Pregnancy – Page 16

Reproductive Tourism

This kind of out-of-control globalization, wherein wealthier women are able to rent the wombs of poorer ones, makes me extremely uncomfortable.

I’m certainly sympathetic to the plight of couples who can’t conceive for whatever reason. And it certainly makes sense for women to voluntarily carry someone else’s pregnancy if it means making a lot of money. But I think it’s possible to be skeptical of this situation without passing judgment on the people involved in it, most of whom are doing the best that they can in tough circumstances.

An article published in The Times of India in February questioned how such a law would be enforced: “In a country crippled by abject poverty,” it asked, “how will the government body guarantee that women will not agree to surrogacy just to be able to eat two square meals a day?”

One could argue that surrogates are simply providing a service like any other. But I’m not sure that we want to turn reproduction into a service industry. The inequalities here are so stark — and the carrot of thousands of dollars so tempting for women in a country with astounding poverty rates — that writing if off as purely business is inadequate.

“Surrogates do it to give their children a better education, to buy a home, to start up a small business, a shop,” Dr. Kadam said. “This is as much money as they could earn in maybe three years. I really don’t think that this is exploiting the women. I feel it is two people who are helping out each other.”

Mr. Gher agreed. “You cannot ignore the discrepancies between Indian poverty and Western wealth,” he said. “We try our best not to abuse this power. Part of our choice to come here was the idea that there was an opportunity to help someone in India.”

In the Mumbai clinic, it is clear that an exchange between rich and poor is under way. On some contracts, the thumbprint of an illiterate surrogate stands out against the clients’ signatures.

Thoughts?

What do you mean my law degree won’t buy me some new ovaries?

Apparently I should be having babies right now.

Women who want to have children should make it a priority in their twenties to find a partner. That’s because one of the most dramatic issues facing Generation X is infertility. No generation of women has had more trouble with fertility than this generation, who received the terrible baby boomer advice, “Wait. You have time. Focus on your career first.”

But in fact, you have your whole life to get a career. Obviously, that’s not true of having a baby. If you are past your early twenties, and you’re single and want to have children, you need to find a partner now. Take that career drive and direct it toward mating – your ovaries will not last longer than your career.

In case you’re waiting for “the right time,” there is no evidence to show when is best to interrupt a career to have a child. No matter when it happens, a women’s career is thrown off track. Phyllis Moen, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, says, “Don’t wait until the right time in your career to have a child or it will never come.”

I’m getting really, really tired of hearing these messages. Men have never had to worry about balancing career with family. Women are inundated with “helpful information” about how we simply cannot possibly “have it all,” and then we’re berated when we internalize the message and work part-time, or stay home, or worry about how we’re going to do it all, or set our sights lower than men do. Then the same nay-sayers who had been telling women we can’t do it use women’s insecurities and lower achievements to “prove” their self-fulfilling prophecy.

I call bullshit. Yes, everyone has to make choices, but plenty of women are able to balance their professional goals with their personal ones. Some of them have babies in their 20s. Some of them don’t. And the author of this article is out of her damn mind if she thinks that fear of not having babies in the future is a good reason to get married and/or pregnant right now.

A Modest [Feminist?] Proposal

This is satire, right?

Fay Weldon is a long-time feminist activist, and I have to hope that this op/ed is simply a satirical response to the suggestion of a British politician that all teenage girls have access to long-term birth control — a suggestion that Weldon frames as if the politician said that all teenagers should be sterilized. But it reads awfully seriously. And whether or not she meant it, the commenters at the Daily Mail sure seem to be taking her seriously — and agreeing with her proposal. Plus there’s the fact that Weldon “found God” a few years back and has been spouting some seriously anti-feminist rhetoric ever since. I want to believe it’s a joke, but I’m not so sure.

Last week, an intriguing proposition was mooted by Government minister Dawn Primarolo.

Teenage girls, she said, could be steered towards what is described as “long-term contraception”.

This is now possible thanks to the development of contraceptive jabs and implants which can last up to five years.

In other words, there is a way of effectively sterilising girls for a lengthy period of time.

At what age? Well, doesn’t 12 until 17 sound rather sensible?

This would have the advantage of bringing down the teenage pregnancy rate, so high in this country it makes us a disgrace among the nations – the worst offenders in Europe.

The abortion rate would fall sharply. And silly young girls could get on with the education that is meant to produce serious, responsible taxpayers, not benefit recipients.

Now, many people will see this modest proposal as little short of horrific – nothing less than state interference in our reproductive lives.

But think about it: it might not be such a bad idea.

The rest of the op/ed just goes downhill from there.

I’m all for improving access to education and decreasing the teen pregnancy rate, but not at any cost. And forcing all girls to be sterilized is a pretty high price to pay. It’s simply wrong. It’s a violation of bodily autonomy and basic human rights, just like forced abortion and forced pregnancy. It is not something that any pro-choice person should ever consider reasonable.

It’s also something with deeply racist roots. Forced and coerced sterilizations are not neutral propositions, and have long been used as tools of control against women of color and others “unfit” for parenthood. These kinds of suggestions cannot be separated from that history. And, no matter who they’re directed at, suggestions that we should take away the reproductive rights of an entire group of people are inherently problematic and worthy of strong feminist opposition.

The Good Old Days

While state senators are pining for the good ol’ days of easy rape and conservative Texas communities are doing their darndest to shame and punish young women who “choose life,” a Colorado representative is letting teen moms know exactly how he feels about them:

“In my parents’ day and age, they were sent away. They were shunned. They were called what they are … There’s no sense of shame today. Society condones it … They’re sluts. And I don’t mean just the women. I mean the men, too.”

Ah yes, the good old days when women were socially shunned and sent away upon becoming pregnant (and, sorry, but the young slutty men were never shunned or sent away). I’m sure that never contributed to increased abortion rates among young women. I’m sure that young women who become pregnant today will “choose life” when “pro-life” politicians tell them they’re whores who should be ostracized and shipped off.

But this is the “pro-life” movement for you — they rail against abortion, but then take every step possible to (1) make preventing unwanted pregnancy more difficult, and (2) punish and harm women who have kids. They aren’t just hostile to abortion rights; they’re hostile to women, and to women being able to make their own decisions.

Oh, but he “apologized:”

“I certainly could have had a better choice of words,” said Liston. “That’s the word that inadvertently came to my mind.”

Funny, because reading this, “self-righteous ass” is the term that inadvertently came to my mind. All my most genuine apologies for that.

Thanks for Choosing Life! …now piss off.

Title stolen from Doug, who basically says everything I would have.

It’s not an uncommon story: Teenage girl grows up in a conservative town; teenage girl gets pregnant; teenage girl has baby; town is scandalized. But here, the teenage girl got her life together — being a mother pushed her to be more responsible, and she got her grades up and stayed in school, despite having the odds stacked against her. Her fellow students took notice, and wanted to write a yearbook story on her — but the conservative, likely “pro-life” administration would have none of it.

Her classmates decided to write about Shipman’s story of choices and challenges in the yearbook.

But school administrators said the article would glamorize pre-marital sex and send the wrong message.
…
Mr. Crummel said that Ms. Estes and Ms. Shipman were well spoken and articulate at the board meeting. He believes principal Cash made his decision because the yearbook story was in conflict with the school’s position of abstinence-only education.

And therein lies the entire crux of the anti-choice movement: They are willing to actively deny reality in order to promote their ideals.

Ms. Shipman’s existence, and the existence of her child, are in conflict with the school’s position of abstinence-only education. The majority of Americans conflict with the school’s position. Reality conflicts with the school’s position. As Doug writes:

Ahh, now we see what this is really about: that “abstinence-based curriculum” failed dramatically in at least one instance, and now they want to make sure that instance is kept under wraps.

The Shipman case is a microcosm of everything that is head-slappingly screwed-up about the right wing’s attitudes toward sex and pregnancy. Basically, the way they think things should work is this: If you’re in high-school, you should only be exposed to an inaccuracy-laden form of sex education that is no more likely to keep you from having sex than other forms of sex ed. When you do go ahead and have sex anyway, chances are you get pregnant, because you never got any accurate information about birth control or contraceptives. Once you get pregnant, you have to carry the child to term, because abortion is wrong — but even if you do keep the baby, we’re still going to shun you and treat you as a leper because you never should’ve had sex in the first place. And God forbid you work hard, finish your schooling and make something of yourself, because then you’re “glamorizing” teen pregnancy and demonstrating to your peers that God doesn’t automatically make pregnant teens spontaneously combust in a fireball of shame. Here’s a question: How many pregnant teenage girls will see a story like this — in which another girl did everything she was “supposed” to do in handling her pregnancy, yet still got treated as damaged goods by the Powers That Be — and figure that, if that’s as good as things get when you actually “choose life,” they might as well get an abortion?

Of course, working to create circumstances that will actually increase the demand for abortion is nothing new to the right wing. But not only are they working against reducing abortions, they’re working against teenagers — particularly girls — at every single step of the process.

Indeed.

Anti-Choicers Defeat Birth Control Bill in South Dakota

A South Dakota bill that would have given women easier access to contraception and taken substantial steps to decrease the unintended pregnancy and abortion rate was defeated in the state senate — by “pro-life” legislators.

The Birth Control Protection Act said South Dakotans have the freedom to obtain and use safe and effective methods of contraception without government interference.

“It is the public policy of this state that the interest in freedom from unreasonable government intrusions into the private lives of citizens, and specifically the right of consenting individuals to obtain and use safe and effective methods of contraception without interference by governmental entities … ” the bill stated.

Birth control is not abortion. It does not cause or promote abortion. Birth control is the most effective way to decrease the abortion rate. And yet those who claim to oppose abortion the most are the same people who are taking the strongest steps to increase the abortion rate.

Plans

Supposedly everyone agrees that we need to lower the teen pregnancy rate. But when we take a look at what the plans actually entail, we see what the “pro-life” movement actually stands for. First, the Dems:

Both Obama and Clinton have backed and continue to support increasing spending on what they call comprehensive family planning programs, sometimes also called “abstinence plus.” These give information on abstinence, abortion, contraception and Plan B or the morning-after pill that can prevent pregnancy after sex.

Clinton and Obama are co-sponsors of the main Democratic family planning bill, the Prevention First Act, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., early last year. It would increase funding by $100 million the approximately $300 million spent annually by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for family planning and sex education.

The Obama campaign also stresses his bill, the Communities of Color Teen Prevention Act, introduced last year, to spend $65 million annually in grants to lower pregnancy rates among Latino and African-American teenagers.

Both strongly emphasize that they will appoint federal judges who will uphold abortion rights and both endorse the Freedom of Choice Act, a bill to ensure legal abortions remain available. Both also say they will push for health insurance plans to cover prescription contraception.

So: Comprehensive sex education. Contraception. Abstinence. Abortion rights. The very things that have been proven time and again to decrease the abortion rate — they just need to add in comprehensive social welfare policies (like childcare and aid to low-income families) and universal health care.

The Republicans?

Republicans have not put out detailed agendas, but support continued federal funding of abstinence programs. Huckabee and Romney pursued abstinence-only funding as governors. McCain voted in the Senate against expanding family planning programs with contraception education.

Huckabee has been outspoken about his support for abstinence education as the best approach to teen pregnancy, and his commitment to overturning the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court legalizing abortion. In responding to a query from the Christian Broadcast Network last year, he said, “I do not believe in teaching about sex or contraception in public schools. That is the responsibility of parents.”

Last February, McCain spoke of overturning Roe v. Wade before an abstinence rally in South Carolina, but he did not detail specific plans to reduce teen pregnancy. On his Web site, he says he favors adoption and will work to reduce abortions. “The pro-life movement has done tremendous work in building and reinforcing the infrastructure of civil society,” his Web site reads. “This work must continue and government must find new ways to empower and strengthen these armies of compassion.”

Romney, as the governor of Massachusetts, sought to provide federal abstinence-only education grants for programs in African-American and Latino communities. He told the Family Research Council’s Voter Values conference last fall that teen pregnancy is tied to the breakdown of the traditional family. He believes in incentives to encourage marriage and penalties to fathers who do not support their children.

“One of the biggest threats to the fabric of our society is out-of-wedlock childbirth. Ann and I will use the bully pulpit to teach America’s children that before they have babies, they should get married. It’s time to make out-of-wedlock births out-of-fashion again,” he said.

He stressed his support for an overturn of Roe v. Wade and favors returning the decision over abortion legality to the states.

And Republicans have… outlawing abortion and telling people to keep their legs closed until they’re married. The very things that never work. And they oppose the measures that have been proven to decrease the abortion rate. Because they’re pro-life like that.

Time for another poorly-thought-out pregnancy-scare health article!

Because God forbid a pregnant woman enjoy an adult pleasure every now and again without someone trying to shame her into giving them all up in the name of the holy baby.

Too much caffeine during pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage, a new study says, and the authors suggest that pregnant women may want to reduce their intake or cut it out entirely.

Translation: a poorly-designed study riddled with major methodological problems focusing on women who’ve already miscarried comes to the unsupported conclusion that *the* deciding factor might could possibly have been caffeine, so no more coffee for you, Walking Womb. Don’t complain, either, because we know it’s not so bad:

Pregnant women should try to give up caffeine for at least the first three or four months, said the lead author of the study, Dr. De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, Calif.

“If, for whatever reason, they really can’t do it, think of cutting to one cup or switching to decaf,” Dr. Li said. “Stopping caffeine really doesn’t have any downside.”

Um, yeah.

Listen, I know a little bit about quitting caffeine, as I’m in the process of doing it right now. There are indeed downsides, starting with the miserable headache I had for two days running, followed by a low-level headache that has lasted for another three days. I see little point of doing it if you’ve pretty much missed the window during which it might possibly make a difference before you even realize that you’re pregnant. It’s a lot of stress, what with caffeine being an addictive substance. And in the end, it’s a tossup as to whether the stress or the addiction itself worse for you, especially if you’re only doing it for a short period of time and only because someone’s told you to do it for the health of your fetus.

Except for the fact that that someone has made this recommendation because they found a little correlation in one questionably-designed study, have not measured what amounts of caffeine might possibly have an effect, if any, and have decided anyway that because you are a uterus on legs, that you cannot be trusted with anything less than total abstinence, regardless of how you feel about the matter.

It’s the same story with any number of other bits of food and drink, such as alcohol, raw fish, soft cheeses and the like. You know, the kind of things that pregnant women have been enjoying for centuries without necessarily turning out mutant babies.

The message given to pregnant women nowadays, though, seems to be that they’re mere children themselves, so they can’t partake of adult pleasures, and while smoking, drinking to excess and taking hard drugs is pretty unquestionably bad for both the fetus *and* the mother, nobody knows how much is dangerous, how much is safe, and so on. So the recommendations seem to be that the pregnant woman has to quit absolutely everything that she may enjoy, and that she can’t be trusted to have any of this stuff in moderation. And god forbid she might decide to partake in public; women’s bodies are public property already, but a visibly pregnant woman really gets it bad. Bartenders and waiters may refuse to serve her alcohol or sushi, strangers may decide they know what’s best for her (and they’ll be sure to tell her).

In the end, though, all of this abstinence may not make a difference, at least when it comes to preventing miscarriage:

Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and epidemiology, at Columbia University Medical Center, had reservations about the study, noting that miscarriage is difficult to study or explain. Dr. Westhoff said most miscarriages resulted from chromosomal abnormalities, and there was no evidence that caffeine could cause those problems.

“Just interviewing women, over half of whom had already had their miscarriage, does not strike me as the best way to get at the real scientific question here,” she said. “But it is an excellent way to scare women.”

She said that smoking, chlamidial infections and increasing maternal age were stronger risk factors for miscarriage, and ones that women could do something about.

“Moderation in all things is still an excellent rule,” Dr. Westhoff said. “I think we tend to go overboard on saying expose your body to zero anything when pregnant. The human race wouldn’t have succeeded if the early pregnancy was so vulnerable to a little bit of anything. We’re more robust than that.”

Really, you’d wonder how we survived all these millenia if you listened to the pregnancy-scare people.

h/t Louise.

Teen pregnancy will also restore your virginity and pay off your credit card debt

I still haven’t seen Juno, although I really want to. A whole lot of feminist bloggers have criticized its message, but Susie Bright’s take is my favorite so far. Head over there and read it.

Anti-choice bloggers are calling these movies “gems” and saying that they reinforce a culture of life. I’m sure these films are entertaining and sweet, and I’ve heard that Juno in particular is fantastic — I’m sure I’ll like it. But while Culture of Life Warriors are applauding films which show teenage girls having babies, they’re taking all kinds of steps to insure that teenagers in real life have fewer options to prevent pregnancy, and are kept ignorant about their bodies and their health. They are making it harder for low-income women to raise children. They are making it harder for children to thrive in our society. They are willing to sacrifice women’s lives for their ideology.

Many of these movies are enjoyable for pro-choicers and pro-lifers alike. That’s great. But a truly “pro-life” culture requires more than just feel-good films — it requires an actual commitment to the lives and well-being of women, men and children. And I have yet to see anything resembling that from the “pro-life” political establishment.

Boy, am I glad I didn’t pick up a copy of the Sunday Times this morning

I was meeting someone today at a newsstand and had run out of stuff to read (the wait was also longer than I’d anticipated, since he was at an entirely different newsstand, wondering why *I* hadn’t shown). I was eyeing the magazine choices, not all that thrilled with any of them. I thought briefly about buying a NYT, if for no other reason than the crossword. Well, that and I’m planning on painting my ceiling in the near future and need something to catch the drips. I decided against it, though, since we were going to brunch and I didn’t want to lug the thing all over.

And then I got home and found out that I had dodged a bullet: Yes, they gave Caitlin “My job is to shame working mothers while pretending I just have a hobby” Flanagan a prime spot on the Sunday op-ed page.

To talk about pregnancy being punishment, but you should also be sure to regret abortion and adoption for good measure, you slut.

Query: why is she still getting paid by anyone after it turned out she plagiarized a lot of her New Yorker piece on Mary Poppins creator Pamela Travers, presenting the original research of Valerie Lawson as her own work? Let alone falling upwards on the publishing food chain?