Sexism Watchapalooza*
2008 September 19 at 2:23 PM (2008, feminism, Gov. Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton)
I have a guest post up at Shakesville: Sexism Watchapalooza (*nifty title is Liss’, not mine). It’s about C.M. Paulson’s Associated Content article critiquing the Entertainment Tonight segment that speculated on Ms. Obama, Gov. Palin, Sen. Clinton, and Ms. McCain’s dress sizes. The article itself was good but the ET content was horrendous, as was The Insider’s fat-shaming interview of Meghan McCain.
HHS Rule Change: Comment Period Closes 25 Sept.
2008 September 19 at 11:27 AM (2008, feminism, HHS rule change, Hillary 1000, i write letters, Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton)
Cross-posted from Hillary 1000. My other posts on the HHS rule change are here.
Via Liss, Senator Clinton and Planned Parenthood Federation of American President Cecile Richards have an op-ed in yesterday’s NYT, “Blocking Care for Women”. For a quick refresher, the HHS rule change would create a “conscience clause”* exemption allowing “health care providers”** at institutions receiving federal funds to refuse to provide “abortions” and “abortion-related services.”***
Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.
The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.
The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified “other medical procedures” that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.
Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.” Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription? [emphases mine]
In short, the rule change would
- be expensive;
- allow medical providers and health care employees ranging from receptionists to people who file insurance claims to pharmacists to doctors to refuse treatment, information, medication, and referrals for abortion and contraception at their whim. Whether you’ve been raped, whether you’ve had unsafe sex, whether you need that birth control because you already have children and don’t want more, whether you need it to regulate your period, whether you need it for endometriosis or PCOS – your access to health care is up to the whim of the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc. involved in your treatment.
- as always, fall disproportionately harshly on the poor and uninsured. Women and girls who don’t have the option of seeking multiple doctors or multiple pharmacies to find someone who does their job will be forced to go without. Women and girls without the insurance coverage, money, time, transportation, and information to seek out multiple doctors or multiple pharmacies will be forced to go without. In this case, going without could mean carrying pregnancies they can’t afford or don’t want, with all the risks and dangerous consequences upon that, and losing the ability to make their own decisions about their lives and bodies.
Whether or not you would personally have an abortion, whether or not you personally use birth control (for birth control or other medical purposes), it behooves you to not force your beliefs upon another woman’s decisions. You have the right to make your choice; she has the right to make her choice and access the health care she needs.
What can I do?
Liss suggests,
If you’ve already sent a letter, please take a moment to call 1-877-696-6775 and say: “I am calling regarding the proposed regulatory changes released on August 21. I would like to register my strong disagreement with the proposed change.”
ACLU Action Alert to contact the Department of Health and Human Services
Online comment form at regulations.gov to send a comment. Put “Provider Conscience Regulation” as the subject.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: 202-225-4965 (DC)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: 202-224-3542 (DC)
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama: 202-224-2854 (DC)
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden: 202-224-5042 (DC)
Senators: Senate.gov
Representatives: House.gov
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*“Conscience clause”: I think it’s nothing more than an abdication of morality and one’s conscience to refuse to provide treatment for people in need of it, and to lie and provide misinformation about contraception and abortion.
**“Health care providers”: The rule change redefines health care provider to encompass every employee at a medical institution receiving federal funds – the clerks processing insurance claims (oh, won’t that be fun to sort out, if one of them has an objection to filing claims for birth control), the doctors, the nurses, the pharmacists, the aides that sterilize equipment, etc.
***“Abortions” and “abortion-related services”: The definition of abortion is left up to the individual, in the text of the rule change. This means that someone who thinks that birth control, emergency contraception, and any form of contraceptive is abortion, no matter what you’re using it for (e.g. PCOS, regularize periods, anemia, endometriosis), can refuse to provide those medications and services because they’re “abortion.” This includes writing and filling prescriptions and providing referrals to medical professionals who are willing to provide abortions and related services.
Principles
2008 September 3 at 11:36 PM (2008, feminism, Gov. Sarah Palin, me, politics, racism, Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. John McCain)
Yesterday, Misty said,
[P]rinciples aren’t reserved just for people we like, agree with, and would “do for us” in kind. This concept? Not hard.
My rule of thumb lately has been that if you can abandon them when it’s convenient, they’re not principles.
I get that it’s appealing to pick up the nasty, poisoned barbs of sexism, classism, racism, and ableism and revel in using them freely because the target is one of those people. Someone you don’t like, someone who is considered an acceptable victim, someone who came at you with those same weapons in the past. After being attacked with those tactics, it feels positively heady to pick up those slurs and aim them at someone else. This is what power feels like! This is what it feels like to be the aggressor and in control, rather than the victim!
Unfortunately, principles are a code of behavior that you stick to when it’s inconvenient, when it’s hard, when it’s not fun and even when it means you’re ceding the easy ways to attack people. It doesn’t matter whether the people you’re standing up for are friends or enemies, whether they agree with you, or whether they’d return the favor, because principles are not about them. They’re about you and how you hold yourself accountable. That was one of the most difficult lessons of my life because I struggled against learning it. I still have to fight the temptation to use prejudiced slurs because the damned things are effective. They work because they’re words loaded with histories of hatred and although I know better, I still have to work to avoid shaming myself and falling prey to the ease and effectiveness of hateful speech. It gets easier with time and practice.
Oddly enough, maybe that’s my Christian background turning out to be useful. We were taught that salvation was not easy, that following Christ was not easy. If we wanted to be His and live Christian lives, we’d have to struggle and work at it every day, fully aware that we’d fail time and again. We’d never be perfect but we’d pick ourselves up after every failure and keep on going, striving to do better.
In the end, resorting to sexist, racist, classist, ageist, and ableist weapons only serves to legitimize those tactics in all instances. Using them means that even if you win the immediate conflict, you’re succumbing to bigotry and hatred. Those slurs are never ok, even if you think that it’ll be just in this instance…just against this woman…just because we’re so close…just because he called me a g**k first…just because it would hurt them badly…just this once and then you’ll go back to being a good progressive and standing up against prejudice, except for right now…
As the election season moves forward, I’m wondering how many progressives will be left by the end of it.
