****SPOILER ALERT!****

Dear Sybil:

First of all, you aren’t alone.  Now in 2012, in July of 1920 when you died, and all the years before that, you weren’t then and aren’t now, alone.

Because even today, every 90 seconds a woman in the world dies from childbirth.   As has been written in other blog posts, of the estimated 210 million women who become pregnant each year, 20 million will experience life-threatening complications.  And 50% of maternal deaths take place in the 48 hours after delivery - just like yours.

You may be wondering what, exactly, killed you. It’s a condition know as eclampsia.  First, you had preeclampsia, evidenced by high blood pressure accompanied by a high level of protein in the urine. Untreated, preeclampsia becomes eclampsia, which is the final and most severe phase, often leading to seizures, coma, and death. We don’t know – even now – exactly what causes it.  Only that being diagnosed early with preeclampsia and being treated for it lessens your chance of it developing. As one of your doctors noted: “once the seizures begin, there’s nothing to be done.”

Here in the United States, pregnancy is still a huge risk to both mother and child.  The U.S. is ranked 50th in the world for maternal death rates, and that’s just because we’ve been steadily declining (death rates nearly doubled  between 1990 and 2008. Compare that to the fact that worldwide, maternal death rates were nearly cut in half during approximately that same period). Every year there are 6 million pregnancies, which basically means every year almost 6 million women are exposed to an enormous number of life-threatening conditions. In recent years, an average of 875,000 women have experienced one or more pregnancy complications in the United States. It’s just one reason why we are so incredulous every time another law passes permitting abortions only in the case of a “threat to the life and health of the mother.”

All pregnancies – as you’ve discovered – potentially threaten the life and health of the mother. Pregnancy is incredibly dangerous for a woman.

But back to you.  The strange thing is that you were living just on the cusp of a revolution in maternal health care. Maternal death rates began to drop dramatically and uniformly in developed countries around the 1930s, mostly due to better training for doctors (trained and experienced midwives had performed the deliveries in the past), and the introduction of a drug which effectively attacked a strain of fever that had been one of the leading causes of maternal death. Both sadly and ironically, conditions such as yours went from being the 3rd leading cause of death in developed nations to the first.

My friends had strong reactions to your death, and not just because we’re invested in your family and in your lives.  But because you were the one who got away. My smart, strong, independent, politically active and feminist friends had barely a chance to get to know you well before you were off to rallies for women’s rights and then to Ireland, having shrugged off your upper class upbringing and married the chauffeur whom you had always loved.

Now it’s true that a lot of us have since become interested in Edith – poor Edith – who is not quite as beautiful as you or Mary and has struggled as the middle child to find her place in the world. When she’s offered a position as a writer for a newspaper column shortly after your death, all we could think was “because that’s what unattractive women without husbands do – get jobs.”

But even so, you were the one who ultimately suffered the greatest punishment of all. You weren’t to be allowed your freedom and your happy life with your loving, working class husband. And truth be told, the pain and fear you went through touched a nerve for so many of my friends – even the middle class, healthy ones who are more likely to come through a pregnancy without complications.

I haven’t been through that stage of my life yet, but as a young woman in her late 20s, I am surrounded by friends who have. Becky has been trying to get pregnant for almost 4 years, and has suffered two miscarriages already. She didn’t see your death coming, and it impacted her deeply.  Jamie’s cousin had had placenta previa, a dangerous condition which left both mother and child fighting viciously for their lives. She, also, was struck silent and then deeply upset by your death.

Jessica Valenti, a feminist author and activist, wrote a compelling article in a magazine called The Guardian about a year ago which has stayed with me. In it, she details her own unexpected battle with pre-eclampsia, and the war she and her newborn daughter each fought to survive.  And how mother and child had then later struggled to bond as naturally as she had been led to believe they would.

On the fringes of such stories, I can hardly imagine such fear and pain for my life.

The risks are many, even almost 100 years after your death.  Today, three of the “Four Horsemen of Maternal Mortality” as they are called, are severe bleeding, infections post childbirth, and high blood pressure (preeclampsia and eclampsia, as you experienced).

The fourth is, of course, unsafe abortions. Every year, 42 million women seek abortions to terminate unwanted and unplanned pregnancies.  Half of those procedures are deemed unsafe, and 68,000 women die as a result each year, accounting for 13% of the global maternal mortality rate.  Of those who undergo an unsafe abortion and manage to survive, 5 million of them suffer serious, long-term health complications. Where you live in the United Kingdom, abortion wasn’t legal until 1967 – and even then, the law didn’t extend to Ireland.  It is only recently, after the death of a woman named Savita Praveen Halappanavar, who was denied an abortion at an Irish hospital and later died from pregnancy-related complications, that the country is considering altering their strict laws regarding abortion.

Of the hundreds of thousands of women who died last year due to complications from pregnancy, most of them suffered deaths that could have been fairly easily avoided. 35% of babies around the world are still delivered without the aid of a nurse, midwife, or doctor, significantly increasing the chances that mother or child or both will die.  Too many are delivering children with no prenatal care, no electricity, and in locations prone to infections and disease.

One of your doctors insisted that all was well, and both you and your baby would be fine. The other appropriately diagnosed you and claimed that your life would be at risk unless you were rushed to the hospital and the baby immediately delivered. As it turns out, the latter was right.

Better information, increased access to health care facilities, and the attention of competent health care professionals all dramatically increase the chances of survival and dramaticallydecrease the chances for complications and health problems for both mother and child.And some studies show that increased access to contraception and family planning could decrease maternal mortality rates by almost 1/3.

It’s too late to save you.  And I don’t know how my friends and I will feel as we wait for next week’s episode to show us how it is possible for a family to come through such a tragedy – even though hundreds of thousands of families do, every year, all over the world.

But what we can do is press on.  We can continue our work to end maternal mortality, which we’ve had quite a lot of success at over the past decade especially.  True, we have a long way to go before we are able to say that we have reduced these deaths by 75% from 1990 to 2015, as the United Nations Millenium Development Goals declare. But 13% of countries are on track to meet that goal and since 1980, there’s been a 35% decrease in maternal deaths globally.  This is progress.  Although it’s slow, we are at least heading in the right direction, increasing access to contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place, expanding health care services to the most vulnerable (poor, rural women in developing countries), and training health care professionals in maternal care.

We’re better off now than we were at the time of your death. But the truth is that your death could have easily happened in the world we live in today as well.  And saving the lives of the 210 million women who will get pregnant this year needs to remain one of the highest and most urgent priorities of the global community.

We’ll miss you, Sybil.

- Abigail, a fan.

This post is originally published on Left Standing Up and is cross posted with permission.

Photo credit: homestilo via photopin cc.

It’s here!  I can’t believe tomorrow is finally Election Day.  By now you’re probably exhausted from all of the pleas for your vote.  I know I am.  But hopefully you’ve already registered and, if you didn’t vote early or by absentee, you plan to vote tomorrow at a polling station.  Well if you’re tired of being asked to vote and already plan to, ask someone else to vote!  You could also volunteer to knock on doors, tweet, post an article to Facebook, make phones calls, do whatever you can.  The possibilities for activism are endless, and crucial when there are still people out there who are apathetic, discouraged, or not making it a priority to vote for whatever reason.  I couldn’t convince my 19-year-old brother to vote, but maybe there’s still time to convince the undecided 19-year-old you know!  Every vote counts.

Women and all who love women seriously need to rock the vote tomorrow and protect our rights!  We know what’s at stake.  If you’re still convincing someone to vote, and also don’t forget to vote for marriage equality in the states where it’s on the ballot, here are a plethora of posts from Fem2pt0 for you to share with someone right now:

• Undecided Women, Don’t be Fooled: Your Control of Birth IS ABOUT Jobs
• What Women Want 2012: A YWCA USA National Survey of Priorities and Concerns
• Do Women’s Reasons for Having Abortions Matter? No…and Yes, and Here’s Why
• Pandering and Lip Service Not Required: Romney Isn’t A Mystery On Women’s Issues
• Is it Your Body or Not? Draw The Line, People
• #Motherfkd: Economy Will Suffer If People Cannot Plan Parenthood
• Women: A Helpful Chart for Determining What to Trade Your Fundamental Rights For
• Legislators: Women Are Not Cows and Pigs
• Todd Akin: It’s Not a War on Women. It’s a War on Critical Thinking and Democracy
• 10 Tips for Avoiding Jail When You’re Pregnant

And one more time… VOTE!

Photo credit Theresa Thompson via the Creative Commons License.

50 years ago, women attending college wasn’t nearly as commonplace as it is these days.  And if they did, nine times out of ten it was only for them to get their “MRS” degree. For those of you unfamiliar with this degree plan, it’s when a woman goes to college not to pursue any educational pursuits or ambitions, but to find a man actively pursuing his, marry him and then proceed to live out her days as a devoted wife and mother.

Before I go any further, I want to stress that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing this if it’s really what your heart desires.  Some people long to do nothing more and nothing less than raise a family—and that’s nothing to scoff at.  Parenting is the toughest gig in the world. You’re in complete control of another human’s existence, and you don’t get to take a vacation from it.  If that’s not overwhelming then I don’t know what is.

Opting to be a homemaker because your husband and others around you deem his professional endeavors more worthwhile than yours is where we start to have problems.  The “MRS” system implied that things HAD to be a certain way. The woman was supposed to give up her hopes and dreams to find a man because God forbid she end up alone and possibly INDEPENDENT…OH MY! Luckily for me and future generations of free-thinking women everywhere the times have changed.

At colleges across the globe women are studying everything from aerospace engineering to elementary education. Our interests and talents are far and wide and our involvement on university campuses reflects that.

More women than ever before are enrolled in school and pursuing higher education, and not only that, they are said to be outnumbering their male counterparts. According to the U.S. Department of Education 12.1 million women were enrolled in a degree-granting institution compared to just 9.1 million men. Compare that to statistics from 1970, which showed male, female enrollment at 5 million and 3.5 million, respectively.

Talk about changing tides. Data also revealed that women are gaining ground in traditionally male-dominated fields such as business and math-based disciplines.  So, not only are they getting at home on campus, girls are branching out of their traditional comfort zones, likely in an attempt to remain competitive in this fierce economy.

Another way women are striving to stay employable is by gaining not only bachelor’s but masters and doctorate degrees as well.  In the last few years, statistics have shown that women have consistently earned the majority of masters and doctorate degrees. That’s an impressive accomplishment when you look at where they were just 30 years prior.

However, amidst all of this progress, there is still one area where women have yet to surpass men, and that is in the realm of equal compensation.  A year out of college, women are said to be earning 80 percent less than their male counterparts. Some say it’s partially because of the tendency for women to go for professions that historically pay less, but analysts says that’s not enough to account for the immense pay gap.

News like this is nothing but discouraging. What does this teach the present and future generations of women? That their work and effort is not valued? That they still need a “man” to succeed and thrive? Whatever the cause, we can all agree it’s sending a conflicting message to our planet’s female population—both young and old.

Women and men alike need to unite and stand for equality together, because until someone stands up to the broken system, what hope do we have of it changing?

Maria Rainier is a freelance blogger and writer for several educational websites and regularly updates an online degrees blog. Maria believes that online degrees and online universities are the future of higher learning. She is interested in all things concerned with higher education and is particularly passionate about life after college. Please share your comments with her.

Photo credit NazarethCollege via the Creative Commons License.

by Katherine Mullen, Jeffrey C. Lunnen and Rachel Piazza, Founders of Feminist Friends

With only 19 days before the 2012 election, the War on Women is intensifying. While Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s flip-flopping statements on women’s health in last night’s presidential debate might suggest a truce, you can be sure that threats to women’s reproductive freedoms are still as prevalent and ludicrous as ever. The War on Women has been raging since the early 2000s when newly-emboldened conservative groups began to attack women’s reproductive rights. Since then, reproductive rights advocates have tirelessly defended these threats to control women’s reproductive capacities, but by doing so, they have unwittingly entered into a dangerous game of tug-of-war. What’s at stake in this reactionary tug-of-war, which locks reproductive rights advocates into a perpetual power struggle with conservatives, is the recognition of women as whole persons.

The consequences of this analogical game go beyond calculated attempts to limit access to abortion and birth control. In this tug-of-war, women’s bodies are dismembered and their humanity diminished. While one side attempts to strip women of the ability to end or prevent a pregnancy and another side works to safeguard that right, the focus is solely on the uterus. This struggle divorces the uterus from the woman and treats the uterus as an independent entity that functions separately from her body and life. In the end, actual living, breathing women become irrelevant and simply viewed as incubators whose purpose and worth is to bear children.

Make no mistake, reproductive rights advocates have had no choice but to respond aggressively to the hard-hitting attacks against women’s reproductive health, again and again. The implications of letting the conservative right run with the other end of the rope are too catastrophic to consider inaction as an option. Yesterday’s second presidential debate clearly foreshadowed these implications when Mitt Romney boldly asserted that every woman should have access to contraceptives even though he has made it clear that if elected, he will defund Planned Parenthood, a major provider of healthcare for millions of women. However, the discourse that reproductive rights advocates have engaged in has been shortsighted. Women’s reproductive capacities play a role in their lives, but they do not define them. As whole human beings, women are more than their biological parts. In fact, being a woman does not require “female” anatomy. Reproductive rights advocates often lose sight of the fact that women – who constitute half the world’s population – are incredibly diverse, live their lives in a myriad of ways and experience intersecting oppressions (racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, etc.) in a world that seeks to control and limit their lives.

Reproductive health and rights can not be separated from economic security, education, political representation and healthy families and communities. A woman’s “choice” goes beyond the decision to end a pregnancy. Her life choices regarding her fertility and reproductive capabilities are made within, and often determined by the contexts of her life. As women’s rights advocates, we have a responsibility to re-define and broaden the discourse that dismembers women. We must reclaim women as whole persons who struggle not only for access to reproductive health, but as people who fight for economic, political and social rights.

With this simplistic tug-of-war dominating the struggle for reproductive rights, the idea of promoting reproductive freedom by treating women as whole persons may seem too daunting in the daily struggle of pushing back the onslaught of conservative attacks. However, organizations and feminist activists that have been addressing reproductive issues within the context of women’s complex and multifaceted lives give us a model and starting point from which we can begin to redefine the discussion.

Feminist Friends recently sat down with the staff of Maternity Care Coalition (MCC), a non-profit organization in Philadelphia that addresses the needs of pregnant and parenting women from a reproductive justice standpoint. Going beyond the single-minded focus on abortion and birth control that dominates mainstream debate, MCC is a model in supporting reproductive rights and health by treating women as whole people.

“At MCC, we work toward a more just world for women and girls. By advocating for policies that support the breadth of roles that women fill, we put the reproductive justice philosophy in practice,” said JoAnne Fischer, Executive Director at Maternity Care Coalition. Whether it’s supporting breastfeeding in the workplace or working to end pregnancy discrimination, MCC is actively engaged in cultivating a society that embraces women as full participants in every sphere (public and private).

Refusing to engage in the existing tug-of-war discourse surrounding reproductive rights, organizations like Maternity Care Coalition have slipped below the mainstream media’s radar. However, their work is an example of how the reproductive rights discourse needs to be reframed to take into account the complexities of women’s reproductive decisions in the context of their lives.

The responsibility to honor women as whole people whose reproductive choices are a part of their multidimensional lives rests on the shoulders of women’s rights advocates. The very people who have (s)heroically defended women’s bodily autonomy must heed the call to step outside the reductive discourse that has defined women as merely body parts and redirect the focus to advocating for women’s personal autonomy in every aspect of life. This effort is not one that is accomplished overnight. Steph Herold, reproductive justice activist and founder of IAmDrTiller.com, confirmed this notion.

“Shifting from a “pro-choice” framework into one that celebrates and fights for reproductive justice is something that will take years–we have to be in this for the long haul,” she said. Herold also insisted that “(b)eing honest about where we are and not shying away from (intra-feminist) conversations is what will ultimately build a cohesive movement for reproductive justice that seeks to dismantle all oppression, including racism, transphobia, classism, sexism–all the forces that keep people from having the healthy families they want.”

Ms. Herold is correct. This journey toward women’s personhood is a long and arduous one. Taking it together can lead us to a place where we begin to recognize women as whole, living persons. Eventually, focusing only on a person’s reproductive organs will be a preposterous notion. Shifting the discourse to allow for a more complex discussion of women as whole people will begin to change the way we all think about respecting and protecting the sanctity of life. By recognizing women as fully alive, and wholly human, our bodies will cease to be public property. This journey is worth taking, and as feminists, one we must embark on together.

Katherine Mullen is a feminist writer and activist. She earned a Master of Science in Women’s and Gender Studies from Towson University and currently blogs at Feminist Conscience. Katherine’s work has also been published on Fem2pt0 and Feministing. She is passionate about using her interdisciplinary knowledge of gender studies, international affairs, communications and writing skills to achieve feminist goals. 

Jeffrey C. Lunnen is a Research Program Coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. Graduated with honors from Salisbury University on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Jeffrey has undergraduate degrees in Spanish and History–with a focus on women’s rights in the Americas. He also holds a Master of Science in Women’s and Gender Studies from Towson University. Jeffrey is bilingual and has published both English and Spanish. You can find him on Twitter: @elchavodorado

Rachel Piazza earned a Master of Science in Women’s & Gender Studies from Towson University. Rachel currently works as a sexual health educator for youth in Delaware. Passionate about bridging feminist academia and activism, Rachel has presented her work at the National Organization for Women’s (NOW) National Action Center, the 2011 and 2012 National NOW Conferences, the Mid Atlantic Popular American Culture Conference and Towson University. Rachel’s work has also been published in the book “And Finally We Meet: Intersections and Intersectionality Among Academics, Activists and Students.”

Photo credit Gage Skidmore via the Creative Commons License.

This piece is originally published on Role/Reboot. Republished here with permission.

Lynn Beisner explains the difference between the two phrases “The best choice for both my mother and I would have been abortion” and “I wish I had never been born.”

If there is one thing that anti-choice activists do that makes me see red, it is when they parade out their poster children: men, women, and children who were “targeted for abortion.” They tell us “these people would not be alive today if abortion had been legal or if their mothers had made a different choice.”

In the past couple of months, I have read two of these abortion deliverance stories that have been particularly offensive. The first story is one propagated by Rebecca Kiessling, the poster child for the no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. On her website Kiessling says that every time we say that abortion should be allowed at least in the case of rape or incest we are saying to her: “If I had my way, you’d be dead right now.” She goes onto say, “I absolutely would have been aborted if it had been legal in Michigan when I was an unborn child, and I can tell you that it hurts [when people say that abortion should be legal.]”

The second story was on the Good Men Project this week. In an article entitled, “Delivered from Abortion: Healing a Forgotten Memory,” Gordon Dalbey tells a highly unlikely story about his mother’s decision to abort him and her eventual change of heart. I say that the story is highly unlikely because the type of abortion he says his mother was about to have was not available until 50 years later. However, Dalbey claims to have recovered a memory of being “delivered” from the abortion because as a fetus he cried out to God. He claims that the near-abortion experience had caused him psychological suffering throughout his life. Since recovering the memory, he has experienced survivor’s guilt because he was saved when so many other fetuses have been aborted. In explaining how he overcame this guilt, he quotes a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who says that the purpose of surviving is to testify to the experience.

What makes these stories so infuriating to me is that they are emotional blackmail. As readers or listeners, we are almost forced by these anti-choice versions of A Wonderful Life to say, “Oh, I am so glad you were born.” And then by extension, we are soon forced into saying, “Yes, of course, every blastula of cells should be allowed to develop into a human being.”

Stories like Mr. Dalbey’s are probably effective because they follow the same model. First there is a woman facing the unplanned pregnancy that poses severe problems. In Dalbey’s case, his family is suffering from extreme poverty, and in the case of Kiessling, her mother is dealing with the aftermath of rape. The story shifts so that the mother has a divine or moral enlightenment and knows that she must carry the baby to term. We are left with an adult praising the bravery of their mothers and testifying that their lives were saved for some higher purpose. But the story goes on to tell us how even the contemplation of abortion was horribly scarring for the person. The moral of these stories is clear: Considering abortion is like considering genocide.

Here is why it is so effective: People freak out when you tell an opposing story. I make even my most ardent pro-choice friends and colleagues very uncomfortable when I explain why my mother should have aborted me. Somehow they confuse the well-considered and rational: “The best choice for both my mother and I would have been abortion” with the infamous expression of depression and angst: “I wish I had never been born.” The two are really very different things, and we must draw that distinction clearly.

The narrative that anti-choice crusaders are telling is powerful, moving, and best of all, it has a happy ending. It makes the woman who carries to term a hero, and for narrative purposes, it hides her maternal failing. We cannot argue against heroic, redemptive happy-ending fairy tales using cold statistics. If we want to keep our reproductive rights, we must be willing to tell our stories, to be willing and able to say, “I love my life, but I wish my mother had aborted me.”

An abortion would have absolutely been better for my mother. An abortion made it more likely that she would finish high school and get a college education. At college in the late 1960s, it seems likely that she would have found feminism or psychology or something that would have helped her overcome her childhood trauma and pick better partners. She would have been better prepared when she had children. If nothing else, getting an abortion would have saved her from plunging into poverty. She likely would have stayed in the same socioeconomic strata as her parents and grandparents who were professors. I wish she had aborted me because I love her and want what is best for her.

Abortion would have been a better option for me. If you believe what reproductive scientists tell us, that I was nothing more than a conglomeration of cells, then there was nothing lost. I could have experienced no consciousness or pain. But even if you discount science and believe that I had consciousness and could experience pain at six gestational weeks, I would chose the brief pain or fear of an abortion over the decades of suffering I endured.

An abortion would have been best for me because there is no way that my love-starved trauma-addled mother could have ever put me up for adoption. It was either abortion or raising me herself, and she was in no position to raise a child. She had suffered a traumatic brain injury, witnessed and experienced severe domestic violence, and while she was in grade school she was raped by a stranger and her mother committed suicide. She was severely depressed and suicidal, had an extremely poor support system, was experiencing an unplanned pregnancy that resulted from coercive sex, and she was so young that her brain was still undeveloped.

With that constellation of factors, there was a very high statistical probability that my mother would be an abusive parent, that we would spend the rest of our lives in crushing poverty, and that we would both be highly vulnerable to predatory organizations and men. And that is exactly what happened. She abused me, beating me viciously and often. We lived in bone-crushing poverty, and our little family became a magnet for predatory men and organizations. My mother found minimal support in a small church, and became involved with the pastor who was undeniably schizophrenic, narcissistic, and sadistic. The abuse I endured was compounded by deprivation. Before the age of 14, I had never been to a sleep-over, been allowed to talk to a friend on the phone, eaten in a restaurant, watched a television show, listened to the radio, read a non-Christian book, or even worn a pair of jeans.

If this were an anti-choice story, this is the part where I would tell you how I overcame great odds and my life now has special meaning. I would ask you to affirm that, of course, you are happy I was born, and that the world would be a darker, poorer place without me.

It is true that in the past 12 years, I have been able to rise above the circumstances of my birth and build a life that I truly love. But no one should have to make such a Herculean struggle for simple normalcy. Even given the happiness and success I now enjoy, if I could go back in time and make the choice for my mother, it would be abortion.

The world would not be a darker or poorer place without me. Actually, in terms of contributions to the world, I am a net loss. Everything that I have done—including parenting, teaching, researching, and being a loving partner—could have been done as well if not better by other people. Any positive contributions that I have made are completely offset by what it has cost society to help me overcome the disadvantages and injuries of my childhood to become a functional and contributing member of society.

It is not easy to say, “I wish my mother would have aborted me.” The Right would have us see abortion as women acting out of cowardice, selfishness, or convenience. But for many women, like my mother, abortion would be an inconvenient act of courage and selflessness. I am sad for both of us that she could not find the courage and selflessness. But my attitude is that as long as I am already here, I might as well do all I can to make the world a better place, to ease the suffering of others, and to experience love and life to its fullest.

Lynn Beisner is the pseudonym for a mother, a writer, a feminist, and an academic living somewhere East of the Mississippi. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo Credit lunar caustic via the Creative Commons License.

The 2012 Olympics in London have been heralded as a win for feminism in many ways — some calling it the Title IX games even. And there’s a lot to celebrate for women in these games.

But as the old poem says, we have miles to go before we sleep.

If you’ve watched any part of the Olympics, no doubt you’ve seen at least one of the P&G commercials celebrating moms.  Now, I’m a mother myself and I admit, there’s a certain part of me that gets a little misty when I think about all the sacrifices families must make to help an Olympian achieve their dream.

And then I watch a P&G commercial — for a brand that peddles paper towels and household cleaning products — and I see how the company is exploiting my mom mojo: P&G values moms.  And moms buy household cleaning stuff… because moms clean the house! I didn’t even need to be an Olympian to make that leap.

Enough with the sexist ads P&G!

For one thing, despite the catchy jingle, it’s not just moms who have the magic in the household cleaning department. And for another, this campaign is like getting hit in the head by a two-by-four of social norms.  Only women (aka moms) are parents and therefore deserving of accolades.  Only moms sacrifice. Sorry dads, grandparents, aunts, sisters, brothers, foster/adoptive parents, step parents; your skills, sacrifice, love, and support doesn’t apply here.  Move along.

But it doesn’t stop there.  NBC, which covers the Olympics exclusively, leaves no stone unturned when it comes to dialing up the drama by exploiting the mom mojo.  Of course there are shots of anxious parents in the crowd, watching their Olympian go for gold.  (I don’t even mind that so much.)  But when the announcers start pouring it on too…  Well, it’s so bad that Slate has brought back the Sap-o-meter.

Yes, mothers (and fathers) are proud of their Olympic-caliber offspring. They should be! But doesn’t it distract from the stature of Olympians when we infantilize them to push products?  These people have dedicated their lives to becoming the best athletes in the world.  Let’s show them some respect!

And what about the Olympians who are parents? What about beach volleyball team Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May-Treanor, who are going for their third consecutive gold medals in their sport (which, by the way, would be a historic feat in that sport)?  Walsh Jennings is a mother herself, which is why I was doubly offended when John McEnroe referred to the Olympian and her team-mate as “girls,” while talking to Bob Costas. These are not teenage gymnasts — whom I would argue you should call “young women” out of respect for their hard work and discipline as athletes.  These are thirty-somethings with husbands and kids and fully developed adult lives.  They are not girls.

Let’s move on. And in the spirit of the games, move forward.

Photo Credit marcopako  via the Creative Commons License.

Melissa Byrne is happy to see a woman in charge at a Fortune 500 company, but does not agree with Marissa Mayer’s support of Wal-Mart, which she says is known for exploiting its workers.

I think its is easy for us to agree, especially those who identify as female, that it is still hard to be a woman in America. We are disproportionately lower wage workers. We are rarely seen as CEOs, even less rare as board members. We have to worry about how getting pregnant might affect our careers. We sometimes can’t walk from point A to point B without getting sexual advances from men we’d rather ignore. We get bombarded with articles wondering if we can have it all. We are judged on if we marry, if we don’t, if we have a baby, if we don’t, if we nurse, if we don’t…the list is endless.

So, I think it is easy to see why women and men across the country are excited to see a young, pregnant woman chosen to be the newest CEO of Yahoo!. Between my Twitter feed and Facebook feed, Marissa Mayer has taken over updates, tweets, and retweets. There is a lot of excitement to see the walls of the boys’ suite in the business torn down a little bit. And, I must admit, there is a little, tiny part of me that is always happy to see a woman succeed. I also want to roll my eyes at the naysayeers who are judging Yahoo!’s decision to hire a pregnant woman. Especially, because now the whole literati gets to debate the details of Marissa’s maternity leave.

For me, though, I am less than thrilled to see Marissa advance in her career because I take seriously the impact of decisions on low wage workers, especially women. In June, Marissa was elected to the board of directors of Wal-Mart after being nominated in April.

Wal-Mart and its founders, the Walton family, have built an empire based on the simple calculation of exploitation. They pay the lowest wages. They hire fancy firms to lead union busting campaigns. They priced Mom and Pop stores out of business. They’ve sold sweatshop made products in their store. Honestly, I could write a several articles on the problematic aspects of Wal-Mart. I haven’t even touched on their political donations, former role in ALEC, and many others decisions they have made over the years.

I am concerned that young girls and grown women will look to Marissa as inspiration for a corporate career. But, behind her stunning rise up the corporate ladder, is an abdication of her responsibility as a human being to do the right thing by her community. As soon as she embraced her role on the Board of Wal-Mart and praised their business, she became part of a corporate culture that deprives so many of our neighbors of their basic dignity. She accepted that there is systematic pay discrimination against women. She accepted that many of associates have to go on Medicaid because they don’t offer health insurance.

I’m worried the values of Wal-Mart—greed at any cost—will seep into the still growing tech sector. Will Marissa become chummies with the Waltons? Will they trade secrets on union busting? Will she influence Yahoo!’s political giving to support conservative, anti-worker candidates?

I want women to succeed at business. But, I want no one to succeed at business who doesn’t respect the rights and dignity of workers, especially low-wage workers, most of whom are women.

I do wish Marissa the best. Mostly, I wish that she would spend a few days with low-wage workers and decide to leave Wal-Mart.

Today is the National Day of Action to Raise the Federal Minimum Wage.  Take action now.

Melissa Byrne likes gardening, posting too much on Facebook, and experimenting with quinoa. She has been a long-time organizer and first noticed gender discrimination as a first grader when the boys had twice as much playground area as the girls. Right now, she is working on ending the jobs crisis and loves all things about Social Security.  This post is originally published on Role/Reboot and is cross-posted with permission.

Image Credit LeWEB12 via the Creative Commons License.

Yesterday the House Judiciary passed a ban on abortions in DC, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or health of the mother.  Bria Murray, a survivor of rape, responds to Representative Trent Franks’ comments from the debate for the ban.  The post is originally published on RH Reality Check and is cross posted with permission.

Dear Representative Trent Franks,

Today, I watched you debate during the markup for H.R. 3803, or, as you may know it, the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortion after 20 weeks in Washington, DC. I watched you valiantly fight to save “the children” from their pain even in the case of rape or incest, or when a mother has been diagnosed with cancer and the treatment needed to save her life is incompatible with the continuation of her pregnancy. I watched you warn the rest of the judiciary committee that abortions are linked to higher rates of suicide, even though this “fact,” and the basis for the bill itself (that 20-week-old fetuses can feel pain) flies in the face of all accredited scientific evidence.

And all I could think about was September 7, 2007.

It may seem strange to you. September 7, 2007 was almost 5 years ago. Why think about that now? And why such a specific date?

September 7, 2007 was the night I was raped.

September 7, 2007 was the night that my rapist’s sperm met my egg and I was impregnated with the child of my rapist.

I thought about all of this as I watched you passionately advocate on behalf of “the tiny little babies” and the only reaction I could muster was “how dare you.”

How dare you, Representative Franks. Your claim of caring about the “pain of the tiny babies” rings hollow when one remembers your support of the Ryan Budget, which would have slashed over $36 billion from food assistance programs. You called them “slush funds” and “runaway federal spending.” This from a member of the House of Representatives, who makes more in a month than I do in a year.

How dare you, Representative Franks. Your claim of caring about the “increased risk of suicide” among those who seek abortions rings hollow when, again and again, you have voted to strip people like me of health care by voting for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the slashing of Medicare and Medicaid. These programs that I, personally, rely on so that I can afford counseling to help me deal with the trauma of being raped.  After all, “health care” involves your mental health as well.

How dare you, Representative Franks. Your faux concern for the physical and mental well-being of parents and their children is sickening when you have over and over again proven your concern for both is nonexistent.

What about the parents who would qualify for health care coverage under the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act (HR 847)? Does their pain matter to you? Obviously not, since you voted against that bill.

What about the pain and struggle of working-class families, many of whom are facing foreclosure? That obviously doesn’t matter to you either, as you voted against both the Temporary Extension of Tax Relief (HR 4853) and Aiding Those Facing Foreclosure Act (HR 5510).

What about the pain of immigrant families who are being torn apart by deportation? Their pain would have been at least partially alleviated by the DREAM Act (HR 5281), which you also voted against.

And the list continues, Representative Franks. You have voted against extending unemployment benefits multiple times, against providing aid to states for, among other things, Medicaid and teacher employment, and against food safety and environmental protection regulations.

And, to bring this letter full-circle, how dare you, Representative Franks. How dare you claim to care about pregnant people and the babies they are carrying when you voted to deny federal funding to Planned Parenthood, the very organization that helped empower me to keep my baby.

Because, you see, Representative Franks, after I found out I was carrying my rapist’s child, I was scared – more scared than you could ever possibly fathom. Originally, I went to one of those “life-affirming” crisis pregnancy centers, as it was closer to me than a Planned Parenthood.

It was there I was told that after I explained my situation, I was told that, face it, I would probably not make a good mother. After all, look at the “mess” I had gotten myself into. I was encouraged to “do the right thing” and give my baby to a couple who could “give it a better life” than I ever could. Why, I would have couples lining up at my door to adopt!  After all, I was young and healthy and, most importantly, white.  I ran from that center feeling more traumatized than the night I was raped.

It wasn’t until I took the hour bus ride to a Planned Parenthood that I was presented with the revolutionary option of carrying and raising my own child. I was given information about how to apply for runaway federal spending, er, excuse me, food stamps, TANF and Medicaid. I was asked if I had access to prenatal care, and, if not, did I know that I could get it right here? They gave me the information for a local rape crisis center that could connect me with counseling so I had some one to help me through the trauma that I had experienced. Yes, abortion was presented to me as an option, but it was in no way pushed on me. Abortion, adoption and parenting were all given equal credence. And, most importantly, I was told that Planned Parenthood would do their best to support me in whatever decision I made.

In case you are wondering, Representative Franks, this is what caring for women and babies looks like. Caring for women and babies is presenting them with true, unbiased facts as part of comprehensive program that supports a person no matter the choice they make.

Caring for women and babies is not forcing poor women (as 42 percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes below 100 percent of the federal poverty level, and 27 percent have incomes between 100–199 percent of the federal poverty level) to have babies, and then providing them with no assistance feeding those babies, or making sure those babies are born and stay healthy.

As Representative Quigley asked during the debate today, how can you, sitting in that sterile committee room, know what is best for a woman and her family? Or, to put a more personal touch to it, how can you – a white male, who will never have to worry about facing an unintended pregnancy and who is, I would assume, at the very least not struggling financially – know what is best for me – an unemployed rape survivor who has no idea if they will even have a roof over their head next month? The answer is you can’t, Representative Franks, and that is why you must do your best to support all options a person could possibly make regarding an unintended pregnancy, even if you do not agree with it.

If you cannot do this, Representative Franks, then, please, don’t ever claim you “care” about me or my son or the millions of other families with situations like mine. Because, obviously, you don’t.

Sincerely,

Bria Murray

A note on sources: Representative Franks’ voting record was provided by Project Vote Smart.  All facts about induced abortion (both statistical and those related to health effects) were provided by the Guttmacher Institute.  Fetal pain studies can be found in the Journal of American Medicine.  

Due to an editorial error, dates reported in this article earlier were incorrect. The current version includes all correct dates. We regret the error.

Photo credit Gage Skidmore via the Creative Commons License.

Being a feminist mother means doing the hard shit. Lynn Beisner shares the harrowing incident that made her willing to do whatever it takes.

Trigger warning: Article includes descriptive scenes of an injured animal. If you’re an animal lover like us, just be prepared.

I became a feminist because God did not keep his end of a rather simple bargain I had made with him. I was willing to suffer the indignities and abuse of being less than a person, of being a will-free person, but God had to understand that I could not watch a child of mine go through the same thing. So we struck a deal. I would stay “complementarian” (the religious term for making women less than fully human), a sweetly submissive wife. But in return, all of my children would have to be sons.

So on the night that my first child, a daughter, was born, I gave up on godly womanhood. But becoming a feminist proved harder. I knew little about it, and what little I did know seemed to conflict with my role as mother. I struggled with the conflict for years until it was resolved by something horrible that happened to my daughter when she was in her early teens.

My daughter, Kassie, had spent the night at my mother and step-father’s home. They lived in the same rural county as we did, so she could catch the bus to her middle school just by standing at the end of the long lane that was my parent’s driveway. My daughter had no sooner gotten to the end of the long driveway that morning when she discovered that there right beside her bus stop was a deer who had been hit by a car. It was gravely injured and bellowing in pain. My daughter ran back to the house and begged her grandfather to come down and put the deer down to save it from an further suffering. But my step-father decided he couldn’t afford the cost of a shot-gun shell; he was saving all that he had in case a snake crossed his property, or a homosexual came sauntering by. My parents are not that poor, but my step-father simply could not be bothered.  My daughter cried and pleaded with him to please put the deer out of its misery. Instead, he ordered my daughter to go back out and stand at that bus stop, next to that deer dying in excruciating pain, and wait until the bus came. Twice she went back to plead for help, and each time she was turned away more harshly.

The bus was late that day, so my daughter endured more than 20 minutes of some of the worst psychological torture I could imagine for an empathic animal lover. The deer’s gut had taken most of the blow, so it was suffering the excruciating death of an abdominal injury. Its legs thrashed with pain, and its bowels and bladder would let loose as it lapsed into unconscious. Each time she would think it was dead, but it would quickly regain consciousness and the waves of agony would cause it to scream and claw at the ground mindlessly again. To this day, she cannot forget the eyes of that deer as he suffered a cruel and torturous death and they haunt her dreams. When the bus finally pulled up, the gruesome scene and my daughter’s hysterical grief traumatized an entire busload of children.

My step-father may have been the soulless bastard who refused to put a suffering animal out of its misery or spare his granddaughter and her schoolmates that trauma, but my mother is the person who stood by and let him do it. She would not defy him because she is not a feminist. And because she is not a feminist she has been unable to perform the most basic role of mothering: protecting children.

When my daughter told me what had happened to her that day, I was incredibly grieved and concerned for her. But in the days and weeks that followed, as I mulled it over, something inside of me shifted causing the tension between motherhood and feminism to vanish.

Why? Here is what a feminist mother would have done: She would have ignored her husband’s orders, made sure my daughter was somewhere safe and comforting, taken the shotgun and killed the deer herself. Had she been unable to get his firearm away from her husband, she would have collected the sledge hammer from the garden shed, hauled it down that very long driveway, and knelt beside that deer. She would have cried, looked him in the eye and told him how sorry she was for his suffering and that she was there to make his pain end. Then she would have raised that sledge hammer and used every ounce of strength in her body to bring it down on his skull. After making sure the animal was finally at peace, she would have made sure that her granddaughter had the kind of comfort and support she needed and covered the body with a tarp so that the kids on the bus would not have been traumatized.

We have told women that they can “have it all”—fulfillment in their work and home lives. I am here to say something different. I am here to tell you that being a feminist mother means doing the really hard shit. It means marching your ass down the driveway and delivering the mercy blow to an injured deer when that is what is needed. It also means that we march our asses into the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies and into the legislative and executive offices of government and we put this poor miserable patriarchy out of its misery. We do it not because we are power-hungry or money-hungry or man-haters. We do the really hard shit of bringing meaningful equality to our boardrooms and elected offices because we know that this is the way to make the world better for our children, and that is the “all” that feminists really want.

Note: Kassie, not her real name, gave her permission for me to tell her story. Readers should also know that in our rural, southern county, there is no one to call to care for injured wildlife. You either end the animal’s suffering yourself, or it dies horribly over a matter of hours.

Lynn Beisner is the pseudonym for a mother, a writer, a feminist, and an academic living somewhere East of the Mississippi. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter.  This article is originally published on Role/Reboot and is cross-posted with permission.

 Photo Credit dbaron via the Creative Commons License.

Last week the Supreme Court declared that Obamacare was constitutional and this was a huge victory for women’s health.  Once Obamacare goes into effect health insurance companies won’t charge women more money and birth control will be covered.  But the fight for women’s health does not end here, as other health issues affecting women need to be addressed too, including HIV/AIDS.

I’ll be honest: I’m a Feminist, but on a daily basis I don’t think about how HIV/ AIDS affects women.  That isn’t to say that I don’t understand the severity of the AIDS epidemic.  It’s just that this issue hasn’t been on my radar like other women’s issues have been.  That’s why I hoped to learn a lot last Thursday when I went to an event at the ICRW entitled, “AIDS-Free Generation?  Not Without Women.”

The event featured nine speakers from noted women’s organizations, all working to fight AIDS.  The speakers opened up a discussion about the severity of the spread of this disease, and more crucially about its effect on women, both here in DC and across the globe.  Most importantly the conversation stressed what I hadn’t been considering: HIV/ AIDS and gender inequality are deeply and problematically connected.

Katherine Fritz of the ICRW argued that researching AIDS helps us to see the “linkages between social inequality and poor health.”  Of course, the most universal form of social inequality is gender inequality.  Through discussing gender inequality, we can see many ways that women tend to be affected by HIV/ AIDS differently from how men are, such as via gender based violence.  Pat Nalls of the Women’s Collective, a survivor living with AIDS, discussed how it is apparent that many women are infected with HIV through rape.  She also explained that women with HIV are not being given the attention they need because we can’t just solve this problem with medicine.  In addition to looking at violence against women, we must also consider how the problems of discrimination, economic empowerment, reproductive health, and poverty all connect with HIV/ AIDS.

Another issue which connects with gender inequality was of women and care giving.  Of course women globally are more often the caregivers.  Pat Nalls discussed how many women living with HIV/ AIDS will spend so much time taking care of their children, they will forget to care for themselves.  This can mean forgetting to take their medicine even if they have the economic access to it.  There is also the issue of mothers passing the virus onto their unborn children.  Essentially, we cannot eliminate AIDS without addressing to specific problems for women.  Deborah Smith, an ObGyn at the Whitman Walker Clinic, urged that we must have gender specific data about HIV/AIDS as well as gender specific outreach and engagement.  It is important to always contextualize this issue, one example being with poverty.  Many women cannot afford the expensive medication for HIV/AIDS, and we must do what we can to help make it more accessible.

Throughout the speeches, I wondered what activists really could do to help to stop the spread of HIV/ AIDS.  There were many ways discussed that need to be put into action, and one important one was access to female condoms.  Currently, there is one female condom for every six women in many African countries.  This is a serious problem because the female condom is a form of contraception that prevents the spread of STIs, pregnancy, and it is female-initiated.  Serra Sippel, of CHANGE, spoke about one of the current campaigns they support which is the UAFC Paper Doll Campaign.  This is adorably simple and yet so effective.  Through this campaign, people can write messages on paper dolls in support of female condoms and their importance.  They are attempting to break the Guinness World Record for a paper doll chain, while spreading the word about female condoms.  This reminded me that there are many simple ways to get involved with these issues and to become a supportive AIDS/ HIV activist.  It really doesn’t have to be complicated!

The speakers went on to discuss more ways that anyone can help, such as with DC’s upcoming International AIDS Convention that’s happening in July.  This will be an important gathering for HIV/ AIDS activists and survivors.  Education and spreading awareness are always crucial to this cause.  On a more personal level, the speakers reminded everyone to remember to get tested, practice safe sex, and encourage others to do so as well.  The speakers also urged us to hold huge donor organizations, like the World Bank, accountable for not putting money towards the prevention of HIV/ AIDS.  HIV/ AIDS is the leading cause of death for women around the globe, and it cannot ever be ignored.  Through addressing this problem for both women and men, together we can create hope for an AIDS-free generation.

Some of the many organizations present at the “AIDS-free Generation” event:
http://www.womensorganizations.org/
http://www.genderhealth.org/
http://www.icrw.org/
http://www.womenscollective.org/
http://www.whitman-walker.org/
http://www.commonhealthaction.org/iphi.html
http://www.unaids.org/en/
http://www.genderaction.org/
http://www.preventionnow.net/

For more information on the 2012 International AIDS Conference in DC: http://www.aids2012.org

Photo Credit schacon via The Creative Commons License.