What does a female condom have in common with a hip replacement?

[Re-post from NWHN e-newsletter 6/11/15]

Dear Friend,

What does a female condom have in common with a hip replacement?  Not much, obviously.  At least it’s obvious to us.  But the FDA treats female condoms as if they need the same level of stringent regulatory oversight as hip replacements and other implanted devices.  That’s just not right!

I’ve written to you before about how female condoms are a great option for safer sex. Despite being safe and effective at preventing HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STI's) and unintended pregnancy, the FDA has labeled female condoms as a Class III medical device, the highest level of regulation.  Male condoms are treated as Class II devices, which means that the FDA ensures that good manufacturing practices are followed, and changes aren’t made that could compromise safety and effectiveness.  But otherwise, the FDA doesn’t over-regulate male condom.  Needlessly classifying female condoms in the highest regulatory category creates barriers to female condom accessibility and affordability.  Only one female condom is FDA approved and available in the U.S. and permitted to be purchased with U.S. foreign aid.  Women and men deserve to choose the method of family planning and STI prevention that is right for them without facing unnecessary obstacles.

Last week, Network Program Director Coco Jervis participated in this informative webinar about current FDA regulatory opportunities for removing barriers.  We have been working with our coalition partners at the National Female Condom Coalition to urge the FDA to down-classify female condoms to enable new options for women in the U.S. and across the globe.  To help us remove barriers to new female condom products, take action today and share some of these fantastic NFCC resources and help spread the message that people need more options for safer sex.

The Network will continue working with our allies to ensure access to a full range of preventive options for pregnancy and STI transmission.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to receive for the most up-to-date information on our advocacy!

Thank you,
Cindy Pearson
Executive Director

REPORT - TRIP TO NEW YORK CITY, BROOKLYN, N.Y. AND WASHINGTON, D.C.

October 26 to October 28, 2014

By Carol Downer

Background: StopPatriarchy.org Advisory Committee met one day and the next day a planning meeting for the January 22, 2015 events in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. took place.  I met with Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch.  Becky Chalker and I attended the National Women’s Health Network (NWHN) Awards Event.

Summary:

1. 10-26-14: Meeting of StopPatriarchy.org Advisory Committee
2. 10-27-14: Meeting of members, Advisory Committee and community activists
3. 10-27-14: Meeting with Silvia Federici
4. 10-28-14: National Women’s Health Network 7th Annual Barbara Seaman Awards for Activism in Women’s Health; Meeting with Adriane Fugh-Berman
5. 10-29-14: Meeting with Ninia Baehr 

New York City 10-26-14 - Meeting of StopPatriarchy.org Advisory Committee: Members present were myself, Mary Lou Singleton, Merle Hoffman; also present were Sunsara Taylor, initiator of Stop Patriarchy, and Mary Lou Greenberg.  We had a free-ranging discussion: (1) to deepen our understanding of the objective situation we confront--where we are in the war on women with a particular focus on the concentrated battle over abortion, and (2) to get off the losing trajectory and forge the kind of politically uncompromising, mass independent political resistance.

No one else is doing this on a national level.

Discussion:

Topic: The main slogan of Stop Patriarchy, “Abortion on Demand and Without Apology”. The members that were present had consensus on this slogan, and have found many people in the movement and in the public who wholeheartedly respond favorably to it, but we discussed the concerns that some have made that the slogan may be too strong.  I reported that many abortion providers are dedicated to abortion rights, but do not want to offend those who have mixed feelings about abortion in their communities, and they want the support of the Democratic Party which has a pro-choice platform, but sometimes endorses candidates who are anti-abortion.  Without more members at the meeting, we couldn’t fully explore these concerns.

Topic: Slogan - “Enforced Motherhood is Female Enslavement”.  This slogan drew fire from the ad hoc group, “Texans for Reproductive Justice”, because it is not the type of slavery that American Black slaves experienced, but the Committee does not agree that this slogan is racist.

Other topics: Planned Parenthood’s (PP) taking over leadership of National Abortion Federation; it’s negative impact on independent abortion providers; its domination of community “pro-choice” coalitions.  I told the group that, although I have known of PP’s negative impact on the abortion movement; that I, along with other feminists and abortion providers, have kept silent, because “we didn’t want to give the anti’s more ammunition”.  But now, as I see how disastrous this course has been, I feel compelled to speak out and share the information about PP’s harmful activities.  Others did not dispute the truth of my specific allegations, but did not want to attack PP, but rather to chart our own course and put forth a more feminist, aggressive strategy.

Role of Advisory Committee Members: We wrestled with and developed a clearer sense of what it means to be on the advisory board of Stop Patriarchy.

Bill Baird called and shared his advice on what Stop Patriarchy should be doing.  Bill, who is a pioneer in the abortion rights movement, continues to be active.  As always, Bill is inspirational and his comments helped up to get perspective on the battle, especially with the Catholic Church.

We all felt that the opportunity to meet and discuss things in a relatively unstructured setting allowed us to have vigorous discussions, especially where we had minor differences in our political views, which reinforced those areas where we were in total agreement.  We did get to know each other better, and I’m sure it will help me on our future conference calls.

New York City, October 26, 2014: Community Planning Meeting for Actions on January 22, 2015 in San Francisco, CA and Washington, D.C.
Attending: Stop Patriarchy Advisory Board Members, others within the abortion provider community, activists with Stop Patriarchy, other women's liberation activists, and several students.  We had lively discussions around such questions as:

If we have a low turnout at our events, might this show our opponents our weakness and be counter-productive? 

We know that we will be outnumbered, because the anti-abortion movement annually brings busloads of church members from several states to their rallies.  They have about 10,000 marchers.  So, how many do we need to have to create a credible force.  My thinking is that we only require the number of people it takes to stage a dramatic event that puts forth a powerful message.  Others speculated 100-200 people.  Of course, we’ll get out as many as possible.

Many good ideas were suggested for building for the march and using signs and other visual materials and socio-dramas that would make our points.  Since this report is going out online, I will not be specific, but I can say that I was impressed with the creativity.  Various tactics were discussed to make sure that our message would be clear.  So, great progress was made.  It was wonderful to be working with these women.

A future meeting date was selected – November 21st.  If you’re interested, please contact me or stoppatriarchy@gmail.com.

I talked with Fran Luck, of WBAI and others about Planned Parenthood.  They were surprised and shocked at some of the specifics.  I will be following up on those contacts.  The independent providers in attendance were not surprised at the facts I was reporting.

Brooklyn, N.Y. October 26, 2014 - Meeting with Silvia Federici

Federici graciously agreed to meet with me, Becky Chalker and Kinyofu Mlimwengu, on short notice, even though she had spent the weekend at a conference.  She served a wonderful repast of soup, bread and salad and delicious cheesecake!  Any fears I had that somehow we wouldn’t hit it off disappeared, because our dinner conversation showed how much we all agreed on a variety of topics.  Because our time was limited, I kept bringing back the conversation to how Caliban and the Witch provided the historical explanation of how women’s knowledge about our bodies was purposely and systematically destroyed, and that I believe that the self-help movement emerged as a powerful antidote to the poisonous effects of patriarchal capitalism.  Silvia completely respects our work, but she wanted to know more of how I saw self-help being used to turn around the subjugation of women’s bodies.  She gave us autographed copies of her book, Revolution at Point Zero, and Becky and Kinyofu left with copies of Caliban and the Witch.  I proposed we three start a book club!

Silvia is well-travelled.  She told us about how Italian social welfare agencies take away immigrant women’s children, put them in “group homes” until the women can prove that they have enough money to maintain them.  I’m going to get more specifics.  If you’re interested in learning about this, let me know.

I left Silvia’s with a head full of ideas about how to carry my new understanding that even though Patriarchy has a long history, the creation of capitalism in Europe depended on wiping out the traditional knowledge that women then had, making “modern women” especially alienated from our bodies and dependent on the medical profession.  Furthermore, this primitive accumulation of capital enabled the European nobility, the church and the capitalists to expand their “empires” over many other peoples, along with using many of the same techniques to destroy women’s knowledge, in addition to plundering the resources by forcing those peoples into slavery to extract the resources.  Just realizing this history doesn’t ensure that we European white women will make the necessary effort to unite with the descendants of colonized peoples to fight against imperialism and capitalism, but I think it will give us a sound basis to do so.

Kinyofu told me about the upcoming Reproductive Awakening program.  This is part of a series of meetings she is curating.

Washington, D.C., October 27-28 - National Women’s Health Network 7th Annual Barbara Seaman Awards for Activism in Women’s Health  

I attended with Becky Chalker.  Becky’s most recent book is The Clitoral Truth.  She is an adjunct professor at Pace University in New York City.  It was a reception.  We were late because it had no readable signage for an out-of-towner to see.  Food and drink were provided.  The presentation had started.  We couldn’t see the program and I couldn’t hear it, unfortunately.  Afterwards, we were able to chat with old friends.  I saw Clare Feinson, who was in the Women’s Caucus at the American Public Health Association (APHA) during the time the health centers were active in that organization.  Clare is free-lancing, doing proposals, writing and research, etc.  She also works part-time at a synagogue; Clare has done amazing work in a Jewish group bringing an awareness of women’s health issues and sexuality issues to the community.  Unfortunately, Clare has some mobility problems, but otherwise she is very vital and involved.

Meeting with Adriane Fugh-Berman: After the reception, we walked with Adriane, a board member of NWHN and a reporter to a nearby Chinese restaurant.  Adriane is an associate professor at Georgetown University and a director of PharmedOut.org.  The reporter is focusing on information about the FDA and the regulations of pharmaceutical companies.  Adriane has written a book, Alternative Medicine: What Works: A Comprehensive, Easy-to-Read Review of the Scientific Evidence, Pro and Con.  I told her about Holly Grigg-Spall’s book, Sweetening the Pill.

10-29-14:  Meeting with Ninia Baehr
Ninia Baehr is on the board of the NWHN.  She is Deputy Director of the ACLU in Montana, and she wrote the pamphlet, “Abortion Without Apology, a radical history for the 1990’s”.  She wrote about Lana Phelan, Pat Maginnis and Rowena Gurner, and she also wrote about the Self-Help Health Movement.

Presently, Ninia is working on her PhD.  She is interested in comparing the politics and approach of the Self-Help Health Movement and the Right-to-Die movement.  She sees many parallels, in that they both are movements demanding body autonomy.  She, Becky and I had breakfast; our meeting actually consisted of a discussion about how “gender politics” has taken over women’s studies and is creating a direct challenge to radical feminists, especially those who want women-only spaces for women to explore their common oppression and to develop anti-male supremacy strategies.  We also talked about pornography and whether there can be a feminist position to support pornography.

I asked Ninia (as I have also asked Becky and other associates I have who are in academia) if she knew how Women’s Studies departments came to become “Gender Studies” departments.  She didn’t know, as do none of the other people I’ve talked to.

Ninia will be interviewing me in the near future regarding early history of self-help.

Sharing of Resources:

• Abortion Without Apology, a radical history for the 1990‘s, Ninia Baehr, South End Press, Pamphlet No. 8, 1990 amazon.com
• Revolution at Point Zero, Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle.  Silvia Federici, PM Press, P.O. Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623 pmpress.org
• Stop Patriarchy - www.stoppatriarchy.org
• Caliban and the Witch, Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, Second, Revised Edition, 2014, autonomedia.org, info@autonomedia.org

Contacts:

• Stop Patriarchy - www.stoppatriarchy.org
• Clare Feinson, Blackbird Development Solutions,1752 Hobart Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20009; (202)302-1823
• Adriane Fugh-Berman (Director) - www.pharmedout.org
• Kinyofu Mlimwengu - reproductiveawakening.com

Pill Popular with Slate's Beyerstein but Feminists Have Doubts

By Carol Downer

The women’s health movement has had a healthy skepticism about all the invasive methods of birth control developed in the last half century--IUD’s and various type of pills.  Women stormed the Pill hearings in 1970 because they saw that no women were participating in the research or the government approval process, and they were leery of women taking a powerful drug - it stops the reproductive machine in its tracks - to control fertility.  Safe, effective methods of birth control existed that women had used in certain societies for many decades.

Lindsay Beyerstein, in her review of Holly Grigg-Spall’s “Sweetening The Pill” seems unaware of our protests, including Barbara Seaman’s explosive work, “The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill”.  Our efforts, mostly through the National Women’s Health Network, have continued over the years, forcing the drug companies to improve their inserts and to lower dosages, so that some of the more catastrophic complications that showed up right away have been substantially lowered.  Still, today, no women’s health advocate will dismiss Holly Grigg-Spall’s questions about the way that the Pill has been marketed, the way it’s been pushed by population control organizations in their clinics and the implications of millions of women taking a pill that may change their emotional hard-wiring.  Furthermore, the net social result of millions of women walking around having drug-induced feelings of sadness and depression is unfathomable.

Feminist health activists’ lack of enthusiasm about the Pill has continued, but women have voted with their feet.  They’ve embraced the Pill.  Even the harshest critics of the Pill, the Feminist Women’s Health Centers, have given out the Pill freely since they opened their doors in 1973 because women want it.  The National Women’s Health Network focuses its efforts on making the Pill as safe as possible, not on restricting its distribution.  Regarding screening out women with high risk of complication, we say, “There’s no woman sick enough to justify keeping her from taking the Pill; there’s no woman healthy enough to protect her from suffering severe side effects of the Pill.”  We know the realities of our lives, and we respect the calculations any woman makes when she determines what birth control method she will use.  After we’ve made sure she has the most up-to-date information available, we fight for her right to choose whatever method she thinks best.

We know, from running our women’s clinics, that an inordinate number of women are taking anti-depressants.  No one is really doing the kind of research that would give us answers as to what is causing that widespread experience of depression.   

So, why does Slate, a progressive on-line magazine not pay respectful attention to a serious book which questions the safety of a pill being taken by millions of women at a time when the research into the actions of hormones in our body are at an infant stage?  Aren’t we progressives worried about government approval of routine genetic modification of the public’s food supply. (Oh, I forgot. The government regulators that Beyerstein places her trust in did approve GMO, didn’t they?) 

Does Grigg-Spall’s book not merit respectful review because it calls into question the popular myth of the benefits of the Pill?  Lindsay Beyerstein claims, “The pill ushered in a new era of educational and professional attainment for women.  As a discreet, highly-effective, and fully female-controlled form of birth control, the pill allowed women to plan their families, space their births, and even delay childbearing long enough to establish themselves in careers.”  

This statement reads like the drug company’s promotional ad.  It’s misleading.  When comparing the Pill with non-invasive methods of birth control, they’re about equal in effectiveness when used properly, and about equal when not used properly!  Running abortion clinics, we find that about as many women become pregnant taking the Pill as using other methods especially if one takes into consideration the oft-occurring situation where a woman suffers a side-effect of the Pill which causes her to quit and before she can institute a new method, she’s pregnant! 

She says it’s wonderful that the Pill is a female-controlled form of birth control.  When I asked Dr. Hugh Davis, inventor of an IUD, why they hadn’t tried a birth control pill on men, his answer was, “We couldn’t get the (reproductive) tracts.”  Even if most women envision themselves as having a career, isn’t the real feminist battle to change society so that having a baby is not a career-derailing event?

Or is Grigg-Spall dismissed because perhaps she thinks that today’s woman is not really that thrilled to drop her children off at a day care center so that she can plug through a day that’s as dreary as their father’s?  Or maybe Beyerstein is unaware of the science of demography, or the machinations of industrialists, or the schemes of social planners who are funded by elite foundations?  She should read Betty Friedan who spent two years looking at the files of public relations firms and interviewed the manufacturers who hired them to discover how much the “Feminine Mystique” was created by the post World-War II media to convince American women to stay home and buy more household furnishings and appliances to support “patriarchal capitalism”.  Oh, where is Betty when we need her!

My favorite explanation is that Beyerstein’s intemperate review comes from her fear that Grigg-Spall wants to make women, including herself, revel in her bodily procreative functions, thus making her into an incubator.  (Beyerstein makes a gratuitous side swipe against women who want to breast feed or not have epidurals.)  I don’t get that implication.  I believe that Grigg-Spall is sharing her concern that the social pressures and inequality of opportunity that women have that leads them to take the Pill is resulting in their enduring years of feeling sub-par.  She is impressing the reader with the enormity of the monkey wrench that the Pill is throwing into the functioning of our bodies.

Beyerstein dismisses Grigg-Spall’s experiences as irrelevant, and insists that only scientific studies, (note: funded by the manufacturers), are to be trusted.  Well, the second wave of feminism was founded on the rock of “the personal is political”.  It was when we sat in a circle and shared our individual stories that we realized our position in the whole scheme of things.  I do not think that Grigg-Spall has “proven” that the Pill is creating generations of Stepford Wives, but I wish that there was some research designed to find out what’s going on with women today who sometimes seem to lose their revolutionary zeal.   Taking a hormone-like drug that makes one feel blue may not be the whole explanation, but it deserves looking into.

Lastly, is it inaccurate for Grigg-Spall to say that the Pill is equivalent to castration?  Well, no one would deny that it is temporarily castrating, that is, when a woman is taking the Pill, her gonads are not working.  But, over a period of years, the Pill can permanently stop the ovary from ovulating.  Now, that’s castration.  Maybe that doesn’t bother some people.  But, remember, hormones, which are manufactured in the ovary circulate through the blood and go into each and every cell of our body.  These incredibly tiny molecules (about which we know appallingly little) cause changes in each cell, different depending on the function of the cell.  These changes are poorly understood and new ones are being discovered every day. 

I would hope that Slate finds another reviewer who understands that birth control and abortion are hotly-debated topics that are hotly debated global population policy forum.  A woman’s decision regarding her sexuality and reproduction are private decisions, however a battle rages between the camp which wants to engineer women’s choices such that they choose to have fewer children, the camp which wants to engineer those choices in the direction of fewer children, and the women’s health movement which is working to change society so that women can have true choice, because society would provide support for any child they would have.  Without that perspective, Slate finds itself in the company of the first camp.