“Vulnerable And Voiceless”: Forced Sterilization Is Still Happening, Is Still Repugnant
As Christina Cordero remembers it, the doctor would not take no for an answer.
“As soon as he found out that I had five kids, he suggested that I look into getting it done. The closer I got to my due date, the more he talked about it. He made me feel like a bad mother if I didn’t do it.”
The “it” is tubal ligation. He wanted to sterilize her.
Cordero, who is now 34, was serving time for auto theft at a California prison. She finally said yes, a decision she regrets seven years later. “I wish I would have never had it done.”
We are indebted to the Center for Investigative Reporting, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated content provider, for the preceding account. It is contained in a troubling report, released last week, documenting that the California prison system sterilized as many as 250 women from 1997 to 2010, in violation of state rules. Women who had the procedure say they were pressured to do so.
The state reportedly paid doctors $147,460 for this service. Dr. James Heinrich, who operated on Cordero, says it’s a bargain. “Over a 10-year period,” he told CIR, “that isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children — as they procreated more.”
Maybe you think that makes perfect sense. Indeed, it’s not hard to imagine someone saying the same thing on Fox “News” next week. After all, character assassination of the less fortunate has become commonplace. A certain wealthy presidential candidate famously described them as the 47 percent of us who are irredeemable.
But maybe you know enough of history to hear the awful parallel embedded in Heinrich’s calculation. You see, this is not the first time Americans have had the bright idea of breeding out undesirables. Indeed, laws mandating forced sterilization were all the rage in America in the early 20th century. Even the Nazis were impressed. They modeled their statutes on ours.
The idea was to keep the nation’s gene pool from being polluted — and its economy burdened — by the “feeble-minded,” the habitually criminal and by families that produced generations of prostitution, promiscuity, alcoholism, poverty or disability. Some sought to do this through immigration restrictions designed to bar the racially inferior, others argued for killing mentally and physically defective children and still others favored forced sterilization.
The Supreme Court sanctioned the latter in a 1927 ruling against Carrie Buck. She was a “feeble-minded” 17-year-old daughter of a “feeble-minded” mother and an unwed mother herself. The court never met her. It relied on the testimony of an “expert,” Dr. Harry Hamilton Laughlin, who himself never met her.
Buck was, in fact, a Virginia girl of normal intelligence who had been raped. But Laughlin, after reviewing test results, claimed that she was typical of the “shiftless, ignorant and worthless class of anti-social whites of the South.” The court approved her sterilization 8-1.
“It is better for the world,” wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, “if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. … Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” That ruling has never been overturned.
It is not such a prodigious leap from Holmes to Heinrich, who says women who claim he pressured them to be sterilized just “want to stay on the state’s dole.” Or to Michelle Malkin, who calls the poor “takers,” or Ann Coulter, who calls them “animals.” We have traveled far, only to wind up in this familiar place where the vulnerable and voiceless, the ones most deserving of our compassion, are regarded instead as inferiors and allowed to be victimized.
It is not happening again.
It is happening still.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., The National Memo, July 15, 2013
“Individual Activists, Not Just Organizations”: The Social Network Behind Wendy Davis
It had to be orange. Pink is overused, green is for environmentalists, and purple isn’t a Texas kind of color. But orange is Texas, it’s the color of the UT Longhorns, and it’s gender neutral. Months before the special session of the Texas legislature was called, the main organizers of the pro-choice protests had already decided that their t-shirts were going to be orange.
By the end of the special session of the Texas State Senate on June 25th, a sea of orange t-shirted pro-choice supporters in the capital’s rotunda were capping off Wendy Davis’ filibuster with fifteen minutes of raucous cheering.
Davis became an overnight sensation because of her singular feat of courage and stamina. But her effort was the last piece of tile fitted into a much larger mosaic of people and actions that brought Texas progressives back to life. The success of the effort hinged on not just the existence of outstanding grassroots organizing and social media activism, but their integration.
Grassroots organizations playing in the same sandbox often behave like rivalrous siblings clamoring for the same donors and public recognition for their efforts. But for the first time in recent memory, according to several activists I spoke with, the local pro-choice groups in Austin played nicely with one another. Their guess is that the threat to access to reproductive health was great enough to put aside their usual differences.
Even with the advanced planning, there weren’t enough orange-shirted protesters to make a difference when the special legislative session began in late May of this year. The protester’s efforts were listless. Something was missing. Every energetic protest effort needs a spark, something personal that makes ordinary people go extraordinary lengths to make their voices heard. The Texas House Committee on Public Affairs’ decision to cut off public testimony with over 700 people in attendance at 4 am on June 21st was the needed catalyst. Word spread locally and online that women were being muzzled on a critically important piece of legislation just four days before the special session was due to end.
But the reach of traditional organizations online tends to be limited to their current supporters. The protest needed more than the usual suspects to grow significantly. And that’s where the secret ingredient came in: free agent activists. Free agents are individual activists who are savvy using social media and able to accelerate the spread of social protests and movements very quickly. Every successful protest movement over the past five years, from Wall Street to Cairo to Brazil, has had free agents stirring the social media waters and turning local events into national and international conversations.
Jessica Luther is an individual activist, unaffiliated with any particular organization, but adept at using her multiple social media platforms as vehicles for communicating with and organizing large numbers of people, and in this case, many who had never been involved in Texas politics before. Organizations were asking her for help in spreading the word about the special session and Jessica was tweeting as fast as she could. Her followers on Twitter increased by over 3,000 people from around 5,000 followers before the special session to over 8,000 afterwards.
Virginia Pickel was another critically important free agent. She lives in San Marcos, 30 minutes south of Austin, but the trip to the capital is often too much for her as she suffers from fibromyalgia. She posted contact information for reporters on her blog for other activists to use to send emails, Facebook messages and tweets. She also created a private Facebook group to orchestrate rides to the capital. Virginia administered the Facebook group but no one owned what happened on it or needed to take credit for organizing rides.
Moving large numbers of people to the capital, making sure they knew where to go and had food and water in the brutal heat required the online/on land nexus to work extremely well. And it did. The local ACLU created the hashtag #standwithwendy and others followed suit to create one narrative stream on Twitter and Facebook rather than multiple messages on multiple platforms. Facebook groups were created to organize rides, deliver foods and drinks to protesters and update people on the legislative process (critical with a Senate that does not have a formal schedule.)
The protest effort was like a fireman’s brigade, everyone pitching in and coordinating with one another in an emergency without asking for permission. This is in contrast to general grassroots organizing, when too many groups are rowing in different directions.
The final piece of the mosaic was Senator Wendy Davis. She fit the role perfectly with her pink running shoes, compelling personal story and incredible endurance. Again, the individual activists I spoke with said that they heard through the grapevine that Davis was going to filibuster beginning on Sunday afternoon, but there was no direct involvement between her efforts and the organizing efforts of the free agents and grassroots organizations. When she stood up on Tuesday morning for the first of her thirteen hours on her feet, she didn’t start a movement, she brought one home.
Jessica Luther said in reflection of the events of the first special session, “I’ve always believed a lot that Texans want to be politically engaged but don’t know how because it feels so stacked against us.” It is difficult to sustain the level of energy and enthusiasm the filibuster created. The job of organizations is to fill the quieter times with more field building and relationship building online in order to turn once again into a well-organized crowd seemingly spontaneously again.
By: Allison Fine, The American Prospect, July 10, 2013
“Political Regression”: 40 Years After Roe, Reproductive Rights Are In Grave Danger
Dr. John J. Sciarra remembers his time as a young doctor in New York City nearly half a century ago. He remembers watching young women die from botched, illegal abortions because they had no safe options. At the time, he felt powerless to help them, and that fact haunted him.
That’s why he decided to join 99 of his fellow OB-GYNs to express his support for legal abortion. In 1972, that group of doctors published a statement in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology to make the case that giving women the means to end their pregnancies is a public health issue. Their timing was prescient; Roe v. Wade ended up legalizing abortion just one year later.
But, in the 40 years since, Sciarra has been surprised to see the state of reproductive rights moving backward instead of forward. “We did not anticipate the backlash that has turned abortion into an ideological battleground,” the retired doctor writes in a op-ed published in the Chicago Tribune on Friday. “So I have again joined 99 of my fellow professors of obstetrics and gynecology in another statement on the issue, published earlier this year, in the very same American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.”
In the new statement, Sciarra and 99 of his colleagues point out that even though abortion has been legalized and medical practice has evolved to accommodate a new range of reproductive care, the politicization of the issue still threatens to derail women’s reproductive rights. When Sciarra first advocated for abortion rights back in the 1970s, he and his fellow OB-GYNs imagined that the “increasingly liberal course of events” in the U.S. would create a rising demand for abortion care. They thought the biggest problem facing the country would be a shortage of doctors available to perform abortions. It turns out they were wrong — the biggest problem is actually the web of state-level abortion restrictions that come between women and their doctors.
“We have had 40 years of medical progress but have witnessed political regression that the 100 professors did not anticipate,” their official statement noted. “Forty years later, the change is not liberal. Its effects will threaten, not improve, women’s health and already obstruct physicians’ evidence-based and patient-centered practices.”
Sciarra is just one of two OB-GYNs who signed both statements — the original one before Roe v. Wade, and the new one earlier this year — because most of the doctors who signed on four decades ago have since passed away. Sciarra notes that none of the doctors who signed the 1972 statement ever changed their minds and rescinded their support for legal abortion rights. And now, a new generation of medical professionals is reaffirming that position with the 2013 statement.
The doctors’ new statement is well-timed. Despite the fact that Roe marked its 40th anniversary recently, reproductive rights are being chipped away from every angle. And 2013 is shaping up to be one of the worst years for reproductive freedom since abortion was first legalized. State legislatures have enacted a record-breaking number of new abortion restrictions this year, including some of the harshest bans ever seen in the past four decades.
Sciarra and his colleagues aren’t the only medical professionals coming out against the mounting pile of politically-motivated abortion restrictions. The nation’s largest group of OB-GYNs, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, also recently condemned anti-abortion laws for “imposing a political agenda on medical practice.”
By: Tara Culp-Ressler, Think Progress, July 11, 2013
“A Tale Of Two Parties In Texas”: Republicans Are Tied In Knots, Democrats Seeing A Resurgence In Grassroots Enthusiasm
The fight over reproductive rights in Texas has reinvigorated progressive voices in the Lone Star State in ways unseen in many years, as evidenced by yesterday’s large, mid-day rally in Austin. The effort to turn back the Republican effort has also drawn the interest of Democrats at the national level — during state Sen. Wendy Davis’ (D) filibuster last week, none other than the president of the United States weighed in to offer his support.
But as David Nather reported, there’s a bit of a mismatch: while national Democrats are eager to use Texas as a rallying cry for activism, even for those nowhere near the state, national Republicans have sat on their hands.
The liberal side of the Texas abortion showdown has the two most powerful Democrats in Washington squarely in its corner: Barack Obama and Harry Reid — not to mention a Dixie Chick.
On the right: Rick Perry’s holding down the fort without much obvious help from national Republicans.
The DNC is involved in Texas; the RNC is not. Democratic congressional leaders have weighed in; Republican congressional leaders have not. And as Politico‘s report added, a key party official in Texas “acknowledged there’s no behind-the-scenes help coming.”
Some of this is simply a matter of need, or in this case, the lack thereof — Republican policymakers in the state hold the reins of power, including majorities in both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s office. Davis and her allies took advantage of procedural tactics to win a temporary reprieve, but GOP officials believe it’s only a matter of time before they approve the sweeping new restrictions that Gov. Rick Perry (R) wants.
But that’s not the only reason Republicans in D.C. are letting this story go by without comment. After all, it’s a national story and there’s nothing stopping prominent GOP leaders and/or the Republican National Committee from, at a minimum, offering Perry words of support and encouragement.
And yet, the party is biting its tongue, probably because it sees this as a political loser for Republicans at the national level.
The mismatch makes sense: Even abortion bills that poll well, like the one in Texas does, open the door to the kinds of comments that have hurt national Republicans repeatedly — from Rep. Trent Franks’s comments last month on the “very low” number of rape-related pregnancies to Todd Akin blowing his shot at a Senate seat over his “legitimate rape” remarks in 2012.
I understand the political calculus, but the GOP is playing a losing game. For one thing, it’s unlikely engaged voters are going to make much of a distinction — it’s not like Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are going to be shielded from criticism because their allies in Austin are pushing extreme measures on reproductive rights.
Indeed, it seems every time Republicans at the national level make a conscious effort to move away from the party’s “war on women,” efforts like this one in Texas remind the public of the GOP’s agenda all over again.
And then there’s the unfortunate flip side: by remaining silent, national Republican officials are angering the party’s far-right base, which expects them to speak up.
“You either fight and ask your leaders to fight on an issue that cuts your way or you just fold up and go home, which is what the national party wants to do,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List. “It really is fear. It really is simply, ‘We’re not going to go there.'”
“Now, you’ve got an issue that’s in your platform, that cuts your way with big margins. To be silent is a mistake,” Dannenfelser said.
The irony is, Perry and his allies are likely to win this fight in terms of legislative success, but it’s Republicans who are tied in knots and Democrats who are seeing a resurgence in grassroots enthusiasm and engagement.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 2, 2013
“Having Trouble Hearing Women’s Voices”: Texas GOP Unleashes Political Quackery On Women’s Reproductive Rights
A few years ago, during consideration of a bill being pushed by a Republican elder in the Texas Senate, first-term Sen. Wendy Davis asked him a question about it. Rather than respond to this Democrat, this woman, the old bull replied dismissively, “I have trouble hearing women’s voices.”
No more. Even a stone-deaf old bull would’ve been jerked to attention by the clarity of Davis’ voice on June 25. Starting at 11:18 a.m., she literally stood tall for more than 11 grueling hours, filibustering a mean and demeaning attempt by extremist Republican leaders to put the state government in charge of the most personal right women have: controlling decisions about their own bodies.
Davis’ principled stand — in Texas, no less — rallied over 2,000 mothers, grandmothers, girls and others to come to the capitol from all over the state, packing the gallery in quiet witness. Quiet until 10:04 p.m., that is, when GOP leaders tried to silence her by unilaterally ruling her filibuster over.
Suddenly, the ruling Solons were startled by a high-decibel reprimand from their subjects — the gallery erupted in citizen outrage, causing chaos on the floor. Then, when the “leaders” tried to force a vote, the “followers” took charge, with jeers so loud that senators couldn’t hear themselves. With the session set to expire at midnight, panicky leaders tried to push the clock back, which led to deafening chants of “shame, shame, shame,” ultimately blocking the GOP’s brutish ploy.
Texas Republicans have already re-rigged the rules so they can get their way on another day, but they can’t escape the huge significance of this defeat. As Davis rightfully noted, while she was the one standing on the floor, “it was the ‘people’s filibuster’ that stopped (the bill)” and awakened a new movement in Texas that won’t be stopped.
Texas has long experience with animalistic approach to public policy. In 2007, a local school superintendent rejected any need for sex education classes in his district. Noting that many students there live on farms, he said, “They get a pretty good sex education from their animals.”
Guess which state is No. 1 in teen pregnancies? Yes, Texas.
And who should be the ones to make medical decisions about pregnancies? Not women and their doctors. They might choose “wrong” over the doctrine of certain religious groups. Rather, the macho Republican autocrats and theocrats who now reign over state government say they are the ones to decide such deeply personal matters. How embarrassing for these political bullies, then, to have had their repressive, extremist and dangerous anti-choice legislation derailed by … well, by women.
“An unruly mob,” cried the lieutenant governor as he fled the capitol. One GOP lawmaker tremulously tweeted that Davis, the opposition leader, was a “terrorist.” And Gov. Rick “Oops” Perry ran away to Dallas, where he whimpered that the people’s assertion of citizens’ authority was a “hijacking of the democratic process.” Odd concept: The people “hijacking” democracy.
All this from “leaders” who blatantly hijacked the rules to shut down Davis’ gutsy filibuster. In 2011, these same wimps even tried to hijack Davis’ Senate district by illegally shoving more than half of her minority precincts into neighboring districts — a racist ploy that federal judges overturned. And now Perry is trying to hijack reality, huffing and puffing that he’ll slap down the women’s opposition to his assault on their rights, because that’s “what the people of this state hired us to do.”
Get a grip, Rick. In a June poll, 63 percent of registered Texas voters said we already have plenty of anti-abortion laws on the books, and nearly three-fourths of the people (including 6 out of 10 Republicans) say such personal medical decisions should be made by women and their doctors, not by political quacks masquerading as Talibanic moral arbitrators. And 81 percent say the legislature should focus on basic economic issues wracking the majority of Texans.
Davis pointed out that far from helping the economic plight of women in the Lone Star State, he vetoed the equal-pay-for-equal-work bill recently passed by the legislature. How rude of her!
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, July 3, 2013
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