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In Other Misogynistic News…

30 May

feminism-3

The highest court in El Salvador has decided that a 22-year old woman must continue with her life threatening pregnancy and give birth to a baby who if born alive will die immediately. The young woman has lupus and obstetric complications. She also has a small child at home. The court’s justification is the same spouted by anyone looking to control a woman’s body; they are protecting the fetus. The fetus in question is encephalitic and cannot possibly live as a baby for more than moments. There is an actual child who might very well lose his mother to this pregnancy. That this woman is being forced to endure this pregnancy is barbaric. A court ordered pregnancy is holding her hostage. She will witness her declining health and her growing stomach, helpless to alter the tragic outcome.

That this is occurring in El Salvador is less relevant today than it might have once been. Twenty or so years ago we may have been horrified but resigned. After all, El Salvador is a very religious country. But guess what? So is America now. Not since the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock have we had such a powerful religious influence on politics and policy. In 2013 it’s rather difficult to point the finger at any other country’s religious fervor. Almost without exception all organized religions agree on a few points; there is an invisible entity that guides, there is a polarity of good and evil, and women have a place. It is not a coincidence that as the nation (finally) benefits from the feminist fights of the 1970s we are seeing reproductive freedoms erode. Those longhaired, bell bottom wearing woman marched through the streets with signs reading; A Woman’s Place Is In The House And In The Senate. And guess what? They are in the House and in the Senate. Their numbers don’t come close to representing 51% of the population, but it is an improvement. Equity in sports has a long way to go, but just remember what Billie Jean King had to endure. It is no longer legal to hire according to gender. That women still make less than 3/4 of what men earn, is an issue, but still it is progress.

So if it’s no longer legal to keep women out of office, the workplace or sports, what is a misogynist to do!? Well we know for a fact that sexism in medicine is both easy to engage in and rarely questioned. We know that medications are routinely researched and developed according to a male test subject. We know that great efforts have been made to ensure that men can always have sex (while on life-support if need be) but there is still no hormonal male birth control. Most medical machines and devices are designed for male patients (except for that gem, the mammography machine which if any man had ever to place any of his sensitive bits into would be redesigned in an instant.) When we combine the sexism of traditional medicine with the sentimentality of “it’s for the children” it’s far easier to attempt to marginalize 51% of the population. It’s not for the children; it’s never been for the children. If people cared a whit about the children we would have stellar healthcare and nutrition for all and the best K-12 system on the planet. We came close to that reality once, but I think we’ll all agree that there’s been some serious backsliding. It’s not for the children that we force a teenage girl (who is in fact a child) to endure a pregnancy and birth, or to look at a sonogram of her fetus. (How is it that using technological advances to traumatize girls and women is contemplated let alone allowed?!)

The truth is that any group outside of the power structure will suffer as they progress. We’ve seen it happen to every minority group. Homeostasis is a very strong force. There will always be those who feel that people they view as ‘less than’ are infringing on their rights by having rights of their own. But it’s hard to fathom how torturing a 22-year old woman and leaving her small child motherless makes anyone feel better about themselves.

 
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Posted by on May 30, 2013 in Cultural Critique

 

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Turning Back Time

10 Apr

Unknown

If you are over a certain age or have any sense of social history you may find yourself living a flashback. How in the world is reproductive freedom still up for dispute in this country? Forgetting for a moment the legality of reproductive choice; how is the subject still even a subject? Why would any person, let alone group, take up a cause that was settled decades ago? Is there a grassroots anti-prohibition movement underway somewhere? Are slogans being developed to appeal the Americans with Disabilities Act?

The common wisdom is that anti-choice supporters come at their crusade from a place of religious conviction. It certainly often looks like that, no? But the logical extension of such a premise is that these people would feel passionate about imposing all of their religious convictions upon others. It’s hard to see how or where this is happening. Even if their only religious conviction is that life (including sperm and egg) shall be preserved at any and all costs, it doesn’t seem to be happening. If it were, shouldn’t the same people protesting reproductive rights be protesting war and pollution? Shouldn’t the placards and protesters be blocking the headquarters of tobacco and gun manufacturers? Wouldn’t the crusaders be impassioned about veteran care and elder care?

The fact that there has never been any anti-choice movement that has taken up the cause of the born and at-risk reinforces the myopia of ‘the cause.’ If all the noise were really about ‘the children’ we would see a groundswell of domestic adoption of older and needier children. We would see zero-tolerance of any form of abuse or neglect of children. There would be full access to excellent health (including dental) care for every child. But almost 500,000 children languish in the foster care system. Children are abused and neglected every single day. These children might feel that being unloved is worse than being unborn.

I’ve no doubt that there are some people who consider it their one-way ticket to heaven to save even one embryo. But I also suspect that the momentum is the message. It’s appealing to belong to a group of like-minded people. It’s equally attractive to have a cause that one can brand as being on the side of ‘good.’ But there are so many crusades that fulfill these requirements. Why women’s reproductive issues? Could it possibly be that it’s ‘women’ that we’re talking about? Hmmm

If it really was about the sperm and the egg, why is there no furor over erectile dysfunction medication? Why is no one protesting the pharmaceutical transport of millions of wayward sperm? Why is there no political movement opposing artificial reproduction? Do you know how many zygotes are lost with each attempt? Has anyone calculated how many zygotes are sloughed off during implantation attempts? Do we know how many stay in the deep-freeze until the end of time (or next black-out)? Do we know how many of the little cell clusters never even make it out of the petri-dish alive? Wouldn’t it stand to reason that anti-choice advocates would be up in arms about such carnage? Isn’t it likely that the number of manufactured zygotes who do not become embryos are equal or greater to the number of abortions in this country? If you believe that life begins at conception, this should be quite troubling.

But none of those issues involve a woman’s body. Controlling a woman’s body would appear to be the only socially acceptable way to control a woman. Legally she has access to voting, employment and even some sports. Legally she must be viewed as equal, even as she earns 77 cents to every dollar a man earns. Really, the only way to stall or turn back progress would be to block her control over her own body. If this is packaged as a morality/religious issue, and if enough bright lights and pretty colors are used to distract us all from the completely illogical crusade to protect ‘life’ only once it’s inside a woman and becomes her choice; perhaps it has a chance of working. It is up to us, those of us who are scratching our heads wondering how the hell this is still an issue, to shine the spotlight on the hypocrisy. It is not enough to simply stake our claim to being pro-choice. We must not shrink from talking about biology (including how several forms of birth control do not prevent fertility but conception.) We must discuss artificial fertility and ignore fear of repercussion. We must preserve our right to determine what we do with our reproductive parts by shining a light on those who fervently desire to turn back time.

 
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Posted by on April 10, 2013 in Cultural Critique

 

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The Facts Of Life

17 Jan

Maude

It’s been forty years since the passing of Roe v Wade. Forty years. That’s a very long time. In 1973 we were still smoking in restaurants, elevators and hospitals. In 1973 women were called girls and people of color were called worse. Push button phones were the edgiest things in communication technology and fancy people had remote controls for their televisions. We’ve come a long way baby! Or have we? The fight against reproductive freedoms is in full force and we seemed to have learned little. Literally. If you were to listen to the arguments or soundbites of anti-choice proponents you’d find yourself wondering how you missed that particular biology lesson. It’s alarming to discover grown people (who have made reproduction their raison d’etre) know so little about reproduction.

Babies don’t live inside of people, zygotes, embryos and fetuses do (in that order.) Semantics you say? Perhaps, but words are power; just ask any 50 year old “girl” or racially slurred man.

Contraception and birth control are not the same thing (though their end results are the same.) Contraception prevents conception. Any barrier device (i.e., diaphragm, condom, etc.) or spermicide (in the best case scenario) prevents a sperm from fertilizing an egg. Sterilization would fall into the category of contraception as well. Any method or procedure that prevents a fertilized egg from becoming a baby is birth control. All hormonal methods fall into this category (i.e., I.U.D., birth control pills, implants, etc.) as part of their efficacy is that they work to prevent uterine adherence. Spontaneous and medical abortions are also birth control. If anti-choice advocates believe that a fertilized egg is a human life, they should take a long hard look at all birth control.

By ignoring the erroneous use of terminology and the manipulation of biological fact it’s as if we endorse the fallacies. Of course we need only go to the movies or watch television to know that we’re doing a pretty bang-up job of ignoring the whole issue altogether. It’s been forty years since Maude had an abortion (with zero viewer controversy,) yet you’d be hard-pressed to ever see a character rationally choosing this option. In 2013 soap operas (once the bastion of contemporary socially relevant dramatization) refers to abortion only with hush and horror; “She was seen outside of an abortion clinic!” A relatively sophisticated police drama depicted a female athlete (how 21st century) choosing to be charged for a crime she didn’t commit rather than have people know she had (gasp) an abortion. Routinely teenage characters are depicted as having only two choices when faced with an unplanned pregnancy (and both involve giving birth.)

Half of all unplanned pregnancies in the Unites States are terminated. It’s left to our imaginations to determine how many unplanned pregnancies occur. It’s a relatively safe bet that at any book club across our land there are at least a couple of stories to be told. And maybe that’s part of our fractured and false conversation. Women don’t talk about abortion. They’ll talk about everything else under the sun, but not abortion. You can’t get through a bridal shower without hearing about pee sticks, frequency, duration, enhancers, gizmos, gadgets and gewgaws. But nothing would bring the consistency of mucus conversation to a screeching halt like the mention of the “A” word. Why? How did we come to believe that there was any shame in freedom of choice? How did taking responsibility for our health, our lives and for the future become tainted? How did we fall under the spell of the anti-choice rhetoric?

We can create small individual revolutions by adopting appropriate terminology. It’s probably a bit of a buzz kill to discuss any gynecological procedure at a bridal shower. But there’s ample opportunity to correct on-air and real people when they refer to fetuses as babies. Pointing out that birth control works very much like abortion does could make some waves as well. We’ve gotten to a point in this country where the loudest voice gains the most credence, not matter how ill informed or flat out wrong that voice is. Tuning out the screamers is not good enough; we need to add scientific and sociological fact to the noise.

 
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Posted by on January 17, 2013 in Cultural Critique, Well-Being

 

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The Right To Choose

06 Jun

The New York Times has ‘uncovered’ some misleading rhetoric regarding Plan B (aka ‘the morning after pill’.)  Many of those interested in banning the contraceptive have hitched their wagon to the notion that this pill sloths away attached cells from the uterine wall.  This is in fact not the case, and never has been.  Plan B prevents the attachment (by means that are very natural/biological but may be too ‘eeeeew’ inducing to discuss here.)

Without getting too technical or “no, she did Not just say that” let’s review what we’re discussing here.  What the banners were using as their justification for preventing access to contraceptives was that Plan B was in fact an abortifacient.  Their position is that as soon as two cells meet (an egg and a sperm) a human exists.  Sentimental rhetoric aside, there is a name for the meeting of these two cells; it’s called a zygote.  A zygote is not a fetus or embryo.  Zygotes slough off and disappear on a regular basis.  It’s nature.  Many regular monthly cycles include these invisible cells.  A zygote probably has as much of a chance as organically becoming a human as any unmet egg and sperm.  That covers the biologically, now for the chemistry.

The last thing I would ever do is provide ammunition to anyone looking to limit the human rights of others, but you know what?  You know what does slough off cells?  The I.U.D. and birth control pills do.  Both of these devices include hormones that change the lining of the uterine wall.  The presence of anything in the uterus (like an I.U.D.) prevents any attachment to the wall.  A zygote’s got nowhere to go.

It’s astounding to consider that people (and mostly they seem, to me anyway, to be men) are so concerned about sperm when it’s inside of someone else.  How could it be, if they are truly concerned about what happens to their contribution, that we still have absolutely nothing resembling reliable male birth control?  The only means we have is not traditionally embraced by men and is probably as old as the I.U.D.  Listen up men, you’ve had the corner on the medical field for centuries, whatya been doing?  Where’s your walkathon or ribbons to raise awareness for male birth control.  Where is the wait-list for reversible vasectomies?  Where is the partaking in relations only for fertilization?

I won’t hold my breath.  It’s always much more interesting to point to others as the problem.  It might even serve social purposes to belittle an entire gender, assuming they a) don’t know how their bodies work and b) can’t make informed decisions about their own reproductive life.  For whatever reason, these attacks on a woman’s body and rights have been going on forever.  And let us be perfectly clear, any limitations to contraception are an attack on women not an attempt to “save the zygote.”  There are facilities all across this globe that are creating and/or processing these microscopic conjoined cells through very expensive and sophisticated means.  They do not all become implanted, and those that do, do not all adhere and grow.  Yes, this brave new world of medically induced fertility is worth more than a cursory review from an ethics perspective.  We should be looking long and hard at the benefits and costs to our society and to the individual of these developments.  But what isn’t complicated is that every person should have control over what is done to his/her own body.  Forcing anyone to carry a pregnancy is barbaric.  Pound whatever religious text as you try to do it, hold up whatever placards you find most repugnant, but in the end, anyone daring to tell a woman to carry a pregnancy is nothing less than a barbarian.

 
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Posted by on June 6, 2012 in Cultural Critique

 

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