Category: Blog Posts

Blog posts.

Blog Posts

Susan B. Anthony Was Slutshamed, Too!

Marysia

If you have ever been slutshamed, take heart. You are in excellent company. Name any independent, outspoken woman from history, and you can probably find tales of feverish, perverted, unreality-based fulminations against her sexual character. Even the nineteenth century suffragist leader Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), a seventh generation Quaker and confirmed temperance woman whom no one ever knew to endorse let alone live out any wild partying lifestyle.

Anthony has become such a hallowed icon today that even advocates of “traditional family values” try to claim her. Never mind that she pointedly chose life for herself as a single woman and nonparent. Although she kept her romantic relationships, if any, intensely private, Anthony was in all likelihood was a lesbian. Whatever her own sexual orientation was or wasn’t, she did warmly support the “Boston marriages,” or same-sex domestic partnerships, of other suffragist women.

Anthony did oppose abortion. But not because it supposedly allowed “bad” women to have sex without “consequences.” Rather, she deemed it unjust prenatal lifetaking that resulted directly from wrongs against women, such as the denial of their family planning rights.

In 1853, after she publicly defended women’s right to prevent unsought pregnancies, a newspaper slapped this piece of character assassination on her.

With a degree of impiety which was both startling and disgusting, this shrewish maiden counseled the numerous wives and mothers present to separate from their husbands whenever they became intemperate, and particularly not to allow the said husbands to add another child to the family (probably no married advocate of woman’s rights would have made this remark). Think of such advice given in public by one who claims to be a maiden lady!… What in the name of crying babies does Miss Anthony know about such matters?

The mixing it up of birth control with sneering references to improperly obtained carnal knowledge and wronged babies: doesn’t this all sound too familiar?

As president of the 1858 National Woman’s Rights Convention, Anthony permitted two speakers onto the platform to make the case for voluntary motherhood. Not only did she agree that women had this right; as one newspaper reported, she “said that when the platform was free there could be no danger from discussion, as truth must prevail.”  But otherwise the press went into a frenzy, alleging that Anthony’s convention was all about the promotion of “free love,” which in the views of its detractors meant utterly self-absorbed, unbridled, destructive lust –and that on the part of women, who were supposed to have no libido whatsoever.

The rest of her life, Anthony was followed by such charges of “free loveism,” which sometimes plunged into breathtakingly paranoid conspiracy seeking. For example, in 1871 a Seattle journalist exposed-or thought he exposed– what she was really all about.

It is a mistake to call Miss Anthony a reformer…she is a revolutionist, aiming at nothing less than the breaking up of the very foundations of society, and the overthrow of every social institution organized for the protection of the sanctity of the altar, the family circle and the legitimacy of our offspring, recognizing no religion but self-worship, no God but human reason, no motive to human action but lust…[T]he apparently innocent measure of woman suffrage as a remedy for women‘s wrongs in over-crowded populations, is but a pretext or entering wedge by which to open Pandora‘s box and let loose upon society a pestilential brood to destroy all that is pure and beautiful in human nature…

She did not directly and positively broach the licentious social theories which she is known to entertain, because she knew well that they would shock the sensibilities of her audience…It is true that Miss Anthony did not openly advocate free love and a disregard of the sanctity of the marriage relation, but she did worse—under the guise of defending women against manifest wrongs, she attempts to instill into their minds an utter disregard for all that is right and conservative in the present order of society.

How did Susan B. Anthony persist despite all the slutshaming, despite all the misogynists who just knew far better than she ever could what she was all about and what was really good for her sex?  Anthony resolutely refused to divide womankind into the “pure” and the “impure,” confident in her knowledge that all women were both human beings of inestimable value and yet potentially at the mercy of exploitative and violent men. She calmly saw through the tactic of slutshaming and named it for what it was: a trivializing distraction. In her own words, which persuaded an 1869 meeting of the Equal Rights Association to set aside a resolution repudiating “free loveism”:

This howl comes from the men who know that when women get their rights…they [will] be able to live honestly and not be compelled to sell themselves for bread, either in or out of marriage… We can not be frightened from our purpose, the public mind can not long be prejudiced by this free love cry of our enemies

Unfortunately the public mind remains all too prejudiced by the cry of “free love,” despite the heroic work of Anthony and so many other foremothers, as well as more recent feminists. If Susan B. Anthony could be slutshamed, that just goes to show: it can happen to any woman. Especially any woman who dares to challenge the power imbalances of men over women. In other words, it can and does happen to the best of us, whatever our own personal sexual histories happen or don’t happen to be.

Blog Posts

Slutshaming Disrespects Life

Marysia

It wasn’t just the notorious antifeminist pundit Rush Limbaugh who said truly ugly things about the sexual character of Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke for her brave defense of women’s access to contraception.

While she did not take as nasty and perverted a turn as Limbaugh–not very hard to do, really–the actor Patricia Heaton tweeted a number of highly disrespectful, appalling things about Fluke. Heaton has since apologized. She apparently took down her Twitter feed for a while.

But All Our Lives still has some grave concerns about Heaton’s slutshaming of Sandra Fluke. After all, Heaton has long served as a celebrity spokesperson and honorary chair for Feminists for Life of America.

We hope Heaton is sincere in her apology.

We simultaneously wonder why such a public face of an organization that has feminism in its very name would go so quickly to insulting the sexual character of a woman who speaks up for affordable contraceptive coverage.

Especially an organization that names itself as feminist in its reasons for opposing abortion and creating postconception alternatives to it.

And it’s not just Heaton we are questioning. *Anyone* who identifies as pro both pregnant women’s and unborn children’s lives needs to speak up strongly, publicly, and unequivocally against slutshaming.

Many prochoicers have spoken up against slutshaming. Some abortion opponents, such as Abby Johnson, have spoken up–but where are the rest of the voices?

Slutshaming is a profound form of disrespect for women’s lives, in and of itself.

And it is a major cause of abortion in the US and worldwide, in history and in the present. Slutshaming heightens certain risk factors that female human beings and the children they conceive have for unintended pregnancies and abortions. It:

–Prevents girls and women from learning everything they need to know about their bodies and accepting and loving themselves as human beings with sexual and reproductive rights.
–Inhibits access to the full range of family planning methods and sabotages women’s ability to use their chosen contraception.
–Makes girls and women more vulnerable to all forms of gender-based violence.
–Puts intense pressure on those who have conceived in nonmarital relationships especially to have abortions rather than run the gauntlet of judgmentality, ostracism, and assault they will face if evidence of their sex lives becomes public.

If respect for life means anything: it doesn’t mean slutshaming. It means the very opposite!

Blog Posts

Misogynist Logic: Testifying about contraception makes your sex life fair game

Jen R

So, according to Misogynist Logic, any discussion of contraception using the pronoun "we" is automatically a discussion of one's personal sex life, and makes that person's sex life fair game for public debate and ugly, crude speculation. Why? Because "in the real world, contraception involves sexual activity." Leaving aside that it doesn't always, because there are other uses for common contraceptives — you know what else usually involves sex? Marriage. And childbearing. By this standard, anyone who uses the term "we" when discussing public policy issues concerning marriage or children is making their sexual activity a matter of public debate. Who among the people who most often discuss "family" policy would accept being subjected to the Sandra Fluke treatment?

(h/t: Balloon Juice)

Blog Posts, Past Actions

In Defense of Life, We Support the Coalition to Protect Women’s Health Care

Marysia

All Our Lives, a pro *every* life nonprofit, does *not* stand with the anti-contraception Stand Up for Religious Freedom.

We support religious freedom, but that does not include employers' restriction of workers' family planning freedom. Instead we support and applaud the Coalition to Protect Women's Health Care in its defense of contraceptive access.

Family planning freedom is a human right in its own right, and indispensable to reducing unintended pregnancies and abortions.

All people, whether prolife or prochoice on abortion, should join together in the defense of family planning freedom, so that it becomes a reality for all women, especially women whose exercise of it is hindered by discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, socioeconomic class, race/ethnicity, disability, national origin, and/or sexual orientation.

Blog Posts

Birth control and slut shaming: let’s get a few things straight

Jen R

There seem to be some misconceptions going around about birth control, so let's get a few things straight:

  • For the majority of birth control methods, there is no correlation between the amount of sex a person has and how much birth control she uses or what it costs.
  • Shaming a person for using birth control says a lot about you and nothing about them.
  • Birth control is often used for reasons other than pregnancy prevention, such as to treat ovarian cysts (Sandra Fluke, the woman being slammed on the right as a "slut" and a "prostitute" for her pro-contraception testimony, was telling the story of a friend of hers who lost an ovary because she couldn't afford the treatment for a cyst). I'm not saying those uses are more legitimate than preventing pregnancy, just pointing out that they do exist.

Got any others? Please feel free to share in the comments or on our Facebook page.

Blog Posts

Disturbing Changes To Our Bodies, Ourselves

Meghan

I first read Our Bodies, Ourselves when visiting my brother and sister in law. My sister in law, who is pro choice, had it on her bookshelf. I found it to be a very comprehensive and informative resource on women’s health, despite not agreeing with its stance on abortion. I was thrilled, however, when I noticed discussion of the prenatal testing/disability rights issue, as well as disability and sexuality. Noticing my enjoyment of the book, my sister in law gave me the updated edition as a Christmas present.                                                                                              

Imagine my disappointment when I cracked the cover of the book and looked for those sections, only to find they had been removed. Issues related to race, religion, gender and sexual orientation remained, but discussions about disability had been relegated to a sidebar instructing anyone who wanted information on disability and prenatal testing to visit the OBO website. The section on disability and sexuality had been completely removed, without any mention of where that information could be found. As a woman with a disability, I felt ostracized. Here was a well-respected resource for women singling out disability as something so insignificant/controversial/whatever as to be segregated on the group’s website.  The book, to put it candidly, was subtly telling women with disabilities that we had no role in the discourse surrounding reproductive rights. I did bring this up on an OBO blog post in 2010 and was answered by an administrator:

“I’ve been part of the editorial team for the past several editions of OBOS, including the one currently in production, due out in October 2011. We faced a lot of space constraints in 2005, as that edition was quite a bit smaller than the 1998 edition, and some of the content you mention was cut. But our recent single topic book, Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth (2008) has an entire chapter on prenatal testing that addresses the complicated issues raised by testing and underlying assumptions about disability.”

I appreciate that OBO legitimized my concern with a response, which shows that they took it at least somewhat seriously. I’m glad that their book on planned childbirth includes a section on prenatal testing and disability. However, I continue to feel frustrated. Facing “space constraints” is not an excuse for segregating disability to the group’s website. The omission of the previously cited material from the 2006 edition, and the explanation that this omission was due to space constraints, indicates that the editorial board considered disability to be of lesser importance than issues impacting other minority groups. The omission sends the message that prenatal testing and disability is only worth knowing about if one is a nondisabled woman planning a family. The implication is that women in general don’t need or want this information, let alone let alone that pertaining to disability and sexuality.                                                                                 

I don’t know what happened between 1998 (the first edition I read) and 2006 (the newer edition) to make the editors decide that disability issues no longer merited use of the space provided for their book.  Was there someone on the 1998 committee with an interest in disability issues who was no longer on the committee when the 2006 version was compiled? Where people who experienced a termination for fetal disability offended that the book urged parents considering this decision to carefully consider their preconceptions regarding “quality of life,” and the editors felt their feelings trumped the concerns of disability advocates? The response I received indicates that the editorial board decided that something had to go and it might as well be disability issues. If so, did they appreciate how this decision contributed to the oppressive cultural zeitgeist that ignores the sexuality of people with disabilities, uses us as pawns in the abortion debate, and thrusts us outside the scope of human diversity? If not, why not? Why, in the very least, didn’t someone think that those with disabilities would complain about these changes? Did they just think we’re too powerless to say/do anything about them? Did the editors actually buy into the eugenic idea that people with disabilities shouldn’t/don’t have sex and hence didn’t deserve a place at the table when discussing issues related to sexuality and reproduction? I don’t know, but I feel these are all possibilities.                                                                                                                                       

My next statement will be somewhat controversial: I think that whoever was in charge of the 2006 OBO book felt that the book was automatically disability friendly because it extols a politically liberal worldview. This is, of course, crap. While most disability advocates believe in things strongly supported by the Democratic party (social security, Medicaid/care, a full range of family planning choices, LGBT rights, healthcare reform) we do have positions that deviate from mainstream liberalism, including critiques of selective abortion, efforts to eliminate institutions in favor of small group housing, and strong opposition to assisted suicide/euthanasia. We also support the social model of disability, something that people on both sides of the political aisle have struggled to accept or have resisted completely. People on the right shouldn’t expect our automatic support because they oppose selective abortion, and people on the left shouldn’t expect our automatic support simply because they support Medicaid/care. This is the result of both sides seeing us as “the least of these” who they, of course, want to support. If there is  no understanding of what that support entails, the so-called support becomes a very cynical form of tokenism. I hope that the 2011 edition reflects a reconsideration of whatever lead the editors to exclude disability issues in 2006.

Blog Posts

Virginia law will no longer require forced transvaginal ultrasounds

Jen R

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is now backing off on the law that would have required some women seeking abortions to have invasive transvaginal ultrasounds. He is asking the state legislature to amend the bill to clarify that it will apply to transabdominal ultrasounds only. Good.

Protip: If women's response to your measure that is supposedly meant to help them is "Holy shit, that sounds like rape," the correct reply is not: "No, this is for your own good!"

I'm in favor of informed consent and believe that women considering abortion have the right to factual information about the children they are carrying (not "it's just a blob of tissue, don't worry your pretty little head about it" lies), but making a woman submit to unwanted vaginal penetration goes way beyond "information". Women don't cease to be human beings with dignity because they're having abortions, and treating them like they do is about the best way I can think of to reinforce the idea that anyone who opposes abortion is a woman's enemy.

I just want to cry when I think about all the time and energy that goes into legislation like this instead of asking women, "What do you need? How can we help you so that abortion doesn't seem like your only choice?" How much better would the world be if that were what pro-lifers were known for?

Blog Posts

About That All-Male Birth Control Panel….

Marysia

I love my country, the United States. And that’s why I am so embarassed about the current cavalcade of birth control follies now overtaking our public life.

We have so many material resources, why can’t we share them to help all who need help covering the full range of family planning choices, without all this uproar? Poor Americans, immigrants, people of color, women, people with disabilities…why why why are these the groups that always get lost in the shuffle?

Exhibit A of said cavalcade: The all male panel that was convened before Congress to explain why the recent Department of Health and Human Services ruling on family planning coverage intrudes upon religious freedom.

When pressed, apparently, some of the panel members conceded that maybe contraception was OK in cases of “medical necessity.”

In an animated conversation with people I know, I submitted that this concession might stem from a belief that women with disabilities/health impairments have no business reproducing. Someone said that I was prejudicial, leaping to conclusions.

So I read through each of the panelists’ testimonies. If anyone can provide substantive evidence that any of these men have good disability and/or women’s rights records, then pleasantly surprise me, would you please?

Reading the testimonies just made me even more skeptical that any of them get the reproductive rights of women with disabilities–let alone *all* women’s family planning rights. Below are my notes on each testimony. If you want to read the testimonies yourself, please go here.

William Lori, US Conference of Catholic Bishops: Compares the proposed contraceptive coverage regulations to the government forcing Orthodox Jewish delis to serve pork, when that pork eaters can easily, cheaply, and freely get their chosen meat elsewhere.

This analogy does not hold (and it offends me as someone whose vision of reverence for life encompasses being a vegetarian, and an anti-anti-Semite). Pork is death-dealing, first of all to pigs, and second of all to humans who develop serious health problems from eating it. Access to free/affordable voluntary contraception, on the other hand, is often life- and health-giving for women, especially women with disabilities.

The analogy also suggests that contraception is somehow an optional luxury, one already easily, freely, cheaply available through many other venues. Yet the reality is that family planning access is far from a given for millions of US women, including and especially women with disabilities.

Women with disabilities are far more likely than nondisabled to live in poverty, rely on government benefit programs, be unemployed or underemployed, and thus to have constricted access, if any, to health care of all kinds, including voluntary family planning services and supplies. Any HHS ruling that expands voluntary family planning access, whether through government programs, private health plans, or some combination of the two, thus promotes the interests and needs of women with disabilities. Does Lori know this?

 

Matthew C. Harrison, President, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod: “We object to the use of drugs and procedures used to take the lives of unborn children. We oppose this mandate since it requires religious organizations to pay for and otherwise facilitate the use of such drugs by their employees.”

As All Our Lives asserts every day, just about, according to the best, most current scientific evidence, IUDs and hormonal birth control methods such as the pill and Plan B emergency contraception work *before* conception and not at any point after. Thus the contraceptive coverage ruling is in fact solely about pregnancy *prevention*, by *anyone’s* definition of when life or pregnancy begins.

If Harrison believes this misinformation about such a critical health issue impacting so many women, with or without disabilities: then why should I be optimistic that he is amply informed about, let alone eager to promote and defend the family planning concerns of women with disabilities, a frequently overlooked and neglected minority population?

 

C. Ben Mitchell, Union University: “I am here to decry the contraception, abortifacient, and sterilization mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services on January 20, 2012…” , See my objections to Harrison’s testimony.

 

Meir Soloveichick, Yeshiva University: “The administration denies people of faith the ability to define their religious activity.” This definition of “people of faith” does not include or side with disabled women who make prayerful, conscientious, lifegiving, and lifesaving decisions about which family planning method(s) to use and when and whether to pursue conception.

 

Craig Mitchell, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary: “This rule…takes away the freedom of the citizens while emboldening the federal government to do whatever it wants.”

Whoa….Just about every discriminated-against group in the US has heard such an argument leveled against its own struggle for justice.

Mitchell’s definition here of “citizens” who are deprived of freedom sides with powerful religious institutions whose policy on birth control, especially when intruded into the public sphere, infringes upon the freedoms of many women with disabilities (not to mention women in general, but let’s stay focused on this doubly discriminated against minority for the time being.)

In effect it forces a “choice” between lifelong celibacy and a single method of family planning, natural family planning that may be right for some women. But for many women with disabilities, NFP is quite ineffective and illfitting, even as pregnancy may be quite risky for them, and they wish *themselves* to conceive sparingly, or not at all.

Mitchell’s notion here of “citizens” deprived of their freedom in regard to family planning does not appear to recognize women with disabilities and their children’s and their own rights to health and life.

 

I treasure religious freedom, especially as someone affiliated with a distinctly minority, other than Christian faith. Some of my ancestors were forcibly deprived of their religious freedom. Never again! But these testimonies…so awry…so unaware, it seems, of who they are excluding, and why, and how. In the name of prolife, even though their unwillingness to meet the administration halfway could end up costing lives, unborn, already born.

Blog Posts

Tell the Truth: They’re Not Abortifacients, But Anti-Abortifacients

Marysia

In the debate over contraceptive coverage in the United States, many opponents have repeated the argument that they do not want to be forced to pay for "abortifacients," namely IUDs and hormonal contraceptives such as "the pill" and the emergency contraceptive Plan B.

But, as All Our Lives continually points out, this isn't what the scientific evidence says. Check out, for example, the references in our "Family Planning Freedom Is Prolife" slideshow.

In fact, these very methods are among the most effective reversible methods at preventing conception. So, they're not abortifacients. They are anti-abortifacients.

We have already discussed the grave real-life consequences of the misinformation here. Unfortunately, they go far beyond any blog post.

The Supreme Court of Honduras has just ruled that emergency contraception amounts to abortion and thus should be subjected to the same criminal penalties. Never mind that Honduran women's access to all kinds of family planning–pregnancy prevention–is severely restricted and the government.

If you appreciate the work of All Our Lives, please join us in challenging the rampant misinformation about how such methods of birth control work. Wherever you live, don't let it go unchallenged. Refer those who perpetuate it to our slide presentation, which lists specific scientific studies.

You will likely encounter complete resistance from some people, especially those who both categorically oppose birth control and want to interfere in others' right to make their own decisions about it.

But others will welcome the good news that these methods are anti-abortifacients. And if those of us who believe in family planning freedom say nothing, women will continue to suffer, and unborn babies to die.

Blog Posts

On the contraception mandate

Jen R

I should point out before I begin that in this post, I am speaking for myself only. The All Our Lives board is not unanimous in the details of our opinions on requiring religious employers to provide insurance that covers contraception, though we are united in our belief that widespread access to contraception is vital.

I have a problem with the whole way this whole issue has been framed as “making churches pay for something they find morally objectionable.” Health insurance that someone earns as part of their employment compensation package is theirs, not the employer’s. If an institution’s religious freedom does not extend to allowing them to tell the employee that she can’t use her salary to pay for contraception, why should it extend to telling the employee that she can’t use her insurance benefit to pay for contraception? Yes, the money to pay the premium is coming from the employer, but so is the money to pay her salary. As far as I can tell, the difference is that religious institutions have been able to restrict the way that employees use their insurance benefits in a way that they have not been able to restrict the way that employees use their salaries, but the ability to do something does not make it a right. If there were some kind of special money that could be used to buy anything except contraception, would it be a violation of religious institutions’ First Amendment rights to require all employers to pay in standard money?

I’m an atheist. I rely on the separation of church and state to protect my freedom. Because of that, I’m leery of anything that even remotely smacks of government interference in religion or religious interference in government. That’s why I can appreciate the impulse behind the Adminstration’s accomodation allowing religious institutions to offer restricted insurance to their employees while still requiring the insurers to provide contraception coverage to those employees. I won’t claim to respect the belief that contraception is intrinsically evil. I think it causes great harm and is based on a number of false premises. But I do respect people’s right, as much as is possible in a pluralistic society, not to cooperate with something they think is evil. What happens, though, if Jehovah’s Witness employers decide that their employee’s insurance plans shouldn’t cover blood transfusions? What if Scientologist employers decide that their employees shouldn’t be covered for psychiatric treatment? At what point do we decide that a person’s right to practice their religion is interfering with another person’s right to live their life without having to submit to the rules of that religion? The degree of the employers’ “cooperation with evil” in these cases is remote — paying a benefit which the employee decides to use for a purpose condemned by the employer’s religion — while the impact on the employee who is restricted in their use of their own benefit is direct. The same is true of insurance coverage of contraception.