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Unfortunately, All Our Lives is not in a position yet to launch the dream feminist CPC described in our last blog entry. But that doesn't mean we will decline to address real-life pregnancy problems in whatever ways we can right now.

The Nonviolent Choice Directory, http://www.nonviolentchoice.info, will soon become a project of All Our Lives.

The Directory lists resources from all over the world that can help alleviate problem pregnancies and abortions. It covers:

--Post Abortion Care

--Male Responsibility

--Sexual/Reproductive Health Education (comprehensive)

--All Pregnancy Prevention Methods

--Crisis Pregnancy Support

--Mother & Child Health

--Parenting/Childrearing

--Adoption, Foster Care, & Guardianship

--Food & Nutrition

--Clothing

--Shelter

--Finances & Income

--Education

--Employment/Career

--Relationships

--Eco-Friendly Living

--Other Ways to Give Life

The Nonviolent Choice Directory was launched in 2007 to fulfill a promise made in the book Pro Life Feminism Yesterday and Today, Second Expanded Edition.

You can email the Directory here: editor --at-- nonviolentchoice --dot-- info

Surfin3rdWave at Feministing.com describes her vision of a feminist crisis pregnancy center.

It would:

• Refuse to engage in "slut-shaming...'marry your baby's daddy'...fearmongering."
• Foster choices in birthing, such as midwifery care, as well as in parenting.
• "Offer realistic parenting classes that promote responsible parenthood while also encouraging women to view themselves as individuals--with personalities and careers" apart from their parenthood.
• Give "free counseling services to women coping with anxiety and depression during an unplanned pregnancy," including access when needed to licensed mental health professionals.
• "Encourage pregnant women to view their bodies as beautiful and sexy...provide information about maintaining a good sex life and a positive body-image before and after pregnancy."
• "Help women find the financial and material resources needed to make it through pregnancy and give birth...[such as] the WIC program.  Donors could bring baby car seats, maternity clothes, cribs, nursing bras, breast pumps, and canned goods..."

All Our Lives cofounder Jen commented on this post, saying that she shared this vision of a feminist CPC and our organization would like to run one like this someday.  There are in fact ethically run CPCs who already engage in these services for women.  And to the above services, we might want to add:

• Prevention measures such as comprehensive sex ed curricula, a full range of family planning options, and outreach tailored to groups of clients most at risk for unintended pregnancies, such as LGBT youth.
• Male responsibility programming.
• An advocacy department to work on systemic-level/collective changes necessary to alleviate the plight of so many pregnant women and reduce the numbers of unintended pregnancies and abortions, locally, nationally, globally.
• Standards to help existing CPCs evaluate and improve their services, and aid in the creation of new ones.

Please also see the discussion of Surfin3rdWave's post on the All Our Lives Facebook group.

The UNFPA blog Conversations for a Better World has announced the winner in its contest for best idea on contraceptive access for the 200 million plus women worldwide who want but lack it.

It's us!

Our proposal will be featured for a month on the website of Women Deliver, the just-concluded global conference on reducing maternal deaths.

Winning Idea: Access to Contraception Begins with Questions on the Ground

Please spread the news. It's not every day that the pro every life, pro nonviolent choice approach gets a hearing!

We're having a discussion on the All Our Lives Facebook page about the recent article in The Nation, When Teen Pregnancy is No Accident. The Nation article looks at "reproductive coercion" -- a form of partner abuse in which men deliberately try to make their partners get pregnant by tampering with their birth control or simply refusing to use any.  Sometimes these men then force their pregnant partners to have an abortion; other times they force them to bear the child.

How should the reproductive peace community respond to reproductive coercion without promoting the violence of abortion? How can we best empower women to escape abusive relationships and maintain control over their choice to use contraception?  Please feel free to comment here or, if you use Facebook, on our Facebook page.

This is the kind of measure everyone, pro-life and pro-choice and label-resistant, should be able to get behind. On May 11, Representative Lois Capps (D-CA23) introduced the "Improvements in Global Maternal and newborn health Outcomes while Maximizing Successes Act" (also known, in a remarkably contrived act of abbreviation, as the Global MOMS Act).

The bill, H.R. 5268, would support expanded access to prenatal care, family planning, HIV treatment, skilled delivery care, emergency obstetric care, and postpartum care and support for women in at least 30 countries around the world. It would also support activities to improve child health care and decrease violence against women.

If you are a United States citizen, please contact your representative and ask him or her to cosponsor H.R. 5268.