Category Archives: Reproductive Rights

“What if I have it?”: Five Ways You Might Be Contributing to HIV Stigma

01 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Reproductive Rights, Sex Ed

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In my personal and professional life as a sex educator, I’ve talked to a lot of people about HIV testing. With those that refuse to test, I have the following conversation all too frequently:

“Have you thought about getting tested for HIV?”
“No! I mean, what if I have it?”

When I first started out, I didn’t understand it. Looking back, I can see where newbie me had it wrong: when people ask, “what if I have it?” they’re not just asking for a clinical account of their treatment trajectory or their life expectancy. Rather, they want to know how to deal with everything that goes along with being labeled a “person living with HIV (PLWHA).” 

As the gut-wrenching panic of the early AIDS crisis fades into distant memory, more and more people can expect to live long lives with HIV. Unfortunately, that also means living with the stigma of being “HIV positive.” HIV-related stigma isn’t a mere inconvenience, it is a persistent obstacle to progress in the HIV epidemic. It results in new infections, keeps people from accessing treatment, and it makes people sicker.

Here are five of the more common stigmatizing beliefs about HIV that I hear on a daily basis. Have you caught yourself or someone you know sharing them?  Continue reading →

Disrupt for Planned Parenthood

22 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Reproductive Rights

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Hello Dear Disruptors,

A lot of fun things happened this past week.  The U.S. Congressional House’s decision on Friday to stop funding Planned Parenthood for a year was not one of them.  That funding enables approximately 2.7 million people to access free and affordable healthcare, enabling both women and men in low-income areas to control their reproductive health, as well as providing other needed healthcare services.  Infuriatingly, the move to deprive these people of access to these services was grounded in a slew of inaccuracies, and the claim that low-income individuals can readily access these services elsewhere is simply not the case.

That brings us to this week’s Promote a Petition.  Except instead of just a petition, we’re calling on our community of disruptors to step up to the plate and promote Planned Parenthood in whatever way we can.  This issue — all people’s right to reproductive healthcare regardless of gender or income — is at the heart of intersectional feminism.  It gives women and people with gestational anatomy the rights to their own bodies, provides healthcare to people who cannot afford it, and promotes upward mobility by preventing girls, women, and people with gestational anatomy from having to choose between parenthood and their education / financial stability. Further, it helps prevent survivors of sexual assault from having to deal with further trauma as a result of the violence that they have already experienced.

Even though each of us individually may feel that our efforts don’t matter, when we band together, they most assuredly do.

Planned Parenthood Logo. Slogan reads "Care. No matter what." Continue reading →

What’s Next In College Sexual Assault Policy Reform? The Case For Emergency Contraception And Post-Exposure Prophylaxis

02 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by in Rape Culture, Reproductive Rights

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This is a guest post by Kailah Carden. Content note: This article is about campus sexual assault, however it does not contain any descriptions of assault.

Thanks to student activists, our country is paying unprecedented attention to the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses. Students across the country have staged protests, filed Title IX complaints, and the Office of Civil Rights in the Federal Department of Education is currently investigating over 85 schools for non-compliance. As a result, institutions of higher education across the country are currently rewriting their sexual assault policies.

While the national attention and policy work is a welcome rupture in the status quo, the dominant discourse has been almost exclusively on reforming disciplinary procedures to hold perpetrators accountable. As a result, survivor’s health needs in the wake of sexual assault have been overlooked.  Continue reading →

The Erosion of Buffer Zones Around Abortion Clinics

03 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Economics, Harassment, Human Rights, Reproductive Rights

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We had a regular we called “Chuck” who was an old, burly guy with terrible breath. He was incredibly aggressive and would try to shoulder me out of the way to get to patients. He spoke a little Spanish, and so he’d especially go after Spanish-speaking patients. Once he was so aggressive, pushing me with his shoulders and yelling in Spanish at a patient that I had to back off so I didn’t contribute to her fear.

Every time a patient walked down the sidewalk we had to try to get between the anti-choicers and the patients. Technically, the antis couldn’t come within 20 feet of the building, but they did. And even if they hadn’t, bombarding the patients as they walked along the street, getting in front of them as they turned down the path to get to the clinic and holding entire masses in the bushes in front of the clinic were all common practices.

I worked as a clinic escort. Clinic escorts do not provide information to patients. We do not counsel them. We do not protest or carry signs. We are simply there to act as a buffer between them and the aggressive anti-choice protesters. We walk with them to the door of the clinic, we tell them they do not need to listen to the anti-choicers, or to talk to them, but that it’s ok if they want to. We tell them we like their shoes and comment on the weather.

Continue reading →

Finding Empowerment in Pain

19 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in Disability, Reproductive Rights

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This is a guest post by Lorelei. It discusses abortion and euthanasia, and describes intense chronic pain. It was originally published here.

The best thing about being alive and having a chronic disease is having the ability to save yourself. It’s the most empowering thing in the world.

This is my story.

Continue reading →

Babies? IUDon’t Think So!

06 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in Empowerment, Reproductive Rights, Sex Ed

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My mom told me not to get an IUD. Like many Americans, she had a lingering mistrust of the idea that traces back to the Dalkon Shield scare in the ‘70s and ‘80s. According to Mother Jones, the Dalkon Shield IUD was badly designed and drew bacteria up its strings, occasionally causing infections and even death.

Today, there are safe designs available (there are a few risks, but they all have a very tiny chance of happening), but still, only 6% of women who use contraceptives in the US choose an IUD [1]

Graphic provided by Guttmacher Policy Review

Use of contraceptive methods by type. Graphic provided by Guttmacher Policy Review

When you look at the statistics, you’d think IUD use would be much higher. According to the Center for Disease Control, IUDs are the number one most effective form of non-sterilization contraception, with a typical-use failure rate ranging between 0.2% and 0.8% (for reference, typical use failure rate for birth control is 9% and condoms is 18% [2]). Because lets face it, who actually remembers to take their birth control pill at the same time every day?

Maybe a barrier to IUD use is its reputation. The first thing anyone told me about an IUD is how much it would hurt. I Googled IUDs and what to expect, and immediately got blog results with titles like “No Pain, No Gain.” Several of my girlfriends advised me to expect “the worst period cramps of your life” for 24 to 48 hours. Yikes!

So when I walked into my GYN’s office to get an IUD yesterday, my palms were sweating and my heart was beating in my ears. Admittedly, the procedure itself didn’t feel great, but nowhere near as horrible as I was expecting. Once, I got a hairline fracture on my index finger from playing basketball, and it wasn’t even painful as that. I was sure to take ibuprofen an hour before the procedure, and used Cytotec the night before to soften my cervix to make the insertion easier. If your GYN doesn’t prescribe you anything like that before the procedure, don’t be afraid to ask!

When the procedure was over, after about 5 minutes of cramping and dizziness of medium severity, things started to feel more normal. The rest of the day I only experienced mild to medium cramping, no worse than an unpleasant period day. Phew! I had been gearing up to be incapacitated for two days straight.

The point is, I’m here to tell you that getting an IUD is not necessarily going to be terrible, and fear of the procedure shouldn’t be a barrier to getting one. Admittedly, everyone’s body is different, and everyone is going to have a different experience with the insertion and following few days. Some women really do experience the worst cramps of their lives. But not having to take birth control pills for the next five years? Worth it.

Affordability is another barrier, if you don’t have health insurance. New federal rules mandate that FDA-approved contraception, including IUDs, must be covered under health plans with no co-pays or additional fees. Thanks Obama! But if you don’t have health insurance, costs can be between $500 to $1000. That can be a lot of money for some one to front, even if it does last up to 10 years. Thanks again to federal changes, more people are covered by Medicaid in 2014, which does cover the procedure. Some Planned Parenthood clinics are also willing to charge you according to income.

I chose Mirena, a hormonal IUD that lasts 5 years. It’s supposed to lighten your period, or even stop it all together in some cases. You can also opt for ParaGaurd, which is a non-hormonal copper IUD that lasts for 10 years. ParaGuard generally increases cramping and bleeding during your period, and the few days following insertion can be slightly more painful than Mirena.

Access to effective and affordable contraceptives is basically the number one form of female empowerment. Delaying childbirth and smart family planning means that women can have the ability to finish their educations and establish a career. It fosters economic prosperity, more equitable romantic relationships (where women are less dependent on men for financial support), and gives rise to healthier communities.

So go forth and review your birth control options! Be safe and use effective methods. Educate yourself and help others do the same. Knowledge is power.

Planned Parenthood is Amazing

30 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Reproductive Rights

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PLANNED PARENTHOODI need to take a second to tell y’all about how amazing Planned Parenthood is.

I don’t have a doctor in my new city, I don’t have health insurance right now, and I don’t have any income right now.

So Thursday morning when the UTI I’d been hoping would go away started giving me a fever and causing me to piss blood (spoiler, I have a kidney infection at this point), I took a bus down to the PP clinic.

I got screamed at on my way in: “Don’t kill your baby!!!”

Continue reading →

Babies? No Thanks, Doc

01 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by in Reproductive Rights

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Today’s post is a guest post by Beth H. 

Not too long ago, I was spite reading a pro-life thread on Facebook about abortion. That’s not what this post is about. In that thread, the original poster made a comment about how “women who don’t want children should just get their tubes tied so they’re less likely to get abortions.”

HOLD UP THERE, LADY. I’m here to tell you that we WISH it was that easy.

In spite of years of work and progress regarding women’s rights and abilities to make choices about their own bodies, there’s still an inordinate amount of social pressure for women to make the choice to have children, a pressure that exists in nowhere near the same magnitude for men. Women are supposed to be caring, giving, selfless, and nurturing, and the backlash against women who don’t exhibit these traits is immense. Women are harassed about when they’ll be getting married and procreating, because if they don’t do it soon enough their biological clocks might tick out, as if the worst thing that could happen to a woman is childlessness. Unfortunately, since doctors are people too, it’s all too common for them to perpetuate these beliefs, and given their position of power over women’s reproductive decisions, they can make it very, very difficult on women who go against the standard-woman script.

This is what we think of your sexist cultural scripts.

Continue reading →

Wendy Davis and the importance of bearing witness

27 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by in Media, Organizing, Politics, Reproductive Rights

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Spend even a little time reading up on social justice, and you’ll notice that some people do some pretty awful things. You’ll also notice that often, these people try to cover up the awful things they’ve done. People want a reputation of being honest and good, even if they don’t want to actually deserve such a reputation.

This is a plea to you to pay attention. As advocates of non-awfulness, we can take advantage of the human desire to, if not be decent, at least seem to be decent. We can bear witness, let the sunlight shine on the actions of those who’d prefer to hide how corrupt or oppressive they are. The events surrounding Wendy Davis’s filibuster are a perfect illustration not just of how this works, but of how social media are making it easier to let the sunlight in than ever before.

Late Tuesday night, the entire internet (or at least about 150,000 of us) watched Texas State Senator Wendy Davis as she drew toward the end of an attempted 13 hour filibuster to defeat an abortion bill that would effectively shut down almost every abortion clinic in the state.

Wendy Davis, the Lebron James of filibustering

Wendy Davis, the LeBron James of filibustering

Like so many of us glued to our computer screens, I watched the Texas Tribune‘s livestream from the senate chambers, followed their livetweeting of events, and read and tweeted (from the DDP twitter account). The drama had me on the edge of my seat, and you really should read a recap that captures the emotional rollercoaster. This is a good, short one– go learn the details or relive the excitement now.

Back? Okay, here’s the part I want to talk about today:  Continue reading →

Beatriz is 22, pregnant, and dying. She needs an abortion to save her life.

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in Human Rights, Reproductive Rights

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Beatriz is 22.

She is pregnant.

She is fighting for her life.

Beatriz has lupus, an autoimmune disorder that attacks her internal organs and caused severe complications that almost killed her during her first pregnancy. Now she is confined to a hospital bed, away from her infant son, with the danger to her life growing each day the pregnancy continues.

All of Beatriz’s doctors agree that she needs an abortion, that carrying the pregnancy to term will most likely kill her. But Beatriz lives in El Salvador, a country with an absolute ban on abortions, and if her doctors performed the life-saving operation, both she and they could face up to ten years in prison.

Even though the fetus she carries has anencephaly, a birth defect that is incompatible with life, and will almost certainly die within days of being born.

There are no pictures available of Beatriz (Beatriz is not her real name, but a pseudonym). So here is a picture of myself at 22, because I want you to remember what 22 looks like. I want you to remember how impossibly, heartbreakingly young 22 is. And every time I tell you that the Salvadoran government and the Catholic church are deciding whether this 22 year old woman should live or die, I want you to think about this picture and maybe feel like throwing up because what kind of a world do we live in, really?

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Continue reading →