Anti-Choice Movement: Confrontation or Compromise?

The Wall Street Journal reports, generally, on the state of the anti-legal abortion movement post-election. Do they cooperate with an incoming Democratic administration and Congress or continue the fight with the same tactics, engaging in the same battles status quo? According to the article:

Hard-liners say they cannot compromise on their goal of criminalizing the roughly 1.2 million abortions in the U.S. each year. Judie Brown, president of American Life League, calls it "the civil rights movement's final battle."

But others the article cites, like Reverend Joel Hunter (who has made a name for himself by elevating issues like poverty and global warming above criminalizing abortion in the pro-life agenda), "sees a new willingness among pro-life activists to cooperate with pro-choice forces in search of a middle ground."

The article notes:

President-elect Barack Obama and other Democrats have promised to work to make abortion rare, so long as it remains legal. "Maybe it's time to take them up on the offer" instead of "bashing our heads over and over again against the same wall," writes Paul Strand, a blogger for the Christian Broadcasting Network.

The problem with these kinds of arguments is that it still seems to ignore the inherent issues surrounding access to safe and legal abortion for so many reproductive health advocates: it's a social justice and personal liberty issue. Only a woman who is pregnant has the right to decide, until the baby is viable outside of her womb, whether she will sustain that life or not. If we continue to frame abortion as "sad" and "tragic" we continue to bash our own heads against a wall as we try harder and harder to explain why abortion should be legal at all? And, finally, the focus needs to be on prevention, health care, education and ensuring social safety nets for women who choose to keep their babies. Where is the heated discussion about family planning programs, access to contraception, comprehensive sexual health education, ensuring paid family leave, access to prenatal care for all pregnant women, post-natal care, health care for young children?

An Unlikely Bond

In the Inquirer Mobile today, Filipino reproductive health advocates report on a recently embarked study tour of Mexico's reproductive health community embracing a willingness to learn as much as possible about Mexico's family planning successes over the last decade. Mexico and Philippines have much in common in this area: both countries are overwhelmingly Catholic with a strong Catholic leadership that influences reproductive health behavior and policies. But the study tour, according to a Rina Jimenez-David, was organized to look at "how policymakers, implementers, civil society and even young people work together to get the [family planning] program going despite challenges raised by a conservative government and an increasingly strident Catholic opposition."

Mexico's reproductive health movement has accomplished a considerable amount, amassing many successes in recent years, as compared to The Philippino movement where  "the family planning program has been reduced to the promotion of a single, unreliable method--the so-called natural family planning--which so far, despite the millions spent on its promotion, is still largely rejected by couples and women." In Mexico, however:

Today, Mexico boasts of 70.9 percent contraceptive coverage for women of reproductive age (compared to about 45 percent in the Philippines). Twenty years ago, said Olaya Vargas, the average fertility rate in Mexico was seven children, and the population growth rate (PGR) was 3 to 4 percent. Today, the fertility rate has fallen to 2.1 per woman, and the PGR is down to 1.9 percent.

"Family planning is a national policy and therefore it is mandatory and must be enforced in all the states (Mexico follows the federal system)," replied Olaya Vargas when asked about the possibility of conservatives in state governments simply refusing to implement the program in their areas."

Dump Abstinence-Only Programs In Hawaii

The Honolulu Star Bulletin features an opinion piece today imploring the state to "dump ineffective abstinence only sex education." Hawaii receives federal funds to teach abstinence-only programs which bar discussion about contraception, birth control or how to protect oneself against sexually transmitted infections.

The piece states that Hawaii has the 22nd highest teen pregnancy rate in the country and that,

a 2007 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 36 percent of high school students in the islands had had sexual intercourse. Of the nearly 24 percent who were sexually active, a little less than half did not use condoms the last time they had intercourse.

Hawaii would hardly be acting on its own should it decide to say no thank you to the federal funding. The article notes that,

States such as Connecticut, New York, Virginia and Rhode Island have seen the wisdom of doing without federal funds in lieu of presenting a thorough education. According to a story by the Star-Bulletin's Helen Altonn, they are among nearly half the states that have declined the funding.

Indiana Focuses on Sexual Violence and Its Impact on Women, Communities

The Chicago Tribune, in its article Indiana seeks input on stopping sexual violence, reports on the ways in which crisis situations and economic uncertainty increase the rates of rape and other sexual violence against women:

"In crisis situations, there are many things that cause people to do things that they might not do otherwise. Circumstances outside people's control can really affect what they do," she said.

Such crises contribute to nearly one in five Indiana women experiencing some type of sexual assault in her lifetime, and one in eight reporting having been raped, according to a survey last year for the Indiana Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

The state will host a series of forums on the issue in order to "identify local factors that contribute to sexual assaults and find ways to mitigate them." But, the article reminds us, that changing the ways in which a society reacts to and deals with sexual violence, "unlearning" the issue, takes years of not generations to implement. One advocate in the article says, "It takes time. You're changing a social norm."