reproductive justice

Three Things:

1. Barack Obama appeared as ever very cool, very collected, very smart. McCain appeared, just like his campaign, rather erratic, all-over-the-place, and definitely a stream-of-consciousness man.

2. Both gave their stock answers on the Roe v. Wade question; though it is worthwhile to take a close look at McCain’s answer:

SCHIEFFER: But even if it was someone — even someone who had a history of being for abortion rights, you would consider them?

MCCAIN: I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade that would be part of those qualifications. But I certainly would not impose any litmus test.

That’s my bolding, call it the bolding of shock. McCain directly contradicts himself within two sentences. Deciding whether a candidate is qualified for the bench by looking at whether he/she supported Roe v. Wade is a litmus test.

3. Sex Ed, anyone?

It got a brief mention by Obama:

But there surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, “We should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby.”

And… that was it. I’ll have more to say on this tomorrow. Sex and Sensibility is, per usual, running a bit late but will be up tomorrow.

Tonight is the This Is What Women Want Speak Out here in NYC. So here is what I want, what I’d like to tell the candidates, what I want them to hear. And a bigtime thanks goes to the National Council for Research on Women for their Big 5 website – a motherload of information for those of you similarly wanting to put it out there and help bring our issues to the candidates’ attention.

As a woman hoping to bring a child into this world, I have a lot of wants right about now.

As a working woman, I want guaranteed leave. Yes, it’s true, some limited unpaid leave is made mandatory under the Family Medical Leave Act. But I find it pretty disgusting that the United States is not among the 168 countries worldwide that provide paid maternity leave. And did you know, dear candidates, that mothers without paid leave in our country take fewer weeks off from work after childbirth than women with leave benefits, putting both mothers and infants at risk for health complications? And while we’re at it, nearly half (47%) of private-sector workers and 22 million women workers do not have any paid sick days. Nearly half the women who take off from work to care for a sick child give up their wages to do so. Three-quarters of women living in poverty sacrifice wages to look after sick children. If I sound frustrated, it’s because I am. Fix this, puleese?

When I become a mother, I’m going to want affordable childcare. Did you know, dear candidates, that nationwide, nearly 12 million children under age 5 are in childcare each week and, in every region of the United States, childcare fees surpass the average amount families spend on food? And of course, childcare costs are particularly weighty for poor and low-income families, who pay a significantly higher share of their income for care than higher-level income groups. Providing childcare subsidies reduces work schedule-related problems for single working mothers by about 56%. So why not supply more of these?

As the future mother of a future daughter or son, I want a personal promise from you that Roe v. Wade will never be overturned. And I want you, dear candidates, to take the lead in promoting women’s reproductive rights and health, especially the preservation of reproductive rights and health for low income women and women of color. I want honest sex ed in our schools, and an end to this federally-funded abstinence-only hoohah.

That’s for starters. What do YOU want? Tell it to mic tonight at LaGuardia Community College if you happen to be in the NYC vicinity. The “This Is What Women Want Pre-Debate Speakout” is taking place tonight @ 7:00 PM and it’s free: Mainstage Theater, 31-10 Thomson Avenue, LaGuardia Community College, Long Island City, Queens. More info available here.

Jacqueline Hudak’s column Family Stories appears the first Monday of the month. Here’s Jacqueline! -Deborah

As a feminist family therapist, my work is filled with stories.

I’ve wanted to add my voice to the conversation about Sarah Palin, and was reminded of this particular story from my practice, which I heard several years ago. I finally knew what I needed to say to Sarah Palin.

My patient was a 70-year old mother. I was working both with her and with her grown children, all in their forties at the time. The oldest daughter, who I’ll call Cathy, had been a client of mine, so I was familiar with her particular family story. On this day, only Cathy and her mother were able to attend the session; looking back, it was bit of divine providence.

Early in the session, the white-haired, frail mother looked at Cathy and said, “I’ve been thinking about telling you something. I haven’t spoken about it since it happened forty years ago, and always thought I would take this to my grave.”

The mother asked Cathy if she remembered a time when she was about 5 years old, and was left with her younger brother at her mother’s friend’s house. I knew for certain Cathy did remember. In fact, those days were vivid in her otherwise cloudy memory. The time her mother left her was part of a narrative she constructed about being abandoned as a young child to care for her younger sibling until her mother returned days later without explanation.

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Check out this quickie in Dame about the advent of the male pill–an injection or patch once every 12 months that acts as an impermanent vasectomy. Writes Dame’s Jonathan Bender, “It’s about time science caught up to the changing gender roles.” More on the science of it here. Thoughts?!

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Well, speakin’ of reproduction! This just in via Elaine Tyler May, who currently teaches at the University of Minnesota and was twelve years old in 1960 when the Pill was approved by the FDA. Although not yet old enough back then for the event to have had any personal significance for her, she was already interested in the subject because her father was one of the clinical researchers who helped develop the Pill, and her mother was a founder of free birth control clinics in Los Angeles. She’s now doing research for a book and asks that this query be passed around widely. Please pass it on!

To learn more about Elaine and her oevre–which includes the groundbreaking book Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era—click here.

Dear Friends (and friends of friends…),

The Pill is often considered one of the most important innovations of the twentieth century. As I investigate this claim for a new book—set for release on the 50th anniversary of the Pill’s FDA approval (Basic Books, 2010)—I’m looking to include the voices and stories of real people. I hope yours will be one of them. I’m eager to hear from men as well as women, of all ages and backgrounds.

Have you or any of your partners taken the Pill? Why or why not? How did it work for you—physically, emotionally, and ethically? How has it compared with other contraceptive methods you or your partners have used?
· What has been the impact of the Pill on your sex life, relationships, political or social attitudes, and beliefs about the medical or pharmaceutical establishments?
· Do you have opinions about public policies related to access, availability, approval or limitations on the development and distribution of the Pill and related contraceptive products (the patch, the “morning after pill,” long-term injections, etc.).
· Anything else you think I should know?

Send me your most richly detailed answers to any and all of these questions (and don’t forget to include your age, gender, where you live, occupation, ethnic/religious/racial background, sexual orientation, marital status, political party affiliation, or any other biographical info you think is important). If you would like to participate in my study but would prefer to respond to a questionnaire, please let me know and I will happily send you one.

I’m interested in hearing from men and women who have used the Pill and those who have not, those who used it briefly or a long time ago, or who use it now. I am also eager to hear from people who work in fields that relate to the use and availability of the Pill (such as medicine, public health, social work, education, etc.). You will remain anonymous. I will use your contact information only to respond to you directly and to let you know when the book will be available for purchase (at a discount to contributors!).

And just one more thing. I not only want to hear your voice, but the voices of those you love, teach, preach to, learn from, and work with.

Please pass this request on! The more responses I receive, and the greater the diversity of respondents, the more the book will reflect the wide range of experiences and attitudes that have shaped the Pill’s history over the last half century. I hope to hear from you. Please write to me at elainetylermay@gmail.com.

Thanks very much! Elaine Tyler May

Two interesting tidbits about abortion in the news recently:

In American pop culture, the face of abortion is often a frightened teenager, nervously choosing to terminate an unexpected pregnancy. The numbers tell a far more complex story in which financial stress can play a pivotal role. Half of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year are 25 or older. Only about 17 percent are teens. About 60 percent have given birth to least one child prior to getting an abortion. Read more.

Second, as abortion rate drops (as we all know they have), use of RU-486 is on rise, as WaPo’s Rob Stein reports. On the market since 2000, more than 840,000 U.S. women have used mifepristone since it was approved, according to Danco Laboratories, which sells it. More than half of abortion providers now offer the option, a 70 percent increase from the first half of 2001, according the Guttmacher Institute. Yep, thirty-five years after the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision, a pill that has largely faded from the rancorous public debate over abortion has slowly and quietly begun to transform the experience of ending a pregnancy in the United States. Read the rest.

(Thanks again to CCF for the heads up.)

Frank F. Furstenberg, Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and Senior Fellow at the Council on Contemporary Families, has just released a briefing paper intended to stimulate discussion among researchers and clinicians in advance of the Council’s 11th annual conference, April 25-26, University of Illinois at Chicago–where I’ll definitely be! Join me?

Here’s the jist, via AScribe Newswire:

Teen Pregnancy and Poverty: 30-Year-Study Confirms That Living in Economically-Depressed Neighborhoods, Not Teen Motherhood, Perpetuates Poverty

— In fairy tales, there are two possible outcomes for a young girl. In the Disney version, the handsome prince rescues her, then marries her, and everyone lives happily ever after. In the dark version, the heroine makes a dreadful mistake that leads to disaster. For the past 15 years, political pundits have been telling us a dark fairy tale about American teens, blaming America’s high poverty rates on the actions of teenage girls who have babies out of wedlock. This assumption guided the welfare reform act of 1996, which promised to write America a happy ending by getting teens to stop having babies, get married, and thus end poverty.

But a new longitudinal study by Frank Furstenberg (University of Pennsylvania) shows that fairy tales have no place in the realm of policy-making. His data reveal that teen childbearing is NOT the reason that many Americans have been trapped in poverty over the past three decades….Furstenberg reports that

– teen motherhood tends to occur among people ALREADY trapped in poverty

– postponing motherhood does not make much of a difference to people’s chances of escaping poverty.

– impoverished girls who bear children as teens do almost as well educationally and economically — or as poorly — as the girls who postpone childbearing.

Preventing and reducing teen pregnancy is a valuable social goal, says CCF Fellow Furstenberg. In fact the United States had a dramatic decline in teen pregnancies–and abortions–from 1991 to 2005. But, using observations from his Baltimore study, and supplementing it with current reports from demographers, economists, and demographers, sociologist Frank Furstenberg reminds us that the phrase, “it’s the economy, stupid” is not yet out of date. For details and policy recommendations, check out Furstenberg’s full briefing report at www.contemporaryfamilies.org.

Virginia Rutter (the gal who brought us “Who Votes Their Gender?” the other week) took time out from writing college lectures to pen this excellent review of Juno from the perspective of a sex researcher. As you likely know by now, Juno was just nominated by the Academy for four Oscars, including Best Film, and Best Actress (Ellen Page). We’re bound to see a continued discussion of the issues the film raises in coming months, and here Virginia calls our attention to something other reviewers have overlooked: the way our culture talks about–or rather, doesn’t talk about–luuuvvv. -GWP

Can We Talk about Love, Please?

The movies are giving demographers, sociologists, and sex researchers a boost these days. Movies about unwanted pregnancy that eschew abortion, such as Juno, Knocked Up, and Waitress, are giving gifted columnists (like Ellen Goodman and Carrie Rickey) a chance to contemplate where the culture stands with respect to unwanted pregnancy, early motherhood, and all things youthful, tawdry, and anxiety producing for those of us who consider ourselves grown ups now. Those kids are different from us grown ups, and the problems that they have are about the mechanics of sex, and the rules and practices around abortion, adoption, and teen delivery.

Meanwhile, it is Christmas in January for a sex researcher. There is a lot of important teen sex and unwanted pregnancy news out there, too. Abortion rates are down, Guttmacher reports. The fantasized link between teen pregnancy and poverty is screwy, as reported to the Council on Contemporary Families, and instead, poverty is caused by (who’d a thunk it?) the economy. Ouch. How unromantic.

But I don’t want to write about that, any more than I want to write my sociology lectures or finish my latest sex data analysis, right now. The cultural theme that Juno raised for a lot of commentators is whether we as a society are making sex and reproductive decisions look too easy and too simple.

Mind you, the main theme, focused on a woman’s body, seems to have crowded up some other ideas that matter. I have wondered why we haven’t detected a cultural story to be told here in this movie about the fact that:

1. Consequences of sex are a component of the plot in Juno, just as they are in Knocked Up; and

2. The boy, Paulie Bleeker (played by Michael Cera), though not as touched by the pregnancy crisis as the girl, Juno MacGuff (played by Ellen Page) remains a large focus of the unfolding story of the consequences of sex.

But, like I said, none of this grips me. You know what grips me? Love. And I’m convinced that we just don’t talk about it enough.
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The value and pleasure of Juno was that it was a story of love—where the kids sing to each other “you’re a part time lover and full time friend.” In the messy, dull, weird world of conformity and reticence that dominates high school relationships, Juno sweetly offers a story of shy, sweet, but steadfast friendship and romantic love.

Family love was there too. I was touched by the love and acceptance that the father showed his daughter, even as he was befuddled by her choices. I cheered at the loyalty portrayed by the stepmother when she dressed down the judgmental ultrasound operator. This is the kind of love we can live with, the kind of love that we need in order to live, survive, thrive, and just be good people. It isn’t “kill yourself love” like we get from movies like Titanic, which is the kind of love we are more likely to glamorize and talk about.

Cultural commentators, chief among them Stephanie Coontz, highlight the way in which marriage itself has been transformed from an institution based on commitment to an institution based on love. We’ve got a host of politicians who respond to this reality with hand-wringing about the loss of old-fashioned commitment. But we will do well to contemplate, elucidate, illustrate and talk about ways to love skillfully, kindly, and with compassion and acceptance that were illustrated in Juno. In the end, love—doable, realistic, everyday love–was the protective envelope (not marriage, not traditional values) that made us see that Juno the teen mother was going to be okay. In other words, love, done right, serves the kind of social purpose that commitment and traditional values do. And jeepers, the songs are so sweet when they are about love.

Since, despite my impulses, I have to keep working on my sociology lectures and my sex research, I have a nice little social science illustration for why love matters that brings us full circle to thinking about teen sex. In her research, Amy Schalet (UMass-Amherst) contrasted how teens and their parents in the United States think about and communicate about sexuality as compared to in The Netherlands. She found that Dutch parents and teens actually believe that young people can experience love, can be in love, and that love is an important prerequisite to sexual activity, while in the United States, parents are skeptical of their teenagers’ capacity to be in love, and instead keep expressing the view that boys and girls must be in some kind of antagonistic, sexual arms race. The lesson in Professor Schalet’s work: the age of first sex is higher and the rates of unwanted pregnancy and STDs are lower among Dutch versus American youth. Valuing love works. Don’t forget it.

I say, up with Juno! Up with love! Now, to write lectures and look at data.

Today, the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, has become Blog for Choice Day. Some poignant blogging going on around the blogosphere. Thought I’d share a few of the posts that have most caught my eye:

Gloria Feldt at Huffington Post, “I Am Roe”
Courtney Martin at Huffington Post, “Admitting the Complexities of Abortion”
Erica Jong at Huffington Post, “If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would Be a Sacrament”
Jill Filipovic, “10 Reasons to Support Reproductive Justice on Roe Day”
Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman at The Nation, “Long Roe to Hoe”
Susie Bright at Susie Bright’s Journal, “Anatomy of a Smushmortion”

Also:

The Guttmacher Institute’s newly released report finds that the U.S. abortion rate is the lowest it has been in more than three decades. Commentary by Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet, here.

Salon asked a number of feminists to talk about the court case that changed their lives, and why it matters more than ever. Read their responses here.

And the ever-wonderful Feministing will be blogging reproductive justice all day long.

Damn. There’s wireless at this here writing retreat. For the most part, though, I’m being “good.” Meaning, staying offline. But I couldn’t help but post this cool button below, once I signed up for Blog for Choice Day, which will take place on January 22, 2008–the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Which, as I’m watching the caucuses and primaries, seems to be a pretty important thing to continue making tons of noise about, if you know what I mean.