This past Thursday, January 22, marked the anniversary of the decision in Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal. While House Speaker John Boehner wanted to coordinate with the annual March for Life and celebrate the occasion by passing a stringent 20-week abortion ban,
his plans were checked by the fact that even Republican women understand some of the realities of rape victims. Instead he had to settle for a weaker bill banning public funding, already law through the Hyde Amendment, which keeps Medicaid from funding abortions, and foreign aid money from going to health programs that perform or even counsel about abortions. Kudos to the Republican women in the House - not something we are likely to say often in this series.
The week also saw the death of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. We will look at his record on women's issues, including his possibly imprisoned daughters.
Reproductive Health/Abortion I
It's probably no surprise to our readers, but the "pro-life" movement is killing women and newborns. We have infant mortality rates comparable to those in third world countries. Now we also know that our maternal mortality rate is also shamefully high. The linked article includes maps showing where maternal mortality is highest. It's no surprise that those states that refused Medicaid expansion are worst; states that have strict abortion restrictions that have limited access, not only to abortions, but to women's health care in general, are also over-represented. Not surprisingly, these are often the same states.
This is all the more frightening because we are now criminalizing pregnancy outcomes, arresting women for having miscarriages or stillbirths because they might have been deliberate attempts to abort, or caused by some maternal action such as taking drugs.
The extreme is shown in this case from El Salvador, where a young woman serving a 30-year sentence for murder after miscarrying was refused a pardon, which can only be granted by congress, and which lost by one vote.
In this too we are closer to developing than industrialized nations. More and more states are passing laws granting personhood to fetuses, or laws against feticide. The results are always surreal. Increasingly the law is separating the interests of mothers from the interests of their fetuses.
In the wake of this week's failed attempt to pass a national 20-week abortion ban, this wonderful video of Molly Ivins discussing late-term abortions is more than relevant:
Reproductive Health/Abortion II
In view of all these developments, women are seeking solutions. One such woman is Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch doctor who founded Women on Waves and Women on Web to distribute the medications for medical abortions to women in countries around the world where abortions are illegal. Filmmaker Diana Whitten has made a documentary about Gomperts, which Katha Pollitt discusses in The Nation. Gomperts at first sought to perform abortions in international waters off countries like Ireland and Spain where abortions were illegal. Though she was stymied in these early attempts, her attempts garnered public exposure, and she appeared on television showing the pills and explaining how they worked. As a result, Spain and Portugal loosened their restrictions on abortion.
So Women on Waves became women on Web, and Gomperts began to work with women online, and with a drug distributor in India to get the medications to women in countries where abortion is illegal.
The New York Times also had an article that begins with Gomperts' work, but goes on to other ways for abortions to be performed without in-person patient/doctor contact, including telemedicine, which has proved effective and helpful. As more and more restrictions get put on clinics, such alternatives become more and more important - and will come under fire more and more often.
King Abdullah and His Daughters
With the death of Saudi King Abdullah, come questions about whether he actually had an effect on the plight of women in the kingdom, where all women are under a kind of guardianship, needing to be accompanied by a male relative to appear in public. It is still illegal for women to drive, for example. And there is a question about his own daughters being under a kind of house arrest.
In June, one of those daughters gave an interview online in which she accuses her father of endangering the health of two of her sisters by denying them needed medication, and of withholding food and other medical care. Their mother is in London, having been allowed to leave. They say they are under arrest because they speak out for women's rights and were raised by their mother to be independent. An article in Think Progress gives another possible reason - that they are followers of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who has been imprisoned several times for his views on such things as Iran, elections, and independence for Shia majority areas. Given the Wahabi radical Islam of Saudi Arabia, that would be seen as apostasy.
Short Takes
From the news:
A terrible tale of the origins of modern gynecology being developed on the bodies of living slaves.
Another instance of a rapist's sentence being ridiculously reduced from a plea agreement by a judge.
Another look at what it means for a woman to "have it all." I admit that I was not able to make out exactly what the author meant to be different.
And finally, another petition for Marissa Alexander, who agreed to a plea bargain to avoid a trial which could have resulted in a 60-year sentence. She could still have to serve another five years.