Author: Jen R

Blog Posts

Susan G. Komen, Planned Parenthood, and — oh, yeah — women

Jen R

I've been reluctant to post on the whole Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood debacle because I kept feeling like there was information I didn't have. Some of my questions have been answered in the past few days. We now know that:

What's still not clear to me is how much PP's ability to provide breast exams and referrals would have been affected by the loss of this money. If someone is seeing a provider anyway, it doesn't seem to add any cost to also have them do an exam, but I may well be missing something there.

To the extent that women are relying on Planned Parenthood for essential breast health care, pro-lifers who want to promote breast health have three options:

  1. Support those women getting breast health care at PP.
  2. Provide a viable alternative: a clinic where women can get affordable comprehensive reproductive and sexual health care, but that doesn't do abortions.
  3. Leave those particular women to rely solely on donations and services from pro-choicers – which has the side effect of teaching them that abortion proponents are the only people who care about their health.


I'd rather women didn't get their health care from a provider that also performs and lobbies for abortion. I'd rather they didn't have to. But many women do, and pro-lifers needs to ask themselves why. To me, the real outrage in this whole episode is this:

"The grants in question supplied breast health counseling, screening, and treatment to rural women, poor women, Native American women, many women of color who were underserved–if served at all–in areas where Planned Parenthood facilities were often the only infrastructure available. Though it meant losing corporate money from Curves, we were not about to turn our backs on these women."

That was Susan G. Komen founder Nancy Brinker in 2010, explaining why Komen funded Planned Parenthood. Areas where Planned Parenthood facilities were often the only infrastructure available. If you don't want money to go to Planned Parenthood – fix that.

Blog Posts, Past Actions

Pfizer birth control recall

Jen R

Pfizer has announced a recall of 1 million birth control pill packets, saying that there was a packaging error that led some of the packets to have too many active pills and some to have too few. This press release from Pfizer contains information on how to tell whether your pills are subject to the recall. If you are using birth control pills, check your packet to make sure that you are not accidentally put at risk for unintended pregnancy.

Blog Posts, Past Actions

REPOST: Help needed: Translation of Family Planning Freedom is Prolife presentation

Jen R

(Reposting because we have had interest in the presentation from an organization in Pakistan, so Urdu translation is now a priority.)

Are you good with languages? Would you like to help us spread the word about our Family Planning Freedom is Prolife project?

We've had interest in the presentation from around the world, and we'd like to make it available in languages other than English. We're looking for at least the official UN languages: Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), French, Russian, and Spanish. Hindi, Polish, Portuguese, Swahili, Tagalog, and Urdu would also be good. Please contact volunteer@allourlives.org if you can help. Thanks!

Blog Posts

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month … and Respect Life Month

Jen R

It's appropriate that October is both Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Respect Life Month, as domestic violence (also known as intimate partner violence) and abortion are closely linked.

1 in 3 women worldwide are subjected to gender-based violence, including intimate partner violence (IPV), which may involve:

  • Sexual assault and contraceptive sabotage–thus heightened risk for/ incidence of unintended pregnancies.
  • Inhospitable circumstances for women to continue pregnancies and raise their children, leading more women to see abortion as their only choice.
  • Directly forced abortions.
  • Homicide of mother and/or child.

This fact sheet from Know More, Say More summarizes the research into the connection between domestic violence and unintended pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, and homicide in the United States. The link between IPV and induced abortion has identified by studies from many other countries as well (including Australia, Bangladesh, Cameroon, and Italy). Some of these also link IPV and miscarriage.

Any strategy to reduce the incidence of abortion must address intimate partner violence and reproductive coercion. If you work with a pro-life group or crisis pregnancy center and would like to learn more about how your organization can serve abused women, please contact us.

Blog Posts

ANNOUNCING: Family Planning Freedom Is Prolife!

Jen R

What is family planning freedom? In short, it is the freedom to choose whether and when to attempt to conceive a child or to attempt to prevent conception, and to choose the prevention method that is best for one's own life circumstances and health.

Even though most self-identifed pro-lifers favor family planning freedom, we haven't succeeded in making our voiced heard in the public sphere. Too often, pro-life advocates link opposition to abortion with opposition to family planning, and pro-choice advocates link support for family planning with support for abortion.

All Our Lives rejects this opposition. We have developed a presentation outlining ten ways in which family planning freedom is prolife:

  • It prevents millions of maternal and child deaths every year.
  • It measurably reduces abortion rates.
  • It is a critical solution to the overlapping injustices of violence against women and abortion.
  • Contraceptives truly prevent rather than take lives.
  • Contraception can be and is widely practiced without a “contraceptive mentality.”
  • Some contraceptives help prevent HIV/AIDS.
  • Most abortion opponents favor contraception.
  • Family planning freedom is a recognized universal human right, and one that encompasses all prevention methods.
  • Family planning freedom includes the freedom to bear children, and precludes forced sterilization and abortion.
  • Contraception secures the sexual/reproductive and life rights of people with disabilities.

We hope that you will be able to use this resource in discussions with pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike.

Blog Posts

Update on shackling pregnant women in California

Jen R

California governor Jerry Brown has vetoed Assembly Bill 568, which would have limited the use of shackles on incarcerated pregnant women to the least restrictive restraints possible. In a statement, Brown claimed that at first he was inclined to sign the bill, but claimed that it “will only serve to sow confusion and invite lawsuits.”

As Lisa Russ of Strong Families points out at the Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice blog, Brown signed a number of laws the previous week that will benefit (non-incarcerated) mothers in California:

In the middle of last week, I lost faith.  The Governor's office put out a press release celebrating four important bills for California moms!  Hoping against hope, I scanned the list.  AB568 was not there.  It was important stuff that I support and you probably do too, like protecting health insurance for pregnant women, and something to encourage breast feeding in maternity wards.  Good stuff.

And yet, for me, what was left off was loudest of all.  We weren't even vetoed on the same day the Governor signed those Mom Bills.  Pregnant women who are incarcerated do not count as California moms!  Their rights are considered favors that we are doing for them.  The fact that they struggle with drugs, with money, with violence, is enough for us to put them away, both behind bars and into another category: prisoners.

Women's rights advocates in California will continue to work for a ban on shackling women in labor.

Blog Posts

Protect women’s lives too

Jen R

H.R. 358, sponsored by Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA) and also known as the Protect Life Act, is being debated in the House today. The vote will be a symbolic one, because even if it passes the bill will be DOA in the Senate.  The provision that's getting most of the attention, and rightly so, is the one that says no hospital would be obligated to perform an abortion under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospitals to treat and stabilize people in medical emergencies.

When this bill first came up in the spring, I talked to Brian Bosak, a legislative aide in Rep. Pitts' office. There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Bosak does not look at this as a question of valuing women less than their children. He believes that the conflict between the two is a manufactured one, and that pro-life doctors will treat both the mother and child as patients and act in the best interests of both of them as much as possible. That's a great ideal, and I have no doubt that many doctors do exactly that, but the fact is that this bill would permit doctors to do otherwise. It fails to safeguard women's lives — and for what? You can't protect the life of an unborn child whose mother is dead.

We talked about cases when, say, a woman comes in with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy and the embryo must be removed immediately. He said that the Catholic doctrine of double effect would allow for the treatment of ectopic pregnancy even though that would inevitably result in the death of a child. A lot of people don't even consider that an abortion. I replied that yes, that's the doctrine, but not everyone interprets it the same way. Oh yeah, and not everybody is Catholic. If a woman is experiencing a medical emergency, is she supposed to pick a hospital where she's sure the doctors believe in the doctrine of double effect and interpret it the same way Rep. Pitts and his staff do?

Bosak told me, "There has never been a case where a doctor refused an abortion and a woman died." As far as I've found, that's true — at least in the U.S. — but that's no guarantee of what people will do in the future. Also, I'm wondering about the converse: has a hospital ever been forced to perform an abortion (or a procedure that it may or may not consider an abortion, such as treatment of ectopic pregnancy) under EMTALA? If not, and if doctors really will perform abortions in those cases where they are medically necessary to save a woman's life, then what is the impetus for this provision? Just to say "you can't require doctors to do what they'll do anyway?" Doesn't sound right.

I felt that Bosak was not ill-intentioned, but that he was looking at the issue in a very abstract way. Arguments on paper are all well and good, but he didn't understand — and I couldn't get across to him — what it would be like to be a woman who knows how badly pregnancy can go, looking at this law and wondering if it might mean your death.

Blog Posts

What new research on hormonal contraceptives means for family planning freedom

Jen R

A study recently published in Lancet Infectious Diseases found that women with HIV-positive partners who used the injectable hormonal contraceptive DMPA were twice as likely to contract the virus than women who did not use DMPA. In addition, HIV-positive women using DMPA were twice as likely to pass the virus to their HIV-negative partners than women who did not use it. (Other hormonal contraceptives were also implicated in increased HIV transmission, but so few women in the study were using them that the sample size was not large enough to yield statistically significant findings.)

The theory is that the hormones have an immunological effect.  The difference between the DMPA and non-DMPA-using groups was not due to a difference in condom use; that was one of the variables the scientists controlled for in their analysis.

The researchers noted that contraceptive use was based on self-reporting, raising the possibility of recall bias. They recommend doing followup studies using randomized trials to confirm or disconfirm the findings. They also recommend that:

Women should be counselled about potentially increased risk of HIV-1 acquisition and transmission with hormonal contraception, especially injectable methods, and about the importance of dual protection with condoms to decrease HIV-1 risk. Non-hormonal or low-dose hormonal contraceptive methods should be considered for women with or at-risk for HIV-1.

The New York Times reports that the World Health Organization has scheduled a meeting for January to discuss whether the evidence is strong enough to warn women that DMPA may increase their risk of contracting HIV.

We advocate informing women that there may be a risk. However, we also acknowledge some complicating factors. Pregnancy itself can be dangerous for many women, particularly those in the developing world who may have already had many children and who lack access to modern health care. Pregnancy may even increase the possibility of HIV transmission. If women stop using effective contraception for fear of HIV transmission, they might end up less safe — particularly if this study is later disconfirmed by randomized trials.

What does all of this mean for family planning freedom? The position taken by All Our Lives is that women should have access to all safe family planning methods, and all relevant information about them based on the strongest available evidence, to be able to choose the appropriate methods for their own situations. Some methods are safe for some women and not for others; that's one reason that a wide range of methods needs to be available to every woman. Many women in the developing world use DMPA because it can be administered by personnel with little medical training and each injection lasts three months, meaning that it can be used in situations where women have little access to medical facilities. Better access to medical care would allow more women to choose from alternative methods that do not carry an increased risk of HIV transmission.

Blog Posts, Past Actions

Take action to end shackling of prisoners in labor

Jen R

If you live in California, please contact Governor Jerry Brown's office to urge him to sign AB568.

Assembly Bill 568 (Skinner) would limit the use of shackles on incarcerated pregnant women to the least restrictive restraints possible.

Translation: It would end the use of belly chains, leg irons, ankle restraints and other barbaric shackling devices that are used on pregnant women in jails and prisons across our state. Yes, shackles reminiscent of slavery are still being used on pregnant women as far long as 8 ½ months.

Medical professionals agree that it’s time for a change. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) was so moved by this issue that they became co-sponsors of the bill. ACOG opposes the use of any restraints on pregnant women because it increases the risk of falling and leaving the pregnant woman, whose balance is already compromised, unable to break those falls.

When I tell my friends about the bill, their response is usually a quiet gasp followed by a confused expression because they are in disbelief. “We actually do that?” Yes, “we” do. We shackle pregnant women.

 

via California sheriffs organize against pregnant women