Tag Archives: Oklahoma

Due Protections: The Pregnancy Discrimination Act at 40

Posted on by

Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1977. Photo: Lynn Gilbert

Today, Susan Struck’s political positions are nothing that would stick out in a red state like Arizona. A few years ago, she joined the chorus of support for the once-threatened A-10 fighter jet program at Tucson’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. In a 2010 article on immigration, a writer noted her concerns about automatic citizenship for U.S.-born children.

Despite the rightward tilt that would be assigned to her views today, Struck was once at the center of a fight for reproductive justice, a cause taken up by a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg, back when “The Notorious RBG” was still a lawyer for the ACLU. It was that fight that led to Ginsburg’s involvement in the writing of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, a landmark piece of legislation that turns 40 this month.

Despite 40 years of protections, pregnancy discrimination hasn’t gone away.

Now retired in an Arizona ranch community, Struck first arrived in the Copper State at the end of the 1960s, when she enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed at Davis-Monthan. She told Elle in a 2014 interview that she reveled in her newfound independence from the family and church she left in Kentucky. “She went on the Pill and stopped attending confession,” the article recounts, and she spent her free time enjoying her sexual freedom and the chance to experience Tucson’s foothills in a newly acquired Camaro.

Still, Struck wanted more excitement, so she asked to be sent to Vietnam. She was assigned to Phù Cát Air Force Base, where she quickly hit it off with an F-4 pilot — and ended up pregnant. Struck understood that the Air Force gave officers in her situation two choices: get an abortion or be honorably discharged. It was 1970 then, still a few years before Roe v. Wade, but the armed forces had made abortion legal ahead of civilian society. Continue reading →

Brothers in Arms, Part 4: The Gathering Storm of Patriots and Plainclothes Politicians

Posted on by

This article is our final installment in a series that explores the historical and contemporary links between racial intolerance and opposition to abortion. Previously, this series examined the connections that developed in the 1980s between white supremacists and the anti-abortion movement, which bred a growing extremism and led to the first assassination of an abortion provider in 1993. This installment looks at the threats that developed in the aftermath.

1996 Planned Parenthood publication detailing militia movement links to anti-abortion terrorism

On March 11, 1993, Michael Frederick Griffin approached Dr. David Gunn outside his Pensacola clinic and shot him in the back three times, reportedly shouting, “Don’t kill any more babies!” Griffin, who had been radicalized by former Klansman and anti-abortion crusader John Burt, committed the first assassination of an abortion provider in the U.S. The following year, 1994, saw a record four murders and eight attempted murders by anti-abortion extremists, and more than half of the estimated 1,500 abortion clinics in the U.S. were targets of anti-abortion crimes, such as arson or bombings, in the first seven months of 1994. Although the next two years would see decreases in some types of anti-abortion crimes, clinics have never been free of threats in any of the years since.

Since the 1990s, anti-government groups have stirred racial hatred and anti-abortion extremism on the right.

Just weeks after Dr. Gunn’s assassination, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ended a 51-day armed standoff at a compound in Waco, Texas, the home of a religious cult known as the Branch Davidians. The standoff began in response to reports that the cult was abusing children and stockpiling illegal weapons. The siege ended on April 19, 1993 — 25 years ago this month — when the cult’s leader, David Koresh, ordered his followers to ignite fires that soon engulfed the compound in flames. By the end of the standoff, 75 people had lost their lives.

The federal government’s actions in Waco had overwhelming public support — 70 percent according to a poll conducted shortly after the siege — but to many right-wing activists, who held a deep distrust of the federal government, Waco was a gross display of heavy-handed government intrusion; tyrannical, military-style policing; and violent intolerance of religious liberty. Waco thus became a rallying cry for a growing, militant movement in the political right. Continue reading →

Book Club: Her Body, Our Laws

Posted on by

By 2014, law professor Michelle Oberman was no stranger to El Salvador. She had already spent four years making research trips to the Central American country, but that June she would need a local guide during her travels. An activist had volunteered to accompany her on the interview she needed to conduct, a task that required a two-and-a-half-hour trip outside the city to an area that is not well mapped — in fact, to a village where there are “no signs or numbers” to help visitors find their way among the cinder-block houses and the patchwork of land where the clucks and lowing of livestock punctuate the silence.

Paid maternity leave, monthly child allowances, and affordable day care and health care decrease demand for abortion.

Once in the village, it took Oberman and her guide an additional 45 minutes to find the house they needed to visit. Inside, a curtain was all that separated the main room from a small bedroom in the back. A bucket and outdoor basin served as a shower, and an outhouse completed the bathroom facilities. The living conditions there were not uncommon — not in a country where roughly 40 percent of the population lives in poverty.

That poverty was both the cause and consequence of a conflict between left-wing rebels and government forces that lasted from 1979 to 1992. In many ways, that conflict set the stage for the abortion war in El Salvador, the subject of Oberman’s recently published book, Her Body, Our Laws: On the Frontlines of the Abortion War from El Salvador to Oklahoma (Beacon Press, 2018).

From Civil War to Abortion War

In the early 1980s, the small republic of El Salvador was in the grip of civil war, while in the U.S., debates raged over the emerging Sanctuary Movement that was aiding Salvadoran and other Central American refugees. The movement began in 1981, when Quaker activist Jim Corbett and Presbyterian Pastor John Fife, both of Tucson, pledged to “protect, defend, and advocate for” the many people fleeing warfare and political turmoil in El Salvador and neighboring countries. Tucson was at the forefront of the movement as refugees crossed through Mexico and arrived at the Arizona border. Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

Posted on by
  • orange-kool-aid-man-205As all of us know by now, the moronic stooges of the incoming administration pose a serious threat to our reproductive rights. Trump’s pick for HHS secretary, Tom Price, has twice co-sponsored federal legislation that would define fertilized human eggs as legal persons. Vice President-elect Pence co-sponsored these legislative attempts. Paul Ryan has supported such legislation as well! Is it realistic that the push to legally recognize an egg as a “person” could succeed? Could stem cell research lose federal funding? Could Price make it easy for insurance companies to stop covering birth control? Yes to all of the above. (Scientific American)
  • There has been a lot of chatter about “faithless electors” refusing to grant their states’ electoral votes to Donald Trump next week. Personally speaking, I’m keeping my expectations low and preparing for the orange version of the Kool-Aid man to be in office come January 20, 2017. (Time)
  • Did you know that the fear-mongering weasels in Texas drafted a cockamamie booklet full of idiotic, disproven lies called “A Woman’s Right To Know” that is required to be given to women seeking abortions? Of the many blatant falsehoods cited in the book, they try to scare women into thinking having an abortion increases one’s risk of breast cancer. Fun fact: it doesn’t. (Huffington Post)
  • Republican legislators in Ohio, completely IGNORING the fact that federal courts have previously deemed such laws unconstitutional, advanced a law to outlaw abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Which is before most women even show signs of being pregnant. Infamously anti-choice Gov. John Kasich vetoed this bill and instead passed a 20-week ban based on the notion that this is when a fetus can feel “pain.” (NBC News)
  • Notably, the American Medical Association concluded more than a decade ago that fetal perception of pain is “unlikely before the third trimester.” They concluded that the capacity for pain probably does not even exist before 29 or 30 weeks. (Fact Check)
  • Various Arizona artists are planning a “Nasty Women” art exhibit in downtown Phoenix January 14 to 20, and they’re donating the proceeds to Planned Parenthood Arizona! (Phoenix New Times)
  • Our Knight in Shining Brown Armor, Barack Obama, just made it super hard for individual states to defund Planned Parenthood! (NY Times)
  • Donald Trump doesn’t have time to be bothered with daily intelligence briefings, but he does have time to meet with rappers. #Priorities (Rolling Stone)
  • 30 million people will lose their insurance if Obamacare is repealed. Thirty million. (NBC News)
  • Maybe this scathing Trump op-ed in Teen Vogue will make you optimistic about the next generation. (Teen Vogue)
  • Ya know what I don’t wanna see when I walk into a public restroom at a restaurant, bar, hospital, hotel, or school? Anti-abortion graffiti propaganda written all over the damn wall. Well, Oklahoma passed an atrociously asinine law requiring anti-abortion rhetoric to be posted on bathroom walls in public restrooms. And business owners would have to pay the costs for this nonsense! The state claims it wants to achieve an “abortion-free society.” Wow. That sounds amazing. Know what will help get us there? Widespread access to affordable birth control and comprehensive sex education in all schools. Oklahoma notoriously does not support either of those initiatives, though. (NY Mag)
  • Speaking of Oklahoma, they lost a battle in the TRAP war. (Slate)
  • Roe v. Wade will be fine (according to this optimistic writer, who is banking on the longevity of the very old liberal members of SCOTUS). (Slate)
  • In my last rundown I shared the news of Texas trying to force the burial of fetal remains (only the ones resultant from abortion, not miscarriage — cause apparently those are less sacred and valued to legislators). Well that’s canceled. For now. (Texas Tribune)
  • Guess what? Abortion does not harm women’s mental health. The medical field has spoken. Definitively. (NY Times)

Illegal Procedure: How a 1974 Stadium Bill Put Reproductive Rights in the Sidelines

Posted on by

StadiumFans of the University of Arizona football team will arrive by the thousands at Arizona Stadium on September 3, the start of the fall football season, as the UA Wildcats face off against the UTSA Roadrunners, a team they defeated 26 to 23 in San Antonio last September. For fans, the stadium is a place where legends and losses are remembered. For reproductive rights advocates, it represents a devil’s bargain that took place more than 40 years ago and continues to compromise health care to this day.

In 1974, abortion rights were sacrificed to expand Arizona Stadium.

Arizona has long had a unique role in the abortion battle. In 1962, Sherri Finkbine, a Phoenix-area woman, entered the national spotlight after she found out the thalidomide she was taking as a sleep aid could cause severe fetal abnormalities. The early mortality rate among infants who were exposed to the drug was about 40 percent, in large part due to internal defects that commonly affected the kidneys, heart, digestive tract, and reproductive system.

Fearing how thalidomide would affect the development of her own fetus, Finkbine wanted to terminate her pregnancy in a state — and nation — that put legal barriers in the way of abortion. Already known to many as the star of a locally produced children’s show, she became a topic of national debate when she shared her story with a reporter from the Arizona Republic. She spoke to the reporter in the hopes of warning other mothers about thalidomide. An unintended consequence was that the publicity made it harder to quietly seek an abortion; providers who might have otherwise taken a legal risk for her couldn’t escape the attention that followed her. Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

Posted on by
  • teddy bearImagine being 10 years old and pregnant as a result of rape by your stepfather. Imagine being forced to carry that pregnancy to term and give birth — all because your government says so. This is what’s happening to a child in Paraguay. It’d be remiss of me not to mention the fact that pregnancy can be extremely hazardous to this child’s health and can endanger her future fertility, and that girls under the age of 15 are FIVE times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than those over age 20. Again, this child is 10. (Think Progress)
  • Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says (correctly) that the religious zealots who don’t believe in abortion are infringing upon the rights of the rest of us. (Jezebel)
  • In contrast, two of the candidates from the Republican side, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, want support allowing employers to fire their employees based on birth control usage, terminating a pregnancy, and other private decisions that have have less than nothing to do with an employee’s job performance. (MSNBC)
  • Meanwhile, Oklahoma has become the fourth state to enact a 72-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions. Gov. Mary Fallin said, “This legislation will help women get the information they need before making a decision they can’t take back.” Um, don’t they already have the information??? That they’re pregnant and no longer wish to be???!! (WaPo)
  • A prolific chlamydia outbreak at a Texas high school that only teaches abstinence? Who would’ve ever thunk it? (Slate XX Factor)
  • Dr. Keith Ablow, a medical blowhard of the Republican persuasion who practically lives on Fox News, thinks men should be able to “veto” a woman’s abortion. Because why should the final decision on that belong to a woman? It’s not like pregnancy is in any way “risky” or could have life-long effects on her health or life in general. He hates that women have “all the control” … over what happens with their bodies and health and lives and all that petty nonsense. Boo friggity hoo. I’ll tell ya what, Ablow, the day an embryo can be transferred from a woman’s body to a man’s to carry to term, I’ll be on board with men having a say. Mmmkay? (Raw Story)
  • Dr. Ablow’s commentary was mostly in reference to the shenanigans of Nick Loeb, the ex-fiance of Modern Family actress Sofia Vergara, and the brouhaha over frozen embryos created during their relationship. Sofia is not interested in those embryos becoming people since she broke up with Nick, so Nick went on an epic faux pro-life shaming rant/tantrum that disgusted most people with any common sense or critical thinking skills. (RH Reality Check)
  • One writer illustrates why it’s important to be pro-abortion in addition to being pro-choice. (Salon)

Mythbusting: Does Abortion Cause Breast Cancer?

Posted on by

breast-examNew England Journal of Medicine. Journal of the American Medical Association. Annals of Internal Medicine. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

[O]ne of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong. But how can most laypeople differentiate between these medical journals? The dry, pithy titles seem to tell you exactly what’s underneath their covers. So if I told you that, according to a study in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, abortion increases risk for breast cancer, would you believe me? Well, why not? The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), which publishes the journal, sounds legit.

Health decisions must be guided by reliable evidence, and when agenda-driven policies misinform, patients cannot make informed decisions.

Except that AAPS is infamous for its agenda-driven views, and its journal is used to deny climate change and the dangers of secondhand smoking, promote the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism, advocate for closed borders in overtly racist anti-immigration pieces, reject the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS, and perpetuate a far-right political worldview. The organization opposes any government involvement in health care, including the FDA, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and regulation of the medical profession.

Medical journals, like all scientific journals, are where researchers share and critique each other’s work. Before anything is published it undergoes “peer review,” in which experts evaluate studies for quality — good study design, reasonable interpretation of results, etc. The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, however, has been criticized for placing ideology over the presentation of meticulously gathered scientific evidence, and is not indexed in academic databases like MEDLINE. In 2007, AAPS joined conservative organizations in filing a lawsuit against the FDA, arguing against emergency contraception’s over-the-counter status. So, when the journal publishes articles purporting a link between abortion and breast cancer, we should all be raising our eyebrows in collective skepticism.

You might have heard abortion opponents’ claims that abortion can raise one’s risk for breast cancer later in life. So let’s get something out of the way right now: The very best scientific evidence does not support a link between abortion and breast cancer. Prominent medical organizations, including the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the World Health Organization, have all examined the entirety of the research and found that the largest and most methodologically sound studies fail to reveal a link between abortion and breast cancer. Yet still opponents of abortion include this factoid in misinformation campaigns to instill fear into people making difficult, private decisions, often during periods of vulnerability. Continue reading →