Collisions with Reality

I have been furious beyond belief at how men have dominated the contraception “debate”. Look, here’s a link wrap-up comprised of articles solely by men! Here’s a Congressional hearing that’s mostly male!

I couldn’t quite pinpoint why these conversations were so male-dominated. I had plenty of ideas, but nothing concrete. And then I read this conversation between David Brooks and Gail Collins. Brooks’ exasperation was a revelation to me. To conservatives, women are problems, rather than people who may or may not have problems. And when you look at it that way, suddenly everything falls into place. Why ask a woman what she thinks when she’s the problem in the first place?

The mainstream media may mostly be buying into this narrative, but women’s voices are out there. Check out the RH Reality Check site, where the vast majority of authors are women. Read Irin Carmon’s work on Salon. Gail Collins is fighting the good fight over at the NY Times, particularly in this column. Finally, the Planned Parenthood Saved Me tumblr is worth a read.

Because I’m not sure which part of this is more disgusting in 2012: that we’re still having this contraceptive debate, or that it’s being dominated by men.

Today is the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, so Friday’s announcement of nearly universal contraceptive coverage was excellent timing. The most successful way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Worldwide, the abortion rate is lower in countries where it’s more accessible, as accessibility to abortion is generally correlated with accessibility to all reproductive health services for women.

But back to the contraception coverage: women bear a disproportional financial cost of birth control, and they bear the entire physical cost of childbearing. This is not a move that is unfair to men; rather, it levels the financial playing field for women. I have good health insurance, and yet birth control has been my largest out-of-pocket medical expense over the past decade.

Finally, dare we hope that this is a true, tentative step towards universal health care in this country?

A bill has been proposed in the Georgia Assembly that would outlaw abortion in Georgia. And just to make sure that they don’t miss any illicit abortions, section 2.14 (see page 7 of this PDF file of the full text of the bill) stipulates that all “spontaneous fetal deaths” must be registered with the county. It goes on to say:

(3) When a spontaneous fetal death required to be reported by this Code section occurs without medical attendance at or immediately after the delivery or when inquiry is required by Article 2 of Chapter 16 of Title 45, the ‘Georgia Death Investigation Act,’ the proper investigating official shall investigate the cause of fetal death and shall prepare and file the report within 30 days[.]

In other words, if you miscarry at home, you’re automatically a suspect.

I know the sponsor of this bill has other unreasonable proposals, and maybe it won’t even make it out of committee. Unfortunately, there is precedent for bills of this sort.

• A bill requiring that miscarriages be reported within 12 hours was proposed in Virginia in 2004, but did not make it out of committee.

• In 2010, Utah passed a bill that criminalized any “intentional, knowing, or reckless act” that could lead to a miscarriage. The only good news here is that the word “negligence” was dropped from the bill. (I don’t even want to ask what would qualify as a negligent or reckless act during pregnancy. Is forgetting the prenatal vitamin one morning negligent? Is the small cup of coffee reckless?)
• Recently, an Idaho pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for methergine, because of the possibility that the patient had just had an abortion, not a miscarriage.

Why am I pro-choice? Many reasons, but today I am pro-choice because women who have miscarriages are not criminals.

(By the way, still waiting for any of these so-called pro-life politicians to tackle the infant mortality rate in the U.S..)