Texas NOW Blog

Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the case that gave women the right to reproductive choice, won by Texas' own Sarah Weddington. So we here at Texas NOW are taking this opportunity to stand up and say we are pro-choice. Absolutely, positively, without equivocation or apology.

So we're grumpy that our, uh, distinguished colleagues at the Capitol are pushing for a trigger law that would outlaw abortion in Texas if Roe v. Wade is overturned. It's ridiculous. The vast majority of Texans are pro-choice. Seriously. A 2004 Scripps Howard Texas Poll found that 81% of Texans agree with the statement, �??Abortion is a complex issue that is better left in the hands of a woman, her doctor, her family, and her God, rather than in the hands of politicians.�?�

Eighty-one percent! You read that right. Do you know how hard it is to get 81% of people to agree on anything? That is a HUGE number. And it tells us quite clearly that the people of Texas don't want this. A very vocal minority has no right to make decisions for the rest of us.

Get ready to contact your legislators, folks. We've got to make our voices heard this year.

Posted by Carrie at 9:35 AM | Permalink

I do enjoy the gossipy, snarky PinkDome. And in the general case I love me some Bluebonnet. But yesterday's post about the alleged irony of anti-choice Senator George Allen owning stock in Barr, which makes Plan B, made my teeth itch.

NO! That's not ironic. It would be ironic if Plan B was an abortifacient. But it's not. Plan B is a form of emergency contraception - the so-called "morning after" pills. Plan B actually prevents abortion abortion because it gives women one more option if their regular birth control method fails, if they forget to use it, or if they are sexually assaulted. So if Senator Allen is such an all-out wingnut that he's against contraception, then he should dump his Barr stock. But if what he's against is abortion, then he should buy more.

Why am I so grouchy at Bluebonnet as well as the editorial peeps at the News Virginian about this? Because I hate it when misinformation about EC is perpetuated. The Folks Out There have a hard time differentiating EC from RU-486 (the 'abortion pill'). They're not the same thing. Even the government says so. EC is basically backup birth control. If you're already pregnant and you take EC, it won't do anything. RU-486 causes a medical abortion. If you're pregnant and you take RU-486, it will terminate the pregnancy. Since we're so freaky about abortion in this country, it's crucial to make sure people understand the difference.

And the timing couldn't be worse. There have been years of controversy and jackass behavior on the part of right-wing Bush adminstration officials on the issue of over-the-counter access to EC. One of them opined that making EC more widely available would lead to massive promiscuity and teenagers forming sex-based cults around its use. I'm not kidding. Resignations were tendered. Nominations were held up. Some crazy stuff went down. Now that we've finally gotten the FDA to reconsider making EC available over the counter, the last thing we need is more misinformation.

If you want to get a joke out of this mess without Alanis references, it's not hard to do. Here's a little comedy gift from me to you: the name of the FDA official who made the insane statements about sex cults is... Janet Woodcock. Y'all have fun with that.

Posted by Carrie at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Major kudos to Jordan Smith over at the Austin Chronicle for this great story on Texas state funds going to crisis pregnancy centers. I do love to see our hard-working pro-choice friends over at NARAL Pro-Choice Texas get quoted on this issue, because they've done a huge amount of work on it. And I was very glad to see Smith reference Rep. Henry Waxman's report on crisis pregnancy centers and how they spend your money to lie to women about the effects of abortion.

Lying? Surely not, you say. No, really. They're flat-out lying. The following four assertions are the most common:

• Abortion causes breast cancer. Crap. Planned Parenthood puts the smack down on this one. Don't trust them? The National Cancer Institute backs 'em up. Considering all the cultural attention paid to breast cancer, and the fact that breast cancer accounts for 1/3 of all cancer diagnoses in women and killed about 40,000 women last year, it's cruel to fudge the facts on this terrible disease to a woman who's already upset and vulnerable because of an unplanned pregnancy.

• Abortion is extremely dangerous for women. Nope. According to the most current stats on the DSHS website, there were 76,019 abortions performed on Texas residents in 2003 without a single maternal death. Zero. Nada. In 2004, Texas women had 72,440 abortions with one death. In 2002, there were 76,277 abortions and one maternal death. So in the last three years, the death rate for abortion has been 2 in 224,736 - less than .0001%, and less than 1 per every 100,000 procedures. In fact, in the 1,444,809 abortions performed in Texas between 1986 and 2003, only nine deaths resulted. So having an abortion is slightly less safe than having your appendix out - which is to say, extraordinarily so.

• Abortion makes you infertile. Nope. Big honkin' lie. The National Institutes of Health list a bunch of causes of infertility, but abortion is not among them. It's tough to find statistics on the incidence of infertility, but NIH estimates 10-20% of couples trying to conceive won't get pregnant at the end of one year. They also say that 15-20% of those couples will successfully conceive a child without seeking treatment - in other words, sometimes you just have to try for a while. So that knocks the rate of persistent infertility down to a max of about 16%. It is true that there are some rare complications of abortion that can affect fertility. But use some common sense here. One, look how rare the complications are - all of them are under 1%, most well under. Two, think about it just for a minute. About 40% of women will have an abortion at some point in their lives. If abortion reliably caused infertility, wouldn't we expect to see a lot more than a 10 or 15% rate of persistent infertility?

• Abortion makes you crazy. For years. Again, Planned Parenthood debunks this decisively. They cite authorities ranging from the American Psychological Association to former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stating that abortion has minimal lasting mental health effects. Of course women are going to have some feelings about it. But there is no good scientific evidence to support the notion of a 'post-abortion syndrome.' The study most often cited by anti-choicers has a serious sampling flaw: it only included women who had high-stress abortion experiences. That's like going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and concluding that there is a massive epidemic of alcohol abuse. In that room, of course there is! But it's irresponsible to apply that conclusion to the general public.

The state of Texas is paying crisis pregnancy centers $5 million over two years to tell women this garbage. You know where the money came from? It's a set-aside in the family planning budget. You know. The money that should be going to fund the services that would keep women from facing unintended pregnancies in the first place!

Does all this make you mad? It infuriates me. Remember in November, people. It is a reprehensible use of state funds to pay contracting agencies to lie to citizens. Ask your candidates what their take is on this. Ask your rep if he or she voted for Senator Williams' budget rider, called Alternatives to Abortion, which started all this mess. And let 'em know you won't stand for it again.

Posted by Carrie at 1:46 AM | Permalink

From our sisters over in Mississippi:

Dear NOW Activist,

Threats to reproductive freedom and justice have never been so systematic and coordinated, and the lives and health of Mississippi women never faced such peril. The Jackson Area National Organization for Women (NOW), along with the Mississippi ACLU and the MS Reproductive Freedom Coalition are organizing an action around the upcoming hostile visit by Operation Oppress America (this is what they actually do), during the week of July 15-22, 2006.

Year after year anti-choice bullies travel across the country terrorizing clinics, their staff and patients and each time, the pro-choice community continues to show support for women, feminist issues and safe legal access to reproductive health care, free of government and religious intrusion. As an organization with a strong pro-choice foundation, NOW stands firm on reproductive freedom. We are committed to preserving a woman�??s right to choose.

July 15-22, 2006, Jackson, MS will be invaded by �??Operation Oppress America�?? and several other self-righteous, right-winged Christian fundamentalists, who use a nationwide network of churches to organize a series of actions against abortion providers and harass women visiting the clinics. They have chosen the Jackson�??s Women Health Clinic-the only provider in Mississippi.

Continue reading "Call to action: Support the last abortion clinic in Mississippi!" »

Posted by Texas NOW at 5:29 PM | Permalink

Lynn Harris over at Broadsheet started a great conversation about reproductive rights language. The comments section gets pretty interesting.

I've heard both sides of this argument, and they both have merit. Some feminist folks take the position that no one is pro-abortion, how could anyone be actively for something that's so hard, but it has to remain a safe, legal option; so they use the choice language. The hardcore folks, like Eleanor Smeal, say that refusing to talk about abortion is letting the anti-reproductive rights folks define the debate - a big strategic mistake; so they stick with abortion rights language.

Longtime Texas activist Peggy Romberg of Women's Health and Family Planning Association of Texas has a good way to put this, I think. She says that the pro-choice position is the moderate compromise - that one end of the spectrum is the anti-choicers who want to outlaw abortions, and the other end of the spectrum is people who would force women to have abortions. We're in the middle - abortion should be safe, legal, and accessible, and the decisions should be left up to individuals. This is accurate, and it's also a smart rhetorical move - when you've got China on one end and Randall Terry on the other, yep, we look quite sane and reasonable by comparison.

Posted by Carrie at 11:00 AM | Permalink

I take it for granted that everyone interested in women's issues should read Respectful of Otters, home of the very smart, thoughtful, compassionate Rivka. She's recently started posting again, after a hiatus for the birth of her first child, and I rejoice to see her back in the blogosphere. Her recent post about pro-choice motherhood is just stunning.

...my personal experience with pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood has strengthened and deepened my conviction that abortion is a valid choice that must remain safe, legal, and available.

Continue reading "How pregnancy can keep you pro-choice" »

Posted by Carrie at 1:45 PM | Permalink

Everyone knows that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee for 2008. The conventional wisdom is that she'll have massive support among women, but Women's eNews says that might not be so. Some feminist groups are not thrilled by many of her votes in the Senate and some of her issue positions.

Clinton has teamed up with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada who opposes abortion rights, to introduce legislation aimed at preventing pregnancy by enhancing access to contraception and reducing health care costs. Critics see the bill as an attempt to shift the debate away from the controversial issue of abortion rights.

"I would like Senator Clinton, as I would like all pro-choice representatives, to start any conversation about reproductive justice and reproductive health by saying, 'I support access to safe, affordable, legal abortions,' period," said Melody Drnach, action vice president at the Washington-based National Organization for Women.

Amen, sister. I think the Prevention First strategy is a good one for advocacy groups, especially in more conservative states. Big props to our friends at Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America for this very smart campaign. But as an issue position for a presidential candidate, it irritates me. It's a very Third Way position to take, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But given all the attacks on choice in the states, I want to hear federal candidates flat-out say whether they do or do not support a woman's right to choose. Supporting reproductive freedom is not a liberal position! What's more conservative than saying the government has no business legislating your personal decisions?

Continue reading "Lots of women support Hillary - does she really support us?" »

Posted by Carrie at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What the heck is going on in Ohio? The Akron Beacon Journal reports that the Ohio state house will hold a hearing tomorrow on a bill that would outlaw abortion completely. That's right. No exception for rape, incest, or the health of the mother.

But that's not the worst part.

The bill, H.B. 228, would make it a felony to transport a woman across state lines to obtain an abortion. Not a minor. Not a child who isn't yours. An adult woman.

Clearly this is in direct conflict with Roe v. Wade. Gotta think this is meant to be a court challenge. In any case, it's way bad. Boo to you, Buckeye State.

Posted by Carrie at 5:13 PM | Permalink