An action we have taken/asked people to take, which is now completed.
Jen is indeed tweeting away from the Open Hearts, Open Minds conference.
I am at home taking courses from the US Agency for International Development's Global Health eLearning Center. So far, I have completed certificates in Child Survival, Family Planning & Reproductive Health, Gender & Health, HIV/AIDS, Maternal Health, Neonatal Health, and PEPFAR (the US international HIV/AIDS program). Both Jen and I are working to become more informed and effective advocates through All Our Lives.
I'm excited to be attending the Open Hearts, Open Minds, and Fair Minded Words conference that will be taking place at Princeton University this Friday and Saturday. The conference is for activists on all sides of the abortion debate to:
- Explore new ways to think and speak about abortion. Recognizing the divisive nature of the debate, and its larger effect on public discourse, we wish to explore new words, ideas, categories, arguments and approaches for engaging with each other
- Approach issues related to abortion with open hearts and open minds. We wish to make a concerted effort to engage with each other with the kind of humility and quiet necessary to really listen and absorb the ideas of someone who thinks differently.
- Define more precisely areas of disagreement and work together on areas of common ground. Some sessions are intended to cut through the confusion and fog of the public abortion debate, by clarifying more precisely areas of disagreement, potentially highlighting areas where we can move forward.
- Get to know those on multiple sides of the issues more personally. In part because it is often easier to take seriously and listen to those one knows personally, we will self-consciously promote social interaction at this conference through lunches, cocktail hours and breaks.
One of the first things on the conference web site is: "Do you find most public discourse on abortion painful?" That's what really drew me to it. Is there anyone who finds the way we talk about abortion satisfying? I don't mean useful — I think all sorts of people find it useful — but satisfying? Like it's really bringing out the best in us, like we're really doing our best thinking and relating to each other when we fling "baby killer!" and "woman hater!" at each other for the thousandth time? I hope not. I want to have a richer, more constructive conversation and try to find a way out of the toxic swamp we've been mired in for the last few decades. I want to talk to people who won't dismiss ideas out of hand just because they come from one of Those People. I really hope to meet other reproductive peace advocates (even if they don't call themselves that)!
If you can't come to the conference, good news! All but one of the panels will be livestreamed on the web site, as well as archived for later viewing. I make no promises about liveblogging, but I'll have my phone and hope to be tweeting (within the rules, that is).
Now that CarbonFund.org is offering carbon offsets for websites, All Our Lives has gone carbon-neutral. Global warming is one of the biggest threats to all life on Earth. It makes a world that women fear to birth their children into.
What we can do is so small compared to the threat. But we need to do it anyway, hoping that others will do their parts, too.
Google.org has launched Health Speaks, a new initiative to try to increase the amount of online health information in languages other than English. Health Speaks will begin with pilot projects in Arabic, Hindi and Swahili. Bilingual volunteers are encouraged to translate health-related Wikipedia (EN) articles into one of these three languages, using the Health Speaks website and Google Translator Toolkit. Google.org is also looking for reviewers, who will read published translations in Wikipedia to ensure that they meet sufficient quality standards.
For the first 60 days, Google.org will donate 3 US cents per English word translated to the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), the Public Health Foundation of India, and the Children's Cancer Hospital Egypt 57357 (for Swahili, Hindi and Arabic respectively), up to a maximum of US $50,000 each. Click here to read a blog entry on the new initiative.
If you speak Arabic, Hindi, or Swahili, please consider joining HealthSpeaks. Translating information on sexual and reproductive health would be a great way to give people, especially women, power over their reproductive lives and to promote reproductive peace.
The 2010 Global Maternal Health Conference starts in about 4 and a half hours (08:00 in New Delhi). You can follow the conference online here, including access to presentations and video, and participate in the conference discussion forum. Those of you on twitter, follow the hashtag #gmhc2010 for live updates!
Via flip flopping joy comes a call for submissions for a book titled "This Bridge Called My Baby: Legacies of Radical Mothering." The proposal is long, so please click over to FFJ to read the whole thing, but here's the kind of submission they're looking for:
We invite submissions including but not limited to the following possibilities:
* Manifestas, group poems, letters, mission statements from your crew of radical mamas or an amazing group from history
* Letters, poems, transcribed phone calls between radical mamas supporting each other
* Accounts of your experience as a radical mama
* Your experience raising children as a trans mother or parent
* Raising children in a transphobic world
* Your experiences as a single mother
* Raising genderfree babies
* Stories of resilience and oppression as welfare warriors
* Reflections on enacting radical mamacity at different ages
* Motivations for/obstacles in your practice of radical mothering
* Conversations with your kids
* Rants and rages via the eloquence of a mother-wronged
* Your experience of radical grandmothering
* Parenting children through radically queer and loving modes of support, community, belonging and resilience
* Your take on reproductive justice
* Parenting from inside prison
* Extended family (both biological and chosen)
* Life as a disabled parent
* Your experience parenting as a teenager
* Raising Boys
* Gender socialization and Parenting
* Raising Biracial children
* Raising First World children
* Self-interviews, interviews with other mamis
* Birthing experiences
* Ending child sexual abuse
* Mothering as survivors (survival and mothering)
* Mothering with and without models
* Mothering and domination
* Mama to-do lists
* Mama/kid collaborations
* Radical fathering
* Overcoming shame and silence in the practice of radical mothering
* Ambivalence, paradox, emotions, vulnerability
* Experiences of state violence/CPS
* Balancing daily survival
* Loss of children, not living with children, custody arrangements and issues
* Sharing your stories from where you live
* Everything we haven’t thought of yet! Take a deep breath and WRITE!!!!This anthology will center the writing of mothers of color, low income mothers and marginalized mothers. [emphasis added -jr] If you have any further questions, feedback, suggestions feel free to contact us as well.
All Our Lives members and supporters have unique insights into many of these topics; please consider sharing them with the world!
The UK’s Department for International Development is conducting a survey on reproductive, maternal, and newborn health priorities.
People from around the world, and especially from developing nations, are encouraged to participate. This is an opportunity for reproductive peace activists to show support for all nonviolent reproductive choices for women.
Co-founder Mary Krane Derr staffed a booth for Consistent Life (of which All Our Lives is a member organization) at the Pax Christi conference July 16-18. While there, she also took the opportunity to inform conference-goers about All Our Lives. She reports:
I staffed a table for Consistent Life at the national conference of the Catholic peace group Pax Christi USA, held in Chicago the weekend of July 16. Pax Christi is a longtime endorser of CL, so I did not expect to get into a lot of arguments. Indeed, most people who stopped by the table told me that they advocated a consistent life ethic approach in their work. This was not, they said, because they wanted to to de-emphasize abortion, but because life issues are numerous and deeply interconnected, and all of them matter greatly. Many expressed interest in CL's newest member group, All Our Lives, which advocates women's right to make nonviolent sexual and reproductive choices.
The UNFPA blog Conversations for a Better World has announced the winner in its contest for best idea on contraceptive access for the 200 million plus women worldwide who want but lack it.
It's us!
Our proposal will be featured for a month on the website of Women Deliver, the just-concluded global conference on reducing maternal deaths.
Winning Idea: Access to Contraception Begins with Questions on the Ground
Please spread the news. It's not every day that the pro every life, pro nonviolent choice approach gets a hearing!
We're having a discussion on the All Our Lives Facebook page about the recent article in The Nation, When Teen Pregnancy is No Accident. The Nation article looks at "reproductive coercion" — a form of partner abuse in which men deliberately try to make their partners get pregnant by tampering with their birth control or simply refusing to use any. Sometimes these men then force their pregnant partners to have an abortion; other times they force them to bear the child.
How should the reproductive peace community respond to reproductive coercion without promoting the violence of abortion? How can we best empower women to escape abusive relationships and maintain control over their choice to use contraception? Please feel free to comment here or, if you use Facebook, on our Facebook page.
