The story of Savita Halappanavar, who died last month as a result of Ireland’s abortion ban, has sparked much debate over Ireland’s abortion laws and, in a broader sense, the issue of access to reproductive health care.

Savita went to a hospital in Ireland while experiencing severe back pain. The medical staff diagnosed her with miscarriage of a fetus with no chance of survival, but refused to perform an abortion because they detected a fetal heartbeat.

Several days passed before the heartbeat ceased and removal was allowed. But by this point, Savita had developed an infection that led to her death.

This is a tragic example, but one that unfortunately is quite predictable when women are unable to obtain legal abortion care. Abortion has been banned in the Republic of Ireland since 1983 by constitutional amendment, but traces back to an 1861 law. According to the Irish Family Planning Association, more than 4,000 women living in Ireland traveled to England and Wales for abortions in 2011, because the service is not legally available in Ireland.

Earlier this year, The Guardian reported that despite apparent declines in this number, more women may simply be disguising their home country, as “The number of women contacting a charity that helps people in Ireland seek abortions in Britain is set to double for the third year in a row.” (For more on the history of abortion law in Ireland, see this timeline, and “Ireland’s abortion ban: a history of obstruction and denial.”)

Here are some of the articles and analysis stemming from Savita’s death:

• Justice for Savita — Jessica Valenti gets to the bottom line for The Nation: “It’s not just our lives and health that are in danger, but our human dignity.”
• Hospital Death in Ireland Renews Fight Over Abortion – Douglas Dalby at The New York Times writes of a state of Irish politics that will not be entirely unfamiliar to U.S. readers: “Given the divisiveness of the abortion issue in Ireland, which has prompted two bitterly fought referendums, successive governments have avoided passing any legislation.”
• Death in Ireland is a Wake Up Call to Fight Bans on Later Abortion Here at Home – Susan Yanow at RH Reality Check contemplates the U.S. implications and concludes: “We have a sobering lesson to learn from Ireland — when doctor’s medical judgement is compromised by restrictive abortion laws, it is women’s health and women’s lives that suffer.”

Several writers have referred to the “X case” in covering this story. This was a controversial 1992 Irish Supreme Court case in which a 14-year-old girl expressed suicidal thoughts after being raped by a neighbor and becoming pregnant as a result. The girl planned to have an abortion elsewhere, but was prevented from doing so. The court eventually ruled that women have the right to seek abortions in life-threatening situations, including possible suicide.

Despite this 20-year-old ruling, Irish legislators have not passed a law to codify this right, leaving women in dangerously uncertain territory.

A Choice Ireland spokesperson explained:

Today, some twenty years after the X case we find ourselves asking the same question again — if a woman is pregnant, her life in jeopardy, can she even establish whether or not she has a right to a termination here in Ireland? There is still a disturbing lack of clarity around this issue, decades after the tragic events surrounding the X case in 1992.

Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore has said that the government would act “to bring legal clarity to this issue as quickly as possible.”

See also these additional commentaries on the failure to pass relevant laws after the X case to make abortions clearly legal in life-threatening situations.

Emer O’Toole writes at The Guardian about the struggles of pro-choice activists in Ireland, pointing to the culpability of doctors, legislators, journalists, and others in perpetuating the lack of justice in abortion laws. She issues an apology to Savita’s family that is also a call to action to supporters of abortion rights:

To her family, I want to say: I am ashamed, I am culpable, and I am sorry. For every letter to my local politician I didn’t write, for every protest I didn’t join, for keeping quiet about abortion rights in the company of conservative relations and friends, for becoming complacent, for thinking that Ireland was changing, for not working hard enough to secure that change, for failing to create a society in which your wife, your daughter, your sister was able to access the care that she needed: I am sorry. You must think that we are barbarians.

Related: Study Examines How Inability To Obtain Abortion Care Affects Women’s Lives

Last night, the War on Women suffered a setback — due largely to women voters who used the ballot to re-elect President Barack Obama and to push back against absurd, insulting and just plain offensive comments about rape and women’s bodies.

As Veronica Arreola posted on Facebook:

Two of the biggest losers last night were the gentlemen who claimed that women have magic wombs that stop pregnancy from occurring during legitimate rape and if it does happen, it was a gift from God. The magic was in our votes, ladies. We’ve had it all along.

Erin Gloria Ryan’s post at Jezebel is succinctly titled “Team Rape Lost Big Last Night.” Read it for a complete look at races around the country.

Some highlights …

Missouri Rep. Todd Akin failed to unseat incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill, causing Twitter to explode with a new round of Akin-related humor, like “Claire McCaskill legitimately wins and shuts that whole Akin thing down!”

John Koster was defeated by Suzan DelBene in Washington state — Koster famously referred to “the rape thing” and confused one woman’s choice with controlling all women’s choices: “I know a woman who was raped and kept the child, gave it up for adoption and doesn’t regret it.”

And in Illinois, Rep. Joe Walsh, who doesn’t believe abortion is ever necessary to save the life or health of a mother, lost to challenger Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran who lost both legs in combat.

For more analysis, Bryce Covert at The Nation examines the impact of politicians’ misogyny on the election outcomes, and concludes: “Score one for women’s rights, zero for attempts to control their bodies.”

***

Our Bodies, Our Votes …

“Our Bodies, Ourselves” turned up in a number of tweets last night. Anne Elizabeth Moore, who led The Ladydrawers on the road trip to deliver “Our Bodies, Ourselves” to the offices of Akin and McCaskill, posted this upon news of Akin’s defeat:

hey @RepToddAkin, now maybe you’ll finally have time to get crackin at all those books @oboshealth and @TheLadydrawers dropped off!

We heartily second that recommendation.

Following the defeat of Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock — who recently said, “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen” — Jason Lefkowitz tweeted: ”And in Indiana, Mourdock has officially been buried under a massive pile of hardback copies of ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves.’”

Jason Cherkis also took note of the upsets, tweeting: ”GOP furiously buying ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ on Amazon.”

No need; with the public’s help, we’ll deliver the book to each and every member of Congress (41 days left to make this happen!).

***

Big gains for women and marriage equality …

We now have a record number of women in Senate, with 20 women Senators elected.

Rep. Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay senator, and the first woman senator from Wisconsin. Rep. Mazie Hirono became the first woman senator from Hawaii as well as the first Japan-born immigrant to be elected to the Senate and the first Buddhist.

Another big success last night was the passage of ballot measures in Maine and Maryland approving same-sex marriage, the first time it has been made legal through a popular vote. An amendment to ban same-sex marriage was defeated in Minnesota.

We’re still waiting to hear for sure about Washington state, but early returns are promising. Same-sex marriage is now legal in eight states as well as in Washington, D.C.

More good news: Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins is staying on the bench – he had been targeted for removal because of his role in the legalization of gay marriage in that state.

***

Mixed results on abortion-related measures …

Abortion-related measures were considered in two states. In Florida, voters defeated Amendment 6, which would have prevented state employees from using their healthcare coverage for most abortions, and would have affected privacy rights in a way that could have led to further restrictions.

In Montana, voters approved a parental notification measure requiring girls under age 16 to notify a parent or seek judicial bypass prior to terminating a pregnancy.

 ***

Lessons learned and work to be done …

Akiba Solomon at Colorlines shares “Five Race and Gender Justice Lessons Learned from This Marathon Election Cycle,” including this important point: “The Republican-led war on abortion, Title X-funded reproductive health care and contraceptive access was—and still is—a war on poor women of color and their families.”

And if anyone needs a reminder of the work we still have before us, On the Issues magazine has appropriately titled its fall issue “The Day After.”

From the editor’s note: “On wide-ranging issues — the economy to the environment, reproductive freedom to voting freedom, sexuality to media representation — our writers, artists and thinkers in The Day After remind us to extend our vision beyond the ballot box to where we need to place our energies, build our muscles and put our feet on the ground every day of the year.”

In other words, it’s time to get busy — again.

En Español

We are over-the-moon thrilled today to announce that Indiegogo is featuring the Educate Congress campaign on its homepage. What an honor for Our Bodies Ourselves!

A huge thanks to all our supporters for donations and driving attention to our efforts — all of you helped to rock the gogofactor!

More good news: we’re also almost one-third of the way to our goal of $25,000! Think we can reach 40 percent this weekend? With your help, we may make it!

There’s no shortage of reasons to educate Congress, starting with the most blatant and insulting comments about rape, abortion, and women’s health that legislators and political candidates just can’t seem to stop making (welcome to the club, John Koster).

We’re also concerned about numerous policy issues and legislation affecting reproductive health that don’t reflect evidence-based information. As one supporter wrote:

As a registered nurse in community health I know how vital accurate information is. … Join me to improve public health by educating our most vulnerable and underserved congressional representatives!

Another shared why he’s backing Educate Congress:

I am particularly pleased to support this cause because I am male, and I want to make it clear to those who would consider this a self-serving cause for females that enlightened males recognize how much “Our Bodies, Our Selves” contributes to the well-being of all humans, regardless of gender.

You can view more messages and add your own by clicking the comments tab at Educate Congress. We’re so grateful for the enthusiasm we’re getting from all corners — including Indiegogo!

 *******

Indiegogo Promueve Nuestra Campaña para educar al Congreso!

Hoy estamos muy emocionadas por anunciar que el sitio Indiegogo tiene nuestra campaña de Educate Congress (Educar al Congreso) (enlace en inglés) en su página principal.  ¡Que gran honor para Our Bodies Ourselves!

Queremos agradecer a todos aquello/as que nos han apoyado. Gracias por sus donaciones y por atraer atención hacia nuestros esfuerzos. ¡Todo/as ustedes nos ayudaron a llegar tan lejos!

Más buenas noticias: ¡Ya tenemos casi un tercio de nuestra meta de $25,000! ¿Crees que podamos llegar a 40% este fin de semana?  ¡Con tu ayuda, si podemos!

No hay falta de razones para educar al Congreso, empezando por los insultos más obvios sobre las violaciones, el aborto, y la salud de las mujeres que los legisladores y candidatos políticos no paran de decir (bienvenido al club, John Koster).

También estamos preocupadas sobre el gran número de políticas y leyes sobre la salud reproductiva que no reflejan información basada en buena evidencia. Como ha dicho una persona que nos apoya:

Siendo una enfermera de salud comunitaria entiendo lo importante que es la información. ¡Unete a mi para mejorar la salud pública educando a aquellos que son más vulnerables y a representantes del congreso que no se merecen su puesto!

Otro seguidor compartió porque él también apoya nuestros esfuerzos:

Me gusta esta causa particularmente porque soy hombre, y quiero que sea claro para aquellos que consideran que esta es una causa exclusiva para mujeres que hay hombres cultos que reconocen cuanto “Our Bodies Ourselves” contribuye al bienestar de todos los humanos, sin tener en cuenta el género.

Puedes ver mas mensajes y añadir uno si haces click en los comentarios de Educate Congress. Estamos muy agradecidas por todo el entusiasmo por todos lados – incluyendo Indiegogo!

by Rachel Walden & Christine Cupaiuolo

This Halloween, ask yourself: Which is scarier — Furry creatures that scamper in the night? Or a Congress ignorant of how reproduction and women’s bodies work?

Unsure? Take a quick quiz to find out which frightens you more!

1. (A) Possessed Vampire Kitty

OR

(B) Legislators claiming that pregnancy from “legitimate rape” is really rare because women’s bodies can just “shut that whole thing down,” and suggesting that pregnancies resulting from rape are “something that God intended to happen.”

2. (A) Golden-Eyed Vampire Kitty

OR

(B) A member of Congress believing that thanks to ”modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” of abortion being necessary to protect the health or save the life of the mother.

3. (A) Fork-Tongued Vampire Kitty

OR

(B) Forcing women to undergo unnecessary and medically unwarranted procedures,  such as a transvaginal ultrasound, in order to obtain an abortion [HR 3805]. (If you’re in Pennsylvania and you don’t want to view the images, just close your eyes!)

4. (A) Lord Cattula

OR

(B) Holding a Congressional hearing on contraception with no women present?

If you consistently selected “B,” then you’re more scared of misinformed policy and inaccurate statements about how women’s bodies work!

What can you do to change the conversation and protect yourself from misinformation? Join the Educate Congress campaign!

We’re delivering copies of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” to every senator and representative so they have access to accurate, evidence-based information about reproductive health — and you can be part of this important effort.

Because nothing is more scary than legislators drafting policy that harms women — not even Meow Mix …

Credit: Cat photos
1. Possessed Vampire Kitty / Opacity on Flickr
2. Golden-Eyed Vampire Kitty / Digidave on Flickr
3. Fork-Tongued Vampire Kitty / mohd fahmi on Flickr
4. Lord Cattula / sgatto on Flickr

Should medical associations really have to correct members of Congress?

As recent events have shown, clearly they do. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has issued two statements in the past two months correcting false information about pregnancy and abortion that was promoted by elected officials.

In late August, ACOG responded to Rep. Todd Akin’s comment, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” that sparked the Missouri Sex-Ed Road Trip. ACOG said his comments were “medically inaccurate, offensive, and dangerous.”

Then on Saturday, ACOG responded to Rep. Joe Walsh’s comment that thanks to “modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” where an abortion was required to save the life of a mother.

ACOG refuted Walsh, noting: “In fact, many more women would die each year if they did not have access to abortion to protect their health or to save their lives.”

Unfortunately, these legislators’ blatant misrepresentations of women’s bodies, while extreme, highlight a larger, more universal problem: Policies and legislation related to women’s reproductive health are not always based on accurate, evidence-based information.

That’s what spurred us to create Educate Congress , a campaign to deliver “Our Bodies, Ourselves” to every member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. We’ve raised over $3,000 — more than 10 percent of our goal — in just the first few days.

Today at 1 p.m. , the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., is hosting a Newsmaker event to announce this effort and to discuss the central importance of evidence-based reproductive health policy in women’s lives.

Speakers include Judy Norsigian, OBOS’s founder and executive director; Erin Thornton, who is representing Every Mother Counts (Christy Turlington, EMC’s founder, was scheduled to be here but can’t make it — we’ll miss her!); and Vivian Pinn, the former director (now retired) of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health.

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women & Families, and Cindy Pearson, executive director of the National Women’s Health Network, will also be available to answer questions about what Congress can do to improve women’s health.

We prepared a fact sheet showing how Congress can advance evidence-based reproductive health policy — the full list of recommendations is available at OurBodiesOurselves.org/congress-fact-sheet.asp.

Let us know what other issues you’d like to see Congress take on, using the best evidence-based information available. Leave your comments and we’ll share them on Facebook and Twitter. We’re all in it together to keep members of Congress from saying — and doing — anything else that hurts women.

Last night’s quick-fire sparring between Vice President Joe Biden and GOP candidate Rep. Paul Ryan made for an engaging debate — and a well-organized one, thanks to the moderator, ABC news reporter Martha Raddatz.

Still, there were many subject areas that went left un-touched — immigration, rights of workers and equal pay, environmental regulation, LGBT issues, for starters — and it took quite a while to get to one of the most important issues framing this campaign: women’s access to reproductive health care.

Imani Gandy, who tweets as Angry Black Lady, called it out with this tweet:

You have 23 minutes to start talking about uteri before I cut mine out and send it to Paul Ryan. Seriously. Don’t make me do it. #VPdebates

The question did eventually come, sort of:

Martha Raddatz: We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion. And, please, this is such an emotional issue for so many people in this country. Please talk personally about this, if you could.

Asking two Catholic men to talk personally about abortion is, well, problematic. The issue begs for a serious discussion around facts and policy, not men’s feelings.

“I really wish she hadn’t framed abortion as a personal issue for a couple of Catholic guys,” Lucinda Marshall wrote today. “Not to mention that we really need to discuss reproductive rights as a whole, not just reduce it to the abortion question.”

Amy Davidson, however, noted the opening it provided: “Making religion the frame meant that the discussion could range well beyond the dilemma of abortion in women’s lives. (Ryan: ‘Look at what they’re doing through Obamacare with respect to assaulting the religious liberties of this country.’)”

Amanda Marcotte wrote that the candidates gave “polished, talking-point heavy answers,” but Ryan bringing up contraception, without prodding and in the context of religion, was notable:

The only remarkable thing about the exchange is that contraception is now such an important target for the anti-choicers that Ryan brought the subject up, even though Raddatz didn’t ask about it, pivoting quickly from abortion to talk about the Catholic Church’s issue with contraception: “Look at what they’re doing through Obamacare with respect to assaulting the religious liberties of this country. They’re infringing upon our first freedom, the freedom of religion, by infringing on Catholic charities, Catholic churches, Catholic hospitals.”

As with abortion, Ryan’s religion teaches that contraception is wrong, though, when pressed, he wasn’t as eager to suggest that what is taught in the pews should be enforced by the law. Instead, he spoke of “religious liberty,” by which he means giving the employer the right to deny an employee insurance benefits she has paid for because he thinks Jesus disapproves of sex for pleasure instead of procreation.

Ryan made the point that his Catholic faith isn’t all that guides his views on abortion. “That’s a factor, of course,” he said. “But it’s also because of reason and science.” Here’s Davidson again:

“Science,” in this case, meant looking at an ultrasound image of his first child with his wife—an experience that is widely shared and rightly regarded with wonder. (The tiny image he saw was the source of his daughter’s nickname, Bean, he said.) And then, “the policy of a Romney administration will be to oppose abortions with the exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother”—carefully construed, as even this very restrictive list is more than Ryan, left to his own devices, would allow. Ryan doesn’t think that rape victims should have access to abortion.

We don’t look to personal views on religion to frame debates about when to involve ground troops in global conflicts or how to shape tax policy, but we allow our politicians to fall back on their religion when it comes to women’s health. And that’s a problem.

Here’s a sampling of questions I wish Raddatz would have asked, using the same level of specific questioning she brought to other topics: You mentioned science and reason — why are faulty scientific claims being used to justify opposition to contraception, which has been shown to decrease the rate of unintended pregnancies and abortion? How can someone be “pro-life” and support a bill that shows no regard for the life of the mother? What, exactly, is the definition of “forcible rape”?

If we really want to go to religion: Since Italy, which is overwhelmingly Catholic, approved the sale of the emergency contraception Ella (which an Ella representative says wouldn’t have happened if it were considered to induce abortion), why is there still so much debate around the morning-after pill?

And in response to Ryan’s assertion during the debate that the Democratic party supports abortion “without restriction and with taxpayer funding”: Isn’t that, in fact, malarkey?

Raddatz did return to the question of abortion with a different angle: “If the Romney-Ryan ticket is elected, should those who believe that abortion should remain legal be worried?” to which Ryan responded: “We don’t think that unelected judges should make this decision; that people through their elected representatives in reaching a consensus in society through the democratic process should make this determination.”

That led to a brief discussion of Supreme Court nominees, with Biden stating: ”The next president will get one or two Supreme Court nominees. That’s how close Roe v. Wade is. Just ask yourself, with Robert Bork being the chief adviser on the court for — for Mr. Romney, who do you think he’s likely to appoint?”

And shortly thereafter, it was over, leaving many viewers as frustrated as they were before the first question about uteri was asked.

Today in “Yeah, no kidding!”: A new article in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology reports on a study that found when women are provided with free birth control, women choose more effective long-term methods, and unintended pregnancies and abortion rates drop.

Here are the essential details from the study’s abstract (emphasis below is mine):

OBJECTIVE: To promote the use of long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC) methods (intrauterine devices [IUDs] and implants) and provide contraception at no cost to a large cohort of participants in an effort to reduce unintended pregnancies in our region.

METHODS: We enrolled 9,256 adolescents and women at risk for unintended pregnancy into the Contraceptive CHOICE Project, a prospective cohort study of adolescents and women desiring reversible contraceptive methods. Participants were recruited from the two abortion facilities in the St. Louis region and through provider referral, advertisements, and word of mouth. Contraceptive counseling included all reversible methods but emphasized the superior effectiveness of LARC methods (IUDs and implants). All participants received the reversible contraceptive method of their choice at no cost. We analyzed abortion rates, the percentage of abortions that were repeat abortions, and teenage births.

RESULTS: We observed a significant reduction in the percentage of abortions that were repeat abortions in the St. Louis region compared with Kansas City and nonmetropolitan Missouri (P<.001). Abortion rates in the CHOICE cohort were less than half the regional and national rates (P<.001). The rate of teenage birth within the CHOICE cohort was 6.3 per 1,000, compared with the U.S. rate of 34.3 per 1,000.

CONCLUSION: We noted a clinically and statistically significant reduction in abortion rates, repeat abortions, and teenage birth rates. Unintended pregnancies may be reduced by providing no-cost contraception and promoting the most effective contraceptive methods.

The study’s researchers have set up an excellent website, The Contraceptive Choice Project, along with a YouTube video (see above) on what would happen if women had access to birth control methods that worked best for them, and the project is on Facebook. You can also read more about the findings at Women’s Health Policy Report.

While the study seems pretty intuitive — removing a major obstacle to birth control use (cost) means that more women use it and the rate of unintended pregnancies goes down — strangely enough, this argument rarely seems to convince abortion foes to support contraception.

Why is that? For starters, some conservatives are unwilling to concede that contraception lowers the rate of unintended pregnancies. As Amanda Marcotte smartly explains, their real opposition is to sex, not to reducing the number of abortions.

Anti-abortion groups have also promoted a specious argument attempting to redefine how contraception works. One provision of the Affordable Care Act requires coverage of women’s preventive services, including contraception, without cost sharing in new health plans. This provision has been decried by those who have religious objections to birth control in general, and by a segment of the anti-reproductive rights crowd that believes contraception is equivalent to abortion.

The conservative group Focus on the Family, for example, sent an alert to its supporters claiming that “the federal government is requiring both religious and secular employers to fund possible abortion-inducing drugs.” The email was sent in response to a federal judge in Missouri’s recent dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the contraception mandate of the federal health care law.

It would take you about two seconds of Googling to find many, many other examples of anti-abortion groups and individuals claiming that contraception is a form of abortion, especially if there is even the remotest possibility that the method may interfere with the implantation of a fertilized egg, which they have insisted is the case with emergency contraception.

But as The New York Times recently reported, emergency contraception (also known as the morning-after pill and marketed under the brand names of Plan B and Ella) doesn’t prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the womb:

Rather, the pills delay ovulation, the release of eggs from ovaries that occurs before eggs are fertilized, and some pills also thicken cervical mucus so sperm have trouble swimming.

It turns out that the politically charged debate over morning-after pills and abortion, a divisive issue in this election year, is probably rooted in outdated or incorrect scientific guesses about how the pills work. Because they block creation of fertilized eggs, they would not meet abortion opponents’ definition of abortion-inducing drugs.

Medically, women aren’t considered pregnant until a fertilized egg implants, and it’s not possible to carry a pregnancy to term without successful implantation. Despite these medical definitions and standards, the belief that contraception equals abortion persists.

So, where does that leave us? Certainly findings like the St. Louis study provide important evidence of what works to reduce abortion rates, and the study bolsters our arguments for contraception access. What’s less clear, though, is what works to counter the notion that birth control = abortion.

If opponents sincerely believe this, how well do fact-based arguments work to change their minds? Have we seen any evidence of other fact-based appeals resulting in shifts in opinion? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The National Women’s Law Center and Law Students for Reproductive Justice are co-hosting two upcoming webinars of interest. The October webinar is on the intersection of reproductive justice and environmental justice, while the November webinar addresses the intersection of reproductive justice and First Amendment rights.

You’ll need to register in advance for each session, though both are free. You do not have to be a law student, lawyer, or member of either organization to participate, although if you are affiliated with a law school your participation may benefit an LSRJ chapter. More info is available here. Details below:

If You Care About Environmental Justice, You Should Care About Reproductive Justice
Date: Wednesday, October 10, 6-7 p.m. Eastern
Speakers: Kelli Garcia (Senior Counsel, NWLC) and Kimberly Inez McGuire (Senior Policy Analyst, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health)
Registration link: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/955538943

If You Care About the First Amendment, You Should Care About Reproductive Justice
Date: Wednesday, November 7, 6-7  p.m. Eastern
Speakers: Kelli Garcia (Senior Counsel, NWLC) and TBD
Registration link: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/946617903

A previous webinar covered the intersection of criminal justice and reproductive justice, and is available for viewing. It will look like you’re registering for an upcoming webinar, but once you input your email, etc., you’ll be taken to a link to view the recorded webinar.

There is also a fact sheet on the issue, and a link to the “Mothers Behind Bars” report.

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican candidate in Missouri for U.S. Senate, made news again last week for his comments on the ladies — this time for asserting that his opponent, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, acted “much more ladylike” during the 2006 campaign, and for suggesting that it’s fine for businesses to pay women less than men.

Well, then.

We do have Akin to thank, however, for sparking an upcoming Congressional Pop Quiz on gender, sex and reproductive health designed by The Ladydrawers. But first they need you to share what you think Congress needs to know about sexual and reproductive health. Here’s info from the call for participation:

The latest Truthout strip asks readers to submit questions for a Congressional Pop Quiz on the workings of your body. We’d like you—the cartoonists, the ladydrawers, the gender-aware media makers—to submit illustrated questions. You can use the questions from the Truthout comments section, generate queries among your own communities, or just straight-up ask Akin to identify the different between your vag and, say, a praying mantis. Which, actually, is pretty damn good at shutting “that whole thing down.”

We’d like questions on sex and reproductive health, of course, but questions about gender seem appropriate too. Marriage, partner benefits—it seems a little bit endless, what we must ensure Congress knows before further legislation is enacted. Anything. Be creative. Be funny. Be accurate. Use evidence-based resources, and cite them, so interested parties (R, D) can read more.

Most important: submit them to us here at TheLadydrawers@gmail.com or on our Tumblr by October 15. We’ll publish everything we receive here and on our Tumblr that fits the above guidelines (so include your website in your submission for proper credit), and choose the very best ones to print or publish in a quiz we’ll send directly to congress. (We might even have a way to pay you.) Line art only, please!

Can’t draw? Submit your text question on Truthout’s comment section, work with a friend who does like to draw, or do it anyway. You’re the expert: on your body, and on what you want to say about how it should be legislated.

The deadline is Oct. 15, so get going!

Having road tripped with The Ladydrawers in August to deliver “Our Bodies, Ourselves” and sex-ed books and comics to Akin’s office, I can pretty much guarantee that they’re the most awesome rabble rousers this side of the Mississippi (view more photos and drawings from that adventure).

The trip’s urgency was set off by Akin’s unfortunate comments about “legitimate rape” and pregnancy. Since we were in the neighborhood, we also stopped by McCaskill’s office and a training for sex-ed educators, dropping knowledge and spreading the word that everyone deserves access to accurate, evidence-based information on reproductive health. In fact, we’re about to launch a larger-scale delivery effort; more on that soon!

Globally, 47,000 deaths occur each year as a result of unsafe abortion, accounting for 13 percent of all maternal mortality.

Today, activists are calling attention to the need for safe, legal abortion in all countries, urging scrutiny of governments that restrict or forbid abortion.

The Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion campaign site includes a public statement that reads in part:

[P]regnancy-related deaths and unsafe abortion remain a major public health problem in large parts of the world. Most countries that allow women to die in childbirth also allow them to die and suffer from unsafe abortions. Why? Because they do not value women’s health and lives, including when they are pregnant. This is what makes women’s right to safe abortion a public health and human rights issue.

The number of maternal deaths has declined substantially globally between 1990 and 2008, while the number of deaths from unsafe abortion has fallen to 47,000 per year in 2008. However, the proportion of all maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion has not been reduced but remained at 13% of all maternal deaths in that period. In 2008, of the 43.8 million induced abortions globally, 21.6 million were unsafe, 98% of them in developing countries. (Sedgh et al, Lancet 2012) And an estimated 5 million of those 21.6 million women each year had to be hospitalised for treatment of complications of unsafe abortion, (Singh et al, Lancet 2007) putting a heavy burden on scarce hospital resources (up to 50% of hospital maternity beds in some countries). [...]

Adolescent girls suffer the most from complications of unsafe abortion and have the highest unmet need for contraception. More than 40% (8.7 million) of the 21.2 million unsafe abortions in developing countries in 2008 were in young women aged 15–24 years. Of these, 3.2 million were adolescents aged 15–19 years, and 5.5 million were aged 20–24 years. (Shah, RHM May 2012)

The website also explains the clinical, legal and social health determinants that characterize what is meant by “unsafe abortion”:

• Illegal or legally restricted
• Dangerous method
• Untrained/unskilled provider
• Unsafe conditions
• Self-induced without help or information
• Incorrect usage (of pills)
• Little or no access to treatment for complications
• Stigma and fear and isolation
• Violence, rejection (by family, school, work) and murder, including of doctors providing abortion care
• Threat of prosecution
• Prosecution and imprisonment

Actions taking place around the globe are listed here by country. A letter has been written by young feminists to the United Nations, urging the UN to commit to women’s reproductive rights as human rights in upcoming negotiations. You can sign on to the letter via this petition site.

You can also keep up with the campaign on Twitter at @mybodycampaign and via the hashtag #safeabortion.

In a compelling article in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lisa Harris, MD, points out that matters of “conscience” surrounding abortion and healthcare providers usually focus on refusing to perform abortions. She makes the case that choosing to provide abortions is also an act of conscience, one that is unfairly ignored.

While providing a brief history of conscience laws, Harris observes:

Over the past 40 years, the idea that conscience-based care means not providing or referring for abortion or other contested services has become naturalized. In 2008, the Bush administration extended the protections offered by the Church Amendment to workers who chose not to participate, even indirectly, in care that violated their moral beliefs. The Obama administration rescinded that rule. Antiabortion groups embraced Bush’s rule and criticized Obama’s rescinding of it; prochoice groups responded in the opposite manner. The result is an ongoing false dichotomization of abortion and conscience, making it appear that all abortion opponents support legal protections of conscience and all supporters of abortion rights oppose such protections, with little nuance in either position.

Drawing on Mark Wicclair’s “Conscientious Objection in Health Care: An Ethical Analysis,” and Carole Joffe’s “Doctors of conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v. Wade,” Harris continues:

Whether or not abortion provision is “conscientious” depends on what conscience is. Most ideas of conscience involve a special subset of an agent’s ethical or religious beliefs — one’s “core” moral beliefs. The conclusion that abortion provision is indeed “conscientious” by this standard is best supported by sociologist Carole Joffe, who showed in Doctors of Conscience that skilled “mainstream” doctors offered safe, compassionate abortion care before Roe. They did so with little to gain and much to lose, facing fines, imprisonment, and loss of medical license. They did so because the beliefs that mattered most to them compelled them to. They saw women die from self-induced abortions and abortions performed by unskilled providers. They understood safe abortion to be lifesaving. They believed their abortion provision honored “the dignity of humanity” and was the right — even righteous — thing to do. They performed abortions “for reasons of conscience.”

We know, of course, that abortion providers today face “stigma, marginalization within medicine, harassment, and threat of physical harm.” Likewise, “conscientious” providers may have strongly held beliefs in “women’s reproductive autonomy as the linchpin of full personhood and self-determination, or they believe that women themselves best understand the life contexts in which childbearing decisions are made, or they value the health of a woman more than the potential life of a fetus.” These perspectives, writes Harris, are often ignored, with “conscience” invoked only in an anti-abortion context.

Harris makes a really interesting argument that if laws are allowed to protect conscientious refusals of medical care — especially to restrict abortion access — they should also allow conscientious provision:

Persistent neglect of the compatibility between conscience and abortion provision not only misrepresents their relationship, but has consequences for law, clinical practice, and bioethics. First, U.S. federal and state laws continue to protect only conscience-based refusals to perform or refer for abortion, offering minimal legal protection for conscience-based abortion provision. For example, the recent Georgia and Arizona bans on abortion after 22 and 20 weeks’ gestation, respectively, include no allowances for providers conscience-bound to offer care after that limit.

As Harris succinctly puts it: “Whether or not abortion provision is ‘conscientious’ depends on what conscience is.”

Read the full article. Healthcare students and doctors interested in supporting or learning more about abortion and reproductive choice should check out Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, Medical Students for Choice, and Nursing Students for Choice.

Medical Students for Choice, an organization that works to destigmatize abortion and increase training opportunities for medical students and residents, has opened registration for its annual conference.

The Conference on Family Planning will take place Nov. 10-11 in St. Louis, MO. Registration closes Oct. 26.

Topics to be covered include surgical techniques, psycho-social issues in abortion care, patient counseling, legal issues, abortion pain management, and unsafe abortion in global conflict settings. In addition, the conference includes sessions on family planning issues such as contraceptive choice and barriers to obtaining birth control.

Statistic via Medical Students for Choice

There’s also a session titled “The Pro-Choice Medical Student’s Guide to Applying to Residency” — an important issue when so many hospitals are denying women access to the full range of reproductive health services.

J. Joseph Speidel, MD, the director for communication, development and external relations at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, will deliver the opening keynote. Merle Hoffman, publisher and editor of On The Issues Magazine, and the founder and CEO of Choices Women’s Medical Center, will deliver the luncheon address, “The Courage to Defend—The Will to Resist.”

Judy Norsigian, OBOS executive director, wrote the lead article today in Cognoscenti, a new public opinion space at WBUR, Boston’s NPR’s station, that aims to foster conversations about issues that matter.

And what matters right now? Women’s access to reproductive health services.

In her column titled “Our Bodies, Our Votes,” Judy discusses the unprecedented level of attacks on women’s access to care. She points to recently enacted laws that restrict abortion and contraception and addresses the importance of defeating attempts to rescind the Affordable Care Act, which benefits millions of women by mandating that insurance companies cover preventive health care, including birth control, without additional co-pays.

For many of us who have been working in women’s health for decades, it is both surreal and discouraging to bear witness to these recent setbacks. What can we do, especially in this critical election year, to reverse these trends and to preserve the gains established in the ACA? We can start by making people, especially young people, aware of the increasing threats to women’s health and family planning.

Head over to Cognoscenti to read the rest. Then find out what you can do to help protect women’s reproductive rights at OurBodies,OurVotes.com.

While we’ve been busily tweeting away with reports on the #akinroadtrip to deliver the most recent “Our Bodies, Ourselves” to Rep. Todd Akin, the story has kept up steam in the media. Here’s some coverage of the overall issue and big picture problem of the GOP’s abortion platform that we liked:

• Pretty much everything from the Rachel Maddow Show – she’s been doing a fantastic job covering this all week long, and all the videos are online.
• Akin is Not an Outlier – Republicans on Rape, Abortion, and Women’s Rights – A little something I wrote up at Women’s Health News.
• Opinion Pieces Weigh Impact of Rep. Akin’s Controversial Remarks – a nice round-up of commentary in the Women’s Health Policy Report
• Also in the Policy Report – Significance of Rep. Akin’s Remarks Extends Beyond Current Controversy, Opinion Pieces Argue
• Akin’s comments highlight the extreme GOP platform plank on abortion – Editorial in the Boston Globe
• Paul Ryan Goddam! – Melissa Harris-Perry for The Nation (the title is a take on Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam”)

And much-appreciated coverage of the road trip:

• Jane Henderson, our inspiration, at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Book Blog – Sex ed books on way to Akin in St. Louis
• Jezebel – Todd Akin’s Very Own Copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves Is Being Rush-Delivered to Him Right Now

Why mail the book “Our Bodies, Ourselves” when you can deliver it in person? Yes, a Chicago-to-Missouri road trip to Rep. Todd Akin’s office begins this afternoon to deliver copies of the newly revised and updated 40th anniversary edition of the landmark book.**

Seriously, who needs accurate women’s health information more than a member of Congress who thinks women can magically ward off pregnancies if their rape was “legitimate”? (So, what amazing feats have you accomplished with your uterus today?)

I’m traveling with the always awesome Anne Elizabeth Moore and a crew of Ladydrawers – Sara Drake, Rachel N. Swanson and Nicole Boyett - who are packing art supplies and snacks, making us pretty much invincible.

Our journey to deliver “Our Bodies, Ourselves” to Akin’s office will kick off at Women & Children First in Chicago, where we’ll scoop up their four remaining copies of the book and combine it with other educational reading material. Then we’ll hit the highway, 55 South to be precise. Wave when we go by!

Our plan is to deliver the books in person Friday morning at Akin’s St. Louis office. Stay tuned for updates from the road, and if you’re not already following us on Facebook or Twitter, start now.

In the meantime, how can you show your support for an educated Congress that believes rape is rape, period, and all women deserve access to basic reproductive health services? Visit OurBodiesOurVotes.org and join us!

**Hat tip to St. Louis Post-Dispatch Book Editor Jane Henderson, whose writing inspired this road trip.