“The Texas Abortion Emergency”: This Isn’t Complicated, Women Are Paying An Unconstitutional Price
Outside the chambers of federal appellate judges Priscilla Owen, Jennifer Elrod, and Catharina Haynes, virtually everyone understands that H.B. 2, the new Texas law that places various restrictions on a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion, is not about protecting women’s health — it’s about stopping abortion.
And yet on Friday, those three judges, who sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, ruled that the law could go into effect, since it was “not designed to strike at the right itself,” and wasn’t invalid simply because it “has the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion.”
That ruling led to the immediate closure of one-third of clinics in Texas where abortions are performed — several in rural areas that serve women without the means to travel hundreds of miles to another clinic.
On Monday morning, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia allowed the charade to continue for at least another week when he declined to grant an emergency request by the law’s challengers to stay the appeals court’s ruling, and ordered the state to file a response by Nov. 12. (Justice Scalia hears all emergency-stay applications out of the Fifth Circuit.)
The law requires, among other things, a doctor to have admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 30 miles from where he or she performs abortions. On Oct. 28, U.S. District judge Lee Yeakel ruled that this provision was “without a rational basis and places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.”
The state appealed immediately, and on Friday, the Fifth Circuit panel issued its stay of Judge Yeakel’s ruling.
But no matter what the panel says, the law is intended precisely to “strike at the right itself” — only dishonest politicians pretend otherwise. Making it harder for women to get an abortion is not an “incidental effect” of the law; it is its primary goal.
Consider the words of Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, who claimed during the trial before Judge Yeakel that the state has a vested interest in “protecting the life of the unborn child,” and thus may impose “inconveniences on women seeking abortion in hopes that it may lead women considering abortion to consider childbirth instead.”
Like similar laws popping up all over the country, H.B. 2 is cloaked in the guise of protecting women’s health only because anti-abortion activists know it’s their best shot of surviving judicial scrutiny.
This shouldn’t be complicated. On one side is a law of dubious constitutionality passed by legislators who openly admit their desire to end all abortions. On the other side are real women whose constitutional right to have an abortion is being effectively blocked.
The arguments of all sides have been on the table for months, which is why Texas was able to file its appeal within hours of the district court’s ruling. Now the state has at least another week, while Texas women pay the price.
By: Jess Wegman, The Opinion Pages, The New York Times November 4, 2013
“Nothing Short Of Radical Inclusiveness”: The Power of Pissed-Off Women United For Equality
I’ve just begun my second four-year term as president of the National Organization for Women. I was reelected — by acclamation, I’m proud to say — at NOW’s 2013 Conference in Chicago over the July 4th weekend.
My vision for the next four years of activism begins with something that’s long overdue — the election of a women president of the United States.
And not just any woman. A feminist woman who will stand up for our issues against those who would turn the clock back to the 1950’s.
Women need to be thinking — and acting — for the long-term, not just for this year’s elections or next year’s. We need to be preparing for the next president, and the ones after that. That’s what our adversaries have been doing.
As the grassroots arm of the women’s movement, NOW is strong and getting stronger. We are focusing our power — the power of a whole lot of pissed-off women — identifying targets and achieving goals.
As we look towards the 2014 elections, we know that the stakes couldn’t be higher. The radical fringe that controls the Republican party is chomping at the bit for a replay of 2010, and this time they mean to take over the Senate as well as the House.
The Supreme Court has just made our job harder by eviscerating Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Now dozens of state and local jurisdictions, freed from having to pre-clear changes in their voting laws with the U.S. Department of Justice, will race to erect new barriers against voting by such “undesirable” voters as people of color, seniors, immigrants and younger citizens.
We are committed to restoring the Act, and correcting the Supreme Court’s sordid attempt to enhance the political power of those who already have so much.
Beyond our electoral challenges, NOW is doubling down on fighting for women’s economic security. We support the initiative launched last week by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Congresswoman Doris Matsui (D-CA), Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD), and House Democratic women to address real economic needs facing women and families: ensuring equal pay for equal work, promoting work and family balance, and providing access to quality, affordable child care.
It’s called When Women Succeed, America Succeeds: An Economic Agenda for Women and Families.
As Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro said,
Women are really struggling financially. They are looking for an increase in the minimum wage and equal pay, so they can raise their income, support their families and have a chance for a better life. So today, 165 years after the Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, we are launching a woman’s economic agenda to address these severe financial pressures. Raising wages for millions of struggling women is central to ensuring work pays for them and their families. Closing the wage gap, increasing the minimum wage, expanding educational opportunities and supporting women entrepreneurs are crucial to making sure that women — and America — succeed.
Of course, wage security isn’t the only linchpin of economic equality for women. We need access to the full range of reproductive health services, because, as this Valerie Tarico column in the Huffington Post says, “Anybody who says that talking about reproductive rights is a distraction from talking about economics is not running the numbers.”
Unintended pregnancies push women out of the workforce, keep women from earning their full potential as business leaders, contribute to absenteeism and lost wages and throw state and federal budgets out of whack. According to the Guttmacher Institute, every public dollar spent on contraception saves three dollars that would otherwise be spent on Medicaid payments for pregnancy-related and newborn care.
Another enormous economic burden facing women is the crushing cost of student loans. As Elizabeth Warren, the sponsor of the Bank on Student Loan Fairness Act has said,
Students owe more than $1 trillion in student loan debt — more than all the credit card debt in the entire country. But they didn’t go on a shopping spree at the mall–they did exactly what we told them to do. They worked hard, they played by the rules, and they got an education.
As I wrote in this column for the Huffington Post, because women are paid less than men are paid after college, student loan repayments eat up a larger part of women’s earnings.
Like a bad penny, economic insecurity follows women through school, in the workplace, at home, and far too often, in what should be a safe and secure retirement.
This year, we are rolling out NOW’s Campaign to Break the Social Security Glass Ceiling to add a good offense to our ongoing defense against cuts in this crucial program.
We are calling for a range of improvements in benefits for women — including a caregiver credit, so women will no longer be penalized in their retirement years for having dropped out of the paid workforce to care for children or family members; a higher minimum benefit for low-wage workers (who are, very disproportionately, women); modernized rules for divorced and widowed spouses; and equal treatment for same-sex couples and their families — and we show how to pay for it by requiring the wealthiest to pay their fair share into the system.
Simultaneously, our national action campaign to Let Them Put a Ring On It expands and deepens NOW’s commitment to achieving equal marriage rights in all states, at all levels of government. We’ll engage NOW’s chapter leaders and activists to press for passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA including the provisions not struck down by the Supreme Court. And we’ll ramp up our work with coalition partners in key states to reverse anti-marriage measures and pass laws recognizing the full rights of loving, committed same-sex couples.
As NOW feminists, our goal is nothing short of radical inclusiveness, as we work to build an organization, a movement, and a society that values diversity and upholds respect for every single woman and girl, no matter where she comes from, what she looks like, where she works or who she loves. We are stronger together, and united for equality.
By: Terry O’Neill, President, National Organization for Women; The Huffington Post Blog, August 5, 2013
“Cherry Picking The Facts”: Why The Right Doesn’t Really Want European-Style Reproductive Health Care
U.S. conservatives want Europe’s abortion restrictions, but they oppose the generous systems and legal exceptions that support women’s health.
Earlier this month, Texas lawmakers witnessed and participated in passionate debates about one of the nation’s most sweeping pieces of anti-choice legislation. That legislation, known as SB1, was initially delayed by Wendy Davis’s now-famous filibuster before Governor Rick Perry signed it into law last week during a second special legislative session. It bans abortions after 20 weeks, places cumbersome restrictions on abortion clinics and physicians, and threatens to close all but five of the state’s 42 abortion clinics. Throughout the many days of hearings, anti-choice activists relied on religious, scientific, and political evidence to argue that the new Texas law is just and sensible.
Many of those arguments are tenuous at best, but it is the continued reference to European abortion laws that most represent a convenient cherry-picking of facts to support the rollback of women’s rights. Many European countries do indeed regulate abortion with gestational limits, but what SB1 supporters conveniently ignore is that those laws are entrenched in progressive public health systems that provide quality, affordable (sometimes free) health care to all individuals and prioritize the sexual and reproductive health of their citizens. Most SB1 advocates would scoff at the very programs and policies that are credited with Europe’s low unintended pregnancy and abortion rates.
Members of the media have also seized on European policies to argue that Texas lawmakers are acting in the best interests of women. Soon after the passage of SB1, Bill O’Reilly argued that “most countries in the world have a 20-week threshold,” and Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, wrote, “It’s not just that Wendy Davis is out of step in Texas; she would be out of step in Belgium and France, where abortion is banned after 12 weeks.”
It’s hard to imagine any other scenario in which O’Reilly and Lowry, and most conservative politicians and activists, would hold up European social policies as a beacon for U.S. policy. After all, the cornerstones of Europe’s women’s health programs are the very programs that conservatives have long threatened would destroy the moral fabric of American society. One cannot compare the abortion policies of Europe and the United States without looking at the broader social policies that shape women’s health.
Both Belgium and France have mandatory sexuality education beginning in elementary school (in France parents are prohibited from removing their children from the program). France passed a bill earlier this year that allows women to be fully reimbursed for the cost of their abortion and guarantees girls ages 15 to 18 free birth control. Emergency contraception in both countries is easily accessible over the counter, and in Belgium the cost of the drug is reimbursed for young people and those with a prescription. Both countries limit abortion to the first trimester but also make exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and fetal impairment, to preserve woman’s physical or mental health, and for social or economic reasons. None of these exceptions are included in the new Texas law, and I’d guess it would be a cold day in hell before the likes of O’Reilly and Lowry advocate for more expansive health policies or for including such exceptions in abortion laws.
But it would be wise if they did. This availability of preventative care contributes to the overall health and wellness of women in Europe and enables them to make free and fully informed decisions about their bodies over the course of their lifetimes. The demonization and lack of progressive sexual health policies in Texas, and in the United States more broadly, drives high rates of unintended pregnancy, teen pregnancy, maternal mortality, sexually transmitted infections, and abortion.
Unfortunately, Texas couldn’t be further from France or Belgium when it comes to the care it provides to women and families before, during, and after delivery, as I’ve written about before. The Texas teen birth rate is nearly nine times higher than that of France and nearly 10 times higher than that of Belgium. Nearly 90 percent of all teens in France and Belgium reported using birth control at their last sexual intercourse, compared with only 53 percent in Texas. The infant mortality rate in Texas is twice that of Belgium and France. The poverty rate among women in Texas is a third higher than that of women in Belgium and France, and the poverty rate among Texas children is 1.5 times higher. Less than 60 percent of Texas women receive prenatal care, while quality care before, during, and after pregnancy is available to nearly all women throughout Europe.
None of those hard facts were compelling enough to amend – let alone negate – the new law. It seems impossible these days to find a common ground between anti- and pro-choice individuals, but if conservatives wanted to have a conversation about enacting European-style sexual and reproductive health policies in the United States, that just might be something that could bring everyone to the same table. The more likely scenario is that once conservatives have plucked out the facts that help advance their anti-choice cause, they will promptly return to tarring and feathering Europe’s socialized health system.
By: Andrea Flynn, The National Memo, July 24, 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
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