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Written by Tara Murtha for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
The recent announcement that actress Jenny McCarthy is replacing Elisabeth Hasselbeck on the popular ABC morning talk show The View has sparked an intense wave of backlash.
The problem is that after McCarthy's son was diagnosed with autism, she became convinced it was because of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and over the last several years she has reinvented herself as the leading celebrity voice of the anti-vaccine movement. Although the study that originally sparked the MMR vaccine-childhood autism panic has since been completely discredited, many parents have stopped vaccinating their children, in part because of anti-vaccine advocacy carried out by McCarthy and others. As a result, measles cases have spiked in recent years.
Critics say that McCarthy's anti-science views are a public health hazard, and giving her a platform, on a morning talk show or in other media outlets, legitimizes her view. For instance, "Larry King had [McCarthy] debate a doctor, as though her disproven ideas should be given the same equivalence as those of a medical expert," The Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote recently, adding, "False equivalency is one of journalism's great pitfalls, and in an effort to achieve 'balance,' reporters often obscure the truth." As Brendan Nyhan, writing at the Columbia Journalism Review, argued, uncritically repeating discredited statements just amplifies the spread of misinformation.
False equivalence is the worst of what New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen and others have called "he said/she said" journalism. It takes much less time—and subject expertise—to frame a story as a "controversy" than to give it informative context. (Not to mention that a non-scientific minority opposition to the vetted facts does not qualify as a "controversy.")
When it comes to covering health and science, the "he said/she said" short-cut is downright dangerous.
It's unfortunate then that media coverage of reproductive health issues often falls into this trap as well.
Reproductive Health
Hasselbeck, the former Survivor contestant whom McCarthy will replace, once argued to one of her co-hosts on The View that taking the morning-after pill is "the same thing as birthing a baby and leaving it out in the street." She said that she believes emergency contraception (EC) disrupts a pregnancy. In fact, EC prevents ovulation from occurring, preventing fertilization in the first place.
Since the medical definition of pregnancy is successful implantation of a fertilized egg, effective use of EC means you can't get pregnant in the first place.
Yet there was relatively little outrage over Hasselbeck's remark or the dispute, which was described in many outlets, as usual, as a "cat fight" between hosts.
When it comes to reproductive health, we have a much higher tolerance for hearing anti-science beliefs with serious public health consequences. Of the many fake-science falsehoods published every day on reproductive health issues, only the most obvious draws McCarthy-level heat. Most memorable is the belief, shared by an ever-expanding number of lawmakers, that women's bodies contain magic lady-venom to prevent pregnancy in cases of rape.
While these legislators draw much deserved public ridicule, it's the less obvious anti-science and evidence-free statements published every day that are most dangerous.
Written by Imani Gandy for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
In the "war on women," 20-week abortion bans have become a rallying point for both pro- and anti-choice camps alike. While Texas' recently-enacted law, which among other things bans abortions after 20 weeks, may have garnered most of the media attention in recent weeks, so far 13 states have passed similar bans, and three states have passed even more restrictive laws, prohibiting abortions as early as six weeks' gestation. Nevertheless, these 20-week abortion bans have been gaining traction.
Much has been written about the politics behind these laws—especially the false claims that they are designed to protect women—but so far, there has been relatively little coverage of the anti-choice litigation strategy in relation to these bans. For instance, how do anti-choice campaigners intend to persuade the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade? Of all the various state anti-abortion laws, which one is most likely to be used as the test case at the national level?
The Supreme Court won't review its long-standing abortion jurisprudence unless it has to. Given the controversial nature of abortion, a simple appeal from a state to clarify abortion law probably won't prompt the Court to act. (The Oklahoma supreme court recently tried this tactic when it struck down Oklahoma's ultrasound law and practically begged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case; the Court didn't bite.) What will prompt the Supreme Court to act is a conflict between the laws that apply in one circuit and the laws that apply in another.
"Circuit" is a fancy legal term for a group of states. The country is split into eleven circuits, plus the D.C. Circuit, with one federal appeals court in charge of setting the law for each of the circuits. If one circuit court sets law that is different than the law that applies in another circuit, then a legal mess—or, as it is sometimes called, a "circuit split"—results. And since the Supreme Court likes to have laws that bind the entire country, it will intervene to resolve the circuit split.
The push for 20-week abortion bans is part of a national strategy implemented by anti-choice advocates to create exactly the sort of legal mess that will force the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and to revisit the viability standard that has served as the constitutional foundation for abortion rights for 40 years.
Written by Amanda Marcotte for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
As Todd Akin and the country at large learned during the 2012 elections, pregnancies resulting from rape are very real and sadly all too common. If there was one silver lining in the entire debacle and "debate" over Akin's "legitimate rape" comment, it was that it helped expose a previously under-reported problem: 31 states allow rapists to sue for custody or visitation of children conceived by rape. It might initially seem like it wouldn't be much of a problem—most of us probably ask ourselves why rapists would bother to want these children at all—but the fact of the matter is that rapists rape because they like to hurt and control women. How better to make your victim's life a living hell than going after her through her children? Nothing says "I have power over you" like forcing yourself into someone's life through their children. Now a bipartisan group of congressmen are trying to close up this loophole in custody laws, with the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, which creates financial incentives for states that bar rapists from suing their victims for custody.
Shauna Prewitt, a woman who chose to give birth after her rape resulted in pregnancy, was with the congressmen when they announced the bill. Prewitt filed charges against her rapist after she gave birth, and he retaliated by suing her for custody. There aren't any numbers out there to assess how common it is for rapists to abuse the family court system in this way, but there are thousands of women who choose to raise children conceived by rape every year, and we know that rapists are often dogged in their sadism, making suing their victims a tantalizing opportunity for many of them. Wife batterers are notorious in legal circles for their eagerness to abuse the family court system to continue the pattern of hurting and controlling their victim, so it makes sense that rapists—who have a lot in common with and are often batterers themselves—would be attracted to the same strategy. And if they get visitation rights or custody? Now they have tons of access to manipulate and hurt their victim for 18 more years.
Needless to say, it's probably not the greatest idea to let these men, who think it's okay to force sex on unwilling women, raise children, especially if there are alternatives—like the mother—available.
While this bill seems like the sort of thing that both liberals and conservatives should support—it is a bipartisan bill—there's a chance the bill will present a challenge to at least some Republicans in Congress. That's because this bill has the potential to be a wedge between two factions of anti-feminists that have the Republican ear: anti-choicers and a group of anti-feminists that often call themselves by the misleading term "men's rights activists." Misleading, because they are opposed to many women's rights. This group of anti-feminists tend not to be overly interested in the battles over reproductive rights—and some, like Glenn Reynolds, even claim to be pro-choice—but instead focus exclusively on their claim that men are being oppressed by their female overlords.
These anti-feminists mostly focus on trying to restore the social and economic power men have over women. They rage against equal pay legislation, defend sexual harassment, denounce the existence of child support, and peddle half-baked theories of female inferiority to defend discrimination. They have a special enthusiasm for pushing back against any effort to reduce gendered violence, aggressively promoting the idea that women routinely lie about rape and downplaying the statistics on rape and domestic violence. Most of the time, their goals overlap neatly with the anti-choice movement. For instance, when anti-choicers started to attack the Department of Health and Human Services mandate that insurance covers contraception, this other breed of anti-feminist—eager to believe women get "goodies" denied to men—jumped right in and agreed. This anti-rape bill, however, could reveal a major point of conflict.
It makes perfect sense for abortion opponents to support measures that make it harder for a rapist to sue for custody of children. If a woman impregnated by rape has reason to believe her attacker will try to get custody, that creates more incentive to abort. And unlike other attempts to reduce incentives to abort, ranging from greater access to contraception to a better social safety net, this bill doesn't come into conflict with the baseline anti-choice motive to punish women for sex. After all, rape victims didn't have sex. They were raped. They were trying not to have sex, so this presents an opportunity for anti-choicers to demonstrate consistency both with their stated values (to be pro-life) and their actual values (to oppose consensual non-procreative sex). Everyone is against rape, right?
Written by Anthea Butler for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
I was not surprised when I viewed Amanda Marcotte's presentation on online feminism at this year's Netroots Nation conference, in which she pointed mostly to young, hip, white female bloggers writing today. While there are many women of color blogging at sites like the Crunk Feminist Collective, women of color were represented in Marcotte's PowerPoint presentation by one stock photo of a Black woman holding car keys, with a statement about how online feminists are "driving the movement forward." The PowerPoint slide is indicative of a larger problem in feminism: the inability to see or identify with women of color who are feminists. It's not a good look, but then again, this slight is not unexpected given the history between white women and feminists of color.
My purpose in this piece is not to bash Amanda Marcotte—a contributor here at RH Reality Check—but to illuminate some of the long history of tension between the feminist movement and women of color. Writing this piece in the wake of the George Zimmerman trial has not been easy. Is it always going to be this way? Will it always be this difficult to come together with white feminists, as women of color, to work on the many pressing issues in this country, including the rollback of women's rights, specifically reproductive rights?
The tension between white feminists and feminists of color has existed for a long time, in part because of race, class, and positionality. It is fair to ask, "Why is it so hard for white feminists to embrace, celebrate, and partner with their sisters of color?" Is intersectionality just a dream, or can we work past this conundrum?
It is time for white feminists to become more aware of their internalized compliance to the "isms" that threaten to divide us all, from historical and contemporary perspectives. How can we come together without being torn apart by the other "ism" that threatens feminism: racism? A brief look at the history of the feminist movement and women of color, and a prescription for our future together, is long overdue.
A History of Privileged Positions
Women of color have never had the luxury of simply focusing on women's issues. Considerations of race, racism, and economic and social injustices have always intertwined with issues of patriarchy and sexism. Women of color who also hold feminist beliefs are also acutely aware of how their communities, broadly defined, are affected by outside forces. One classic standoff in the history of the women's movement and feminism was between journalist and civil rights leader Ida B. Wells and women's suffragist Frances Willard. Wells wanted Willard to recognize the problem of lynching in the South, but Willard believed that Black men were drinkers and responsible for the rape of white women. It's reprehensible, yes, but Willard's privileged position kept her from seeing the issues that were important for the Black community and Ida B. Wells. It also showed how she bought into the narrative of stereotypes about African-American men, accepting the trumped-up notion that African-American men, presumed to be more alcoholic than white men, were a sexual menace to white women and were being properly targeted. Wells fought against this strenuously, and their battle strained relationships between African-American and white women in the suffrage and temperance movements.
Even with the advent of the fully-formed feminist movement in the post-civil-rights-movement 1970s, Black women and other women of color were regulated to the sidelines, while white women became the face of feminism. As Gloria Steinem's good looks were heralded as the face of feminism, other women of color were partnering together to work for a common cause. The Combahee River Collective Statement from 1977 chronicled the genesis, interests, and issues Black feminists faced, and their statements still resonant today. The statement importantly noted that Black feminists were interested in combating a "range of oppressions." It said, "We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have."
The collective nailed why it is easier to be a white feminist than it is to be a feminist of color: Without a position of privilege to call on, it is even harder as a woman of color to fight for issues that are important for every woman, but especially for women of color. Not recognizing that privilege of whiteness or class hampers the ability of feminists across ethnic lines to join together for common causes.
Written by Imani Gandy for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
Last week, a federal judge in Wisconsin extended a temporary restraining order that prevented Wisconsin's latest legislative attempt to reduce women's access to safe abortion care—by requiring abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges from a local hospital—from going into effect.
Section 1 of Wisconsin Act 37 (SB 206), which was proposed by the Wisconsin legislature on June 4 and hastily signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker on July 5, requires that physicians who provide abortion services have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the location where the abortion is performed. The law was enacted ostensibly to reduce the risk to patients who suffer serious complications during an abortion, and to prevent abortion providers from abdicating their duty of care and leaving such women to fend for themselves. In reality, however, these laws place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion and contravene the constitutional principles set forth in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
At first blush, these laws may seem sensible enough, especially if you believe that abortion is a dangerous procedure and providers should have hospital admitting privileges in case something goes horribly awry. Such is the concern of anti-choicers pushing for the Wisconsin law, as Susan Armacost, legislative director of Wisconsin Right to Life, noted in a July 5 statement. "Apparently, Wisconsin's abortion clinics don't believe their abortionists need to have hospital privileges at a hospital located within 30 miles of their clinic ... or anywhere at all," she said. "Currently, when a woman experiences hemorrhaging or other life-threatening complications after an abortion in Wisconsin, the clinic puts her in an ambulance and sends her to a hospital ALONE where she is left to her own devices to explain her medical issues to the emergency room staff. The abortionist who performed the abortion is nowhere to be seen. This deplorable situation must change."
But documents submitted to the federal court in Wisconsin overseeing the case paint a very different picture of the admitting privileges law. According to Dr. Douglas Laube, a board-certified OB-GYN since 1976, the admitting privileges requirement is "medically unjustified and will have serious consequences for women's health in Wisconsin."
Written by Anika Rahman for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
McDonald’s has taken some heat for its Practical Money Skills Budget Journal, a financial planning guide for its low-wage workers that suggests monthly spending on a variety of expenses. That’s pretty ironic since heat was one of the things McDonald’s failed to anticipate in the guide's first iteration—it was later included in the sample budget in response to public pressure.
News coverage has noted the implausible monthly $600 rent (compared with the national average of $1,048). Many people have pointed out the impossibility of spending just $27 a day on gas and groceries, and the absence of a clothing budget. All of these criticisms are completely valid.
McDonald’s has defended the second income required to balance this budget, indicating that it could be representative of a two-person household, with both contributing. Let’s play along with this scenario.
Two-thirds of fast-food workers are women, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The majority are older than 32—in their prime years for raising children. In fact, almost a third of minimum-wage earners are raising children. Thus, there’s a good chance that our theoretical couple has children. But let’s back up.
Assuming that the full-time McDonald’s worker qualifies for the company’s $14 a week health-care plan and that costs already have been deducted from the gross pay in this budgeting scenario, the plan caps coverage at $10,000 a year—a measly amount, particularly for a female employee (or insured female partner of an employee) who gives birth to a child.
The joy of that child would surely be dampened by the realization that no money is left to dedicate to child-care costs—the average of which exceed average rent costs in half of all states for just one child. Using the financial planning guide’s insanely low projection of $600 for rent, this family would likely need at least $600 for child care, leaving merely $200 to feed and clothe a family of three each month.
Written by Tina Hester for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
On Thursday, when Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed into law a sweeping abortion measure, my heart broke for all of what my Republican uncle in Lubbock calls “my girls.” “My girls” are Texas minors seeking to terminate a pregnancy through the judicial bypass process. For the past six years, I have managed a legal hotline called Jane’s Due Process. Primarily, we help minors from across Texas navigate the obstacle course known as the Texas judicial bypass law—or Chapter 33 cases, as our referral attorneys call them. I personally have assisted more than a thousand minors who have called our 24/7 hotline in search of help to terminate a pregnancy.
I have heard so many stories of abandonment, threats of being kicked out, threats of physical harm or harm to the boyfriends, families breaking up or falling on hard times, and parents with life-threatening diseases. Stories that burn into your psyche and spur bubbling rage when you hear Texas legislators callously decide to make rape or incest victims carry pregnancies to term, or close all but five of the roughly 40 abortion clinics in Texas. Basically, the bill would wipe out all abortion providers west of Interstate 35.
At the bill's signing, Gov. Perry was praised by state Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (R-Parker), the sponsor of the anti-abortion bill, known as HB 2. Laubenberg became an overnight sensation when during a debate on the bill she said, "In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits, where a woman can get cleaned out." Laubenberg said Perry would be known for “eternity” for his work.
Yet, all I can think about is the here and now—how to set up a transportation line to get minors, as well as all others seeking abortions—to a clinic that will survive the draconian targeted regulation of abortion provider (TRAP) laws.
Written by Amanda Marcotte for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
Read all of RH Reality Check's coverage of the recent fight for reproductive rights in Texas here.
There will be many, many pixels spent on the ramifications of the new law in Texas, signed by Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday, a law set to close most of the abortion clinics in the state. I'll spill some myself, and already have. What I want to address is the larger theme of the anti-choice movement that the Texas decision really brings to the forefront: The profound commitment to unfairness and inequality that holds the anti-choice movement together. Not just between men and women, though it's certainly true that subjecting those with a uterus to state control over their reproductive organs contributes to that inequality. The anti-choice movement and their goals are unfair on every level, and the Texas decision shows that.
1) Inequality by geography. The anti-choice movement's strategy of attacking abortion rights on a state-by-state basis may have been the expedient choice—it's much easier to get largely unpopular abortion restrictions passed through state than national politics—but it's also one that creates massive gulfs in access based on nothing more than geography. Even though all Americans are supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law, laws like this mean some Americans can't easily get to an abortion clinic while some have all the access they need. This was already true for a lot of Texans compared to, say, New Yorkers—the anti-choice climate plus the huge swaths of rural land without much in the way of abortion access made sure of that—but this law will dramatically deepen the disparity between who and who does not have realistic access to their abortion rights.
In other words, Texas politicians just targeted their own people for the removal of rights, or at least realistic access to those rights. It's not New Yorkers or Californians that will have to scrape together hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get access to a safe, legal abortion. It's Texans, and for no other reason than the accident of geography. To make it worse, this disparity will happen within the state, too, as people who live in the urban areas around Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas will have clinics relatively close, but those who live in West Texas will have nothing.
2) Inequality by wealth. What that means, of course, is that the already-existing gaps of access between women of means and those without will get much worse. It's a struggle for working class and low-income women to get any kind of health care; it's a struggle for them to get an abortion even if there's a clinic right down the street, because you still have to come up with $300-$600 to pay for the procedure. Now it's just going to get worse, as many women will have to drive—or fly, because it's really that far away now—hundreds of miles to get to clinic. Or worse than that, because the five remaining clinics won't be able to handle the abortion demand, so women will have to look outside of the state, or even halfway around the country.
For women with means, being able to take an "abortion vacation," perhaps flying to New York City for an abortion and staying in a hotel—maybe go see some sights while you're there!—will be totally doable. For those who can't just afford to drop a couple of thousands of dollars and take the time off work, that will be an impossibility. No wonder there's an already existing black market in abortion pills, one that's expected to grow after this law goes into action.
Written by Cora Fernandez Anderson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
In light of the recent case of Beatriz, a 22-year-old Salvadoran woman and mother of a toddler, who, while suffering from lupus and kidney failure and carrying an anencephalic fetus, was denied the right to an abortion, it is relevant to discuss the restrictive abortion laws in Latin America and some of the reasons behind them.
Latin America is home to five of the seven countries in the world in which abortion is banned in all instances, even when the life of the woman is at risk: Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, with the Vatican City and Malta outside the region. Legal abortion upon request during the first trimester is only available in Cuba (as of 1965), Mexico City (as of 2007), and Uruguay (as of 2012). In the rest of the continent, abortion is criminalized in most circumstances, with few exceptions, the most common of which are when the life or health of the woman is at risk, rape, incest and/or fetus malformations. However, even in these cases the legal and practical hurdles a woman has to face to have an abortion are such that many times these exceptions are not available, or by the time they are authorized it is too late. The consequences of such criminalization are well known: high maternal mortality and morbidity rates due to unsafe back alley abortions that affect poor and young women disproportionately.
The current laws ruling abortion in the region have been inherited from colonial powers. They are a legacy of the Spanish and Portuguese empires. While European women have already gotten rid of these laws many decades ago, Latin American women still have to deal with them. Why is this so?
As both scholars and activists know by now, women’s rights, like other human rights, are only respected if a movement organizes around them and puts pressure on the state to change unfair laws and policies. While feminist movements swept Europe and North America during the 1960s and 70s, Latin American countries were busy fighting dictatorships and civil wars. It is not that women did not organize, but rather they did so to oppose the brutal regimes and to address the needs of poor populations hit by the recurrent economic crises. Reproductive rights just had to wait. When democracy finally arrived in the region—in the 1980s in South American and the 1990s in Central America—feminist movements gradually began to push for reproductive rights. For example, the September 28th Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion was launched in 1990 in the context of the Fifth Latin American and Caribbean Feminist meeting held in San Bernardo, Argentina. Since then, most countries in the region have seen mobilizations and protests around this date. However, by the time the movements began to focus on reproductive rights, the global context had changed and the conservative right had also set up a strong opposition to any change to the status quo.
Written by Chanel Dubofsky for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
Recently, I was having a conversation with some other reproductive justice-inclined folks about cisgender men who are clinic escorts. Escorting, regardless of your gender, can be taxing. (It can also be powerful, rewarding, and beautiful.) You wake up early and stand outside an abortion clinic for hours. You may have to answer questions from people who are just walking by and want to know what's happening, without knowing whether or not they're going to be sympathetic. Anti-choice protestors will try to make your job harder via verbal or physical harassment.
For the most part, it is women who take on the job of escorting at clinics, but on occasion there are men. Generally speaking, in the abortion conversation, men are either providers, the partners of those getting abortions, or protestors. "I am constantly having to stop myself," said MB, a female clinic escort, "from asking both the dude protestors and the dude escorts, what does this mean to you? Why are you here?"
I decided to track down some men who are clinic escorts to get answers to these questions. And I read their answers with this quote from Natalie, a clinic escort in Los Angeles, in mind: "Some cis male clinic escorts are great, and it's an honor to volunteer with them. I think cis men who choose to get involved with clinic escorting have a responsibility to be conscious of what they bring to the dynamic. They have the power to present a male-inclusive feminism to patients, protesters, and passers-by, or to perpetuate the status quo."
P is a 25-year-old data scientist who lives in Boston. He has escorted at a private clinic in Philadelphia and at a Planned Parenthood office in Boston.
RH Reality Check: Why did you decide to start escorting?
P: My girlfriend and I met in college. She had been a clinic escort with her mom before college and was continuing that before we started dating. She told stories about these crazy people who would protest, so after we started dating I was feeling like there was this remote possibility that something bad would happen to her while she was escorting, and if it did then I would feel terrible. So I started going along with her. It's worth noting that she had been escorting by herself for a long time, so it wasn't like I thought anything would happen. But I was appalled at the thought of not being there if something did happen. I also am pro-choice, but as in this paragraph, that was a bit of an afterthought.
RHRC: How do you think your identity as a cis man has affected your experience as an escort?
P: I think there was some extra special vitriol from anti-abortion protestors in some cases. One time I was volunteering in Philadelphia and there was this old white dude who was protesting, and he came up to me and started telling me how unmanly I was in various ways. The most memorable part was that he called me a "sissy bitch." The clinic has a non-engagement policy for the volunteers, so I didn't respond to him.
RHRC: What's been the best part of escorting for you?
P: Like any kind of volunteering, it always feels good to have people express their gratitude. This wasn't usually from patients so much, because they were usually pretty stressed out, but passers-by would sometimes say "Thanks for being here" or give thumbs up or whatever. That's always nice.
