This phrase, coined by Sharon Cameron for the title of her book about Emily Dickinson’s fascicles (the sewn bundles of folded poems found after her death) references Dickinson’s refusal to abide by the conventional poetic prosody of her time, and through her creation of the fascicles, her rejection of set sequencing of her work.

A little over a century later, New Yorker Rachel Lehmann-Haupt chronicles how contemporary women are eschewing linear expectations for family-building and creating innovative combinations of choice. The stakes couldn’t be more different, but this phrase (choosing not choosing) — about Dickinson’s deliberate resistance to restriction into categories — strangely fits as Lehmann-Haupt navigates the channels, islands, and walking-off-the-edge-of-known-territory-into-new-frontiers changes with reproductive options.

In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment, and Motherhood recounts Lehmann-Haupt’s reach toward motherhood.  She details her relationships, some pulsing with hope they will lead to a walk down the aisle, some clearly just had for fun, but all viewed through the lens of wanting a child and cognizant of her likely decline in ability and aching increase in awareness of these limits.  She interweaves personal narrative with factual research and first-hand interviews as she educates herself about freezing her eggs, freezing embryos, single motherhood, donor eggs, donor sperm, and the attendant issues each topic brings – ethical, scientific, financial – and how this clashes with the still-longed-for- “dream.” She explores the consequences of creating an “insta-family” as women (and some men interviewed) grapple with dating and mating under the pressures of time.

Her voice is engaging, although some of the boyfriends grow tiresome. Lehmann-Haupt thinks so too, hence the succession as she also winnows down to what she most wants.  I found the book most rewarding when she’s not recounting the quirks of her dates or her busy, jetsetting life, but rather working hard to compress the vagaries of all the reproductive options now available.  I wished she would linger longer on the knottier topics that these choices generate.

There is “Luc” who thoughtfully donates sperm and is thrilled to meet the woman who will receive it, yet who becomes far less enchanted when he learns she plans to offer up extra frozen embryos for “adoption” to other families he won’t have the chance to know.  Or the doctor who suggests that while reproductive technology can extend the fertility shelf life for many women (at great price), why not work to undermine the system that tells women they should focus on their careers and delay childbearing in sync with their male counterparts?  Or the 46-year-old woman who has twins through donor sperm and donor egg but admits she could have been just as happy never having kids.  I hoped Lehmann-Haupt would dig deeper into these contradictions, but the book skates back to her dating life and internal wrestling with risk, reality, and wistfulness.  When the scientific facts square off with ethics and are then pressed through the powerful feelings her interviewees express, Lehmann-Haupt’s acuity is at its best.

“I don’t like not getting what I want,” says one woman interviewed by Lehmann-Haupt about her decision to become a single mother by choice.  And she realizes she feels the same way too.  While “choice” has become a highly charged word for women, “options” and wanting to keep them open, seems far less loaded.  Lehmann-Haupt ultimately decides to freeze her eggs to keep her reproductive potential likely available for longer into the future, despite knowing the success rates with pregnancy from frozen eggs are still quite variable.  In this thoughtful book, Lehmann-Haupt grapples with what “having it all”– or at least trying to – means when modern technology can make the path to motherhood wider or longer, and realizes glad as she is for this, she also really wants a partner to travel beside her. “But nature, in the end, will decide whether I have children or not; science can go only so far,” she writes towards the book’s end.   Her story starts when Lehmann-Haupt is in her early 30s; she finishes it on the cusp of 40, older, wiser, and leavened with the sobering sagacity more knowledge often brings.

Impossible Motherhood is a new memoir by Irene Vilar, editor of The Americas series at Texas Tech University Press and a writer who uses the history of her life and the lives of her mother and maternal grandmother to highlight critical relationships between colonialism, sexism, reproductive rights, and motherhood. But this will not be the headline that captures the interest of the public. Vilar’s fifteen abortions in fifteen years, on the other hand, seems to be causing quite a stir of attention.

In many ways, this is a memoir about misery. Throughout the book, Vilar critiques the idea that her success on paper — early graduation from high school and a move from Puerto Rico to the U.S. at the age of fifteen, marriage to a Syracuse University professor, book publishing – has not kept her from suffering with severe issues of depression, abuse, self-mutilation, and addiction. Her marriage to a highly regarded, intellectual writer several decades her senior, who defines “independence” by keeping her forever at an emotional distance from him and insisting that the couple cannot have children together, triggers a downward spiral which culminated in twelve abortions in an eleven year relationship, followed by three others with another partner after the dissolution of her marriage. However, with intense therapy and a happy second marriage, Vilar overcomes her painful ambivalence toward biological motherhood and gives birth to two daughters.

The seemingly happy ending of Vilar’s tale of thwarted motherhood will still raise ethical and moral red flags in readers, causing us to squirm uncomfortably as we embark on the author’s lifelong journey of recovery.  Vilar does not go for pat answers or self-satisfied conclusions about her decision to repeatedly abort unwanted pregnancies rather than utilize birth control (which was available during her time in the U.S.).  Instead, this a complex, emotional account of one woman’s emergence from cycles of oppression into an acceptance of her unique identity and experiences.

Vilar’s unhappy childhood – a distant philandering father and a mother who committed suicide when Vilar was only eight years old – contributes to her feelings of abandonment and a need to please authority figures, if only to ensure her survival. Vilar is not claiming to be a representative for pro-choice or pro-life arguments, though she does offer this disclaimer in the prologue:

“This testimony… does not grapple with the political issues revolving around abortion, nor does it have anything to do with illegal, unsafe abortion, a historical and important concern for generations of women.  Instead, my story is an exploration of family trauma, self-inflicted wounds, compulsive patterns, and the moral clarity and moral confusion guiding my choice.  This story won’t fit neatly into the bumper sticker slogan ‘my body, my choice.’  In order to protect reproductive freedom, many of us pro-choice women usually choose to not talk publicly about experiences such as mine because we might compromise our right to choose.  In opening up the conversation on abortion to the existential experience that it can represent to many, for the sake of greater honesty and a richer language of choice, we run risks.”

Reproductive justice movements, particularly in the U.S. and its territories, often have a tumultuous history with communities of color.  But many readers will likely approach the book with little, if any, background knowledge of reproductive justice movements in Puerto Rico. So how did colonialist policies and a U.S.-driven abortion counseling, abortion services, and abortion outreach contribute to these decisions?  In an interview with The L.A. Times, Robin Abcarian observes that:

“Puerto Rico, at the time, was a living laboratory for American-sponsored birth control research. In 1956, the first birth control pills — 20 times stronger than they are today — were tested on mostly poor Puerto Rican women, who suffered dramatic side effects. Starting in the 1930s, the American government’s fear of overpopulation and poverty on the island led to a program of coerced sterilization. After Vilar’s mother gave birth to one of her brothers, she writes, doctors threatened to withhold care unless she consented to a tubal ligation.  These feelings of powerlessness — born of a colonial past, acted out on a grand scale or an intimate one — are the ties that bind the women of Vilar’s family.“

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How did the pro-choice movement fail to help a survivor of abuse like Vilar?  Is there a theoretical and activist disconnect between three major intersections — martial strife/violence, psychological trauma, and reproductive justice?  Pro-choice communities would do well to examine books like these and form outreach for women who have experienced multiple abortions.  Vilar understands the stigma which confronts women who have had multiple abortions and does not shame these women, but tries to provide a lens of her own experiences with repeat abortions as a way to personalize this sensitive issue.  In a 2006 Salon.com Broadsheet post, Page Rockwell notes that:

Liberal message-makers would probably have an easier time if repeat abortions were rare, but the truth is, they’re not: According to a report (PDF) released last week by the Guttmacher Institute, which we found thanks to a flare from the Kaiser Foundation, about half of the women who terminated pregnancies in 2002 had previously had at least one abortion. (The report notes that because many women do not accurately report their abortion experiences, these findings are “exploratory.”) Rates of repeat abortion have been on the rise since Roe v. Wade, and ignoring that fact isn’t doing women who need multiple procedures any favors.

In the anthology Making Face, Making Soul, Gloria Anzaldúa wrote that, “[W]omen of color strip off the mascaras [masks] others have imposed on us, see through the disguises we hide behind and drop our personas so that we may become subjects in our own discourses.  We rip out the stitches, expose the multi-layered ‘inner faces,’ attempting to confront and oust the internalized oppression embedded in them, and remake anew both inner and outer faces…. We begin to acquire the agency of making our own caras [faces].”  This is one of those books that rips out the metaphoric stitches and exposes Vilar’s process of multilation and healing, addiction and recovery, for readers to examine.  This is not an easy or light book; it will trigger and it will probe and it will leave readers feeling as if they’ve been punched in the stomach, repeatedly.  But it also has the power to transform and expose previously hidden oppressions.

The outer face of Vilar is a brave one and so is the inner face.  Impossible Motherhood is a book for any pro-choice believer who wants a deeper understanding of the complex issues surrounding reproductive rights in the U.S. and its territories in the twentieth century.  This is also a book for people who believe in the power of personal redemption.  It will leave readers aching, hopeful, and perhaps a little more empathetic to Vilar’s life.

Is the recession upping the ante on birth control and/or abortion?  Two writers in my authors group ask the question this week.  Check out Lauren Sandler over at The Big Money: No Way Baby – Are Market Forces the Ultimate Contraception? And Annie Murphy Paul over at Double X: Is the Recession Causing More Abortions?

And then, there are those, like (ahem) me, going entirely the other direction…

Over at Broadsheet this week, Amy Benfer has a nice little post on “accidental” pregnancy in which she writes:

About half of American women will have an accidental pregnancy before age 45. So while we like to think of accidental pregnancy as a rare and catastrophic event that happens only to women who take extraordinary sexual risks, it’s actually rather common. Nevertheless most stories about accidental pregnancy focus on teenage girls whom many people feel entitled to automatically dismiss as unfit mothers. Thus I was initially excited to see that this month’s Self magazine leads with a feature that puts a face on those who constitute the vast majority of unplanned pregnancies, one with the subhead: “Forget Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol. The new face of accidental pregnancy looks like … you.” But while it starts out by allegedly showing that even “good girls” can get knocked up, it ends up reinforcing some very old stereotypes about what the choices women make say about them.

About 50 percent of unplanned pregnancies end in abortion,  but the article does not contain a single quote from a woman who had one.

Hmm…

(Thanks to CCF for the heads up.)

We’re pleased to bring you another cross-post from our friends at Feminist Review. In this week’s edition, Sarah Eve Nichols-Fulghum reviews Michelle Goldberg’s The Means of Reproduction. –Kristen

In The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, author and investigative journalist Michelle Goldberg uses her abilities to uncover the truth about the reproductive rights (and lack thereof) for women around the world. As we grow into a global community, the politics of sex, child bearing, and child rearing are monumental issues that are overlooked for the convenience of those in power. This book explores the reality of the situation, including many real life accounts of the struggles faced by women in countries that span four continents.

Chapter one begins with a heartbreaking tale of the first victim of an abortion ban in Nicaragua. The country deemed that abortion in any form was illegal. Jazmina Bojorge began suffering a miscarriage and due to fear of legal repercussions the doctors, against their better judgment, gave her medicine to stop the labor because helping her with the miscarriage—that is, terminating the pregnancy—would have been illegal. The delay in action caused her to die. If the doctors could have performed medical assistance in ways that are associated with abortions, it would have saved Jazmina’s life.

The book goes into great detail about the various issues that surround women’s rights and the laws and culture that repress them. Topics include contraception, pregnancy and childbirth, AIDS, female circumcision, abortion, sex-selective abortion, rape, and the role of women in society. The political stances of both the Left and the Right are dissected with suggestions of what should be done and how women can stand strong together to fight against the torment we collectively endure.

The Means of Reproduction is a hard hitting read. Goldberg opens the eyes of the reader to the unjust treatment of women due to reproduction. Feminist activists will be motivated to take stronger action after reading this book. Anyone else will be hit with the realization that they can no longer choose to be ignorant. The facts are stacked up, and it’s time to take action.

Review by Sarah Eve Nichols-Fulghum

(Crossposted at Feminist Review)

In his inaugural address, Barack Obama said, “We will restore science to its rightful place.” Yet just a few weeks later the Stimulus Package was stripped of provisions to expand affordable family planning, “a betrayal of millions of low-income women” as Planned Parenthood termed it. Republicans successfully jettisoned the provisions on the claim that family planning would do little to stimulate the economy, though they provided no statistical or economical rationale for this, proving only that prejudice and the culture wars still take precedent over the evidence of statistical science.

Just a few weeks later and now a detailed study from the Guttmacher Institute is out clearly showing the economic and social benefits of family planning:

Publicly funded family planning prevents nearly 2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 800,000 abortions in the United States each year, saving billions of dollars, according to new research intended to counter conservative objections to expanding the program

…

Report co-author Rachel Benson Gold called the family planning program “smart government at its best,” asserting that every dollar spent on it saves taxpayers $4 in costs associated with unintended births to mothers eligible for Medicaid-funded natal care.

For a Republican block that is so focused on saving Americans their tax dollars, family planning seems to cohere extremely well with their notions of economic stimulus after all. Let’s hope that the Democrats don’t bow out so easily on their next fight: they claim that they will soon work toward a large increase in funding for Title X, the main federal family planning program.

Let’s also hope that such two-faced rhetoric as that of Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, who termed the attempt to include family planning in the stimulus package a “shameful population control program that targeted low-income families,” disappears from the debate. Providing access to family planning and contraception does not add up to coercion. Taking away this access for those who cannot otherwise afford it does.

Oh, happy day! I was alerted by an email from NARAL Pro-Choice America announcing that President Obama has signed an executive order putting an end to the Global Gag Rule after eight arduous years. Yesterday, on the thirty-sixth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Obama put out the following statement:

“On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose.”

The Global Gag Rule was first implemented by Reagan and banned tax-payer money from going to international family planning groups. Clinton ended it, Bush reinstated it, and now Obama has ended it again. Let’s hope it’s gone for good.

CBS News reports also on how an anti-choice group has used Obama’s image once again in an ad, just as his image was used in the Prop 8 battle, despite his opposition to their cause.

Image Credit.

Is this a new day, or what?! Check out these two headlines, both from this morning:

First Embryonic Stem-Cell Trial Gets Approval from the FDA – WSJ

Obama Ends Funding Pan for Abortion Groups Abroad – Yahoo

(Thanks, Virginia, for the heads up!)

It’s a question on all of our minds as we wait and watch to see what the Obama Administration will tackle first. And the feminists are getting busy. Do check out the live blogging going on at RHRealityCheck Live Blog @ 3pm eastern tomorrow–on what happens to be the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Sounds like it’ll be a vigorous and provocative conversation.

I just had to put up a quick post highlighting some of the great articles coming out of RH Reality Check discussing what Obama’s administration will mean for reproductive rights. Over a year ago, RH Reality Check published a questionnaire filled out by Obama’s campaign staff outlining his nuanced, but firm view on reproductive rights.

Now that President Bush is doing his best to undermine reproductive rights in the last days of his presidency, how sure can we be that a President Obama will live up to the promises seen in Obama the candidate? As with much of the future Obama administration, right now we can only react and predict as his nominations and appointments unfold. So, the good, the bad, and the ugly?

The (very) good: Obama nominated Dawn Johnsen this week to head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. Johnsen is a fierce, pro-choice advocate who served as Legal Director for NARAL Pro-Choice America from 1988-1993.

The, well, not bad, just unknown: Obama’s office announced the nomination of CNN’s Sanjay Gupta for surgeon general. Gupta’s CNN show, “House Call,” has avoided the topic of reproductive health and when talking about AIDS has never really touched on the topic of sex. http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/01/08/but-can-he-talk-about-sex

Still, reproductive issues specifically rarely grace the screen. An entire episode devoted to “women’s health issues” covered only the topics of breast cancer, smoking, and heart disease. In a 2004 special on multiple births, he headed up the top of the news program with the news that pregnancies among girls ages 10-14 were on the decline, which he attributed to “abstinence programs and birth control,” a fairly ambiguous and tentative statement.

And the Ugly: Well, this may actually be a good. It seems that right-wing, anti-choice extremists are already plotting their opposition marches and rallies and false information spreading. While this is something pro-choice organizations will have to focus on combating, it is a good sign that the opposition is scared of what an Obama administration will mean for reproductive rights.