Abortion Blamed for Toys”R”Us Bankruptcy in Ridiculous Letter to Newspaper Editor
Welcome to The Week in Reproductive Justice, a weekly recap of all news related to the hot-button issue of what lawmakers are allowing women to do with their bodies!
This week, conversations about abortion were, in a word, interesting. A letter to the editor directed at a local Illinois newspaper drew attention this week for blaming the bankruptcy of Toys’R’Us on abortion rights. In the op-ed, titled “Abortions taking a toll on business,” writer Mandy Alman argues that because the majority of women who have abortions in the U.S. are young, their unborn children would have been born into “families [that] could have contributed to the customer base of companies such as Toys’R’Us.”
It seems—and, of course, is—pretty radical to connect a popular toy company’s economic woes to women’s right to bodily autonomy, but we’ve heard relatively similar arguments before; just last year, a Wisconsin lawmaker argued that abortion was bad for the “labor force,” insinuating that women’s state-ordained job and purpose is—reminiscent of many fascist societies—to push out babies.
Alman’s letter has become the subject of intense ridicule this past week, and deservedly so. But another comment about abortion rights hasn’t drawn as much response as it should have: At a Tuesday Q&A session at Georgetown, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi argued against the Democratic Party requiring candidates to support abortion rights.
Here’s what else you may have missed this week in reproductive rights:
Nancy Pelosi once again rejects “abortion litmus test” for Democrats
“We would support the Democrat in order to get that gavel to protect all the other rights that we have,” Pelosi said in response to a question about the “abortion litmus test” while speaking at Georgetown on Tuesday. She went on to qualify this response by acknowledging that it isn’t popular with many activists and liberals, and added that, “having said no litmus test, it’s a very high priority for us to protect a woman’s right to choose.” However, it’s hard to imagine how Democratic politicians could “protect a woman’s right to choose” if the DNC endorses and fundraises for candidates who will use their lawmaking powers to support policies that would effectively force women to give birth. And speaking more broadly, it’s hard to imagine how a party that would leverage women’s human rights as political bargaining chips could have any credibility to represent or advocate for women in general.
Reproductive rights aren’t separable from “all the other rights we have”—access to abortion, birth control and other reproductive health care affects women’s economic situations, safety and overall living standards. It’s critical that Pelosi and other leading Democrats, from Bernie Sanders and Jerry Brown to Tom Perez and Democratic Congressional Campaign chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luján, recognize this with midterm election campaigns starting to heat up across the country.
Missouri courts hear testimony about medication abortion restrictions
This week, a federal judge heard testimonies from Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, and the attorney general of Missouri about a law effectively banning medication abortion services, effective in most of the state since January. The Planned Parenthood groups are suing for an injunction on the law, which they say is causing “irreparable harm” to clinics and patients by imposing an undue burden on women’s right to choose abortion care.
Medication abortion accounts for 45 percent of all abortions at or before nine weeks gestation, but is at least partly restricted in almost every state. The abortion pill, which is the drug mifepristone, followed by misoprostol 24–48 hours after the first pill, is not only FDA approved, but also has an extremely low serious complication rate of around 0.05 percent. Intense regulation of medication abortion isn’t about safety concerns, but obfuscating access and promoting stigma.
“These stringent requirements are not imposed on any other medical service in the state, including medications and surgeries with far higher complication rates,” Planned Parenthood groups told the Star.
The court could decide to impose an injunction at any time, but the lawsuit to overturn the law isn’t scheduled to go to trial until next year in March.
Tennessee lawmakers move forward bill for monument for “abortion victims”
On the surface, a bill to erect a monument for “abortion victims” that passed Tennessee’s state Senate on Monday just seems, well, stupid. Imagine how removed from reality you would have to be to propose a bill titled, “Tennessee Monument to Unborn Children, In Memory of the Victims of Abortion: Babies, Women, and Men.” But it’s important to note that the bill, which is pretty much expected to pass (it will now return for one more round of voting in the state House before being shipped to the desk of Tennessee’s rabidly anti-choice governor), is also actually dangerous.
We could have a discussion all day about the many deeply important things funding for “abortion victim” monuments could go to—specifically, care for born, living children in low-income families, or something like that—but another concerning aspect of the bill is its promotion of the narrative that abortion is murder, a narrative that tends to incite threats and severe violence directed at abortion providers. Who could ever forget the man who called himself a “warrior for the babies” and shot three dead at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015?
If the bill is passed and the proposed monument is built, it would be the second for “abortion victims” in the state; the National Memorial for the Unborn is located in Chattanooga, where it was erected in 1994.
New study shows community college students struggling to access reliable contraception
A new study by the University of Texas, Austin’s Population Research Center found the majority (54 percent) of female students in Texas’ community colleges used less reliable forms of birth control such as condoms or withdrawal. (Couples who use the withdrawal method have a 22 percent chance of conceiving within a year, and those who use condoms have an 18 percent chance in a year, compared with 0.05 and 0.2 percent for IUDs and birth control implants.) Sixty-eight percent told researchers their preferred method would be an IUD, the pill, ring, patch, or shot.
The disparity between Texas community college students’ birth control of choice and birth control used seems to emerge from how 38 percent of the surveyed women had no health insurance. In community colleges around the country, that rate is substantially lower at 13.5 percent, while 3.5 percent of all college students are uninsured.
The study is yet another reminder of reproductive justice’s innate intersectionality: Class and socioeconomics are a critical factor in who is able to access quality care and make independent decisions about their bodies. This is an issue that the increasingly popular over-the-counter birth control movement alone isn’t going to solve—nothing but expanding coverage of birth control and widening access to quality health insurance will.
Tune in next week to see what lawmakers will try next in their never-ending mission to derail reproductive justice!
(image: Avivi Aharon / Shutterstock.com)
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