Life Choices: A 20th Century Book in a 21st Century World

by ELENA

Are you a white, cisgender, educated, New Agey, feminist woman? If so, then Linda Weber’s book Life Choices: The Teachings of Abortion (published by Sentient Publications) is an excellent book for you. If you are not, then Linda Weber has very little to offer. Weber, a prominent feminist and counselor wrote Life Choices using her experience as an abortion counselor at a women’s clinic in Boulder, Colorado. While Weber’s intentions were good, the execution is far from it.

Like many “second wave” feminist leaders who rose to prominence in the 1970s (I’m looking at you, Gloria Steinem), Weber follows a cissexist, binarist point of view throughout the book when she repeatedly writes about women’s unique/magical/etc ability to bear children. Could someone please inform Ms. Weber that not all women can get pregnant? And that some men can? And that sex and gender is not nearly as cut-and-dried as she makes it out to be?  Weber missed a great opportunity to write about special issues and concerns of nonbinary individuals seeking advice about abortion — an issue that is not mentioned enough in our current reproductive rights dialogue.

Weber does make some good points: a crisis pregnancy and/or abortion can be an opportunity for personal growth and development, and this perspective is refreshing. In writing about the history of the pro-choice movement, she makes a very important point about the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision: Roe  had more to do with establishing physicians’ rights than it did with protecting the health, well-being, and bodily autonomy of people seeking safe abortions.  Unfortunately, these passages get lost among her New Age navel-gazing. I have no issues with those who enjoy meditation and/or worshiping The Divine Feminine, but if your spiritual habits are not of the “woo-woo” variety, you’re not going to enjoy this book. Weber’s message alienates both Christians (surprise: some Christians are feminist!) and skeptics alike. Some of her advice is simply not practical: while I can’t deny the possibility of abortion  via soul-to-soul communication between a fetus and its carrier, I do not think that this a realistic or practical method to recommend to anyone.

Legislators in Colorado, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, and Michigan have introduced anti-choice legislation, from increased restrictions to abortion access and funding to even more disturbing proposed “personhood amendments” that would also outlaw most forms of birth control.

Rick Snyder, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, et al want to restrict our bodily autonomy, and bring us back into a world where, like a teenaged Weber, we would have pretend to be married so we could receive an abortion via IUD implantation, and risk an infection. They are not interested in going on a vision quest. They don’t care if we meditate. They are not going to listen politely to us. The personal stories in Lie Choices are touching, but out of place in an increasingly hostile political and social environment.

Now is not the time to get in touch with our inner goddess. Now is the time to hurl bricks.

This review is part of a blog tour hosted by Linda Weber’s publisher, Sentient Publications, who provided me with a review copy. The next blog on the tour is at The Abortion Gang on November 20 and the previous blog on the tour was at The Abortion Monologues. Linda Weber will be doing an actual physical tour of the west coast in February. Please consult her website for more details closer to that date.

PPNYC’s Fall Training Institute

by MIRANDA

Planned Parenthood of New York City will soon host its annual Fall Training Institute, a series of free and low-cost training sessions “for health professionals and anyone who wants to learn and remain knowledgeable on sexual and reproductive health issues.” Selected topic titles include Public Insurance & Reproductive Health Care; Empowering and Supporting Our Transgender Youth – Taking Lessons from the Film Gun Hill Road; Don’t Forget the Pleasure in Sex Education; and Talking About Abortion With Confidence.

For more information and to sign up for a training, visit the website here.

Humiliating girlhood

by MIRANDA

So, there’s a bit of a tradition of veteran MLB relief pitchers making their rookie counterparts do embarrassing and unpleasant things. The NYTimes reports the latest update: “A hazing ritual that has gone on for years seems to have reached a new level of absurdity at major league ballparks: rookie relievers are being forced to wear schoolgirl backpacks — gaudy in color, utterly unmanly — to transport gear.”

“Unmanly”! “Painful”! “Torment”! “Flamboyant”! “Amusing”! “Humiliating”! And — take a deep breath — “pink”!

They’ve spelled it out for me: there’s nothing more humiliating than being a girl. It’s a trope that’s entirely undisguised, and actually entirely unoriginal.

I’M SICK OF IT.

There is a bit of girl inside everyone. Regardless of your age or gender, she’s there. She’s the part of you that’s strong, feisty, vulnerable, compassionate, and resilient. She might be at the surface but more often she’s been repressed — like a voice silenced, like tears held in. Take a page from Eve Ensler’s book and EMBRACE YOUR INNER GIRL. If we’ve all been told to suppress her, imagine the vast power she might wield if released. She’s anything but a humiliation.

Kansas Should Serve as a Warning to Virginia Women

This is a guest post by Dr. Jim Kenley, the former Commissioner of Health in Virginia from 1976 — 1986. Thanks to Dr. Kenley and also to Katherine Greenier, Director of the Patricia M. Arnold Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU of Virginia.

A few weeks ago, a disturbing situation arose in Kansas that brought the state perilously close to banning abortion within its borders. The legislature, with the governor’s support, enacted a new licensing and regulatory law that resulted in the creation of “emergency” regulations giving abortion providers just a few days to comply with impossible and medically unnecessary requirements.

These regulations, which demanded precise sizes for janitorial closets, no-variance room temperatures, and other ridiculous requirements, were purportedly established to protect the health and safety of women, but in truth had one and only one purpose: to shut down the three existing abortion facilities in the state.

Fortunately, a federal judge temporarily enjoined the new regulations, and all three clinics in Kansas are still able to provide services, at least for now.

The situation in Kansas should serve as a warning to Virginians. Our General Assembly passed its own regulatory law this spring motivated by the same anti-choice agenda that spurred the foolishness in Kansas. And now Governor Robert McDonnell is forcing the Board of Health to adopt new regulations in an unprovoked “emergency” process that bypasses the normal public notice and comment periods for changes in state regulations, and reduces opportunities for input from the trained professionals at the state agencies who know the most about the issues at hand.

As a retired doctor and former health commissioner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, I am deeply concerned about these developments, because I fear that we, like Kansas, are attempting to turn back the clock on women’s health in a way that could have devastating effects.

Although I never performed an abortion, when I was a young physician in Cincinnati and Atlanta in the 1950s, I helped women who needed emergency medical care following either self-performed or “back alley” abortions. Later, in practice, one memorable case was a mature, educated mother of two whose spouse had recently survived a brain hemorrhage. Pregnant some 20 years before the Supreme Court legalized abortions and with nowhere to turn, she desperately tried to self-abort with a hat pin.

In the middle of the night, I was called to her house where I found her in excruciating pain suffering from severe chills and a fever of 105 degrees. After telling me what she had done, I rushed her to the hospital where she received emergency medical treatment that thankfully saved her life.

In September, the Virginia Board of Health will propose emergency regulations to require abortion clinics to meet hospital-like standards of care, even though abortion is one of the safest medical procedures available in this country and is already heavily controlled by state and federal regulations.

To be certain, supporters of these new regulations will claim that elevating abortion providers to mini-hospitals by forcing them to make costly architectural upgrades will somehow protect women’s health and safety. Women definitely deserve the highest standard of medical care especially when it comes to reproductive healthcare. But women in Virginia are already receiving abortion care at the highest standard, and medically inappropriate and unnecessary regulations will only serve to restrict access to the full range of reproductive health care services and further marginalize young, low-income, uninsured and minority women by decreasing their health care options.

Early abortion care is already difficult to access in the Commonwealth, with 86% of Virginia’s counties lacking any abortion providers at all. The new regulations could make abortions both harder to get and more expensive, possibly taking us back to something akin to that time I recall with such great dismay, when every abortion was a health risk.

That’s why I hope my fellow medical professionals with the Board of Health will not bow to political pressure or rhetoric from special interest groups. Women in Virginia are already receiving outstanding abortion care, so there is no need for medically inappropriate and unnecessary regulations that will not only reduce access to abortion for all women, but especially for existing marginalized women.

There are additional consequences of fewer providers and more expensive abortion services as a result of overregulation. Virginia abortion providers also offer an array of reproductive healthcare services to women as well as men, including life-saving cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment and pre and post-natal care. These critical health services could be reduced or eliminated altogether.

As the former Commissioner of Health under four governors, I urge the members of the Virginia Department of Health and the Board of Health to adhere to their charge — to protect the public health and safety of the people of the Commonwealth by adopting only those regulations that are medically appropriate, and based in science.

If they do, they will show us that on important matters involving constitutional rights and health care, Virginia can rise above politics. We can be better than Kansas.

Vance has more opportunities to change the rape conversation

This is a guest post by Sam, who will return to the University of Chicago this fall as a sophomore. Thanks Sam!

Just as rape charges were dropped against Dominique Strauss-Kahn earlier this week, an off duty NYPD officer was arrested for allegedly raping a woman in Upper Manhattan. The case is the third high profile rape incident to confront Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., following the Strauss-Kahn case and the trial of two police officers that were acquitted of charges that they raped a drunk East Village woman in her home.

Vance, who is just over a year and a half into his four-year term, has faced intense public scrutiny for failing to earn a conviction in both previous cases. While these criticisms and frustrations are understandable, energy spent criticizing Vance can be better used to draw attention to the thousands of rape victims in New York City and across the world who will never have the opportunity to face their attacker in a court of law.

While convicting a powerful man of rape would have made a strong statement that rape is wrong, a guilty verdict would not have made rape unacceptable. Even though we live under a system of justice that assumes innocence until proven guilty, it remains disturbing to see how much more credible a denial of rape is seen than an accusation. Public fascination with the backgrounds of victims reflects a culture that is more interested in seeing a drama play out in the courtroom than in having a responsible conversation about rape.

While both previous rape cases collapsed because of a lack of credible evidence, the newest accusation is the first case in which a witness other than the victim supports the rape accusation. Paul J. Browne, the NYPD’s chief spokesperson, has acknowledged that the officer was drunk and that he used his licensed weapon to intimidate his victim. Vance must use this evidence to vigorously prosecute the officer, while activists must elevate a conversation about rape.

Just as Vance must use this moment to ensure that women across New York are safe, activists must ensure that the voices of the women brave enough to speak out against their attackers inspire other women to do the same. To do so would be to do true justice for all women.

On DSK

by MIRANDA

Today Justice Michael J. Obus dismissed the ongoing sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn filed three months ago by Nafissatou Diallo, at the request of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

Vance and other prosecutors formally told this to Diallo on Monday in a meeting that “lasted 20 or 30 seconds,” during which time “they accused her of lying but would not answer her questions,” according to her lawyer Kenneth P. Thompson. They gave her half a minute of their time.

Thompson tried to “keep the case alive”:

Thompson [filed] a motion on Monday asking that Mr. Vance’s office be disqualified. But about an hour before Tuesday’s hearing, a court clerk handed out a one-page decision in which Justice Obus denied Mr. Thompson’s motion.

Thompson appealed the decision, but an appellate judge struck down the appeal Tuesday afternoon, clearing the way for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, to return to France.

The prosecutors submitted the request for dismissal based on a “pattern of untruthfulness” in Diallo’s responses to questioning after Strauss-Kahn’s indictment. She lied or contradicted herself on multiple accounts relating to both the incident itself, its aftermath, and her past.

“At the time of the indictment, all available evidence satisfied us that the complainant was reliable,” Ms. Illuzzi-Orbon told Justice Obus. “But the evidence gathered in our post-indictment investigation severely undermined her reliability as a witness in this case, to the point where we are no longer able to credit her version of events beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Diallo’s lawyer Thompson said that the district attorney’s office “has abandoned an innocent woman and has denied an innocent woman a right to get justice in a rape case. And by doing so, he has also abandoned other women who will be raped in the future or sexually assaulted.” (On an international scale, Tristane Banon comes to mind as one such woman. On a local scale, I think of myself.)

No one is disputing that Diallo lied. But we cannot pretend that her lies account fully for the case’s dismissal. The district attorney’s office has been criticized, and in my view rightly so, for its hasty handling of the case when it was first reported.

Some critics have contended that Mr. Vance’s office is to blame for some of the problems that arose in the case. They pointed to the prosecutors’ decision, shortly after Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, to reject an agreement under which Mr. Strauss-Kahn would be freed on bail — a decision that forced them to move swiftly to seek an indictment from a grand jury rather than take more time to investigate details of the case.

The more deliberative course, these critics say, would have given prosecutors a chance to learn more about the housekeeper and perhaps avoid their early pronouncements that she was a powerful and “unwavering” witness.

I feel it is important to say that though I consider myself an honest person, strive for truth especially in matters of sexual assault, and take America’s system of justice seriously, I have little difficulty imagining myself lying under the stress of repeated, if compassionate, questioning, surrounded by many people (for example, “three prosecutors, an investigator and a translator”), while still in the early throes of what might be a long post-traumatic recovery process. And I believe that only someone with absolutely no understanding — personal, secondary, or cultural — of sexual assault would be unable to imagine the same of another human being.

It has been pointed out that even forensic evidence — Strauss-Kahn’s semen — is not worth much: “though the forensic evidence in the case shows that a sexual encounter occurred, it does not prove that it was forcible.” (There’s also some wistful speculation that if only she’d clawed his flesh in protest, collecting DNA under her fingernails, the case might have been saved.)

I am drawn to this quote from yesterday’s analysis by the NYTimes: “From his first court hearing, Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers indicated that a sexual encounter did take place in the suite but suggested that whatever occurred was consensual.” Whatever occurred. He cannot bring himself to specify in detail what occurred — this would be too risky, to say it, to claim outright that she performed oral sex because she made clear that she wanted to — but he just knows that whatever did occur was consensual.

So the plaintiff, the only other witness, is credible enough to remember what occurred — oral sex — but irreparably unreliable when it comes to all other testimony.

And I do wonder how consensual an “encounter” of these specifications might ever truly be — the specifications being: The woman, a person of decidedly low social status, an immigrant, an underpaid maid in a ritzy hotel, a woman of color; the man, who is undisputedly and in all respects one of the most powerful people in the world; the setting, her place of employment and his place of repose. I’m not trying to take away anyone’s agency; I don’t want to suggest that it is impossible for a hotel maid to consent to sex with a hotel guest. I only want to take a hard, broad look at the situation and ask, when every power narrative in place would suggest that consent was unlikely, why do we rush to the opposite conclusion?

Maybe she said no, maybe she screamed it. Maybe she begged. Maybe she fought. Maybe she gave in, because she began to realize that no matter what she did relief would not come — because his alleged actions were not a consequence of her behavior or her morals, but an unmitigable display of his own.

She lied afterwards, that much is clear. But since when does lying imply consent? I echo Eve Ensler, who asked: “How do you fight a rape case if you have lied in your past?” I’m angry at the system that’s fucked over not only Diallo, but also all those who were in her situation but did not come forward.

And if I am fully honest, I must admit that I’m self-consciously angry with Nafissatou Diallo too. For she is not the perfect victim, not the victim I somehow want her to be. She didn’t crush Strauss-Kahn in court like I’d fantasized. I had allowed myself to hope that this incident could be a turning point for the way our culture responds to sexual assault and an occasion to turn the tables on the power politics that too often control public opinion and yield a flimsy excuse for justice. Maybe it will be. But nonetheless I feel disappointed, and maybe cheated, by her lies which however indirectly have allowed another alleged perpetrator to walk away.

I feel anger and then self-contempt. I am disgusted with myself for momentarily taking anyone’s side but hers, because despite substantial effort I can’t suspend my disbelief of Strauss-Kahn’s innocence. Does anyone really think he didn’t do it?

Sonia Ossorio, executive director of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women, said that Ms. Diallo’s complicated case had been “mishandled by many people, including the victim’s lawyer… [But] the prospect of Dominique Strauss-Kahn simply walking away scot-free is appalling.”

New York, the beautiful city in which I feel so lucky to live, seemed sick today. I saw the headlines again and again across the subway’s cheap newspapers — “C’est la Free” stands out in my memory — and swallowed vomit. I did not allow myself to become frantic, though I wanted to. I wanted to run up to strangers, to grab hold of women I had never met and say, Did you hear? What do you think? What do you feel? Do you feel anger and sadness and outrage and exhaustion? Do you feel safe? Have you ever? And can you show me how?

Review: Undecided

Undecided: How to Ditch the Endless Quest for Perfect and Find the Career — and Life — That’s Right for You by Barbara Kelley & Shannon Kelley

~~~~~

Mom-and-daughter pair Barbara and Shannon Kelley have a gem here — an important read for basically any shrewd woman of my generation. It’s a relentlessly chatty book but it dives right to the core of women’s “analysis paralysis,” wisely eschewing self-help rhetoric in favor of a more rigorous cultural investigation of the professional challenges that plague today’s young women. The Kelleys thoroughly map the complex web of expectations, both social and internal, that push women to agonize over each and every life decision, and to grieve excessively for the loss of the option given up.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that I feel right at home in discussions of the laundry list of institutional forces that manipulate women’s professional choices. But what shook me up about this book was its insightful analysis of the ways in which we paralyze and punish ourselves. By ascribing so much meaning to our decisions large and small, meaningful and inconsequential, we lock ourselves into a cycle of yearning and remorse. And in our haste to take advantage of our newly afforded privileges in academia and in the professional world, it’s all too easy to sacrifice authentic decision-making in favor of other people’s estimations of what we are — or aren’t — capable of. (Me becoming an engineer just to disprove sexist stereotypes doesn’t mean shit in the big picture if I’m not truly invested. It’s just another way of conforming, of basing my decisions on patriarchal frameworks.)

It’s steadily depressing fare, but the Kelleys rescue the reader by concluding with advice to pursue “work worth doing” — work at the intersection of pleasure and meaning — and a spirited vision of what a feminized professional landscape might look like: one in which women and men are given social permission to implement leadership styles that emphasize collaboration, relationships, emotional connection. It’s a meaningful read.

Reproductive Rights Cartoon Caption Contest

by MIRANDA

The Center for Reproductive Rights has launched an awesome cartoon caption contest. They might be short on responses since ladies are inherently unfunny, but luckily there are at least a few men who support reproductive rights? Or so I’ve heard?

1. Submit your caption(s) between now and August 23, 2011. There is no limit on how many captions you can submit.
2. Three finalists will be selected for each cartoon by the Center for Reproductive Rights and announced in the August 25th issue of our ReproWrites eNewsletter.
3. Public voting on the finalists will begin on August 25th and end at midnight on August 29th.
4. The two grand prize winners will be announced on August 30th. They will each receive a printed version of the cartoon with the winning caption and a gift bag.

Take a look at the cartoons and submit your captions! I’m still working on mine…

Bits & Pieces

by MIRANDA

I have woefully fallen off the blogging deep end; my last post was almost two months ago. But my life’s been pretty awesome and fulfilling in the meantime, so I won’t regret briefly saying no to blogging. I’m easing back in with this roundup of bits and pieces.

The Fresh Air Fund, an amazing organization of which I am particularly enamored, is seeking host families all across the Northeast for this summer’s group of kids. Read all about their mission and the details of their need, and pass it along!

Planned Parenthood of NYC has created an interactive online sex education comic strip. From their press release:

The strip was written by former teen peer educators, and follows a few teenagers through their daily lives as they face tough choices about sex, health care, and life decisions.

“Teaching teens how to make good, healthy decisions is a constant struggle,” said Haydee Morales, Vice President of Education and Training at PPNYC. “This comic strip, written for teens by teens, should help reach young people in a way that facts and statistics can’t.”

Talia, who writes at Star of Davida, is hosting a feminist essay contest; submissions are due in October.

Troll, troll, troll your blog — Women’s Glib edition

by ELENA

I have been busy working and taking summer classes, but I nearly laughed out loud in the computer lab when I saw these messages left in the Pending Comments section:

Mr LonerGothic’s IP address is a Savannah location, and I’m willing to bet that it’s one of the workstations at Monty. If man-hating is so highly regarded at SCAD, why haven’t I received a special award for it? Or even better, how about some man-hating scholarships?