In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Tag: planned parenthood

Seriously, what’s so bad about Planned Parenthood?

Kathryn Jean Lopez believes that Planned Parenthood steers pregnant teens towards abortion:

Browse on over to their web magazine for minors, www.teenwire.com, and you’ll find, among the question-and-answer, a question from a teen who says she had an abortion “a little over a month ago,” is pregnant again, and wondering if a second abortion is safe. Not only does the teenwire.com staff cavalierly tell the girl (who, I remind you, got pregnant again a month after her first abortion) that abortion is “very safe” the first or second time around, but that abortion “is much safer than giving birth.” While they do throw in a line about preventing pregnancy by using birth control, there’s no talk about adoption or other alternatives — such as raising the child, and getting help to do so — that a desperate girl could afford to hear.

Out of thousands of questions and answers, she picks out this one, which shockingly tells the truth about abortion. It is “very safe” and “much safer than birth.”

The girl (I’m assuming she’s a minor, since the site is aimed at teens, but she could be older) didn’t ask about adoption or parenting, she asked “what are the risks of a second abortion.” She steered herself towards abortion!

If she had wanted information about parenting or adoption, though, there’s plenty of it on the teenwire.com site. (And if you follow that link, you’ll notice that the archives about pregnancy, parenting and adoption are fifth from the top, while the archives about abortion are at the very bottom of the list, further proof of their aggressive marketing of abortion.) For example:

“I’m pregnant. What options do I have?” The teenwire.com staff shamelessly reply that she has three options:

  • She can choose to have a baby and raise her child.
  • She can choose to have a baby and place her child for adoption.
  • She can have an abortion.

Then they have the nerve to tell her that only she can decide which option is right for her! They suggest that she consider what she can live with, her plans for the future, her moral and spiritual beliefs, her future well-being and so on. Then they suggest talking to family, friends or a counselor.

“I’m pregnant. Everyone wants me to get an abortion, but I don’t want to! What do I do?” The teenwire.com staff brazenly tell the girl that only she can decide what is right for her. They tell her that she has three options: “raise the child, place the child for adoption, or have an abortion.” They then suggest talking to a teacher, religious adviser or trained counselor, and go through a list of things to consider before becoming a parent!

And if you do a search for “pregnancy” or “adoption” you’ll find articles like these:

“Prenatal Care for Pregnant Teens.” An article on the importance of seeing a doctor, not smoking, not drinking and eating right during pregnancy.

“Adoption: An Act of Love.” An article about open adoption, including a sweet letter from a birth mother to her baby, and her reflections on how wonderful she feels about her choice.

“Questions and Answers About Adoption.” An “FAQ” about adoption, including a link and phone number to adoptionhelp.org.

“The Rights of Teen Parents.” A positive story of a successful teen mom who won the right to take college prep classes, and a list of all the rights teen parents have, such as the right to get a GED, go to school, participate in extracurricular activities and school functions, receive extra help or tutoring, miss school for medical appointments, take a leave of absence for pregnancy, join honor societies, and so on.

I found all this stuff in a matter of minutes. Sure, they’re not shoving adoption and parenthood down the throat of every girl who asks about abortion, but they do tell girls that they have those options, and they do have information on those options for girls who are interested.

And that’s just the teenwire.com site. If a teen is capable of finding teenwire.com, she’s also capable of finding all the other websites out there about adoption and teen parenting. And if she does a Google search for abortion, the first hit is Wikipedia, the second hit is a pro-life site called “abortionfacts.com,” and Planned Parenthood is sixth on the list. Teenwire.com doesn’t even show up!

There’s no reason to think that teenagers don’t have information about adoption and parenting, as well as ample exposure to the pro-life point of view. Anti-abortion pregnancy centers outnumber abortion clinics and anti-abortion ads dominate on TV, radio, billboards and buses. Nearly 60% of teen pregnancies end in birth!

Planned Parenthood focuses on preventing unwanted pregnancy. If not for Planned Parenthood, I wouldn’t have my IUD, which has kept me pregnancy-free for the past six years. (I also used the pill for two years, for a total of eight pregnancy-free years.) I could’ve had dozens of abortions in that time, if not for Planned Parenthood’s clever “marketing ploy.”

What’s so bad about that? What’s so bad about Planned Parenthood helping people who refuse to abstain (like me) avoid pregnancy and abortion? Seems pretty pro-life to me… that is, if your personal definition of “pro-life” is about avoiding abortion, and not controlling women.

cross-posted

No sex for the poor

I guess I should introduce myself. Hi. I’m trailer park, a 26-year-old (former teenage) mom living in Austin, TX with my eight-year-old abstinence-only baby and my husband of three years who (shockingly) didn’t mind that his bride wasn’t a virgin. I’ve been online for years, but I only started my little public blog a few months ago, and I’m thrilled to be guest-blogging at Feministe for a week. And now, with that out of the way…

Jennifer Roback Morse must be crazy:

A poor cohabiting teenager using the Pill has a failure rate of 48.4%. You read that correctly: nearly half of poor cohabiting teenagers get pregnant during their first year using the Pill. If she kicked her boyfriend out of the house, or if she married him, her probability of pregnancy drops to 12.9%. At the other extreme, a middle-aged, middle-class married woman has a 3% chance of getting pregnant after a year on the Pill.

Wow, who knew that wedding rings worked as a contraceptive? It’s as if quality education and access to health care have nothing at all to do with one’s ability to use contraception effectively.

These figures cast new light on the debate over contraception education. The commonly quoted failure rates of 8% for the Pill and 15% for the condom are inflated by the highly successful use by middle-aged, middle-class married couples. Yet, the government promotes contraception most heavily among the young, the poor and the single. The “overall failure rates” are simply not relevant to this target population.

Planned Parenthood and its allies in the sex education business have had conniptions over federal funding for abstinence education. But at least abstinence actually works. If you don’t have sex, you won’t get pregnant. It works every time.

Poor people just shouldn’t have sex! That’s the ticket! It’s not like poor people need anything fun or pleasurable in their lives, right? Sex is not a natural, normal part of human pair-bonding, it’s a luxury like champagne and caviar!

God, who do these people think they’re fooling? Even before the sexual revolution, 90% of Americans had premarital sex. Poor, young, single people are NOT going to stop having sex, and raising the risks of sex only leads to tragedy:

Three times in the last eight years, investigators have fished the body of a newborn from a lonely stretch of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, haunting detectives and residents in the area.

This week authorities announced a horrifying development: Two of the three children likely came from the same mother.

The nearest abortion clinic to Red Wing, MN is an hour away, and the only Planned Parenthood clinic in town is open two days a week. There are, however, dozens of anti-abortion pregnancy centers in the area. If lack of access to abortion and birth control forces the young and the poor to remain abstinent, just how did those three dead babies wind up in the river?

Resnick said the typical profile of a mother who commits neonaticide was a 19-year-old young woman, often unmarried, who may still live with her parents, and may not be able to face her parents’ disappointment — both that she’s had premarital sex and that she’s become pregnant.

“Some may feel that they will literally be rejected from the house,” he said.

Resnick, who treated a woman who killed two of her newborn children, said that such fears can become so overwhelming that the mother completely loses sight of what she is doing. He points to the remarkably difficult circumstances under which neonaticides often take place.

“These women deliver alone, without pain relief, and without crying out, for fear of discovery. Oftentimes the parents are in a different room in the house. Then [the mothers] manage to wipe up all the blood, dispose of the baby and do all of this unaided. In that sense, you can see how the women are so much more terrified of discovery than they are of actually taking a human life.”

So much for the idea that slut-shaming creates a “culture of life.”

hat tip, Amanda

cross-posted

Summer, Sex and Spirits

A Planned Parenthood fundraiser. The info:

WHO: Planned Parenthood of New York City.

WHAT: Cocktails and shopping for a good cause. Planned Parenthood of New York City (PPNYC), in conjunction with Brooklyn Indie Market, presents the third annual Summer, Sex and Spirits fundraiser for an evening of mixing and mingling with retail therapy! Brooklyn Indie Market will be showcasing one-of-a kind, independent label goods. A portion of the evening’s sales and ticket proceeds go to PPNYC. Tickets are only $20! Here’s what’s waiting for you at our event:

· $4 drink specials including wine, beer, and mixed drinks!

· ½ price sangria pitchers!

· Live DJ!

· A chance to win a Mystery Prize!

WHEN: Wednesday, July 18 from 5-8 pm

WHERE: Sugar

311 Church Street (between Walker and Lispenard Streets)

New York, NY 10013

WHY: For over 90 years, PPNYC has been a beacon of hope for the thousands of women, teens, and families who rely on us for essential reproductive health care, innovative educational programs and effective advocacy. This event helps raise support our work providing critical information, skills, and care to all individuals, regardless of age, income, or circumstance. To buy tickets contact: PPNYC Special Events Office at 212.274.7260. Tickets also available at the door (cash only at the door).

Ignoring Anti-Choice Terrorism

The car bombing in Glasgow and attempted bombings in London have understandably been all over the news this weekend — after all, trying to blow up a car in order to kill and injure people and damage property in furtherance of your political ideals is a pretty big deal right?

Well, not when the terrorist is an anti-choice activist. This guy was sentenced on Friday for driving his car into a women’s health clinic and then trying to set it on fire. He thought he was bombing an abortion clinic. It turns out that the clinic doesn’t even provide abortions, but that’s neither here nor there — the bottom line is that it’s not terrorism when nice “pro-lifers” are doing it.

Now, the threat of international terrorism certainly feels more imminent and more random. The ideology behind it is ominous. Its backers have succeeded in carrying out devasating attacks.

But anti-choice terrorism is still terrorism. In the first post-9/11 anthrax scare, Planned Parenthood received more than 150 letters and packages containing white powder and threatening notes. The head of Pro-Life Virginia said that he supports the actions of the people sending the letters. A second wave of anthrax letters were sent out to another 200 abortion clinics and advocacy organizations.

There have been plenty of murders and attempted murders, stalkings, threats, firebombs, and arsons carried out by pro-lifers, but they’re rarely labelled “terrorism” — instead, they’re just par for the course.

Feminism is a minority social movement, whose members murder innocent children in order to obtain sexual gratification.*

baby
Celine Dion proves her commitment to feminism by preparing to eat this baby.

Sweet Jesus I wish I could have made that headline up myself.** But no, that is Mike Adams’ new definition of feminism. Verbatim. And if you don’t think it’s totally hilarious, you were probably an abused communist emotionally disturbed child, and you have no sense of humor.

I would write more, but that would actually require me to read Mike’s column, so you should just go here instead. Per usual, Mike is responding to yet another feminist bull-dyke stripper abortionist named Daisy who either approached or emailed him and yet again confirmed that all feminists are crazy bull-dyke stripper abortionists, but who also imparted upon him the wisdom that feminist bull-dyke stripper abortionists have sex with anything in sight so that they can get pregnant and have hundreds of orgasms at Planned Parenthood. Really. It’s turning into the latest teenage sex craze. It’ll be in Dear Abby next week.

World O’Crap really nails it:

(You know, some day that strident dyke who always accosts Dr. Adams after a speech will climb into the cab driven by that guy who cruises around La Guardia all day waiting for a chance to vindicate Thomas Friedman’s preconceptions, and we’ll finally get the whole world straightened out.)

A girl can dream, right? Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go “slaughter some innocent children,” as the kids are calling it these days.

via Amanda.

*Who knew that the Bush administration has so many feminists in its ranks? And if you don’t think that’s funny then you are a humorless disturbed conservative who has just proven my theory that conservatives are defined by being humorless and disturbed. So thank you. I expect to see my check from Town Hall any day now.
**Clearly this is an ongoing problem: I try to mock these dudes by being battier and more hyperbolic than they are, and they still out-crazy me.

Georgetown Caves to Anti-Choice Pressure

“Pro-life” religious hypocrisy in a nutshell:

Daniel Hughes, president of the student group Progressive Alliance for Life, said he is among the students who have confronted administrators with concerns over summer internship funding. He said he threatened to take the matter to the church officials if action wasn’t taken. Aleinikoff said Georgetown’s decision had nothing to do with external pressure.

Hughes said the university is finally taking the appropriate action by honoring church teachings.

“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue — that wouldn’t be desirable,” he said. “But the most bedrock Catholic teaching is the protection of life. No advocacy group that works against that principle should be supported by the university.”

Hughes said he doesn’t understand the complaints. Students, he said, need to realize that there are tradeoffs to coming to a Jesuit institution, such as the fact that some alumni donate because they support certain beliefs associated with the church.

Yes, whiny titty-baby Daniel Hughes threatened to go to church higher-ups if Georgetown didn’t de-fund his fellow students. And he doesn’t really care if Georgetown abides by other Catholic doctrines (anti-war, anti-death penalty) as long as they can continue to oppress women.

The background is this: Georgetown University Law Center has a public interest program that provides funding to students who take unpaid summer internships. Students have long accepted positions at a wide variety of organizations, including pro-choice groups. But this year, a student who was hired by Planned Parenthood’s public policy and litigation department was denied funding because of Planned Parenthood’s support of abortion rights.

Particularly problematic here is that students were blindsided by this policy. There are many pro-choice students at Georgetown, and they had no warning that the public interest program would not apply to them. After all, students still receive funding to work at other organizations that violate Catholic doctrine. As one student says:

“If Georgetown wants to be a Catholic University it has the freedom to identify as such,” she said. “If the school wants to abide by Catholic doctrine it should do so consistently and prevent all activities the Church disagrees with. This includes prosecutors’ offices that impose the death penalty, gay rights organizations, political candidates and judges that hold positions that disagree with the Catholic church, military law organizations and human rights organizations (the majority of which support reproductive rights, as well).

“When we apply to Georgetown Law, the most you hear about the Jesuit tradition is that [the school] supports students doing work in the public interest,” she added. “If I ever knew that taking part in women’s rights issues would lead to a chilling effect, I don’t know if I would have ever considered coming here.”

I have a feeling, though, that Georgetown won’t prevent the DA’s office from working on campus, or de-fund students who work for pro-war conservative legal organizations or think tanks. I’m pretty sure that there are at least a few non-Christian students at Georgetown — do they refuse to fund students who are working for other religiously-based legal organizations? Or, say, the Anti-Defamation League? I suspect they don’t. But advocating for something that saves hundreds of thousands of women’s lives every year, and improves the heath and well-being of millions more? Unacceptable.

I’ll repeat the quote from anti-choice student Daniel Hughes:

“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue — that wouldn’t be desirable,” he said.

…because that might interfere with my job prospects, and we can’t have that!

The thorough hypocrisy of people like Hughes never fails to amaze me. And Georgetown’s emphasis on curtailing women’s rights instead of taking a holistic life-affirming view is disappointing, but not surprising. Georgetown of course has a right to fund what they want to fund, and refuse to back organizations that depart from their institutional and religious values — but that isn’t the case here, at least not in any sort of consistent way. This is just about being loudly misogynist and anti-abortion.

I hope this results in a serious application decrease next year, and plenty of bad publicity for the law school. And if I were a law student at Georgetown, I’d put in my application to transfer — or at least write a letter to the dean expressing my disappointment, and letting him know that so long as Georgetown embraces the curtailing of women’s rights, I won’t even consider “giving back” after graduation.

Playing Politics With Cancer Screening

Planned Parenthood made its name by helping people plan parenthood, promoting access to contraception and providing general reproductive health care. Fewer than one in ten clients comes for abortions, and less than 30% of 860 Planned Parenthood clinics in the U.S. actually provide abortions. In fact Planned Parenthood argues that it prevents nearly 300,000 abortions a year by helping prevent unintended pregnancies. But the fireworks of the culture wars have meant that the organization has become the face of abortion in America, and that brings a literal as well as political cost.

For fifteen years, Planned Parenthood of Southwest Missouri clinics in Joplin and Springfield have offered free breast and cervical cancer screenings as part of the state’s “Show Me Healthy Women” program. Now Governor Matt Blunt has announced that he will cut off all program funding to Planned Parenthood and redirect it to other health clinics. “Patients should not have to go to an abortion clinic to access life-saving tests,” Blunt declared. Refusing to fund cancer screening at the clinics, he said, “ensures women may access important preventative care without contributing to abortion providers’ goal of facilitating the destruction of innocent life.”

Except the clinics he cut funding to don’t even provide abortions. And even if they did, patients don’t “have” to go to abortion clinics to access these tests — they just have the option to go to Planned Parenthood, which may be closer to where they live, easier for them to access, and more affordable than a private doctor.

But because Planned Parenthood offers abortions at fewer than one-third of its facilities, and because the organization refuses to back down in supporting women’s rights, Governor Blunt is stripping women of greater access to cancer detection. Yet again, “pro-lifers” prove that their commitment to life ends at birth, and does not apply to women.

Girls and Women are Fertile; Conservatives Panic

At issue is an educational book which teaches girls how to chart their fertility cycle. It isn’t a book promoting “natural family planning” as the only acceptable birth control, and it clearly states that protection should be used during intercourse. But it does teach girls how to track their fertility, and how to know which days are more fertile, when they’re ovulating, and so on. I’m with Planned Parenthood’s Vanessa Collins on this: it’s always a good thing for people (teenagers or adults, boys or girls) to know more about how their bodies work, and keeping girls ignorant about their reproductive systems is incredibly unhealthy.

Expert reactions to the book tend to track political views on comprehensive sex education vs. the abstinence-only approach. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, takes the line that better-informed teenagers make better decisions: “Time and again,” she says, “research has shown that giving information to adolescents about reproduction and sexuality will not lead to promiscuity and will only arm teens with information that they need whenever they decide to become sexually active.”

Unsurprisingly, abstinence-only crusaders object to any efforts to actually teach girls about sexuality and their bodies, and believe it’s “inappropriate” to tell them that there’s anything other than an empty mysterious void between their belly-button and their knees:

But Janice Crouse, senior fellow at Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, disagrees. “I think it is inappropriate. Instead, I think that we need high ideals for our teenagers, to teach them the value of self-control because those are disciplines that you need for your whole life. Providing this type of information says that teenagers are hostages to their hormones.”

If you don’t tell teenagers that they have hormones, they just won’t feel them! If you don’t tell girls that they’re fertile, they just won’t get pregnant! What could go wrong?

Where are the pro-choice pregnancy homes?

This Feministing thread has evolved into a really interesting discussion about how to best assist pregnant teenagers, and how the pro-choice movement is dealing with the issue.

The conversation started because of this article, which is about three pregnant teenagers who broke out of the home for pregnant girls that they were being kept in. My first reaction was a hearty “hell yeah.” Girls shouldn’t be sent away because they’re pregnant, and they certainly shouldn’t be isolated from their families and their friends while they go through pregnancy and childbirth. These homes often coerce girls into putting their children up for adoption, and inundate them with conservative Christian ideology. In a lot of ways, they’re bad news.

But as one commenter points out — the woman who cast a 30 Days episode about homes like these — there are lots of girls who could use this kind of support system. Ideally, every pregnant teenager would have a healthy home life, and parents or relatives who were willing to support her. But that isn’t the case. The commenter writes:

Read More…Read More…