Category: Blog Posts

Blog posts.

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

Blog Posts

“Family Planning Freedom Is Prolife” featured on Pro-Talk Podcast

Jen R

Marysia's article "Family Planning Freedom Is Prolife", recently published in Life Matters Journal, was discussed on the latest episode of the Pro-Talk Podcast. In this podcast, a pro-lifer and a pro-choicer come together to have conversations on the subjects of birth control and abortion. They work hard on calmly and reasonably discussing their differences as well as trying to find areas of common ground. It's worth a listen.

Blog Posts

Is This About Male Responsibility or Female Submission?

Marysia

Already known for their controversial billboards on race and abortion, the Issues4Life Foundation and the Radiance Foundation are announcing a new campaign, apparently directed most at African American men, that declares "Fatherhood Begins in the Womb."

All Our Lives is all for greater male responsibility-in sex, birth control, and childraising-and we agree, fatherhood, like motherhood, does begin with conception. We recognize the many ways that systematic racism and intersecting injustices have undercut the ability of Black men, as well as Black women, to parent their children in nonviolence and safety, beginning in pregnancy-and *not* at all ending there..

But do these organizations mean the same thing that we do by "Fatherhood Begins in the Womb"? We have to wonder.

Because the Radiance Foundation's Ryan Bomberger says in the press release announcing this campaign: "Men have been empowered by Roe v. Wade to have sex and run. They've been forced out of their crucial role by perpetual welfare and today's brand of liberal feminism."

Whatever effects Roe v. Wade may have had on destructive male behavior- men were certainly "empowered" (a curious choice of words!) long before Roe v. Wade "to have sex and run." Although we obviously disagree with prochoice feminism that abortion is a constructive solution to these very real and serious problems, we can understand that prochoice feminism arose in part as an effort at female self-defense against longstanding, socially sanctioned male sexual and reproductive coercion, violence, irresponsibility, and abandonment.

Bomberger's analysis does not sound like male responsibility taking. It sounds like he is blaming destructive male behavior on the alleged wrongs of the (gender-coded female) "nanny state" and those ever-dratted "liberal feminists." After all, if these Bad Women and their social assistance programs have "forced [men] out of their crucial role"-then it's the Bad Women's fault if men maltreat them, isn't it?

And just what is this "crucial role" of men? Is it ownership of/dominance over women and children, based on a misinterpretation of the Christian scriptures that mandates "Biblical submission"? Whatever it is, it does not have the sound of equal, reciprocal, nonviolent *partnership* with women in the nonproprietary care of children. And if it's not about that-then it may actually increase rather than than decrease the number of women who feel they have no other or better choice than abortion, precisely because of the violent, abusive, controlling behavior of their babies' fathers.

The reference to "perpetual welfare"-amog other things!-in the context of a campaign directed principally at African Americans smacks of stereotyping. After all, most Americans who receive public assistance are White. Even before the debacle of welfare "reform," most Americans of all race on public assistance have been on it for relatively short portions of their lifespans. There have been plenty of heterosexual married couples and single  fathers on public aid. Where, pray tell, is this emasculating "perpetual welfare" that drives men to bad behavior? Especially since child support enforcement in the US is actually more effective in some respects for children who receive public aid than for many other children?

We also have to ask the Radiance and Issues4Life Foundations: If fatherhood begins in the womb-what active, concrete, practical, real-world, effective steps at the systemic/institutional level are you taking to support African American men as responsible, egalitarian fathers before, during and ever after birth? To promote healthy decisions about sex and access to comprehensive sex education, family planning, and prenatal care? To abolish the complicity of religious and other community institutions in sexual assault, domestic violence, and other forms of reproductive coercion? To create substantive educational and job opportunities? To prevent and heal community violence? To ensure that everyone has enough decent food, clothing, shelter and medical care? Among other things…

Blog Posts

Our Pro Contraception Article in New Consistent Life Ethic Journal

Marysia

Thanks to Aimee Bedoy, editor of the new consistent life ethic journal Life Matters. She published our article "Family Planning Freedom Is Prolife" in the inaugural issue.

All Our Lives has encountered active censorship not simply when we have sought cooperative action on birth control with prochoice groups, but when we have tried to civilly raise this issue within the organized prolife movement as such.

Never mind (as the article points out) that most who identify as prolife on abortion support contraceptive rights. We welcome this opportunity to get matters out in the open.

Please read, support, and send your own work to this welcome new journal.