Abortion Rights: Back in the Spotlight

(Originally posted on the Huffington Post)

Throughout a long election campaign, the future of abortion rights and the right to choose has remained a silent concern for many women and men as the higher-profile issues of the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dominated debate. But the question on Roe v. Wade put to the presidential candidates at the final debate on Wednesday moved the issue front and center once again. It is an intensely personal and relevant issue for women, and for most of us it is not an abstraction.

It became central to my life a couple of years back, when my primary physician refused my request to prescribe the morning-after-pill, citing medical reasons that made no sense to me. I was in a better position than most women in the United States. I was in a dual-income relationship and had a steady job that serendipitously afforded me all the information I needed to assess my situation.

I knew I had a number of options. I had the resources to seek out another health care provider, and I would be able to afford a safe abortion if it came to that. The only option I had ruled out was to carry a potential pregnancy to term: we simply would not be able to afford childcare and other expenses for a second child.

This, to me, is the real question of choice. As voters in California, Colorado, and South Dakota are asked to decide on proposals that would limit women's access to abortion and contraception, there is precious little public debate on whether actually having a child is necessarily a viable choice, financially and professionally.

For many, it is not. Federal law affords just 12 weeks of unpaid maternity or paternity leave, and only for those who are eligible, which excludes about 40 percent of American workers. There are no allowances for time off to breastfeed. There are few public child care options before primary school, and even private alternatives generally will not take children under 2.

Perhaps most disturbing in terms of lack of support, 8.7 million children in the United States currently have no health insurance. In the eyes of the law, it would seem, physically giving birth is the only consideration: you are afforded a short time to regain your strength after the delivery, but are otherwise on your own.

Some -- even advocates for choice -- would say that if you plan to depend on the government, you shouldn't have a child in the first place. But this argument also presumes that if there were public health care and childcare, and provisions for family support, birth rates would shoot through the roof, draining government coffers. Experience from countries with much better maternity and child protections shows otherwise. In my own country, Denmark, there are provisions that are generous by American standards - 52 weeks of paid parental leave, child care and public health care. But the birth rate also is quite low, 1.74 per woman in her lifetime, compared with 2.1 in the United States.

Support services are not the only factor in making a choice about parenthood, but clearly in the United States, from a purely economic point of view, fertility is not a matter of choice for everyone.

In the United States the lack of support for child care and parental benefits also coexists with serious legal or financial obstacles to accessing safe abortion services and even, at times, contraception. Since 1973, both state and federal legislators have limited access to legal abortion through burdensome regulation. Women with limited economic resources face additional obstacles because abortion services have been subject to a federal funding freeze since 1977 except in cases of rape, or incest or where the mother's life is in danger. Furthermore, the majority of states do not provide health care funding for abortion services that fall outside these exceptions.

In fact, fertility (and, by extension, choice) often comes down to a class issue. While the overall fertility rate has stayed the same, the number of children living in low-income families has steadily increased since 2000. The point is not that poor women shouldn't have children, but that all women should have a real choice - and that means access to information about contraception and abortion, and the support they need to raise children.

In my case, I ended up finding an alternative health care provider, who prescribed me the morning-after-pill.

For me, this is more than a personal issue. I have made a commitment to press for a real opportunity for choice for all women, including access to safe abortion services for poor, adolescent, or otherwise vulnerable women.

But choice also requires science-based sex education, contraception, maternity and paternity benefits, and access to child care and health care. The rationale behind polices such as Denmark's is that rearing a child is a service to all: reproduction, at its most basic, is the reproduction of society. Both the personal and the collective nature of that choice need to be protected by law and defended by the next president.

Rape in War: Will the United Nations Walk Its Talk?

(Originally posted on RH Reality Check)

On June 19, 2008, the United Nations Security Council made history by declaring that rape in war is such a bad idea they plan to do something about it.

That's right. After decades of reports on vicious sexual violence in conflicts across the globe, the highest decision-making body of the United Nations has decided that it is time to act. In fact, no other international actor has as much power to do something about rape in war, and as disappointing a record, as the United Nations Security Council.

It is not that the Security Council hasn't talked about the issue before. In 2000, the Security Council -- under intense pressure from women's groups and UN field personnel -- established a link between the Council's mandate and the way in which women and girls are affected differently by conflict than men and boys. This link is contained in a resolution, known mostly by its number (1325/2000), which includes an urgent call to end impunity for sexual violence and for the United Nations system to gather information on issues related to women and girls in conflict and report these to the Security Council.

Action to back up these good intentions has, however, been scarce. Every year in October since 2000, the Council has celebrated the anniversary of resolution 1325 by announcing the importance of the gender perspective in its work, and then proceeded to largely ignore it for the rest of the year.

Up until last Thursday, that is. On Thursday, the Security Council declared its readiness to act on sexual violence in a resolution that contains three key components:

1. The resolution establishes sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict as a topic within the purview of the Council's work. "Obviously!" you might say, and you'd be right. There is no conflict in recent history where women and girls have not been targeted for sexual violence, whether as a form of torture, as a method to humiliate the enemy, or with a view to spreading terror and despair. If that's not potentially relevant to the protection of international peace and security, what is? But the inclusion of this clause is essential because some members of the Security Council, in particular Russia and China, at times have portrayed rape in war as an issue that doesn't deserve the Council's attention. With the new resolution, they will no longer be able to do so.
2. The resolution creates a clear mandate for the Security Council to intervene, including through sanctions, where the levels or form of sexual violence merit it. Again, this might seem self-evident. The Security Council is mandated under the UN Charter to address situations that present a threat to international peace and security. It has the power to chastise countries waging war without proper cause -- notably, not in self-defense -- or by illegal methods, such as the use of child soldiers and, indeed, using rape as a weapon of war. Despite this mandate, the Council has so far done little to prevent or punish states for rape in war. In fact, it would seem it at times has consciously avoided doing so. This was, for example, the case during the July 2007 discussions regarding the mandate-renewal for the UN mission in Côte d'Ivoire. Despite having received information regarding intolerably high levels of sexual and gender-based violence in that country, the Council did not empower its field staff to address the violence.
3. The resolution asks the Secretary-General to provide a comprehensive report on the extent to which the resolution has been implemented, as well as on his views on how to improve information flow to the Council on sexual violence. This is tremendously important. In the past, the prevalence and patterns of sexual violence have barely featured in the reports the Council commissions and receives from the field offices of the United Nations. This is in part because the Security Council until now more often than not didn't ask for such information to be included in the reports. This crucial failure has been addressed in last Thursday's resolution, which asks for information on sexual violence to be included in all reports. Still, the UN system may in many cases not be equipped to gather information on sexual violence in conflict-affected situations in a consistent and ethical manner. This is a root cause of the lack of Security Council attention to sexual violence. And last Thursday's resolution asks the UN Secretary-General to propose a lasting solution.

Thursday's debate and the resulting resolution also added a new word to the Council's sometimes dusty vocabulary: never before has a Security Council resolution called on parties to "debunk" myths that fuel sexual violence. But the historic contribution of Thursday's debate was to "debunk" the Council's own and self-perpetuating myth that sexual violence in conflict simply didn't happen because it didn't feature prominently in UN reports to the Council -- which, in turn, had been commissioned without seeking to elicit any information or insights on rape in war.

Of course, any UN resolution is only as good as its follow-up. In fact, it is possible that the Security Council's until now tepid attention to sexual violence in conflict-affected situations is a symptom of a more onerous problem: a deep-seated reluctance to address rape at all, mirroring the failure of national governments to prosecute and address violence against women more generally. Moreover, the UN system cannot change overnight: while it is now legally empowered to provide information on sexual violence in conflict situations, it still needs to be appropriately structured and resourced to do so. This requires investment in training and service-provision, and it requires the prioritization of this issue at the highest level: field missions, UN agencies, and peacekeeping troops should be evaluated, amongst other things, on the effectiveness and ethics of their approach to sexual violence. It is incumbent upon UN members states, Security Council members, UN agencies, and civil society to make sure this happens. The road was paved last Thursday. Now it's time to see if the United Nations can walk the walk.



Do or Die: Learn to Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Piece

(Originally posted on the Huffington Post)

I am a failure. Not because of an early divorce, or a failure to learn Chinese. Not even because, after 15 years abroad, I sometimes sound like a foreigner when speaking my native Danish language. All of those things, while potentially uncomfortable or painful, are the consequences of choices I have made. I am a failure because I have not been able to create equality in my own relationship -- despite being defined by my business card as a "women's rights advocate."

There are excuses. Equality takes time. There are social pressures involved. I have done better than my mother, even though she tried. I can't blame it all on my co-parent. He is not opposed to sharing the reproductive work -- we just can't seem to get the logistics right; what with two working adults and a child to rear in the urban jungle of cut-throat "equality" that is New York. So I'm a qualified failure -- I fail at equality in part because equality is failing me.

These excuses do not get rid of the frustration. But coming out as a failure allows me to deal with whatever obstacles to equality depend solely on me. This is why I recommend the same honesty for the United Nations.

The United Nations was created in 1945 with a stated objective to put into practice the shared principle that men and women are absolute equals. Since then, only three women have been elected President of the UN General Assembly, and none have served as Secretary-General. The organization has established agencies and offices for dealing with sex-based discrimination, but has provided them with grossly inadequate funding and virtually no political influence.

In other words: the United Nations sees itself as a women's rights advocate, yet like me, it has failed to create equality at home. The excuses are the same: time, social pressure, gradual improvements. But the real issue is that the organization must own up to its failure on women's rights. It is time to change.

This impetus for truth-telling, self-flagellation, and change in the area of gender equality is probably the least publicized part of the ongoing UN reform process. Yet it is also the one that has the potential of affecting the most people -- a little over half the world's population -- and it might already be under way. Next week governments from all over the world meet at the UN Commission on the Status of Women to discuss how to finance most effectively for equality.

The conclusions of this event could signal a new start for the United Nations in the area of women's rights. The laundry list of concerns is endless, but here are my top three personal recommendations:

* Power to act. It's not enough to say you want equality -- you need the power to do something about it. The United Nations has an abysmal record on this: of the 1,300 UN positions that state gender concern as part of their job description, 1,000 are junior positions with little decision-making or implementation power. Most deal with "gender" as only part of their job.

* Leadership. Last year, the United Nations selected another man with no discernable women's rights experience as its Secretary-General. The Commission on the Status of Women will contemplate whether women's rights are important enough to create an Under-Secretary-General position to head such concerns. It's not only important, it's essential.

* Resources. The budget of the (also under funded) UN children's agency, UNICEF, is about 40 times larger than that of the UN development fund for women, UNIFEM. UN reform experts have called for vastly increased funding for women's rights, though still only a fraction of what is routinely shelled out for peace-building, children's rights, and other equally important issues. Money isn't everything, but in this context its absence is significant. It spells a lack of commitment. The question shouldn't be: are women's rights really worth it, but rather: why have we been shortchanged for so long.

And it's not like there isn't enough to do.

Take violence against women. At least one in four women suffers violence at the hands of her husband or intimate partner. Sexual violence against women and girls has, especially in conflict areas, reached epidemic proportions. In 2006, the General Assembly set out a road-map for how the United Nations and its member states should prevent and punish violence against women. This year, the Secretary-General has launched a global campaign on this issue. But without reform and resources, the UN system will not be able to deliver the information and programs needed to bear out these good intentions.

Or how about maternal mortality? Every year over half a million women die as a result of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Some 8 million women a year survive such complications, but end up with life-long health consequences. The UN Millennium Campaign has gathered expertise on how to all but eliminate maternal mortality. Yet without a well-resourced women's agency empowered to help governments implement the needed reforms, our knowledge about how to save women's lives will be mostly academic.

Whether the reforms succeed will depend on one thing: does the United Nations -- or rather, its member states -- possess the political will and stamina to implement them? Perhaps looking critically at the status of equality at UN Plaza will inspire some action. It certainly helped me.

Access to Contraceptives Promotes Abortion?

(Originally posted on the Huffington Post)

In the last five years, I have interviewed hundreds of women in developing countries regarding their access to reproductive health care. To the best of my knowledge, President Bush has not.

I would expect to be in disagreement with his administration's often demonstrably unscientific approach to family planning. However, President Bush's claim this week that giving poor women access to contraceptives promotes abortion defies logic. In a policy statement released by the office of the president on June 19 the administration has declared the president's intent to veto a bill authorizing foreign aid for family planning programs, because, according to the statement, the bill would be contrary to the administration's Mexico City Policy (also known colloquially as the "Global Gag Rule").

The administration's analysis of this issue is not only fundamentally flawed, it is also dangerous. Here's why. The Global Gag Rule restricts U.S. foreign aid to non-U.S. based organizations that (with non-U.S. funds) provide legal voluntary abortion services or advocate for less restrictive abortion laws within their country.

The Global Gag Rule is not about whether U.S. foreign aid is used to fund legal abortion services directly -- such funding has been illegal since 1973. That is, the Global Gag Rule expressly denies funding to organizations who even with their own alternative funding refuse to be silent on the devastating consequences of the criminalization of abortion on the lives of women or who simply provide reproductive health services that are fully legal.

A brief history of the Global Gag Rule is that it was first enacted by the Reagan administration; was repealed by the Clinton administration in 1993; was reintroduced by Congress in the foreign aid appropriations act (with a waiver system) in 2000, and was fully reinstated by President Bush as one of his first acts of government in January 2001.

The local health providing organizations de-funded by the Global Gag Rule (those who refuse to be "gagged") often give services spanning the full spectrum of family planning: information on contraceptive methods, youth counseling to postpone sexual initiation and prevent adolescent pregnancies, as well as the provision of condoms, diaphragms, and hormonal contraception.

Rather than preventing abortion, the real effect of the Global Gag Rule has therefore been a drop in access to reproductive health services, information, and modern contraceptive methods. These are all services primarily to women that have been proven to bring down the number of crisis pregnancies, and therefore abortions.

In short, the Global Gag Rule is bad foreign policy and bad for women.

The foreign aid bill President Bush is now threatening to veto contains a provision stating that organizations who apply for U.S. foreign aid cannot be denied funding specifically destined for the provision of contraceptives solely on the basis of the Global Gag Rule.

With this provision, Congress seems to be saying that improving access to contraceptives might give poor women a better chance to avoid using-often unsafe-abortion as their only means of family planning.

With his promised veto, President Bush is saying the opposite: that contraceptives promote abortion.

President Bush should explain this twisted logic to the many women and adolescents who -- as a result of this administration's sustained war on family planning and scientifically based health information -- will face unsafe abortion, lasting health consequences from early pregnancies, and even possible death. President Bush would certainly benefit from contact with the millions of people his policies affect.

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.