Blog Posts

Nature, red in tooth and claw; humanity, red in needle and curette

In Glossip v. Gross, the United States Supreme Court was asked to determine whether the use of a lethal injection drug that might not prevent pain violates the Constitutional prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.” Last week,  Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, found that it doesn’t because hey, lots of people die painful deaths. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Our decisions in this area have been animated in part by the recognition that because it is settled that capital punishment is constitutional, “[i]t necessarily follows that there must be a [constitutional] means of carrying it out.” And because some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution, we have held that the Constitution does not require the avoidance of all risk of pain. After all, while most humans wish to die a painless death, many do not have that good fortune. Holding that the Eighth Amendment demands the elimination of essentially all risk of pain would effectively outlaw the death penalty altogether.

Pro-lifers, does this argument sound familiar? It should. It’s the pro-execution equivalent of “over half of pregnancies end in miscarriage, so who really cares about killing an embryo?” It’s wrong in both instances, for the obvious reason that not everything that happens naturally is OK to do to another person. Everyone dies, one way or another, but we still have a responsibility not to deliberately or recklessly take their lives. Everyone experiences pain, but it’s wrong to be cruel. Everyone’s life ends, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter how.

Blog Posts

#BlackLivesMatter

“Face it, blacks. Michael Brown let you down.”

Does that headline get your hackles up? It got mine up. But then I read the article, and it was devastating. The author describes the experience of hoping that this time, someone would care that an unarmed black kid had been killed by the police. Maybe this time, someone would think that Mike Brown — and his community — had gotten far worse than they deserved. Until people went looking for reasons why he must have brought it on himself.

For a moment there, things were looking pretty good. A boy shot multiple times with his hands up. College bound. Poor. Innocent. And in response: helicopters and tanks. Maybe this time, we thought, they would believe us.

But that’s all been ruined.

We now have all sorts of reasons to make us doubt Brown’s humanity. He may have stolen some cigarillos. He may have been facing the officer when he was shot. He got shot in the top of the head, which might mean that he was surrendering, or might mean he was being defiant. He made amateur rap songs. Perhaps worst of all, he’s been caught grimacing at a camera making a contorted peace sign, and it turns out that he was pretty tall.

And Fox News has been trying to cast doubt on whether he was actually going to go to college in the first place.

All signs that his life was worth less than we might have hoped.

The inevitable had happened. Apologists for police violence had successfully painted Mike Brown as a “thug” who deserved what he got. If the question is “what could a black person do that would make their death not their own fault?”, there’s no answer. The question should be “why are black people required to prove — over and over again, in a rigged game — that they don’t deserve to be killed?”

Remember literacy tests for voting? They were ostensibly in place to ensure that applicants were educated enough to qualify as voters. But in reality:

Determination of who “passed” and who “failed” was entirely up to the whim of the Registrar of Voters — all of whom were white. In actuality, whites almost always “passed” no matter how many questions they missed, and Blacks almost always “failed’ in the selective judgement of the Registrar.

If you don’t want to grant someone a status in the first place, any excuse to revoke it will do. So it is with the right not to be killed. If people wanted to see an 18-year-old black man as a fully human person deserving of the right to life, then video of him allegedly swiping a handful of cigars and shoving a store clerk wouldn’t change that. Photos of him making a hand signal wouldn’t change that. Rap lyrics wouldn’t change that. That he was tall and heavy wouldn’t change that. How do I know? Because white people miss those questions on the humanity test, as it were, all the time without being dismissed as thugs who need killing.

For obvious reasons, nobody who considers themselves pro-life should embrace an ideology that requires human beings to pass tests to be considered worthy of living.

And speaking of pro-life, consider this: In the United States, the abortion rate is highest among black women. Black women in America have 40 abortions per 100,000 women — almost 4 times the rate among non-Hispanic white women. That’s 360,000 black lives ending in abortion every year. That’s who knows how many black women ending up in clinics like Kermit Gosnell’s. How many of those abortions would have been avoided if black Americans, on average, had the same healthcare, access to resources, and life prospects as white Americans? If we acted like black lives, born and unborn, really matter?

Blog Posts

For Peace and ALL Life

Personally, not speaking for All Our Lives as a whole, I feel a deep ambivalence about the focus on the Roe v. Wade anniversary in general and the March for Life in particular. That said, All Our Lives believes that being pro-life means being pro-everybody’s-life. That’s why we support the For Peace & ALL Life Meetup and March group at today’s event. Thanks for representing, folks, and keep warm!

Blog Posts

On “Radical Feminism” and Human Dignity

I recently became aware of a faction within the feminist movement calling itself the “Rad Fem” and/or “Womyn Born Womyn” movement. Those ascribing to this ideology hold that gender constructs are intractable. Those who are biologically male will always be male, even if the male in question identifies as a woman. (The same holds true for biological women who identify as male, though most rad fem analysis focuses on the former.) Because transwomen were initially reared as men, they have experienced male privilege. Hence, any man who transitions into a woman is appropriating the biological identity of women and imposing male perspectives unto the collective experience of women as a group. Such individuals view this alleged appropriation as misogynistic.

We live in a country where people are free to believe whatever they want, but many RadFems, such as those on GenderTrender, ignore the boundaries of basic civility by identifying, tracking, outing and then systematically harassing specific individuals. Such people are not content to voice their opinions; they seem to have a burning compulsion to make trans people’s lives as miserable as possible. People associated with Gender Trender have attempted to get people fired from their jobs and alienated from their social circles. They have engaged in online bullying of specific trans people. As survivor of bullying, this persecution breaks my heart. These attackers have no concern for the physical, emotional, vocational or spiritual well being of their targets. It’s impossible to look into their hearts, but their behavior evokes the kind of unrestrained savagery displayed by the child antagonists of Lord of the Flies. Like their metaphorical counterparts, these attackers represent a vicious society that is controlled by humankind’s lowest instincts and which is devoid of compassion.

Radical Feminism is an anomaly in the feminism movement. There are fringe factions in every group. RadFems strike me as the Randall Terrys of the feminist movement-their hateful rhetoric is an embarrassment to the feminist movement in the same way that Terry’s besmirches pro-lifers. Similarly, the rhetoric of some in the RadFeminism movement reminds me of Peter Singer’s ableist promotion of medical rationing, involuntary euthanasia and infanticide, which he cloaks in the guise of philosophical discourse. For instance, in regard to their statements that they want transgenderism to disappear from existence, some RadFems have reassured detractors that they don’t want to physically injure or murder trans people. Similarly, Peter Singer has said that he doesn’t want to kill disabled people who can conceive of themselves over time and have a preference to go on living. Well, thank goodness for small favors! Surely society should have higher standards than that…

I anticipate that in the future there will be more and more dialogue between trans and disability advocates, as we experience similar forms of social oppression. (Bodily difference, discontinuity between the kind of body our society expects and the kind of body one actually has, interaction with the medical establishment, the current need for accommodation in regards to name changes, living arrangements, etc.) This dialogue will become increasingly valuable as the disabled community wrestles with the phenomenon of transableism, and how best to evidence respect for able-bodied persons who identify as disabled. Finally, I hope that those of us who identify as progressive, consistent pro-lifers can be party to creating a society in which every person is loved, valued, and treated with dignity.

Blog Posts

Jezebel’s Cynical Post Reeks of Ableism

Recently, Jezebel published an article titled, “Church Saves Fetus with Downs, Everyone Lives Happily Ever After.” I find this article’s perspective to be perverse. I feel that its cynical tone represents yet *another* example of the mainstream pro choice movement shamelessly *using* the disabled to promote its agenda. (The mainstream pro-life movement does this as well, though in different ways.) Presumably, the woman/parents in question went to her/their priest for help. The mother and her partner decided to follow the priest’s advice and give their child up for adoption. According to Jezebel,the priest’s advice/actions amounted to this:

Here’s a heartwarming story about a Reverend who learned of a young couple planning to abort because their child, if carried to term, would have Down syndrome. “But abortion is sin!” the pastor said (we’re paraphrasing). “Let me pressure you into carrying to term by hastily crowdsourcing an adoptive family!”

Here’s the thing: If you go talk to your spiritual leader about terminating a pregnancy, there’s a good chance that he or she opposes abortion and will try to dissuade you from having one. (Not that all religious leaders feel that way, but many do.) The woman in the case was legally free to choose an abortion, and she decided not to do that. She was free to refuse the priest’s offer, and she accepted it. The fact that the parents involved were free to reject his suggestion isn’t enough for Katie Baker. Perhaps the most sanctimonious part of the post read:

So many mistreated babies and kids with Downs live terrible lives. Instead of throwing resources at a nonviable fetus, why can’t the church help children with Down syndrome that are already alive? Because anti-abortion folks care more about fetuses with fairytale narratives than actual babies.

I deeply resent Baker’s use of the story to imply that opposing the abortion of disabled fetuses indicates a lack of concern for other disabled children, and her assertion that finding a home for a disabled fetus amounts to nothing more than a “feel good” story.” This is demeaning to anyone who is living with a disability and to everyone who has chosen to bear such a child. Incidentally, how many children with Down Syndrome have you adopted, Katie Baker?

Many of the comments on this article are disturbing, as well. For instance, one person wrote:

As good Christers, we realized that we couldn’t abort this fucked-up child we no longer want. Which, obviously, means that Jesus wants us to mail it to someone and then try again for one that will look good on our Christmas cards. Have a blessed day!” 7/10/13 4:39pm

This comment makes me want to use profanity. People with disabilities are not “fucked up.” As a representative of our ableist culture, however, the commenter certainly is. Given a choice between being him/her and being a person with Down Syndrome, I’d choose the latter any day.

Another comment was more restrained, but no less ableist:

Great, I’m happy this couple found a way to deal with their singular situation, but that does not mean this sort of thing is a viable way to solve the problem of unwanted and/or non-viable fetuses. What happened to all the “discarded” families that were not chosen? Did they run out and adopt a different DS baby? 7/10/13 4:21pm

I can’t help but suspect that the distinction this commenter draws between “unwanted” and “non-viable” indicates a conflation of disability and death. Ie, a 23-week old fetus without a disability is “unwanted.” A 23-week-old fetus with a disability is “non-viable.” Both can be aborted, but the latter fetus “wasn’t viable” anyway. (Despite the fact that there are plenty of former “non-viable fetuses” with Down Syndrome walking around.) This kind of conflation may make some people feel better about aborting, but it is not based on science.

After I posted my perspective on Jezebel’s Facebook page, I noticed the following statement placed above the article:


[Note: According to the Washington Times, the Rev. reached out to a couple he heard was planning to abort; they hadn’t considered adoption before and his offer was unsolicited. So the Facebook message isn’t exactly truthful.]

There is nothing in the Washington Times article contradicting the implication that the parents went to the priest for advice and/or solace. Many parents dealing with a prenatal diagnosis do so, whether they choose to terminate or carry to term. Maybe “reached out” means ‘the priest heard about the couple’s plans from his secretary and contacted the couple,” OR, more likely, it means, ‘The devastated mother/parents went to their priest in their hour of need, and told him that they were considering abortion. The priest *reached out* to them and offered to find an adoptive home.’ I suppose that the “truth” behind that part of that situation depends on how one interprets the phrase “reached out.” IRREGARDLESS, Ableism is Ableism. No disability advocate I know, most of whom are pro choice, would ever be “ok” with the tone of this article, because most people in our movement see the decision to birth or adopt a disabled child as something more than a “Christian reality TV series.” Furthermore, the author’s protestations of concern for disabled children are hollow unless she herself is doing more than what the church, or the most active parts of the disability rights movement, do for people with disabilities. Has she participated in ADAPT protests in support of the Community Choice Act? Is she overseeing the educational needs of disabled children in foster care? Has she adopted any children with special needs? Does she give a crap about any of those things beyond using them as an ideological cudgel? Again, I repeat my question: How many mistreated children with Down Syndome, for whom you profess to be concerned, have you adopted, Katie Baker??

Blog Posts, Past Actions

“For Peace & ALL Life” meetup/march group at the March for Life

All Our Lives will not have a presence of its own at the 2013 March for Life, but we are co-sponsoring the “For Peace & ALL Life” meetup/march group. It will be a great opportunity to meet other consistent life/whole life proponents.

Co-sponsored by Life Matters Journal, Secular Pro-Life, Consistent Life, Students for a Fair Society and continuing to seek other partners in the meetup/marching event!The March for Life is often portrayed and publicized as an event to protest against the (legal) killing of the preborn human among us. But what if it meant something more? What if the rallying cry in our ranks was one that stood for peace and all life? What if we stood not only for the preborn, but for the criminal, the prisoners of war, innocent civilians everywhere, the aged and the disabled, the depressed and the bullied, people of every race, gender, faith, sexuality, size, level of dependency, location, nationality?

If you are a supporter of the Consistent Ethic of Life, or just want to see our world engaged in a conversation that does not exclude any human life from consideration, please join us for a meetup and march with us at the March for Life. We represent the fullness of the pro-life mission!

The plan is merely to have a space and a time to share in the community of our little movement that encompasses the anti-abortion cause, but to be strengthened in the knowledge that we are not alone. Network with others in the CL cause, learn about opportunities available, and help to spread the message for peace and all life!

Blog Posts

An interview with Mary Krane Derr

At the conference held for the 25th anniversary of Consistent Life (of which All Our Lives is a member group), Mary spoke with Elizabeth Palmberg about her views on how abortion relates to issues of reproductive justice faced by women, as well as to other forms of lifetaking. This interview is reprinted, with permission, from the Fall 2012 newsletter of Consistent Life.

When I was small, I had a strong intuition that all lives are sacred. And I heard about women’s liberation; I heard the feminists burned bras, and this and that and the other thing, but there was something about it that, inside, made me cheer. I was always kind of a free spirit. What I learned in college, at Bryn Mawr, was that if you’re for women’s rights, you have to be pro-choice— something about that just didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t know many people who felt the same way who would talk about it. I came from a very conservative background, and I came out of college feeling that some of my earlier moral and political intuitions were validated by feminism and progressive politics. But this issue of abortion—I just could not get away from the feeling that this is violence and it arises from injustice against women.

I wanted to do something about violence, but I felt very discontent with the pro-life movement as such. I became a social worker and worked in pregnancy care services. When I became too disabled to work a “normal” job, I went to being a writer and editor; one of my specializations is recovering lost history.

I’ve written on black history, Polish-American history. And I’ve done work on early feminists—even though the situation is different today, obviously, they have a very keen analysis, that still holds, why women have unintended pregnancies and abortions.

Two years ago Jennifer Roth and I co-founded a group called All Our Lives; we very consciously take a reproductive justice approach. Reproductive justice is a movement that arose from women of color, people with disabilities, people with a working-class perspective. Reproductive justice involves having not only the right to have a child but the social power to exercise that right, to raise the children we have in safety, and it also includes the right not to have a child.

Many people who identify with reproductive justice take a pro-choice stand on abortion, but there are many of us who don’t. Loretta Ross, the head of SisterSong, a very influential reproductive justice organization, talks about “perfect choice.” If everyone had the means to do what they wanted to do reproductively and sexually, that would be the state of perfect choice. Some people believe that in that state there would still be abortions, and others of us think that it would be rare to nonexistent.

So that’s why we started All Our Lives, and we’ve had very interesting dialogues, mostly behind the scenes, with both pro-life and pro-choice people. One thing that we’re finding is a niche that nobody’s taken up is that a lot of scientific research now suggests that methods that were considered abortifacient really aren’t—there is so much resistance to hearing that perspective. We also have on our website a PowerPoint presentation called “Family Planning Freedom is Prolife.” It gives 10 reasons, many backed up with scientific studies. It addresses a lot of myths that both pro-life and pro-choice people have.

“As many as God sends us” is a family planning choice, and natural family planning is one, but the important thing is I don’t think “choice” is an empty word. Some people think it’s a cover for all abortion all the time, but I think it’s very real. You can’t just talk about choice in a vacuum; you have to talk about how it’s compromised by issues of race, gender, disability, class, sexual orientation. Environmental justice is one; a lot of women are losing their ability to conceive when they want to because of environmental toxins.

Believing that all life is sacred, that means women’s lives too, and that means we do have a right over our own bodies. Pro-lifers often interpret that as a selfish demand, but I [don’t.] I remember Muhammad Ali, when I was a little kid, boasting about how great he was; a lot of white people were saying, “God, this man has an ego!” But after living in a black community for a long time and having an interracial family, I realized that that’s not egotism—that’s saying, “I’m somebody, I have value.” That’s what women are saying when they say, “We have a right over our own bodies.”

Now with pregnancy, it’s a matter of two bodies, two lives. Our responsibility has two sides: one is responsibility for pregnant women and their children, and the other side is the responsibility to respect women’s right to prevent conception when they want to. That is a difficult thing to write in the pro-life movement. Some Catholics have objections; the other thing is the belief in something called the “contraceptive mentality,” that if your contraception fails, that you automatically have an abortion—that doesn’t explain millions of pregnancy outcomes. It certainly doesn’t explain why I had my daughter and why she had her son. I know lots of women who use contraception in the knowledge that it doesn’t always work as intended. But if it doesn’t work as intended, then you and your child have a right to everything that will help you both survive.

A lot of [the bridge-building we at All Our Lives have] done so far is behind the scenes. We find, in surprising places, opportunities to join with people who have a common concern. We have found pro-choice people who say, “I don’t agree with you on abortion, but I have respect for your perspective because it’s consistent, because you value women’s lives.” We found pro-lifers who say, “That’s exactly how I feel.” We share a lot of supporters with the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians. One very interesting thing is that women of color, even those who identify as pro-choice, really can relate to this perspective. There’s probably a lot of opportunity for common ground there.

We have a small board; most of us have disabilities. We’re all female; one of our board members is a woman and an independent ordained Catholic priest. We’re not anti-religious; we’re open to people of all faiths. I’m someone with Catholic and Protestant ancestry, and I also practice Buddhism, and Jen Roth is an atheist. We really try to bring in multiple perspectives, which can be difficult sometimes, but so far it’s worked out really well.

I was involved in Feminists for Life, I think, from 1986 until I resigned in 2007. I don’t quarrel with what they do—what they do is good—but I left specifically in protest of their inaction on pre-conception issues. [They] said [they] couldn’t come to a consensus because people disagree. I feel like we’ve worked out another approach. I kind of understand; Catholics in the United States, including my white ethnic ancestors, Polish and Irish, were targeted for eugenics, and that collective memory is still there. That legacy is one reason it’s hard to talk about birth control in the pro-life movement. But I think it needs to come more out in the open, it needs to heal.

As a multiply disabled person who depends on expensive medical care, I am really concerned about the threat euthanasia poses, especially to people on public assistance. I think disability rights folks—who are often not included in the debates, but we have had some impact—have gotten people to think about the fact [euthanasia often] isn’t a free choice; it can easily slide into coercion. As for the death penalty, I really think that’s tied into racism, it’s tied into poverty. I know a family with a member who was eventually exonerated, but he was on death row for something like 14 years. He was a young man, and he lost those years of his life. So that issue has a very human face to me. All these issues do.

War is very tied in. I know people who have gone into the military for very noble reasons: they want to serve their country, they know that some things are worth dying for. It’s unfortunate that they’re dying for such horrible reasons.

I see a parallel between that and a lot of women I know who’ve had abortions. They are not evil people; they are people trying, like all of us, to make the best of very bad situations. I know women who’ve had abortions who go to either the pro-life or the pro-choice movements, and I see good people in both groups. A lot of women feel they have to have an abortion because it preserves a relationship with a man, or with their parents. They are concerned about the situation they bring the child into. I just think it’s unfair that women are placed in that position to begin with, that the whole karmic burden is thrown on that woman and that child. We always talk about most of these issues in terms of individual rights, but what about collective responsibility? I think that’s where Americans really, really have gone wrong.

Blog Posts

Drawing Connections: Intimate Partner Violence, Poverty, and Abortion

[Author’s note: this article was originally published in Life Matters Journal, Volume 2, Issue 1.]

The consistent life ethic is traditionally seen as a way to draw connections among issues that do not seem related at first glance, such as war, the death penalty, and abortion. However, the connections between forms of violence and injustice are sometimes more immediate. Recent research, including a study published in August 2012 by the Guttmacher Institute, has highlighted connections between intimate partner violence, poverty, and abortion.

Intimate partner violence and abortion

Multiple studies from countries around the world have established a link between intimate partner violence (sometimes also known as domestic violence) and unintended pregnancy and abortion.[i],[ii],[iii],[iv]

The increased abortion rate among women who have experienced intimate partner violence begins with an increased prevalence of unintended pregnancy. A health survey in Massachusetts found that 40% of women who reported being abused had experienced one or more unintended pregnancies in the past five years, compared to 8% of non-abused women.[v]

Women in abusive relationships who become pregnant face numerous pressures to abort. These include fear of being punished if their partner doesn’t welcome the pregnancy, fear that the child will be abused, and the belief that having a child will make it impossible to leave the abusive partner for good. Among women who had abortions in the United States in 2008, about 7% reported having been physically or sexually abused by their child’s father, compared with about 1% of women in the general population who report experiencing physical or sexual abuse in the previous 12 months.[vi]

Reproductive coercion

In 2010, University of California-Davis researcher Elizabeth Miller and colleagues conducted the largest study to date of a phenomenon Miller has termed reproductive coercion[vii]. Miller’s team surveyed women aged 16-29 seeking reproductive health services in five clinics in northern California. Of these women, 53% had ever been physically or sexually abused by a partner. Nineteen percent had experienced pregnancy coercion, defined as a male partner using emotional or physical pressure or threats to get a woman to agree to become pregnant. Fifteen percent had experienced birth control sabotage, in which their partner had deliberately interfered with their efforts to use birth control. Miller uses the umbrella term reproductive coercion to cover pregnancy coercion and birth control sabotage.

Reproductive coercion is often associated with intimate partner violence and may partly explain why intimate partner violence is associated with high rates of unintended pregnancy.

Guttmacher study of “disruptive life events” and abortion

In August 2012, the Guttmacher Institute published a study in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care about the circumstances under which women have abortions. The researchers surveyed 9493 women who had abortions, and found that most had experienced at least one “disruptive life event” in the last year, such as unemployment, divorce or separation from a partner, getting behind on the rent or mortgage, moving two or more times, or having a baby.[viii]

The women in the study who were living in poverty experienced more disruptive life events – and hence, more abortions – than the women who were making greater than poverty incomes. Women living in poverty were also more likely to report having been physically or sexually abused by their partners.

In addition to the quantitative survey, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 49 women. Nearly half of these women said that disruptive events interfered with their ability to use contraception consistently. Women reported losing health insurance and having trouble affording prescription contraception and getting to doctor’s appointments. Consistent use, not simply any use of contraception, is key to preventing unintended pregnancy. Poverty and disruptive life events appeared to make consistent use more difficult.

There were no questions on the quantitative survey about reproductive coercion, but six of the 49 women interviewed in-depth reported experiencing it.

Conclusions

Intimate partner violence and poverty both make it more difficult for women to avoid unintended pregnancy and to carry to term if they become pregnant.

For pro-life advocates who are working to reduce the demand for abortion, these data suggest two courses of action. The first is working to end poverty and abuse themselves, and ensuring a strong social safety net to buffer against the effects of disruptive life events. Second, it is also important to ensure that women currently experiencing poverty and abuse have the information and health care access they need to prevent unintended pregnancy, as well as social and material support if they do conceive.

Mitigating the effects of injustice and working to end the injustice itself are not mutually exclusive approaches. As one example, Elizabeth Miller and colleagues reported in 2011 on a pilot program that tested a new harm reduction intervention for women experiencing abuse or reproductive coercion.[ix] Their intervention enhanced standard intimate partner violence counseling with information on reproductive coercion and strategies for minimizing the risk of unintended pregnancy by using birth control methods that were concealable or hard to tamper with. The enhanced intervention both reduced the incidence of reproductive coercion and increased the likelihood that women would leave abusive male partners.

Protecting lives that are threatened by poverty and intimate partner violence also turns out to be a way to protect lives that are threatened by abortion.

 


[i] Christina C. Pallitto, Claudia García-Moreno, Henrica A.F.M. Jansen, Lori Heise, Mary Ellsberg, Charlotte Watts, on behalf of the WHO Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Intimate partner Violence, Intimate partner violence, abortion, and unintended pregnancy: Results from the WHO Multi-country Study on Women’s Health and Intimate partner Violence, Int J Gynecol Obstet 2012. Published online in advance of print September 6, 2012. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgo.2012.07.003. Accessed September 17, 2012.

[ii] Lockart I, Ryder N, McNulty AM. Prevalence and associations of recent physical intimate partner violence among women attending an Australian sexual health clinic. Sex Transm Infect 2011; 87(2): 174-176.

[iii] Alio AP, Salihu HM, Nana PN, Clayton HB, Mbah AK, Marty PJ. Association between intimate partner violence and induced abortion in Cameroon. Int J Gynecol Obstet 2011; 112(2): 83–87.

[iv] Fanslow J, Silva M, Whitehead A, Robinson E. Pregnancy outcomes and intimate partner violence in New Zealand. Aust N Z J Obstet Gynaecol 2008; 48(4): 391–397.

[v] Futures Without Violence. The Facts on Reproductive Health and Partner Abuse. Available at: http://www.knowmoresaymore.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/The-Facts-on-Reproductive-Health-and-Partner-Abuse.pdf. Accessed September 17, 2012.

[vi] Jones RK, Moore AM, Frohwirth LF. Perceptions of male knowledge and support among U.S. women obtaining abortions. Women Health Iss 2011; 21(2):117-23.

[vii] Miller E, Decker MR, McCauley HL, Tancredi DJ, Levenson RR, Waldman J, Schoenwald P, Silverman JG. Pregnancy coercion, intimate partner violence and unintended pregnancy. Contraception 2010; 81(4):316-22.

[viii] Jones RK, Frohwirth L, Moore AM. More than poverty: disruptive events among women having abortions in the USA. J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2012; published online in advance of print August 20, 2012. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jfprhc-2012-100311. Accessed September 17, 2012.

[ix] Miller E, Decker MR, McCauley HL, Tancredi DJ, Levenson RR, Waldman J, Schoenwald P, Silverman JG. A family planning clinic partner violence intervention to reduce risk associated with reproductive coercion. Contraception 2011; 83(3):274-80.

 

Blog Posts

I respectfully decline your condescending lecture

A column by Thomas Friedman titled “Why I Am Pro-Life” is making the rounds. I’d been ignoring it because I have a policy of ignoring anything Thomas Friedman writes, but after about the 1,926th time this thing crossed my path, I got fed up. I am 100% on board with criticizing the hypocrisy of people who claim to respect life but oppose universal health care, oppose life-saving environmental care, and hawk war and guns. But criticizing those people isn’t a free pass to avoid examining your own inconsistency.

The term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth.

Wonderful! I agree! But you will let that label apply to people for whom sanctity of life begins at birth. You will sneer at the notion of wanting to protect “every fertilized egg in a woman’s ovary” (since corrected, but a handy reminder that ignorance about how reproduction works is not confined solely to the far Right). “What about the rest of life?” you ask, but I could ask you the same question: what about the life you minimize and deride and don’t consider part of the human family?

I’m getting pretty tired of people who divide the world into two groups — those who only care about protecting human life before birth, and those who only care about protecting it after — and congratulate themselves on their superiority for being in the latter.*

What about being pro-everyone’s-life? Funny how that possibility never arose in Friedman’s column, or in any of the smug tweets and Facebook shares and blog comments using it as a club to beat those horrible pro-lifers with.

Finally, as someone who actively opposed the Iraq War for which he was a cheerleader, I decline to accept a lecture on the sanctity of life from Thomas Friedman, thank you very much.

*(Edited to add, because I want to be clear: I don’t think a person has to be for banning abortion to respect prenatal life. But I do think they have to talk about that life as one of us. They have to treat its destruction like it matters and is more than simple personal choice. They have to favor trying to prevent abortion, in every just way, because it ends a human life. If you’re doing all those things but identify as pro-choice because you don’t think legal bans are the answer, you’re not who I’m talking about here.)

A Response to “Disability, Prenatal Testing, and the Case for Moral, Compassionate Abortion”: Part 1 (photo by Tom Olin)
Blog Posts

A Response to “Disability, Prenatal Testing, and the Case for Moral, Compassionate Abortion”

RH Reality Check has published yet another article extolling abortion in the case of fetal disability. (I use the word extoll because these articles portray fetal disability as a a particularly important reason for pro choice policies. By using disability in this manner, disability-selective abortion is extolled-it is portrayed as something positive that needs to be preserved). Many of us at All Our Lives follow the site, and our own Mary Krane Derr has written articles for them in the past. Yet, we have noticed a pernicious pattern of ableism that permeates the site. By this I mean that the perspectives of the disabled community and issues facing that community are rarely acknowledged. Ablebodied perspectives dominate, and abortion is often cited as an important tool for the prevention of disability. Recently, the site published an article entitled, Disability, Prenatal Testing, and the Case for Moral, Compassionate Abortion.” Despite the editors eventual decision to allow a disability advocate to respond to this article, I feel that a sense of tokenism overshadows that decision and that further analysis is necessary.

The piece is so full of ableist preconceptions and misinformation that it is impossible to address them all in a single blog post. Therefore, I have decided to complete a series responding to the issues she addresses. In this blog post, I will explain why Sierra’s piece is condescending, ahistorical, and embraces eugenic ideas related to the continued influence of ableism in our culture. I will also consider the issue of ablebodied privilege and its influence on discussions related to ableism and selective abortion. Moreover, my approach to this issue reflects personal beliefs and experiences that not every All Our Lives board member shares. While we are united in our desire to see such abortions end, we may not all take the same approach to addressing this issue. Finally, before I begin I will briefly address the pain that parents who interrupt pregnancies impacted by a prenatal diagnosis may feel when reading a disability rights analysis of such decisions.

A Brooding Conflict

The intensely personal, private and painful nature of abortion for fetal anomaly makes this subject difficult to address. Many pregnancies terminated for reasons of fetal anomaly were wanted. These parents may feel that they did not “terminate a pregnancy,” but released their child’s spirit and/or saved him or her from a lifetime of suffering. These parents were motivated by feelings of love. Hence, it is extremely painful for these individuals to hear that their agonizing choice was at least partially influenced by ableism. Nevertheless, I do not feel that this is something disability advocates can avoid when discussing the social pressures that contribute to disability-selective abortion. As Amy Sequentia, a nonverbal autistic rights advocate notes, “We don’t hate parents but we are not going anywhere. We will continue to talk and write about the need for acceptance – ours and their children’s. Autistic children are part of the autistic community. And we will point out the flaws in the autism “advocacy” organizations – they never invite us when talking publicly about autism.” Similarly, any discussion of reproductive rights and disability is going to involve difficult discussions about ableism, and that is going to come up in reference to the painful decisions parents make to terminate wanted pregnancies. Hence, I want to invite everyone reading this to try and do so with compassion for themselves and for the moral challenges we all face as we undergo the difficult experience of being human.

Logical Inconsistency

Women have abortions for a plethora of reasons, only one of which is fetal disability. Sierra has argued that advocates’ objections to disability-selective abortion conflate fetuses with born children, yet she has chosen to specify these abortions as specifically “moral and compassionate,” a distinction which depends upon her perceptions of people who are alive right now. In order to argue that preventing someone’s birth is compassionate, one must make judgments about the experiences of people who are leading lives similar to that which the fetus is expected to lead. One must conclude that these experiences are sufficiently horrific to make not being born preferable to living that life. Hence, specifying those particular abortions as compassionate while not categorizing the moral nature of other abortions DOES send the message that people with disabilities are better off not being born. Without such judgments, the decision making process related to these abortions could not take place.

Tone:

Sierra has a profoundly condescending tone toward her audience. She begins the article by saying:

“Note: If the headline didn’t already clue you in, this is controversial subject matter. If you come away from this article thinking that I advocate genocide of a disabled population or the coercion of women pregnant with disabled fetuses into abortion, that I hate disabled people or think that Down syndrome people don’t deserve to live, you have failed to understand my point. Please walk away from the computer, breathe deeply, and start again from the beginning… if you’re already angry, please stop reading and go get yourself a nice cappuccino. Have a beautiful day. And then, if you still really want to read this, take frequent breaks to punch a pillow with a “hello, my name is Sierra” badge stuck to it.”

This statement a) trivializes legitimate objections to her argument, b) insults the maturity of those who hold such objections by suggesting that we are incapable of responding to her article in a calm manner, c) insults the intelligence of her readers. (Really, this is controversial subject matter? I totally didn’t know that: thanks for telling me!)The pseudo-levity of her remarks attempts to make righteous indignation the stuff of humor. Reading that paragraph is like being talked-down to by a preschool teacher: “Oh, honey, these issues are just too complicated for your little mind to understand. Here, have a cookie.”

Token “Support”/Ahistoricism

Sierra goes on to write, “The disability rights movement is hugely important and I support it. It’s especially vital for individuals with mental illnesses, who are often judged as “not really disabled” because there’s nothing visibly wrong with them. Disabled people have a long history of being medically abused, used as test subjects without consent, being abandoned or forced to live in squalor, and being generally reviled, disrespected and treated like freaks. We need a movement to rectify that and prevent it from ever happening again [my emphasis]. I’m glad we have one. Now. Here’s where I depart from Zylstra and other activists…” Sierra’s statement ignores the fact that the mistreatments she attributes to the past still go on today. (Perhaps her use of the term “rectify” in the present tense was meant to be an acknowledgement of this fact, however, her statement still puts the burden of social change squarely on the shoulders of the disability rights movement. It fails to acknowledge or reflect an understanding of the fact that disability rights impact everyone and, thus, should be everybody’s fight.) Moreover, her proceeding argument completely ignores the fact that these problems are caused by society, not by being disabled. If those abuses were to cease, people with disabilities could go on being disabled without their disabilities being an impediment to their well being, because the world would be a hospitable place for people of all abilities.

Sierra also seems to ascribe a disproportionate amount of historical and epistemological importance to her article. Shortly before launching into a discussion of “fetishism,” she writes, “Okay, now let’s go on (assuming you’re not already plotting my demise)…” Contrary to her rather aggrandizing conception of this essay, Sierra’s argument isn’t new. It certainly isn’t going to shock disability activists and allies into “plotting her demise.” Disabled people have always dealt with the influence of such attitudes, whether they manifested in Plato’s suggestion that the state control procreation, or the early eugenicists’ efforts to sterilize those they viewed as disabled. Statements of approval for that effort have been percolating in our collective consciousness since time began. Moreover, while Sierra may not consciously support eugenics, she is accepting the ableist ideas upon which this movement was based. Ie, the fact that Sierra doesn’t want to resurrect the original eugenics movement and force people to be sterilized or euthanized against their will has no bearing on the existence of this phenomenon. Eugenic ideas still exist because ableism does, not because people who hold those ideas are part of an evil conspiracy.

The tendency of geuninely good people to embrace ableist ideas can be seen in the plethora of respected leaders who supported the original eugenics movement. Plato, Oliver Wendel Holmes, WEB DuBois, and even Helen Keller (Pernick, 103) supported eugenic philosophies. Sierra’s argument is also not unique in contemporary discourse. Contemporary articles and statements in support of disability-selective abortion have been made by Joycelyn Elders (Freedom of Choice Act of 1989: Hearings before the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, United States Senate, One Hundred First Contress, second session on S. 1912, to protect the reproductive rights of women, and other purposes, March 27 and May 23, 1990, Reprints from the collection of the University of Michigan Library, pg. 199). Virginia Ironside, Claire Raynor, Peter Singer, Julian Savulescu, and a host of other individuals. Sierra’s argument simply isn’t the theoretical breakthrough that she seems to think it is.

Sierra attempts to distance her article from its connotations of ableism by stating: “I believe that it is possible and desirable to respect disabled people while still working to eliminate genetic disorders so that children who might have had Down syndrome or cystic fibrosis (or any other disease) have a chance to be born without them. I believe that abortion of a disabled fetus can be a compassionate choice made for morally sound reasons, and does not at all conflict with the respect due to disabled people. I am firmly pro-choice, and I believe strongly that the wellbeing of all born persons in a family is paramount before considering the needs of a fetus. My position is that fetuses are incapable of being self-aware and therefore cannot experience suffering the way born persons do. The prevention of suffering is central to my moral beliefs.”

In short, Sierra is saying, “I’m not an ableist person.” This, however, ignores the systemic phenomenon of ableism by which her view of disability is impacted. Perhaps part of Sierra’s ignorance can be attributed to the so-called “hierarchy of oppression” that hinders the discussion of ableism and pits issues of disability against those related to other minority groups. It’s likely that people who attend diversity assemblies at their schools are never told that diversity includes disability. While race, gender, religion and sexual orientation are discussed, disability is rarely, if ever, addressed. History classes ignore the disability rights movement, the murder of disabled people during the Holocaust, the original American eugenics/euthanasia movement, and other aspects of disability history. If curricula included this information, perhaps Sierra would have a better understanding of why her article reflects prejudiced attitudes. Despite Sierra’s attempt to distance “the prevention of suffering” from the oppression of disabled individuals, an examination of history reveals that this sentiment was shared by many eugenics supporters, many of whom felt sympathy for individuals who they felt were leading inferior lives. Even the US Eugenics Records Office, in their 1914 recommendations for the prevention of disability, argued:

“With euthanasia, as in the case of polygamy, an effective eugenical agency would be purchased at altogether too dear a moral price. Any individual once born should, in the opinion of the committee, be given every opportunity and aid for developing into a decent adulthood of maximum usefulness and happiness. Preventing the procreation of defectives rather than destroying them before birth, or in infancy, or in the later periods of life, must be the aim of modern eugenics.”

Like Sierra, the people who wrote this report had feelings of charity towards disabled individuals. They did not recognize a connection between their efforts to prevent such births and the oppression of disabled people. Similarly, Alexander Grahm Bell tutored many deaf people in lip reading and elocution, but his attempts to “integrate deaf people into society” were partially motivated by his desire to keep deaf couples from meeting, forming relationships, and procreating. In fact, Bell’s own words in support of mainstreaming the deaf closely mirror Sierra’s acknowledgement of the abuse disabled people have historically experienced. In 1883, Bell gave an address to the National Academy of Science in which he stated that laws forbidding the intermarriage of deaf individuals were not enough. Rather, the integration of deaf individuals and the subsequent dissolution of deaf communities was paramount. In support of this solution, Bell argued:

“Whatever the cause, it is certainly the case that adult deaf-mutes are sometimes hampered by the instinctive prejudices of hearing person with whom they desire to have business or social relations. Many persons have the idea that they are dangerous, morose, ill-tempered, etc. A deaf person is sometimes looked upon as a monstrosity to be stared at and avoided (Shapiro, 97).”

Because of his strong language in support of integration, Bell was regarded as a champion of the deaf, but his influence lead to a moratorium on the teaching of ASL. (Shapiro, 94-98). Like Sierra, Bell saw himself as a “supporter” of the disability rights movement. Looking for the cause of antipathy toward the disabled within his own ideology never occurred to him. He never physically harmed a deaf person, and he was probably fond of the deaf students he worked with. I’m sure that some of those students benefited from his instruction, but because he nurtured what seemed to him to be the self-evident belief that people were better off not being born deaf, he harmed the deaf community.

Sierra has embraced the same fallacy. It is not possible to support the elimination of something without acceding to its inherent inferiority. The belief that the prevention of disability via selective reproduction has a special moral status is eugenic thought, even if that philosophy isn’t forced unto others via legal means. One cannot be a legitimate ally and suggest that we ought not to be born as we are. That position does, in fact “conflict with the respect due to disabled people.” It strips us of our identity and boxes us into a caricature of personal tragedy.

Privileged Assumptions

In between insulting her audience and suggesting that her detractors head to the nearest Starbucks, Sierra makes huge assumptions about things that she has not experienced. She bases her assumptions about disability upon her experience of growing up in poverty. The two are simply not the same thing. While issues of class and disability certainly intersect, being an impoverished non-disabled person does not confer knowledge of what it is like to live as a disabled person of any economic background. She “wagers” that the disabled wouldn’t have chosen to be disabled, an assumption based entirely on hubris. As a person with Nonverbal Learning Disorder, I think that some of the social cues that I have difficulty picking up on are bizarre, immoral and destructive. I do not feel that being born non-disabled and growing up to accept these practices as “normal” would have benefited me. Most people I know in the disability rights and studies communities embrace their disabilities as a fundamental part of their identities that should not be changed. A colleague of mine expressed this sentiment well when he said, “Without dwarfism, there is no Joe.”

Perhaps Sierra’s tone and logical inconsistency are related to her own unacknowledged privilege. Despite Sierra’s experience of childhood poverty, she does not seem to recognize that like affluence, able-bodied-ness is a privileged status subject to social influences. Because she doesn’t realize that being able-bodied predisposes her to view that status as universally desirable, she assumes that all disabled people want to be able-bodied like her. She locates the problem of disability oppression within disabled bodies themselves rather than in the attitudes of our society. (Moreover, despite her comparison of disability to the poverty she experienced, I don’t see her using that circumstance to defend “moral and compassionate” abortion for would-be indigent fetuses…)

The same issue of privilege impacts conversations about ableism and selective abortion. Most people defending such abortions have had the privilege of assuming that able-bodied-ness is the state against which the experience of embodiment will be measured. Telling these people that able-bodied and disabled are social constructs conflicts with everything they have been taught to believe. Moreover, like racism, people tend to define ableism as a personality flaw rather than a systemic phenomenon that drives oppression. Alan B. Johnson expresses this difference succinctly in Privilege, Power and Difference when he writes: “Racist isn’t another word for ‘bad white people,’ just as patriarchy isn’t a bit of nasty code for ‘men.’ Oppression and dominance name social realities that we can participate in without being oppressive or dominating people (Johnson, 10).” This is also true of ableism. It’s not that Sierra, the editors of RH Reality Check, or parents who terminate pregnancies impacted by disability are bad people, but they are impacted by an oppressive system that defines able-bodiedness as the norm and encourages the elimination of characteristics that deviate from that state (disability). Hence, it is possible for them to behave according to ableist preconceptions without harboring malice toward disabled individuals. This is something that Sierrra fails to recognize.

As shown in the comment section, the author of the original article has written a response to my critique. It can be found here.