Our Bodies, Ourselves (174 page)

Courtesy of Loretta Ross.

Loretta Ross, a founder and the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, speaks at a Georgia rally for immigration rights in March 2011.

True freedom, she added, ensures human rights for all people, including reproductive rights and reproductive health care options for women.

When anti–abortion rights activists arrived by bus in Atlanta on July 24, SisterSong, along with SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW (sparkrj.org) and SisterLove (sisterlove.org) were waiting, their voices ready. This is Ross's story from the counterrally:

More than fifty supporters came from Project South, Advocates for Youth, Feminist Women's Health Center, the Malcolm X Movement, and of course, SPARK, SisterSong, and SisterLove. The folks were mostly African American, but a number of Latinas and some white activists came in solidarity. It was a decidedly young group, with only a few elders like me sitting back and watching them lead. We had a spirited rally for about an hour, with speeches and statements of solidarity, like from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

Then the anti-abortionists' bus and cars pulled up in front of the King Center. Staying on our side of the street as they disembarked, we started chanting. “Trust Black Women” as loudly as we could, holding up signs that read “You Can't Steal Civil Rights” and “Women's Rights are Human Rights.” Paris Hatcher and Tonya Williams from SPARK, and Heidi Williamson of SisterSong, led the rally with spirit and energy that really excited our side and kept everyone engaged and having fun.

We were quite surprised when the antis piled off the bus—all but four of whom were white as far as we could tell! For a campaign organized by the African-American outreach director for Priests for Life, Alveda King, it was surreal seeing all these white folks carrying signs that said “Abortion Is the #1 Killer of Black America.” Can you imagine the optics of the scene? Here's a group of white folks claiming to save black babies being protested by mostly African-American women and men who are shouting “Trust Black Women!” Once we saw their signs, Paris instantly created a new chant: “Racism Is the #1 Killer of Black America, Not Black Women!” The ironies of the day seemed endless—when was the last time black folks protested at a white folks' rally at the center named after Dr. Martin Luther King?

After marching in front of the tombs and reassembling on the sidewalk until they were told to move on, the antis left their side of the street and walked around the back of our demonstration to hold their prayer service on the grass behind the amphitheater where we were, possibly upon orders by the park police. Suddenly, there were no barriers, no police, nothing between the two groups. At first, everyone kept their distance—we shouted, they sang; we held up signs, they held up their hands. Then things got interesting when they decided to cross the invisible barrier and start
praying over us. The park police providentially appeared and kept both sides apart.

It seemed a bit ridiculous when they started singing “We Shall Overcome” to counter our singing “Lift Ev'ry Voice.” Eventually, the heat of the day wore everyone out. They moved across the street again (not in front of the King Center) in order to finish their praying. We climbed to the top of the amphitheater to look down on them to continue our chant, “Trust Black Women!” I think we frustrated them because I'm sure many of these white folks assumed the black community of Atlanta would welcome them as saviors of the black race. It was obvious they were more than a little uncomfortable at being shouted down by black women. After about an hour and a half of this back and forth, they boarded their bus and left and so did we, but not without singing, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Hey-hey-hey. Good-bye.”

Website: advocatesforpregnantwomen.org In October 2010, Colorado voters rejected a ballot measure seeking to classify “preborns” as “legal persons with protection under the law.” With implications that went far beyond attempting to restrict abortion, this measure would have granted fetuses, embryos, and even fertilized eggs legal status separate from the women who carry them. The National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), an advocacy group working on behalf of all pregnant women, published a commentary criticizing the Colorado measure's sponsor Personhood USA's “radical fetal-separatist agenda” and helped defeat the ballot measure. Other states, including Montana and Nevada, have attempted without success to pass similar laws.

Lynn M. Paltrow, founder and executive director of NAPW, wrote, “Pregnant women could be sued, subject to child welfare interventions, or even arrested if they engaged in activities at work and at home that might be thought to create a risk to the life of the ‘preborn.' Legally separating the ‘preborn' from the pregnant women who sustain them will ensure that in jobs, education, and civic life, pregnant women will, once again, be unequal to men.”
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Speaking out against laws that undermine the rights of women, the NAPW formed to expand the reproductive rights movement to all parenting and pregnant women, including those who plan to continue their pregnancies to term. Through a wide array of advocacy work—including local and national organizing, litigation, public policy development, and public education—the organization works to secure reproductive rights for all women, especially underrepresented and at-risk groups such as women of color, low-income women, and women addicted to drugs or alcohol. In addition to safe and legal abortion, the organization lobbies for access to adequate prenatal health care, alternative birthing practices, support for vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC), and nonpunitive drug treatment services for pregnant women.

NAPW's legal advocates vocally oppose the shackling of inmates during labor and the criminalization of drug addiction in pregnancy and have provided litigation support in a variety of related cases across the country. Relying on a network of more than two thousand local and national activists, the group has challenged the arrests of pregnant women charged with child endangerment for drinking alcohol and has formed alliances with other organizations to file amicus (friend of the court) briefs explaining how so-called fetal rights laws dehumanize and criminalize pregnant women.

Websites: abortiongang.org and iamdrtiller.com

Steph Herold is a reproductive justice activist who has worked in direct service abortion care and reproductive health advocacy.

In 2010, I created the Abortion Gang blog as a space specifically for young people in the reproductive justice movement, with the goal of raising our visibility and highlighting our activism.

There were a number of articles in the mainstream media that year claiming that young people weren't pro-choice enough or were not engaged in meaningful activist work. I wanted to counteract those attitudes with tangible evidence. The next time someone wondered what young people were doing, I could point to numerous activities documented on the blog.

The name “Abortion Gang” came out of the seemingly endless health care reform debates. Then-representative Bart Stupak was accused of having an “abortion gang”—a group of congressmen who were committed to voting no on the bill unless Stupak's antichoice abortion language was included. My first reaction was: Why does this antichoice, antiwoman politician get to have an abortion gang? He doesn't know the first thing about abortion, women's health, and reproductive justice, to say the least. If there's anyone who could disqualify from being in an abortion gang, it's Bart Stupak. So I decided to start the real abortion gang, one composed of people fully committed to abortion rights.

When the blog first appeared, we received some criticism from within the feminist community, asking why we focus specifically on abortion. I explained that calling ourselves an abortion gang means that we are committed to destigmatizing not only abortion care work but also reproductive justice activism. We support all aspects of reproductive justice work and do not shy away from controversy and complexity. We embrace and analyze it in order to better understand why we do what we do, and to explore the power of justice and compassion.

© Darrin Weathersby

In the past year and a half, I've launched the Abortion Gang blog, the I Am Dr. Tiller project, and both Twitter accounts associated with these initiatives. The success of each of these campaigns speaks volumes to the power of social media and the Internet as organizing tools.

A case study of just how powerful online campaigns can be is the Twitter hashtag I started in the fall of 2010, #IHadAnAbortion. I asked women to tweet their abortion stories as a way to counteract the stigma associated with abortion. I had no idea what to expect, if there was going to be any response at all. What happened in the next twenty-four hours amazed me: Women shared their stories, women who had previously been completely absent from the pro-choice activist community. It didn't take long for the media to catch on, and soon enough, CNN, PBS, and a variety of mainstream media, online and off, were talking about this phenomenon. Did they understand it? Usually not. But their coverage showed that this campaign struck a nerve, and
this exposure led more women to speak out and find a new community of people who support them and their reproductive choices.

That isn't to say the world of social media advocacy isn't without its complexities and problems. If you looked at the hashtag a few weeks later, it's dominated by antichoice cruelty and misinformation. That is the reality of online organizing: when you open up a conversation, everyone has access to it.

A clever advertising tactic is to manipulate the message that many feminists have tried to promote: Girls have the power to be anything and to do anything they want. It's not surprising that in what author and activist Ariel Levy calls “raunch culture,” advertisers and other media have reinterpreted this idea. In a male-centered culture, where female athletes gain praise and recognition when they pose in
Playboy
and pop stars focus first and foremost on how sexy and attractive they are, this girl power gets translated into a distorted message that tells girls they can wear anything they want and no one can tell them otherwise.

In this interpretation, power has nothing to do with character or achievement but instead equates to the power of sexual attraction. For tweens and teens navigating this landscape, the pressure and expectation to be pretty, thin,
and
sexy can become an all-consuming task.

Levy aptly observes: “Adolescent girls in particular—who are blitzed with cultural pressure to be hot, to seem sexy—have a very difficult time learning to recognize their own sexual desire, which would seem a critical component of feeling sexy.”
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The notion that performance of sexuality equals power and control is particularly perilous for girls navigating their way to adulthood.

The APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, formed by the American Psychological Association, issued a report in 2007 (updated in 2010)
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addressing the omnipresence and damaging effects of sexualized images of girls and young women in every media format studied, including advertising, television, movies, music videos, music lyrics, magazines, sports media, video games, and online.

As expected, the images and depictions of women presented reflect a narrow—and unrealistic—standard of beauty that serves to undermine women. And, according to the report, sexualization has a host of negative psychological consequences for girls and young women—it affects their “cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, sexuality, and attitudes and beliefs” and harms “girls' self-image and healthy development.” (See
Chapter 3
, “Body Image,” for more discussion.)

The report also took an important step in identifying the components of sexualization, noting that it occurs when:

• a person's value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics

• a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy

• a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others' sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making

• sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person

In response to this widespread problem, feminist and youth groups are promoting their own positive messages about sexuality tied to thinking critically about media representations of girls and women. New Moon Girls (newmoon.com) is both a magazine and a moderated online community for girls ages eight and older. Designed to help girls develop healthy body image, the site features articles on girls changing the world, stories about arts and culture from around the world, and a safe and moderated chat room where girls can express themselves and share ideas. Girls can also create and share their own artwork, poetry, and videos through the site.