In U.S. Elections, Global Women's Rights at Stake

Suffragettes, 1921 (via Wikipedia)

Two very different visions for the future of women around the world are on the ballot today as Americans head for the polls to decide between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. The U.S. media has provided ample coverage of the so-called ‘War on Women,’ that is, the Republican initiatives that give fetuses and embryos more human rights than the pregnant mothers who carry them (Romney supports the “personhood” of a fertilized egg, which could, by law, charge pregnant women with murder if they have an abortion; or worse, demand that a woman carry a child to term even if her life is at risk). But little has been said about what a Mitt Romney administration means to women on a global scale. Romney’s website states:

Mitt believes that life begins at conception and wishes that the laws of our nation reflected that view. But while the nation remains so divided, he believes that the right next step is for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade… Mitt supports the Hyde Amendment, which broadly bars the use of federal funds for abortions. As president, he will end federal funding for abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood.

Never mind that Planned Parenthood also offers birth control consultations, funding for breast and cervical cancer screenings, and free STD testing among other crucial services for those who cannot afford it. 

Candidate Romney’s agenda for reversing a woman’s right to choose is not confined to U.S. borders. If elected, he will reinstate the global gag rule, or Mexico City Policy, which will disavow any U.S. aid to family planning services that offer abortions. The gag rule also demands that family planning practitioners receiving U.S. aid remain silenced on abortion, no matter what the circumstances, thereby hindering free speech on an international scale. The European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development petitioned the U.S. Congress condemning the gag rule, stating that it “undermines internationally agreed consensus and goals."

Romney also believes in cutting off money for the United Nations Population Fund. Nicholas Kristof, author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, says that he has witnessed the United Nations Population Fund’s valuable work in “supporting contraception, repairing obstetric fistulas, and fighting to save the lives of women dying in childbirth.”

According to Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics, voter turnout in presidential elections among women has been proportionately larger than that of men since 1980. Here’s to hoping that this trend continues, and that American women realize how powerful their vote could be for the future of other women, children, and families around the world.

CLIO TALKS BACK: Remembering a Dutch Woman Physician Who Pioneered Birth Control Methods

Dr. Aletta Jacobs (1854-1929) became the first woman physician in the Netherlands. In the course of her practice in Amsterdam, she became sensitized to the plight of poor women who came to the hospital to deliver their babies. Out of sympathy and necessity, she became a pioneer in offering birth control advice and devices to needy women – much like Margaret Sanger in the United States. In this excerpt from her Memories, Aletta Jacobs tells us how this came to be:

“When I was a student, and particularly when I worked at Amsterdam Hospital, I was haunted by the suffering caused by frequent pregnancies, which, for various reasons, can have a disastrous effect on a woman’s life...In my long conversations with a variety of women in the delivery room, they explained to me that they found it impossible to prevent pregnancy when sexual abstinence was the only method available. Women who produced sickly babies or stillbirths, for whom birth meant yet another brush with death, kept on returning to the delivery room. Families that were already large enough, considering the mother’s physical condition and the parents’ circumstances, simply continued to expand. I spent hours wrestling with this problem without any solution in sight. Sometimes I discussed the issue with my fellow students. ‘Yes,’ they would cooly reply, ‘that’s what’s called a woman’s destiny’ or ‘Thank God, there’s no way of preventing pregnancy. If there were, then the whole world would soon collapse through underpopulation’.”

During a visit to England, Dr. Jacobs learned about the possibilities of contraception from a group of neo-Malthusian advocates. She then visited with a German doctor named Mensinga who had invented a pessary for use by women. She began to prescribe it for a select group of patients from her free clinics for poor and destitute women. And, in consequence, she “incurred the wrath of the entire medical establishment.”

“As the only woman doctor in Holland, I often found it difficult and painful to row against the tide of lies and slander spread by my male counterparts. However, the absolute conviction that I was doing the right thing, and the awareness that this whole situation concerned not only individual suffering but also the interests of society at large, gave me the strength to stand by my point of view. I kept thinking that the longing to have a child is so strong in most normal women that only for the most serious reasons would they choose to avoid motherhood. Of course, I thought, contraception would certainly lower the number of unwanted pregnancies and hence should be welcomed for many social, sociological, and individual reasons. If there were fewer unwanted babies, the race would advance, which in turn would lead to greater social well-being and human happiness. Studying this subject in great depth finally convinced me that I had taken the right course of action.”

Well before the invention of the contraceptive pill (which only made its debut in the early 1960s in western countries), Dr. Jacobs persisted in providing assistance with family planning to her clients. In the early 1920s she could write that “after all these years there is still no better form of contraception than the Mensinga pessary I always prescribed.”



Further reading:
Aletta Jacobs, Herinneringen (Amsterdam, 1924); edited by Harriet Feinberg as Memories: My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrage, and Peace (New York: Feminist Press, 1996), pp. 46-49. Translation by Annie Wright. See also www.alettajacobs.info (in Dutch).

Respecting the Earth's Mother

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“We realize there is still a long road to go down to achieve respect and dignity for indigenous women. We need to build an inclusive network that can persist over time,” says Tarcila Rivera Zea, Coordinator of the Network of Indigenous Women of South America.

Throughout the world, first peoples or indigenous peoples find their languages, cultures, values, environments and in some cases their lives under constant threat. In every corner of the world, indigenous people are among the poorest, most socially excluded and discriminated against groups. In many respects the world's natives, who account for nearly 350 million out of a global population of seven billion, remain an occupied people.

Before occupation, indigenous women held a respected role in society with regards to property ownership, decision-making as it related to the community and were in control of their bodies.

Civilisation coupled with climate change has changed this reality as women are no longer able to rely upon the elder who was the keeper of herbs to assist in health care issues. Nowadays, women are forced to seek western means of health services but due to their status of living in poor, rural and under-developed areas many perish during childbirth.

In the Congo, where indigenous people represent nearly two percent out of a population of almost four million, women are discouraged from accessing proper health facilities during childbirth due to the negative stereotypes surrounding native people. According to a recent survey, the Congolese Association for Health in Cuvette-Ouest found that of the five hundred and twenty women of child-bearing age, only eight delivered at a health centre.

Besides ill-treatment from health care workers who may view these women as being from a distant culture, high fees, lack of education and language barriers all contribute to leaving this vulnerable population to fend for themselves.

Traditionally, we were taught to honour our elders and to respect tradition. That's all lost now. Indigenous peoples are the keepers of the original law, which is the belief that we as souls are placed on Mother Earth to act as caretakers. All life including the plants, animals, sea and other human beings are our kin and should be treated as part of ourselves.

Given this reality, colonial governments have a responsibility to implement free health services, cultural sensitive training for health care workers and education in schools about tradition and reverence to those that are our global elders.

The following is a short video documenting indigenous women who have been forced from their lands.

U.S. Republicans Take Culture War Abroad with Global Gag Rule

A mother and child in a health center in Africa. (via Creative Commons / Flickr user Novartis AG)

Beyond the recent onslaught of attacks on Planned Parenthood by members of America’s conservative party, an even larger threat to the right to reproductive services, one that could impact millions of women in the world’s poorest nations, looms as House Republicans work to reinstate a global gag order on family counseling services.

The Global Gag Rule was rescinded under President Barack Obama in 2009. Last week, however, a far stricter version of the Rule was passed overwhelmingly by Republican congressmen. Under that rule, all U.S. financial assistance to international health organizations counseling women on family planning options—abortion in particular, can be blocked. Such assistance includes funding for HIV/AIDS, water and sanitation, and child education.

Ranking House Member Nita Lowey (D-NY) said the Gag Rule "muzzles doctors and nurses throughout the world." She added, "...that means an expectant mother who has walked six hours while bleeding to reach the only health clinic in the region may not get the life-saving care she needs - or even a referral."

As critical funding for preventative health care hangs in the balance for millions of women, President Obama finds himself in a national cultural war debate that now has international implications thanks to conservative lawmakers.

Originally referred to as the Mexico City Policy, the 1984 Ronald Reagan-issued executive order, was used as a political flashpoint, polarizing Republicans against Democrats in what could be seen as one of the first firing shots of a culture war that would continue to plague U.S. domestic policy for decades.

A question left out of the abortion debate remains: is it really necessary to take domestic cultural disputes global?

According to a recent global survey on abortion, published by the Guttmacher Institute, a large percentage of safe, lawful abortions take place in China and India. If China and India are removed from the analysis, 86% of women of childbearing age in the remaining developing nations face highly restrictive abortion laws. And by “restrictive” they mean to say that abortion is only permitted to save a woman’s life, to protect her physical or mental health, or in cases of rape, incest, or fetal impairment.

In addition, the U.S. push to curtail abortion procedures seems entirely unwarranted when looking at the statistics, which suggest a steady decline in abortion rates in those same developing nations. Guttmacher estimates that the global number of safe abortions fell from 25.6 million in 1995 to 21.9 million in 2003. The organization also found that unsafe procedures have changed very little, from 19.9 million in 1995, to 19.7 million in 2003--a mere 1%. These unsafe abortions were performed either by unskilled practitioners in unhygienic conditions, or they were self-induced. The worldwide data thus concludes that the rate of unsafe abortion is trailing behind the rate of safe abortion procedures.

As the studies clearly show, unsafe, potentially life-threatening abortions will continue and are continuing at a steady rate.

Shouldn’t Americans be asking their legislators why, then, is the Republican majority fighting to silence medical practitioners in these developing nations? Why gag the very people who could save women’s lives?

Dear Planned Parenthood: Sexuality & Reproduction in Art

Lately, the arts and reproductive rights have been on my mind, which is not surprising by any means since both these topics are on the tips of many tongues. Whether it's Obama's plan to reduce arts funding or Planned Parenthood's recent setback, we've got a lot of advocating to do about their importance.

For example, view the video of Congresswoman Jackie Speier's reaction to a New Jersey representative's attempt to shame women who've had abortions. Sharing her abortion story truly took a great amount of bravery, and even more sensibility than what we've been observing lately regarding reproductive rights. As noted in the Mother Jones article, there is no question about what lies at the heart of the matter:

Critics of the funding contend that because money is fungible, these dollars are, in effect, paying for abortion services.

Moralizing rhetoric is rampant these days. In addition, opinions about sexuality have become confused with guidelines for reproductive rights.

It's a similar story in Art History, where the language is pared down to a few canonical "documents" of culture. Take a moment to search your memory for art works and performances that display (and furthermore, celebrate) female sexuality.

I thought of a few: whether it's the subversive animation that brought us Bettie Boop, Tracey Emin's sensitive installation about intimacy, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963-1995), Renee Cox's Yo Mama series, or Frida Kahlo's painting Henry Ford Hospital, the subject matter allows viewers to contemplate childbirth, loss, and the very public nature of womens' bodies.

Frida Kahlo. Henry Ford Gallery. 1932. Oil on metal. Image via Olga's Gallery.

Each of these women attached personal symbolism to their experiences, and this is no different from what we do in our daily lives. What I find most interesting about Henry Ford Hospital and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963-1995), is that they do what Speier did -- they contribute to defending a platform for a larger community of women in similar positions.

When I am shocked by the ultimate ignorance of "leaders," it's always comforting to look at these art works and remember that you can't stifle imagination at its best.