Why the Use of Steve Jobs As An Anti-Choice Political Stunt Is Flawed

@RHRealitycheck

Steve Jobs' premature death has generated much online activity, some seeking to exploit his demise for political gain. In this category are articles suggesting that Jobs' status as an adoptee is a reason to restrict abortion access in general. The arguments put forward in this regard are flawed on two levels.

First, no individual circumstances can change the overarching reality that women and girls have abortions when they need them, regardless of the legal context. Restricting abortion access does not make the practice scarce, it merely makes it unsafe.

More than 30 percent of women in the United States will have at least one abortion before they are 45 years old, even though many live in states with few or no abortion providers. Most women who have abortions already have one child or more, and many refer to their desire to have time to parent as a key reason for needing an abortion. 

In fact, in my experience interviewing women around the world about pregnancy and child-bearing, abortion is the end rather than the beginning of their decision-making processes. Women talk to me about food for their children, time to play and concern with paying for their children's education. They talk about expensive birth control and child care and about limited health care options. They talk about how difficult it is to decide when and if to become a mother. And they talk about abortion as an option where other options have failed. 

They rarely, if ever, refer to the legality or availability of abortion services as a decision-making factor.  If a woman or girl feels she needs to terminate her pregnancy, she will find a way. I once spoke to a girl who had fired a gun into her abdomen because she felt too young to be a mother and abortion was illegal in her country.

It is also noticeable that abortion, in the United States, is more and more the recourse of women without financial resources.  In 2008, more than 40 percent of those having abortions in the United States were living under the poverty level, and this proportion is growing.  There is a reason for that: children are expensive and the United States provides few legal protections for parents. There is no federal law to protect paid parental leave or sick days, and there are no allowances for time off to breast feed. Federal law guarantees 3 months of unpaid extended sick leave to be used as parental leave, and only for those who are eligible, which excludes about 40 percent of American workers. There are no general provisions for health care--not even, in most states, for children. In 2010, almost 10 percent of all children (15 percent of children living in poverty) in the United States had no health insurance.

In short, though access to abortion services is becoming more expensive in the United States mainly because service providers are farther away, some women and girls see abortion as the only viable choice available to them.  In cases where women or girls might initially be inclined to carry a pregnancy to term and give the infant up for adoption, many would not be able to pay for prenatal care and to give birth--or even get time off for visits to the doctor and for the birth itself.  This in addition to the many very valid--and private--reasons women and girls might have to not want to carry a pregnancy to term, even if adoption were an easier and less costly option than it currently is.

Secondly, Steve Jobs' life experience doesn't work as an argument for limited abortion access, even by its own logic.

It is a fact that Steve Jobs was born before the legalization of abortion in the United States.  It has been suggested that Jobs' biological mother, faced with an unwanted pregnancy, contemplated having an abortion before she decided to carry the pregnancy to term and give the infant up for adoption. Her decision to do so was based on personal, and private, considerations.  This is as it should be.

Had Steve Jobs' biological mother decided to terminate her pregnancy in 1954 when she discovered she was expecting, she would have had to have an illegal and therefore potentially unsafe abortion.  And she might have died as a result, as more than half a million women worldwide continue to do every year because abortion access is illegal or severely restricted in their countries. Let us not wish ourselves back.

From Condoms to the Pill: Trust, Control, and Violence

@HuffingtonPost

As media reports celebrate advances toward new male contraceptive methods, the fact that women currently take the larger responsibility for birth control is held up as somewhat inevitable and sad.  In effect, contraceptive use is now so firmly established as a woman’s responsibility that data on birth control often are collected from women only.  Moreover, pundits regularly question how to get a man to wear a condom—the main existing form of male contraception, barring vasectomy—and  why men are so uninterested in something that surely pertains to them too.

Historically, however, the responsibility for birth control has fluctuated.

The use of modern contraceptive methods started at least in part as a male project.  George Bernard Shaw called rubber condoms the “greatest invention of the 19^th century,” and by the early 20^th century the US birth rate had fallen significantly, in part because of effective contraceptive use,  condoms in particular.

This male control over contraception was seen by some suffrage leaders as immoral, because it made it easier for married men to cheat on their wives.  Later feminists saw access to woman-controlled birth control as essential to advancing women as equals, in particular women from the working classes.  And in time, a woman’s right to decide, alone, about the timing and spacing of her  pregnancies has become a key tenet of the women’s rights movement, evidenced by the massive improvements in women’s status since the approval of the birth control pill over 50 years ago.

Male contraception remains very much in the mix, though, and contraception decisions still are very much a matter of trust and control.

For starters, as some of the suffragettes noted, the use of contraception allows for sexual encounters with a substantially lower risk of both pregnancy and, depending on the method, sexually transmitted infections.  

As a result, if a person wants to use contraception, that is sometimes seen as a sign of their desire to “cheat,” or even as proof that they already have. In societies where male infidelity is seen as more “normal” than female straying, this can cause problems. In 2004 I spoke with dozens of women in the Dominican Republic who had been beaten by their male partners for daring to ask them to use condoms.  Human Rights Watch research from Uganda, the Philippines, Zambia, and elsewhere confirms that expectations about female fidelity and submission is a central problem in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS: women can’t control their husbands’ sexual encounters, and they fear abuse if they ask their husbands to use condoms.   

Trust, control, and violence are interlinked with use of contraception in other ways too.  In a news report from 2010, 20 percent of women who sought family planning care in Northern California reported that their partner had sought to pressure them into having a child, including by sabotaging their contraceptive use.  In my own reporting from Argentina, experts told me that a significant number of abusive men deliberately sabotage their wife's or partner's access to contraceptives as part of the control and abuse. One woman I spoke with, who had had 10 pregnancies during her 14-year abusive marriage -- including two miscarriages caused by the abuse -- told me her husband said: "I am going to fill you with children so that you can't leave my side." As a result of this relatively prevalent dynamic, many women in Argentina choose invisible contraceptive methods, such as voluntary sterilization or hormonal injections.

Also for those who have not personally experienced a physically abusive relationship, trust is often central to contraceptive choice.  Even the most superficial web search reveals that many men and women are loathe to trust their partners about birth control. The truth of the matter is that unless you can see it or use it yourself, you can never be 100 percent certain that a pill has been taken or a condom is intact.

Of course, putting more contraceptive options on the table, also for men, is a social good. But as I mentally review the testimonies of the hundreds of women I have spoken to about their lack of autonomy in contraceptive use, I find women’s responsibility for, and right to, birth control neither inevitable nor sad.  Most of the women I speak to are still struggling for choice, and their lack of reproductive autonomy has only brought them grief. 

A Step Backward for Puerto Rican Women

@PRDailysun

When it comes to ending violence against women, Puerto Rico has taken a giant step backward.  To be sure, the islands have had a comprehensive law to protect women and girls against domestic violence since 1989. But the Puerto Rican Supreme Court has blocked a lot of women from its protection.  

In a decision handed down in March, the Court upheld a lower court's ruling that a victim of intimate partner violence was not protected by Puerto Rico’s domestic violence law because she was not married to the man who attacked her.  The woman, who was separated but not yet divorced from her husband, was battered by her new partner.

The Supreme Court held that the historical background of the law indicated that the Puerto Rican legislature’s intent was to protect the integrity of the family and its members. So, it held, the law did not apply to extramarital affairs. The court did make clear that the assault violated other criminal law provisions.

The ruling has, understandably, outraged many people, as far away as New York, where city and state elected officials voiced their objections. For starters, Puerto Rico’s domestic violence law explicitly applies broadly to interpersonal relationships. It covers violence by someone with whom the victim lives or has lived or has had a consensual relationship and does not require a marital bond between the victim and the abuser.   In other words, the ruling imposes a perverse interpretation on a commonsense and literal reading of the law, based on far reaching assumptions about the intent of the legislature.

But more important, through this ruling the Puerto Rican Supreme Court is sending the message that some women may not deserve equal protection from the state.  This is the wrong message to put forward in a society where interpersonal violence is a serious problem.   

According to official sources, on average, 20,000 domestic violence incidents are reported every year in Puerto Rico, along with about 3,000 incidents of sexual violence.  Official sources estimate that, in the case of sexual violence, only about 15 percent of rapes are reported.   If the proportion is the same for domestic violence, approximately 130,000 women and girls are subjected to domestic violence every year, and 18,000 are raped, in a place with only 4 million people. Whatever the actual figures, violence at the hands of their partners and families is a serious problem for Puerto Rican women and girls.

Paradoxically, Puerto Rican women are far from disempowered. Women on the islands achieved the right to vote in 1935, before almost any nation in Latin America and the Caribbean (outdone only by Ecuador, where women have been able to vote since 1929). And Puerto Rico’s women and girls have long outdone their male counterparts when it comes to education: a century ago, nearly three quarter of the graduates from the University of Puerto Rico were women.  Today approximately 160 women are graduating from Puerto Rico’s higher education programs for every 100 men. 

So the reason for the high rate of interpersonal violence has to be found elsewhere.  Emerging evidence from across the world suggests that it’s not enough for women to be financially independent and educated for the incidence of domestic violence to drop—though those are  necessary conditions.  

 But because violence against women often is fuelled by deeply held notions of male dominance and entitlement, it doesn’t stop just because women, objectively, are as educated and employable as men.  Rather, successful anti-violence initiatives must engage men and boys as well as women and girls to do away with prejudices about what families “must” look like, and what women and men “should” do. 

The Puerto Rican Supreme Court’s ruling is particularly problematic because it does just the opposite. By suggesting that “integrity of the family and its members” trumps the right of certain women in certain relationships to equal protection against violence, the court undermines the many valid initiatives to stop violence against women in Puerto Rico.  And that’s indeed something to be outraged about. 

Rape in war: No more excuses

@chicagotribune

Last month, the first woman ever was convicted of genocide by an international tribunal. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, Rwanda's former minister for family and women's affairs, guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including rape, for her role in planning and ordering others to carry out these crimes during the country's 1994 genocide.

Some, including some feminists, might find it uncomfortable to deal with the fact that women can plan and direct violence. But Nyiramasuhuko's conviction, in particular for rape, should be celebrated as a giant step forward for women's rights.

There are two main reasons for this.

First, it contributes directly to justice for sexual violence.

Sexual violence is perhaps one of the least prosecuted crimes in the world. While most people agree that rape is bad, many carve out excuses. The alleged victim was drunk, silent, suspected of criminal activity or just plain married to the rapist. The perception in the general public — and more troubling, with police officers — is that a high percentage of rape allegations are false, even when research shows this to be untrue.

To be sure, there is more empathy surrounding sexual violence in war, often because victims are genuinely seen as "innocent." But even so, it took decades from the adoption of the Geneva Conventions, in which sexual violence was defined as an attack on a person's dignity, to the adoption of the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court, in which the many different types of sexual violence in war were given context and detail.

While only a fraction of war crimes may ever be prosecuted, commentators have noted that rape continues to be underprosecuted for a number of reasons, including the reluctance of rape victims to speak up, and the general difficulties in collecting information and proving coercion.

And so thoughtful jurisprudence on rape in war — and indeed, including it on an equal basis with the other crimes Nyiramasuhuko was accused of — helps to overcome this gap and should be celebrated.

Second, Nyiramasuhuko's conviction counters the most overused and dangerous justification for rape in war: "Boys will be boys."

The basic idea behind this notion is that male soldiers rape female civilians because of an uncontrollable genetic impulse to have sex. Sometimes the boys-will-be-boys excuse gives rise to well-meaning, but misguided, recommendations that soldiers be allowed to visit their wives or girlfriends more frequently. At other times, it is used as a justification to shrug off sexual violence in conflict as inevitable: Regardless of our efforts, boys will continue to be boys.

Nyiramasuhuko's conviction, and everything we know about sexual violence as a weapon of war, tells us just how wrong this concept is. Systematic rape is an effective way to terrorize a civilian population and destroy the social fabric that might later lead to reconstruction. It is used as a weapon of war, and, as such, it is ordered or willfully ignored by commanders and superiors. Even if those commanders and superiors are women, as in the case of Nyiramasuhuko.

If Nyiramasuhuko's conviction indeed contributes to overcoming the boys-will-be-boys nonsense, perhaps one long-lasting contribution of the case would be an end to the insulting notion that men just can't control themselves. I have never understood why male experts on war so blithely propagate the idea that men essentially are animals that cannot be stopped.

Surely, until we all accept responsibility for our actions, as conscious, thinking human beings, there can be neither peace nor justice.

Gay Marriage: The Issue Is Respect

@HuffingtonPost

Earlier this year, a student in a human rights seminar I was teaching declared her conviction that gay parents damage their children by virtue of being gay. I explained as gently as I could why this is a discriminatory notion, incompatible with human rights standards, and moved on. My student sat as if stunned for two minutes, then gathered her books and left the class.

She later confronted me outside the classroom, and I was astonished to see just how fervently she insisted that her opinion was both based on science and respectful of rights. Neither is true. As New York State joins the ranks of countries and other jurisdictions recognizing same-sex marriage, it's worth reflecting on rights and respect.

The fact is that thousands of human beings are subjected to violence across they globe simply because they are suspected of being gay. In Brazil alone, over 2,500 men were murdered between 1997 and 2007, ostensibly for being gay. In the United States, the It Gets Better Project has highlighted the sustained violence and bullying young people suffer just because they aren't straight. This month, the United Nations Human Rights Council for the first time condemned violence and other human rights violations based on a person's sexual orientation or identity.

Of course, those who oppose same-sex marriage in New York State and elsewhere are not saying they support violence against LGBTQ people. Nevertheless, the same basic proposition lies at the root of both: the notion that you are somehow a different -- lesser -- type of human being if you are not, or are not seen to be, straight, and that society is justified in rejecting you.

For too many people it is only a short leap from seeing homosexuality as offensive to justifying physical harm. In this way, for example, the ban on inter-racial marriage in this country coexisted with societal acceptance of violence against people of color. Many times, inter-racial couples suffered violence precisely because they dared to break the ban.

But perhaps the deepest-held notion is the one that was expressed so vehemently by my student: that all children brought up by LGBTQ persons are psychologically damaged. Fortunately, it is increasingly recognized that it is not exposure to diversity but rather to bigotry and prejudice that is damaging to kids. In 2008, the European Court on Human Rights held that France was not allowed to deny the adoption application of a women just because she was a lesbian. And in February, the High Court in the United Kingdom barred a couple from becoming foster parents because their anti-gay views were held to be potentially harmful to the children who would be in their care.

In fact, research shows that children with gay parents are just as likely to be well-adjusted as children with straight parents, and that the key to childhood adjustment is good relationships between parents and children and between the parents themselves.

Marriage, of course, does not guarantee good relationships. But where family leave and other benefits depend on marital status, children are disadvantaged if their parents are not allowed to marry. The vote in Albany this week is significant because it is another step toward guaranteeing children and adults the rights and respect they are entitled to.