Posted on 5.31.2012 by Lily
This post is part of our commemorative series here and at the Abortion Gang to honor Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered three years ago today, in a call for collective blog remembrance. If you'd like to submit something, please see this post and link back to it in your own.
On May 31, 2009, I had been a college graduate for one week. I found out about Dr. Tiller’s murder late Sunday night when my boyfriend and I got back from a weekend-long music festival that we’d attended to celebrate graduation. I don’t really remember my reaction, though I’m sure it was of shock and horror. I knew that abortion providers had been killed in the past, but not since I had become politically aware and passionate about reproductive rights.
At that point, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, but I did want it to be political and feminist and ideally related to reproductive rights. I was looking for some kind of advocacy job, somewhere like NARAL or Planned Parenthood's Action Center.
A few weeks later, I started training as an abortion counselor. It wasn’t what I really wanted to do, but it was my first job offer and I figured clinic work would be good experience. As they say, the rest is history; now I can’t imagine working anywhere but a clinic. I can’t imagine ever getting the kind of profound gratification from an advocacy job as I get every day from working with patients who need the health services I now help directly provide.
I understand intimately why Dr. Tiller persevered in providing these services through 30+ years of threats on his life.
And many of the patients I work with are women seeking second-trimester abortions. If we were unlucky enough to be in a state with a 20-week ban, my patients would be affected. If they were determined to have an abortion, and we could no longer provide it to them, they would be faced with a daunting prospect: travel out of state, arrange childcare for days, miss work for days, find transportation, potentially conceal their days-long absence from family and/or partner, and raise funds on top of funds to cover it all, besides the funds needed for a late second-trimester procedure. Especially if they have Medicaid, as most of my patients do, which covers abortion in our state but wouldn’t be accepted out of state.
Imagine that the patient is 16. Or lives at 150% below the poverty line. Or is a single mother with three kids. Or has an abusive partner. Or might get fired for missing work, since she’s already been out due to pregnancy-related sickness.
There’s something tragically ironic about having a(nother) baby because you can’t arrange, access, or afford the abortion, isn’t there?
Listen up, pro-choice advocates. It’s past time to stop minimizing late-term abortions, which is what Dr. Tiller was known for and the reason for his murder. Every time we defend abortion rights because “only 1% occur past 20 weeks” we do a disservice to Dr. Tiller's legacy and to the patients who desperately need those abortions. It doesn’t matter if late-term abortions are 1% or 100% of all abortions. They are urgently needed. They are a matter of life and death.
Three years ago, I had just graduated college and finished my year as president of my school’s Students for Choice. After Dr. Tiller’s murder, I wrote a final email to the group’s listserv. I had not yet begun working in abortion care, and I’ve learned an immeasurable amount since about abortion and how this work is love and life and everything good. But you don’t have to work in abortion care to understand the importance of Dr. Tiller’s work and his legacy, and so I’d like to share that (gently edited) email below.
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Posted on 5.30.2012 by Amy
Tomorrow, May 31, marks the three year anniversary of Dr. Tiller’s murder. In the wake of increasing restrictions on later abortions and mounting violence against abortion clinics, we at the Abortion Gang and The Provider Project want to honor Dr. Tiller’s legacy of compassionate care by hosting a collective blog remembrance in response to this question: How can the pro-choice and reproductive justice movements better support the people who have later abortions and providers who perform them?
Your post can directly answer this question, or use it as a jumping off point to talk about other issues, such as:
Why is it so difficult for our movement to talk about and support later abortions?
Reflecting on Dr. Tiller’s famous quote: ”Make no mistake, this battle is about self-determination by women of the direction and course of their lives and their family’s lives. Abortion is about women’s hopes and dreams. Abortion is a matter of survival for women.”
In your post, please link back to this blog post so that folks can come here and find links to other reflections on Dr. Tiller.
The Abortion Gang and The Provider Project will post links to pieces written answering this question, starting Thursday, May 31 through the following Thursday, June 7. Please feel free to forward this call for posts to anyone who you think would be interested in honoring Dr. Tiller’s legacy. Send the links to your posts to info@iamdrtiller.com and lily@theproviderproject.org, tweet them to @IAmDrTiller and @Provider Project, or leave them in the comments.
If you don't have your own blog but would still like to submit something, please feel free to email it along and we can feature it either here or at the Abortion Gang.
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Posted on 5.28.2012 by Kelly
As the government has increased restrictions on a variety of reproductive and sexual health care services, I have repeatedly heard an outcry over this “War on Women.” In this phrase, “women” are those who can become pregnant, and the “war” is the increase in government control over the bodies of these people and restrictions on their choices of whether to become pregnant, how to prevent pregnancy if so desired, whether to have an abortion, and how and where to give birth. However, this language erases the experiences of a whole range of other folks who don't fit into this narrow category of cis women, including people who can get pregnant who aren't women and women who don't have uteruses but are sure as hell also facing a war of misogyny, such as CeCe McDonald. To me, reproductive justice is about bodily autonomy, not just the rights of some folks to safe, affordable, and appropriate contraception and abortion. It only hurts the fight against patriarchy to ignore and exclude people whose experiences of fighting for bodily autonomy may be different from our own (and who in fact may experience misogyny not only from the government and society but also from those of us who claim to be feminists).
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Posted on 5.26.2012 by Chantal
According to RH Reality Check, a pro-choice advocate was recently barred from catching a connecting flight on American Airlines because she was wearing an "offensive" pro-choice T-shirt. The woman in question was stopped before exiting the plane and told that she would not be allowed to board her next flight until she changed her shirt.
The shirt was gray with the wording, "If I wanted the government in my womb, I'd fuck a senator." I must also mention that when I boarded the plane, I was one of the first groups to board (did not pass by many folks). I was wearing my shawl just loosely around my neck and upon sitting down in my seat the lady next to me, who was already seated, praised me for wearing the shirt.
When I was leaving the plane the captain stepped off with me and told me I should not have been allowed to board the plane in DC and needed to change before boarding my next flight. This conversation led to me missing my connecting flight. I assumed that because I was held up by the captain, they would have called ahead to let the connecting flight know I was in route. Well, upon my hastened arrival at the gate of the connecting flight, it was discovered that they did indeed call ahead but not to hold the flight, only to tell them I needed to change my shirt. I was given a seat on the next flight and told to change shirts.
Will the ridiculousness ever stop?! Feel free to tell the folks at American Airlines that what kind of t-shirt you wear (and what you do with your vagina!) is none of their floppin' bunnies!
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Posted on 5.24.2012 by Chantal
BBC News featured an article this week about the latest in Greece's efforts to revive its crumbling economy. Apparently, hospitals are cracking down on patients who can't pay their bills. The article focuses particularly on pregnant women, at least one of whom reports being told she may not be able to take her baby home from the hospital, if she couldn't pay the bill up front.
Anna lives in a tiny shack with a concrete floor and crumbling walls in Loutsa, a coastal town about an hour's drive from the capital. The entire household, including her husband, father and brother are all dependent on the meagre earnings her mother makes cleaning houses.
The family, who were all employed until the crisis hit, say they have run out of savings and are behind on their rent. Their landlord has given them until the end of the month to move out.
Anna says she doesn't know how she will manage to pay for the baby's vaccinations.
"The hospital asked us for a lot of money and the man at the administration office told us we had to pay the whole amount or they would not let the baby leave the hospital with me," she says.
The hospital, of course, denies Anna's claims. Yet at least one other new mother and a doctor at the hospital in question recounted similar experiences. I have always been a firm believer that health care is a human right. A right that everyone on this planet deserves regardless of socioeconomic status or anything else, for that matter. But as global economies and the machinery of capitalism disintegrates, how do we protect these rights? How do we fight the insurance system as whole, a system which profits off our illnesses and leaves the uninsured (a growing number of people these days) saddled with debt?
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