Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Summary: The way “reducing abortions” is almost always framed distracts us from the more legitimate, and legitimately pro-choice issue of reducing the number of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. Here’s what we should be doing instead. And why. And why.

Silvana Naguib, who’s now blogging at TAPPED says…

Ever since President Bill Clinton introduced his succinct position on abortion: “safe, legal, and rare,” the goal of reducing the number of abortions has been a stated aim of abortion rights as well as anti-abortion groups. Last year, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama promised the pope that he would make efforts to reduce the number of abortions in the United States.

But should decreasing abortion rates be a stated goal of the reproductive-justice movement? Aimée Thorne-Thomsen says no. She makes the case that we should instead focus on increasing all options for women, expanding their liberty to make the right choice for them.

She said it here.

I say no too, for basically the same reasons. Framing the issue in terms of numbers of abortions avoided is going about it completely backwards.

Back before Roe was handed down our argument was that abortion was necessary as a fallback for contraceptive failure and/or failure of personal autonomy and/or failure to use contraception due to lack of education, access, affordability, safety, or usability of contraception.

And the reason we framed it that way back then is that we knew that even when it became legal, is that abortion is more expensive, more time-consuming, more uncomfortable, and medically more risky than any other method of avoiding unplanned, unwanted pregnancies.

Point being that making abortion “rare” should only be a highly-desirable outcome of making unwanted, unplanned pregancies rare.

And the obvious way to get there has no, zero, none relationship to restrictions on abortion. Instead it has everything to do with making a variety of contraception options safe, legal, available, reliable, usable, and affordable for women and men. It has everything to do with comprehensive sex education that includes not just “birds and bees” biology, anatomy, and technique but also appropriate modeling of negotiation and respect for decision-makers not just regarding sex but regarding relationships as well. Heck, for extra credit you can even toss abstinence advocacy on top of all that.

And the result of those policies (ok, except maybe the abstinence part) really would make abortion rare. But as a result, not a goal.

Of course no matter how well all of the above might work there will still always be a need for the fundamental right to fall back on abortion. So no matter how rare it becomes abortion will always need to be safe and legal and there.

—-

Can I just add one more thing about reframing the question away from abortion (where secular and lay opponents work hard to keep it) and towards preventing unplanned, unwanted pregnancy (where they really, really don’t want to go?)

When the issue is framed in terms of abortion then an increase in the raw numbers is considered a “failure” and a decrease is considered “success.” That’s great for Popes and the rest of the nopes, so you can see why they love that way of looking at it.

If instead you start looking at it in terms of education, autonomy, and in terms of safe, affordable, available, useable, and reliable birth control then an increase in the number of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies becomes the point of failure and a corresponding decrease becomes success. And an increase or decrease in abortion becomes a sideshow.

Popes and other nopes prefer to keep the focus on abortion rather than unplanned, unwanted pregnancies because with the former they can pretend they’re part of the solution. With the latter there’s no way they can pretend they’re not part of the problem.

Jill Filipovic of Feministe says

Too many women are dying in the United States while having babies. Amnesty International details the American maternal health care crisis, calling it part of a systematic violation of women’s rights. Funny how “pro-lifers” aren’t exactly latching on to the cause.

She said it here.

A month later, and another report on the same subject showing the same results, this time from the presumably non-human-rights-activist University of Washington, and we’re still not hearing from “pro-life” groups.

Goodness! You’d think “pro-life” was some kind of euphemism for “use pregnancy to punish any woman, married or not, for having sex.” Also known as “the wages of sin.”

I’ve mentioned this repeatedly in the past but unlike the euphemism “pro-life,” the pro-choice label is apt. The point of being pro-choice is to support women’s reproductive decision whether the decision is to become pregnant or avoid it, to terminate an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy or to carry a wanted pregnancy to term. (That’s why, for instance, Planned Parenthood is both the biggest provider of contraception services and pregnancy termination but also the biggest provider of prenatal care and post-partum care. That’s why, for instance pro-choice advocates oppose both efforts to limit access to birth control and abortion in the U.S., and opposed to force abortion in, say, China.)

This is why you’re hearing calls for reducing maternal mortality from pro-choice groups, and hearing diddly squat from “pro-life” organizations.

Rachel Larris of RHRealityCheck.org says

Virginia may be on the verge of offering drivers a pro-choice specialty license plate with proceeds from the sale of the plates going to Planned Parenthood. Last month a bill to create the Virginia license plate “Trust Women, Respect Choice” was passed by the House of Delegates with an amendment redirecting the funds from the sale of the plates away from the plate’s sponsor, Planned Parenthood, to a dormant state fund created in 2008 to assist women with unplanned pregnancies.

However in a conference committee on Saturday, the General Assembly restored the funding back to Planned Parenthood.

The Virginian-Pilot reports...

Read the quote in context here.

Good for them!

Unlike the adoption industry “crisis pregnancy” centers most anti-choice license-plate programs channel funds to (their real motto? “Choose adoption”), Planned Parenthood offers precisely what the “Trust Women, Trust Choice” motto promises: they’re not only the biggest providers of birth control and termination services for those who choose not to be pregnant, they’re also the biggest provider of prenatal and pregnancy support for those who do.

Virginia’s stealth-teabagger Governor is likely to veto the bill.

And, now that I’ve stumbled across her blog, it turns out that Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist is one of the few people I’ve ever met who talk about miscarriage as the (on average) everyday event it is.

Most miscarriages happen at work. Twenty-five percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Seventy-five percent of women who are of child-bearing age are working. Most miscarriages run their course over weeks. Even if you are someone who wanted the baby and are devastated by the loss, you’re not going to sit in bed for weeks. You are going to pick up your life and get back to it, which includes going back to work.

This means that there are thousands of miscarriages in progress, at work, on any given day. That we don’t acknowledge this is absurd. That it is such a common occurrence and no one thinks it’s okay to talk about is terrible for women.

Read the quote in context here.

It’s actually terrible for everybody.

It’s terrible for conversations about choice. Failing to discuss miscarriage, which is approximately as common as abortion, leaves the field of debate open and uncluttered for those who would proclaim themselves “pro-life.”

It’s terrible for couples who lose very-much planned and wanted pregnancies who, in the absence of virtually all conversation about it in advance, imagine their experience is commonplace rather than rare, and who consequently may blame themselves or each other rather than fate and odds.

It’s terrible for men because such silences increase the “mystery” and thus the alienation from their peers, colleagues, and fellow citizens.

And yeah, definitely, terrible for women for the way it helps perpetuate all the other silences that keep us from public understanding of everything that it is to be a human being.