Year: 2012

Posted on

Anti Choice Except When It’s Mine

To follow up on yesterday’s post, here’s an article by Joyce Arthur about how even anti-choice activists have abortions.


Many anti-choice women are convinced that their need for abortion is unique — not like those “other” women — even though they have abortions for the same sorts of reasons. Anti-choice women often expect special treatment from clinic staff. Some demand an abortion immediately, wanting to skip important preliminaries such as taking a history or waiting for blood test results. Frequently, anti-abortion women will refuse counseling (such women are generally turned away or referred to an outside counselor because counseling at clinics is mandatory). Some women insist on sneaking in the back door and hiding in a room away from other patients. Others refuse to sit in the waiting room with women they call “sluts” and “trash.” Or if they do, they get angry when other patients in the waiting room talk or laugh, because it proves to them that women get abortions casually, for “convenience”.

It’s worth reading, especially if you are anti-choice.

My thanks to my former student Naomi Waxman for the linkage.

Posted on

Letter from PP About WI Bombing

A (.pdf) note from Teri Huyck to our patients and supporters regarding Incident at Appleton Health Center:

“For 77 years, the dedicated staff at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin have worked to ensure that women and families will always be able to access affordable, high-quality health care in a safe and caring environment in which their privacy and dignity is respected.

“We care for 80,000 patients statewide who turn to us for medical exams, lifesaving cancer screenings, birth control and STD testing and treatment. Over 97 percent of the health care services we provide are essential, preventive care such as this. At three of our 27 health centers, we provide abortion care, a critical component of comprehensive women’s health care.

“Last night around 7:40 p.m. the Grand Chute Fire Department was called to our Appleton North Health Center. Police are telling us that a small, homemade explosive device was placed on an outside windowsill causing a small fire that burned out prior to the fire department arriving. There was minimal damage to one of the exam rooms. No staff or patients were injured or present. The health center will reopen tomorrow. Our primary concern today—as always— is our patients, staff and volunteers.

“Women deserve safe and compassionate care, and we are proud to provide it. Rest assured, our doors will remain open for the thousands of women who rely on Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin each year for high quality health care.

“We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the law enforcement agencies working with us to ensure Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin continues to be a safe and trusted health care provider for Wisconsin women and families.”

Sincerely,
Teri Huyck
CEO and President

Posted on

Domestic Terrorism

A bomb was planned at the Planned Parenthood of Grand Chute, WI. For those of you who don’t know, that’s about 5 minutes from where I live.

How can a person even respond to this kind of violence that would target poor and working class women who are trying to get their health needs met in a difficult economy? How do you explain to people who would bomb a health clinic that PP clinics don’t offer abortion services in the first place? How do you respond to a group that would plan bombs and kill innocent people – theoretically, even the fetuses they say they’re protecting – and who call themselves “pro life”?

How do you respond at all?

I am at the point now where anyone who apologizes for the inflaming and incendiary rhetoric aimed at Roe v. Wade & at a woman’s right to choose is not my friend, my family, or even someone I can talk to. I understand objections to abortion; I was raised Catholic after all, & am the youngest of 6. But this language around choice, the “army of God” mentality that’s been fed to people is so hurtful, so entirely wrong and beside the point.

When will those of you who vote Republican start telling your leadership that you will not vote for them until they stop with this rhetoric and these policies that target poor women especially?

This Planned Parenthood is so easily a place I might speak at or have a student intern at. The women who go there and work there could be friends.

I don’t understand violence as a response to what is sold as a moral objection. It just doesn’t make sense.

Posted on

In the Life: Parents of Trans Kids

What a cool video: an “It Gets Better” with the parents of trans kids. They’re part of the T-NET part of PFLAG, which focuses on those with trans children.

I wish I could communicate how amazing it is to see things like this happen, to see its prominence even on PFLAG’s website. When I first started working on trans advocacy – long before these kids in the video were born – you really had to hunt to find information on anything trans, but especially so on any family-related issues.

& While there is still a dearth of information on parents who are trans themselves, we have come a long way, baby.

Posted on

RIP: Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich died, and the world is a little less poetic – and a little less political – as a result.

Translations
By Adrienne Rich

You show me the poems of some woman
my age, or younger
translated from your language

Certain words occur: enemy, oven, sorrow
enough to let me know
she’s a woman of my time

obsessed

with Love, our subject:
we’ve trained it like ivy to our walls
baked it like bread in our ovens
worn it like lead on our ankles
watched it through binoculars as if
it were a helicopter
bringing food to our famine
or the satellite
of a hostile power

I begin to see that woman
doing things: stirring rice
ironing a skirt
typing a manuscript till dawn

trying to make a call
from a phonebooth

The phone rings unanswered
in a man’s bedroom
she hears him telling someone else
Never mind. She’ll get tired.
hears him telling her story to her sister
who becomes her enemy
and will in her own time
light her own way to sorrow

ignorant of the fact this way of grief
is shared, unnecessary
and political

Posted on

WI Prison Law & GID

A while back, a federal judge here in Wisconsin ruled that the 2005 Sex Change Prevention Act (really? was that necessary?) was deemed unconstitutional because it represents:

“deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs’ serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” because it denies hormone therapy without regard to those needs or doctors’ judgments.

The U.S. 7th District Court of Appeals upheld his ruling last year, and just this week, the Supreme Court turned it down for review.

Which means, overall, that trans prison inmates in WI, IL, and IN can get medical care for their transition while in prison.

Posted on

Julia Sweeney Does Sex Ed

Hysterical, and probably even funnier for those of you who parent.

It does make me wonder if there is something more like a sex education appropriate video of humans having sex that isn’t porn per se. There should be.

(Thanks to my friend Keith for this one.)

Posted on

Firsts.

A trans guy is running for City Council on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (from whence come all things progressive).

“I’m not running because I’m transgender,” said Mr. Wymore, 50, who was born female but now, after testosterone therapy and top surgery, identifies as transgender. But, he said, that “doesn’t mean that being transgender doesn’t bring a certain perspective.”

Although gay men and lesbians have broken many electoral barriers — serving as mayors, state legislators and members of Congress — the same is not true of the transgender community. Only a few, including a Democratic district leader in Westchester County and a former member of the Hawaii Board of Education, have been elected to office around the country.

Of course that really means those who are out as trans, which means there are probably others no one knows are trans who are holding office.