Utah Law TRAPs Providers; 72-Hour Waiting Period (Almost) an Afterthought

Posted on 5.23.2012 by Amy

I contacted the Mountain View Women’s Clinic in Salt Lake City because I wanted to hear about Utah’s new 72-hour waiting period for abortion, which went into effect earlier this month.

But Dr. Bill Adams, the clinic’s owner and provider, had other things on his mind. In the months before Utah made history with the longest waiting period in the country, Dr. Adams was thinking about doorknobs.

Rules about doorknobs -- along with bathroom fans, electrical wiring, cleaning supply storage, and a host of other things -- were threatening his survival.

Utah has a new Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) law, adding to similar laws in Virginia and dozens of other states. TRAP laws impose a range of onerous regulations that are silently imperiling abortion clinics.* This year alone, TRAP bills have been introduced in 14 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The new rules went into effect in Utah last month. Adams explains:

“We got about 17 pages in rules and regulations we’re supposed to comply with, a lot of it infrastructure. They wanted our exam rooms to be a certain size; we had to add lighting, fire protection, emergency exits and all this stuff that we never worried about before.”

Adams had to install a bar in the bathroom (“so my 20-year-old patients can pull themselves off the toilet”) and set aside a locked room with a ventilation fan for cleaning supplies. He had to install a separate switch in the bathroom so the fan and light would turn on separately. And he had to switch to a lever-style doorknob on his bathroom door.

NYTimes Outlines the War on Women

Posted on 5.21.2012 by Lily

If you haven't seen it yet, yesterday's New York Times editorial summarizes the recent and seemingly endless legislative assaults on women's health and well-being. They divide these attacks into four broad categories of abortion, equal pay, domestic violence, and access to basic preventive health care, showing that the war on women is not imaginary and fetus-loving can't exactly be the motivation for it all. (That last bit may be my own extrapolation.)

Despite the persistent gender gap in opinion polls and mounting criticism of their hostility to women’s rights, Republicans are not backing off their assault on women’s equality and well-being. New laws in some states could mean a death sentence for a pregnant woman who suffers a life-threatening condition. But the attack goes well beyond abortion, into birth control, access to health care, equal pay and domestic violence.

Republicans seem immune to criticism. In an angry speech last month, John Boehner, the House speaker, said claims that his party was damaging the welfare of women were “entirely created” by Democrats. Earlier, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, sneered that any suggestion of a G.O.P. “war on women” was as big a fiction as a “war on caterpillars.”

But just last Wednesday, Mr. Boehner refuted his own argument by ramming through the House a bill that seriously weakens the Violence Against Women Act. [...]

Whether this pattern of disturbing developments constitutes a war on women is a political argument. That women’s rights and health are casualties of Republican policy is indisputable.

Go read it all.

Taking Direct Action to Reclaim Health Care

Posted on 5.18.2012 by Kelly

As someone who identifies as an anarchist, direct action is central to my philosophy of social change. But what exactly is direct action? Mainstream media portrayal of radical action often paints a picture of black-clad protesters breaking windows of corporate targets or locking themselves together in front of a bank headquarters. Indeed, property destruction and blockades are forms of direct action often undertaken by people who identify as anarchists, but I am not going to discuss either their merits or disadvantages here. Expressing dissent towards an unjust system and disrupting business as usual is important, but there are other forms direct action can take. As Wikipedia defines it, “Direct action occurs when a group of people take an action which is intended to reveal an existing problem, highlight an alternative, or demonstrate a possible solution to a social issue.”

While I see validity in the point Amy recently made about electoral politics having a direct effect on people's lives through the seemingly small things that impact access to reproductive health care, I am sick of giving control of my body to the whims of a bunch of rich, white, heterosexual men. Even with Obama as president, our profit-driven and hierarchical political and economic system continues to wage a war on the bodies of women and other people with uteruses, and its effects are amplified by race, class, citizenship status, sexual orientation, gender, disability status and other forms of oppression. To me, direct action means finding ways to provide community access, control, and self-sufficiency over fundamental human rights such as accessible and appropriate health care, food, and shelter.

“But what exactly does this look like?” you ask.

Great question! Let's look at a few examples of communities who have taken direct action to provide necessary health care services.

USA Today Article Urges Civil Disobedience by Doctors Against Attacks on Reproductive Health Care

Posted on 5.17.2012 by Amy

This important column in USA Today asks "Where are the doctors?" and urges doctors to stand with their patients against attacks on basic health care rights:

Physicians, both as individuals and as a profession, should stand with their patients. They should make it clear that they will not perform procedures, such as ultrasound examinations, unless they are medically indicated and desired by their patients. And they should refuse to provide inaccurate information about the consequences of abortion, or to follow any other prepared script in counseling their patients, particularly when it involves treating women like children.

Such acts of civil disobedience by individual doctors should be only the starting point. The profession as a whole, as represented by its professional organizations, needs to become involved, so that physicians are not left to fend for themselves.

Read the whole column here.

Birth Control On Demand, Without Apology, and Over-the-Counter!

Posted on 5.15.2012 by Lily

Last month Amy and I went to CLPP, a 3-day reproductive justice conference filled with fabulous, progressive people working in all sorts of social movements. One of the workshops I went to was run by the OCs OTC Working Group, which is a coalition working to make birth control pills available over-the-counter.* This is a tough idea for a lot of people to swallow, including reproductive justice folks. But over-the-counter contraception actually makes a ton of sense.

In the US, hormonal birth control access has traditionally been tied to the annual pelvic exam and Pap smear. Women know that if they wish to prevent pregnancy pharmaceutically, they must jump through the Pap hoop. (How ‘bout that image?) But this connection is a mistake of history. No Pap result contraindicates the use of hormonal birth control; contraindications are found by taking a medical history and checking blood pressure. No exam necessary.

(Lest anyone think I’m saying Paps and well-woman exams are irrelevant, please be assured that I’m fully aware of their importance. Of course everyone needs regular check-ups, and the Pap is the best tool we have to prevent cervical cancer - although many practitioners still don’t follow the updated Pap protocols, which say that most women need a Pap only every 2-3 years rather than annually and no one needs one before age 21, period.)

Nor am I saying that birth control has no place in the doctor’s office. Over-the-counter access should ideally supplement, not replace, consultations with your provider. But providers should not be the gatekeepers between women and these needed medications. Clinicians will often withhold refills until patients come in for their appointments, which definitely affirms who has control over women’s bodies, but accomplishes little else - besides contributing to rates of unintended pregnancies and abortions, naturally. A cardiologist would not deny a patient their blood pressure prescription as punishment for blowing off a follow-up appointment. Birth control is no less important a medication, but it is firmly entrenched in the social and political arena of the War on Women and Our Bodies.