 AM.

Finally, we hear some voices calling for real reform in pay-to-play land.

First, we have a few Dems calling for campaign finance reform, a prerequisite for any substantive reform package. David Sirota, citing Reuters, wrote:

Democratic Reps. David Obey (WI) and Barney Frank (MA) will "offer legislation this month requiring that general elections for the 435 House seats be financed purely with public funds." In his statement announcing the push, Obey said, "You can talk all you want about nibbling at the margins about ethics and House rules and all the rest, but unless we deal with the nexus between politics and money, damned little is actually going to change over time."

Damn straight.

In an unrelated post, AlterNet commenter Gulliver relayed an idea s/he heard from John Edwards:

His recommendation was simple and to the point: Finance campaigns with public money and make a law that says that any politician who takes any money from anybody….goes to jail. No need to prove quid pro quo, just a simple principle: Take Money=Go to Jail. Do not pass Go. And no Get Out of Jail Free cards. But of course he doesn't think for a minute that a congress which benefits from all this graft will ever countenance such a clearly rational measure.

That's true, but a Democratic Party that really wanted to re-take Congress would give up their addiction to the money and perks and win a landslide victory on bold measures like that. People are fed up and have no place to go.

Speaking of bold measures, Ralph Nader's got one:

The goodies bestowed by Congress on their patrons are too numerous and diverse to be addressed with any single reform approach.

But good legislation could go a long way toward reducing corporate welfare doled out in the form of giveaways, subsidies, and cheap loans.

In one sweeping bill, Congress should decree that every federal agency shall terminate all below-market-rate sales, leasing or rental arrangements with corporate beneficiaries, including of real and intangible property; shall cease making any below-market-rate loans or issuing any below-market-rate loan guarantees to corporations; shall terminate all export assistance or marketing promotion for corporations; shall cease providing any below-market-rate insurance; shall terminate all fossil fuel or nuclear power research and development efforts; shall eliminate all liability caps; and shall terminate any direct grant, below-market-value technology transfer or subsidy of any kind. The bill should also amend the Internal Revenue Code to eliminate all corporate "tax expenditures" (Beltway talk for loopholes and gimmicks for corporate taxpayers) listed in the President's annual budget.

Some of what gets cancelled in such a bill might be good public policy. If so, Congress should reauthorize it. But there's too much accumulated contribution/lobbyist-driven institutionalized graft for a case-by-case review to eliminate what's in place. What's needed is a clean slate. [Commondreams]

People don't link crony-capitalism with profligate spending and deficits, but they should; how much of our budget goes to bullshit projects that lobbyists bought for their clients? How many tax breaks?

Human rights
Posted by Joshua Holland on January 22, 2006 at 5:53 AM.

That the ability to plan a family is all or mostly a woman's right defies my understanding of biology. Unless a stork is dropping off little packages like in Bugs Bunny cartoons, men are also impacted by the state of reproductive rights in this country.

According to research by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, less than half of women getting an abortion in 2004 cited "not wanting to be a single mother or … having relationship problems" as one of the reasons. So men in committed relationships are involved in many of the choices of which we speak.

And the consequences of forcing people to give birth against their will are born by society as a whole. Unwanted or unloved babies, and babies born to people unprepared to give them the care they need disproportionately become social problems later in life - the criminals, the depressed, the substance-abusers of tomorrow.

I'm not saying that women should hold anything less than ultimate sovereignty over their bodies; it's ultimately their choice. But saying it's a "women's issue" denies the reality that for many or most men - I don't have a statistic - saying "ciao" when an unplanned pregnancy happens isn't an option.

I have my own experience to go on; the personal is political. While I'm not one who generally shares personal details in my writing, I'm going to make an exception here.

Three times I've gotten the heart-stopping news that my partner was unexpectedly pregnant, and three times she and I, together, chose to terminate the pregnancy.

Once, the choice was easy - we were young, poor and both terrified at the prospect of having children. We knew our relationship was not a permanent one; in fact it was "scheduled" to come to an end a month later when her visa expired.

The other two were more difficult choices because of where we were and who we were at the time. Although it was understood that the final decision was hers, we worked through it together. These were painful, difficult times. Men are capable of anguish too.

I'm 36 now and my only dependent is a dog. On this anniversary of Roe, I can't imagine how different my life would have been if our choices had been limited to back-alley butchery or having children we weren't prepared to have. I would not be able to afford to do what I do now if I had three kids, aged 8-15.

Social conservatives will say it was all our fault anyway; it's about personal responsibility. But one pregnancy resulted from a contraceptive failure and in one case my partner had been told that she was unable to conceive. It's not uncommon; according to the Guttmacher research, "42% of condom users cited condom breakage or slippage as a reason for pregnancy."

One pregnancy was entirely our fault - it was one of those hot and sweaty mistakes young people sometimes make when stupefied by lust and caught up in a moonlit moment. The question is: what is an appropriate punishment for such a crime of passion? Is it to live poor? To not have a chance to fulfill your ambitions?

By relegating reproductive choice to the domain of "women's issues," we ignore the reality that many people live when faced with these difficult choices. Worse yet, it plays into the hands of a cranky old patrimony that is threatened by modern social mores and wants nothing more that to control women's sexuality. They've invested enormous amounts of resources and energy into vilifying the sexual revolution and feminism in general, and we run right into their wall by calling abortion a women's issue.

The ability to plan one's family is a human right. Let's call it what it is.

Posted in conjunction with Blog for Choice Day.