I was at Planned Parenthood today.

That’s right. Planned Parenthood.

Why?

Well, not because I am not terminating a pregnancy, looking for prophylactics, treating an STI or anything else like that. (All those “dirty whore” things that people love to hate on.) Actually, I am sick and I can’t get well. Down there. Not that it really matters why. (TMI?)

You know they do that at Planned Parenthood, right? They help women who are sick. Who need help down there.

And sometimes “down there help” does include terminating a pregnancy, getting prophylactics, or treating an STI. Sometimes it’s cancer screening, diagnosing ovarian cysts, treating irregular periods, investigating pain that won’t go away. Down there gets complicated.

I don’t have medical insurance. Not because I am reckless, stupid, “dependent on the state” or anything even close to that. And not because I like to gamble.

I am a freelancer with no “employer provided plan.” I am member of 3 unions who can barely afford to cover their members, so they just keep putting more and more restrictions on that coverage. I cannot afford “independent insurance” as the New York state premiums are so high that it would cripple my household to pay the monthly rate. Oh, and Healthy New York? Well, I’m too rich to qualify. Too freakin’ rich. (Come over and hang out on my yacht sometime.)

I am white, middle class, educated, married, and employed. Double income, no kids. (I have all the safety nets, right?) I pay my bills and taxes. I have held up every end of the bargain that is the American dream and I am nobody’s charity case. I am paying for my visit. Because I can and because, if I can, I should. And because my money will help the next woman who can’t.

I am sick and I can’t get well. Sick enough that I can’t wait for another program to approve me for a doctors visit. I can’t wait until I can afford insured healthcare. I can’t even wait for the “promised land” of “Obamacare.”

I’m sick right now.

And I’m lucky to be sitting here in a safe facility, surrounded by a compassionate and professional staff that is insuring that I will get help today. They are so funny, helpful, and positive.

I am also surrounded by a multitude of diverse women, old and young, well-heeled and Payless, black, Latina, Asian, Arab and yes, white-as-bleached-towels like me. Some of them are chatty, some of them are pensive, some of them are downright terrified. But, whatever the reason they are here, none of them are “dirty whores.” They are just women who need help with a medical problem. Right now. And this might be their only resource.

And (thank the good lord above) that Planned Parenthood is here to provide help to them. And help to me. Your friend, Jenny Wren [waving at the camera].

When I arrived today, I had to go through a full security screening like what you see at an airport and I thought, “Seriously? why would someone bring a gun to the gynecologist?”

And then, “Oh… Oh my god. I forgot.”

I actually forgot for a moment that there are people who hate Planned Parenthood. Who want to stop Planned Parenthood. And that there are people who would not simply use legislation or bullying to accomplish that.

Once I enter this building I am not safe. Because there are people who WANT TO KILL the doctors for providing care “down there.” There are people who WANT TO KILL me for coming here. That think I’m a “whore.”” A not just a woman who needs to see a doctor for a reason that is nobody’s business.

I stand with Planned Parenthood. I stand for a women’s choice, privacy, and access to medical care.

I stand with Julia who treated me, LaVinna who ran my lab tests and Stan the guard who told me to have nice day. (You too, Stan.)

I stand with all the other women I encountered in the clinic: alone, with friends, wearing hospital gowns, reading magazines, getting tests.

This November, stand with me.

ETA Permalink: http://standwithpp.blogspot.com/[1]

A new poll released this week by Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) shows that American voters overwhelmingly support access to affordable contraception. According to the poll (PDF), the Obama Administration’s rule under the Affordable Care Act that requires all employers, including religiously-affiliated employers, to include contraception coverage without co-pays or deductibles in their health insurance plans is viewed by most voters as being about economics and women’s health, not religious liberty.

In a joint press release, Marcia Greenberger, co-president of NWLC and Cecile Richards, president of PPFA, announced the results of the poll and emphasized the wide support for affordable contraception. Marcia Greenberger wrote, “This polling demonstrates, once again, that Americans across the political spectrum and religious beliefs support affordable access to prescription birth control and reject opponents’ claims that this is not a matter of basic health care. The use of birth control is nearly universal among sexually active women, regardless of their political or religious beliefs, and this new polling mirrors that reality. For a majority of voters, this is a matter of basic health care, not of religious freedom.”

The poll found that 73 percent of voters agreed that Americans should have access to affordable contraception, and 55 percent strongly agreed. Fifty-four percent of voters who identified as pro-life agreed with this, as did 66 percent of Catholics and 58 percent of Evangelical Protestants. Fifty-six percent of voters identified the Obama Administration’s rule as a matter of economics and health while 36 percent viewed it as a matter of religious liberty. The poll had a margin of error of +/- 3.1 for the full sample.

As much as reproductive rights were catapulted into major campaign issues this cycle – in the Republican primaries and beyond – one political football has remained unaddressed. That would be the global gag rule, which bars international organizations receiving U.S. funding from providing, referring for, or even discussing abortion. It’s been implemented by every Republican president since Reagan and promptly lifted by Clinton and Obama. But reproductive health advocates here in Kenya haven’t stopped worrying.

Rosemarie Muganda-Onyando, a longtime women and adolescent health advocate who now works with the group PATH, put it pretty bluntly.

“We’re not sleeping at night.” She added, “If Mitt Romney did win – oh please do not talk about it.”

During the most recent round of the gag rule, lack of clarity even among advocates created a chilling effect. (Abortion is legal in Kenya in cases of risk to health and life, as well as in cases of sexual violence, though the constitutional provision is still poorly understood.)

“I think people just got really scared,” said Muganda-Onyando. “From our understanding, if you had any work on abortion, whether it was just prevention or education, even if that funding came from somebody else, you couldn’t get any funding at all. Even for a project on agriculture.”

An estimated 30 to 40 percent of maternal deaths in Kenya are attributed to unsafe, illegal abortion. At the same time, the decline in the fertility rate flatlined. There was another complication: “As HIV/AIDS money increased by leaps and bounds, you also did see a substantial decline in support for family planning.”

“We know that a Republican win could reverse some of the gains that have been made because since it was listed, “there’s been an increase in the U.S. government’s investment in family planning,” though another advocate told me that not that much has changed and some international staff don’t seem aware the policy has been lifted. Still, she says, “Right now the U.S. government invests more money in health in the region than any other country”, including healthcare projects like PATH’s, which serve an estimated 8 million people.

“I’m not exaggerating,” she said. “This is a real fear for us.”

When discussing the politics of reproductive rights, many of us focus on abortion access and care (which is essential, of course), and forget about the other side of the coin — that birth and birth choices are also a feminist issue; and many women* are being kept in the dark, unaware of and denied their options.

TRUE STORY: I BUY BIRTH CONTROL FROM A TRUNK

My first thought on buying car trunk birth control? Ewww. But six months later it’s more like, “Yay!!”

Shayla

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All this happened because I had the audacity to want to go to grad school. To make that happen, I had to put my grown-up life on hold and live in the back room of my mom’s house until I got my fancy pants master’s degree. Having a kid in that situation would be beyond inconvenient.

So without money or health insurance, I hightailed it to Planned Parenthood once a month to pay $30 bucks for birth control in an concious effort to keep my womb fetus-free. This worked wonderfully until (one particularly broke weekend) the cost of my NuvaRings spiked $20 dollars without explanation.  

For $50 bucks a month, I figured it’d be less expensive to just go on ahead and raise my hypothetical baby.  Fortunately, my thesis (and total lack of motherly instinct) knew that having a kid was still a very bad idea. But I only had $30 dollars, two of which were in quarters. Then and there I decided Susan G. Komen is somehow responsible for this nightmare and I left the clinic empty-handed for the first time in months.

The next day I sulked on over to the hair salon to beg my stylist for a freebee.  When she relented, I sat in her chair to vent about my lack of Nuva Ring dilemma, because aside from executing a mean “press n curl” she’s there to listen to me complain. I expected her to nod absentmindedly at my pain in the same way she does every other Saturday afternoon. But instead, after listening to my womb woes, she bent over and whispered the sentence every fiscally challenged person longs to hear: “I got the hook-up.”  

Now “the hook-up,” in laymen’s terms, is an unauthorized connection to goods or services that is typically illegal in nature. I’ve received said hook-up on cell phone chargers, the occasional bootlegged DVD and a $50 dollar store credit at Wet Seal that I swear was for a friend. But a hook-up on birth control?  Eww.  

Before I could even fix my lips to give my hair stylist a courteous, “Hell no,”  she tells me that her best friend’s second cousin charges $15 dollars for a month’s supply. Fifteen dollars? Maybe bootleg birth control wasn’t such a bad thing after all. 

Fast forward to 30 minutes later and I’m outside the salon next to a rust-colored Plymouth Reliant, shaking hands with a portly young woman who introduces herself as Ruwanda. She pries open the trunk and rattles off the names of pills like list of fine wines;  “Loestrin, Yasmin, or Alesse?” Fingers crossed, I whisper, “NuvaRing?”   

It’s a freakishly warm November day. Ruwanda snaps her fingers and reaches into her oven of a trunk for one of the rings I’m pretty sure is supposed to be stored at 60 degrees. When I grab for it, I’m worried that, not only has the Indian summer destroyed its contraceptive power, but that the ring may singe my va jay jay on the way up.  But Ruwanda hands it over and, lo and behold, it’s cool to the touch.  

I want to ask how she gets them, but can’t, because the rule for this and any other illicit transaction is always, “Don’t ask.  Don’t tell.”

Before I hand over the money, I give the city block around us the shifty eye to make sure no one is watching. I inspect the packet with trembling hands. The little blue package isn’t some Canal Street knock off. It’s the real freaking deal. I caress the ring, resist the urge to hiss, “My precious,” and I shove it into my back pocket.

If this were an episode of “Intervention,” I’d be shooing the cameraman away not to keep my face out of frame, but to protect sweet Ruwanda’s identity. I have to make sure she’s not in jail this time next month when I’ll need another fix.

After a convincing sales pitch, I decide to buy three rings for less than the price of what Planned Parenthood charged me for one. Ruwanda even throws in a free ring, part of her new customer promotion. Before we part, Ruwanda grabs a satchel out of her steamy trunk. It’s filled with packets of Plan B pills. Apparently, they sell like hot cakes at the barbershop next door.

It’s six months later and my lady parts are still vacant, save for the NuvaRing.  Meanwhile, a bunch of white guys in Congress, none of who will probably ever get pregnant, are trying to make it even harder for me to get the birth control that’s keeping my life plan on track.  I guess to keep me from screwing half the county on the taxpayers’ dime when all I want to do is NOT have a baby before I have a grown up house, a grown-up job and all the other means to take care of one. 

I’m willing to bet that Ruwanda’s dozens of other customers and the one in five women without health insurance have a similar American dream. But unlike many of them, soon I’ll graduate and hopefully be able to get a real job with real benefits. Until then, Ruwanda and her entrepreneurial American spirit will keep making my birth control as accessible as a freshly delivered pizza. So she’ll continue to get my birth control business, as long as her car continues to run.

Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court agreed to consider an amicus (friend of the court) brief filed by the Liberty Counsel in support of the prosecutions of Hope Ankrom and Amanda Kimbrough. The Liberty Counsel describes itself as an organization whose mission includes protecting “the inalienable right to life guaranteed to all, including unborn children.” While a number of “pro-life” leaders claim that recognizing the rights of the unborn and re-criminalizing abortion should not and will not lead to the arrest or punishment of women, the Liberty Counsel has clearly and unequivocally taken the position that “restoring the historic right to life accorded to unborn children” requires that women, including new mothers who have given birth, go to prison.

Ms. Ankrom and Ms. Kimbrough are two of approximately 60 women who have been arrested under Alabama’s 2006 Chemical Endangerment law. The overwhelming majority of these women have given birth to healthy babies.

The Chemical Endangerment law originally was passed to create special penalties for people who bring children into methamphetamine labs. Despite the law’s clear purpose, prosecutors have argued, and the Alabama’s mid-level Court of Criminal Appeals has agreed, that the law may also be used to arrest and jail women who become pregnant, eschew abortion, and go to term, despite having used a controlled substance. In other words, the Court of Appeals has ruled that under Alabama’s Chemical Endangerment law a pregnant woman who has never been to a meth lab and who has never brought a child into a meth lab, can be punished for bringing a child into the world if she tests positive for a controlled substance—even one prescribed to her by her doctor. 

The result? Women have unwanted abortions instead of facing jail for overcoming their addictions during pregnancy. Women avoiding prenatal care and any drugs or help that doctors will give them.

The Liberty Counsel has established that the “pro-life” position is “pro-punishment,” not just for doctors who perform abortions, and not just for women who intentionally end their pregnancies and have abortions, but also for pregnant women who have no intention of ending their pregnancies and go to term.

Feminists for Life has, apparently, distinguished itself from this point of view. But what about all of the other groups including Priests for Life, Generations for Life, and Americans United for Life that have assured the public that women will not go to jail if their point of view becomes law? If “pro-life” does not mean “pro-imprisonment,” now would be a good time to speak up and stop the growing assault on the dignity, sanctity, and liberty of the women who bring forth life.

It’s a strange sensation to start something as a joke, expecting that only your friends on Facebook will see it, and then all of a sudden to see it all over the internet. That’s what happened with my decision to report on my menstrual cycle to all of the Virginia legislators (not just the Republicans, contrary to popular news sources) who voted “yes” on HB462, the “mandatory ultrasound” bill.

The idea itself started as a passing snarky comment, at a meeting of the Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project- the abortion fund with which I work. It was before the bill even passed- I think we were discussing all of the current legislation that was slated to legally subjugate women - HB1, HB462, etc. I made a comment about how we should keep legislators updated on our bodies, since they are “so concerned” about them. I may have also mentioned sending hand-painted valentines using menstrual blood. Just sayin’.

A few weeks later I was at home, sick in bed, and getting really bored. I was browsing Facebook, and found myself getting angrier and angrier as I read through a frenzy of posts about the newest competitors in the “which state can oppress people the fastest” Olympics. And all of a sudden, something kind of snapped. All of my rage, all of my disgust, my stir-crazedness, culminated into a sarcastic Facebook post. I started with Senator McDougle, the Republican Caucus Chairman, and then made my way down the list of Representatives who had voted in this absurdist, shaming legislation. I went to each one, and I wrote this message:

Hi Senator/Delegate _____________! I just wanted to let you know, since you’re concerned with women’s health, that my period started today! Color looks good, flow not too heavy. Cramps are pretty manageable but don’t worry - I’ll make sure to let you know if that changes! Thanks again for caring so much about women and our bodies!

I took a screenshot of my post on McDougle’s wall, and posted it on my page. My friend Stacey Burns, the Online Communications Coordinator at the National Network of Abortion Funds, asked if she could post it on Twitter, and from there it made its way to the RHRealityCheck tumblr page, and it went on, and on, and on… all of a sudden, in what a friend dubbed “Project TMI”, women all over Virginia were doing the same!

A few folks were critical, calling me “catty,” “bitchy,” and “overly emotional” (is it coincidence that these are all insults frequently used to delegitimize women’s opinions? Probably not); others said that I was “playing into” the idea that menstruation is “icky.” With that I greatly disagree. I’m not ashamed of my body, or the way in which it functions. I think that menstruation is an amazing thing, and I believe that others who posted openly and honestly about their bodies did so without hesitation, without shame. I believe that this was intrinsic to why Project TMI is such a hit - it is a way to fight back against legislators who were attempting to shame us, who were attempting to tell us not to worry our pretty little heads, because they were there to take care of things for us.

So, despite some critiques, most were hugely supportive. It spread like wildfire. Last I heard, there are efforts to do the same in Arizona and Texas and now in Kansas as well. And I think that it SHOULD continue. In this time of desperation, where it has become blindingly apparent that our government doesn’t give a damn about female-bodied people, as well as other historically-marginalized peoples, I think that a touch of humor was sorely needed. People are hanging onto it as a shred of humanity, as a way to call out to our legislators, to demand accountability. These legislators have no problem playing doctor in the GA - so why not have some follow through, and play doctor to your constituents? Because that’s who these people are that are posting these items. We are not mere “protestors”. We can’t be dismissed as “humorless feminists” (because, let’s face it, this is utterly hilarious).

We are constituents. We are the people who are being represented by these legislators. Legislators like Dave Albo, for instance, who voted “yes” on HB462. In a disgusting display of public misogyny disguised as a (pathetic) attempt at humor, Delegate Albo felt it necessary to stand on the House floor and tell an utterly inappropriate story about how his wife wouldn’t have sex with him because of it - but he couldn’t even bring himself to say the word “vagina!” Instead, he used the sanitized “trans-v this, trans-v that.” Because apparently, when it comes to vaginas, it is always necessary to retreat to adolescent baby-talk. Legislators need to know that if they can’t bring themselves to say the word “vagina,” they probably shouldn’t be legislating them.

This is a way to show our legislators that misogyny isn’t funny. But rather, that anything they can do? Feminists can do it better.

The Secretary of State’s fiery speech at the Women in the World Summit featured a rare dip into domestic politics