#BansOffOurBodies
Dear Readers,
Please comment in the comment section from your own personal experience. You may reach out to us for support about your experience with sexual, reproductive health. If your are concerned about privacy, the SisterScene website can put stories on a password-only page. You are invited to submit your stories to this community blog.
By Emily Cox, Durham, NC
My Visit to Planned Parenthood in Louisiana in 1984:
My first visit to a gynecology clinic was to the Planned Parenthood clinic in Lake Charles, Louisiana (my home town, population 80,000 in 1984). I went alone because I wanted to start birth control around my 18th birthday, it was part of my vision of becoming an independent adult. Words like independent are thematic of the false American dream, actually used to push people away instead of including or supporting them.
In reality, I was genuinely too uncomfortable to talk to my parents or any teachers or elders. My mother had taught me about Margaret Sanger’s work to save the lives of pregnant women. And she told me how we have a public clinic called Planned Parenthood that gives women, teen girls access to private consultations, medical care and assistance with sexual, domestic violence, reproductive needs. But she was not careful enough to show me, clearly, that I was included in a world where gynecology or reproductive health are addressed.
By the time I was 20 years old, attending Loyola University in New Orleans with a keen interest in healthy society (e.g. I cared about racism and poverty and sexism and domestic violence). I went to the Desire Housing Projects for meetings with a nun who supported the needs of women and children exposed to inhumane conditions and irrevocable harm; government assistance was more like hell than anything. I attended a Green Party meeting because I believed in the principles of humanism, antiracism and environmentalism—I was appalled; a tiny, all-white male group meeting in a church basement. I feared the party would never have any impact on the needs of the poor, women, children or the planet. Well, I also had a strong belief in low cost medical care for people needing help to prevent or end unwanted pregnancy. I signed up to be a Patient Defender for public clinics, but I remember getting the call on my answering machine to show up one day. I did not reply to the call because I was too scared to actually show up! I’ve never forgotten that moment.
Statement from Dr. Leana Wen, President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 2018:
Every person deserves the right to control their body, their life, and their future. We cannot live freely and move fully in the world when our basic right to access the reproductive health care we need, including safe, legal abortion, is under attack. Our bodies are our own — if they are not, we cannot be truly free or equal. We will show everyone the strength of our fierce and unrelenting opposition to these bans and any attempt to take away our fundamental right to make decisions about our bodies. Now is the time to unite, stand up, and make sure we all have the opportunity to live full and healthy lives. We won’t tolerate this assault on our reproductive health and rights, and we won’t be silenced. People across the country are ready to stand together, unified and defiant, to say: get your Bans Off My Body.
Privilege Not Same Thing as Rights
Back to my Planned Parenthood experience. When I was a teenager, my mom told me about the history of public policy and laws and the ongoing deaths of pregnant women and girls because of government and male-dominated control of human rights around the world. How the shame, domestic abuse, psychological and physical control of girls and women kept them away from safe information, advice and treatment for menstrual cycle, infections, STDs, planned and unplanned pregnancies. Even though she talked to me so respectfully and passionately about all of that, it wasn’t at the moment when I finally got up the courage to want advice and a pregnancy prevention plan for myself. My American History and Civics teachers taught the difference between human rights and privilege. My mom didn’t didn’t address that angle, but as Americans I fear way too many people dispute this key function of our society, culture and government. The Catholic Diocese of Lake Charles made it mandatory that our class watch propaganda “educational” films on the dangers of fornication, birth control, and abortion. I was a strong enough critical thinker to recognize the conflicting actions of teaching us about the rights of Americans to life—survival—and the demonizing/condemning, brutal, shame of normal human biology and behavior, sex, pregnancy and self-care. .
SisterScene strives to positively impact public discourse through conversation, increasing interest and turnout in the arts and cultural and social justice world. We want to change cruel policies and help people stretch their comfort zone and be role-models for open-mindedness.
Alone Not Horrified
When I got up the courage myself to seek support for my gynecology needs, I silently and ALONE made a plan to go to Planned Parenthood and figure out what to do. Why do people feel ashamed to get condoms or the pill, when it is just a healthy, smart thing to do? I was not told openly by my parents that whenever I needed health information I could go to (or speak to) a doctor independently. And, I can’t get birth control pills off the rack, I had to get a prescription.
Maturity Not Motherhood
Everyone throws around, “mature, immature” judgmentally, unsolicited, without regard for the ridiculous traps that maturity brings. Adults who are honest know that we are never fully mature. The environment I grew up in transmitted the messages: “be a good girl,” “find a good guy,” “sex is sexy,” “motherhood is beautiful.”
I saw myself as part of the public, a part of the population of American women who need advice and so I made a plan and took a morning off from high school and went to the Planned Parenthood clinic. I did not want the intrusion on my decision-making of parents, boyfriend, or even my girlfriends. I had waited, as best I could, to the point in my teenage, young adult life, to make a plan to start having sex with a trustworthy person I loved (who did not necessarily think that we should have sex or that I should go on birth control).
From my high school P.E. health class, I knew that a guy wearing a condom would not prevent pregnancy 100%. And I had already decided by the time that I was 12 years old that I would not be a young mother like my mother was (she was 18 when she married). Do you feel compelled to share your assumptions, questions about my adolescent life; hard not to when culture/society promotes snap judgements and bias? I do not like to walk around the world wearing “thick skin,” but go ahead. I believe the way I pretty acurately understood, perceived other people’s opinions, questions, ideas is precisely the reason that I had to go alone to do such an adult thing.
This is how sexism, racism, homophobia, and the umbrella system of white supremacy works to control aspects of people’s personal life. Controlling information and not challenging messages promotes cruelty.
SisterScene strives to positively impact public discourse through conversation, increasing interest and turnout in the arts and cultural and social justice world. We want to change cruel policies and help people stretch their comfort zone and be role-models for open-mindedness.
PERSONAL connection to Creative Content: ARTICLE FROM NONFICS.COM
BY Siân Melton
Four Essential Films to Watch While Reproductive Rights Are Under Threat
A look at the recent wave of abortion documentaries 'Trapped,' 'After Tiller,' 'Vessel,' and '12th & Delaware.'
https://nonfics.com/four-essential-films-to-watch-while-reproductive-rights-are-under-threat-d843d1d3704c/
Excerpt>>Just last week, Senator Paul Ryan pledged, along with repealing the Affordable Care Act (which is the exact same thing as Obamacare, really!), to defund Planned Parenthood. This is because Republicans don’t believe that Planned Parenthood should receive federal funding, because they provide abortion services.
Except, guess what: those federal funds go to everything but abortion services, like testing for sexually transmitted diseases, providing contraceptives, screening for breast cancer. You know, basic healthcare.
‘Trapped’
If defunding Planned Parenthood wasn’t horrifying enough, some state governments are also actively working to shut down abortion clinics through TRAP (targeted regulation of abortion providers) laws. The impact of these laws throughout the southern states in particular is the focus of Dawn Porter’s 2016 documentary Trapped. She gained impressive access to clinics in Alabama, where there are only three left; Mississippi, where there is just one (and you thought it was bad in Alabama); and Texas, where the number of clinics dropped from 44 to six after new legislation passed in 2013.
This is perhaps one of most striking things about Trapped: how it manages to tackle the complex law side of the issue while still feeling intimate and human. “When I was there, the nurses and doctors just worked so hard to make the women feel safe, and they recognize and understand how emotional the women can be, so I really wanted to just show how normal the people are and how professional and brave they are,” explains Porter in an interview at The Moveable Fest.
#ArtIsEssential #sisterscene #ReproductiveRights #PrivacyRights #Trapped
