THE POWER TO DEFINE

Yes, transgendered men who are pregnant rightfully want to be included in MANA’s guidelines, so at first glance it seems inclusive to change “pregnant women” to “pregnant people”.  So why are some of us so opposed to what seems like a direct, simple solution?  

We don’t oppose including pregnant men in MANA’s guidelines.  We oppose changing the terminology because we think that females who identify as women will not be referred to as “women”, and their “femaleness” will become invisible.  

Until the very recent past, the term “woman” was virtually synonymous with “female”.  In fact, until feminist theorists distinguished gender from sex, we all conflated them.  See the dictionary.  Second-wave feminists fought to re-define women as equal and fought against gender stereotypes.  They joined together and rejected the stigma of being women; instead they embraced being women.  This positive identification with themselves and other women energized that generation.  

Of course, this was before anyone imagined that someday biological males who identified as women would, probably without realizing that it would change the definition of what was a woman.  How?  By insisting that anyone, male or female, who identified themselves as a woman had the right to be so regarded.  Even if they had testes and a penis.  This is a major re-definition, because it ignores the central fact of femaleness that we bear children, which, in male-dominated societies, has been and still is used to make us dependent.  If females were equal, a woman would be able to have both a career and children, because society would be organized to make it possible.

Some people insist that even if a person does not have, and never had ovaries and a uterus, she is still a female if she identifies as such, but most people realize that this is a denial of a biological reality.  Radical feminists totally disagree with such a distortion of both history and present-day reality.  Of course, if self-identified “females” or “women” joined in with females to fight for females’ reproductive control, they would be welcomed, but so far, they have not done so.  In fact, some are anti-abortion, like Caitlyn Jenner.   

Also, radical feminists believe that there is a patriarchy and that the patriarchy oppresses females as a class (as well as others), and that only if females can unite, can they overcome oppression.   

Many feminists today believe that patriarchal domination is only one type of oppression, and that the way to bring about justice is for our society to evolve into a more equal, unprejudiced society.  They hope this evolution will come about when each person acknowledges their privilege and confronts others who are oppressing them.  To them, MANA using more gender neutral language is one way to do this. 

I propose that if we support transgendered women in their right to be women (and I do), and if we support transmen in their right to be men and, if they desire, to have children, (and I do), that we clearly define the difference between sex and gender.  This means that we start with the generally accepted scientific fact that humans are basically divided into two sexes, males and females, however this distinction and the implications of this distinction have been greatly oversimplified and whatever gonads a person has, they are first and foremost human.  The main difference is that male sperm is needed to impregnate a female by uniting the sperm and the ovum, and that an intact uterus in a female body is needed to produce a new human being.  But this difference greatly affects a person’s experiences and opportunities and in a racist, capitalistic, sexist society, it is pretty much determinative.  From a political perspective, if we hide or minimize this difference in gender-neutral language, we can’t effectively organize to change society.

Gender is a social construct, and what we consider “masculine” or “feminine” traits are very often socially determined.

If we adopt this proposal to define sex and gender, I suggest one of two courses:

1. MANA reverse its decision to change the language of its Core Competencies, while searching for other ways to be inclusive of those people who are pregnant who are not women.
2. MANA change “pregnant people” to “pregnant females” and “pregnant males”. 

An additional suggestion a colleague gave me:  
MANA could leave “woman” in the core competencies document (which reflects the vast majority) and add a statement to it that they realize transmen don’t identify as women and if such a person becomes pregnant they deserve respectful care.

Dear Kayla

I’m really happy to explain my views, because I believe we are standing at a crossroads, and our rank and file has not had the necessary self-education about the science involved in changing our bodies through drugs and surgery or broad-based political and philosophical discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of re-defining sex and gender.  (I am deeply concerned about transgender civil right; I think these studies and meetings/conferences/forums need to happen immediately.)

I’m also glad that both the Open Letter and the Response are carefully written and show great respect to those who disagree.  Unfortunately, up to now, careful thinking and respect has been in short supply in this debate.

I would like to continue talking about this with you and anyone else who would like to be involved.  I want to hear what you think, and I’m happy to explain why I think as I do.  If you’re interested, let me know. 

I found the Response very interesting and thought it brought out some valid points about the rights of transgender people, but it bothers me that the Response did not respond to the thrust of the Open Letter which had to do with the effects that the proposed changes in terminology would have on the practice of midwifery, on the health and well-being of birthing mothers and babies and their families, or what impact it would have on the political strength of the midwifery movement.  Instead, they changed the conversation to focus very narrowly on the justice or injustice that transgendered people suffer in our society and to suggest that the change of terminology would somehow be the first and most significant change that we have to make and that it would somehow end misogyny and social injustice.

One reason I know that most people, including medically-trained doctors, midwives, and other practitioners lack the necessary understanding of how our natural hormones work in the body and how the hormone-like drugs that are being used to prevent pregnancy and to bring about changes in people’s secondary sex characteristics is that over 30 years ago,  the Feminist Women’s Health Centers (FWHC) undertook to learn enough about hormones to enable us to write a chapter for our book, “Women’s Bodies in Women’s Hands.”  (That chapter was never published.  It was cut and the shortened version was published as “A New View of a Woman’s Body”.)

To remind you, the FWHC learned much about the healthy functioning of our female bodies through self-examination in groups.  But, to write this chapter, we did much, much more.

We formed a “hormone team”, which consisted of Lorraine Rothman, inventor of the Del’em, Kathy Hodge, Suzann Gage, illustrator of A New View and me.  We met all day, five days a week for months while the rest of our group kept the health center going.  We read scientific papers and journals.  Al Rothman, Lorraine’s husband, came up to L.A. from Orange County, at least one day a week to spend the day answering our many questions.  Al was a professor of Biology at University of California at Fullerton.  

We immediately learned that human beings, like all animals, aren’t cut out of a cookie cutter.  Of course, in self-help, we had seen that although we were all females, our bodies looked different, and we were all normal and healthy.  Our menstrual cycles weren’t all “28-day”.  Our genitals had a wide range of difference.  We realized that the concept of “male” and “female” was an oversimplification, albeit a very practical one.  We also realized, as feminists, that the Patriarchy exaggerates the differences between males and females, and that both males and females produce estrogen and testosterone.  Males and females are not “binary” (a mathematical term meaning that all units are either one thing or the other), however in the course of embryonic development, two normal curves develop.  How many people have ever taken a course in elementary statistics?)  Most people (about 60%) who present as males fall into the “normal-type curve”.   There is the same normal-type curve for females.  I don’t know if pre-historic societies created gender roles to fit in with their social and economic structure, but today’s world, gender roles definitely further patriarchal militarism, male dominance and female submission.  As a feminist, I challenge these restrictive roles, although I believe that as females gain more real power in the society, both individually and collectively, the oppressiveness will decrease and the content of these gender roles will change. 

I believe that white male supremacists are the most powerful force in the world, and they use their wealth and power to enforce these norms.  As a feminist, I battle against their ability to harness our reproductive capacity to further their nationalistic and imperialistic agendas.  Any discussion of sex and gender that doesn’t start off with this awareness just ends up defining the problem as social conditioning and the solution as changing public opinion.   

In our hormone study, we learned how little science really knows about how our body functions, and how the medical profession generally relies on their “detail salesmen” to tell them about drugs.  We found the average doctor knew less than we did—and that was frightening.  That was over 30 years ago, but our scientific understanding of hormones and the complexities of their relationship to our body’s functioning does not justify the reckless experimentation with hormone-like drugs to prevent pregnancy or to change our outward appearance.  Our present knowledge of GMO’s does not justify experimentation in changing the genetic structure of plants to make bigger profits.  We all know the capitalistic motivations of the scientists who promote GMO’s and other technological innovations like fracking, but most of us do not know the motivations of those who promote population control.

The books and blogs I’ve read on this issue gives the impression that the authors can explain these issues with the laywoman well enough to arm us with answers, not just questions.  I know how hard we worked, and I know how all the analogies that people use to explain these phenomena distort and mislead more than they enlighten.

I believe that the understanding of what is “sex” and “gender” is fundamental to having a sound theoretical base for our feminist struggle.  It is a spectacle of see us constructing manifestos out of the poorly understood and adequately researched “biological facts”, especially if it’s to push an agenda that doesn’t deal with the problem that all females (those identified as females in ultra sound in utero) are either being destroyed on the basis of their sex or raised to perpetuate their oppression.

Now, getting to the Open Letter and the some specifics of the response.  To me, the midwifery movement is much, much more than giving women “choices”.  To me, it’s restoring birth to its rightful place in human society.  The respondents mischaracterize the Open Letter’s exaltation of birth as a biological event, relegating it to “merely” being biological.  The biological reality of birth is the essential precondition of everything else.  It is awesome.  I’m concerned that de-emphasizing the fact that unless a human being is born with ovaries and a uterus, it cannot produce a new human being will weaken Midwifery’s powerful support of each woman’s right to birth without outside interference.  We females are the ones that the patriarchy is controlling; we are the ones that must work collectively to fight our struggle to regain control.   

I could say that this gender discussion is a side-show, and some people in power have been and no doubt will no doubt continue to use it for that.  But, actually, I think it’s very important.   

Right now, I can only hope we’re in an awkward phase and eventually we’ll be able to accommodate the needs of anyone, male, female or intersex, who wants to live in that way without undermining the gains of the feminist movement. 

Especially as it relates to the birth issues and the philosophy of midwifery, I think that, much as we respect the rights of mothers to drink and smoke and use drugs, we seek to keep environmental toxins and technology away from the birthing process.  This is a fundamental distinction between us and the male-dominated medical profession.  I believe that accepting the use of hormone-like drugs and surgery in our sexual and reproductive organs as being healthy will weaken our position as guardians of the birth process and clouds our thinking.

Please forgive my wordiness!  As Mark Twain said in a long letter, “I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.”

Warm regards,
Carol

"Reports of Feminists' Discussions of How to Counter Legislative Attacks on Abortion" by Carol Downer

Recommended Article: "Alabama Case Illustrates Difficulties Women Behind Bars Face When Seeking Abortion" by Victoria Law

Margaret Atwood did not have a crystal ball when she wrote the gripped “The Handmaid’s Tale”.  She didn’t need one.  She just used her brilliant creative mind to imagine women’s future in 30 years after U.S. legislators started making laws that make the fetus have more rights than the woman who carries it.  We have now entered the “woman as incubator” in Alabama and Texas.

Rain and Thunder publishes "Repoductive Sovereignty or Bust!"

The latest issue of "Rain and Thunder: A Radical Feminist Journal of Discussion and Activism" published "Reproductive Sovereignty or Bust!" Pick up a copy and support this publication!

GREAT CONFERENCE! BirthKeeper Summit Report

CONTINUE READING

TruthOut Publishes "Reproductive Sovereignty or Bust!" by Carol Downer

Post by Women's Health in Women's Hands.

"No One Has To Ask Permission To Fight For Women’s Liberation - A Response To Katie Klabusich’s Attack On Stop Patriarchy In Bitch Magazine"

[Originally published in countercurrents.org, counterpunch.org, stoppatriarchy.tumblr.com, and revcom.us]
By Carol Downer

The headline, “In Texas, Activist Group ‘Stop Patriarchy” Draws Criticism’ and the first two paragraphs might first appear like an objective report; however, your blog, reprinted in Bitch is not a report, but a trash job. Come clean, Katie Klabusich, Texans for Reproductive Justice is you and your buddies in an ad hoc group formed for the sole purpose of opposing Stop Patriarchy and their mission to come to Texas, protest the TRAP laws that are closing down Texas clinics and their goal of linking this to the nationwide emergency facing abortion rights.

I’m on the advisory board of Stop Patriarchy and I went on the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride for one week.

So, you have not given me or anyone else one good reason not to support Stop Patriarchy. Your criticisms are baseless; if anything, they are reasons to support Stop Patriarchy.

It is great that we attract media attention because we go to where the Patriarchy is crushing women down; our demonstrations are photogenic; we have good slogans, “Abortion on Demand and Without Apology”; we have attention-arresting enlargements of photos of women who have died from illegal abortion and great props dramatizing that enforced pregnancy is unconstitutional “involuntary servitude.” We have great fliers and dramatize women’s abortion stories. We get national and local media response, in addition to getting out broadly into the communities across Texas and talking to real people – not just people in the existing “movement” – the majority of whom know nothing about the clinic closures and have never heard anyone speak positively about abortion. I saw this have a real positive impact on people’s thinking. What is not to like about that?

You ask where the money we raised went? $30,000.00 is not much these days, especially when dozens of you fly or drive to the destination and you have to use cars and stay in motels, but if you sleep on the floor and cook your own food, you can make it stretch. What money do you think is not accounted for?

You all call Stop Patriarchy racist because we say that forced motherhood is female enslavement? A woman accepts the pains and dangers of wanted pregnancy and labor, but when we are forced to endure them, what would you call it? A walk in the park? You call us Islamaphobic because we condemn the patriarchy that forces women to wear the burka? We condemn Western patriarchy that pressures women to be sex objects and wear body-restricting clothing like thongs. Is that Islamaphobic? And, who says Stop Patriarchy is against sex workers because we are against pornography? Is being against sweatshops also being against underpaid laborers who work in unhealthy conditions?

None of these are good reasons for opposing and seeking to sabotage Stop Patriarchy.

Let’s get to the meat of what is burning your buns. We did not get permission from you all to come protest at the Federal Courthouse in Austin at the hearings to decide whether to let the restrictions on clinics go into effect this September 1st, did we? Katie, did you notice that we demonstrated at the FEDERAL courthouse? That’s because the question before the court was whether the law violated the U.S. constitution, and that affects all of us, doesn’t it? Just because it happens on Texas soil is irrelevant. We don’t have to ask permission. Get over it.

Also, you are upset we did not use our money to pay for women’s abortions now that Texas women are being forced to travel and incur extra costs. Well, that is a political decision. Most people who call themselves reproductive rights groups consider themselves “political.” Political means engaging in the political process. Protesting is a time-honored way of being political, and while we are all consternated at the injustice against Texas women that is being perpetrated, social change will only come about through political organizing, which costs money.

What really makes me question your ad hoc group’s opposition to Stop Patriarchy, Katie, is that you want to keep SP from protesting in Texas, because they are “disreputable” and many of them support the Revolutionary Communist Party. Why do you think this disqualifies us from being part of the reproductive rights movement?

I have been a reproductive rights activist and an abortion provider for over 40 years, and I am on the advisory board of Stop Patriarchy. I am aware that Stop Patriarchy is an effort that Sunsara Taylor and other supporters of the RCP initiated which also includes others who believe in the goals of Stop Patriarchy, such as I. I believe that we need a revolution in this country, but think it has to be a feminist-led revolution that transforms our society, therefore I am not a communist, but I have known these folks since before 1979. I esteem them as fellow progressives that share my opposition to U.S. imperialist wars, and mass incarceration of poor, black and brown people, and I condemn your red-baiting.

The red-baiting brings up an interesting question, Katie, are you guys against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the blatant use of our law enforcement machinery to imprison so many young men of color and the murder of Trayvon Martin and now Michael Brown? Or, are you all the kind of reproductive rights activists that believes that the women’s movement is just about raising women’s status in our society, and not about broader social justice. That might explain your group’s slurs.

I have to wonder if you folks have lined up with the Democratic Party who continues to support Hyde Amendment restrictions and the mealy-mouthed “choice” people whose only goal is to reduce female fertility, and you do not want us “disreputable” protestors to raise hell about these TRAP laws.

I would like to say why I came to Texas at this time to protest these laws. First, I have watched our defeat in Texas with dismay, and I wanted to come join in with the protests of Texans and to voice my own outrage. Second, I see more and more attacks coming around the country, and I see very little visible protest occurring. Mostly everything is left up to Planned Parenthood and the Democrats, and I am sick of it. I think it’s time for outspoken protests saying “Abortion on Demand and Without Apology.” I respect that Texans have been working hard on this issue, but it has not been enough. We need to do more. In L.A., in NYC, everywhere. I invite Texans who are working for Reproductive Freedom and Justice to come to California. We need some help too.

NOW IS THE TIME: A Statement of Support for the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride: Ground Zero Texas

[Re-post from stoppatriarchy.org]

by Carol Downer

I totally support the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride that will take place through Texas this August and possibly through September, and I hope that everyone who values women’s reproductive freedom will support this beginning of a new chapter of the Battle for Women’s Reproductive Rights.

I was there in the mid-1960’s, when abortion was still illegal in much of the United States and women were forced to travel to states and cities where abortion, legal or illegal, was available, or to subject themselves to procedures done by unknown abortionists. I was one of them. I had taken no action to stand up for my reproductive rights, and I didn’t know anyone else who had.

We’re in that same position today. There is a splash of newspaper coverage when one more defeat of the so-called “pro-choice” movement takes place in the courts or the legislatures, or when clinics in Texas close, but mostly life goes on as though nothing significant is happening. Perhaps we send in a few dollars to Planned Parenthood, which has positioned itself as the champion of women’s rights, although that championing is strictly limited to lady-like tactics, not grass-roots organizing.

But, something significant is happening.

Suddenly, ridiculous regulations that have been proposed in State legislatures for the last 40 years and quickly quashed, have now gained traction. The Supreme Court has even refused to stay the Texas law that requires a clinic to have a doctor on staff at a hospital within 30 miles. In general, hospitals have not wanted to touch abortion with a 10-foot pole, ever. That’s why abortions are provided in clinics. There are extremely few complications from abortion that require hospitalization, and when they do, hospitals have staffs who are equipped to deal with them and are already required by law to do so. Forty years of providing legal abortion shows that this regulation is bogus, but it is being treated as legitimate by legislators and jurists.

If the U.S. Supreme Court finds that these regulations are constitutional, it is just a matter of months or a couple of years, for State legislators around the country to emulate Texas and Mississippi. Clinics will scramble to somehow get a doctor on staff if they can. Perhaps those abortion doctors who presently have staff privileges will lose them. Clinics will close. We will find ourselves in a patchwork situation of abortion access similar to pre-Roe v. Wade.

You may think, “Well, that’s when women will wake up. We’ll take to the streets.” Or, you may think, “Well, thousands of abortion clinic workers know how to perform abortions safely. Clandestine clinics will come into existence.” Or, you may think, “Well, there will be an underground supply of abortion pills.” If you’re really dreaming, you’ll think, “Heck, women did it themselves before Roe v. Wade. They’ll do it again, and the law will collapse of its own weight.”

None of these solutions is going to occur, at least without the dedication and organization of those activists who will make them occur.

Why? Because, history shows that Richard Wright, who wrote “Native Son” was right when he said, “Oppression oppresses.” As the new status quo is established, people will be even less optimistic, less willing to take a chance.

Most people in the late 60’s and early 70’s took no active interest in abortion, beyond inviting a NOW speaker to come talk about abortion. Public opinion polls showed, as they consistently show today, that a small percentage of people are very concerned about the issue, either pro or con. The majority of people are in the middle. Most of these people are uncomfortable with abortion. Many believe it to be immoral, and would never have an abortion or want their loved one to have one. And, many believe that abortion should be regulated or limited in some fashion. However, all but those at the extreme anti-abortion end of the continuum, do not want abortion to be illegal.

I believe that the Freedom Ride will awaken those at our end of the continuum who care passionately about women having reproductive freedom. It will form networks, draw attention, support abortion providers, raise consciousness, inspire the future Lana Clarke Phelans and Pat Maginnises. It will be raucous but non-violent; it will be confrontational and enlightening.

Social change in regards to women’s reproductive rights is not measured by the changes in the law. For example, the Comstock Law, which forbade the mailing of information on birth control, stayed on the books until the 70’s, but it was not enforced. The Freedom Ride will build on the fact that most people are with us. “Abortion should not be illegal!” will resonate with almost everyone. “Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!” will thrill some and start many others thinking about this in a new way. Openly talking about it will keep the dialogue going and reduce the shame. These changes cannot be accomplished on the internet. The internet can coordinate activities and make us aware of each other; the websites where women can talk about their abortions or those that raise money to help women get abortions perform a valuable service, but daughters talking to their moms, and speakouts and demonstrations is what’s going to change the climate around abortion. Social change is not going to come by getting on or watching the Anderson Cooper 360 or Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room. These programs follow the changes in public opinion; they articulate them.

No one can predict how far-reaching the impact from the Freedom Ride will be. For sure, it will break down isolation and it will bring grass-roots voices to the debate. It certainly will nourish the spirits of those who go on the ride and those who benefit from its actions and programs. It may inspire other projects, other Rides. It could even awaken the potential leaders of mass movements, or even it may itself lead a mass movement.

NOW IS THE TIME

Carol Downer is a feminist, lawyer, and co-founder of the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Los Angeles which started providing abortions in 1971

Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull, road map of the Christian Patriarchy Movement

By Carol Downer

I recommend that you leave the frothy page-turner at home when you do your summer reading. Instead, read Quiverfull by Kathryn Joyce--every single word of every single page, with my comments about Joyce’s antinatalist bias in mind, as though your reproductive freedom depends upon it, because it may.  Joyce (a contributing writer for Nation Magazine) does an excellent job of reporting the self-labeled Christian Patriarchy Movement, a counter-culture which lives the values of sixteenth-century Calvinism, where the father is the spiritual and earthly leader of the family. 

Through her interviews and participant observation, Joyce found that Quiverfull families model themselves on the white settler families of pre-Revolutionary English colonies in North America whose economy was based on forcibly exploiting the natural resources of the indigenous people, the slave trade and slave labor.

You will get a glimpse of how women in this movement see the shortcomings of our feminist movement, and you may be uncomfortable with how well the shoe fits.  Hopefully, rather than dismissing these womens’ criticisms, you’ll ask whether our feminist movement has stayed true to its goals of liberating ourselves, and if present-day mores have improved women’s lives or created a more equal society.

Reading Joyce’s description of the movement in the first 12 chapters prepares you to understand Chapters 13 through 18.  Starting with “Trust and Obey” and “Blessed Arrows”, Joyce gradually introduces the reader to the foundational beliefs underlying pronatalism, “the policy or practice of encouraging the bearing of children, especially government support of a higher birthrate.”

Chapters 15, 16 and 17, “The Natural Family”, “Return to Patriarchy” and “Godly Seeds” digs a little deeper into history and politics, presenting an excellent review of nationalists’ and nativists’ use of social policy to advance national interests through tax policies favoring large families, and their use of strategies, such as homeschooling, home businesses and home-based churches to spread the ideology and the theology of patriarchy.  Denying racism, the Christian Patriarchy Movement, seeks to “be fruitful and multiply” to increase white Christians, but at the same time accepts converts to Christianity and recommends that white Christians adopt children of color.

Studying these chapters provides the basis to understand Chapter 18, “Demographic Winter”, the blockbuster centerpiece of Joyce’s book.  The various strands of history, politics, and religion are pulled together to showcase the Christian Patriarchy Movement’s vision of the death of Western Civilization unless the United States and Europe start producing enough babies to the replace the old and dying.  And, they have the cold, hard demographic facts to back them up.  It’s being called, “the baby bust,” “the birth dearth”, “the graying of the continent”.  Joyce attributes this to a “race panic” as low fertility among white couples coincides with an increasingly visible immigrant population across Europe.

As one reads this book, one begins to conjecture that perhaps the current race of State legislators to pass TRAP laws (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers), and the increasingly reluctance of the Supreme Court to rule regulations that raise barriers to women seeking abortion as unconstitutional is this fear of “demographic winter”.  Joyce seems to be implying that this is “just a prelude for a new cold war, a ‘clash of civilizations’ to be fought through women’s bodies, with the maternity ward as battleground.”

So, Joyce has done a brilliant job of observing, describing, quoting and analyzing the pro-natalist underpinning of the Christian Patriarchy Movement, and she has educated her readers about all the dry-as-dust pronatalist tax policies and the demographic realities internationally.  We will be wise to understand the gravity of her message; pronatalists are determined to encourage the Western world to make more babies, therefore they respect women’s reproductive rights only as long as those rights are to have as many babies as possible.

BUT, we feminists will never start to effectively fight this battle to control our own sexuality and reproduction if we forget that there are two sides to this battle.  It is not the right-wing versus the feminist and their liberal friends.  It is the right-wing pronatalists versus the wealthy and influential anti-natalists.  These are the families, such as Bill and Melinda Gates, the Rockefellers and Warren Buffet, and other capitalist friends who have no more regard for a woman’s freedom to control her body, than the right-wing, pronatalist Koch Brothers, et al.  They just favor a different way of solving social problems, such as global warming and poverty.  They believe that these problems are caused by too many people.  They don’t put their efforts toward changing consumption patterns, having a more equitable distribution of the wealth and allowing the occupants of the land, rather than corporations, to use resources to benefit their own people.  They are doing everything possible to discourage women from reproducing.  They’re against “teen pregnancy”.  They’re for any social trend that reduces women’s fertility: gay and transgender lifestyles, women going to college and having careers, later marriage, and the use of contraception such as the Pill, abortion, and sterilization.  (The Christian patriarchal right opposes each of these social trends).  There is a anti-natalist equivalent policy to those pronatalist policy listed in the book.

And, for every bombastic quote of a pro-natalist leader, such as Yasir Arafat’s “the womb of the Arab woman is my best weapon” can be matched with a quote from an antinatalist, such as Paul Ehrlich, who wrote the “Population Bomb”.

I hope I’ve encouraged people to read the book.  It’s time that feminists who oppose policies that control women’s reproduction, whether it be employed by the pronatalists or the antinatalists start developing our own strategies, independent of the anti-natalist-controlled “pro-choice” movement.

Hyde Amendment - Where Is It Now?

By Carol Downer

Where is this year’s version of the Hyde Amendment, a rider that Congress tacks on the Appropriations Bill?  In the House, it was in the “Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice” until Thursday, January 9, until Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes-Norton announced that the Republican-controlled Committee had decided to send a “message bill”, a way that gets around having to send the proposed legislation to the full House for debate and a vote.

Norton shed a spotlight on the hearing on this nasty piece of proposed legislation which expands the usual Hyde Amendment prohibition of federal monies to fund Medicaid abortions, when she spoke from the House floor to complain about the Committee’s chairman,Trent Franks (R) not having permitted her to speak before the Committee hearing even though her district would be directly impacted by the proposed bill which would prohibit the District of Columbia from spending its local funds on abortion services for low-income women, and define the D.C. government as part of the federal government for the purposes of abortion.

In the Senate, the Hyde Amendment has been lying dormant in the “Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee” since January 24, 2013.  This legislation’s sponsor is Senator Robert “Bob” Casey, Jr. (D, PA). Casey, this Democrat who is a liberal on all other issues than abortion, was given the dubious honor of leading the Democrat-controlled Senate in this war on women.

Now, leaders of both parties are expected to meet secretly and hammer out a much-delayed budget agreement and avoid another government shutdown. Somehow the House and Senate Appropriations Bills will appear magically containing some or all of the prohibitions of abortion funding listed in these two bills with no legislator’s name on it, and most, if not all, of the members of the House and the Senate will okay the budget.

Once again, the Hyde Amendment will get its annual lease on life, and we won’t be able to hold anyone accountable except the outspoken anti-choice legislators.

Whenever a pro-choice advocate talks about “repealing” the Hyde Amendment, you can bet that they know that the Hyde Amendment is a rider that lives only a year and it has to be re-attached each year, but they don’t want to risk revealing that for 38 years, no matter who was in power in the Congress, both Republicans and Democrats have voted for it.

The old saying is that no one would eat sausage if they could see how it’s made. This week - the money runs out Wednesday - the sausage-making is happening, and women will be the losers.

Emergency Strategy Meeting to Preserve Abortion

to Discuss Texas Closing Down 1/3 of Abortion Providers and What to do about it

When: Saturday, November 30, 2013

Where: 2250 Fair Park Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90041

Time: 2:00pm

for more information text message 323-547-4119

Agenda:
1. Introductions
2. Report on Current situation - Law and discussion of what that means.
3. Suggestions and Ideas for things that can be done by the group or what other groups should do.
4. Next meeting: when, where and with whom.

Additional questions:
1. Do we think that women can organize themselves and get together and form a mass movement?
2. Evaluate these different approaches: pushing for legislation, public education, direct-action (menstrual extraction and civil disobedience), etc.