Category Archives: reproductive rights

Why I’m not surprised that most of the Bush family is pro-choice

Posted on by
2

via RHReality Check. Here’s an excerpt from the story by editor-in-chief Jodi Jacobson:

“The Bush family has a long history of support for Planned Parenthood.  Prescott Bush, father of George H. W. Bush (Bush 1) and grandfather of Bush 2 was the treasurer of Planned Parenthood when it launched its first national fundraising campaign in 1947. Birth control being controversial in the period pre- Griswold v. Connecticut (and yes, history obviously repeats itself), Prescott Bush was attacked for his pro-choice position and knocked out of the running for a Senate seat in Connecticut.

While he was a Congressman, George H.W. Bush was a leader in establishing Title X, the program that most in the contemporary right wing love to hate. The fact is that most programs today targeted for extinction by Republicans and Tea Party fanatics were either supported or established by…Republicans, albeit for reasons having more to do with population control than women’s rights.

In the sixties, the connections between family planning and economic security were becoming clearer.  President Lyndon Johnson was the first to establish public funding for family planning services as part of the War on Poverty. According to a brief review of legislative history by the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association Johnson began offering grants for family planning services in 1965, the same year the Supreme Court struck down the Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives by married couples in Griswold. Then, in the late sixties, the Social Security Act was amended to require state welfare agencies to make family planning services and information available to recipients.

Following on this platform, Republican President Richard Nixon “took a special interest in family planning.”

“Soon,” the NFPRHA brief states, “Congress responded, enacting Title X of the Public Health Service Act, the first – and to this day, only – federal program dedicated to providing family planning services nationwide.”

Signed into law by President Nixon on December 26, 1970, champions of the program during its enactment included then-Congressman George H.W. Bush, who said in 1969: ‘We need to make population and family planning household words. We need to take sensationalism out of this topic so that it can no longer be used by militants who have no real knowledge of the voluntary nature of the program but, rather are using it as a political steppingstone. If family planning is anything, it is a public health matter.'”

I’m not surprised by this at all.  Support for population control was pretty mainstream in the 1960s and 1970s, but the reasons behind it were not exactly pro-choice (and not just because they were talking about contraception, not abortion).  Rather, the Johnson and Nixon administrations and Congress at this time supported federal funding for birth control clinics because they believed that overpopulation contributed to international terrorism and domestic political unrest.  This is quite different from a rights-based framework that advocates expanding women’s access to birth control because it gives them more control over their bodies.  Because these programs targeted poor women of color, militant civil rights groups alleged that these programs were “genocidal.”  Women of color who supported reproductive rights criticized this argument, but they also found fault with the population control approach that disproportionately affected their community. For these women, reproductive freedom meant not only the right to limit their fertility but also the right to reproduce regardless of race or income level.  For more on this topic, see Jennifer Nelson, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement.

History of Health Activism Conference at Yale

Posted on by
Reply

Here is a Yale Daily News report on the conference, “Health Activism in the 20th century,” that I participated in at Yale last weekend.  (minor correction — MADD stands for Mothers Against Drunk Driving!)  As the reporter was only there for Saturday (bright and early at 8:30am!) and I was the first presenter, he didn’t get a chance to observe my brilliant presentation, Creating a Middle Ground: Feminist Health Activists and Emergency Contraception in the United States, 1970-2000! (I’m giving a shorter version of this paper at the History of Science Society meeting next weekend )  Here are the main points:

This paper looks at the changing position of the National Women’s Health Network (NWHN) on emergency contraception, aka the “morning-after pill.” Initially this group was a vehement opponent of emergency contraception and other forms of hormonal birth control.  By the early 1990s the organization had joined broader efforts to develop a dedicated emergency contraceptive product.  NWHN found that there was sufficient evidence about the safety and effectiveness of this contraceptive method to “cautiously support its use.”
More importantly, increasing restrictions on abortion and access to federally-funded birth control under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush convinced the organization that they needed to help ensure that women had access to emergency contraception when other birth control methods failed.

This paper is a chapter out of a book-length project on the history of emergency contraception in the United States, which is under contract with Rutgers University Press. This project aims to use the history of emergency contraception to illuminate key themes in the politics of birth control and abortion since the 1960s.

In terms of relevance to other issues in health activism in the twentieth century, one of my main points is how the history of emergency contraception reflects the professionalization of the women’s health movement. Since the 1970s, feminist health activists had gradually become insiders in reproductive health by earning professional credentials, which gave them the ability to reform organized medicine and health care policy from within. Although some of their contemporaries accused these newly-minted professionals of “selling-out” rather than furthering the cause of women’s self-empowerment,” the corresponding radicalization of the medical “establishment” was equally significant. This book is intended to contribute to recent scholarship on how women have used experience of the physical body as a source of knowledge production and feminist practice regarding women’s health issues. For example, Wendy Kline argues that “body knowledge” was central to the women’s health activism of Second Wave feminism, and that this feminist framework was abandoned as the women’s health movement adopted the professional credentials and scientific language of the health care establishment.
I suggest that rather than being a departure from Second Wave feminist strategies that were based on knowledge of the biological body, recent activism on emergency contraception demonstrates how women have continued to use personal histories of their bodies to transform reproductive health research and healthcare policy. Since the early 1990s, emergency contraception has served as a “bridge issue” that brought together former adversaries, including feminist health organizations, population and family planning people, and groups representing women of color who were the main targets of attempts to control the “population crisis” in the United States.

This coalition did not arise without a struggle and had to overcome much bad faith generated by sexism in the medical profession and the racist and coercive policies of the population movement. My book shows how these diverse groups created a “middle ground” between an older liberal feminist position that tended to support technological innovations such as hormonal contraception; and a more radical feminist position that criticized the use of hormones but was otherwise in favor of reproductive rights.

Reproductive Rights: Here are the Churches

Posted on by
Reply

via RHReality Check, where Trusting Women asks, “On Health and Rights, What Happened to the Churches?”  TW writes about growing up in a liberal church that offered sex education classes.  She writes:

“Church was the place I first heard the word feminism.  Church was the place I first practiced putting a condom on a banana.  It was the place where I had openly gay and lesbian adult mentors and ministers.  The congregation my father grew up in gave the local Planned Parenthood their first home.  My first minister was a member of the Clergy Consultation Service, a network of liberal clergy that referred women to safe abortion providers in the days before Roe versus Wade.”

She then asks, “What happened to the churches?”   Here’s her answer:

“Liberal religions (particularly Protestants) feel guilty and ashamed on an institutional and cultural level.  Between the mid 19th and mid 20th century, liberal religion was at its apex. It lauded the possibility of human potential, placed science and empirical method right next to (if not above) Scripture, believed that human civilization was evolving morally and civically. Advances in science and medicine fueled and confirmed this hope and hubris.  Then the World Wars happened. The Holocaust happened, aided and abetted by liberal institutions, included liberal churches in Europe, governments, and academia.  Maybe evil really did exist in this world, maybe human beings were not so great after all.  Maybe the growth of liberal thought not only coincided with great democratic and medical advances, but also with brutal colonial and imperial endeavors; brutal injustices like Tuskegee Experiments and the recently revealed syphilis experiments in Guatemala. Maybe liberalism was not as perfect and wonderful as we thought…..”

My reply was:

Overall this is a thoughtful post but seriously — liberal protestant churches were solely to blame for the Holocaust?  What about the Pope? Or  Father Coughlin who blamed the Depression on an international Jewish conspiracy?

Also, what about the liberal church members, white and black, who participated in the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, and other movements for social justice in the 1960s?  Liberal clergy were also active in reproductive rights:  see Tom Davis’ book _Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and its Clergy Alliances_.”

Furthermore, look at the extensive history of reproductive rights activism outlined by the group Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.  Their most recent work includes counter-protests against Operation Save America (formerly Operation Rescue) , a strong presence at the March for Women’s Lives, opposition to the nominations of Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Allito, and the “Lift Every Voice for Reproductive Justice” program for voter empowerment during the 2008 election.

In other words, the activism of liberal churches on behalf of reproductive rights and other areas of social justice has not gone away.  It’s the media that has turned their back on the work of liberal churches.

Ableism and NARAL Pro-Choice America

Posted on by
Reply

via NARAL Pro-Choice America, which is running a pro-choice slogan campaign.  Here are the choices:





I voted for the first one — why?  Because using “insanity” to discredit opponents trivializes persons with mental illness — a group that already experiences social marginalization and oppression.  It’s an example of what the blog FWD/Forward refers to as liberal ableism, a variation on hipster ableism, hipster racism and liberal sexism, as well as liberal racism,

Oh yeah, in case some folks think I’m just singling out feminist organizations, I’m not too happy with Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity either.

Abortion after IVF and the economics of choice

Posted on by
1

via  XX Factor.  In this article Amanda Marcotte comments on  the alarm raised over a small number of women who decide to have an abortion following IVF.  I agree entirely with Marcotte’s criticism of people who argue “that the women who have abortions after IVF are bad people, too fickle to deserve rights.”  If we really trust women, we should respect all choices.

That said, I need to observe the problem with this article  is that it only addresses a tiny percentage of women in the United States who are privileged enough to have health insurance that will pay for IVF and abortion  (in fact, the story grew out of cases in Great Britain, where both IVF and abortion are covered by the National Health Insurance).

What about the millions of women who are denied access to abortion because it’s not covered by Medicaid (and under the new “health reform” package will not be covered by private health insurance either)?  Or the millions of women whose choices to reproduce are constrained by economic circumstances, or if they do find the resources to reproduce, are condemned as being “selfish”?

This isn’t the only article at XX Factor that bugs me — it seems this column is aimed almost entirely at privileged women who have the money and leisure to worry about things like Snooki and denim-colored diapers.

Seriously, is this sort of writing really advancing rights for all women? Or is this type of women’s blogging simply feeding into a larger addiction to snark?  Maybe I’m expecting too much. . .

This reproductive health article needs a Reality Check

Posted on by
2

via RHReality Check.  In an article entitled “A Natural Alternative to the Pill?” a “social media professional/Twitter lover” who goes by the name “jaz” expresses some healthy skepticism about the outpouring of praise surrounding the 50th anniversary of the Pill.

Unfortunately, the article contains a lot of misinformation as well.  So, here’s a reality check.

First, Jaz claims that  “With the Pill off the table, we are left with very few options besides condoms (or diaphragms and cervical caps which are essentially out of existence and have lower effectiveness rates), or more permanent solutions like the IUD and sterilization which do not make sense for younger women or women who want to have children in the next few years.”

According to this table, male condoms have a 2% failure rate if used “perfectly” — i.e. every time a couple has intercourse, and the condom doesn’t break or fall off.  Diaphragms have a 6% failure rate.  IUDS are not the same as sterilization either.

Second, the article tries to suggest that herbal contraceptives are effective. Jaz discusses an herb called wild carrot (aka Queen Anne’s Lace) and mentions the work of Robin Rose Bennett which “has been surrounded by controversy and naysayers in her efforts to bring this to American women.”  Well, count me in as one of the naysayers.  Even Bennett says that her study was unscientific, i.e. was not a controlled clinical trial.  Her sample was also very small — only 13 women — and three of them became pregnant.  So far, not a good alternative to barrier methods.

Jaz implies that this natural remedy is safer than oral contraceptives.  According to Bennett, wild carrot is an estrogenic herb — in other words, it contains the same chemical as many birth control pills.  So, the same contraindications for use of oral contraceptives would apply to wild carrot.

The underlying assumption of the article is that natural remedies are safe because, hey, they’re natural.  Well, those who are looking to try this method on their own better be sure they can tell the difference between wild carrot and poison hemlock.  Even jaz says she’s “a little wary of making my own contraception, since it’s more serious than making a smoothie or a mojito, though I do want to experiment with my inner alchemist and my green thumb!”

She should be just as wary of herbal treatments prepared by so-called experts.  Since herbal remedies are considered dietary supplements,  they not regulated by the FDA as are drugs.  This means no one is checking to make sure the health claims are valid.  Also, there is no national system of licensure or certification for herbalists.  This means that anyone can hang out a shingle and call her/himself an herbalist.

[NB: if you take St. John’s Wort be aware that it can interfere with the effectiveness of oral contraceptives].

So, while I agree with jaz that “women deserve to have a wide range of options readily available to make the ideal decisions for their bodies and sexual health,” they also need accurate and reliable health information.  RHReality Check usually does this and gives guides on how to detect inaccurate information.  In their section, “Fact v. Fiction,” the editors write:

“One trademark of the far right is misinformation. They make ideology sound like fact, belief sound like scientific data. We bring you the most widely circulated fictions about reproductive health, and the facts and resources to dispute them. If you are confused about how to determine if a study is real, this primer provides you with a great framework to evaluate any research study you read.”

Too bad the editors of the site didn’t apply these same criteria to misinformation from the left.  Women deserve better.

Added later:  RHRealityCheck has reposted this entry on their website.  Please join the discussion.

Discloser: My research is funded by the National Library of Medicine and the Connecticut State University American Association of University Professors Research Grant.  I have no financial ties to pharmaceutical companies of any kind.

More on the History of the Pill

Posted on by
2

via – NYTimes.com.  This is an editorial by University of Minnesota Professor Elaine Tyler May, whose new book America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (pictured at left) was just released.   I’m glad to see that May deflates the truism that the Pill caused the sexual revolution — as Kinsey observed, the sexual revolution was well underway before 1960.  Furthermore, as said in my previous post, the Pill wasn’t available to many women when first released.  Even married women in the state of Connecticut could not legally obtain the Pill until 1965 and it took another seven years for the “right to privacy” to be extended to unmarried women as well.

Since Knitting Clio never misses an opportunity to plug her own work, I’ll mention that the Pill is the subject of my paper at the upcoming annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine .   The title is “Safer Than Aspirin: The Campaign for Over-the-Counter Oral Contraceptives.” A longer version of the paper will appear in The Prescription in Perspective: Therapeutic Authority in Late 20th Century America. Edited by Jeremy A. Greene and Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press.

Here’s the abstract:

On January 21, 1993 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in the Federal Register that the agency’s Fertility and Maternal Health Drugs Advisory Committee would hold an open public hearing to discuss issues related to providing oral contraceptives without prescription. Philip A. Corfman, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, stated the agency’s reasoning for this hearing:”I think the pill is safer than aspirin and aspirin is available over the counter.”

One week after the posted Federal Register notice of the open hearing, FDA officials canceled the session. The reasons for this abrupt move, and subsequent failures to make oral contraceptives available over-the-counter, are the subject of this paper. I will use the discussion about nonprescription status for oral contraceptives as a case study in the history of the switch from prescription to over-the-counter drugs. This paper will highlight the conflicting positions of the various stakeholders invested in restricting or promoting consumers’ direct access to their medications.

Earth Day and the Pill

Posted on by
1

As many of you know, today is the 40th anniversary of  Earth Day. Next month will mark the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the contraceptive Pill in the United States.  This afternoon, I’m giving a paper at a conference celebrating 40 years of coeducation at Trinity College in Hartford (conference logo at left) that ties the two stories together.   My talk is adapted from my chapter in this book with some additional material on Connecticut incorporated.  I start with Gloria Steinem’s claim that the “contraceptive revolution” started on college campuses in 1962.  This certainly wasn’t true in Connecticut, where it was illegal for married persons to get contraception.  Even after the Griswold v. Connecticut decision in 1965, individual states did not guarantee that the right to privacy extended to married persons.  The state of Massachusetts explicitly outlawed giving contraceptives to unmarried minors, and Bill Baird was arrested for “crimes against chastity” for giving contraceptive foam to an unmarried students following a lecture at Boston University in 1967.

My paper contrasts the situation at Trinity with that at Yale University, which also went coed in 1969 (actually the undergraduate college went coed; the graduate school already admitted women).  The Yale Student Health Service hired a gynecologist shortly before the college admitted women, out of fears that “that all the young girls descending on campus would get pregnant,” [this quote comes from an interview by Judy Klemesbud, “Yale Students Have Own ‘Masters and Johnson,” in the New York Times April 28, 1971]. Trinity College, however, did not hire a gynecologist but instead sent students to Planned Parenthood or local hospitals.  Female students didn’t like this situation, of course, and formed the Trinity Women’s Organization and organized a women’s week in 1972 to express their concerns that the college was not doing enough to accommodate women.  According to one of the women’s organization’s founding members, sophomore Sara Throne, many women “came here feeling like invaders in a foreign land” since. no one had done anything to make welcoming to women. Male professors trivialized women’s intelligence, there was no gynecologist or woman counselor on campus, no feminist literature in the library, no woman in the athletic department. Instead, said Throne, “We’re expected to fit ourselves into what’s already here.” [this comes from an article by Linda Greenhouse, “Problems Seen in Women’s Bias Fight,” in the Hartford Courant February 13, 1972]

At the same time that Yale and Trinity were going coed, the organization Zero Population Growth was sponsoring teach-ins on college campuses emphasizing the “catastrophic impacts of ever more human beings on the biosphere.” The first Earth Day celebration in 1970 made U.S. human population limitation a major theme. ZPG started a regional group in Connecticut in 1972 in order to lobby for better family planning services in the state and removal of state laws prohibiting abortion. The group actively recruited students at Trinity, University of Connecticut, Connecticut College, and other colleges around the state.

Even though some student organizers emphasized that the baby boom among middle-class Americans was the main cause of “overpopulation” in the United States, the alliance between birth control advocates and ZPG was an uneasy one. Officials at Planned Parenthood Federation of America were especially cautious about the appeal of ZPG on college campuses. Dan Pellegrom, Director of Planned Parenthood’s Program of Student Community Action, told University of Connecticut Biology Professor Nancy Clark, that given the controversial nature of ZPG, and population groups more generally, it was “essential” that Planned Parenthood provide leadership at the ZPG’s teach-ins, and use it as a way to increase student interest in forming campus chapters of PPFA. Pellegrom warned of the dangers of affiliating with ZPG, however. Based on his experience working with black community groups, he had “personal problems” with ZPG, “one, because their rhetoric could be taken by the black communities as genocidal and two, because they seem to be often politically in adept.” [this comes from a letter in the PPFA archives at Smith College]

Planned Parenthood leaders recognized that enlisting the support of black students was essential in establishing the legitimacy of birth control among the African American community, both on and off campus.  One of the earliest college chapters was at Hampton Institute, a historically black college in Virginia.

So, I’m concluding that the “contraceptive revolution” didn’t just happen because the Pill was invented:  students had to organize and demand reproductive health services be provided on campus.  This work continues with Planned Parenthood’s Vox program.

Ada Lovelace Day/Emergency Contraception Day of Action

Posted on by
Reply

via Finding Ada and Back Up Your Birth Control.  So, here’s a blog post that combines a celebration of women in science and technology with a call to action on emergency contraception.

What is Ada Lovelace Day?

“Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.

The first Ada Lovelace Day was held on 24th march 2009 and was a huge success. It attracted nearly 2000 signatories to the pledge and 2000 more people who signed up on Facebook. Over 1200 people added their post URL to the Ada Lovelace Day 2009 mash-up. The day itself was covered by BBC News Channel, BBC.co.uk, Radio 5 Live, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Metro, Computer Weekly, and VNUnet, as well as hundreds of blogs worldwide.

In 2010 Ada Lovelace Day will again be held on 24th March and the target is to get 3072 people to sign the pledge and blog about their tech heroine.

Ada Lovelace Day is organised by Suw Charman-Anderson, with design and development support from TechnoPhobia and hosting from UKHost4U.”

Now, for Ada Lovelace Day, I’m supposed to blog about my favorite tech heroine.  Why just one?  I’ll celebrate all those who worked on bringing emergency contraception to the U.S. and announcing the Back up your birth control day of action.  Here’s how you can help:

Back Up Your Birth Control is a national campaign committed to raising awareness of and expanding access to emergency contraception (EC). Every year, leading national advocacy organizations, service providers, and other community stakeholders participate in activities such as grassroots organizing, provider and public education, and policy debates, which culminate in our Day of Action.

Here’s how you can take action:

  1. Spread the Word about EC with FREE Materials
    Our popular EC educational materials featuring Rosie the Riveter are available for FREE! Just click above to place your order, and we’ll send you materials to distribute at health centers, to teens, at street fairs, etc.
  2. Enter the Campus Challenge
    If you’re a college student, get your group to raise awareness about EC on campus. The most original and informative idea will win a $250 prize!
  3. Write an OpEd or Blog
    Whether it’s for your local paper, campus publication, or blog, help educate readers about EC and how they can help others back up their birth control.
  4. Sign the Petition
    Send an email to the FDA and the White House asking them to end unnecessary age restrictions on over-the-counter access to EC.
  5. Celebrate the Back Up Your Birth Control Day of Action
    Use the Take Action Toolkit to get ideas about organizing educational activities in your community for the Day of Action on Wednesday March 24, 2010.

Other tips for engaging activists include:

  • Increase education for teen educators and teens by hosting a party, film screening, “Battle of the Bands,” or sporting event and distribute BUYBC materials on what EC is and where teens can get it.
  • Raise public awareness by organizing an EC roundtable discussion with elected officials, clinicians and medical experts to identify the work that needs to be done with respect to EC awareness/access in your community. Identify groups of advocates and local elected officials that are willing to help bring about any necessary changes and outline future steps.
  • Engage your local medical community by contacting local pharmacies and hospitals to inquire about their EC stocking and provision policies. Include educational materials and information to assist their staff with informing clients about EC, including advance provision of EC to patients.

Download the 2010 Back Up Your Birth Control Take Action Toolkit for more ideas including special activities for students and college campuses!