A Convincing Argument

(Originally posted on RH Reality Check)

I am now in Los Angeles, on the last leg of my road-trip through the United States and Canada with Verónica Cruz, founder and director of the Mexican grassroots advocacy group, Las Libres (The Free Women). Las Libres works for access to safe and legal abortion in the conservative Mexican state of Guanajuato, so it is not surprising that social change - how to create and sustain it - is high on Verónica's agenda.

What might be surprising is that her reflections are universally applicable. Also to the groups that try to generate this change.

"You can't ever afford to get complacent with your work," Verónica told me Tuesday as we left a meeting with community based women's organizations in East Los Angeles. "We must all evaluate the impact our work has on creating durable social change - that's the key factor for doing things right."

In fact, setting priorities and planning for real change has been our main conversation topic throughout the week, from the panel discussion with Verónica and Dolores Huerta (the legendary founder of United Farm Workers) at the Feminist Majority's offices, over our visit to a model Rape Crisis Center in Santa Monica, to our lunch-time strategy session with latina and chicana women in East Los Angeles.

And we have come to a few conclusions.

First, we agreed, change happens through three main vehicles: conviction, financial incentives, or political pressure.

In the case of ensuring access to safe abortion for all women, an example of each of these three arguments would be something like this:

1. Women have a right to decide over their bodies (conviction);
2. The criminalization of abortion leads to adverse health complications, in particular for poor women, and this carries financial implications for the public health system (financial incentives); and
3. Promoting access to legal abortion translates directly into votes (political pressure).

Secondly, we also had to admit, we, as a movement, often are trying too hard to convince the wrong people with the wrong arguments.

Few decision-makers agree to push for social change because we convinced them of the rightness of our cause - most respond better to financial or political pressure. But to build a durable movement, the logic is inverse: if you try to pressure or buy people to join your cause, your movement will disappear as soon as the incentives subside.

And yet so many groups we know - including political parties - do just the opposite: they use energy trying to convince decision-makers and resources trying to buy or pressure grassroots.

Third, change can be almost instantaneous if you start by really listening.

"We call it listening with all five senses," said Verónica. "That's what we try to do when we talk to women in the marginalized communities we work with. We say to them: let's see what problems you have, and what resources you have to overcome them. And that way, together, we can figure out a solution that is made possible by the women themselves."

No money, no enhanced infrastructure, not even access to any other education than just a basic understanding that women are human beings and that human being have certain inalienable rights.

Finally, durable social change can only come about through a movement.

Law and political changes are important and can create an impetus for deeper social change. But they can never be enough on their own. With regard to the issue of abortion, this - perhaps quite naïve - realization cuts both ways.

In South Dakota, for example, the movement behind the referendum to defeat the proposal to criminalize most abortions made it clear that a large group of convinced people can overcome a smaller group of decision-makers motivated by financial or political incentives. The legal change was not enough to change the mentality of the people of South Dakota, who knew that criminalizing abortion does not eliminate the need for it.

In Nicaragua, the financial and political incentives won out, at least for the moment. Despite a massive movement against the criminalization of abortion; despite countless letters and petitions to the Nicaraguan Congress; despite women already dying in hospitals because they cannot get access to a therapeutic abortion; despite all of this, Nicaraguan politicians virtually fell over each over to demonstrate that they were tougher then the next guy on sending women to prison for abortion. Why? Because in Nicaragua, it seems that it is more important to have the church and the commercial interests on your side in an election, than to do the right thing. (Money and pressure weigh out conviction).

Fortunately, this legal change will not create social change. The people of Nicaragua are likely to continue to protest the unjustness of the law. And through their mobilization and work, they will create the real, the durable, social change that women everywhere deserve.

"As long as people mobilize for social justice, there is hope. Then you know you are doing the right thing," Verónica said to this morning. Indeed.

Plus ça change

(Originally posted on RH Reality Check)

In French they have a saying: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." (It means something like: "The more things change, the more it's all the same.")

This is the feeling I have as I travel with Verónica Cruz - my Mexican colleague who helps rape victims get access to legal abortion - from New York over Washington D.C., Ottawa and Toronto to Chicago. Women everywhere - and in particular poor, uneducated, young, or non-white women - are ignored and abused. The justice and health service providers charged with helping them, instead insult and mistreat them.

In Ottawa, for example, we spoke with a researcher from Canadians for Choice. The researcher had called public hospitals all over Canada, posing as a young woman with a crisis pregnancy who was looking for information on how to get a safe abortion. In Canada, abortion is, by law, considered a medical procedure the state has to provide. Even so, some hospital receptionists treated the researcher with cruelty and disdain ("No one will want to talk with you or help you!"); others referred her to anti-choice organizations that lied to her ("Virtually all young women miscarry anyway"); and still others simply hung up.

And in Chicago, Verónica only had to present her work briefly to grassroots groups working on access to health care and justice for women, before it became clear that situations were so similar in Chicago and Guanajuato that it made sense to set up an exchange program to share ideas, strategies, and work-methods in both directions.

Everywhere, women are beaten, abused, and raped. Family members and public officials ignore them, or worse: they convince women that the women themselves are to blame for the crimes committed against them.

"Women are seen as things, not as human beings," Verónica said to a local journalist this morning. "So much so, that I don't know one single woman who has not at one point or another in her life been sexually harassed, grabbed, or fondled. This happens on the street, at her work, in her home, or at school."

Me either. Including myself.

And for me, this really is the key issue when we talk about access to abortion. It is not only about abortion per se, though it is also about that. It is about choosing who we are, as women, and deciding who and what we allow to touch our bodies. It is about controlling how we want to live our lives, and if, when, how often, and with whom we want to have children. It is about the fact that women are human beings. It is about fundamental dignity.

And perhaps this is what makes abortion such a threatening topic to so many people in Mexico, in Canada, and in the United States. Many of those who oppose equitable and legal access to abortion explicitly or implicitly argue that access to abortion on demand (and free for all) will unleash women's irresponsible nature. Some say - as if it is a bad thing - that such a policy reform might convert women into the equals of men. "It's not conscious," Verónica said to me. "And that's perhaps the worst part of it: many are inherently afraid to let women make choices over their bodies because they sense this would change power and control structures. And as a consequence it would change the world as we know it."

Indeed it would. But change is not a bad thing when what's changing is women being beaten, abused, and raped.

Plus ça change...



Justice Is Possible

(Originally posted on RH Reality Check)

It's easy to get discouraged if you support women's right to decide over their bodies and choices, what with the blanket ban on abortion in Nicaragua passed last week, the imposition of demonstrably harmful "abstinence-only" sexual education in the United States and elsewhere, and the lack of access to comprehensive reproductive and sexual health care for women generally. But this month I am getting a much-needed injection of "it's possible."

I am not talking about the U.S. elections, though some electoral campaigns have given me hope that not all politicians have sold out to focus group research.

I am talking about Verónica Cruz.

Verónica Cruz is the co-founder and leader of the organization "Las Libres" (The Free Women) in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. She is also one of only three recipients of this year's Human Rights Watch annual award for exceptional human rights activists. Part of the prize is a three-week speaking tour of the United States and Canada, where I, as her Human Rights Watch host, get to accompany her. Our trip only started Monday, but I am already energized by her enthusiasm and inherent belief that justice is possible. Even for women. Even for poor women. Even for poor, indigenous, illiterate women.

And even though Verónica and Las Libres work in a hostile environment, their results are as up-lifting as their cause is depressing.

Las Libres is the only organization in the state of Guanajuato that provides legal aid and integral health services for victims of sexual violence. In Guanajuato, as elsewhere in Mexico, sexual violence is rampant and mostly unchecked. By the government's own conservative estimates, a woman or girl is raped every four minutes in Mexico, and more than 90 percent of rape victims don't ever report the crime committed against them to the authorities.

Many women and girls know from experience that they are likely to be aggressively questioned if they go to the police or to the public prosecutors. When I investigated this issue in Mexico last year, I found appalling cases of public officials actively mistreating or summarily dismissing rape victims, even before a claim was filed. Moreover, of the 10 percent rape cases that do get reported, few get properly investigated, and even fewer end with a conviction of the perpetrator. This impunity is a further reason for rape victims not to want to report a crime: if there is no final conviction, what is the point of exposing yourself to abusive police officers and prosecutors?

But it's even worse. Rape victims who have gotten pregnant as a result of the rape bear the brunt of the mistreatment and distrust. This is closely linked with the politically touchy issue of abortion. Abortion is generally illegal in Mexico, and some states still prosecute women for having had abortions. At the same time, all 32 state penal codes include exceptions to that general criminalization. The only exception that is valid in all of Mexico is legal abortion for rape victims. This means that rape victims in theory have a right to a safe, legal, and free abortion. However, pregnant rape victims who ask authorities for help to obtain such an abortion meet with multiple obstacles, both in the justice and health systems, ultimately impeding access.

In fact, in the state of Guanajuato, not one single rape victims has been granted access to a legal abortion by the authorities during the 30 years the penal code exception has been on the books.

Luckily, rape victims in Guanajuato now have somewhere else to go with their plight: Verónica Cruz and Las Libres. Las Libres provides the mental and physical health services the state should be providing but doesn't. Las Libres convinces women, through sustained support and consciousness-raising, that impunity is fought with the law: if rape victims agree to report the rape, Las Libres will provide them with the necessary legal aid. And if rape victims are pregnant and find they want to terminate the pregnancy, they are given the choice they are legally entitled to.

I have seen Verónica's presence in a rape victim's home change almost tangible despair to hope in a matter of minutes, just from Verónica's compassionate support and direct assistance. "Women, and in particular poor women, are used to thinking that they don't have a right to justice," Verónica told me today. "We show them it's not true. Justice is a human right. And it is possible."

Of course, victims of sexual assault still face a number of obstacles in accessing justice and health services in Guanajuato as elsewhere in Mexico. But with Verónica's and Las Libres' sustained pressure, the government can no longer ignore their obligation to improve this situation. And this is already a big step forward.

Abortion lessons from Latin America

(Originally published in the Los Angeles Times)

IT'S BEEN A LONG time since the days of back-alley abortions in the U.S. Perhaps that's why South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds signed into law a ban against abortion in his state, with one narrow exception: protecting the life of the pregnant woman. Perhaps Rounds, who was only 19 when Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, doesn't remember what it was like to live in a country where women had no right to a safe, legal abortion.

But there is a place he could visit if he wants to refresh his memory: Latin America.

Abortion is illegal in most countries in Central and South America, though the law waives criminal penalties for women who have abortions in certain circumstances: after rape or incest or if their life or health is endangered by the pregnancy. Over the last five years, I have interviewed dozens of women and girls who faced unwanted pregnancies and had abortions in Argentina, Mexico and Peru, all countries that limit access to contraceptives, sex education and abortion. The most common tale I heard was one of desperation.

"I don't have $10 a month for contraceptives -- I need that money for milk for my children." "I didn't even want to have sex, let alone become pregnant." "If I have this child, I won't be able to take care of the others." "My father raped me." The list goes on.

My experience in Latin America carrie with it three clear lessons for South Dakota.

Lesson 1: Outlawing abortion does not stop women from having them. "What do I care if abortion is legal or illegal?" Marcela E. told me in 2004 in Argentina, where abortion generally is banned. "If I have to do it, I have to do it." The 32-year-old mother of three had a clandestine abortion after her husband raped her.

A community organizer in Argentina told me: "You will not believe what women end up putting in their uteruses to abort." I wish I didn't.

I have spoken to women who used knives, knitting needles, rubber tubes, even pieces of wood to pry open their uteruses. Some got access to abortive medicines that in theory lower the possibility of direct infection but that caused serious complications when they took them without medical assistance. Affluent women suffered fewer traumatic ordeals, often traveling to the U.S. for the procedure or sneaking off to upscale private Latin America clinics where, on paper, they had surgery for appendicitis.

Lesson 2: Providing limited exceptions to an abortion ban does little to improve access to safe abortions.

In reality very few, if any, women get such "non-punishable" abortions because there are no clear procedures. Fearing that they'd be charged with a crime, many of the women I interviewed who might have qualified for a legal abortion because they had been raped or because their health was endangered by the pregnancy did not dare to out themselves as potential abortion candidates. They went straight for the illegal and mostly unsafe back-alley abortions. A large proportion of maternal mortality in Latin America is caused directly by the consequences of such unsafe abortions.

Lesson 3: In Latin America, as everywhere else, the best way to stop abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Women and girls act within the circumstances imposed upon them. In Latin America, where contraceptives are inaccessible and sex is stigmatized (through cultural expectations that they be virginal and uneducated about sex), unwanted pregnancies are more common; not surprisingly, there is a higher proportion of abortions to pregnancies than in, for example, the U.S. The simple fact is that women with unwanted or imposed pregnancies would have preferred not to need abortions.

South Dakota's abortion ban won't end or even cut down on abortions among the women in that state, and it probably will have disastrous effects on their health and lives. Laws and policies on abortion and contraceptives should not punish women and girls for doing what they feel they must to live with dignity.

Guatemalan Oil Debacle

The Houston-based oil exploration company Anadarko announced earlier this year that the company might expand its operations in Guatemala. What Anadarko's management did not explain was how serious the environmental costs of the expansion could be, although the destruction of vast areas of rainforest by past operations has led to condemnation by an international environmental tribunal, as well as a pending lawsuit before the country's Supreme Court.

Basic Resources International (BASIC), Anadarko's fully owned subsidiary, started drilling for oil in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala in 1985. Spanning nearly 2.1 million hectares, the reserve is an area of primary lowland tropical forests and expansive wetlands. It contains both important biological diversity and internationally renowned archeological treasures such as the Mayan Tikal ruins.

At the center of the reserve is the 340,000 hectare Laguna del Tigre National Park, established in 1990. The park contains the largest protected wetland in Central America and was recognized by the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, which the Guatemala government ratified in 1990.

Though oil drilling is not allowed in most parts of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, BASIC's 1985 contract was grandfathered into the reserve when it was created in 1990 and renewed in 1992.

The World Bank's corporate lending agency, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has assisted Basic's expansion into the Biosphere Reserve, approving a $20 million loan to BASIC in 1993 to finance a 30 percent increase in oil production from the Reserve, as well as the construction of a pipeline.

BASIC argued that the pipeline would minimize the environmental impact of oil transportation, since it would not be subject to accidental spills and attacks from local guerillas the way oil trucks are. But environmental damage from the pipeline turned out to be extensive, environmentalists report. Built on a cement platform above ground, the pipeline was exposed to sabotage and failed to minimize spills.

The most severe environmental damage has followed from the clearcutting of primary rainforest to make room for the pipeline's maintenance road � a road that would not have been needed if the pipeline had been built along existing roads. BASIC's maintenance roads also have afforded increased access into the Reserve for settlements of landless peasants displaced by the recently ended civil war.

In 1996, BASIC asked for a second loan from the IFC for a second pipeline in the Reserve. By this time, the U.S.-based environmental group Conservation International (CI) had met several times with the IFC to protest the irregular approval process in connection with the first loan. The IFC had itself characterized the project as requiring a full environmental assessment by BASIC, as well as public participation in the planning and approval process. Yet according to CI, the environmental assessment carried out by BASIC was insufficient, and the IFC failed to guarantee adequate public consultation.

The IFC denied CI's allegations, but agreed to conduct a new joint field assessment (by BASIC, the IFC and CI) prior to approving the second loan. According to CI, the second assessment was also unsatisfactory, ignoring alternative routes for the new pipeline, and downplaying the adverse environmental impact of the increased access to the park.

CI asked the World Bank to postpone approval of the loan until it had fully assessed its likely consequences, or until BASIC agreed to fund environmental mitigation actions. However, after postponing twice without producing new assessment materials, the World Bank approved the new loan in July 1996.

According to the 1995 World Bank Natural Habitat Operational Policy, the Laguna del Tigre Park is a "critical natural habitat." The policy suggests that the Bank refrain from funding projects "involving the significant conversion of natural habitat," and that projects in general should not be funded unless "comprehensive analysis demonstrates that overall benefits from the project substantially outweigh the environmental costs."

By the time the IFC approved the loan for the second pipeline in 1996, BASIC had already started construction, essentially nullifying the World Bank's already dubious public consultation process.

In January 2000, the Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman denounced BASIC before the Guatemalan Supreme Court for violating the right to a clean environment by drilling in a protected area. In March, 50 citizens denounced BASIC before the Supreme Court for adversely affecting the rainforest and habitat in the reserve.

So far, neither of the cases has been ruled upon.

"I don't know if the courts are co-opted, corrupt or incompetent, but the fact of the matter is that BASIC's operations are illegal, and that the cases should have been ruled upon a long ago," says Magal" Rey Rosa of Madre Selva, a Guatemalan environmental group that has followed BASIC's operations from the beginning.

While the national cases have stalled, BASIC, Anadarko and the Guatemalan government became the subject of a Central American Water Tribunal case launched by Madre Selva in August. In September, the Tribunal called upon the Guatemalan government to immediately put a stop to BASIC's activities in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, and condemned Anadarko for ignoring the environmental consequences of its subsidiary's exploits. "Anadarko refused to be present at the hearing," says Magal" Rey Rosa. "This to me is not the action of a company that cares about the environment."

Perhaps anticipating that the Water Tribunal case would be taken seriously by the Guatemalan courts, a Bahamas-based branch of BASIC issued a response in which it claimed there was "no scientific basis" for the consideration of the Laguna del Tigre National Park as a site governed by the Ramsar Convention.

"Indeed, the interpretations on biological diversity are drawn from literature from regional studies and not specific studies of the area," the company contends. "Moreover, the Ramsar Convention Declaration establishes the sovereign right of the signatory States to decide on the use and management of the Ramsar site lands, as well as the States' right to substitute and/or modify the registered wetlands area, for reasons of public utility or need."

BASIC also downplays its contribution to opening up the reserve by pointing to other human activities and the fact that Texaco built the Naranjo-Xan highway through the reserve in 1980, five years before BASIC began operation.

BASIC's current contract will come up for renewal with the Guatemalan government in early 2001. Whether the mounting environmentalist and international pressure, and the growing evidence of the damage to the Biosphere, give government officials pause before renewing the contract remains to be seen.

Published in Multinational Monitor