So, apparently Damon Wayans is working with handpicked young artists to “develop innovative television shows for the internet.” And apparently their idea of innovation is making fun of violence against women and children. (Warning: the video is potentially triggery, as is the rest of this post.) For those of you who would rather not watch the video and possibly generate ad revenue for its creators, here’s the rundown: a woman calls her boyfriend to tell him she’s pregnant. He pretends to be happy about the news; she’s thrilled that he wants the baby, and starts making plans for their new family life. When he gets off the phone, he calls for help, and “Abortion Man” answers the call. Abortion Man accosts the young woman as she’s walking down the street and beats and kicks her. Miscarriage hilarity ensues.

I really hesitated to post this, because I know that giving the creeps who made this video more publicity is exactly what they want, and will let them claim they’re “edgy”. But we need to speak up and let them know that they’re not edgy or funny or clever; they’re just misogynistic bullies.

This isn’t funny:

At 1:15 in the morning a pregnant woman is beaten in her apartment on Hickory Street. Police say the suspect, who’s apparently the baby’s father, repeatedly punched the woman in her body, face and head. He reportedly told her he was going to “make her lose that baby.”
[…]
According to the Centers for Disease Control, some 324,000 pregnant women are hurt every year by an intimate partner or former partner. And a study a few years ago that found homicide was a leading cause of death among pregnant women.

This isn’t edgy:

Excited by the ultrasound Jan. 7, [Ashley] Lyons made plans to show the fetal pictures to her ex-boyfriend, Roger McBeath Jr., 22. She left her family’s home, telling her mother she would be back for dinner. But when her father and brother found her, she was sitting in her parked car — with the car engine running and the headlights on.

She had been shot twice in the head and once in the neck. In her lap was her handbag — half opened — with the ultrasound picture inside, her father said.

“He knew that if she had that baby that she would be in his life forever, and he didn’t want that,” said prosecutor Shawna Jewell.

On a cold Kentucky afternoon four days later, Lyons was buried with her tiny baby tucked into her arms.

And this is the work of monsters, not superheroes:

[Roxanne] Fernando was pressured to terminate her pregnancy and initially agreed. She later had a “change of heart” and that set in motion a chilling chain of events, he said.

“It would be the fetus that would drive the planned and deliberate killing of Ms. Fernando,” Davidson said.
[…]
Fernando was hit with a wrench up to 20 times, bound with tape and wrapped in a blanket before being stuffed in the trunk of the car.

It was thought she was dead. But as the car began driving away, sounds could be heard coming from the rear.

“There was a realization Roxanne Fernando was still alive. They could hear moaning,” Davidson said. […]

Fernando was taken to a remote area near Mollard Road and Ritchie Street in northwest Winnipeg and repeatedly beaten with a broken hockey stick until she was obviously dead.

I’ll update this post with contact information for Damon Wayans or wayouttv.com as soon as I find some — it’s surprisingly difficult to come by. I left a comment on their web site, but you have to create an account to do that. (On the bright side, you can use Mailinator to create a throwaway email address for your account.) If anyone finds a better way to contact them, please let me know.

(ht: feministing)

I’m very excited!

I’ll be taking my computer with me to take notes, but I probably won’t actually be live-blogging. ;-)

* Discrimination against blacks linked to dehumanization, study finds. This study looked at the racist association of blacks with apes, and its consequences for people’s willingness to accept violence against them. Any anti-violence advocate could tell you that one way to get people to accept violence is to dehumanize its victim.

* It’s pretty easy to find the candidates’ stands on abortion, but glassbooth has also collected their stands on birth control and sex education.

* A New Zealand Idol contestant was kicked off the show for being pregnant. “Public life is set up with the assumption that people participating won’t have primary responsibility for childcare. This is incredibly anti-woman and extremely restrictive for women who do have children. A huge part of what I’m fighting for, as a feminist, is ending the notion of a ‘private sphere’ the idea that child-rearing is an individuals (usually a woman’s) primary responsibility, and that you have to choose between that role and any other role that you want to take.” Maia isn’t pro-life, but this is one area where feminists should be able to find common ground. (No, I haven’t actually had that bookmarked since August 2006. I’m not that far behind.)

* From another of Maia’s posts come two links to brownfemipower on the struggles of women, especially women in marginalized communities, to have their right to give birth respected.

* In that vein, Marysia (with a bit of help from me) has been working up a manifesto for an inclusive reproductive justice organization. This organization will encompass the rights of the unborn and already-born, and will advocate for all women’s rights to the full spectrum of nonviolent reproductive choices.

The local campus newspaper carried an article about a student who, with the help of her partner and family, is on track to graduate with her class in 2010 despite taking time off to give birth to her daughter.

Maria Moreno, Deanna’s mother, talks about her daughter’s initiative and determination.

“One thing that I have noticed, now that she has a child, is that she is very independent and has been able to carry the accomplishment of raising (Sofia) and being able to balance school,” Maria Moreno said.

Between having a baby, going to school and planning to go back to work, Maria Moreno added, Deanna is making it all work, with the support of her family and her boyfriend, Dennis Hernandez.

“I was really concerned at the very beginning, but right now I am so proud of her. She has been able to adapt and take care of her child very well,” Maria Moreno said.

The article itself is uplifting and encouraging. The comments section — not so much. The first comment (using the handle “Pro Choice”!) simply says:

Having a child while in college is statistically highly correlated with college dropout rates. She would have been well advised to abort the fetus.

“Tyrone the Rapist” takes Moreno to task for decreasing the prestige of the University and says, “This is what the University gets for accepting people who have no business being in college.” “Don H” gets in his own racist jab with, “*puke* Story about ghetto love.”

Another commenter, “Cassidy C Browning”, has no problem with Moreno, but questions why the paper featured her story:

Getting pregnant while in college is not a unique situation - nor is choosing to carry the fetus to term and raise the child.

As I replied to Ms. Browning, choosing to carry to term and raise the child while in college may not be a unique decision, but it’s a rare one compared to abortion or dropping out. Looking at the hatred and scorn that supposedly enlightened people are heaping upon this young woman for daring to bear a child, it’s not hard to understand why so many women in Ms. Moreno’s place end up where she was when this story started — on the way to an appointment for an abortion.

Even after the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of women and children are raped every year in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Panzi Hospital in Bukavu serves the survivors of this epidemic of sexual violence.

The hospital also has a daycare for children conceived as a result of sexual violence.

Susannah Breslin at The Reverse Cowgirl found out more about what we can do to help. I’ll quote here, but I recommend reading the whole post:

If readers wish to contribute funds they can do it through the Bank Account of Panzi General Reference Hospital, to which they can send their donation. Please mark the check or bank transfer with “VVS project” (”Victims de Violence Sexuelle Projet”, in other words, Victims of Sexual Violence project). This is the project that is run within the infrastructure of the Panzi hospital and in which we treat and rehabilitate the raped women. The hospital is owned and run by the organisation called CEPAC.

Account number: 170-0362031-93 (USD account)
Title of receiver: 8ème CEPAC V/C HOPITAL GENERAL DE REFERENCE DE PANZI
BANQUE COMMERCIALE DU CONGO
AGENCE DE BUKAVU/ RD CONGO
Swift code / BCDCCDKI

Via Nonviolent Choice:

The UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women will receive $100,000 from the United Nations Foundation for 100,000 signatures on its petition. They’re currently at 68,4823. Please help them get over 100,000.

(Unfortunately, I’m having trouble connecting to the main web site to find out what the money will be used for, but nonetheless, it seems worth a moment of one’s time.)

The university I work for will be holding a Pregnancy Resources Forum in April. The college pro-life group and NOW chapter are co-sponsors, and the student Senate voted to assist with the project as well. That’s a pretty amazing amount of cooperation on the goal of reducing abortions and making the campus a friendlier place for parenting students.

Feminists for Life and I have parted ways in recent years, but I still really admire the work they’ve been doing on college campuses. Check out their “dream campus”, FFLU, for a vision of what a college campus might look like if it were designed to include students with family obligations.

I’ll be posting more about the forum and about the changes that (I hope) come about on this campus as a result.

Last month, Marysia speculated about what Martin Luther King, Jr. would have thought of the feminist consistent life ethic. (part one, part two) Whatever the answer to that question may be, one thing is clear: if Dr. King’s message of equality, dignity, nonviolence, and empathy were to truly take root in our society, we would become consistently pro-life.

If we believed in equality for all human beings, we would not single out the youngest members of our species as killable non-persons. We would value women’s full humanity, not just their sex appeal or ability to bear children. We would honor women’s sexuality and motherhood. We would not accept a racially biased criminal justice system. We would not see the loss of lives in other countries as an acceptable price to pay for our national goals.

If we believed in dignity for all human beings, we would not allow people to die of treatable diseases because they’re poor or uninsured. We would not allow the neighborhoods of the poor to be poisoned with pollution. We would not refer to human beings as “products of conception” or “fetal tissue”. We would help the sick and disabled live their lives as well and fully as possible — no matter how short or how different from ours those lives may be — rather than trying to eliminate them before birth.

If we believed in nonviolence, our candidates would not compete with each other to prove who would kill more people in other countries, who would kill more prisoners, who would restrict the killing of unborn human beings the least. Our electorate would find such contests repugnant instead of galvanizing. We would have to be more creative in finding ways to solve problems instead of reflexively reaching for the violent solution. We would be brave enough to sacrifice a bit of safety and security in the short term for a better future.

If we had empathy for all human beings, we would accord all people of the world the right to self-determination that we claim for ourselves. We would not let pregnant women feel that they have no choice but abortion. We would recognize ourselves in every human being, even those most unlike us. We could not torture.

In a speech marking the 79th anniversary of Dr. King’s birth, Barack Obama invoked the words of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: we are all tied together in “a single garment of destiny.”

Does that sound familiar? It should. It’s the same imagery that consistent life ethic proponents have used for 25 years to argue that it’s not enough for fight for the rights of some people while ignoring others. All our lives are intertwined.

Unfortunately, Senator Obama’s garment is full of holes. Although I believe he would personally prefer a lower abortion rate, he would allow for essentially unrestricted destruction of human beings before their birth. Although I believe that he would be less aggressive than his opponents, he favors a buildup of a military which is already larger than the militaries of the rest of the world combined. Although I don’t believe he’d be a great proponent of it, he does not repudiate the death penalty. He isn’t the one who’s going to tear down the anti-life society in all its forms; he’s going to uphold much of it.

I voted for him today anyway. Because the society Obama describes, the one King fought for, is pro-life. And he alone among the candidates appears able to inspire hope and courage and confidence among the people in the grassroots who have been so beaten down for the past seven (or twenty-seven) years. The grassroots leaders he inspires and gives breathing room and may possibly even listen to a little bit are the people who can strengthen that single garment. Yes, even to include the unborn. Once people believe in the equality and interconnectedness of all human beings, they’re 90% of the way there. Our job then is to convince them to expand their vision of humanity.

As Patrick says:

He’s not an insurgent; he’s the standardbearer for a faction of the country’s political elite. I believe that, on balance, this particular faction happens to comprise many of the the smartest and most conscientious individuals from within that elite. So I’m supporting Obama and his train, people like Samantha Power and Robert Malley and Lawrence Lessig, just as a peasant might cheer for an aristocratic faction made up of reasonably decent individuals against other factions made up of out-and-out thugs. Not because the peasant doesn’t know the game is rigged, or doesn’t have the wit to imagine a better world. But because incremental change matters, and because the right incremental changes can lead, like water flowing downhill, to bigger and more profound ones.

And frankly, in the end, nobody better is in a position to win. Perhaps someday, if we peasants work hard enough and change enough minds, the leaders will have no choice but to follow.

Noted without comment, because I saw this about 3 seconds before I was going to log off and go to bed:

The results, appearing in the online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Sex Roles, show that for both women and men there was a benefit to having a feminist partner. Feminist women were also more likely than others to be in a romantic relationship.

“If you’re a woman paired with a male feminist,” said Rudman, “you have a healthier relationship across the board”–better in terms of relationship quality, equality, stability and sexual satisfaction.

“And men paired with female feminists have greater sexual satisfaction and greater relationship stability,” she said. “So, [there were] higher scores on two of the four dimensions, with no difference on the other two.”

There you have it: Feminists are sexy.

(“Study: Feminists are better mates”, Chicago Tribune)

Hear, hear.

In this fantastic clip from Sesame Street from 1977, Buffy explains breastfeeding to Big Bird as she feeds her son:

(ht: Anna)

Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I really can’t imagine seeing that on Sesame Street today, can you?

Democracy Now! aired an interview with Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai yesterday about the connections between environmental, human rights, and anti-war advocacy. Although the subject didn’t come up in the interview, Maathai also opposes abortion. She gave an interview to a Norwegian newspaper in 2004 in which she said that abortion is wrong, and that it hurts both unborn children and their mothers. (partial translation — if anyone out there speaks Norwegian, I’d love to get a full translation)

I was just reading about the “Women Deliver” conference. It sounds wonderful, and badly needed. Most of it.

Promoting the health of mothers and children is something that should naturally be a part of the pro-life cause. I mean, I shouldn’t even need to say that. We should be all over a conference like this. We should be holding it! And yet, it appears to be run by the type of advocates who consider expanding access to abortion — all abortions, not just those done out of medical necessity — as part and parcel of improving women’s health. It makes sense if you accept that women will always have abortions, and that the best that can be hoped for is to replace unsafe abortions with safe(r) ones.

Of course, people who consider abortion violence against a human child (not to mention violence directed toward the mother as well) can’t accept that, any more than death-penalty opponents can accept capital punishment as part of the agenda for reducing crime. But just as death-penalty opponents can work with proponents on crime-prevention measures such as improved policing, pro-lifers should be able to work with pro-choicers on improving womens’ access to medical care, safe delivery options, HIV prevention, family planning, and many other measures.

I say “should”, because I don’t believe it’ll actually happen. Too many pro-lifers seem to think that working with pro-choicers on anything is tantamount to being complicit in promoting abortion. And too many pro-choicers are unwilling to ever work on issues like women’s health and family planning without bringing abortion access in as part of a package deal.

There is a scheduled plenary session called “Working on Common Ground”:

Ensuring that women and newborns are healthy and are able to contribute their full potential is both a social and an economic investment. How can various disciplines and movements work together and advocate more effectively to realize this potential?

I think that would be a fine venue for promoting the idea that pro-lifers and pro-choicers ought to be able to work together on nonviolent means of improving women’s and children’s health, don’t you?

Of course, given the agenda of the “Addressing the Controversies in Reproductive Health and Rights” plenary:

1994 ICPD marked a paradigm shift in population policy to a woman-centered, reproductive health and rights approach. It also led to controversy. This plenary will examine four areas where action has not matched international commitments:

* Are religion and culture positive or negative forces in influencing reproductive health policy?
* Do young people have a right to access a full range of reproductive health services as well as information?
* How best can the public health goal of eliminating unsafe abortion be achieved?
* Are women’s rights human rights?

…well, my hopes aren’t high.

(And damn it, I hate that the term “reproductive health and rights” throws up red flags for me, because reproductive health and rights are vitally important! Access to medical care, choice in childbirth, contraception, the right to be educated about how one’s own body works, the right to be free from sexual violence and coercion — it’s a tragedy that so many women, hell, probably most women, don’t have these things. And yet, and yet, and yet… the violence of abortion always creeps in. As if we can’t even imagine our lives free of pain, free of violence, free of destruction.)

In which I piggyback on the brilliance of others.

The first post in this series was written over two years ago, but I just found it, so as NBC used to say, it’s new to me: The AmbivAbortion Rant (part 1, part 2, and part 3).

Amba writes about the humanity of the unborn, the humanity of women, the precariousness of women’s lives, and her own abortion in powerful, passionate language. She’s pro-choice, but reluctantly so, and believes that the culture must change to acknowledge what’s at stake in every abortion — the death of an individual human being. I’ve seen the ideas she discusses here before, but I have rarely seen them expressed with such grace. Some passages will be uncomfortable for pro-lifers, others for pro-choicers, and that’s good. Whatever conclusion you ultimately reach, I think that if you haven’t grappled with the issues Amba raises, you haven’t thought your position through as fully as you could.

Just a bit more recently, Fred at Slacktivist compared U.S. society’s acceptance of prison rape with the despicable practice of “extraordinary rendition”.

One thing that both posts have in common is the idea that we should avoid violent acts not only because they harm their victims, but also because they degrade those who engage in or tolerate them.

Amba writes:

In a way I think we do more harm to ourselves, and to the fabric of reality, than we do to the individual who will never be. How desensitized do we have to be to destroy this astounding, tiny thing, a complete human being rapidly spinning itself out of next to nothing? If you’re not ready to keel over in awe of that, for Godsake get yourself a shot of Depo-Provera.

[…]
Accepting abortion as no big deal requires regressing rather than advancing in our higher qualities, awareness and gratitude. It is definitely a part of the Darwinist culture that takes pride in our being nothing more than fancy animals driven by brute self-interest.

Fred, meanwhile, quotes Hilzoy:

But sympathy is not our only reason for not torturing and raping people. There’s also self-respect: the thought that whatever someone else might choose to be like, and even if that person has chosen to be Jeffrey Dahmer, there are certain things that I will not choose to do, because I do not want to be the sort of person who does them.

So, great posts. Go read ‘em.

Even Fox feels the need to pander to the 10% or so of the population who oppose birth control. I told you their influence was all out of proportion to their actual numbers!

Trojan recently tried to place an ad for its condoms on the four major networks. ABC and NBC accepted the ad, but Fox and CBS rejected it. Fox’s response was particularly telling:

Fox and CBS both rejected the commercial. Both had accepted Trojan’s previous campaign, which urged condom use because of the possibility that a partner might be H.I.V.-positive, perhaps unknowingly. A 2001 report about condom advertising by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that, “Some networks draw a strong line between messages about disease prevention — which may be allowed — and those about pregnancy prevention, which may be considered controversial for religious and moral reasons.”

Representatives for both Fox and CBS confirmed that they had refused the ads, but declined to comment further.

In a written response to Trojan, though, Fox said that it had rejected the spot because, “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”

So the networks either don’t think they’ll get flak, or they’re willing to take it, for promoting condom use to prevent disease. But not to prevent pregnancy. Hmm. What could account for the difference?

“There’s a utopian view that women ought to be able to have sex any time they want to without consequences” [emphasis added]

– Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, explaining her groups’s opposition to legislation that would promote contraception and comprehensive sex ed

Oh yeah.

Following up on the previous post: Women for Women International responded to my query.

Dear Jen,

Thank you for your email and interest in our organization. Women for Women International does not advocate for or against abortion. During our rights awareness training session on women’s reproductive health, we focus on educating women about standard health practices for themselves and their children. We discuss prenatal care, infant and child care, nutrition during pregnancy, natural family planning methods and other topics designed to reduce the maternal and infant mortality rates in the communities where we work. I hope this information is helpful. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us.

I’m very glad to hear that. WWI seems like a great organization. Their stated purpose is “Supporting women in war-torn regions with financial and emotional aid, job-skills training, rights education and small business assistance so they can rebuild their lives.” You can become a “sister” and sponsor another woman, or just donate to WWI, who will use the funds for their educational programs and administrative costs. There are also other, non-monetary ways to get involved.

They are highly rated by Charity Navigator and the American Institute of Philanthropy.