abortionclinicdays

"abstinence only"

this is sort of a postscript to the last story which mentions the disservice done to young men and women who are taught "abstinence only" in high school.  last night CNN did one of their zipper blurbs on a study out of Texas A&M which found that  for ALL grades in high school, students who had undergone "abstinence only" education proceded to have more sex afterwards.  they did not say how long afterwards.  (this was a texas study.)

let's hope that more of these studies come to light so that the schools will see that they need to get back to educating students about their bodies, reproduction, birth control and protection against sexually transmitted disease.  for the record, i am all for talking about responsible sex, how to say no until you are ready. 

obviously, creating unrealistic goals using disinformation, scare tactics and guilt is not working and worse, causes pain and damage.

lou

you never know 2

i know i just wrote about this topic but i had to write again because yesterday once again i spoke to a young woman in counseling who was shattered by the experience of getting pregnant.  she is beautiful, smart, articulate and a daughter that any parent would be proud of.  in high school she took the chasity pledge and was a speaker in the national "teen impact" program that promotes chastity until marriage.  it worked until she fell in love.

and then, like many women before her, because she had never thought that she would have sex, was not prepared to protect herself from pregnancy.  overwhelmed with guilt and shame, and not knowing about emergency contraception (that can stop a pregnancy before it starts), she did nothing. 

the turmoil she described upon finding herself pregnant cannot be imagined because it went to the core of her own being, her identity.  eventually she concluded that abortion was her best choice to maintain her college scholarship, her life goals.  besides feeling like a hypocrite, she said, the hardest thing for her was that she could not tell her parents, causing her to feel deceitful.  but she knew that telling them would preclude her making her own choice about her future and would also let them know that she had violated the pledge.  oh, if only parents coulld see the anguish i see every day in women who have "violated the pledge".  it is quite different from the women whose birth control failed.  neither is happy to be having an abortion, but those whose very sense of themselves is crushed have a longer road to self forgiveness.

it's easy to say "well, then she should just not have the abortion" but obviously she had considered that herself.  her decision to discontinue the pregnancy was not one of convenience.  being a contemplative young woman, she pondered deeply and then had to confront her smug assumption that of course adoption was an easy answer to the problem.  she kept repeating "i didn't know it could happen to someone like me".

maybe it's always easier to decide what others ought to do.  maybe it's always hard, hard, hard to figure out your own life, your own choices, but working in women's health for so long, this is the one thing that i hear every day that changes when it's you, your life.

my heart breaks for her but i think that she will be able to forgive herself eventually.  she will be forever more tolerant and understanding of others' situations, not just around pregnancy.

these "abstinence only" programs that our tax dollars are supporting really make me angry.  i have been working in this field a long long time and i can see how women come in knowing less and less about how their bodies work, less about birth control methods.  young men are abysmally ignorant!   it seems to me that we are doing young men and women a disservice.  it's all right to preach the "virtues" of abstaining because in fact many young people do begin sexual activity before they are ready for it.  but to have taxpayers funding intentional ignorance and depriving them of information that they need to protect themselves seems worse than naive, it is cruel.

crossing over

Turning the Tide: A Letter from the Editor Making History: The March for Women's Lives Crossing Over FCC - Federal Censorship Commission Wedding Day Little Longings La Migra The Personal Quests of Saira Shah Muddled in the Middle A Letter To The Old Far Who Thought A Grab Would Cure My Feminism Letter to us via Reetika Vazirani Turn, Turn, Turn: Thoughts on the Sexual (Counter) Revolution Conversation With A Stripper In New Orleans Say "NO" to Dowry Spiraling White Privilege Means Never Having to Walk Across the Bridge You, Too, Can Be A Sexy Mommy An Eye For the Ladies Breaking Out of the Bubble: Life Outside of the Slope Sex Talk Teen Oral Sex: It's Sensationalized Hair How Do You Want Your Abortion? The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women, by Susan J. Douglas & Meredith W. Michaels Bearing Life: Women's Writing on Childlessness, Edited by Rochelle Ratner The Chinese Garden, by Rosemary Manning Can We Talk? Links About STP Write for STP Contributors Home Sexing the Political: A Journal of Third Wave Feminists on Sexuality Editor and Publisher: Krista Jacob Unless otherwise noted, all material located in this site is: ©Krista Jacob, 2004 all rights reserved Volume Three Number Two May 2004   Crossing Over Robin Ringleka Six months before I became pregnant, I marched the streets of Washington, D.C.  Every January 22nd, the anniversary of Roe V. Wade, thousands of ‘pro-lifers’ from all over the country pour into the streets to protest. The year I turned eighteen, I was one of them. How could I have known that in less than a year I would become one of “those women” against whom we were marching? I will never forget the night before the march. The vigil. The one that ends with Catholic Mass in the Basilica. I was in awe, very aware of the “privilege” to share in the occasion with bishops and cardinals from all over the world. The splendor of this church alone. And there were so many men—indeed, most of them were. During a moment of silence, from several rows behind came the blood-curdling screams, those of a woman. She screamed with her whole being, in protest of the church, the gathering of all these men, and against our efforts to end legalized abortion. Right then it seemed to me that all of the bodies present should have been able to absorb or buffer the screams of one lone woman. But her voice, her message, resounded throughout the Basilica, and went right to my very core. I never actually saw her. As this woman was wrestled down and led out, the Mass continued as if nothing had happened. Nothing. Wait a minute.  I can’t even begin to describe the way her screams tore through me.  I did not see one person turn around. I had been standing next to a priest who grabbed hold of me, physically keeping me from turning and acknowledging her.  But it was too late.  I recognized something in this woman’s voice. And while I had no idea what it was, I’d never felt so afraid as I did that moment. My tears came and wouldn’t stop. Another young woman nearby was as affected, and she and I clung together, sobbing and rocking into one another, waiting for the Mass to end.  The next day’s march was filled with people toting all kinds of pictures of mutilated fetuses. We were excited to take pictures of the most grotesque, most “convincing” signs we found. Many people brought their young children and babies to the march. My friends and I decided to pose with one for a picture because we thought it made a statement. I’m sure I still have it somewhere, the picture of me and Jessica and Laura with some smiling baby among swarms of huge, blown up photos of bloody fetuses. For me, it was all about the babies. Saving them. Sending them into good, Christian families who weren’t able to have their own. It seemed so obvious to me, especially with the baby shortage they talked so much about in religion class. Individual couples were waiting years to adopt while so many women aborted their babies. So imagine my excitement, following the initial shock and shame of an unintended pregnancy, to be able to do the “right thing.” My plan was to tell my parents once arrangements had been made. With ease, I found a program out east, Circle of Love or something like that. The woman with whom I spoke was great. She was delighted to tell me about their program, and even more delighted to receive answers to the questions about my background: White, upper-middle class, excellent health and education, and college-bound. She commended me for my bravery, and empathized with my situation. I had just graduated from high school the month before, and in the fall I was to go away to the University of Tennessee, where I had accepted a cheerleading scholarship. Really, we surmised, if this had to happen, there wasn’t a better time in my life. Rather than go away to school, I would go out east for a year. The agency was ready to pay for my housing, any counseling I might need, even college courses while I waited to have the baby. I would even be allowed to aide in choosing the adoptive family, and was assured the child would be placed in an affluent one, where they would have endless opportunities. She helped me envision my return to Tennessee the following fall, where I could just pick up the poms again and nobody would ever have to be the wiser.  It all seemed very romantic. But then came the questions about the “father,” my then-boyfriend Dennis. She should have been delighted to know that he, too, came from a “good” background, one nearly identical to mine. As I told her about him and his plans for college in the fall, something was happening on the other end of the line. Something was terribly wrong, the fading connection seemed almost tangible. Her breathing, her tone, everything had changed.  With these words, it was all over: “Oh. Well, I’m really very sorry, but we just don’t have a demand for bi-racial children. Our program won’t be able to help you.” Dennis was black. So. It wasn’t about babies after all, but about white babies. They didn’t tell us that in religion class, nor did they mention it at the march. But wait! Open any newspaper and you can find couples advertising, selling themselves as loving parents who wish to complete their lives with your baby. Yes. Your white baby. When I began dating Dennis, my mother warned me. She said that while it was okay with her, I should remember the social context in which we lived, especially in Memphis. Some white boys might not want to date me once they knew that I had dated a black one.  This, for me, was a non-issue because I would never date someone who held those opinions anyway. I never dreamed that racism extended beyond that. Surely not amongst the more liberal and educated.  Surely not into the northern or eastern borders. And certainly not into the pro-life movement.  It appears that little has been written about the pro-life movement and it’s rhetoric as ideas based on notions of white supremacy. This needs to be discussed. I wonder how many other women have found themselves in similar situations. How can people justify talking about baby shortages when there are over 500,000 children in the United States waiting for homes? And how about worldwide? How many of these children are non-white? And for that matter, how can they talk about babies in economic terms anyway? Demand. Supply. Market. I recently looked up the agency that I had dealt with on the Internet. I wanted to find and read their mission statement, curious to see if anything has changed since 1992. I found the agency in Massachusetts. According to their web page, they do not discriminate based on age, religion, class or race. Against whom, though, is not clear. The adoptive parents?  The girl “in trouble”?  Their offspring?  Maybe, I hoped, they had just added this anti-discrimination clause in the past seven years.  I wish I could say I believe it. Let’s just leave it at this:  I’ll believe it when I see it.  When the couples in the paper start seeking not white babies, or even babies, but any child. When there are not five-hundred thousand, one thousand, or even one child left awaiting adoption. When there are programs like the one out east available to all women, not just middle or upper class white women carrying white babies.  In other words, I won’t be crossing back over anytime soon. Epilogue: For the first seven years that followed my abortion, I did not talk about it. The impact of the shame I felt around it was tremendous. And It thrived NOT because I had made the wrong decision, but because of the fertile soil such silence provides. I needed to talk about what happened to me, but I was certain that if others knew this one piece of information, it would change everything. So I came to feel like a fraud, doubting my goodness and dedication to anti-racism work. Because when it came down to it, hadn't my decision been based on race? Then I took a course in Women's Studies, then another, and I was hooked. Soon after I particpated in my community's production of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues, I wrote my story. I shared it, and nobody disappeared. In fact, I found that I knew several other women who have had an abortion, it was just something we never talked about.

you never know.....

once of the most striking aspects of any clinic worker's experience is that on any given day anywhere from 25-50% of the patients will start out telling the counselor how they never believed in abortion until they were in the situation that caused them to look at it differently.  many will say that they just didn't believe women needed to choose abortion when they could just as easily choose adoption.  still others will tell of going with their catholic school to demonstrations in washington, d.c., protesting at their local abortion clinic with their protestant or fundamentalist church, or going, sometimes with their mom, to various anti-abortion events.

but then, suddenly when they are forced to confront a pregnancy that cannot continue, they are at first disbelieving that it could happen to them, then disbelieving of themselves that they are considering abortion.  how can that be?  it throws them for a loop, let me tell you.

again this past saturday i spoke with a woman who told me that she was ashamed that she had made judgements about other women, that even though she was upset that she was choosing abortion, at the same time she knew it was the right decision for her.

but why, i wonder, is there such a disconnect?  why do so many women think that they are against abortion but then have one when they find themselves to be pregnant at a time that they feel they cannot be the kind of parent they want to be? 

in other countries where there is not so much anti-abortion rhetoric and protest, women seem to do better, to have less guilt about their choices.  this fact has been proven by numerous studies. 

as we approach the anniversary date of the roe vs wade decision which declared that the woman and her doctor should be the only ones to make the decision, we seem to have moved away from that thought at the same time that abortion numbers are creeping up again.  yet the anti-abortion folks are louder than before. 

it's hard to make sense of it, isn't it, if you are the one who is pregnant, didn't mean to be.  you know what's right in your case, but it may not be what you thought you'd choose.  you never know....

lou

state with no law 3

for those of you who have followed the story of the surrogate mom who gave birth to the triplets and then had to take them home from the hospital when the birth father did not show up, i have what i think is the final outcome. there is a complicated legal situation which i will not repeat here, but i will tell you that it seems like the judge was very careful and wise in making his final decision.  he listened carefully to the stories of the surrogate mom who, according to the judge, told delighted tales of how much the (now over one year old) triplets mean to her and her family.  she spoke of them by name and described her days with them during their first year of life. 

in contrast, the judge noted that the birth father referred to them as "the big one" or said "one of them" but did not seem to exhibit any caring for them as persons.  therefore, the judge said, he felt that they belonged with the surrogate mom even though legal cases are rarely decided in favor of the surrogate mom. he even reduced the time for the father's visitation and insisted that he call them by their names.

the judge said that since the case was so unusual, he could only do what he felt was in the best interest of the children, which is what we were hoping for all along!  a lovely start for the new year!  keep them in your thoughts for a happy healthy life with their family.

lou