Moderator: Amanda Marcotte, Blogger, Pandagon, RH Reality Check
The recent election of a pro-choice Congress and President has taken an overturn of Roe v. Wade off the table for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of Americans think they don’t need to worry about reproductive rights or health any longer. But with teenage pregnancy rates soaring, abstinence-only education holding firm, and access to contraception, abortion, cancer screening and reproductive technologies out of the reach of so many, we need to push harder for reproductive justice now more than ever. Many younger women have only been exposed to the mainstream media debate, which has been conducted on anti-choice terms, and innovative strategies are needed to reach the younger generation. The fight has diversified and gone regional. What can we do to fight for women’s health?
I suspect the title is intentionally provocative, but the title is flat-out incorrect. Not only is Roe not the tiniest bit safe, some argue that it has been effectively gutted by Gonazales v. Carhart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Carhart). Because PBA is not clearly defined, it could mean abortion at any stage. Then, of course, there’s the threat of the current Supreme Court. Anyway — this should be better framed. Also need to see who the presenters are.
The broader point — that people are only hearing a pro choice message but perhaps not getting other services/support — is not the fault of the large organizations, which work on everything. I think there’s room for a “continued fight for Roe” AND a panel on over-all health. Roe, sadly, is not safe. But the wide range of sex education AND access to birth control, info on STDS, etc is still crucially important.
There’s nothing wrong with a provocative title, as long as the text of the description clears it up. Clearly Amanda Marcotte doesn’t think Roe is safe and doesn’t need protecting, but presumably many more people will read the description than will actually come to Fem2.0 conference or to that workshop — and *those* people will be left with the unfortunate (and dangerous) perception that even the organizers of a feminist conference believe Roe is safe, so there’s nothing for them to do. Unless you’re writing for The Onion, appearing to endorse a widely-held and incorrect belief is unhelpful at best.
Ditto on the Roe.
Is this about women’s health in general or reproductive justice? The last line confused me.
I think a discussion of birthing options and adoption rights (both for birth mom & adoptive mom) should be discussed. Let’s move the reproductive justice discussion out of the prevention-only arena and into fighting for the rights women need to become mothers.
I want to second Veronica’s comment about birthing options. Currently in Virginia we are dealing with possible legislation to make homebirth VBAC out of reach.
Please see below for more detail:
http://midwifemonologues.com/open-letter-to-delegate-matthew-lohr-virginia-house-of-delegates/
What I want to know is where do choice people go to discuss all the other choices related to reproduction besides abortion? Is it this workshop or the other one on Women’s Health?
I agree that it’s misleading and dangerous to say “roe’s safe” in the title, and to say that an overturn of Roe is “off the table” in the description. This Supreme Court was re-shaped by Bush and could still possibly hear a challenge to Roe. Also, if Obama gets a chance to replace a Supreme Court justice, it most likely will be a liberal justice, which will not change the current make-up of the court.
So, while we definitely need to address the other barriers to reproductive justice that exist beyond Roe, we also need to talk about how to ensure that the basic right to abortion is protected.
The public perception that Roe is safe is the problem—people think reproductive rights stop at abortion, and that abortion stops at Roe, and therefore the election of Obama settled the problem. There is an enormous gap between what feminists know and what the public at large believes. I picked the title with the hopes that if we start to approach the problem as if Roe itself may actually never be overturned directly, it might open up ways of thinking of how to get through to the public that there’s a whole host of issues that are pressing.
I don’t like it one bit, but we have to shift gears. The anti-choice nuts are ahead of the game. They’re beginning to act like Roe is truly safe, and are putting more of their resources towards reducing access to not just abortion, but contraception. This Medicaid fight is, I suspect, a warm-up to what’s going to be a mother of fights, which is whether or not Republicans can use the eventual universal health care bill to strip already existing contraception coverage away from women. I’m fairly certain of it.
The personhood amendment in Colorado was actually rejected by the more mainstream anti-choice movement, and I suspect it was in part because dwelling over the issue of when life begins is becoming a secondary issue to a full throttle attack on contraception access.