Posted on 7.30.2012 by Kelly
Much to my excitement, it was recently announced that the BBC show Call the Midwife is coming to PBS this fall. I was able to get my hands on this show last winter and absolutely loved it. Apparently British viewers loved it too as it received higher ratings than Downtown Abbey did in its first season. Call the Midwife is based on the memoirs of nurse Jennifer Worth, and follows a group of young, bicycle-riding midwives who worked for England's National Health Service (NHS) in the East End of London in the 1950's. Beyond the personal dramas of the midwives and the nuns they live with, the show presents an intimate look at the struggles faced by the neighborhood's working class residents. Lack of knowledge and access to birth control, single parenthood, forced surrender of babies by young unwed mothers, postpartum depression, and preeclampsia are all issues encountered by the midwives and members of the community.
One thing I love about Call the Midwife is its illustration of a community-based midwifery model. In this model, nurses provide group care in prenatal clinics, one-on-one support during labor and birth in the birthing person's home, and postpartum house calls. Support for emergencies beyond the midwives' scope of practice is provided by a general practice doctor who has a collaborative rather than adversarial relationship with the midwives. Although the NHS has moved away from community-based midwifery in recent decades, there is a burgeoning movement to revive this model in England. Annie Francis, program director for one such community-minded London organization called Neighbourhood Midwives describes the model as follows: "We'll be an option for women who are low-risk and initially at least, our services are likely to only be available to those having second or third babies. Once they've booked with us, we'll guarantee that they'll be seen by a midwife they know, whether it's in their home or in a clinic, every single time they need to see a professional during their pregnancy, birth and afterwards. If their needs change and they need to see an obstetrician, we'll go with them. If they end up needing a caesarean section, we'll still be there by their side.”
As I previously wrote about, the state of care for childbearing people in the United States leaves much to be desired. Perhaps the one-on-one, community-based care depicted in Call the Midwife can help provide the template for a new reproductive health care system in this country. As this article from Think Progress states, “*Call the Midwife* is a reminder both that expanding access to care dramatically changes the lives of people who benefit from it, and requires both the medical professionals who treat them and the patients themselves to make cultural adjustments.” Here's hoping that Call the Midwife is just as popular in the United States as it has been in Britain and that it serves as an inspiration for drastically changing our model of reproductive health care.
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Posted on 7.25.2012 by Lily
In the midst of all the abortion storytelling that's been going on lately, I wanted to highlight two recent articles that bring different perspectives to the table. You may have seen the first one if you've been following recent abortion stories, called "Why I Won't Come Out About My Abortion." The anonymous writer writes,
My abortion is no one's business. My abortion is something that should be between me and my doctor, and going public with the details in an attempt to destigmatize choice could ruin my career. So why would I ever "come out" about it?
She continues,
Wearing a tee-shirt that reads "I had an abortion" might remind the average Joe Abstinence Only Education that all kinds of women have abortions and they're not all irresponsible sluts trying to erase their mistakes by taking the easy way out, and that they don't all look like Courtney Love during the nineties. But coming out pressure from women's groups places many women in an awkward position: do what's being asked of you for the greater good, and all of the risk falls on your shoulders, while all of the reward goes to the movement. That's hardly incentive to come forward. Remaining silent is an act of self-preservation.
Which ties into the second piece I've been thinking about lately, called "'Coming Out' on Abortion: Who Wins?" written by Kai Gurley of the Abortion Access Project. Gurley argues that the abortion rights movement is taking its cues from the queer rights movement in putting pressure on women to "come out." The problem is that being out, whether about sexual orientation or having had an abortion, can also be dangerous:
But there is a limit to this thinking – with all of the culture change that the LGBTQ community has seen, stigma and violence are still perpetrated every day. I was reminded of this as I read the story of Mollie Olgin, 19, and Mary Chapa, 18, two young lesbians who were shot (with Mollie being killed) in Texas just last month. And I am heartbroken, remembering exactly how terrifying it is to be a 17-year-old kid coming out in the South, and how challenging moving through the world in this queer body of mine continues to be. [...]
Similarly, abortion providers, clinic workers, and the people that utilize their services experience violence and harassment every single day. The National Abortion Federation reports 5,165 incidents of violence and disruption at abortion clinics in 2011 alone, including stalking, vandalism, picketing, and attempted bombings and/or arson. [...]
If the abortion rights movement is going to ask women to be more visible and vocal about their experiences with abortion, we must do so with thoughtfulness about the potential impact on individual people – particularly people living in rural communities and conservative states. We must be working to address stigma in these communities. And we must be vigilant about supporting people – providers, clinic staff, and individual women – once they go public.
Go read the whole thing. It's powerful stuff. She's 100% right that the call to "come out" about having an abortion needs to be done thoughtfully and sensitively, with regard for the circumstances that may make coming out risky for people in different communities. Depending on your circumstances, demographics, community, and a million other factors, coming out can be an act of privilege. Or it can put your life in danger. And tying back to the first piece, of course coming out needs to be a personal decision made by the individual who knows her life and situation best.
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Posted on 7.20.2012 by Amy
Authorities in major U.S. cities are confiscating condoms from sex workers and using them as evidence at trial, leading sex workers to ask researchers how many condoms they're legally allowed to carry, exactly?
This from Human Rights Watch, which released a report Thursday saying sex workers and transgender women are regularly harassed, threatened and even arrested for carrying condoms. (Transgender women are reportedly targeted by police whether or not they are actually performing sex work because of the assumption that they must, of course, be performing sex work.)
Wait, let me repeat that. Police are arresting people for carrying condoms.
Researchers who interviewed hundreds of people in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco found police are forcing sex workers to throw their best means of protection into the garbage. Literally. This despite cities receiving millions of dollars in funding to help protect those most at risk for HIV/AIDS, like, you know, sex workers. Some sex workers are reportedly having unprotected sex or using plastic bags as substitutes for condoms because they are too afraid to carry them. The four cities included in the study reportedly received 50 million condoms last year. It only takes one condom to protect a sex worker from contracting HIV/AIDS. So how many of those condoms ended up in trash cans or police custody? And how many sex workers got HIV as a result?
In New York City, young African-American and Latino men are targeted for "stop-and-frisk" searches in hugely disproportionate numbers by police ostensibly searching for weapons, but not generally finding them. It appears transgender women are being stopped and profiled by police for condom searches. Guns kill people. Condoms save people. Targeting people for random searches because of their race, gender presentation, ethnicity or clothing doesn't make anybody safer. In fact, it's putting lives at risks.
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Posted on 7.17.2012 by Chantal
I don't know about yours but my Newsfeed was abuzz last week with news of the recently created, first-of-its-kind, Lesbian Super PAC. What's a super PAC, you ask? Well, PAC stands for Political Action Committee.
According to Wikipedia, a PAC is "any organization in the United States that campaigns for or against political candidates, ballot initiatives or legislation." A super PAC, as I understand it, is unique in that it is allowed to raise and spend an unlimited amount of money on a particular cause or piece of legislation, but not on any individual candidate or political party. Super PACs are allowed to raise money from individual donors as well as corporations.
So what's all the fuss about a lesbian super PAC? I've been asking myself the same thing.
LPAC certainly has the novelty of being the first of its kind. And it's already gotten some fairly hefty celeb backing from the likes of tennis star Billie Jean King and actress Jane Lynch.
The LPAC website describes its commitment to:
Ending discriminatory treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and their families;
Sexual and reproductive freedom and women’s access to quality healthcare; And
furthering social, racial, and economic justice for all Americans.
And all of these things sound good in theory. But let's not forget that political candidates make the same promises roughly every four years and yet we continue to be confronted with unprecedented economic inequality, racism, structural violence, and a nearly nationwide backlash against reproductive rights. Why should we expect anyone involved in the current political system to behave any differently? There is nothing inherently radical, politically or otherwise, about being a woman or a lesbian. This is why the idea of a female president holds very little appeal for me. The reality of the system that we have is it that it is designed to function in the best interest of the few, at the expense of the many. In 2012, "the few" (call them the 1%, the ruling elite, your boss, whatever) may look a little different than what we're used to. After all, we do have a black president. But we can't let this distract us from the truth. The wealthy rule the world. They always have and, within the current system, they always will.
An article from The Washington Post ironically captures most of my misgivings about LPAC. The article says of LPAC co-founder Laura Ricketts: "it has not escaped her notice that lesbians such as her are in the minority at political events for gay donors, whether it’s a White House reception or a fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, who hopes to become the first openly lesbian member of the U.S. Senate."
Is this what LPAC is really all about? Increasing the number of lesbians at White House dinners and political fundraisers? Seriously? I can't think of anything less relevant to the average American, gay or straight.
Which brings me to my next concern, LPAC seems to be rallying around some mythical, unified goal that magically encompasses the needs and wants of all lesbians. On their website, they're quick to mention race and economic status as issues that they're eager fight. Yet these distinctions, which actually shape what communities need and want, conveniently disappear in the name of "all lesbians."
At the end of the day, LPAC may not be a bad thing. But to be honest, I just can't imagine it as a force for real change. For one, real, meaningful change isn't going to come from the top. It's going to come from communities who are working together to fight for the causes that are close to them. My fear is the LPAC will amount to nothing more than a lesbian spin on the status quo liberal agenda.
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Posted on 7.12.2012 by Lily
Steph Herold wrote an important piece and started an even more important project earlier this week that you need to check out if you haven't already. Here's her introduction:
Over the last few months, there's been an electric energy around the sharing of abortion stories. We've seen two stories in the New York Times, a Jewish abortion story on Kveller, a continuation of an abortion story on Thought Catalog, an early abortion story on Boing Boing, and a piece by a woman reflecting on the consequences of telling her abortion story in the Texas Observer. One woman even documented her abortion in photos. And that's just recently.
This recent wave of abortion storytelling gives me hope, which is hard to come by these days. Those of us working in the field have long said that sharing our stories is the only way (or the most powerful way) to combat the stigma and shame surrounding abortion. Since at least one in every three women has at least one abortion in her lifetime, it's hard to imagine that the stigma could continue if each and every one of this massive global community were open and honest about their experiences. If only abortion were openly discussed as a normal and common experience, part of the range of reproductive and sexual health experiences we have throughout our lives.
But I feel conflicted about one of these stories that's been making the Internet rounds lately. Specifically, I want to talk about the last one mentioned above, the abortion documented in photos.
This project represents a new type of abortion storytelling. The use of photos in abortion politics has been largely confined to the Photoshopped variety on the protesters' signs. Dispelling the lies of those signs seems to be the primary motivation of this patient who took pictures of her abortion.
I understand and applaud these intentions. It's true that a 6 week abortion bears no resemblance to the gruesome pictures of developed fetuses that decorate the sidewalks outside our clinics. In fact, a 6 week abortion is mostly a lot of blood and uterine lining, which is what you see in these photos. The actual embryo is so teensy and unlike any image of a baby you've ever seen that it takes a specially trained eye to find and separate it out from all the other tissue. You’re not actually even looking for the embryo at that stage; you're looking for the gestational sac containing it. Which can still be hard to find. It took me a while to be able to do it, and I know a little something about abortion.
But I have to admit that my first reaction upon seeing the site was not to applaud the woman behind it. My first reaction was more along the lines of what the fuck don't record undercover in our clinics.
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