Written by Tara Murtha for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

A journalist looks at the barriers to reporting on women's reproductive freedom.

In recent days, amidst cries of a media “blackout,” a number of journalists have admitted to either missing or dismissing the story of Dr. Kermit Gosnell over the past two years. As one of the many journalists who has been covering the Gosnell story since it broke in early 2011, all I can say is: We tried to get the story out there. But more importantly, this politics-of-media framework distracts from the circuitous politics that enabled, and resulted from, Gosnell’s actual crimes and the women who were affected.

What Media Blackout?

After spending much of 2010 interviewing 58 witnesses, in January 2011 the Philadelphia district attorney’s office published a 281-page report accusing Kermit Gosnell of grotesque, depraved crimes.

There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with bloodstained blankets. All the women had been sedated by unlicensed staff — long before Gosnell arrived at the clinic — and staff members could not accurately state what medications or dosages they had administered to the waiting patients. Many of the medications in inventory were past their expiration dates.

Fetal remains were stored in milk jugs and cat food containers. A janitor admitted he routinely pulled fetal parts out of pipes. Unlicensed, untrained staff, including a high school student, pumped cheap, powerful drugs into the veins of women who were chemically coaxed into zombie-like stupors that sometimes lasted days.

Last week, Kristen Powers published an op-ed in USA Today that sparked a Twitter shame campaign, directly asking prominent national journalists why they hadn’t covered the case. And it worked. Now, more than three years after the raid and more than two years after the grand jury report, some national journalists who ignored the case entirely are suddenly wildly interested.

After years of coverage from outlets in Philadelphia and Harrisburg, outlets focused on women’s health issues, and yes, mainstream media outlets, apparently all it took to catch the attention of writers such as Slate‘s Dave Weigel, The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf, and Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg was to target their collective egos — specifically, their insecurity about being perceived as having a liberal bias.

Weigel, one of the first writers to develop a sudden interest in Gosnell after Powers’ piece, wrote that when he read about Gosnell back in 2011, he didn’t “see a political story to chase.”

At 3801 Lancaster, the site of Gosnell’s clinic, patients chose their medicine and painkillers a la carte. In other words, the more cash a patient could give Gosnell, the more painkiller she could get. The poorer the patient, the more she would suffer. With all the talk about the Affordable Care Act, you’d think that such starkly stratified access to quality health care would be an interesting political story. The story touches on poverty, abortion, civil rights, state rights, healthcare, increasing inequality and race, to name a few topics of political interest that, if nothing else, came up quite a bit during the presidential election.

What Weigel really meant, of course, is that he didn’t see a story worth chasing. “Bored media,” indeed.

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Written by Jessica Mason Pieklo for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Robert Bork (Photo: US Government / Wikimedia Commons)

There are few personalities in the legal profession that are divisive as Robert Bork. And, while his name has not often come up this election cycle, his legacy with the Supreme Court and possibility that his vision will shape its future deserves to be discussed.

Bork, who currently serves as the chairman of Mitt Romney’s Justice Advisory Committee, built a career on divisive partisan politics, beginning in 1973 when, as solicitor general, he fired Archibald Cox as special prosecutor to facilitate Richard Nixon’s attempted coverup of the Watergate scandal. In 1987, then – president Ronald Reagan nominated Bork to the Supreme Court. Bork’s nomination went down in flames as the Senate rejected him by a vote of 58 to 42, the largest margin in American history.

Bork’s candidacy was largely rejected because of his strong opposition to civil rights and women’s reproductive freedoms. Bork flat – out rejects the idea of a constitutional right to privacy, believes both Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade were wrongly decided and thinks there is no such thing as gender discrimination under the law. While those views are what tanked his nomination, they’ve managed to find a place in the jurisprudence of the high court still, proving the tenacity of the Bork legacy.

Bork’s failed Supreme Court nomination paved the way for Anthony Kennedy’s confirmation. At the time Kennedy was considered a moderate to Bork’s extreme-right positions, but civil rights advocates have come to understand that was not the case. Perhaps no single Supreme Court justice has had the effect of effectively undoing the protections granted women through the Griswold and Roe decisions as Kennedy. In many ways, it didn’t matter that Bork’s nomination failed to be confirmed by the Senate because the very act of airing his extremist views managed to move the pendulum far enough to the right to pave the way for Anthony Kennedy’s ascendance to the high court and later Clarence Thomas.

In fact, without Bork’s nomination justices like Thomas and Samuel Alito would hardly be possible. After all it was as an appellate court judge that Alito embraced the idea of spousal consent as failing to create an undue burden on a woman’s right to chose in a decision the Supreme Court would later largely affirm in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

To that end, Bork’s legacy on the Court is very much alive today, and should Romney succeed in his quest for the presidency, that legacy will be cemented in future Supreme Court nominations. As it stands the Court is at best a mere one vote away from a majority that would overturn Roe together, if it is not there already. If Robert Bork has his way, the gains made by women and racial and political minorities will be undone within this decade.

Written by Jessica Mason Pieklo for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

(photo: ge'shmally / flickr)

At its most basic level, the decision in Roe v. Wade guaranteed women in every state the right to chose an abortion. Usually the impact of the decision is discussed in the context of expanding rights of women in states that had previously criminalized abortion care. But some states, like Illinois, actually provide greater privacy protections for women than recognized in Roe and later Planned Parenthood v. Casey. So what happens when a legislature passes an abortion restriction that may be in line with federal precedent but conflicts with state constitutional protections? We’re about to find out.

In Illinois, pregnant minors generally enjoy the same rights to consent to medical care as adults do. That means they can make nearly every decision concerning the pregnancy without parental involvement. Pregnant minors can also consent to place their child up for adoption without parental notification, involvement, or consent. In fact, throughout the entire course of her pregnancy, a minor can access and consent to a panoply of care without her parents involvement — unless of course she wants to terminate that pregnancy. Then, and only then, does the state of Illinois require a pregnant minor to notify her parents.

Under the Consent by Minors to Medical Procedures Act, abortion is singled out for parental notification prior to treatment, requiring that “physicians or his or her agent” to give “at least 48 hors actual notice to an adult family member of [a] pregnant minor…of his or her intention to perform the abortion.” Those doctors who fail to abide by the notification provision face professional discipline and civil penalties. The law also contains a judicial bypass provision that requires the minor to appear before a circuit court judge and demonstrate, by a preponderance of the evidence that: (1) she “is sufficiently mature and well enough informed to decide intelligently whether to have an abortion, or (2) that notification under Section 15 of [the] Act would not be in the best interest of the minor.

The law has a long and tortured legal history. Passed in 1995, it has been enjoined for the last seven years while challenges to the law’s constitutionality proceed. At one point the case was dismissed on the grounds that federal law holds parental notification statutes do not pose an undue burden on a right to chose abortion. After more appeals the matter is now before the Illinois Supreme Court and should the court side with the challengers, Illinois could become an example of states offering broader protections to abortion rights than at the federal level.

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(photo: ee382, rhrealitycheck)

Written by Pamela Merritt for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

A task force in North Carolina recently ruled that survivors of that state’s eugenics program should be paid $50,000 each in financial compensation. Eugenics is often defined as the science of “improving” a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of “desirable” heritable characteristics. The practice of eugenics was not limited to Nazi Germany nor is it a well kept secret that’s been waiting to be discovered by organizations opposed to reproductive justice.

In America, state governments set up eugenics boards that determined the reproductive future of thousands. I grew up listening to my maternal Grandmother, a Mississippi native, warn against trusting doctors and passing along lessons she learned from other poor women of color who went into a hospital to give birth only to later find out that they were given a Mississippi Appendectomy without their consent. The horrific legacy of these state eugenics boards is one of the reasons why I embrace the reproductive justice framework advocating for the right to have children, not have children, and to parent children in safe and healthy environments.

From the early 1900s up until the 1970’s, over 30 states had formal eugenics programs. These programs enforced compulsory sterilization of individuals deemed to be “unfit” and “promiscuous.” States sterilized people that were disabled, poor, people of color, and immigrants. North Carolina had a particularly aggressive program that was alone in allowing social workers to select people for sterilization based on IQ tests. To date, only seven states have formally apologized for eugenics programs and no state has paid money to survivors. Although a task force appointed by the Governor in North Carolina ruled in favor of payment to survivors, their recommendations are now in the hands of state legislators.

Too often eugenics is looked on as a shameful part of German history and many Americans are unaware of the history of eugenics in this country. I’m reminded of the warning that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. No, I’m not about to repeat black genocide claims that modern health care centers use contraception as a weapon or the ‘easily debunked if folks just used Google Maps’ conspiracy theory about abortion clinics being located in predominately black neighborhoods. I’m referring to the history of government taking control over people’s reproductive future and how that component of the history of eugenics and is very present today. While those opposed to reproductive justice appropriate the language of Civil Rights to perpetuate bizarre anti-knowledge theories about dangerous black women and how we are the greatest threat to the newly identified species of “black child,” states that actually ran eugenics programs and sterilized thousands of people get little to no attention and all too often as not held accountable for those actions. Read the rest of this entry →

Shackles photo: publik15 on flickr

Written by Tamaya Garcia for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

This article is cross-posted with permission from Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice.

Over the past two years, I have worked alongside an amazing group of women to pass a common-sense bill for California moms. Assembly Bill 568 (Skinner) would limit the use of shackles on incarcerated pregnant women to the least restrictive restraints possible.

Translation: It would end the use of belly chains, leg irons, ankle restraints and other barbaric shackling devices that are used on pregnant women in jails and prisons across our state. Yes, shackles reminiscent of slavery are still being used on pregnant women as far long as 8 ½ months.

Medical professionals agree that it’s time for a change. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) was so moved by this issue that they became co-sponsors of the bill. ACOG opposes the use of any restraints on pregnant women because it increases the risk of falling and leaving the pregnant woman, whose balance is already compromised, unable to break those falls. Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson for RHRealityCheck.org. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

One of the most pervasive characteristics of the anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-woman movement, of which Michele Bachmann proudly places herself in the forefront, is that they are also anti-science and anti-evidence and openly flout sound medical practices based on evidence and clinical practice and approved by legitimate medical boards and associations.

These practices have long been a feature of so-called crisis pregnancy centers, which exist solely to confuse women seeking to terminate a pregnancy, often have no medical staff and, as a matter of practice, offer women outright false information, such as that having an abortion will cause increase their risks of breast cancer.

Crisis pregnancy centers engage in these practices because they know the evidence is not on their side. Their only hope at “succeeding” in their quests (success being defined as abrogating women’s rights to self-determination) is to mislead women who have decided to terminate a pregnancy with lies based on ideology and misguided theology, not evidence.

This, it appears, is the model adopted by the Bachmanns with respect to sexual orientation.

Continue reading…

Not as big a d**k Joe Donnelly (photo: Wikipedia)

Written by Sarah Jaffe for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

Ten Democrats cosponsored H.R.3, even with language redefining rape; four of those ten also apparently don’t care if pregnant women die. Sarah Jaffe takes a closer look at all ten, find all posted to date here.

In the run-up to the 2010 election, Melinda Henneberger at Politics Daily wrote of Joe Donnelly:

Democratic incumbent Rep. Joe Donnelly and his Republican challenger in next month’s election, state Rep.Jackie Walorski, have a fair amount in common: Both are pro-gun, pro-life, and oppose climate change legislation, though it’s Donnelly who has been endorsed by the NRA, and he, too, who emphasizes his stand against illegal immigration. Both candidates are running against Nancy Pelosi and on Hoosier values, whatever those might be.

Despite running against his own party and its priorities, Joe Donnelly got $770,760.74 in DCCC expenditures in his race. Not bad, eh? Donnelly’s district was a “red to blue” target in 2006, and so the party kept pouring money in to keep him in it.

Molly McClure is from Donnelly’s district, and she notes that while Indiana as a whole is pretty conservative, it did vote for Obama in 2008–the first time a Democrat had taken the state since 1964 and Barry Goldwater’s epic loss. Obama took South Bend/St. Joseph County in ’08, but much of the rest of the district voted McCain. She notes that the district is heavily Catholic–in addition to Notre Dame, other Catholic schools are prominent in the area.

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Written by Amie Newman for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

“It is my view that no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition. I believe, therefore that we should establish as a national goal the provision of adequate family planning services within the next five years to all those who want them but cannot afford them. This we have the capacity to do.”

– President Richard Nixon, 1970

We need to make population and family planning household words. We need to take sensationalism out of this topic so that it can no longer be used by militants who have no real knowledge of the voluntary nature of the program but, rather are using it as a political steppingstone. If family planning is anything, it is a public health matter.”

– Congressman George H.W. Bush, 1969

Now?

“What is more fiscally responsible than denying any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America?” demanded Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the chief sponsor of a bill to bar the government from directing any money to any organization that provides abortion services.

You’d think Rep. Mike Pence’s (R-IN) bill to defund Planned Parenthood, an organization which provides preventive health care to millions of Americans around the country, would be enough of a blow. They are going for the deep, painful cuts leaving many millions of Americans who are already at their most vulnerable even more exposed with a House leadership budget proposal to completely eliminate Title X, one of the most successful federal safety net programs this country has ever seen. It’s not a political game, as much as Live Action hoax video-makers Lila Rose and James O’Keefe seem to think it is. As states grapple with similar budget cutting, our friends, family and community members will find themselves without basic healthcare and as tax-payers we’ll literally pay the price of the decimation of a crucial public health safety net. In Washington State, with a multi-billion dollar budget shortfall, residents are already bracing for the impact of state cuts to family planning, maternity health services, health insurance for lower-income residents, prescription drug benefits for seniors and more. The elimination of the federal Title X program would be disastrous.

This may feel like a swipe out of nowhere but it’s been a long time in the making for the GOP. Read more

Written by Penelope Saunders for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

This Friday, November 5, 2010, the United States will be reviewed as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The UPR is a relatively new way of addressing human rights in the UN system that came into being in 2008. During the review of the U.S. on Friday, other countries will ask questions about this country’s overall human rights record and propose recommendations that the United States will need to respond to over the next three months. The session can be viewed online as a webcast. This review is a historic occasion because the U.S. typically has a limited engagement with international human rights treaties and mechanisms.

Advocates for the rights of sex workers used the upcoming review of the United States to prepare the first comprehensive national statement on the rights challenges faced by people in the sex trade and people who are affected by anti-prostitution policies more generally (download a PDF of the 5 page report here). The report illustrates the ways in which stigmatization and criminalization of sex workers in the United States result in widespread abuses of civil and human rights, including the right to be free from discrimination; freedom from torture; the right to healthcare; and the right to equal protection under the law. Read more

Written by Rachel Roth for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

The month of May brought two disturbing news stories that illustrate the needless and sometimes tragic suffering inflicted on pregnant women in jail. By suffering, I do not mean the deprivation of comfort and companionship that women might experience if they were at home instead of in jail. I mean the deprivation of basic constitutional and human rights, including the right to be treated as a human being. Without a baseline of respect for human dignity, being taken into custody puts people’s lives and rights in danger.

The first story makes this painfully clear in its recounting of the death of a young woman in jail. What makes this news all the more upsetting is that her death was preventable. The second story recounts an all too familiar struggle between a woman seeking to exercise her reproductive rights and a sheriff standing in her way. Together, both stories remind us of what is at stake when people are imprisoned, even for brief periods of time.

Pregnant Woman Dies of Medical Neglect

Whatever Chuniece Patterson and her family thought when she was arrested, they probably didn’t think that two days in the inaptly named “Justice Center” would result in her death. But that is just what happened to this 21 year-old African-American woman when she was arrested and jailed in Syracuse, New York.

According to the news report Patterson found out at that she was pregnant at the jail. This means that the staff knew she was pregnant, too. But they essentially ignored her symptoms of abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and weakness. Although nurses made three visits to her cell, and various deputies made rounds, no one provided meaningful medical assistance. A nurse who visited Patterson in her cell did not examine her abdomen or bring her to the medical unit for a pelvic exam. It does not even appear that she took her temperature or her blood pressure, which might have suggested signs of fever or internal bleeding (it “does not appear” because the nurse wrote her “observations” after the fact, after Patterson had already died). A woman in a nearby cell said that she could hear Patterson moan and see her writhe in agony throughout the night.

The jail deputy who surveilled Patterson’s cell on morning rounds ordered her to get up off the floor, but did not investigate why she was on the floor, even though she had been told that Patterson was having difficulties when she began her shift. In a report of her 7:30 a.m. stop at the cell, the deputy wrote: “I looked down at inmate Patterson, again told inmate to get off the floor. It looked as if the inmate looked at me. I continued with my tour.” One hour later, Patterson was pronounced dead at an outside hospital.

What is the standard of care in a situation like Patterson’s? Obstetrician Gerson Weiss describes it this way: Examine the woman’s abdomen and conduct a pelvic exam. These exams may result in pain, an indication to perform an ultrasound to determine whether the pregnancy is indeed outside the uterus. If this is confirmed, proceed to emergency surgery. The entire examination and diagnosis should take 5-10 minutes.

People who work in jails that hold women should be knowledgeable about pregnancy-related emergencies, including the signs of ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, and premature labor. Even if no one knew anything about ectopic pregnancy, they might have wondered if Patterson had appendicitis or some other condition requiring immediate medical attention.

Patterson died in November 2009. The story is in the news now because her mother is planning to sue the county and a state commission is finalizing an investigation into the circumstances of her death.

A previous investigation found fault with the same jail in 1996, when a 36 year-old woman named Lucinda Batts died from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. In that case, Batts bled to death over several days. None of the medical staff who visited her cell went the next step to get her proper medical attention.

After Batts died, the county health commissioner promised to issue new standards to prevent such tragedies, including pregnancy testing – which the jail seems to be doing – and thorough examination and monitoring of pregnant women experiencing problems, better training of staff, and improved communication between jail nurses and on-call physicians.

The editorial board of the Syracuse Post-Standard takes the jail to task for its failures: “If the 1996 guidelines were implemented, why wasn’t Patterson’s health emergency caught in time? A second fatality due to an ectopic pregnancy after 14 years is not an epidemic. But it raises questions: Are the guidelines adequate? Have they lapsed? Or is another element still missing here — a lack of sensitivity to inmates’ distress, an attitude of skepticism or indifference among those responsible for their welfare?”

The editorial board’s perspective differs sharply from the perspective of some of its readers, judging from the comments people posted to the story. More than one blames Patterson – if she hadn’t gotten into trouble, then she wouldn’t have died in jail. One writer with eugenic and divine interventionist leanings wrote:  “In and out of jail? What kind of mother is that? Maybe this was gods way of saying it wasn’t meant to be.”

Several readers also commented that the jail staff may not have been able to tell the difference between someone who was suffering from internal bleeding and someone who was suffering from drug withdrawal. Rather than absolve anyone, these comments simply reinforce the need for proper medical evaluation. Abrupt withdrawal from heroin, for example, can be physically brutal and can lead to miscarriage or stillbirth if a woman is pregnant. No one who thinks a pregnant woman is withdrawing from drugs should leave her curled up in agony on the floor.

Sheriff Denies Access to Abortion Care

Across the country, a woman was trying to obtain abortion care from within the confines of the Parker County jail in Weatherford, Texas, about 30 miles west of Forth Worth.

The outlines of the story are familiar: A woman asks for an abortion, or asks to be taken to an appointment she has already made for an abortion. Jail personnel say no.

Then as also often happens, the woman or someone she knows contacts the ACLU, whose staff inform jail officials that 1) they are violating the woman’s rights and must transport her to a medical facility where she can exercise her constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy, and 2) they should implement a policy to deal with abortion requests in the future.

The sheriff in this incident said he was "a little bit flabbergasted" by the ACLU’s position: “My personal feeling is I don’t feel like the taxpayers of Parker County would think much of their sheriff spending taxpayer money to take people to abortion clinics. I don’t think they would want me to even entertain that notion.”

The sheriff’s personal feelings and his ability to gauge the sentiments of other Parker County residents, however, are simply not relevant. The courts have consistently held that women retain the right to have an abortion when they are incarcerated. No court has ever ruled that jails can simply ignore women’s requests for abortion care. This means that jails must take women to an appropriate medical facility, because they are not free to take themselves. As a judge explained in a similar case in Ohio, “The federal judiciary has detailed a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. The Sheriff might find such a right morally repugnant. Or he might find ignoring its existence politically expedient.  Nevertheless, [the Sheriff has taken…] a solemn oath to support the Constitution,” and that includes accommodating the reproductive rights of women in his custody [see Roe v. Leis, No. C-1-00-651, 2001 WL 1842459 (S.D. Ohio Jan. 10, 2001)].

The executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, as well as the sheriff and a spokesperson for nearby Tarrant County, said they could not recall the issue of abortion coming up before in the Texas jails.

But the issue has come up a number of times, including at least twice in Tarrant County. Women have gone to court to fight for their rights and the Texas press has covered their stories. The Jails Commission has had ample time to develop a standard on abortion access that would provide guidance to the many jail administrators throughout the state.

Ultimately, this conflict ended when the jail released the woman after a court dealt with the charges against her. This leaves her free to make and carry out her own decision. It leaves other women in the position of having to go through the exact same process of finding outside help, unless the sheriff adopts a policy that upholds their rights.

Many Women at Risk

More than a million women spend time in jail each year. An estimated five percent of them are pregnant when they enter jail. These two incidents of fatal medical neglect and interference with reproductive decisions crystallize how vulnerable women are to the institutional shortcomings in the nation’s vast jail system, and highlight the need for far greater oversight to protect women’s health, rights, futures, and very lives.