In terms of teenybopper culture, my family’s “off the grid.” No Hannah Montana around here. No Jonas Brothers. No Justin Bieber.
That is, until this week.
Justin Bieber in a Rolling Stone interview tried to assert himself as something other than simply a pretty boy. He aspired to be a pretty boy with opinions: “’I don’t really believe in abortion,’ he says. ‘I think [an embryo] is a human. It’s like killing a baby.’ Even in the case of rape? ‘Um,’ he says. ‘Well, I think that’s just really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I don’t know how that would be a reason.’ He looks confused. ‘I guess I haven’t been in that position so I wouldn’t be able to judge that.’”
I guess not.
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This past week, Representative Jackie Speier took her apportioned time on the House floor to speak about her own abortion some years back. She did so after her colleague, Representative Chris Smith, read from a book about the same procedure she’d had. During his reading, he’d focused upon the salacious, with greatest emphasis upon “a mangled image of a dead, tiny baby.” Representative Speier hadn’t planned to discuss her experience in front of Congress. She is quoted saying she was “overwhelmed,” ostensibly by Smith’s lack of regard for women and that she was “compelled” to speak up.
Representative Speier described terminating a wanted pregnancy due to severe complications with the fetus. As a well-educated, professional, married woman even those who opposed abortion couldn’t dispute that she had acted responsibly. No one there believed she’d made the decision to terminate her pregnancy lightly.
The amendment under debate, proposed by Representative (Mike Pence, was to strip Planned Parenthood of its federal funds—even though federal monies are already barred from being used for (abortion.
Quoting Speier: “I sat there thinking, none of these men on the other side have even come close to experiencing this, and yet they can pontificate about what it’s like.”
What it’s like is what matters. Speier’s remarks made clear that real stories are missing from the debate (although bringing abortion into the debate over whether to fund Planned Parenthood, which doesn’t allocate federal funds to abortion, did not need to happen in the first place).
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The Abortioneers blog is written by abortion providers and in the post-Bieber, post-Speier week, here’s a snippet from a post urging readers to remember what’s at stake are so not politics or polemics but women’s lives:
“Think about the 16 year old whose boyfriend didn’t want to wear a condom, and she was too nervous to insist. Now she just wants to finish high school and maybe go to college. She’s not ready to be a mom. Think about the single mom of 5. The man involved in the pregnancy took off and is dodging her calls. She can’t find a job and survives off of food stamps and TANF. She knows she can’t afford another baby. Think about the woman who went to a party and doesn’t quite remember what happened but woke up knowing something wasn’t right, and now she’s pregnant. She doesn’t want to have the baby of the man who raped her.”
The Redstockings—a radical feminist group that championed abortion rights before the Roe decision made abortion legal in this United States in 1973 interrupted a New York legislative hearing in 1969, furious that the only female speaker testifying about abortion was a nun. The legislative session moved behind closed doors. Meantime, the Redstockings staged their own hearing, a speak-out on illegal abortion.
Silence ruled during the days of back alley abortions. Telling was a radical action. The closer to a return of those days—abortion services are available in only about 12 percent of counties nationwide, with consent laws and waiting periods and lack of funding further limiting access—the more taboo it becomes again.
Certainly, you can argue there’s a confessional nature to these times, with tell-all memoirs and news coverage trained upon scandals that encourage a sense we’re hearing it all, every private detail. That’s just not true; we are not telling all. Despite statistics that tell us half of all pregnancies are unintended, we don’t talk much about those pregnancies. We don’t talk about ones like Speier’s that end sadly.
Without telling, vague ideas about what abortion might be—or contraception, for that matter—takes up too much room while the realities women face occupy not nearly enough.
Last week, Representative Gwen Moore also spoke on the House floor. She said: “I can tell you, I know a lot about having black babies. I’ve had three of them. And I had my first one when I was 18 years old, at the ripe old age of 18.” The pregnancy was unplanned. Moore had no money. “I just want to tell you a little bit about what it’s like to not have Planned Parenthood,” she said. “You have to add water to the formula to make it stretch. You have to give your kids Ramen noodles at the end of the month to fill up their little bellies so they won’t cry.”
Writer and food blogger Damaris Santos Palmer doesn’t have health insurance. When a kidney infection took hold on a Saturday, she panicked: “… yes I did freak out because paying for medical treatment out of pocket rhymes with nightmare.” With both low-income health clinics in her area closed for the weekend, she went to Planned Parenthood. She writes: “I was greeted by unfriendly protestors and had to be escorted in by Planned Parenthood volunteers. Now, as an open Mormon you may know my position on abortion but you know what, thank goodness for Planned Parenthood and the services they give to communities. And for the protestors who were screaming, ‘you don’t need this”’at me, the truth is I do. I need a place where I can get affordable treatment, yes I do.”
Shouldn’t access to health care allow us a chance at good health?
The Pence bill passed in the House.
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We have some storytelling to do. I picture a 1969-style speak-out on the Congressional floor. I want to hear from our female Representatives about their reproductive truths. I want to hear from their daughters and from their mothers. I want to know a whole lot more about women’s lives before another vote takes place, before any more health care-related funds are frozen or cut. I hope that in the face of honorable women, we’d simply prioritize women’s lives.
