Currently, federal funds are allowed to be used for those stem cell lines created on or before August 9, 2001, per the Bush administration policy instituted on that date. The new finding is being heralded as the solution to the problem of limited access to stem cell lines. From Richard Hayes of the Center for Genetics and Society in the LA Times:
In general, Republicans have equated medical research using single-celled clonal embryos with murder, while Democrats have promoted state ballot initiatives enshrining human embryo cloning as a constitutional right and committing billions of taxpayer dollars to a procedure that could open the door to socially pernicious applications, threaten women's health and exacerbate healthcare inequities.
Now we have a chance to put the cloning debate behind us.
Hayes goes on to argue that with the cloning debate on the back burner we can get to the matter of addressing the implications of genetic technologies. But before I get to that, a little primer on the new developments:
There are indeed several benefits to this new research finding. Specifically, according to Joshua Trojak, acting executive director of the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, the new finding could "make it easier for scientists to collaborate across state lines." Currently, collaborative research among states is challenging given that each state that funds embryonic stem cell research has separate rules, regulation and restrictions. Further, states that have severely restricted or no access to these cell lines are likely to commit funding for research using the new technique.
This might have some negative implications for scientific research if the new technology eclipses current research on embryonic stem cells. According to the Post, Richard Murphy, interim director of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine , claimed that will be "two parallel tracks of research" involving embryonic stem cells and stem cells derived from adult cells via the new technology. In an effort to make these distinctions clear, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni said research using the new methods would be eligible for federal funds with the "only limit [being] the quality of the science" (Washington Post, 11/22). On the international front, German Research Minister Annette Schavan announced that the German government will double its funding for stem cell research from five million euros, or $7.4 million, to just under 10 million euros, or about $14.8 million.
Assuming that these issues can be reconciled and the procedures are effectively compatible, where do we go from here? There are several critical issues to keep in mind as stem cell research becomes commonplace:
As technologies become less controversial and increasingly supported women's health and reproductive justice advocates must keep vigilant watch to ensure that they meet the needs of our bodies and communities.
]]>According to Andrea Kavanagh, director of the Environment Trust's Pure Salmon Campaign, the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition's (NHMNBC) recent recommendations for fish and seafood consumption for pregnant and breast-feeding women are "misleading" and a "classic example of industry-driven marketing under the cloak of scientific research."
The guidelines, released earlier this month, recommended that pregnant and breast-feeding women should consume at least 12 ounces of fish and seafood weekly for optimal brain development of fetuses, infants and young children. However, these guidelines conflict with current FDA and EPA guidelines.
In 2005, both agencies issued separate warnings advising young children, pregnant women, nursing women and women of childbearing age to avoid consuming swordfish, king mackerel, shark and tilefish because of high mercury levels. The warnings also recommended that those groups consume no more than 12 ounces of fish weekly and eat no more than six ounces of canned albacore tuna weekly.
Mercury, a highly toxic heavy metal, is particularly dangerous for infants and children, and it can be passed from pregnant women to their fetuses. Consumption of fish is one of the well-established means by which humans are exposed to mercury. Knowing this, why would the NHMNBC support an increase in the advised amount of fish consumption for pregnant and breast-feeding women?
Apparently, the coalition accepted a $60,000 grant from the National Fisheries Institute, a fishing industry trade association, to help fund the research. The coalition, a not-for-profit group with nearly 150 members, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, March of Dimes, and the CDC.
In a move that has angered many of these member organizations, the "researchers who developed the report ... didn't bother to vet its decidedly contentious findings and advice with the coalition's wider membership before public release," Kavanagh writes.
Claim to care about "unborn" children, then actively promote the industries that pollute the environment with toxins that cause serious developmental diseases - it's textbook hypocrisy.
In the past six years, however, we've become accustomed to such schemes and inconsistency. In late 2003, one month after the President and all his men signed the "Partial Birth Abortion Ban," he also signed EPA legislation that would delay implementing mercury regulations, giving utilities corporations more time to cut their mercury emissions. The change purportedly resulted in more children being exposed to nerve damage and developmental diseases, while giving the corporations and industries and easy out. The cost: the health of women and the safe fetal development.
Then, in April of 2004, President Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, a bill that creates a separate federal offense if bodily injury or death of a "child in utero" occurs during the commission of certain crimes. He signed this bill claiming that it was in the interest of protecting women and their unborn children, but did not flinch in the following weeks, when he pushed legislation to undercut domestic implementation of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). These self-proclaimed "friends of the fetus" were making it more difficult, to regulate new POPs as and when they are identified and would have allowed the EPA to ignore treaty decisions when evaluating the safety of new POPs. March of Dimes has warned that "high levels of exposure to pesticides may contribute to miscarriage, preterm delivery and birth defects ... and may affect development of the fetus' reproductive system."
Last year, a Bush Administration proposal to promote pesticide experimentation upon humans drew harsh criticism from legislators. The proposal, inconsistent with federal law, would have allowed manufacturers to conduct testing of pesticides upon both pregnant women and children.
While conservative, anti-choice activists and lawmakers continue to stress how much they value children and families, their lawmakers are consistently granting immunity to industry and corporations whose policies will endanger those very families. While such pundits and lawmakers emphasize the responsibility of individual pregnant women to ensure the safety of their fetus, often at risk of prosecution, they are giving a free pass to businesses that directly endanger pregnant women and their fetuses.
This time, the "selective repackaging of science, combined with slick marketing to sell more fish to pregnant women and women of childbearing age, show the height of corporate irresponsibility," says Kavanagh, concluding that the report is "one fishy marketing scheme that consumers should throw back."
And if our lawmakers allow such irresponsibility, perhaps we should throw them back as well.
]]>Drawing on the argument made in 2001 by economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner of "Freakonomics" fame, which links a decline in criminal violence in the 1990's U.S. to the legalization of abortion in 1973, Cabral made a case for legalizing abortion. Current law bans abortions, except in the case of rape or to save the life of a pregnant woman. Cabral noted that abortion is accessible to wealthy women, who are able to pay for illegal services. It is low-income women, who often live in areas rife with crime, that are left without any recourse if they need to end a pregnancy.
The governor continued on to claim that in affluent areas of Rio de Janeiro, the number of children per woman is similar to that of Sweden, whereas the number of children per woman in impoverished areas of the city is similar to that of Zambia or Gabon. "That's a factory for producing marginal people," Cabral said to the EFE News Service, again linking abortion accessibility to a decrease in crime, per the "Freakonomics" theory.
The Levitt-Dubner theory goes like this: the major decline in urban violent crime rates have happened approximately eighteen years after the 1973 passage of Roe v. Wade. In states where abortion was legalized earlier, these declines happened earlier. The reduction in the rate of violent crime, according to this analysis, affected the generation of people born after the legalization of abortion. Levitt and Dubner explain this analysis by assessing the reasons that people have abortions: poverty, living in an environment where it is undesirable to raise a child, economic concerns, etc. Now here's the leap: an unwanted child has a greater chance of becoming a criminal. And, Levit and Dubner believe, those unwanted children live in environments that facilitate criminal and violent behavior. Therefore, by legalizing abortion the US a large number of unwanted children, likely to become criminals, were never born, and the crime rate fell.
This theory has been debated and argued from all angles for several years now. Steven Levitt explained the theory further in 2004. For a pithy summary on the main debates and rebuttals, see here. Despite admitting to a couple of mistakes, the authors maintain the relevance of their theory. I don't want to get involved in the causation vs. correlation debate, or sucked into statistical economic analysis. Those debates are better left to economists.
Instead, from the reproductive justice perspective, this theory troubles me for a few reasons, none of which I found on the blogs or in the rebuttals. Given that the argument has resurfaced, this time in Brazilian politics, now might be just the time to mention them.
Steven Levitt has repeatedly asserted that the theory did not aim to have racial implications, especially in response to the outrageous comments made by William Bennett. Cabral, however, implicitly made this issue into a racial one by offering a demographic comparison between Sweden and Zambia/ Gabon in relation to what is going on in Rio. When you talk about poverty and inaccessibility of abortions, are women and families of color merely the relevant demographic because they are disproportionately poor and unable to access abortions, especially if illegal? Not exactly. In addition to being the demographic most affected if abortion is illegal, poor women of color have also suffered from sterilization abuse. They are also most frequently negatively affected by the foster care system. In other words, for poor women of color, the right to have and keep their children is as significant as the right not to. The question on my mind, is one that's missing from the debate as yet: how do these factors affect whether their children become criminals or not? Do they? Are the children of poor women of color who want their kids also more likely to become criminals? It is that last question that I'm sure the supporters of the theory would be uncomfortable making, because of its obvious racist implications. Namely, if women of color who want their kids raise criminals, and women of color who don't want their kids raise criminals then real culprit is not the lack of access to abortion, but the woman of color herself. Somehow, I don't think that's where the theory intended to lead us.
In addition, over 60% of women who have abortions have already had one or more child. The Levitt-Dubner analysis links the propensity to become a criminal with the factors that make women decide they want abortions. On their account, the reasons that women want abortions, like poverty and other environmental factors, are the reasons that people become criminals. According to the most recent Guttmacher report on women in the US:
On average, women give four reasons for choosing abortion. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.
If 60% of these women already have children, are those children more likely to be criminals as well, given that they are being raised in a similar environment that the "unwanted child" would be raised in? Do these reasons, cited most by women who want abortions, line up with the reasons given by Levitt and Donahue? If not, what are the implications for their theory?
Ultimately, in raising these questions I aim to get at one element of this analysis that irks me. The analysis focuses on social factors that result in crime and links it with the social factors that result in women wanting abortions. These factors are not arbitrarily linked. In reality, the fulcrum on which the theory rests is the woman and her life. Poor women, women of color, and women who don't have access to reproductive rights do not live in a vacuum. They live in our communities, and they live in all regions of our countries. Cabral is using this theory to draw attention to the reasons that women need abortions, and the fact that those conditions also foster violence and despair. This is certainly an important claim, and one that needs closer investigation. However, by grounding the need for legal abortion in such a theory, Cabral is obscuring the most important factor of all -- the woman. They need access to safe and legal abortions as well as the entire range of reproductive and sexual rights not simply so that they don't raise criminals, but so that they can have control over their bodies; so that their communities are secure, and so that they and their families might enjoy a life without coercion.
]]>Women hold 86, or 16.1%, of the 535 seats in the 110th US Congress. These seats are 16 of the 100 seats in the Senate and 70 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. These numbers do not demonstrate equity -- they scream of disparity. In state government, 76 women hold 24.1% of the 315 available positions. Among these women, 45 are Democrats, 28 are Republicans, and 3 were elected in nonpartisan races. For women of color, the situation is worse in statewide politics, where they comprise only 4.7% of the total 7,382 state legislators.
Sixteen percent. Twenty-four percent. Four point seven percent.
We all know, and have known for a long time, that women are not adequately represented in the world of politics. But given that during this election cycle there is a high profile female candidate for President, we might be lulled into thinking that things are improving steadily.
I urge you to stop and consider those numbers. Actually, I encourage outrage at those numbers. The marginal improvements in women's representation are not sufficient. If women are not participating in political life, how can we expect women's interests to be adequately represented in our local, state and national politics? The issues at stake are about equality and reproductive rights, yes. But they are also about poverty, race, children, health care, schools, and the environment. They are issues as varied and complex as the portion of the population they pertain to.
Jennifer Lawless, a professor of political science at Brown University, has researched this problem. She writes,
I've identified three basic barriers women face: family roles, what it means to be a "qualified" candidate and recruitment efforts... We must think creatively about how to integrate family with politics, as well as be cognizant of the double bind that even highly successful, professional women face. We must identify and condemn the kind of sexist behavior that leads women to feel that they must be twice as good to get half as far in the political sphere. But perhaps most easily, realistically, and concretely, we must recruit more women to run for office.
Women win elections at the same rate as men. Yet they simply don't run for office as frequently. Today, though, I offer a bit of encouragement. In the face of these dismal statistics, She Should Run, a project of the Women's Campaign Forum, is taking names. That is, they are taking nominations to encourage pro-choice women, leaders in their communities, to run for elected office.
[T]he She Should Run campaign [is] a comprehensive effort to gather nominations of 1,000 pro-choice women who should run for public office. We are committed to ensuring these women get the essential encouragement they need and to providing them access to key campaign education and resources.
What we need from you are the nominations. Maybe your child's teacher has some excellent ideas about education reform. Maybe your aunt is a tireless community activist. Maybe your lawyer has talked about running for office but never taken the leap. Research shows these women are much more likely to run if someone asks them to.
Ilana Goldman, President of the Women's Campaign Forum, explained the rationale to me. "Women tend to run when asked," she noted. "Especially when they are encouraged by someone close to them, a trusted source. This project is creating a mechanism for more women to get that ask."
The project is not simply about getting women nominated to run, but will also support them throughout the process by offering trainings, educational support, local resources, and state party contacts. Goldman says that they women that of the 875 women that have been nominated thus far, "they have, on average, 20 years of experience and are deeply ingrained in their communities." Given that "women often think they need to have certain professional and skill boxes checked off before getting involved in politics," She Should Run encourages women to harness the skills they already have and acquire the support they need in order to run a successful campaign.
This project is a few months old, and just shy of their goal to get 1000 women nominated. Projects like this one will likely be a critical part of raising women's participation in public life. Such grassroots efforts, focused on the local efforts of women who are committed to improving their communities and ensuring that our laws and policies work for us, are exactly what we should advocate. Beyond tearing down the gender disparity and depressing statistics I mentioned earlier, and instead of supporting the wealthiest and most connected political hopefuls, this kind of organizing brings people with experience, expertise and passion to the forefront. It's great for women, and a perfect example of democracy at work.
]]>Know someone who would be a great candidate? Submit nominations here.
Thinking of running yourself? For a step-by-step guide, see here.
A little background: Jointly financed by the federal and state governments, SCHIP is administered by the states, which determine the design of its program, eligibility groups, benefit packages, payment levels for coverage, and administrative and operating procedures. The program benefits became available on October 1, 1997 and consisted of $24 billion dollars in matching federal funds over a period of 10 years. Medicaid covers approximately 28 million uninsured children. SCHIP aims to extend coverage to 5 million "targeted low-income" children who are ineligible for Medicaid, typically from families with income up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level. In 2007, this comes to about $41,000 for a family of four.
There is broad consensus that the program has helped reduce the rate of uninsurance among low income children by almost a third (perhaps such a program could benefit adults, whose rate of uninsurance has steadily climbed). Despite this, the number of uninsured children is relatively staggering-- an estimated 9 million (up 600,000 from 2005 to 2006). Some of those are children that were the intended "targets" for SCHIP. It's been a decade and about 30 percent of eligible children have yet to enroll, according to a new government study. For an excellent primer on the specifics of SCHIP and the debate see this issue brief from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
Now for the politics:Read More... Early this year, emboldened by their gains in Congress the Democrats began an effort to expand the program, based on its successes and keeping in mind its previous bipartisan support. If SCHIP funding levels remain the same, many states run the risk of losing coverage for many uninsured children. In July, the Senate voted to allocate $35 billion over the next 5 years; the House later voted, by a far narrower margin, to increase the program by $50 billion. With funding set to expire on Sept. 30, in mid-September the House and Senate agreed on a compromise bill including the Senate's proposed spending increase, which officials estimated would allow the coverage of about four million additional children. This is the bill that President Bush has just vetoed.
With the House vote at 265-149, the supporters of the bill will likely be unable to override Bush's veto, scheduled for October 18, 2007. In anticipation of the veto, Democratic leaders folded an extension of the S-CHIP program at its current funding level until mid-November into a stopgap budget measure recently passed.
What are the reasons given by President Bush, for vetoing the expansion of a successful program? On Wednesday in Lancaster, PA he said,
"I believe in private medicine. I believe in helping poor people, which was the intent of SCHIP, now being expanded beyond its initial intent. I also believe that the federal government should make it easier for people to afford private insurance. I don't want the federal government making decisions for doctors and customers."
This, of course, is not what SCHIP does. Under it, children are covered by private insurance, and have choices as to which private company they use. "Typically, children have a choice from among competing private health-insurance companies," Stan Dorn, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute, a non-partisan, DC-based research group, said in an NPR interview. "There's no federally specified benefits package. There's no individual entitlement," says Dorn.
There are also other myths, spoken as fact by President Bush, reported on by Julie Rovner of NPR.
Strangely, what is missing in all this coverage of SCHIP is the awareness children's poverty does not occur in a vacuum. We hear nothing about the rest of their families, poor and likely uninsured themselves. Family income and parent's employment status are perhaps the most important determinants of whether children have health care coverage and of the specific type of coverage they have. Children in mother-headed families are less likely to have insurance. As are children whose parents' jobs do not provide adequate coverage for their dependants.
What we have here is not a simple plan to insure poor children; it is a commentary on the state of this nation's working poor, many of whom are women. Poor pregnant women face these discrepancies before their children are born. Low-income women are consistently subject to poor or non-existent pre- and neo-natal care. If the Republicans truly cared about the welfare of pregnant women and the healthy children they hope to have, they would be at the forefront of such legislation.
There are so many people in the US who, despite earning well above the federal poverty level are unable to provide health care for their families and young children. Nonetheless, last week we heard the president complain that SCHIP would cover children who don't need government help. "This program expands coverage, federal coverage, up to families earning $83,000 a year. That doesn't sound poor to me," Bush said in Lancaster. Despite the fact that this is not true (the bill actually places limitations on income level eligibility), it demonstrates the administration's cavalier attitude toward the fact that many families who earn well above poverty levels are also unable to cover their children.
This debate on SCHIP seems to be a harbinger for the bigger debate about national health policy that has already become a staple issue in the presidential campaigns. It is being reported as a debate between two competing visions of universal coverage: federal or privatized. Allowing this framing of the debate is concession to party-politics. Republicans speak the words "socialized healthcare" with such loathing that you'd think it was the plague itself. Democrats are bending over backwards to make sure we don't think that they're actually advocating socialized healthcare. Yet the system of private coverage is disastrous and has left almost 50 million Americans in the lurch. Perhaps we'd gain more ground if we pushed our legislators outside the useless parameters of this bipartisan debate and into a conversation about how to solve the problem that when many people in our country get sick, they aren't able to get better.
]]>In this case, Janet Wade and her newborn infant, tested positive for marijuana and methamphetamine use. The state law says that the life of a human being begins at conception and that fetuses have "protectable interests in life, health and well-being." This law, enacted in 1986, has been used successfully in murder, manslaughter and wrongful death lawsuits against people who have caused a fetus' termination. Here, the court dismissed the charges against Wade because of a clause in the legislation stating, "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as creating a cause of action against a woman for indirectly harming her unborn child by failing to properly care for herself or by failing to follow any particular program of prenatal care."
As can be imagined, this case brings out some longstanding points on contention about fetal rights and women's health. I'd like to take this opportunity to challenge those who make this into a debate about women versus their fetuses. This false dichotomizing has continued for far too long, and it's time to set the record straight about some of the myths spread by conservative activists who masquerade their contempt for women as concern for fetal rights.
St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas found the MO court's decision devastating. "The way this is decided, essentially, it opens the door for a person who is pregnant to kill the child up until the moment of birth by just literally consuming too much alcohol or too many different types of drugs," Banas said.
This type of assessment of the situation leaves out a very significant component of the debate. Many of the women who Banas would like to charge with murder or manslaughter are not women who want to terminate their pregnancies. They are drug or alcohol addicted and they need treatment, not prosecution. I recently spoke with Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), who said, "Pregnant women have no more power to end their addictions than Rush Limbaugh does his."
This approach of prosecution and not treatment has the inevitable effect of preventing women from seeking the treatment they want and need, in order to have healthy babies. The medical community is in overwhelming consensus on this point, as are advocates working for just drug polices.
"Pregnant women will be likely to avoid seeking prenatal or open medical care for fear that their physician's knowledge of substance abuse or other potentially harmful behavior could result in a jail sentence rather than proper medical treatment." - Report of American Medical Association Board of Trustees, Legal Interventions During Pregnancy, 264 JAMA 2663, 267 (1990).
"Pregnant women should not be punished for adverse perinatal outcomes. The relationship between maternal behavior and perinatal outcome is not fully understood, and punitive approaches threaten to dissuade pregnant women from seeking health care and ultimately undermine the health of pregnant women and their fetuses." - American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee Opinion 321 (Nov. 2005).
In fact, many of the claims about fetal health and protection are made on the basis of faulty science. The phenomena of crack babies and meth babies are, according to much scientific investigation, fabrications. This is something that many find hard to believe, proving yet again the success of conservative posturing. This posturing effectively sidesteps the dangers to pregnant women by environmental and workplace hazards, not to mention cigarettes and alcohol, to reserve its harshest punishment for women addicted to crack and methamphetamines - drugs found in low income communities and communities of color.
"Throughout almost 20 years of research, none of us has identified a recognizable condition, syndrome or disorder that should be termed ‘crack baby'... We are deeply disappointed that American and international media continues to use a term that not only lacks any scientific basis but endangers and disenfranchises the children to whom it is applied." - From an open letter to the media from the nation's leading medical doctors and scientists. See the entire letter here. See a similar letter regarding "meth babies" here.
With all this scientific consensus, why to conservative lawmakers continue to push for the criminalization of drug addicted pregnant women? These cases are not rare, and despite recent victories, are not going away. Paltrow brings this analysis home, "The fetal rights arguments are made not to advance child health, but to control pregnant women... The idea that illegal drugs are uniquely dangerous is [an argument] based on junk science. It perpetuates a cycle of state power over poor people through the criminal justice system. These cases reflect the power of the state to say, ‘upon becoming pregnant you lose your civil rights.' "
Challenging the abuse of this system amounts to reclaiming both civil rights AND the culture of life. To do this, however, we must adamantly refuse to make this a debate between women's rights and fetal rights. The facts show that these are, medically and socially, the same thing.
For more analysis see:
Punishment and Prejudice: Punishing Drug-Addicted Pregnant Women, By Lynn Paltrow
Women and the War on Drugs by The Drug Policy Alliance
The Constitutional Rights of Pregnant Women, by Jill Morrison of the National Women's Law Center for Feministing.com
Criminalizing Motherhood by Silja J.A. Talvi for The Nation
]]>Makayla, also 15, from the Midwest, is "a traditional girl, a homebody who cooks like a chef and decorates like Martha Stewart. She also has a cheerful, upbeat outlook on life and spends a lot of time laughing. She says she is looking for a man with a sense of humor to take care of." Her cost? $24,995.
If you haven't already heard about the service from which these listings are taken, called Marry Our Daughter, don't worry just yet. It's been exposed as a hoax. It's worth noting, however, that the site certainly managed to fool a lot of people, garnering more than 60 million hits in its first week. Very well done, and awfully realistic, it contains testimonials from satisfied families, instructions on signing up your own daughter and a way to "propose" to those already listed. Claiming to be a "service assisting those following the Biblical tradition of arranging marriages for their daughters," the site has received thousands of angry letters, and - hold on to your seats- has also received thousands of proposals.
Why would someone do this? Site creator John Ordover claims he was trying to draw attention to marriage laws in the states. In the US, laws regarding the legal age for marriage vary by state and often conflict with statutory-rape laws. In cases with parental permission, girls as young as 13 can be legally married in states where the legal age of sexual consent is 17. In Newsweek, Jessica Bennett quoted Ordover:
"This is an issue that people are extremely complacent about, and I said, 'I think I can find a way to get people to care, or at least start talking about it'," Ordover says. He hopes the site will generate controversy and spur outraged readers to pressure their local legislators to elevate the marriage age...
He bills it as "an experiment in Viral Politics" in a letter he plans to send out when he officially comes clean. "If we fooled you or disgusted you, you have every right to be angry at us for what we did. But we ask you to direct that anger energy where it will do the most good: toward those in your state who can change the law, your Governor and state representatives."
This hoax is intriguing for several reasons, but primarily because it's believable. As Jessica Valenti points out, in this world of abstinence only sex-ed and purity balls, many young women are being told to measure their worth in terms of their value as future brides, just as Marry Our Daughter suggests. (For an amusing take on purity balls, see Amanda Marcott's Reality Cast segment.) Their value as young women lies in their virginity and marriageability - and so this website, on some level, strikes a chord.
But on Marry Our Daughter, women don't just land a husband by being appealing virgins - they manage to extract a generous fee for their parents. The cost of ranges from $3,995 to $99,995 per girl, with most around the $25,000 mark. And at first this element of the website might not tip you off - after all, mail-order-bride sites are legal under international law, as long as the bride is of age. But "if the parent is accepting money on behalf of the child, irrelevant of whether the child is of consensual age, it's definitely trafficking"-and would fall under state and U.S. trafficking laws, says Suzanna Tiapula, an senior attorney with the Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse at the National District Attorney's Association.
What is really telling about the element of monetary exchange is that it wasn’t necessary for Ordover to make his point about the age of consent. Just the fact that parents might agree to get their young, underage daughters married “in the Biblical tradition” would have served to point out that this sort of arrangement would be legal in many states and made the hoax effective.
So then what might we learn from Ordover's inclusion of the "bride price?" Simple. While we don't all know about anti-trafficking regulation, we all know, at some level, that a young woman's social and economic worth is tied up in her sexuality. We know that women make less than money than men, that they face the pressure to be married long before most men, and that they are more likely to live in poverty if they aren't married. Social realities like abstinence only-sex education reinforce these assumptions and link women's worth to their age and sexuality. Young women are denied control of their sexual and reproductive lives by policies and social practices that strip them of their agency. So it makes sense that even if the site would be found illegal if brought to court, many folks didn't blink when they came across a site in which young women were purportedly being sold. This, then, is as much a commentary about the economic and social status of young women in the US as it is about age of consent legislation in our states.
]]>The New Jersey Court has always avoided politicizing reproductive health. This most recent case, brought by a woman who was seeking to charge her doctor with medical malpractice, centered on the claim that doctors should be required to tell any woman seeking an abortion that the procedure would result in "killing an existing human being."
The court rejected this claim by finding, in a unanimous decision, that the plaintiff's doctor had "no legal duty" to tell her that her six-to-eight-week-old embryo was "a complete, separate, unique and irreplaceable human being." Justice Barry T. Albin, in the 5-to-0 decision, found:
There is not even remotely a consensus among New Jersey's medical community or citizenry that the plaintiff's assertions are medical facts, as opposed to firmly held moral, philosophical and religious beliefs, to support the establishment of the duty she would impose on all physicians.
The story goes something like this: Rose Acuna went to see Dr. Sheldon C. Turkish, the doctor who had delivered her second child, in 1996, about the development of a pregnancy. According to Acuna, Turkish claimed that Acuna "needed an abortion because (y)our kidneys are messing you up." Acuna asked Turkish whether "the baby was already there." Turkish allegedly replied, "Don't be stupid, it's only blood." Acuna then signed a consent form, and Turkish performed the abortion. Bleeding continued, however, and seven weeks later Acuna went to a hospital. She was diagnosed with an incomplete abortion and had a second procedure. Now 40, Acuna is claiming that she suffered emotional distress for the death of her unborn child, due to the misinformation given her by Dr. Turkish.
Dr. Turkish contests Ms. Acuna's description of the events. According to court papers, Turkish denied having made the "don't be stupid" remark, saying that he probably told her that a "seven-week pregnancy is not a living human being," but rather that it "is just tissue at this time."
Here, of course, is the real question. It is a baby? Or is it merely tissue? This case brings a pressing political issue into sharp relief: If doctors are supposed refrain from providing moral judgement, where is the line between science and public morality? This case is a harbinger for similar cases pending in South Dakota and Illinois. In South Dakota, Planned Parenthood is challenging a 2005 law that requires abortion doctors to tell women several things, including that an abortion ends human life. Mrs. Acuna's lawyer, Harold Cassidy, is also involved in the Illinois case in which his client alleges that Planned Parenthood of the Chicago Area has deceived women seeking to undergo abortions.
While reproductive rights groups celebrate a victory in which women's health and well-being doesn't succumb to unjustified politicization, some groups are spinning a tale about lies and deceit, and on top of it all calling the decision a "ruling against choice." From Walter M. Weber of the National Review:
The court declared that there was "clearly no consensus" on whether an embryo is, as matter of "biological fact" a "human being." Why? Because there is "moral, theological, [and] ideological" disagreement over the status of unborn children. But Acuna wasn't asking the doctor for "moral, theological, or ideological" information. She wanted the cold, hard, medical facts. Then she could apply her own value system in responding to those facts. The state supreme court admitted that its decision ultimately represented a "value judgment" by the court. One shudders to think what "value" justifies subordinating a woman's supposed right to "choice" to an abortionist's callous and patronizing deception.
This way of framing the issue is very telling - read the article and you'll see some interesting tactics. Portray the doctor as a goon. Portray the woman as a tragic and complacent victim. Twist the language of choice enough so that it's completely unrecognizable.
Ed Barocas, legal director of the ACLU of New Jersey, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief, said, "Today's victory sends a message that New Jersey will not tolerate back door efforts to curtail reproductive rights or free speech...We will not allow the anti-choice lobby to force its moral or theological beliefs upon others." Drew Britcher, a representative of the New Jersey Obstetrical and Gynecological Society added that, "The court struck the proper balance between the law of informed consent and the law that relates to an obstetrician or other physician's duty in advising the person who's pregnant."
This certainly isn't the last time we can expect to see these issues crop up in legal disputes. This is dodgy terrain: Should we tell doctors what to tell women? Or what not to tell them? Advocates of reproductive freedom know very well that this tactic has been used to deceive women in the past. Poor women and women of color especially have long faced sterilization abuse and battled against coercive contraception tactics. Our job is to find a way to differentiate between coercion and adequate information. No easy task, but one that we're clearly going to have to reckon with.
]]>But it's a study out of Alabama that might be the one that gets at the crux of the issue. The Alabama Department of Public Health released a report that shows a link between birth outcomes and health insurance, as reported by the Decatur Daily. The report, by the department's Center for Health Statistics, examined birth certificates for 60,262 live births, and among other things:
Now whether Medicaid has merely become a marker for things like education, age, race and economic status, is up to debate. What is clear, though, is the fact that these factors do indeed affect access to reproductive healthcare, and that Medicaid is not a sufficient solution for social inequities.
This, of course was no surprise. The US does not have an enviable record on the matter of infant mortality, which is directly connected to maternal mortality and the status of women in a society. And we already know how important a healthy mother is and many of the challenges they face in securing their own health and the health of their infants.
In a report from Save the Children released this May, entitled State of the World’s Children, 125 nations were ranked according to 10 gauges of well-being -- six for mothers and four for children -- including objective measures such as lifetime mortality risk for mothers and infant mortality rate and subjective measures such as the political status of women. Among industrialized nations, the US was second to last (ranked only above Latvia). Charles MacCormack, president and CEO of Save the Children, said the report "illustrates the direct line between the status of mothers and the status of their children.” He also encapsulated the lesson rather efficiently by saying, “In countries where mothers do well, children do well."
But this seems rather obvious, no? Looking at the studies from Maryland, North Carolina, and Alabama it is clear that access to comprehensive reproductive health care is critical to maternal and infant health. What these studies find, in no uncertain terms, is that in the US race and economic status are relevant factors in whether mother and baby survive. This is a lesson, alluded to by the international studies, that is one our policy makers need to hear. If we want to improve the success of new mothers and their children in the United States, it is a lesson we cannot ignore.
]]>Of late, we've heard about the various meanderings of Mark, Bob, Dave and Larry - quite a cast of characters. Since many political analyses have been offered, each with it's own political spin, I'd like to take a few steps back and think on what be might made of all these scandals. Aside, of course, from the inevitable banter on the political talk shows about the ramifications (read: how many seats lost or gained) and the late night one-liners shooting for cheap thrills (read: Brokeback Bathroom).
The common thread here is, of course, sex. The scandals run the gamut of political parties, even if these days they seem to be plaguing the GOP (who's forgotten M. Lewinsky?). And they run the spectrum of activities - adultery, gay sex, kink, solicitation, pedophilia. Take a close look at my brief list. Only some of these activities are illegal, and depending on your perspective, only some are immoral.
Now, I'm never one to use shame or societal disgrace to chastise anyone's sexual choices, no matter how far from the mainstream they are. Those are the tactics of hate and divisiveness. Those are the tactics that make us fear each other, our own sexuality and our bodies. They never promote understanding and are rarely based on viable concepts of health, harm and bodily integrity.
But those are the tactics often employed, by both parties, to translate these events into votes. The concepts of health, harm and bodily integrity often fall away, when they should be our central means of assessing what we sanction and what we don't. What is it about sex that lends itself so easily to shaming and disgracing? And though it might be effective, is it the solution? What does it mean for reproductive justice if "immoral" sex is the highest dishonor? Granted, often illegal activities are the ones that result in the dishonor, but I'm forced to ask: Do we publicly shame other misdeeds in quite the same way? What about other types of political scandals involving money or drugs? Are those more easily glossed over and forgiven?
I grant that there are many types of scandals that have ended careers and brought shame. But there are a couple of things here that might help us understand what's really going on in the recent spate of Republican sex scandals. Firstly, as Scott Swenson observed, the Republican Party is trying to save face by shunning and shaming its wayward Senators and Congressmen. They are making no attempts to explain away the behavior or minimize the shock. In their opinion, it seems the party base may tolerate something like money philandering, but will never abide a sexual deviant. A clear commentary on how the "family values" platform functions and what is its most significant component. [One article not to be missed, on a possible reading of this, is a great piece from Susie Bright for AlterNet.]
Secondly, the response of progressives has been to point out the hypocrisy within the party's ranks - asserting that they claim to be about family values, yet their own spokespeople do not, and perhaps cannot, live that life. On some counts, the disgust is warranted. Voting against LGBT rights while soliciting gay sex is certainly spiteworthy. On the other hand, sexual deviance itself is not. The distinction is very important for those of us that advocate for reproductive and sexual freedom. We cannot let our disgust for the hypocrisy or lawbreaking be interpreted as disgust for the sexual expression. This is a small but often understated distinction, but as is the case with these types of distinctions, it is the difference between family values and "family values." It is also the perfect way to challenge conservative ethics not on the missteps of its legislators, but on its very principles and foundations.
]]>Amnesty International officials said the organization would "support the decriminalization of abortion, to ensure women have access to health care when complications arise from abortion and to defend women's access to abortion . . . when their health or human rights are in danger."
The London-based human rights organization was founded to defend and aid prisoners of conscience. Delegates from AI are defending this change as part of a larger global drive against violence, discrimination and abuse targeting women, including rape as a "weapon of war" in conflicts such as the one in the western Sudan region of Darfur.
"There are many human rights issues involved in organized sexual violence targeting women," said A. Widney Brown, Amnesty's senior director for international legal issues, in a telephone interview from New York yesterday.
She said the new policy would not detract from Amnesty's focus on political repression, but added, "We can't as an organization look only at human rights issues that implicate men."
Not all AI members and supporters think this is a good move. A leading British Bishop has resigned. And in a case of rather shaky reporting the Times Online is claiming that pop stars Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne affiliated with Amnesty may pull out because of their anti-choice views.
In response to the AI policy shift, the Vatican's Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, said that the Vatican maintains that abortion should not be available to rape victims. AI's response includes a moving explanation of why women's reproductive rights are indeed human rights:
Amnesty International finds it unacceptable for women to be imprisoned for seeking or obtaining an abortion, or for women to be denied access to abortion services even when the UN Committee on Human Rights has held that forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term that was a result of sexual violence in armed conflict is a form of torture; and in non-conflict situations cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Amnesty International finds the preventable death of 70,000 women per year -- and the denial of medical services in a range of circumstances from ectopic pregnancies to complications from unsafe abortions -- to be unacceptable. These are a violation of a woman's right to life, right to health, right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman degrading treatment and punishment and the right to non-discrimination.
See more about AI's position on reproductive and sexual health here.
Interestingly, a poll taken by an anti-choice organization in the UK seems to show significant agreement with AI's move:
Do you agree that AI should develop policy to enable research and action to achieve the following:
- decriminalization of abortion
- access to quality services for the management of complications arising from abortions
- access to abortion in cases of rape, sexual assault, incest, and risk to a woman's lie
Respondents replied:
- Yes: 45.4%
- No: 45.7%
- Undecided: 8.0%
- No answer: 0.8%
Those numbers are pretty close, and if you look at the other questions it becomes clear that for an organization called the "Pro-Life Alliance," the opposition to Amnesty's decision is decidedly not overwhelming. Perhaps all the press coverage that is reporting Amnesty's position as radical and alienating is off the mark.
While I'm sure we would like to see Amnesty International go all the way and support a woman's right to choose in all circumstances, their new stance is significant for international human rights organizing. Seeing women's reproductive rights as human rights, is not only a deep theoretical shift, but it also gives advocates on the ground international human rights tools they have been denied thus far.
]]>Victoria Arellano (sometimes spelled Arrelano), a transwoman with AIDS, died in a California immigration facility for men in July. Reportedly a victim of inadequate medical care and neglect, she was one of three immigrants to die in federal custody in a month, as covered in Washington Post. (The two others to die in custody include a 38-year-old pregnant Mexican woman who died in a Texas facility and a man whose family "implored authorities to give him medicine for his epileptic seizures in Rhode Island.")
Mariah Lopez and Christina Sforza, two transgender women of color from New York City, were arrested and subjected to brutal treatment while in custody. Sforza reported to Amnesty International that she was attacked in a New York restaurant in July 2006 by a man wielding a lead pipe. She said she was attacked for spending too long in the women's rest room which an employee gave her permission to use. The assailant shouted verbal abuse that was picked up by other staff and customers who allegedly egged him on shouting "kill the fag." But when officers from the New York Police Department arrived they refused to allow the emergency medical services to examine her injuries and arrested her, not her attacker, Sforza says. Read their stories reported by Amnesty International.
Lopez, a young transgender Latina woman, was arrested by NYPD officers in June of 2006. While in police custody, male officers reportedly carried out repeated humiliating and unnecessary strip searches. Charged with "loitering with intent to solicit" and with "assaulting officers," Lopez claims to have pleaded guilty in order to get out of jail, where she felt a serious risk of attack and could no longer endure the psychological and emotional pressures of conditions in detention. Lopez was released in August of 2006, and her case came to hearing last week. Read her entire statement to Amnesty here.
There are many political issues intertwined in these stories. Reproductive rights activists are often first to understand the connection between gender identity and violence. Advocates for abortion rights often cite violence against women among the social problems that limit the choices women can make about their lives and bodies. These are perennial issues for women's rights advocates, but broadening our view to include queer and trans people has proven difficult for many. Lopez states:
I was placed in a cell for several hours with no food, water or access to a bathroom. I brought this to the attention of the corrections officer; in exchange, the officer assaulted me, leaving me with severe bruising and abrasions. His justification? Claiming that I was being disruptive, all because I demanded my basic rights.
How many people, while advocating for women's human rights, have been charged with disruption and unfair treatment and suffered violence as a result? Anyone who's been to a pro-choice march or rally can tell you that violence from opponents as well as law enforcement is always a concern. What is important to note, however, these cases are not matters of violence against activists at a rally or march. These cases exemplify the very real danger faced by trans people on a daily basis - on the street or in a restaurant - by law enforcement officials and any passer-by. From Mariah Lopez's statement:
At the sixth precinct, I was verbally abused and forced to disclose my "real" gender, though my ID clearly states that I am female. I requested that officers refer to me with female pronouns, which is my legal right under the New York City Human Rights Law. They continued to abuse, harass and degrade me, referring to me as "it," "he/she" and calling me by male names rather than my own.
All three cases - Victoria Arellano's, Christina Sforza's, and Mariah Lopez's - illustrate a broader connection between the struggles faced by transgender women and the goals of the reproductive rights movement. Our goal of reproductive freedom hinges on gaining political acknowledgement that our bodies are our own. This struggle for a legitimate gender identity (some newspapers are reporting that a Victor Arellano died in custody) and the right to self-determination in the matter of gender and sexuality has always been central to the movement for reproductive rights. Gender self-determination is a central tenet of human rights, and adequate health care is a human right that many millions of us struggle to ensure for ourselves on a regular basis. Aside from those immigrants who have died while in US custody, many have been denied adequate medical care and separated from their families in immigration raids (see video footage of raids on undocumented immigrants in New Bedford here). This is a matter of protecting people and their families from violence in the form of medical neglect - something we cover regularly on this site.
These stories, perhaps disparate at first glance, are certainly a matter of concern for those of us interested in securing reproductive health for the people in this country. They are hard to distill into one blog post, but are ultimately about the need to broaden our lens to include what have been, to date, issues that escape our radar but are crucial to ensuring a comprehensive approach to reproductive justice.
To take action, see Amnesty International's Action Alert for Mariah Lopez.
]]>Recently, on the opinion pages of the New York Times, we are seeing a debate about the implications of the ban may have for doctors and their patients. The debate pivots on a question about whether the ban actually prohibits doctors from performing the safest medical procedures for their patients.
From a piece by David Garrow:
Critics have suggested that the ruling vitiates the complete protection of women’s health that the Supreme Court had previously recognized. But though Justice Kennedy’s opinion certainly weakens the extent of that protection, it also quotes a unanimous 2006 Supreme Court ruling to state that the new ban would be unconstitutional “if it subjected women to significant health risks…Pro-choice doctors — and their lawyers — must have the courage to take Justice Kennedy at his word and read this decision’s explicit approval of all abortion procedures save one in a manner that will most expansively continue to protect women’s reproductive rights. The Carhart ruling is undeniably harmful, but the extent of the damage it will do to American women will be determined more by the fortitude of their doctors than by the words of Justice Kennedy.
Judith Warner is critical of such an analysis. She examines the implication of Kennedy’s opinion and the term “intent.” She writes,
You see, as it turns out, the Supreme Court didn’t just outlaw “partial-birth” abortions (known in the medical community as “intact dilation and extraction” or D & X,) when it upheld Congress’s ban. It criminalized any second trimester abortion that begins with a live fetus and where “the fetal head or the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother.” The big problem with this, doctors say, is that, due to the unpredictability of how women’s bodies react to medical procedures, when you set out to do a legal second trimester abortion, something looking very much like a now-illegal abortion can occur. Once you dilate the cervix — something that must be done sufficiently in order to avoid tears, punctures and infection — a fetus can start to slip out. And if this happens, any witness — a family member, a nurse, anyone in the near vicinity with an ax to grind against a certain physician — can report that the ban has been breached. Bringing on stiff fines, jail time and possible civil lawsuits.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court’s majority, asserted that prosecution for accidental partial births won’t occur; there has to be “intent” for there to be a crime. But as doctors now understand it, intent could be inferred by the degree of dilation they induce in their patients. What, then, do they do? Dilate the cervix sufficiently and risk prosecution, or dilate less and risk the woman’s health? And if they dilate fully, how do they prove it wasn’t their intent to deliver an intact fetus?
Garrow’s view seems unfortunately optimistic in the face of the extraordinary risk he asks doctors to face. Warner effectively explains why it is naïve to think that the legislative vagueness can be overcome by doctors’ choices. She illuminates the factors the doctors must take into account. Per this analysis, the ban is indeed tantamount to binding the doctors hands themselves. In the climate of fear and grave disregard for women’s health under the Bush Administration, Garrow’s position is clearly untenable.
It is true that doctors’ choices can indeed render the ban harmless. Garrow can certainly deny that the ban will prevent all doctors from compromising women’s health. But for those doctors, and I imagine there will be many, who do not choose to take the risk, the ban forces them to ignore their judgment about what is best for their patients. In such a nuanced debate, the crux is easy to miss: it is a mistake to read Kennedy’s position on intent as anything but a dismissal of women’s health. When health and safety are not built into the legislation itself, the law has failed. This, unfortunately, is undeniable.
]]>A group of Ohio state legislators have submitted a bill that would ban women from obtaining abortions without consent from the man who impregnated her. The proposal comes two weeks after Ohio Representative Tom Brinkman proposed a law that would ban all abortions in the state.
Why, you ask? From the Record-Courier:
"This is important because there are always two parents and fathers should have a say in the birth or the destruction of that child," said [Rep. John] Adams, a Republican from Sidney. "I didn't bring it up to draw attention to myself or to be controversial. In most cases, when a child is born the father has financial responsibility for that child, so he should have a say."
But wait, there's more, and it's a doozy:
As written, the bill would ban women from seeking an abortion without written consent from the father of the fetus. In cases where the identity of the father is unknown, women would be required to submit a list of possible fathers. The physician would be forced to conduct a paternity test from the provided list and then seek paternal permission to abort.
In this brave new world, that one-night-stand or abusive partner can now control whether you become a parent or not. Doctors and medical professionals are private investigators. And a woman's body is definitely not her own.
Claiming to not know the father's identity is not a viable excuse, according to the proposed legislation. Simply put: no father means no abortion.
"I'm really pleased that this has been proposed for one reason - it draws attention to the fact that many men are concerned and care for their unborn children," said Denise Mackura, the director of the Ohio Right to Life Society. "You have no idea how many men call telling me about their girlfriends who plan to abort, asking what they can do to help her. They do want to help and they should have a voice."
Now, this sentiment is one that many of us can understand -- abortion is often a matter of family concern. Yet, if Mackura thinks this is a good move to afford previously marginalized fathers a voice in the process, she clearly fails to consider the severity of the difference between the burden borne by the person carrying the child and anyone who is not. More often than not, the responsibility falls on the person carrying the child to ensure that the child's physical, emotional and economic needs are met. This responsibility is hardly comparable to the potential child support payments that Adams and Mackura repeatedly reference as justification for such a bill. It is also unclear who will pay for the required paternity tests and probable lawyers and court fees if the woman contests the decision.
If you needed further evidence that these legislators do not think women can be trusted: Per this legislation, if a woman wanted to prove that the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest she would be required to present a police report, attesting to those events. The burden of proof once again falls on the victim, letting the perpetrator and the justice system off the hook yet again.
Executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, Kellie Copeland says,
"This extreme bill shows just how far some of our state legislators are willing to go to rally a far-right base that is frustrated with the pro-choice gains made in the last election ... It is completely out of touch with Ohio's mainstream values. This measure is a clear attack on a woman's freedom and privacy."
Coming on the heels of a proposal to ban all abortions by Rep. Brinkman, a Republican from Cincinnati and one of the eights sponsors of this bill, the bill seems to have a slight advantage over the all out ban in potentially becoming law. Despite being aware of its strong chances at being declared unconstitutional, supporters of the bill find the dialogue illuminating:
Simply taking a look at this as a possibility is a step in the right direction," Mackura said. "Pregnancy is a unique human condition and obviously a woman is affected differently than a man. As a woman, I can sympathize. However, to completely take rights away from the father is unfair.
It is indeed, illuminating. Though certainly not in the way Mackura suggests. Instead, of encouraging comprehensive sex ed, universal health care, quality education systems and resources for poor women to care for children whose fathers are not in the picture, this bill shows us what "pro-lifers" really think of women: They can't be trusted to make decisions about their bodies and their families; Sex is a matter not merely between consenting adults, but also the state; And the power to control life should only rest in a man's hands, despite the fact that it happens in a woman's body.
]]>Justice NOW works to end violence against women and stop their imprisonment. They operate on the belief that prisons and the incarceration system do not make our communities safer. Instead, they argue that the current prison industrial complex causes harm to people it imprisons as well as the families and communities that they leave behind. About 78 percent of women in prison have children, but they are very often incarcerated in federal prisons out of state or in state prisons in remote towns. Less than half of these women are able to see their children and families. (For a detailed account, see the Amnesty International Report, "Not Part of My Sentence: Violation of the Human Rights in Custody: Impact on Children of Women in Prison" 1999.)
With these foundational beliefs, Justice NOW holds the very unique position working within prisons and on behalf of prisoners and their families while promoting prison and policing alternatives. At this point, you might be thinking a very common question: In a world where violence against women is detrimental to the very fabric of our society how is it possible to advocate for justice while opposing the very system supposedly designed to keep women safe?
I have heard the folks at Justice NOW answer this question several times, and they reply by emphasizing the many-pronged approach to their organizing:
They provide legal services, work with prisoners and their families on political education and mobilization, and they train new generations of activists and lawyers to contribute to this work. But to answer the question, they devote much of their program work to building coalitions that promote safety and individual accountability without depending on the incarceration system as it stands.
They argue that the traditional law enforcement approach to violence against women has not resulted in a corresponding decrease in violence. Furthermore, for communities of color and immigrant communities, the prevalent strategy is, at times, counter-effective given that these communities also face a threat of violence in the home from the very same law enforcement authorities that are charged with their protection.
As for women in prison, violence perpetuated by prison staff affects women's reproductive freedom directly. At times, intervention in a woman's pregnancy by enforcement officials who appeal to the "welfare of the fetus," affect the outcome of the pregnancy. Women in the California prison system are denied access to necessary medical diets, basic hygiene products like soap, shampoo and toothpaste, as well as essential medication. In light of these injustices, the Justice NOW interns and staff provide legal services in areas of need identified by women prisoners, including the following:
In addition to their legal services and other public education campaigns, are two other incredible projects:
The work that the wonderful people at Justice NOW are committed to provides the perfect example of the kind of work we hear advocated for regularly but seen rarely: service driven, vision oriented and intersectional.
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