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Monday, June 01, 2009

It is time to go to the mat to preserve women's right to reproductive self-determination
Posted by Jill | 5:39 AM
Gloria Feldt has a passionate plea at Salon to stop assuaging our outrage at the murder of Dr. George Tiller with candlelight vigils:
I am done with candlelight vigils.

It is good and necessary that people gather together at a candlelight vigil to honor the memory of Dr. George Tiller, murdered in cold blood today at his Lutheran church by an assailant believed to be Montana “Freeman” Scott Roeder. Tiller was a compassionate and courageous doctor who provided abortion services to women in some of the most distressing circumstances imaginable, when their pregnancies had gone horribly, tragically wrong. He provided services when no one else would, and he was stubborn enough to fight against everyone who tried to stop him. So it is right that people express their grief in public ceremonies.

But I myself am done with candlelight vigils. I have participated in too many of them, from 1993 with the murder of Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola through the seven doctors, patient escorts and staff murdered over the horrifying five-year period thereafter. I can never forget the day before New Year's Eve in 1994. I was, at the time, CEO of Planned Parenthood in Arizona, talking on the phone to Pensacola patient escort June Barrett -- who had been wounded when her husband and the clinic’s Dr. John Britton were murdered by anti-abortion zealot Rev. Paul Hill -- when I received another urgent call from a friend whose granddaughter worked in Planned Parenthood’s Brookline clinic. The young woman had just witnessed the murder of two co-workers by John Salvi.


Each time, we held vigils all over the country. We wept and we pledged to continue our work. Which we did, increasingly, in isolation. We were the ones who had been wronged, and yet we were labeled controversial, to be shunned rather than supported. The murders were only the tip of the iceberg, among over 6000 cases of violence, vandalism, stalking, bombings, arson, invasions and other serious harassment. 



[snip]

When it comes to decrying Tiller’s unspeakable murder, I want to hear it from Congress. I want to hear it from clergy, the medical profession, the media and civic leaders: "This kind of violation will not be tolerated. Period." I want to see leaders and people at the grassroots joining hands together in support of those who provide women with reproductive health services, including abortion. I want them to put the yellow armband on, to assume Tiller’s name as so many took on the Obama’s middle name, Hussein, when he was disparaged during the election. Doctors have a special responsibility. David Toub M.D, MBA, who provided abortions when he was a practicing physician in Philadelphia, told me, "This could have been any of us who provide or provided abortion services. I'm just as annoyed by some of my own colleagues and the American Medical Association who marginalized us and even looked down at anyone involved in providing abortion."

The silence overall from leaders so far has been deafening, as attorney and longtime Arizona volunteer for reproductive rights causes Leon Silver pointed out. And if our leaders remain silent, I can tell you with perfect assurance what will happen next. There will be more violence.


For the last twenty years, we've watched as those in a position to make policy began to get "squishy" on abortion rights. We've watched our party become increasingly willing to throw women's rights to control our own bodies under the bus in an effort to include those whose stated concern for "THE BAYBEEEEZZZZZ" is belied by their own behavior. Yes, there are people of good conscience who oppose abortion but support efforts to support women making the decision not to abort -- including financial ones.

But for the most part (including the troll who commented on an earlier post here yesterday), scratch the surface of a fetophile and you'll find a misogynist -- someone who feels that the dirty sluts who can't keep their legs closed deserve to be punished. When you look at who it is who kills these doctors, it's the very same teabaggers who have been praised by right-wing television and radio hosts as American patriots. It is not considered patriotic on the right to murder those providing health care services to women.

There have always been abortions. There will always be abortions. Most of us who believe that there should be NO point in a woman's life in which she ceases to be a human being and becomes nothing but a vessel for a fetus have never had an abortion. I have never had an abortion. I wanted to make sure that this choice I support wholeheartedly is one I never had to make. I was both responsible and lucky -- responsible because I was dogged about contraceptive use, and lucky because in my case, the method I chose, which statistically has a higher failure rate than others, never failed.

"I don't like the idea of abortion used as birth control," we hear people say. Yes, there are women who have repeated abortions. But anyone who thinks that abortion is something that women choose blithely is clearly a) not a woman; or b) has never had a cold speculum shoved into him/her. I had a punch biopsy once, and that was quite enough pulling stuff out of my nether quarters, thank you very much. The very notion that there are millions of women in this country who decide to have a late-term abortino to fit into a prom dress, or who decide that it's such a nice day, let's go get our nails done, have a nice lunch, and then get an abortion, is preposterous on the face of it.

So why do we give these people any credence at all?

It's time to start digging beneath the surface of these people and reveal them for the frightened little weasels that they are. Women have sex. Women enjoy sex. This is a GOOD thing. Once we accept that, then we can open the door to teaching girls about the conscientious use of contraception without the added baggage of having to be "swept away" so that having sex doesn'tmake her a slut. If we want to reduce the incidence of abortion, we need to be teaching women not the madonna/whore dichotomy, but how to make affirmative decisions as to what is right for them at the appropriate times of life. An empowered, confident woman is one who makes smart choices. An empowered, confident woman won't feel unable to insist on condom use. An empowered, confident woman also has better ability to protect herself from disease.

We also need to make contraception more available, especially to low-income women, and not just send them home with pills or devices, but also teach them how to say yes -- or no -- and listen to their own hearts and minds instead of messages from men or churches or even traditions that are no longer relevant to life today. Over the last few decades, contraceptive choices have become fewer rather than more. Try getting a diaphragm these days without having to wait a week for the local Rite-Aid to get the damn thing.

And it's time to stop being squishy about this. I'm not happy about President Obama's statement yesterday, though I realize that it's about as good as we're going to get from him. But the issue isn't simply one of deploring the violence directed against abortion providers. It's time to stop demonizing women who choose abortions and the doctors who perform them. If you want to stop abortions, then support efforts to make contraception universally available, effective, and affordable, and support efforts to help women make independent sexual decisions for themselves. But those who paint their anti-abortion rhetoric with undertones of fear and loathing of women and our sexuality can just shut the fuck up. We don't want to hear you anymore. Guys like Scott Roeder have taken away any credibility you ever had.

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7 Comments:
Blogger D. said...
This says it better than anything I could say. I'm linking to this. Um, after breakfast.
6/1/09, 10:56 AM  
Blogger PurpleGirl said...
An empowered, confident woman won't feel unable to insist on condom use.My first lover (somewhat older than myself) told me that I was the one to decide on a means of birth control and that if I ever told a man I wanted to use condoms and he didn't want to I should run away from him as fast as I could.

It was advice that stood me in good stead in judging character.
6/1/09, 2:18 PM  
Blogger Bob said...
Think of Bristol & Levi having sneaky "sinful" sex in a pickup truck. They couldn't admit to each other that they wanted to have sex, were going to have sex, & therefore could & should enjoy it without making a baby. & then when she got pregnant, it was assumed that she would have the baby & marry Levi. She didn't feel free before or after to control her own body. Over past few months, we learned she was an intelligent young woman who could have been empowered & was in fact handicapped by her own idiot parents.
6/1/09, 2:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Yes to everything you said. This return to outright murder will I think really change the dialog. People who are "against" abortion are overwhelmingly not for murder, and every single person who uses inflammatory rhetoric to make their point has the blood of this doctor on their hands.
6/1/09, 4:13 PM  
Anonymous Liz said...
Another yes to everything. However, I'm beyond cynical. I think the only way people will stand up to this nonsense is when the wingnuts start shooting women going into and out of women's health clinics. And maybe not even then.
6/1/09, 5:01 PM  
Anonymous Larkspur said...
Yes to all of the preceding, but I also have to say that although all the birth control options and sensible choices and confidence are excellent and necessary, we're never not going to need safe, legal abortion services.

People like Dr. Tiller stepped in when few others had the courage to back up the compassion that all of them undoubtedly feel when confronted with a patient whose later-term pregnancy has somehow gone terribly wrong. He carefully and painstakingly helped women and their partners through awful times, and in doing so, saved their lives and very often their future fertility, and certainly eased the already horrific psychological burden accompanying the termination of a near term pregnancy. And he did all this while people were gunning for him, his family, his employees, hell, anyone who was even standing close to him.

I am sick to death of this. I wish I'd gone to church with Dr. Tiller just so I could either take the bullet for him, or stop the shooter and make sure he never ever got another chance. I just want to scream so loud that all of their hateful little heads explode.
6/1/09, 11:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I first marched in 1967 against an evil war. In 1969, I went to that war. Wanna march, feel free, I always enjoy a good laugh.

Got something serious in mind like organizing a political campaign based on the center? No republicans, no greens, no democrats, just ordinary americans that know they have to act together or die singly.

Total medical care for all. No judgment. Just plain medical care.
Only qualification - simply say I need help. Quintuple the number of physicians, quintuple the number of nurses. An over supply of medical suppliers is a teensy weensy little bitty problem. I will donate the first dollar to any medical personnel that wants to go Galt.

Reduction of any business "too big to fail" to irritating little failure. Believe it or not, the lower 99 per cent have a huge stake in this economy, like if it fails, we starve. Read the story of the Argentine economy from 1995 to 2005. From one of the countries with a huge gross surplus of food, to a country where citizens literally died of hunger in the streets.

Holder can either throw all of the conspirators in jail for the good doctor's murder or face impeachment for failure to perform his job. Wake him up every morning with a bull horn screaming "when you going to do your job, Holder?" After a week, change the cry to "Resign gutless, we need an attorney general not some coward."

Nancy, I hate to tell to tell your sorry ass that impeachment is back on the table for Obama. I don't want Joe Biden but I really don't like that two bit lying thieving, best buddy with thieves Illinois politician that has no morals or ethics war criminal that we have. And frankly, I don't like you either. And, yes, I would like to see you in the dock for your personal support for war crimes through two administrations.

Smile,
Joe
6/2/09, 6:07 PM  
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