California Feminist Blogs

Last week, the Speaker of the House announced plans to introduce legislation that further restricts abortion access in the new health care plan. Last week, the Philadelphia District Attorney, Seth Williams, indicted Dr. Kermit Gosnell on eight counts of murder in the deaths of seven infants and a Bhutanese refugee. These deaths occurred in a clinic that provided abortions to mostly impoverished women, women of color, and immigrant women. The incredibly unsanitary conditions of the clinic, and the horrendous way the women seeking abortions were treated (or more accurately, not treated at all) are described here.

I believe (as do many others) these two events are connected. The events demonstrate that when abortion is used as a pawn in a political (democratic v. republican) chess game, the health and lives of impoverished women, women of color, and immigrant women are put at risk. Even if the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” goes no further, abortion has been more deeply entrenched in the political discourse as a “sacrificial lamb” that can be used to appease a specific group of people.

Reproductive justice activists and lawyers must not only fight against the many barriers women in marginalized communities face in accessing reproductive health care, but also must focus on ensuring that the reproductive health care women receive when (if) these barriers are overcame is safe, effective, and comprehensive. I kept this post short in the hopes of fostering a discussion about what lawyers, law students, community folk, and other RJ activists can do/are doing in response to the existence of clinics like Dr. Gosnell’s.

Lara Shkordoff

House Republicans, as expected, have introduced a bill called the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act " that seeks to make changes to federal abortion policy (*pissed off*).Oh BTW it includes a redefinition of rape... WTF!!!Here's the story: since 1976, the federal government has prohibited the use of taxpayer funds for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, and life-endangering pregnancies. Now Republicans are trying to limit the rape exemptions to "forcible rape" only; statutory rapes, rapes of mentally challenged people, countless date rape situations, and rapes in which the victim was drugged are apparently NBD. And abortions in the instances of incestual rapes? They'll still be covered...for women under the age of 18 (why? what? doesn't make sense).As for the "forcible" rapes (sort of redundant, don't you think?) that will still warrant federal funding, well, they probably won't either. As Laurie Levenson, a former assistant US attorney and expert on criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, writes:

The term "forcible rape" is not defined in the federal criminal code, and the bill's authors don't offer their own definition. In some states, there is no legal definition of "forcible rape," making it unclear whether any abortions would be covered by the rape exemption in those jurisdictions.

So if you're as angry/frustrated as I am, please write to your representatives and let them know that we will NOT stand for this! & you better believe I'll keep you posted on future news surrounding the bill.

Every year, LSRJ hosts five Regional Conferences around the country. Each conference provides LSRJ students, allies, and alums an opportunity to come together to learn about cutting-edge reproductive health, rights, and justice issues, network with one another, and get updates about the programs of LSRJ. Jessica Wilkerson is not only a resident blogger for RepoRepro but the Northeast Regional Coordinator, responsible for putting together the Northeast Regional Conference! Visit www.lsrj.org/events for more information about the Regional Conferences and email info at lsrj dot org to RSVP.

This year’s Northeast Regional Conference is a melding of my two passions and I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to organize the conference this year. The more I explore the intersection of reproductive and environmental justice, the more difficulty I have in separating them.  That tells me that this is a connection worth spending a jam-packed day in late February exploring!
Speaking at the conference are some truly incredible role models. The full day will start with an plenary panel exploring exactly what the movements are and how they intersect. Mia Davis from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics will start us off with a discussion about environmental justice in conjunction with reproductive justice in the context of chemicals in personal care products. Next, Professor Mindy Roseman of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School will share her many and varied experiences in the RJ world. Professor Betsy Hartmann from Hampshire College’s Population and Development Program will follow with a discussion on the dangers of simplifying the overpopulation rhetoric and how reproductive justice can inform environmental advocacy.  Finally, Angela Hooten of the National Institute for Reproductive Health will share with us the work the organization has been doing with their Urban Initiative program, which has had significant success in blending environmental and reproductive justice activism.

A panel addressing challenges that communities of color face will follow.  Christine Soyong Harley of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum will elaborate on the work she is doing with Asian American communities and the health effects of nail salon work.  Trina Jackson from Alternatives for the Community and the Environment will address areas where African American women are placed, politically and environmentally, at the nexus of the two larger movements.  To wrap up the panel, Elizabeth Barajas-Roman, representing the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Heath, will address challenges specific to the Latina community.

After chapter presentations, a lunch and networking session, and strategic planning with Sabrina from the national office, the next panel will be focused on the work of one particular organization.  Kimberly Inez McGuire, from the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, will present a panel called Politics, Fertility, and Toxic Chemicals: Advocacy at the Intersection of Reproductive and Environmental Justice.
The conference will wrap up with a high-powered RJ networking happy hour. All who are interested in reproductive justice are welcome so please be in touch if you want more information. Two LSRJ National Board members have worked with the LSRJ Alumni Network Committee to organize this incredible event.  I have no doubt that this will be an enriching and empowering day where all of us students can learn more about what it means to speak truth to power.

Jess Wilkerson, Vermont Law School

This is Part 2 in a two part series about the recent ABC v. Ireland decision out of the European Court of Human Rights. Click here for Part 1.

The buzz following oral arguments was incredibly polarized – some were certain of an “activist opinion” while others feared the ECHR would go on record stating that there should be no more challenges to Ireland’s abortion laws. Personally, I was anxious about the fact that this case substantially raised the bar in asserting women’s rights with regard to abortion. These women were claiming entitlement to quality of life, not just actual physical life. The ECHR had given some spankings – for instance, it had found article 8 required Poland to provide a lawful exception for abortions where the mother’s health is threatened (the applicant in that case had almost gone blind) – but it had punted a lot of issues, particularly regarding state sovereignty. It was anyone’s guess whether the Court would join these women in taking it to the next level.

The decision came down last month, one year and one week after oral arguments were heard before the Grand Chamber. Though the six years it took from filing to judgment is not terrifically uncommon for cases before the ECHR, I can tell you, it made me pretty nervous since the Court had gone on record “expecting” a judgment in 2010.

In very brief summary, the Court found the following:

- right to life, article 2:

The Court noted that there was no legal obstacle to traveling abroad to receive an abortion. Medical complications did not amount to a threat to life. No violation.

- right to be free from inhuman or degrading treatment, article 3:

The Court found the psychological and physical burdens were insufficiently grave as to be considered inhuman or degrading. No violation.

- right to respect for private and family life, article 8:

The Court found this right does not confer a “right to abortion” but that Ireland’s prohibition does fall within its scope. For the first and second applicants, their rights had been interfered with but Ireland had done so in the pursuit of a legitimate aim (protecting public morals). There being no consensus in Europe, Ireland is allowed to make the call for itself. No violation.

For the third applicant, fear of the risk to her life from potential cancer relapse clearly falls within the scope of this right. The uncertainty resulting from Ireland’s state of perpetual ambiguity (as I refer to it) has a chilling effect on both women and their physicians. The theoretical judicial remedies available were also inappropriate for a woman in her situation. Violation.

The judgment may be found in its entirety on the ECHR database (on the left, select “Judgments” and “Grand Chamber”; in the “Application Number” field, search for “25579/05”).

I’m still processing the decision. For a compilation of several reactions to the judgment, look here and here. One thing I am sure of, though, is that I really should have expected this. Maybe we all should have, but especially me. After all my constitutional law courses, I really should have anticipated the axiomatic cliché of meeting everyone halfway in such a controversial matter. I do know, however, that all the hopes I had for this decision are wincing in agony.

Ireland, in its Constitution, clearly (though reluctantly) affords equal rights to a woman and a fetus, but something really needed to be done to tip the stagnant scales in that rigged balancing act. I thought codified and valued human rights like dignity, freedom from stigma, respect, self-determination, privacy, and a right to life that includes more than just existence might shatter the impasse. Analysts referred to the case as Europe’s Roe v. Wade but, in a sense, it aimed for more than Roe and ended up with much less. Maybe time will tell, but this case had a really awesome place it could have gone, and I wonder if it’s possible now (or at least advisable) that future applicants will map the same journey – a quest, if you will, for a more democratic and equal society. If that quest is or needs be abandoned, this judgment is, in my view, an enormous loss.

This is Part 1 in a two part series about the recent ABC v. Ireland decision out of the European Court of Human Rights.

Since 1980, almost 140,000 women have traveled to the United Kingdom from Ireland to receive a safe and legal abortion, meaning approximately 5,000 women per year make a clandestine journey to obtain health care that, at home, has carried a penalty of life in prison for 150 years.  Until recently, even making the journey carried the same penalties.  Many women are entirely responsible for the costs (around $900 USD), have to make a series of lies or excuses to those around them (or suffer anything from minor disapprobation to domestic violence to the possibility of criminal charges), are sought out by pro-life groups on the boat to London, and face potentially serious complications without assurances of follow-up care.

Although Ireland theoretically respected a woman’s right to choose when her life was at risk – a so-called “grave circumstances” exception courtesy of European and Irish courts – the government took an interesting approach in demonstrating that requisite gesture.  It opted to keep the public in a state of perpetual ambiguity so no one could say for sure what circumstances were sufficiently grave.  A woman would have no idea whether she was a criminal or even if she would be helped if something went wrong.  If the Irish authorities later determined a procedure was not performed under the strict, but ephemeral and subjective “grave circumstances” exception, the physician would face license revocation and life in prison.

And so, reminiscent of pre-Roe America, women had to cross borders to receive basic health care (not to mention some respect).  And, in 2005, three of those women took Ireland to court.

All three women had become pregnant unintentionally and had traveled to the United Kingdom to receive an abortion.  The first plaintiff (referred to in European Court of Human Rights [ECHR] parlance as the first “applicant”) was impoverished, single, unemployed, struggling with depression, and in recovery for substance abuse.  She was afraid having another child would jeopardize her chances of reuniting with her other children in foster care.  The second applicant was not prepared to become a single parent and had concerns about complications from the (unsuccessfully administered) morning after pill.  The third applicant, a Lithuanian national living in Ireland, was in remission from cancer.  Not knowing she was pregnant, she’d had some treatment and testing which should not be done on pregnant women, and she was unable to find a doctor who would determine the risks to her or the fetus (due to the prohibition on abortion).  All three experienced painful complications after the procedure (e.g., blood clots, infection) and were afraid to seek care at home.

In the case of ABC v. Ireland, before the ECHR, these women argued that Ireland had violated its promises to them under the European Convention on Human Rights by prohibiting (essentially all) abortions.  Putting their health and well-being in jeopardy, Ireland had failed to safeguard their:

-    right to life, article 2
-    right to be free from inhuman or degrading treatment, article 3
-    right to respect for private and family life, article 8
-    right to an effective domestic remedy when those rights are violated, article 13, and
-    right to the enjoyment of these rights free from discrimination, article 14.

For a breakdown of the arguments presented to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR in December 2009, see this article.

Sara Taylor

Trish Keenan from Broadcast passed away Friday due to complications from pneumonia. The frontwoman was known for her dreamy, 60's-inspired vocals and lyrics. She was also an exceptional writer, speaker, and thinker. Check out some of her posts on the Broadcast blog.

A fascinating, lesser-known blog she co-authored is Found Objects, a self-proclaimed "hauntological dumping ground." Her interest in hauntology, which is, for lack of a better description, the Derridean study of "ghosts" (or ghosts of movements) as existing in paradoxical states of being and non-being, not actually present but having influence over the present, is interesting in light of her death and the impact it's made on the musical community. The following is a particularly hauntological quote Trish gave in an interview with The Wire:

I think the evocation of memory in our music could be seen as the residue of imaginary time travel. You can either go forward or back. You go back in order to change something in the now, to redesign the course of events for personal reasons. When you go back to a previous musical time you're trying to recall a memory that never happened to you, that is not stored, so it would make sense that you hear a fuzzy dissolving sense of time and place as you call it. When you make music in backwards time travel it's shadowy or faint impression as though you're looking back through two clouded lenses, one is the time travel portal the other is a false recollection process.

The following is a video of Broadcast performing "Winter Now" on CBC. The "evocation of memory" in Broadcast's music that Trish talks about in the quote above is apparent in their performance aesthetic.



I also like this next video for "Valerie" that someone synced with scenes from the 1970 Czech film, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. The surreal style of the film and its setting as the heroine's dream matches the content of the song, dealing with themes of dreams and disguises.



One last thing I wanted to share regarding Trish was this mixtape entitled "Mindbending Motorway Mix" that she recently sent to David Brewster, a friend of hers. David has published it on Soundcloud and I'll provide the tracks (which are unnamed) below.

Trish's Mind Bending Motorway Mix by Abandapart

About the anonymous tracks, David writes:

Sorry I don't have a tracklist and to be honest I like it that way. I think its less about who you're listening to on this compilation and more about the fact you are listening to something that Trish took time to select and compile for me and in turn yourselves.

Trish's death has sent shock waves through the musical community. She will be missed, and of course will live hauntologically through her music.

Dear Right Wing Pundits:

The problem with your extreme right wing rhetoric is that it draws, by design and/or by default, from a fundamental of American society that the extreme left wing wishes to see eradicated: white supremacy. The left wing has essentially purged this institution from acceptance, not from existence, but from purposeful practice, if you will, within it's political framework. The right wing, again ignorantly possibly in some instances but openly in many others, embraces institutions that continue to sustain this ideology that specific individuals have rights above others simply by birthright (race, nationality, religion or otherwise.) Therefore you, the right wing pundits and your establishment, immortalize white supremacy and the ideals it embraces, even if you or your colleagues very own individual racial identity is subject to expulsion from such a conformity.

While I can concur that tax-paying citizens, both the worker and the business owner are due rights and input in regard to the programs they fund, such a contribution does not grant you an absolute power over others. The temptation to misuse this deceitful "right to exclude" is exercised vigorously by the right for often tyrannical purposes. Like a sick genocidal lullaby the right wing sings to edify it's belief that certain people count and certain people don't, they advocate legislation, social norms and an overall group think that encourages animosity towards your fellow human being. Right wing fundamentalism is not Christianity, please stop confusing politics with religion, they are separate as the Bible indicates they should be.

In any economic system there is a degree of serfdom, even Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey pay taxes to the man to operate their respective businesses. Which leads me to state that also in most societies, who you serve may be at your will depending on your financial situation. The richer you are the more self-governing you are, this is essential to the American Dream. What is also essential to the American Dream is that our society is open for anybody to achieve this. Because the right wing contextualizes itself within or among white supremacist ideals, American supremacy, however you wish to couch your terms, it's very definition of freedom includes an exclusion and goes against the American Dream. And the right wing's corruption of exception is used to exploit their fellow human under many given circumstances for social, political and financial benefit, ergo, and with fault for sounding redundant, exclusion is fundamental to the right wing philosophy. And this, right wing pundits, is what you espouse daily to your audience: Exclude!

If a broad socio-political dogma embracing hostility towards fellow humans is from which the right wing subscribes, it is only perfunctory that a climate of antagonism develops. I find it quite insensible to confirm contrarily. And frankly, left wing doctrine is a reaction to fundamentalism and a resistance to social stratification. United States fundamentalism presumes itself to be an initiating American genesis, so to imply that left wing practice is anything other than a reaction to this establishment would simply be unintelligent or down right deceptive.

Left wing precept is inclusive, it searches for ways to humanely annex and subsume diverse groups of people and diverse belief systems that are not harmful to society, which is why extreme leftism in America always includes a global context. American conservatism seeks to shun that which it is not familiar or that which is perceived as threatening or foreign, narrow it's scope of representation and therefore constrain society for reasons that are not righteous but are selfish and self-serving, to protect a shameful pretense: that certain groups of people deserve exclusion.

I understand the fear of lack of resources. I understand the fear of joblessness, poverty and disenfranchisement. I share those fears. However, the ruling elite, not just the government alone, but also the families and the corporations that hold the power and the resources and the money, are not going to concede that power nor privilege and are complicit with furthering division, viewing social unrest and blood shed as either an unfortunate consequence or as a strategic necessity. The right wing faction both the blind followers whom have succumbed to the bleak forecast that fundamentalism calls for or the deliberate and clever driving force for which you, the right wing pundits, speak for and to, enables an agenda that will ensure bitter aggression.

Left wing rhetoric is not about what one cannot do, it is about what we can do contrary to the oppressive right wing theories that people should be restricted. Because the right wing wants to make no concessions, what do it's pundits propose that those left out of the right wing loop do?

If the right wing and you, it's pundits, close the door more and more as to make it harder and harder to fit under the unholy umbrella of "haves" then you and your cause will soon enough mimic a system of supremacy that eventually imploded at the base and became a disgrace to even have been associated with.

Wake up! It's 2011, the paradigm is shifting, you can either help shape the future or be mired in the past schlepping around out dated and disproved social theory.

Yesterday,Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, told the USA Today "When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous and unfortunately, Arizona I think has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Conservative bloggers have already attacked Sheriff Dupnik as being a political opportunist. But I say perhaps an experienced police officer who understands a thing or two about social psychology. It's not rocket science here folks. It's common sense.

It is obvious that the Arizona gunman was mentally disturbed to the point of being criminally insane. His thoughts were incoherent, they did not make sense. His postings show a young man grappling with very intense metaphysical, political and social philosophy. His dialogue is one of someone who was being enlightened to certain ideologies, philosophies, however, due to extreme mental illness he is not sound enough to compartmentalize these ideas and instead his mental health pushed him towards violence in order to relieve the pressure from the knowledge he gained, even to want to be a terrorist and gain fame. His thoughts on terrorism suggest that he was intrigued by the idea and the action. However, the gunman isn't really the issue, I don't need to further study him, he's a non-factor, his role is now obsolete, we are left to deal with the shit he put on the table.

The socio-political environment for young people in Arizona must be extreme, no matter the class or race because of the strong racial divisions that are still being reinforced at all forms of social institutions, tangible and otherwise.

Judge Roll, the federal judge assigned to the HB2281 case, involving the legislation passed banning Ethnic Studies, was killed today during the shooting, considered possibly just a coincidence.

Why are these politicians even wasting tax dollars banning Ethnic Studies? It behooves the power elite, really it does, to have such a resource. This level of ignorance suggests that there is a serious reinforcement of power going on and therefore people must be being guided by fear rather than logic. Banning ethnic studies and passing laws targeting undocumented workers in the simultaneous fashion that was conducted by Arizona politicians overtly implies reactionary factions were sending a sincere message to the non-whites: "Stay in your place" or we will eradicate you by any means necessary. Those violent actions, disguised as docile legislation, permeate the culture of Arizonians, white or not white and physically direct the future of Arizona, the future meaning the youth. De jure social norms, if you will, can be and are often unnatural and forced to prevent humane progress (i.e. Black Codes, Jim Crow), therefore pressuring people to follow them, when there natural will or humane feelings might tell them they should do otherwise. This is particularly true among young people.

White Supremacy is a fatal farce and to continue it for any reason on any level is to go against nature, morality and humanity. Any elected official still peddling that bullshit within our governmental institutions should be subject to the justice system. Implementation of any form of racial supremacy requires violence and oppression and thus should not be a tolerated practice.

Arizona's ruling elite is killing it's future, literally.