There has been a lot of coverage this past week about the Guttmacher Institute's new report "Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress", which shows contraceptive use up and abortion laws becoming more liberal worldwide, and, correspondingly, abortion rates down worldwide. This is great news and shows what family planning advocates have been arguing for years; if you want to lower abortion rates, if you want to lower the rates of women dying and being injured from unsafe abortion, then you need to make contraceptives readily available and abortion legal.

The report also confirms another argument commonly used by abortion rights advocates; abortion rates do not correspond to abortion's legal status- making abortion illegal does not make abortion rates go down, it just puts women at risk.

I'm hopeful, because this report shows a modest trend in the right direction, but I am also tired. None of this is new. Research institutes such as Guttmacher and public health organizations such as the World Health Organization have shown evidence of the need for family planning and realistic policies around abortion for years, and yet this new report made the news as if it was saying something new. I am tired of fighting about these issues and having politics used to undermine facts about women's lives. This report is a confirmation and a call to action to keep fighting for reproductive freedom if we want reproductive health, but it shouldn't be necessary. We should be past this- fighting about how we are going to ensure women's reproductive health, not whether or not women's reproductive health is in trouble.

The Guttmacher Report is fascinating and shows many nuances in reproductive health worldwide, but its frustrating that what it says is controversial news- that women's lives are better and healthier when we can make decisions about our own bodies.

It's been a rollercoaster couple of weeks for men, women and uteruses. I'll start with the bad news:

A new Pew survey shows that support for abortion rights in the US is down significantly from last year. They attribute this partially to Obama's election, with complacency on the side of pro-choicers and fear of Obama's policies among anti-choicers resulting. One bright note: The poll also found that less people see the issue as a game changer (insert quote), meaning maybe abortion is beginning to approach a day where it is not so polarizing.

The Dominican Republic outlawed abortion in every case- meaning no exceptions for life or health of the mother, or rape or incest AT ALL. I'm in agreement with Amnesty International and the UN that this will put women and children's lives at risk

On to the "meh":

An amendment to the health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee was defeated that would tighten language prohibiting federal funds from being used for abortions. This qualifies as "meh", because this leaves the state of insurance for a legal medical procedure in relatively the same flawed place. Good Job Democrats, way to work for my vote.

But on the upside, there are people like Penelope Trunk and Gillian Robespierre.

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It's been a rollercoaster couple of weeks for men, women and uteruses. I'll start with the bad news:

A new Pew survey shows that support for abortion rights in the US is down significantly from last year. They attribute this partially to Obama's election, with complacency on the side of pro-choicers and fear of Obama's policies among anti-choicers resulting. One bright note: The poll also found that less people see the issue as a game changer (insert quote), meaning maybe abortion is beginning to approach a day where it is not so polarizing.

The Dominican Republic outlawed abortion in every case- meaning no exceptions for life or health of the mother, or rape or incest AT ALL. I'm in agreement with Amnesty International and the UN that this will put women and children's lives at risk

On to the "meh":

An amendment to the health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee was defeated that would tighten language prohibiting federal funds from being used for abortions. This qualifies as "meh", because this leaves the state of insurance for a legal medical procedure in relatively the same flawed place. Good Job Democrats, way to work for my vote.

But on the upside, there are people like Penelope Trunk and Gillian Robespierre.

Penelope Trunk twittered about her miscarriage during a board meeting and subsequently owned CNN's Rick Sanchez in the interview at this link. She is willing to take heat for talking about women's bodies, reproductive systems, and abortions as normal and part of life...which they are.

Gillian Robespierre made the following short film (starring Jenny Slate- a new SNL addition) that also puts abortion in a realistic context: not fun, but also not the end of the world.



Women like these make me a bit more optimistic about the future of my uterus.

In 1977, a 43 year old man pushed Champagne and Quaaludes on a 13 year old girl and then proceeded to perform “oral, vaginal and anal intercourse on her despite her demands to keep away”. That sounds pretty much like the definition of a rapist to me, one who should have been sent to jail for a while. But in the case of Roman Polanski, that is not what happened.

The details of this case have been scrutinized by the media many times, so I’ll keep it short. The 13 year old (I am choosing not to use her name, although it is all over the news, because she has asked to be left alone and does not want anymore attention) was introduced to the famous director, by her mother, who was hoping it would further the girl’s acting career. Her talked her into doing a photo shoot at Jack Nicholson’s house involving situations that made her uncomfortable, including topless photos and photos of her drinking champagne. This then progressed to him drugging and raping her while she quietly protested. Anjelica Huston was in the house, but the girl was too scared to tell her what happened. The next day, the girl’s family found out and Roman Polanski was arrested.

Polanski claimed it was consensual, and even Huston claimed that the 13 year old looked like she could have been 25. He took a plea deal of “having sex with a minor” (a lower charge than the original rape charge) and served 42 days of psychiatric testing in prison. When he learned that the judge in the case was preparing to sentence him with more time, he fled the country. Because he had (and still has) French citizenship, he could not be extradited to the United States until this past week.

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Recently, UNESCO and UNFPA issued new voluntary sex ed guidelines that advocate for educating children and young people throughout thier lives in age-appropriate lessons about thier body, sexuality and sexual health.  The UN guidelines for educators, the International Guidelines on Sexuality Education:

are organized around six key concepts: relationships; values, attitudes and skills; culture, society and law; human development; sexual behaviour; and sexual and reproductive health.

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Last week 18 year old South African Caster Semenya took the gold medal in the women's 800 meter at the world athletics championships in Berlin. But she was not able enjoy her gold without accompanying public humilation. Why? Because Semenya has a "masculine appearance" - larger muscles, facial features and hair and deep voice- and she run so fast that many people believe she can't possibly be "all woman". So in front of the world, she is now being subjected to complex and invasive tests to check for any chromosomal or genetic variations that may make her more masculine and give her an "unfair advantage".

I'm being liberal with my use of quotation marks because I think that this whole thing is unfair and ridiculous. A silver lining is possibly a true discussion of what it means to be a man or a woman, and what it means to be an athlete. One on side of the debate are some of Semenya's competitors, who identify her masculine features as proof she should not be allowed to compete as a woman, while on the other side are Semenya's fierce defenders in South Africa, who are outraged that being "too good" somehow suddenly makes her ineligible.

The first thing that annoyed me about this story is that Semenya is being forced to go through this now, after winning the gold and the spotlight, in public. Then I got annoyed that so many media outlets are reporting this as "gender testing" and an issue of "gender". Sorry for the caps, but THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE OF GENDER. Semenya identifies as a woman, she lives in our society as a woman- this is her gender. Biological makeup such as chromosomes and genetics do not define one's gender- this is sex. The least media outlets can do is use words correctly.

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I was excited to go to Netroots Nation this year in PIttsburgh, but that excitement was tempered by some unease. Although I write for Amplify and have written blogs for other websites as well, I do not self-identify as a blogger (I know- gasp!), because to me my work online is a direct and necessary extension of the work I do offline. Unlike many of the people at Netroots, I am skeptical of the power of internet to truly be a democratizing and equalizing force- particularly when knowledge of and access to the internet is limited by socioeconomic status.

I found myself in several conversations at Netroots arguing this point, and was frustrated at times with many attendees/bloggers unquestioning acceptance of the power of blogging and online engagement to change the world around us alone. However, the most realistic treatment I saw of the power of online activism and reality of the multifaceted approach to dealing with privelege and social issues was the group that is supposedbly the most "tech-dependent" group- young people.

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I am in Pittsburgh at Netroots Nation with Advocates for Youth, and I just left a panel called "Building A Conversation Across Generations of Progressive Women".  The panel addressed generational divisions that are said to have arisen from the 2008 primary election between then Senator Hillary Clinton and then Senator Barack Obama. This premise is almost exactly the same to panels I've attended at many other progessive and feminist conferences since the '08 election, because apparently we just can't get over these cavernous divisions. I was interested in attending because I both felt some of these "tensions"  when an old boss told me I owed to my mother a vote for Hillary and saw the issue dealt with very well at a panel during Fem2.0, where the discussion focused on hearing different women's stories and decisionmaking processes without judgement.

This panel did not share the good qualities of the Fem2.0 panel, unfortunately, and by the end of the panel I was shaking and fuming to everyone around me. Well, to be honest, I was shaking by the first couple minutes. Here's a short list of why:

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Yesterday, Brian Ackerman from Advocates for Youth held a brown bag lunch to discuss whether or not the Obama administration and others' "common ground" messaging around reproductive health was regressive or progressive. It was a great discussion, focusing on the dangers of compromise, but also its potential.

I came to the discussion skeptical of the "common ground" messaging: as someone who works with abortion providers and women seeking abortions, I see all to well that common ground ideas pioneered in the 90s with the Democrats' "safe, legal, rare" and prevention first messaging often play out by continuing to stigmatize those involved in abortions and keep it a dirty topic. I am also worried by the Obama administration's framing of sexuality as just about reproduction in its naming of sexual education as "teen pregnancy prevention", because that leaves out everyone for whom sexuality is not only about reproduction, and leaves out valuable information (such as STI prevention).

Finally, the ultimate cynic in me thinks this won't work because we are still focusing on reproduction and women's health as something entirely seperate from the rest of health and life issues, and when in that past has that really worked? Obama is right when he said the right to choose is about women's equality- and as long as we keep women's reproductive choices in a seperate category it is only too easy to continue to oppress women through thier reproduction.

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Nicaragua has a ban on all abortion, including in cases of where life and health of a woman is in danger. The ban comes with potential jail time for both women and health professionals and is one of the most extreme in the world.

As someone who works with women and girls seeking abortions everyday it is no surprise to me, then, that Amnesty International recently released a report with a damning critique of the ban, saying that it is hurting and even killing women.

The report has found that health professionals are passing around women whose health are in danger, because they do not want to be liable for providing an illegal abortion, but they do not want to be liable for deaths either. It is a lose-lose situation for all involved and does nothing to help Nicaragua's previous commitment to lower the rate of maternal mortality.

It is classic example of why seeing the abortion issue as black and white is so problematic: abortion is an important piece of healthcare for women, and without proper healthcare, women die. At least 33 women in Nicaraqua have died from pregnancy complications this year (up from last year). This is probably a low number as many of these things do not get reported, and it does not include women and girls who had non-fatal health complications.

Want to fight for the rights of women and girls in Nicaraqua? Amnesty International and Feministing suggest going here to write a letter to the President of the National Assembly in Nicaraqua asking him to lift the ban.