Reproductive Rights – Page 113

Putting parents back in charge of their adolescent daughters

From the “Cheers and Jeers” section of Women’s eNews:

The Republican-led New York State Senate passed a bill Wednesday to allow local pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception to women without prescription, according to combined news reports.

Fabulous. Now both my “home” states — Washington and New York — have sensible rules regarding access to EC (assuming that Gov. Pataki signs the legislation, which he likely will).

But in not-so-great news:

Female teens who try to obtain contraceptives may have to wait at least five days for their parents to be notified, according to the Parents’ Right-to-Know Act, which was re-introduced Tuesday in Congress.

Adopt This Blog

My new favorite blog, which doesn’t update at nearly the speed I desperately need it to, is I Blame The Patriarchy. Ms. Twisty is a foodie, Texan, puck hater, and describes herself as pompous and effete, credentials that match my bloggery standards.

One of here recent posts on abortion rights features perhaps the Best Title Ever. Read it for yourself.

Anti-choicers gone wild

If you’re a high school student in Ohio, be careful around crying people — you might get AIDS from them. At least, that’s what your state’s abstinence-only education curriculum teaches. Ohio abstinence-only “education” programs:

Overstate the failure rates of condom use, blame contraceptives for poor mental health among youths and erroneously suggest that birth control pills will increase a girl’s future chances of infertility.

Misrepresent religious conviction as scientific fact. One program urges teens to “follow God’s plan for purity,” while another recommends books that are religious in nature.

Contain inaccurate or misleading information about the transmission or detection of sexual diseases. One curriculum described HIV as a virus that can remain undetected either by test or physical symptoms for six months to 10 years, when in fact most antibodies are present within two to eight weeks after exposure. The curriculum also suggested incorrectly that HIV can be transmitted through tears and open-mouth kissing.

Is not applicable to gay teens because same-sex marriages are illegal in Ohio.

In other anti-choice craziness, Planned Parenthood of Missouri is being ordered to re-pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in family planning funding because they provide abortions — despite the fact that none of that money paid for abortions or abortion services. It went to programs designed to prevent abortions. That’s anti-choice logic for ya.

Clarification

Amanda does a good job summing up the “Fetal Protection” case that so many of us feminist bloggers commented on this week:

It looks like there’s a very good chance that this homemade abortion was the last incident in a string of abusive encounters. The boy admitted to hitting the girl in the past to keep her from berating him, and the hospital report indicates that she was hit on the face and had a huge bruise on her arm from someone grabbing her. This casts doubt on her story that she wanted to abort the pregnancy so much as it was lost after her boyfriend beat her. The girl had, after all, been keeping up her doctor’s appointments.

From the affidavits, it looks like parental notification wasn’t an issue.

…This entire case is disturbing on a number of levels. First of all, it’s disturbing that it was so widely reported as a simple issue of two teenagers getting caught doing a homemade abortion, when it’s very likely that instead it was closer to the all-too-typical scenario of domestic violence escalating due to a pregnancy. But the prosecution carries a lot of the blame in that–instead of treating this incident for what it most likely was, which is a case of domestic violence leading to a miscarriage and prosecuting the young man for hurting his girlfriend, they grandstanded on the whole abortion bullshit instead of standing up for the young woman who was victimized in all this.

…This hyper-focus on the fetus turns the entire national discussion on how to handle the fact that domestic violence often escalates during pregnancy into a joke. Anti-choicers who exhibit more interest in fetuses than women may not intend it, but their attitude tacitly condones treating women like objects that can be mishandled by their partners–grab her, hit her on the arm, hit her on the face, but if you dare injure her fetus, off to jail with you!

We got some details wrong on this case, but I think the newest information makes this case far more troubling. First because many of us jumped so quickly to defend the boy and his actions, and second for the emotional appeals the boy’s defense made against the girl. Unfortunately, early reports did not mention the boy’s earlier abuse.

Life Sentence Under “Fetal Protection” Law

[UPDATE III: Amp spells out some more details brought to light since I last read the articles that make this situation much more troublesome. In this new light, I am reluctant to defend the young man in this case.]

Two scared and stupid teenagers devise a homemade abortion and the boyfriend is sentenced to life in prison.

Nineteen-year-old Gerardo Flores of Lufkin was sentenced to life in prison Monday in a landmark test case of a state fetal protection law. An Angelina County jury deliberated just under four hours, finding him guilty on two counts of capital murder for his part in killing his unborn twins.

An appeal will likely be filed within thirty days, and may be fought all the way to the Supreme Court.

Ampersand further explains the case and legal choices behind the ruling:

…a 16-year-old pregnant girl, Erica Basoria, and her boyfriend, Gerardo Flores, jointly agreed to abort her sixteen-week pregnancy by beating her around the stomach. None of the news stories I’ve read explains why they didn’t go to a doctor. Maybe they were just too stupid and scared and afraid of being found out; or maybe pro-lifers have succeeded in removing all practical access to abortion where these kids live.

Under Texas’ fetal protection law, a mother can never be charged for “murdering” her own fetus – but someone else can (there’s an exemption for health care providers). She was pregnant with twins, so the boyfriend has been found guilty of a double homicide and, unless the case is successfully appealed, will spend the rest of his life in prison.

…The defense attorney tried to blame the whole thing on the girl, of course. Didn’t fly with the jury.

Note that the mother’s wishes are… entirely irrelevant. Really, I’m amazed that they didn’t go for the death penalty.

For more commentary, see Republic of T.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum says:

This is the intersection of stupid kids, stupid laws, mendacious legislators, and fanatical prosecutors. It’s what happens when states ban access to otherwise legal abortions and kids don’t know where to turn. And if circumstances and the law had been slightly different, Bauereiss probably would have prosecuted Erica Basoria too and sought the death penalty for both.

It’s like living under the Ayatollahs in Iran. It’s simple barbarism.

UPDATE II: From Bitch Ph.D.

In trying to save his life, he had to blame his girlfriend, the girl he was trying to help; and though she tried to defend him, she had to stand by in the end without being able to, listening to his defense attorney blame her for “inviting” a boyfriend to hurt her. She’s legally safe from prosecution, but not safe from the age-old “she asked for it” form of defense; and her boyfriend has to offer that heinous defense in order to save his own hide. (And people say it’s gay marriage that threatends the stability of heterosexual relationships.) Here we have a young man who, in desperate circumstances, tried to stand by his girlfriend, to help her, forced to hurt her and punished by the state because no, we will not allow women to think for themselves. We will portray women who do as victims, as crazy, as invisible; we will not listen to what they have to say; and we will punish the men who try to stand by women, who listen to what women say instead of “listening” to the imagined words of a five-month old fetus.

The whole thing is an absolute tragedy. A metaphorical punch in the gut to Flores, to Basoria, and to everyone who cares about women’s rights. She’s recovered from the miscarriage; if the sentence stands, neither she, he, nor we will recover from the blows of the state.

The Next SCOTUS Abortion Case?

A decision by the Fourth Circuit on Friday may set the stage for the next test in the Supreme Court of the constitutionality of laws that ban so-called “partial birth” abortions. By a 2-1 vote, the Circuit Court nullified Virginia’s 2003 law seeking to outlaw that form of medical practice for terminating pregnancy. A strongly worded dissent by a conservative member of the Fourth Circuit panel, Circuit Judge Paul V. Niemeyer, could embolden Virginia state officials to take the case on to the Supreme Court – very likely reaching it ahead of other “partial birth” cases, now awaiting rulings in three federal circuit courts, that test the federal ban on such abortions.

Read the rest.

Pope speaks out on fertility treatments

No surprise here. The current Italian law is incredibly restrictive; it “bans donations of sperm and eggs, defines life as beginning at conception, and allows fertility treatment only to married heterosexual couples.”

It ramins to be seen how the Italian people will react to this move. One thing that has always been interesting about Italy is that, while its people are deeply religious and overwhelmingly Catholic, there is a strong resistance to the intrusion of religion into the political sphere. And there has been an equally strong push by the Catholic church to do just about anything to maintain its influence over the populace — even its opposition to abortion didn’t really begin until Papal states shrunk and a decline in the church’s political power became obvious.

The church has the right to issue whatever boycotts it deems necessary in preventing people from donating sperm and eggs (gotta protect potential life, right?). I think it’s unfortunate that they are choosing to dedicate such energy to preventing people from having children, but that’s their call. But when an organization is dealing with a wide range of issues and only has access to limited resources, don’t they usually focus on the most important issue/s? I understand, they think fertility treatments end life. But how about taking a louder stand against the invasion of Iraq? That hasn’t been the most life-affirming mission. Or calling on all Catholics to petition the UN and their own governments to do something in Darfur? How about mentioning the Church’s opposition to the death penalty (something that many Christian and “pro-life” groups out here manage to conveniently forget)? Hell, what about the 78,000 women (probably more unreported) who die of illegal abortions every year? What about the 12 million street kids in Brazil — a country where the Catholic church has been instrumental in limiting access to contraception and sex education and illegalizing abortion (which means lots more dead mothers and orphaned children)? Priority, I guess, isn’t being placed in protecting real, actual, living people — it’s being put on getting into a political fray intended to block families from having children.

Excuse me if I’m a little testy tonight. But given the current state of things, I think any feeling person would be. (p.s., please excuse the typos — I’m sure there are many. It’s after 3am, and I’m so tired I’m seeing double. Plus, I’m pissed, and that doesn’t help).

Parental consent in California

Alley Rat has a powerful post on her experience with an underage friend who got a safe, legal abortion in California — something that may not be an option for many girls there if the state passes its parental consent law. Alley makes an important point when she writes that girls almost always tell at least one parent before they have an abortion; the ones that don’t generally can’t, or strongly feel that they can’t. Read her whole post, as it’s much more eloquent and compelling than I can possibly be right now.

Hypocrisy in the Culture Wars

Neil of the nTrain has two great posts up about stem cells and gays/women in the military. Neil (who has a great, sarcastic writing style) points out that, although he his in favor of stem cell research, “those that object to the use of federally funded research that involved the dissection of these embryos cannot simply stop there. You cannot be against what you see as murder simply because the federal government is funding it. That’s absurd. What this calls for is a Republican bill outlawing the use of embryos by any research facility in their stem cell research.”

His solution?

I think it’s necessary to make use of those embryos because to simply allow them to remain frozen is to inhibit their developmental potential. Perhaps we can just sprinkle them on some hospital beds and give them 6-9 months to develop, providing food and drink whenever necessary or applicable. Doing nothing just seems barbaric.

At least they’re good for something

Right-wing wackos posing as journalists is nothing new, and their antics usually fall somewhere in between vaguely irritating and just plain offensive. But every once in a while, they do something kinda funny. Jeff Gannon pal Les Kingsolving — who somehow has a permanent seat in the White House press corps — typically throws long-winded softball questions at Scott McClellan, which involve a statement with which Les agrees, followed by, “The President thinks so too, right?” (See Example A). But this week, he made a humorous (though kind of frightening in its underlying insanity) point about the President’s “pro-life” views: