Abortion Rights in the News: Health of Mother Not a Justification and Laws in Response to Healthcare Bill

This week in Phoenix, Arizona, a bishop excommunicated a nun for approving an abortion. The only catch is that it was a LIFESAVING abortion. The woman was 11 weeks pregnant and developed pulmonary hypertension, and the abortion was needed to save her life. The nun only approved the abortion after speaking with the family and healthcare providers, and for her service was promptly expelled from the church.

According to the bishop who declared the nun excommunicated:

We always must remember that when a difficult medical situation involves a pregnant woman, there are two patients in need of treatment and care; not merely one. The unborn child's life is just as sacred as the mother's life, and neither life can be preferred over the other.

We all need to recognize that an 11-week fetus is not able to survive on its own. So in this case, if the abortion were not performed... both mother and child would have been likely to die.

In other news, Obama's healthcare bill has created some opportunities for abortion opponents to restrict access. Arizona and Tennessee, are two states that have enacted new laws that would restrict access for people who receive their insurance through exchanges (which is estimated to be about 30 million people). So this would extend beyond federal plans if private plans operated in the exchange. You can read more about this and other laws attempting to take away women's rights from an AP article.

Is the U.S. Going Crazy? New Laws Suggest Maybe...

There have been a lot of laws these days increasing the number of hurdles between a woman and her right to choose. As Recovering Economist noted there have been some especially concerning changes in Oklahoma.

The second law was the one that really concerned me. The law that protects doctors from being sued if they had withheld information of birth defects they knew the baby had during the pregnancy. It's one thing as a doctor to chose not to preform an abortion because you do not believe in it, but that does not give you the right to lie to a patient, and therefore, make decisions for them. I hope this law makes it to court.

But Oklahoma does not seem to be stopping there. As McKinley of the NYT reported, there are still some other bills on the move:

One would force women to fill out a lengthy questionnaire about their reasons for seeking an abortion; statistics based on the answers would then be posted online. The other restricts insurance coverage for the procedures.

To lighten the mood, Talking Points Memo has a great roundup of some other crazy laws being passed in America these days.

Don't wrap your misogynist beliefs in a blanket of faux-concern for the disabled

The Oklahoma Legislature voted this week to override the governor's vetoes on two laws restricting abortion rights, one of which would prevent women who have had a disabled baby from suing a doctor for withholding information about birth defects while the child was in the womb.

I find this law to be troubling in many ways; however, the primary reason that I have such a strong reaction to it is because it attempts to mask its primary goal of the oppression of women (and in particular, the oppression of low income/ low education women) with phony concern over children, and in particular, children with mental and/ or physical handicaps.

While I do believe that there are many pro-life individuals who are deeply and genuinely concerned with the well-being of fetuses, children, and the handicapped (e.g. this family), I believe that many people (and most legislators) who harbor pro-life beliefs do so as a means of punishing and oppressing women, especially women who deviate from conservative and religious beliefs of how "good" women should behave (e.g. "If you didn't want to have a baby with Down's syndrome, you shouldn't have had sex before marriage").

The reason I hold this belief is simple: if the true concern of these people, and these legislators, was to protect children (and in particular, disabled children), then they would be supporting a number of policy solutions that did not center around abortion. They would, in addition to abortion-restriction, pursue policies that would benefit children AND the mothers who care for them. If you really care about disabled children and you don't want them to be aborted, why not give women who conceive disabled children special allowances to take care of them? Why not have free, quality, government provided daycare? Why not increase funding for groups and programs that assist the disabled and the poor?

The fact that the majority of these "pro-life" individuals and legislators vehemently oppose these programs reveal their true intention, and it is in no way concerned with the well-being of children.

CSMonitor opinion piece plugs for women serving aboard submarines

There are no remaining legal barriers to women serving on Naval submarines, and this CSMonitor article defends plans for the reversal of Navy policy on the issue, despite some public hysteria regarding women and military service.

Historically, attempts to exclude citizens based on gender or race have been ultimately unsuccessful. But the issue here is more than just a demand for gender equality. Navy recruitment is cyclical. Prohibiting women from serving aboard submarines not only limits their Navy career potential, it also limits the Navy, which has a limited talent pool of nuclear-trained service personnel.

Women make up 15 percent of the Navy. And there is a need for more nuclear-trained recruits who can serve on subs. “We know there are capable young women in the Navy and women who are interested in the Navy who have the talent and desire to succeed in the submarine force,” said Lt. Justin Cole, a Navy spokesman. “Enabling them to serve there is best for the submarine force and our Navy.”

Countries that allow women to serve as submariners include Australia, Canada, Norway, and Sweden. Sounds like a non-issue to me.

Femonomics reads the internet so you don't have to: anti-gay high school policies and jail time for your miscarriage

How do you remember your high school prom? Was it the most magical night of your teen years or was it a night full of drama? A school in Mississippi has decided that Constance McMillen (and consequently her entire class) isn’t going to get to have one. When she found out that she was not allowed to bring her girlfriend to prom, the ACLU got involved and reminded the school that it was a violation of her rights. So in response the school outright canceled the evening.

As Coca Colo reported late February, Utah legislators passed a bill to charge women who engage in ‘reckless’ acts to terminate a pregnancy with criminal homicide. I can’t even begin to imagine what a 17 year-old girl would have to be going through to pay a stranger to beat her in an attempt to miscarry. The bill has now been signed by the governor, but with slightly revised language. They dropped the word ‘reckless.’ A major concern is the potential to make every miscarriage fair game for investigation.

Femonomics reads the internet so you don't have to: Kathryn Bigelow, plagiarism 101, racist drug laws, and more!

The NYTimes' Manohla Dargis, who previously used the F-word to hilarious effect in a rant about female directors, has a lovely piece on the woman of the hour, Kathryn Bigelow. 

Kate Harding over at Shapely Prose (which is an amazing fat-acceptance blog full of terrific writing) has a humorous and biting piece on how not to plagiarize like a certain NYT business reporter, even though you're writing on the internet, and the deadlines are really fast, and the links are all confusing, see?  No, says Kate, we don't.

The Huffington Post publishes a must-read by Michelle Alexander about how drug laws have been used to create a permanent under-class in the United States.  She points out several sad facts about the state of racial equality in the United States (noting it has gotten worse, not better), and looks to biased drug laws predicated on Americans' fears of the inner-city crime bogeyman for the explanation.  Most compellingly, she explains how everything from drug laws, to police incentives, to sentencing guidelines, are designed to get and keep black men in jail.

Reality Check has an update on Utah's effort to criminalize miscarriages (read our earlier piece here), and it seems that even though the governor sent it back without signing, and the bills' sponsor withdrew it, they're not giving up this fight to put women in jail so easily.

[Update: hat tip to Feministe, where I first saw the Alexander piece]

Beyond choice: The big picture of reproductive justice

Last night I heard four reproductive justice advocates speak at Barnard College.  Surprisingly, the evening's conversation only touched on the topic of abortion.  The four women, Aisha Domingue of Brooklyn Young Mothers' Collective, Mary Mahoney and Lauren Mitchell of The Doula Project, and Miriam Perez of Feministing and Radical Doula, have all been trained as doulas, and all work with women at various stages of their reproductive decision-making: pregnancy, abortion, childbirth, and adoption.  What this panel emphasized is that while abortion choice and contraception access continue to be key frontiers for the reproductive justice movement, there are other crossroads where women find themselves without agency over their own bodies, particularly childbirth.  Perez said she got into doula work after seeing the documentary Born in the USA.  "There was something about the way childbirth was being done in the usa that just appalled and horrified and motivated me," she said.  "I found we had technologized and medicalized and institutionalized it in a way that was not serving mothers."

Femangry! Utah considers bill that could charge woman with homicide if she miscarries

Jezebel is reporting that the Utah legislature has passed a bill allowing women to be charged with homicide if they engage in an "intentional, knowing, or reckless act" leading to a the illegal termination of a pregnancy.  As the Salt Lake Tribune reports, the bill was intended to allow prosecution of mothers who seek out an illegal abortion, for example by having someone beat them to produce a miscarriage, as one woman allegedly did.  But it opens up a whole host of potentially troubling legal implications for women who, for example, fail to hold the hand rail while walking down the stairs and slip, decide to ride a motorcycle while pregnant, go jogging, don't wear a seatbelt, take contraindicated medications--the list goes on.  The point is that a woman's body needs to remain her own, to use as she wishes, whether pregnant or not.  If it isn't, women are vessels, not citizens.  And equality will never be possible.

Sex-Offenders Can Now Access Victims' Medical Records?

This should have been just another story of girl sues boy for sexual assault.

Multimillionaire Jeffery Epstein is being sued by women alleging he paid them to give him massages (while nude) when they were as young as 14. Some of the women also reported being sexually assaulted by Epstein.

To defend his client's irreparable emotional damage to these ladies, Epstein's lawyer is digging through their painful memories and (better yet) their medical records. The judge on the case, Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Donald Hafele, decided this was totally OK. He agreed that the lawyers could subpoena the women's abortion records... as long as the women had priorly been questioned about their abortion history.

This precedent could mean you have to wave goodbye to your right to privacy. Also, these lawyers are trying to win this case by arguing that if you have had a traumatic life event, you can't suffer further psychological damage from being sexually assaulted by an adult when you are 14. I have just one question: Why are the victims on trial here?

For clarity, this is the civil suit following his criminal conviction and incarceration.

Hat tip to V.M. for sending me this link.