Early this year, after a lot of struggling with the tech and funding, we rolled out Find-a-Doc, our database system to help young people find quality, in-person services like sexual and reproductive healthcare, counseling, and LGBT, youth and domestic violence crisis shelters and services. The database includes a rating system so that those who have used the services can add recommendations or comments to help other users choose services, or know things about services from a first-person perspective. As you probably know yourself, we all tend to feel a lot better about using a service someone else has personally recommended or vetted: that's why we set up Find-a-Doc, and did so the way that we did.
We also use the database as staff and volunteers when working one-on-one with a user to help them find in-person services they need. But since it's been slow-going to get the database packed, we still have to spend a good deal of time searching in other ways, which is far less efficient and useful. Having the database have many, many options doesn't just help our users, it helps our staff and volunteers in serving them best and in managing our time effectively, especially given our high traffic and heavy workload.
As of right now, we have close to 200 different listings from around the world. But we'd really like a whole lot more. So, we're asking for your help.
Many young people haven't yet used any of these services because they don't know where or how to find them, or aren't sure what's safe for and supportive of them. We know that from the work we do here every day
So, to make up for that, our staff and volunteers have worked hard to add listing from services we have used or already know of. However, there are only around ten of us, while we've millions of users and readers every year, some of whom live in areas none of us have ever visited or lived in ourselves.
What we'd like our readers and supporters to do is just take maybe a half an hour to an hour of your time to help us add some more listings. Could we get your help as a community?
Obviously, the easiest thing to do is to add a listing of a service you yourself have used -- or work for or with: this is about the best free advertising for a youth service you can get! -- even if you are not a young person anymore: if that service serves young people currently, that's all we need.
Alternately, if you haven't used any of these services, haven't used them in a while, or never found anything you've felt served well by, you can just pick an area, a kind of service you want young people to be able to access, open up a search engine and find a few to enter into the database. We vet all entries ourselves, so if there are things you're not sure of, that's okay, we'll double-check everything before making a listing live. If in doubt, we call these services to check listings with someone in person at the listed service. Before adding listings, you can insert the zip code where you're thinking of adding to see what's already there. And by all means, if something you were going to add is already listed, and you've used that service, it'd be great if you could add a review!
Filling out an entry is easy, and putting a few in might even take you just minutes. Our users and we as staff and volunteers would be incredibly grateful for your help. Some areas where we have few to no listings so far and have the biggest need for listings include: Malaysia, the Southern US, Mexico, (all of) South America, Italy, France, Spain, India, Poland and Russia.
If you know you're going to pick a given area and work on that, it'd be additionally awesome if you'd leave a note about that in the comments here. That way, we will focus our time on other areas when we're working as staff to add more listings.
Thanks so much for any help you can give!
I had a favorite line, in high school, when debating people on the subject of abortion. It was "Hey, that thing in your stomach's not gonna come out a toaster, right? It's a baby!"
Oh, I thought I was really, super clever with that one. Because I loved talking about the babies. I talked about the babies at the high school Young Republicans Club--not only was I the president, but also the founder. I talked about the babies at Club 412, the evangelical punk teen hang-out in Fort Worth I frequented with my friends. I talked about the babies in class. I cried about the babies while I strummed my guitar. I wrote songs about the babies, imagining myself as a broken, murderous whore who regretted her abortions.
I didn't have an opinion one way or the other on abortion until I started hanging out with right-wing punk rock kids in high school. Then, somebody -- probably one of the older teenage punk rock boys I would later fend off in the back of a car or behind the chapel at church camp -- handed me a pamphlet with an aborted fetus on the front. The pamphlet told me abortion causes breast cancer and how women who abort can never be redeemed in the eyes of God and will live with heartache and depression for the rest of their lives, a shell of the beautiful thing they could have been if they'd only carried to term. I was outraged. I couldn't believe women were killing members of my own generation -- my sisters and brothers! -- just because they couldn't keep their legs together.
Because while I said it was about the babies, it wasn't. It was about slut-shaming.
I absolutely loved slut-shaming. Because I was saving myself for marriage -- well, oral sex doesn't really count anyway, does it? -- I knew that I would always be right and virtuous and I would never be a murderer like those sluts. The issue couldn't possibly be up for real debate, to my mind: either you were a baby-killer slut, or you behaved like a proper Christian woman and only let him get to third base. Babies were simultaneously women's punishment for having premarital sex and beautiful gifts from Jesus Himself. That didn't seem like a contradiction in my mind. It was just another one of God's perfect mysteries.
After all, I was 16, 17, 18. I knew everything. And what I knew more than anything else was that anyone who got herself into the position of having an unwanted pregnancy was filthy in body and soul. And again, since I would absolutely never have premarital sex, I would absolutely never make the decision to murder my child. Because I was pure, and so were babies, and together, me and the babies and my perfect hymen, we were all going to be fine if we could just fight the ignorant sluts. So that's what I did. I talked and argued and cajoled and pontificated. I ministered to the heathen nerdgirl sluts in Telnet chats and online bulletin boards. I stood up for what I believed in, which was: If you do not believe like me, you deserve whatever brand of God's wrath comes your way.
But, you know, to hear me talk, it was all about the babies. The innocent children. The mass genocide! Perpetuated, of course, by millions of American women who I imagined happily scooping out their wombs with ladles before heading back out for another gang-bang. In private, my anti-choice friends and I would laugh and laugh (or, in some cases, LOL and LOL, if we were chatting online) about how stupid women were for having premarital sex. How evil they were for not being able to control themselves. How great I was for not having sex with my boyfriend. How loved and special I was in the eyes of God because I didn't let my boyfriend, you know, do it with me.
If I'd thought about it any, I might have realized that it takes two to create an unwanted pregnancy. But the conversation was never, ever about men or their behavior. It was only about women.
So, what happened? How did I come to be editing a lefty, pinko-assed feminist blog?
Well, I got off my religious high horse and on to a sex life I enjoyed and found fulfilling.
At college, I met a wonderful, sweet Jewish boy who fell in love with me and who I fell in love with right back. And he didn't have any hang-ups about sex, though he was also a virgin. And we did all of the things except for The Big Sex, and the more I grew to love him, the more I thought back on those people I knew back home who told me sex was awful and would break me. How could sex with this guy, this absolute sweetheart, break me? And so we had The Big Sex. And it was great and fun and loving, and we kept having all of The Big Sex, for about three weeks, until I realized it was about time for my period.
Suddenly: I was the dirty, filthy slut. I was the horny bitch. I was the callous murderer-in-training. What, did I think my womb was going to grow a toaster if we had a condom mishap?
Of course not. I didn't think babies were toasters and I didn't believe I was going to birth a toaster if I got pregnant, so how had I managed to belittle women for years with this condescending, patronizing line about a small kitchen appliance? I was frozen in a kind of moral limbo: I couldn't believe I found myself simultaneously relieved that I could access an abortion if I wanted to, and saddened and stressed out by the possibility of having to make that decision.
So I went right the heck out and got myself some hormonal birth control, is what I did.
I marched into my college women's health center -- oh, thank God they had one -- and I got my first pap smear and the Ortho-Evra patch and talked to the nurses about STD's and pregnancy and how to take care of my body. I had never had any of those conversations with my family or church or friends or teachers back home in Texas. I learned more in a two-hour visit to that college women's health center than I had in the 19 years leading up to it. And yet as a passionate anti-choicer, I had considered myself an expert on sex and reproductive health -- my own and everyone else's -- because of a few pamphlets and preachers.
Today, I see that nothing about my religious anti-choice views did anything to prevent abortion. They did a lot to shame myself and my friends, but nothing to prevent abortion. Today, I hear anti-choicers talk about the babies and the unborn and the American genocide, but what I really hear beneath all that is slut-shaming and fear of female sexuality. I hear that language clearly because I spoke it once, myself. It is a familiar language to me.
And I even have a little bemused sympathy for old men who try to pass anti-choice legislation. Because they really will not ever have to worry about abortion. And once, I thought I wouldn't, either. So I see where they're coming from. I see how blind to the experiences of others they are. Privilege does that to people. If they weren't so damned full of themselves, and so damned politically powerful, I might even find them funny.
What saddens me more than anything else are women who want to make abortion either so inaccessible as to render it impracticable, or who want to outlaw it altogether. Because I truly believe that most women, anti-choice or otherwise, who've experienced even a flicker of uncertainty about a pregnancy in this country since 1973 have been glad, in their hearts, to have a choice. I believe wanting to take that choice away from others is deeply about shame and punishment and judgment, and not about righteousness and love. I believe that because I rarely see those who want to outlaw abortion doing anything to combat its cause: unintended pregnancy, and I see them doing a lot to punish and shame women.
There is nothing "pro-life" about sonogram bills and denying Medicaid funding to (some!) rape victims or allowing doctors to opt out of giving pregnant women life-saving abortions. I know that what has kept me from having to make a decision about an unintended pregnancy is not the prospect of hearing a fetal heartbeat or having to go through a 24-hour wait period, but safe, easy and affordable access to contraception and good, honest medical information disseminated by doctors and medical professionals without religious agendas.
I was a girl growing up in Texas who was failed by abstinence-only education and soured by extreme religious dogma.
I don't want other girls to go through that, too. And so if you've gotten through this whole essay, consider donating to Planned Parenthood. Get on a NARAL mailing list. Fight HR3. Stand up against empty religious and political pandering and stand up for real solutions like affordable health care, comprehensive sex education and contraceptive access.
Originally published at Hay Ladies.
Earlier this week, in the context of another conversation, one of our users at Scarleteen mentioned that her feelings on abortion had changed to a negative when she learned that her mother's pregnancy had been unplanned, and that her mother considered abortion. She said that upset her, because she really liked existing. She did say she was still pro-choice, but her sentiment bothered me all the same. Some of why it bothered me was political, and also about the work that I do and have done. But in thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the ways it bothered me most were intensely personal.
The truth is, I envy her. A lot. I envy she was able to have a discussion in which her mother made clear she had the right to choose and she chose to remain pregnant and parent her. She wasn't forced, she wasn't pressured, she didn't do what she did because it was the only thing she could do without risking her life, her health, being locked away or hidden or committing a crime. She chose. She had the freedom to choose. My mother did not.
It's a powerful thing, this choice, any choice; this freedom, any freedom.
I can't express how much I wish I was born under those circumstances myself. I wish I could've had that conversation with my own mother. I wish I had not grown up knowing my mother didn't have the right to choose, including a lack of access to contraception to choose to try and prevent becoming pregnant in the first place. I wish my own mother had not been denied the right and the freedom to make a choice so critical to her own life, first, and mine, secondarily. I wish that the relationship between my mother and I had not been, and will not always be, tainted and strained by the fact that I was effectively forced upon her and not a part of her life that she chose or, at the time, wanted. I can't express how much I wish the relationship between my mother and I had been elective for her.
I envy this user on my own behalf. I envy her clear, unquestioning knowledge that she was wanted and chosen; that her mother chose to be her mother. If she, unlike me, grew up without overhearing or knowing about conversations and comments family members had or made about her being a punishment, a consequence, a sin made only slightly less terrible by being born, then I envy her. If she, unlike me, grew up without seeing the ways not having that choice unraveled or stymied the lives of people she loved, or brought about pain, abuse or neglect in her own upbringing, I envy her.
Even more, I envy her mother on my mother's behalf. However difficult and painful so much of my relationship with my own mother has been, I love her ferociously. The fact that she was denied the right to such a massive choice hurts me tremendously, as would any basic human right denied to anyone I loved -- anyone at all -- would. That's not what I would want for my mother: for anyone's mother.
Now, I don't feel certain as this user does, and so many people seem to, that if my mother had the right to choose and had terminated that I'd not exist. I have no idea what the deal is with how and if any of us wind up here in life. I think it's possible that if I was meant to be on this earth, I'd be here no matter whose womb I came through, no matter who my biological mother was. But not only can I not know what would have happened in that respect, I find it irrelevant, because the fact of the matter is that my mother was a whole person before I was, one separate from me; my mother had a life before me and a life she wanted before and without me, and my mother's life and her dreams mattered then, matter now, and I know for a fact it would have been radically different for her, and better for her (and me), if she had had the freedom and right to choose for herself. I know her life would have been radically different even if she hadn't have had a choice to make but simply grew up with the knowledge and confidence that she had those choices and freedoms. I know because I talk to young women like she was then who do have those choices, but also to those who don't. They are markedly different, in ways impossible to ignore.
As the years go by, I increasingly realize how like so many young women in or just out of their teens my mother was. It ever staggers and upsets me to realize I'm counseling someone who is the age she was, who knows as little as she did, who is as overwhelmed and unsupported as she was, who still doesn't have the agency she also didn't have. I can't possibly think of myself first before her and young women like her. To do that, I'd have to stop listening, stop feeling, stop understanding. To do that, I'd have to ignore, dehumanize or objectify the person sitting right in front of me or writing to me, and focus instead on someone who may or may not ever exist, even if a given person chooses to remain pregnant. To do that, I'd have to deny the privilege I had and have that my mother didn't and some young women still don't. I also often talk to a young woman who, instead, is in a place my mother could have been if she'd had information, choice and agency she did not. While listening to and talking with the young woman my mother could have been is often far more pleasant and hopeful, in another respect, it is painful and bitter, because this is what I would have wanted for her. This is what anyone who loved her and respected her and who cared about the quality of anyone's life, especially hers, should have wanted for her. But didn't.
If it is so that my own agency must be at the expense of someone else, especially the person who was already here and whole before I was even an idea, let alone a person, the person had to labor to bring me into this world, no less, I have a hard time seeing that as any kind of gift at all, nor as any kind of agency for anyone, including me. If I could turn back the clock and give my mother the choices she should have had, and she had chosen to terminate and that did mean she got to have the life she wanted and I didn't get this one at all, I'm good with that. Better that than the alternative. I love my mother, and all women, too much, and know too much about the life of my mother, and the lives of all women, to enjoy the conceit that is thinking my life and my agency are more valuable or meaningful than hers or that of anyone else.
It's a powerful thing, this choice, any choice; this freedom, any freedom.
The older I get, the more I find reproductive rights, justice and choice run a million red, pulsing threads through my life and my heart. I have cared deeply about the right to choose for as far back as I can remember, and with every year that passes -- even as it becomes highly unlikely given my age that I will ever make another major reproductive choice myself -- I care more and more deeply. Even as reproductive choice becomes less about me personally and more about others, it impacts me and influences me deeply, and perhaps even more so because of that fact.
I cared from the get-go because of the circumstances of my own life and family. I cared early because of my own reproductive and sexual choices, including those I was denied myself, and those I witnessed around me, and because when I got to the point in my life where I had those choices to make, I was acutely aware I had access to a level of choice other women had not or did not. I cared early on because I cared about human rights; because I cared about people having power and agency in and for their own lives. Then I cared more because of working as a teacher, and seeing the diversity of the lives of children and young people; how much of an impact parents have, both for good and for ill. Then I cared some more because of working in sex education, sexual health and with young people just starting to try and navigate all of these choices, as well as all the other choices in their lives; I cared even more working with young people who didn't have all the same choices others do. Then I cared even more when working in abortion directly. I keep caring for all of those reasons, and my care continues to amplify, deepen, diversify and cement. So does my sadness and my anger; so does my awareness of all of what having real choices can mean and what not having them can mean, too.
When I was working at the clinic, sometimes we had to tell women they didn't have choices they wanted to have; they should have had. We had to tell them it took them too long to save up the money or get the support to terminate, that they were now past the time when they could. We had to tell them there was nothing we could do to help them access more money to pay for an abortion procedure, and tell them that knowing a woman without enough money to pay for an abortion doesn't have close to the resources she needs to raise a child, even if she wanted to. Sometimes providers have to tell them that even though they have more children than they can care for, because of money, timing or some other restriction that unless they can arrange an adoption, they're going to have to try and parent one more, even if they know they don't want to and can't serve a child well. Sometimes providers have to tell them that without someone else's permission, because of their age or other reduced status in the world, they are not allowed to make their own choices.
No one ever wanted to be the bearer of this news, including me. Sitting down with someone and opening a conversation by telling them they do not have a choice they should have is one of the worst things in my life I have ever had to do. Watching someone who feels trapped in something no one should ever be trapped in is soul-crushing. I had to once give that news to a 15-year-old girl who had come all the way from Canada. She had to go the long way back home knowing that once she got there, she was going to get kicked out with nowhere to go and I couldn't stop crying or picturing her so alone in the world for my two hour commute on the bus home. Even though it wasn't my fault she was in that spot, and there was nothing I could have done to change things for her, I cried all the more because I had to be part of denying someone something I would never, ever want to deny them.
At Scarleteen, particularly when talking to young women who live outside nations or areas where they have the right to choose or have full freedom in choosing, we've had to tell some women they don't have the legal right to make a choice, or counsel young women feeling suicidal because of a possible pregnancy because they already know that if they become pregnant, it will have to mean they remain pregnant which they do not want to be. We've had to talk young people out of trying to terminate their own pregnancies, talk them out of using things so many people don't realize some people even still think about or try: coat hangers, coke bottles, pencils, knitting needles, drug overdoses, getting in car accidents on purpose.
On the flip side, one of my favorite parts of the work I do has been providing all-options counseling and support for all reproductive choices. The days that I get to do that work, no matter how difficult it can be, how challenging for myself and the women involved, are always some of my best days. To be able to start a conversation by telling a person, especially a young person, that she has choices is powerful for both of us. Being able to tell a woman that she has these vital choices and freedoms, that you support any of them she feels is most right for her, and that you will do your best to provide support for those choices now and whenever else she should need it is one of the most wonderful statements to be able to make to someone else. Sadly, the reaction one often gets to a statement like that also so often makes it clear how rare it still is, how unusual an experience it is for many women to find themselves in the position of being unilaterally supported, particularly around their bodies and reproduction. It can also tell us how tenuous those rights still feel for so many women, mostly likely because they are.
These conversations, and these choices in life, period, no matter what choice a woman makes, often make way for many other powerful lightbulbs and choices. When you work with women around reproduction and have unconditionally supportive conversations at these crucial times you have to ask and talk about the whole of their lives, and the context of their lives is part of all of this. So you're often part of decisions like leaving unhealthy or abusive relationships, choosing to put more energy into pursuing life goals and dreams, changing family or community in a way to be surrounded by more people who are supportive, changing how any one woman sees and understands all other women, sometimes even the women she has the hardest time understanding or sympathizing with. And if and when someone is freely able to choose to be someone's parent, fully able to choose, you see a person going into that endeavor in a radically different way than someone who does not have a choice, and you know their life and the life of any of their children will always be all the better for it.
Without choice and freedom, we don't get to own and truly claim our lives; neither do our mothers, sisters, daughters, friends. Without them, we can't say we made a choice at all, nor can we, or others, get to take real pride in or responsibility for our choices. There's a critical difference between making the best of your circumstances when you didn't have a choice and making the circumstances yourself that are best for yourself. Both are laudable, and yet we can only take real ownership of the latter. I am proud of my mother for all that she was able to do and has done given her circumstances, and I know she is proud of herself, but I hate that my mother was denied the privilege to be as proud of herself as she could be had she been allowed to truly own and make her own choices; I hate that I have that power while my mother did not.
Without choice and freedom -- and without having to engage in any fantasy or speculation about whether I'd be here or not -- I know my life would not be like my life at all. It would have likely been more like some of the worst parts of my mother's life. With them, her life could have been a lot more like the very best parts of mine. People chose to deny her that freedom; people can and do still choose to deny or try to deny it to some people still. People chose to allow me that freedom and to allow and protect it for many of you; people can and do still choose to do their -- hopefully our -- damnedest to allow it to and protect it for all people.
It's a powerful thing, this choice, any choice; this freedom, any freedom.
I cannot stand this show. No sense in being shy about it, because this is a bias I cannot hide, as will be apparent in nanoseconds.
If I had anything even remotely decent or interesting to say about it, I would have blogged it before now. But every single blog post I have even started to think about writing in the past about it had the same title every single time, one composed entirely of profanity except for the articles of speech linking all my four-letter words together.
Summaries and commentaries that read like these do not balanced critical commentary make:
Alas, that's the only kind of commentary I usually have. So, I have kept it from the page, saving it for rant sessions I have alone in my office, where I can yell as loudly as I like without worry of traumatizing anyone. Except my pug. She sometimes looks scared. But mostly confused, which is how she usually looks whether I'm yelling or not.
I hate to watch it at all, but this is the kind of thing I should try to keep up with. None of our users have really talked about it -- potentially because they're holding in the same potty-mouthed critiques I am myself -- but because of it's subject matter, I should know the scoop. Shows or films like these also almost always result in questions from users pertaining to the misinformation in them about sexual response, bodies, birth control, safer sex or pregnancy, so it helps to be warned in advance. Would that I'd known that when American Pie came out. It would have saved me many nights of scratching my head while pointlessly asking the office wall, "Where are they getting this stuff?"
The only scoop I usually get while watching this show is a pooper-scooper, mind, but now and then it's not always just torture. Sometimes it's bad enough that it's funny-bad like MST3K, or instead of just hurling bitter invective, I first laugh, then huff, then spit, then sigh, and THEN hurl bitter invective while also channeling the spirit of Dorothy Parker, which I don't have to do alone because everyone seems to find it very entertaining.
But. It's not a big but, but it's not a teeny one either.
But.
The last episode ("She Went That A'way") showed something I found very truthful and real about abortion and support with abortion and reproductive choices. The character choosing to have an abortion (which you knew was never going to happen: if you become pregnant on this show, you will be having babies, missy) already had excellent support from her mother, whose talk with her daughter was pretty darn righteous itself.
What I find myself quite surprised to be giving a high-five to is an ad-hoc counseling session that occurs in the lobby of the clinic between the character there for a termination and the mother of her ex-boyfriend. What made that such a good representation of support and counseling with abortion is that almost nothing said in it was prescriptive (that bit about "some choices" that you can't undo that seemed to be about abortion was prescriptive, since you can't undo a birth, either). What was said could have empowered and supported any choice well, not just the one the character made to remain pregnant. It was a loving, sage and compassionate talk.
That exact kind conversation can, for the record -- and often does -- result in a woman choosing to have an abortion (especially when she comes into the clinic already very sure about terminating) and feeling good about it. Just so's you know, because you're sure as hell not going to see it in this show.
Back to my props: not only was the counsel and support, and the way it was given, excellent, it also didn't come from a clinic counselor. Instead, it came from a connection made in the waiting room with someone who was not clinic staff.
Counseling and other staff from clinics certainly can and do provide great options and general counseling and support: it's something I have done and do myself. I'm not saying counsel or support is automatically better when not coming from clinic staff. The point is that sometimes in clinics what goes on in the waiting room, either with patients and other patients, or with patients and other people's support people, can be pretty radical. Some powerful, intense connections can happen between women in abortion clinics. Women who don't even know each other can wind up being supportive of each other in an instant and with great strength. It's something we see and love working in clinics, and that some of us have experienced ourselves as patients in clinics, but rarely, if ever, is shown in media. So, a good and real waiting room scene -- which is so much more than I can say for Juno -- and a really good supportive talk around choice? Both in a place I least expected to find them.
Of course, there is something else that's real about Secret Life as a whole.
At first I was going to say that what's real in it is that it's an excellent presentation of the way many adults conceptualize, imagine and treat teens and teen sexuality.
But I think it's actually one step beyond: I think it presents not only the way many adults think about and treat teens and teen sexuality, but also purposefully puts that conceptualization in such a light so it looks like The Very Right, Wise Grownup Way of Thinking. Well, to anyone watching at home who isn't who isn't laughing or swearing at it, anyway. Young people didn't write this. Older adults are writing this, about young people and without, no doubt very intentionally, the perspectives of young people like they're writing about.
This is one of the reasons why this show makes me want to gouge my own eyes out, and why I find a film like Thirteen (youth-written) or a show like the UK's Skins, written about young people but also BY young people (they have a mixed-age writing team), to be such a horses of a different color. Certainly both of those are representing slightly different populations, but not really. The difference between Skins and Thirteen and Secret Life aren't about the differences in the teenagers being portrayed, but about how the teenage portrayals in them are so different. Both have their own flaws or character issues, but I'll take flaws or shortcomings coming from young people in how they see and conceptualize themselves and their peers any day over flaws and failing of older adults trying to send teens moral messaging who should remember how crappy it was when adults presented you in certain ways to further their own morality fables. Apparently Brenda Hampton, the creator of Secret Life (as well as of the socially and politically conservative 7th Heaven), allows her young actors to give input on conversational lines, but that's it. It shows.
What I watched today does not redeem the show in my eyes. The Mad Max trilogy cannot redeem Mel Gibson, and a couple brief bright spots cannot light the deep, black hole that this show and the cloying, obvious propaganda it is. Even the way the whole episode played out was predictable, with an anticipated over-simplicity on their part, an anticipated annoyance on mine and one more baby en route. What followed after the good stuff almost undid the good stuff all by itself.
But not quite. When anyone in media does a decent job with or around abortion, and I happen to see it, I'd feel remiss not giving a nod of respect and thanks. I appreciate it, quite a lot. And when a writer or director's agenda is pretty darn crystal, and what they wrote is real, not myopic, and potentially even challenges that agenda, I appreciate it a little more, even if I choke a little saying so. And so does my little dog, who is happily snoring away, enjoying a night blissfully free of the usual tirade I'd be on about this show by now.
To: Stephen Harper (a.k.a. the Prime Minister of Canada, a.k.a. That Guy With the Questionable Judgment)
From: Me (a.k.a. A Concerned Citizen, a.k.a. Someone Who Thinks You're a Bit of a Twit)
Dear Stephen,
I have to confess, I am not, nor have I ever been, one of your biggest fans. I have never voted for your party, and I've found many of your decisions since becoming Prime Minister (such as sending Canadian troops to Afghanistan and protecting the Alberta oil sands even though they are royally screwing up the environment) disappointing, to say the least. However, when you announced at the end of January that you hoped one focus of the upcoming G8 summit would be improving maternal and child health worldwide - particularly in developing countries - I thought that maybe this was a decision of yours I could get behind.
But then, again, you let me down. Because earlier this week, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon confirmed that your newfound commitment to maternal health would not include any funding for improving access to contraception. According to Mr. Cannon, the money will go towards programs which "save lives", and won't "deal in any way, shape or form with family planning". Thus, this discussion we're having: because no initiative designed to improve maternal health is complete without improving women's access to reliable methods of birth control (and safe abortion, but you don't even want to think about that, do you?).
In a very real way, birth control saves lives. Hundreds of thousands of women die every year due to complications during pregnancy or giving birth. Often, these complications stem from becoming pregnant at a young age, or pregnancies which occur too close together. Clean water and vaccinations don't do much to prevent these problems. Having access to reliable birth control, to space out pregnancies and give women the option of delaying pregnancy until their bodies are physically capable of handling it? That helps. So does funding abortion services provided by actual medical practitioners, because thousands of women die as a result of unsafe abortions.
Now, I realize that the day after this announcement was made, you backtracked, saying that funding for contraception may still be included in your initiative. But I'm honestly not optimistic that this push to improve maternal health - and therefore women's health - will actually include funding for birth control and safe abortion. I hope you prove me wrong...but I doubt you will.
Congratulations, Stephen. You've disappointed me again.
We're glad this day has rolled around again, and always glad to have the opportunity to keeping talking about the essential human right of reproductive choice. Perhaps obviously, we're less glad that any of us still have to work so hard to support reproductive choice and justice, or to need to explain that it should simply be self-evident.
This year we'd like to highlight some of the many articles, blog entries and advice answers we have at Scarleteen on abortion, other reproductive choices and reproductive justice. The Blog for Choice question this year is "What does Trust Women mean to you? The links below reflect that well.
But in a word, to us, it means exactly that: that as individuals who are members of a collective, and as an organization, we trust women.
Women aren't our only readership or userbase here at Scarleteen, but female-bodied and/or female-identified people make up a majority of our users. We give the sexuality information we do in the way we do, including information on all kinds of reproductive decision-making, because we trust that our readers will make their own best choices when provided sound information to do so with and support, respect and faith in their sexual and reproductive decision-making. One reason we work so hard to do our best to help our users make their own choices without just telling them what choices we feel they should be making is because we trust women. If we, or anyone else, are telling a person what we think is best for them, based solely on our own beliefs, rather than listening to them express their feelings and their reality and then helping them to identify, clarify and enact their own best choices based on their feelings and their reality, we aren't trusting them. Nor are we treating them with respect.
We trust that women know, as women always have known, what is best for themselves and their families at a given time. We trust that women know and understand themselves as best they can, and are the sole experts on themselves. We trust that women, the only ones who should be in the position to have any say about what happens to and inside of our own bodies, can and will make our own best choices when fully allowed to make and supported in making those choices; when provided the unquestioned right to do so by the people around us and the systems and communities we live within. We trust women with choices just as much as we trust women with children, and expect the same of anyone who states either women or children are worthy of respect and basic human rights.
We trust and value women's hearts and minds just as much as we trust and value women's bodies. We don't see how anyone who says they love, care for or respect women can possibly do anything else.
I've wondered, with a lot of women's sexual issues, why I'm so passionate it? I am not on the pill, and somehow, I don't think we'll ever be at a point that condoms will be banned, and in the event that any store pulled a CVS, I like to think I'd have the ovaries to look the cashier dead in the face and say, "I would like a size x box of brand y condoms, please. Thanks." This is passing over the fact that most health clinics are well stocked with condoms. Banning condoms is just not happening. It's marginally more likely that women will be barred from buying them, and that too, is highly unlikely. And then even if that did happen, I'd probably don baggy clothes and wear a hat and forego the make-up and beautiful perfume and tell them my name is Virilus Andro Maximus and buy those things. Then I'd offer to do just that for other women for a price, and make some money on the side.
Every three years, I buy a dose of emergency contraception, which, knock on wood, won't actually be useful to me, until it expires, then I replace it (when I'm not actually in need of it). Back in the day, when the FDA knew damn well that it was perfectly safe and effective but was still not approving it for over the counter status, I was a high schooler. I was angry at lawmakers, of course, but I was also wondering, "Why don't sexually active girls just get a prescription from their doc beforehand, fill it, and stash it to have at the ready if and when they DO need it?"
And in the event that I had sex with a man, AND my birth control method failed AND emergency contraception failed and I found myself facing a pregnancy that I wanted to abort, well, I have money stashed away for emergencies. Now that I'm 23, this is moot, but as a minor, even with a mother who disapproved of premarital sex, I didn't have to worry about restrictions on minors, because my mother's maternity trumped her sexual values. I also lived in the suburbs of Washington, DC, so I could easily go to the city or to Maryland via mass transit. And as I'd given thought to what course of action I'd take if I got pregnant when I was thirteen, and continued thinking about it, and was damn sure that I'd haul ass to terminate ANY pregnancy that my (non-existent) lover and I didn't deliberately create, I also wouldn't get guilt-tripped out of having an abortion. All of this was passing over the fact that I was not sexually active to begin with. (All that time I WASN'T spending having sex, I was spending thinking about these hypothetical questions.)
The point is, it would be easy for me to believe that I had no dog in this fight for a woman's right to choose.
Wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG.
Restricting women's reproductive choices is based on a view that women are only good for incubating, birthing, and raising offspring. The woman who has an abortion, even if, like most women who have abortions she already has children that she loves dearly or will eventually have children that she'll love dearly, is an affront to traditional notions of femininity simply because she didn't embrace the prospect of maternity. She went against the role that the patriarchy had assigned to her.
This is one step removed from dictating to women not to have non-procreative sex with a man (completely passing over how those who think this way probably look down even more on non-heterosexual relationships). This is one step removed from proscribing ANY non-procreative sexual expression, including masturbation. It's one step removed from punishing completely asexual women, for failing to give birth, because that too is tantamount to failing to be a child-bearer.
It's also only one step removed from vilifying any behavior at all that doesn't fit into a very narrow mold of traditional femininity. I don't know about you, but I want to laugh at crude jokes (no, not rape jokes), I want to watch South Park, I want to be good at math, I want to argue, I want to wear pants some days, I want to hear people say swear words, I want to be a nerd, I want to earn an income, I want to be able to admit freely that I do in fact use the bathroom. Etc. Restricting other women's access to reproductive health services is not far removed from restricting my own right to do any of the above or even to write this very essay.
Being pro-choice is about a whole lot more than just abortion or even birth control for that matter. Even if the question of abortion access is completely moot to you, even if you're married and your husband got a vasectomy, even if you're asexual, it still behooves you to care about access to abortion just because it's a proxy for the place in society of anyone who isn't a cis-gendered, heterosexual man.
Originally written for The Guardian, condensed version can be seen there.
In 2008, over 5,000 UK women under the age of 20 had an abortion that was not their first. As was made clear by the alarmist headlines following the publication of those numbers, this is a big concern for the public.
A woman’s reproductive life often spans 30+ years. Around 1/2 of all pregnancies in the US and UK are unplanned. Contraception isn’t used or used properly. It fails sometimes even in perfect use. Female fertility peaks between the ages of 19 and 24: the reason we tend to see the most abortions (and pregnancies) in that group is because it is the most fertile group having the most sex. (Piccinino, LJ, Mosher, WD. Trends in contraceptive method use in the United States: 1982-1994. 1998. Family Planning Perspectives. Vol. 30(1): 4-10 & 6, Table 1) The UK teen pregnancy rate is the highest in Western Europe: six times higher than the Netherlands, nearly three times higher than France and more than twice the rate in Germany.
In 2008, nearly 33% of all UK terminations were not first-time procedures. Under 18’s had 1,452 “repeat” terminations. Women 18-24 had 21,443 terminations that were a second or third; those 20-29, 16,734 repeats, and for women over 30, 23,804. As it is in the US, the group with the highest rate of repeats is women over 30. As it is in the states, half those women are likely already mothers.
I don’t get the concern about abortions, specifically. No matter what choices we make with it, pregnancy has the capacity to radically change our health and life. Pregnancy itself is a potentially dangerous health event: 40% of all pregnant women have some sort of health risk. 15% of those risks are potentially life-threatening. The rate of risk and complication with delivery is 8-10 times higher (and higher still for the youngest women) than for legal, first-trimester abortion. The maternal mortality rate in New York state dropped 45% after abortion was legalized in the U.S. Safe, legal abortion isn’t the health issue: unintended pregnancy is.
We should all have women becoming unwantedly pregnant as our deepest concern, no matter how a pregnancy ends.
What most influences unplanned pregnancy? People shagging in ways that matchmake sperm and egg, which most do and historically will have done by the age of 19 or 20. Whether reliable contraception is used correctly and consistently. Poverty is a huge factor, as is the sense of reduced self that often results from poverty, like the sense or reality that motherhood is an attainable goal while other goals are not within reach. Rape and other sexual abuses and unhealthy relationships, also whoppers.
What can be done? The UK plans to respond to this in exactly some of the ways I'd suggest. Lucky Brits! When I think the U.S. government should respond a certain way, they have an uncanny habit of doing the opposite.
Provide better sex education, information about and access to contraception: The 2008/2009 Opinions Survey Report shows only 57% of UK women 16–19 using contraception, a lower rate than all other ages. Only 11% of young people in the Netherlands don’t use contraception: their rate of STIs and unwanted pregnancies is impressively low. 11% vs. 43%: that’s major.
Women need access to comprehensive, unbiased information about all contraceptive methods, addressing all as viable while making clear the differences in effectiveness and proper use. Women need that information at school, at home, in the media and from healthcare providers, including those providing care with pregnancy, whether it ends in abortion, miscarriage or birth. The youngest women use family planning services less than older women, and are often scared to ask for them. It’s vital they’re offered these services without finger-wagging. Women need information about and access to contraception before they need to use it, not after.
Many women won’t know about all options, how to use them properly, or which methods will suit them best without thorough information that puts an emphasis on them as individuals. For instance, young women nearly always ask for (or are rotely given by healthcare providers) the pill, but oral contraceptives are less effective for teen women than for older women: some data shows a failure rate as high as 20% for young women, with a risk of failure as much as 55% higher for those under 20 as those older. (LM Dinerman et al, Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Med, 149(9):967-72, Sept 1995. MD Hayward and J Yogi, "Contraceptive Failure Rate in the US: Estimates from the 1982 National Survey of Family Growth," Family Perspectives, Vol 18, No. 5, Sept/Oct 1986, p. 204; J Trussell, B Vaughan, Contraceptive Failure, Method-Related Discontinuation And Resumption of Use: Results from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, Family Planning Perspectives, 1999, 31)
We must work hard to provide marginalized women contraceptive information and overall support services: the poorest women, the youngest women, women of color, refugee women, homeless women, abused women. These women have a higher risk of unplanned pregnancy because they are the least well-served and the least visible.
Assure thorough information is provided during an abortion visit: Women who don’t want to become pregnant again should be offered an in-depth contraception consult during their abortion visit. Women can often start reversible long-acting methods – an injection, implant or IUD – before they leave the clinic. Providers should make clear women can easily become pregnant post-abortion and ask about the dynamics of their sexual relationships. IPV rates in the UK are high: women in abusive, controlling relationships, particularly the youngest women, have higher rates of repeat unwanted pregnancies.
Talk about combining methods: Combining two forms of contraception provides no less than 92% protection from pregnancy in typical use and no less than 98% in perfect use. If we want to cut the rate of sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancy, we must make clear that consistently backing up any method with condoms radically reduces both STI and pregnancy risks.
Increase awareness about emergency contraception: Only 14% of UK women 16-19 reported using emergency contraception in 2008. Less than 1% of women knew it could be used up to 5 days after a risk; only 49% knew it could be used up to 72 hours. 6% of UK women thought one dose of EC could prevent pregnancy until the next menstrual period (it can’t). Many young women do not know they can get emergency contraception through the NHS, not just family planning clinics.
Men need accurate information on contraception, too. Partner contraceptive non-cooperation is a problem, particularly for the youngest women who are still working on their dump-that-chump-skills. Beyond the impact abusive or careless partners have, even caring men can inadvertently sabotage contraceptive efficacy or use. That Opinions Survey Report included a study on male knowledge that makes clear men need more contraceptive education. Only around 30% knew long-acting contraceptives were more effective than other methods.
UK men reported they always used a condom only 3% of the time. To be an effective sole or backup method, condoms must be used correctly and consistently. Make sure men know that they also are entitled to prevent pregnancies they do not want, and have methods they can use themselves to exercise their reproductive rights. We need to do a better job making sure boys and men understand they are as responsible for their sexual choices, including prevention of unwanted pregnancy, as women are. We don’t do women or men any favors by accepting or enabling double-standards to the contrary.
Think (and talk) differently about teen sexuality: Most young people will -- as they always have -- be sexual with partners. The approaches to teen sexuality with the best outcomes accept this rather than trying to deny or eradicate it.
When we give young people a message their sexuality is something shameful they need to fear or hide, they hear it. They become afraid and less inclined to ask questions or for help, to be honest about what they need and what’s really going on with them. In the Netherlands (last time, I promise): they don’t treat teen sexuality as we do in the UK and the US. They don’t present young people’s sexual partnerships as a terrifying if but as an acceptable when. When reared with a clear cultural expectation they will seek out sexual partnership and an equally clear expectation they will handle sexual partnership ably, young people often will, in fact, do just that.
Just like anything else, all of sexuality has a learning curve. As with, say, cooking, driving a car or writing pieces on huge topics in less than 1,000 words, few begin their sex lives savants. We can’t expect young people to magically be better at this than the rest of us, especially without our help and support. Should we want them to be better at it all than we were or are, we can’t keep doing the same things we know full well have always failed them.
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