Roeder and the Anti-Abortion Movement Itself Followed Parallel Paths

Posted on June 4, 2009

“He wanted a scapegoat.  First it was taxes — he stopped paying. Then he turned to the church and got involved in anti-abortion.”  This is how Scott Roeder’s ex-wife described him, according to the New York Times.  His personal journey to anti-abortion activism, like the journey of the entire movement beginning in the 1970s, began NOT with moral or religious outrage about abortion itself.  Rather, it began with anti-government sensibilities – starting with an outrage at having to pay taxes that primed their activist pumps.  Abortion simply became a surrogate for anti-government, anti-taxation passions.

In the case of Roeder, it was a personal trip from anti-taxation to anti-abortion – possibly stoked by mental illness.  In the case of the anti-abortion movement itself, it was a play for money and power, also beginning with anger at the IRS.    The Christian Right movement, as we know it today, was born when the IRS rescinded the tax-exempt status of the White Christian Academies in the South that had sprung up in the wake of Brown v Board of Education, the decision which mandated the end of public school segregation.  The abortion movement actually began as a pocketbook issue having nothing to do with abortion at all. By responding to the withdrawal of their tax emption, a group of fundamentalists formed an organization called Christian School Action, which later became the National Christian Action Coalition.  By doing this, they developed a public voice, raised a lot of money, and savored their newfound power.  However, the IRS backed down and reinstated the academies’ tax exempt status – leaving the Religious Right a movement without a cause.  They needed a cause.  They tried to latch on to abortion as a cause – but their followers did not buy it.  Abortion, most Evangelicals reasoned, was a personal choice.  Nobody was forcing abortion on anyone, and women could simply choose not to have one.  Christian conservatives did not feel compelled to ensure that all Americans acted on their particular Christian belief system.

            In fact, in 1971 (before Roe v Wade was decided in 1973) the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) voted almost unanimously in support of a resolution affirming a woman’s right to an abortion in many circumstances, including a threat to her physical or emotional well-being.  (That was the same reasoning which prompted Dr. Tiller to provide abortion care to women.) 

Frustrated, the Religious Right leaders continued to promote abortion as a major concern by infusing the tax issue into the discussion – as in “Do you want your tax dollars going to pay for abortions for ‘welfare queens’?”  Conflating abortion with tax dollars turned out to be a brilliant approach by the Religious Right. The issue caught fire with the people in the pews.  Abortion was an innocent bystander, which got caught up in the Religious Right’s push for power and influence.  The “morality” of abortion was not part of the equation.  Americans need to know this history.

A Mother’s Day Challenge to Those Who Support Life: Finding Common Ground

Posted on May 10, 2009

It’s been a while since I have blogged here.  Life, as they say, got in the way.  Especially now that we have President Obama, and may I say YAY!!!!  My research life transformed on January 20.  Real research on HIV-prevention is again on the agenda, which is what has captured my time.

 

I was moved to write today, Mother’s Day, while reading a New York Times op-ed:  What Do You Give the Developing World for Mother’s Day?  Contributors who come to global health from different perspectives talked about what they would give the developing world for Mother’s Day, such as access to C-sections when needed so more babies and mothers survive labor, fistula repair for all the women around the world living with holes in their bladders, rectums or both from obstructed labor.  Their babies are dead and they are ostracized by their families and communities because they leak urine and/or feces.  Another writer would give a “birth pill” to stop post-partum hemorrhage which kills hundreds of thousands of women yearly, and the suggestions continue…….

 

Here’s the challenge:  to take the passion, energy and funding that goes into the anti-abortion movement here – because the “pro-lifers” are against “baby killing” and transform it to a force for real life saving.   I do not understand why these people are not upset about the full term infants who die (by the hundreds of thousands) because their mother’s labor was obstructed; or the children who are motherless because their mothers died in labor.  Why aren’t people who care about life doing something about this??  Why don’t they care about anyone except the unborn?  And when the unborn die during the birth process — well, that’s just life?  Nothing we can do or care to do about that? 

 

As a professor of nursing, I am working with a graduate student trying to figure out how we can educate nurses in Africa to perform more of these life saving functions.  But, it takes money to develop programs.  If the “Right to Lifers” would mobilize their sizable cadre of followers to work for and pay for programs that really protect the right to life – we could be working together to save mothers and babies.  No controversy there –  Happy Mother’s Day!

 

Let me know your thoughts and suggestions –

Being Against Abortion Is Not Really Being Pro-Life

Posted on September 29, 2008

This post contains talking points about the abortion issue. For those who say anti-abortion is “pro-life”, I say you have to take a comprehensive look at the harmful public health implications of limiting access to abortion and contraception. For those who say the bible tells us to be “pro-life”, I say they should look at how the Southern Baptists, who are now rabidly “pro-life” treated the abortion issue, before it became politicized. These are critical issues today, because some well-meaning people may vote for McCain because of his “pro-life” posture. But, in reality his policies will be devastating for the well-being of women, children and families in the US and abroad. AMERICANS MUST UNDERSTAND THIS ISSUE IN ALL ITS NUANCE. I have never seen a comprehensive discussion of the issue in the American media.

Reading the proposed South Dakota anti-abortion referendum, or listening to Sarah Palin (who is opposed to abortion even in cases of rape and incest) accept her nomination to roars of applause, you might think that abortion has always been anathema to evangelicals. You would be dead wrong. In 1971 (before Roe v Wade was decided in January of 1973) the Southern Baptist Convention issued a resolution calling for legalizing abortion in cases of “rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother”. They were responding to grim statistics: American women were regularly being killed or injured attempting to end their unwanted pregnancies. This resolution came right out of The Bible which exhorts us to take care of the poor, the sick and those less fortunate

Clearly, an anti-abortion position has not always been a bedrock issue for evangelicals. In fact the bedrock issue for evangelical scholars has always been separation of church and state.

Today the Religious Right has abandoned that most sacred tenet. Via a circuitous set of circumstances, their joy in being a part of government is one reason abortion became their most pressing issue. Abortion reached their agenda for a number of reasons. They were upset with the direction society was going in the 1970s. It was the era of women’s rights and the Equal Rights Amendment. There was broader acceptance of pre-marital sex and single parent households. They blamed welfare for encouraging out-of-wedlock births, and high taxes were blamed for forcing women out of the home and into the workplace, disrupting traditional family roles. All of these changes were considered abominations by fundamentalists. (Although, today they cheer a woman who within three days went from the delivery room to her office in Alaska. [That is, if you believe she is actually Trig Palin’s mother. See Sept 11 post)

At the same time, the IRS rescinded tax-exempt status for White Christian Academies in the South, because the schools did not meet new national standards on racial integration. The most famous school to be affected was Bob Jones University. This pocketbook issue riled many, and they began to organize. Thus the evangelicals, who had heretofore shunned government, took their first steps towards the halls of power. The movement grew and the organizers thrilled to their new role, collecting millions of dollars to support their cause and gaining political clout. However, the IRS unexpectedly restored the tax exemption. When their raison d’etre evaporated the Religious Right organizers became an army in search of a mission.

Thinking that abortion could be that mission, they tried to rally their troops to oppose abortion, but the troops were not buying. They believed that abortion is a personal issue, not fodder for the government. That is, they were not buying until the organizers made it clear that we were spending tax dollars on abortions for women on welfare, so-called “welfare queens” – Ronald Reagan’s derisive term for Black women on welfare. The troops clearly did not want their tax dollars going to pay for abortions so these queens could have sex without consequences. By 1980 the Southern Baptist Convention resolved that they “abhor the use of tax money or public, tax-supported medical facilities for selfish, non-therapeutic abortion.” And so was born the abortion issue, as a political and economic issue. It was a re-shaping of the issues to meet a political agenda; a progenitor of Karl Rove’s modus operandi.

It must be noted that we have completely ignored the profound impact that abortion policy and reproductive health policy in general have had on the health of women and children, throughout the world, as well as in the United States. We have known for years that when women in the developing world gain access to contraception and safe abortion, the infant, child and maternal mortality rates plummet. My own analyses show that even in the U.S., states with regulations that allow poor women liberal access to contraceptives through Medicaid, have significantly lower infant mortality rates than other states. Restricting a woman’s access to abortion and contraception is actually harmful to children and families. This public health perspective has been conveniently ignored in favor of politically beneficial extremism.

The bottom line is that if the Religious Right wanted to cleave to its true heritage, it would get out of government. Its leaders would act in ways that are consistent with biblical commandments, and become involved in government only to help the poor, the sick and those less fortunate. That is what the Southern Baptist Convention did in 1971, by calling for the legalization of abortion.

Please share these points with people you know who are still on the fence about whom to support for president. All voters need to be informed.

Click on this link to find Obama’s position on issues of importance to women.

So Many Questions About Palin and So Few Answers

Posted on September 11, 2008

My purpose in creating this website was to have a site about women’s health that was based solely in fact. No politics here. But, the nomination of Sarah Palin so offended me, that I am going to tackle Palin’s obviously false story about “her” pregnancy with her 5^th child, — that’s an area I am qualified to speak about. I can examine the evidence.

When the blogosphere filled with stories that Palin was Trig’s grandmother, not his mother, why didn’t she just ask her doctor, Dr. Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, to back up her story and save Bristol the embarrassment? Well, for one thing, Dr. Baldwin-Johnson may be MIA. Her name no longer appears on the website of the Mat-su Regional Medical Center where Gov. Palin is purported to have delivered Trig. And, there is no record of the baby’s birth there. Of course, Dr. Baldwin-Johnson does not want to be found. If she had really told this 44 year-old mother with pre-term, premature rupture of membranes to get on a plane and fly 4000 miles, she could lose her license. That would be malpractice. And Palin says she called the doctor from Seattle to check in. Do you think that Dr. Baldwin-Johnson could do an internal exam via the phone to see how dilated the Governor was? It is preposterous.

The news media is shying away from this story, because it is very sensitive, they don’t want to get it wrong, and they are not medically-trained, so may not realize that Palin’s story is absolutely not credible. Look at the picture of her 7 months pregnant with her first child, and then 7 months pregnant with her 5^th – almost 20 years later. Let’s face it, we don’t get trimmer and firmer with age. Women get bigger with each pregnancy. You can trust me on this. In addition to the patients I have seen in the hospital, I gave birth to 5 children myself, and I looked like a balloon. Look at the picture of her 4 days after delivery, with baby #5!! All made up, coiffed and dressed in what appears to be regular street clothes.

Some may say these are personal concerns. but, when a person accepts the nomination to be Vice president, he or she should expect to be scrutinized. Palin’s actions in this case represent either terrible judgment that could have jeopardized her life and the baby’s or she created a subterfuge and lied to everyone around her, including her colleagues in the state government. And what does all this, which was out there prior to her selection as McCain’s running mate, say about his judgment and thoroughness in his first major action as a potential president?

I invite you to post a comment on this blog. There are so many angry women and men. I have gotten so many emails from people I don’t usually correspond with, and they all use the same phrase, “I am outraged.” We need to keep talking, and to make sure others hear us.

More links:

My story on Palin in Women’s eNews: Go to: http://www.womensenews.org and click on the article on the bottom left side of the page.

http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2000/05/23/news.txt While Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasila, women had to pay for the rape kits that were used when they sought help after a rape. The then-governor of Alaska made that practice illegal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Re0vmbtHK8 Palin giving the Welcome Speech at the 2008 Alaska Independence Party Convention. American first???? This group wants to re-vote statehood and secede from the US!

An Overlooked, Stigmatized Risk Factor for HIV/AIDS In Women

Posted on August 2, 2008

As the opening of the XVII International AIDS Conference was upon us, the highly respected medical journal, The Lancet, published an editorial titled, “HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean” (The Lancet - Vol. 372, Number 9635, 26 July 2008, Pages 263). Once again, however, anal intercourse was ignored as an HIV/AIDS transmission category for women. I wrote a comment on this issue, which was published by The Lancet online. I invite you to read the letter.

In fact, the CDC just released new data showing that the number of new cases of HIV/AIDS in the US is higher than previously thought. A recent article in the Washington Post, reported on a study by the Black AIDS Institute which found that if the African American population of the U.S. was a nation unto itself, that nation would rank 16th in the world for the number of people living with HIV/AIDS!! More than 1/4 of those with HIV/AIDS in this country are women, predominantly black women. Hispanic women also have disproportionately high HIV/AIDS case rates. AIDS continues to be a leading killer of young women of color in the U.S.

Furthermore, and to its credit, The Lancet just published an article online that examines  the old belief that heterosexual intercourse is not as risky as intercourse between men (i.e. anal intercourse). The researchers found that infectivity (the likelihood that someone will become infected with HIV) varies. Astonishingly, while HIV infection is estimated to occur  in as few as 1 in 1,000 episodes of vaginal intercourse (that may be a low estimate!) when there are no other risk factors present, HIV infection occurs in as many as 1 out of 3 episodes of heterosexual anal intercourse. You do the math!!

Women are not getting the education they need to protect themselves from this disease. The nation, and the world, are still silent on anal intercourse as a risk behavior for women. Please spread the word, however, you can — because the public health and medical communities are not doing their jobs, and women continue to contract HIV/AIDS. In some areas the epidemic already has a female face. Education is a key to prevention.

Teen Pregnancy, the Abortion Rate Set to Increase if Bush Has His Way

Posted on July 16, 2008

Abortion and birth control are facing a new attack by the Bush Administration, under the guise of allowing health care providers to exercise their religious beliefs on the job. The Administration is proposing a new rule that would require any health facility that receives funding from the Department of Health and Human Services (that is a lot of facilities!!) to certify that they would not fire a worker who has religious objects to providing any particular “health service” – read “reproductive health service”. Ominously, according to the New York Times, the regulation broadens the definition of abortion to include “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation”. Yet, there are already regulations that prevent employers from firing employees who refuse to perform tasks that go against their religious or moral beliefs. But, what about the patients? There are federal laws that protect their right to obtain needed health services. It seems that if the patients are female their needs do not count for quite as much as employees, according to this Administration.

Let’s get real. If health care providers do not believe in contraception, they should not work in a setting where contraception is dispensed. If you refuse to write prescriptions for birth control, then don’t become a gynecologist – or at least advertise your beliefs so your patients do not come to you expecting to get a prescription for something you consider immoral.

Beyond that, there are many reasons women use contraception –not all of which have to do with preventing pregnancy. For example, women with polycystic ovary syndrome often do not menstruate at all – and they need birth control pills to regulate their periods. Many of my young adolescent patients (who are not sexually active) would really suffer without birth control pills. It is not unusual for a young teen to have very heavy or frequent periods that can lead to severe anemia. The only way to deal with that problem is to prescribe oral contraceptives. Should we just let those women deal with their conditions without the benefit of treatment?

There will be additional public health problems if we allow providers to refuse to provide contraceptives. For example, the teen pregnancy rate went up for the first time in over 15 years. Why? Well, there are several reasons why the teen pregnancy rate was going down, the primary one being better access to contraception. Now that it is becoming more difficult to get contraception, the teen pregnancy rate is on the rise. If teens cannot get birth control, they still have sex – only without contraception. Duh!!

Moreover, while the abortion rate overall has gone down, the abortion rate among poor women (those most affected by regulations making it more difficult to get birth control) has gone up. No birth control = more abortions. As a nation, we must take a comprehensive public health approach to reproductive health, and not tailor policy for individuals who do not believe in contraception. There are plenty of places where they can work without harming the greater good.

What I consider immoral is jeopardizing women’s health. When women cannot control their fertility, they suffer and so do their children (see Reproductive Health Care Can Reduce Child Abuse, April 4 post). Women’s health is a family value.

Contraceptive Free Drug Stores – In the Name of Preventing Abortion!!

Posted on June 18, 2008

On June 16 the Washington Post published an article detailing a new assault on reproductive rights — - pharmacies that don’t stock contraceptives.   They are doing this in the name of promoting their so-called pro-life agenda.As a nurse practitioner, I have often diagnosed pregnancy in young women for whom that pregnancy was disastrous.  One typical patient became pregnant when the condom broke and she was not able to buy emergency contraception because the pharmacist she turned to did not believe in it.  Her future was cut short.  She was to have been the first in her family to attend college.  The pharmacist had no right to do that to her.  If he does not want to fill the full range of prescriptions, he should find another place to work, such as a senior citizens’ residence. Incredibly, one pharmacist quoted in the Washington Post said that he decided that contraceptives “could hurt the woman and possibly hurt her unborn child”, so he does not provide them. That statement is disingenuous to say the least. Any medication can cause harm, even something as common as Penicillin. People die every year from allergic reactions to Penicillin.  Maybe these pharmacies should just stop providing antibiotics also.  Moreover, the risk of dying during pregnancy or delivery is exponentially higher than the risk of dying from complications of birth control use.   Just as antibiotics prevent illness and death from infections, so contraceptives  prevent morbidity and deaths from complications of pregnancy and childbirth.  Moreover, the data show over and over that when women cannot get contraception, the abortion rate goes up.  Duh!!  If women cannot prevent conception, they are left to deal with an unwanted pregnancy –  

In addition, contraceptives are used to treat a range of health problems, including endometriosis, an extremely painful condition and dysfunctional uterine bleeding which can cause severe anemia.  Why would anybody consider it alright to deny patients treatment for these conditions? 

 

At a minimum, pharmacies that do not provide contraceptives, should be required to advertise that fact, in bold letters, on their store sign, so that no woman wastes valuable time entering a pharmacy that will not serve her needs.  Many other consumers, no doubt, would simply wish to avoid patronizing a store that refuses to provide essential medications for women.  I wouldn’t walk in there.

 

Gagging American Women – And Wreaking Havoc in the Process

Posted on May 23, 2008

 

            The Wall Street Journal today (5/23/08) published an article, Antiabortion Groups Push Bush on Clinics’ Subsidies, by Stephanie Simon, which describes in some detail the continuing efforts of groups such as the Family Research Council, the Eagle Forum and Concerned Women for America to impose the Gag Rule on American Women.  In brief, the Gag Rule (which was enacted by Reagan, rescinded by Clinton, but reinstated by Bush on his first day in office) bans nongovernmental organizations outside the US from receiving US family planning assistance if they use funding — from any other source — to perform abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the woman. (For more on the Gag Rule see An Attempt To Impose the Gag Rule on American Women, posted on May 6).
            These groups had planned to give Bush a petition on May 7, asking him to impose the Gag Rule in this country.  I guess they haven’t gotten around to it yet.  They do not want tax dollars, in the form of Title X funds, to go to facilities where abortions may be performed. They are therefore targeting clinics where abortions are provided, such as Planned Parenthood.  However, the Planned Parenthood Programs I am familiar with spend most of their time providing services such as contraception, Pap smear screening and breast exams to poor and near-poor women; and many Planned Parenthoods now have clinic hours for men as well!!  But, the pro-Gag Rule folks want to separate out abortion facilities from those that provide other types of care, for example by erecting new walls around the abortion facilities.  Of course, that would be very expensive.  Some of the women’s health facilities are considering not accepting Title X moneys (an important component of their funding), rather than going through these expensive shenanigans.
            As I was reading the article, I felt as though I was transported back in time about 20 years, at a time when I was working in an agency that had Title X funding (and during the brief time when the Gag Rule did apply in the U.S.).  We had to be very careful about separating our activities when we were counseling pregnant teenagers.  We were not allowed to mention abortion in a Title X funded exam room although it would really have been malpractice not to provide patients with complete information.  In fact, The Hill reported yesterday that Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois said that if the new Gag Rule regulations took effect, “it would mean that a number of doctors, nurses and hospitals that operate under [American Medical Association] guidelines to inform a patient of all their options won’t be able to do so if they accept federal funds.”
In our facility we were supposed to say to a tearful, frightened 16 year-old who asked about abortion, “That is outside the purview of what I can discuss.”  Furthermore, our inclination was to refer them to the OB-GYN Department; but that too would have been illegal if there was a chance that a gynecologist might mention abortion. Can you imagine?!
            So, what the Family Research Council et al will accomplish is to further increase the number of poor women who cannot get Pap smears, breast exams or birth control.  The abortion rate for poor women will continue to increase.  And, the hardships for these women and their families will go on.  The desire for a domestic Gag Rule is clearly not family-friendly. 

NPR Gets It Wrong On Abstinence-Only Education

Posted on May 18, 2008

I was disappointed to hear John Jemmott, a very highly respected HIV-prevention researcher, say that abstinence education was OK. On Weekend Edition Sunday (5/18/08), he spoke about a study he did which showed that abstinence-only does not have ill effects. I am sure that the abstinence program he designed was factual, and based on appropriate theory.

However, most abstinence education, as he alluded, is based on ideology and inaccurate information. For example, teens are told that condoms don’t work. (Why in the world would adolescents bother to use a condom if they think condoms are ineffective?) Major evaluations, even those sponsored by the government, have shown that these programs may result in a slight delay in the onset of intercourse, but once the teens begin having intercourse, those who received abstinence-only education are less likely to use condoms, more likely to contract an STD, and more likely to engage in unprotected heterosexual anal intercourse. Readers of this site know how dangerous that is.

The distinction between most abstinence-education, and a program designed by John Jemmott, should have been made clear to the audience.

An Attempt To Impose The Gag Rule On American Women

Posted on May 6, 2008

Will there be a new Gag Rule in the U.S.? Yes, if nearly 80 conservative groups have their way! The Gag Rule, which is properly called the Mexico City Policy, was initially instituted by Reagan at a world population conference in Mexico City in 1984. It bans nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) outside the US from receiving US family planning assistance if they use funding — from any other source — to perform abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the woman. These NGOs are also prohibited from providing counseling and referral for abortion, or lobbying to improve access to abortion in their own countries.

The policy hurts poor women and children around the world. The United States has been an important donor to international health programs. However, we have also implemented policies that stifle health care. For example, if an organization is working to legalize abortion in its own country the Gag Rule mandates that aid to that organization is cut off. The end result is that the women and men who rely on that NGO will not have condoms and other birth control methods that we would have shipped to them. Ultimately, obviously, this is likely to result in more unwanted pregnancies and HIV transmission as well.

And now, the same groups who cheered the Global Gag Rule are apparently hoping to implement our own domestic version of it. The Family Research Council has prepared a petition for President Bush. Its website asks readers to: Please join the tens of thousands of citizens who have already signed the petition to President Bush, which FRC will deliver to the White House on May 7, asking the President to approve new Title X regulations ensuring that no taxpayer money subsidizes the abortion facilities of groups like Planned Parenthood. (Note to readers: according to the FRC, if abortions are performed on the same premises as family planning services, then any money given to the family planning organization also supports abortion.) Ask the President also to ensure that legitimate clinics are not forced to refer for abortions.

Title X is a lifeline for many uninsured women because it pays for their contraception. To make matters worse, the number of uninsured Americans has grown tremendously during the Bush years. More women need Title X-funded contraception, but fewer can get it. I was just reading a story about a woman who became pregnant because she could not afford birth control and could no longer get free contraception at her clinic due to cutbacks in Title X. She terminated her pregnancy.

In essence, if Bush accedes to this request, the new domestic Gag Rule will, no doubt, result in an even greater increase in abortions among poor women. Is that what these people want?

© Copyright 2008, Carol Roye, All Rights Reserved.