To the anti-choicers who trolled me: Thank you.

I'm no stranger to the wasps' nest that is the American fight for reproductive rights, having interned for Ms. magazine, written various pieces about anti-choicers'* legal tactics that seemed to emerge almost daily, attended a rally in LA against the War on Women, and volunteered as an escort outside a women's clinic. Yet the other day I achieved what must be a true milestone in the life of any feminist writer who covers the reproductive rights beat: I got my first anti-choice trolls.

This was as a result of reporting in my capacity as a Lifestyle freelancer for the Daily Dot on Indiana's new restrictive abortion law, which has to be some of the most transparently pointless legislation I've ever seen. It requires aborted or miscarried foetuses to be cremated or buried, effectively furthering the anti-choice position that foetuses are full human beings, plus the emotionally manipulative tactic of "waarrrgh you've killed a BAYBEEEE, we must now have a little funeral for it just to make sure we don't miss out on any opportunity to guilt-trip you, you heartless bitch." And don't even get me started on the horrific emotional burden this hands to survivors of miscarriage, who are given no choice about how they wish to process the already horrible experience of losing a wanted pregnancy. It's also just a massive waste of time and money and presumably adds to the financial burden already on women paying for what is a simple medical procedure. The law also directly flies in the face of the basis of Roe v Wade (which was the constitutionally protected right to privacy) by stating that foetal abnormality is not an acceptable reason for an abortion. Basically, wimminz, if you don't fancy subjecting a child to a life of disability, pain, limitation and discrimination, or carrying to term a foetus that may immediately die after it's born, or may not even make it that far therefore causing you to carry a dead foetus around inside you, you're shit out of luck. Your "reasons" are not good enough for the mostly male senators and congresspeople who thought up this batshit law and voted it in to practice. 

Anyway, having reported on Indiana women's fitting response to a male governor signing this bill into law (which was inundating him with calls about their periods until he was forced to disconnect his office's phone lines), I saw my Facebook Author page blow up with shares, Likes and... yup, here they came...the anti-choice commenters. The first one was a nonsensical image about Planned Parenthood allegedly selling foetal parts, a report that has been widely debunked. Quite what the poster hoped to achieve I'm unsure; did they imagine that as a journalist who keeps abreast of reproductive rights news that I would somehow have missed that particular attempt by anti-choicers to discredit an organisation that does a fantastic job of providing sexual healthcare? Did they think I'd give any credence to the idea that PP is an evil organ-harvesting profiteer that entices women - who are obviously always too weak and stupid and easily influenced to know what they really want - into having abortions just so they can make a buck on selling on the results? 

Sorry folks, you underestimate me. I know you anti-choicers. I've met you. I've seen you handing pictures of what is most likely doll parts covered in fake blood to a woman who's just come out of a clinic and is standing on a roaring hot city street recovering from an anaesthetic. Your credibility with me is less than zero, not least because two of your folks who tried to sting PP have themselves been indicted by a grand jury on counts of fraud (hoooo, ain't justice sweet?). Also, you know what?  - PP are legally allowed to use or pass on fetal tissue for stem cell research as long as the woman who terminated the pregnancy gives her consent (funny idea, isn't it! the crazy concept that the contents of a woman's body is her business to exercise her autonomy over). They're also allowed to claim back their costs for storing or transporting said tissue. What they're not allowed to do is profit from it, but the rest? Well, I'm sure this will confirm in your heads an image of pro-choicers as heartless murdering harridans, but I'm going to stand up and say Planned Parenthood can go apeshit doing whatever they like with foetal parts as far as I'm concerned. Because I support stem cell research. Because I don't equate a foetus with a baby. And because I'm soooo over tactics nakedly designed to try and emotionally blackmail women out of exercising their legal choice by making aforesaid false equation. Take that foetus-fetishising ridiculousness to someone who's actually fooled by it, please.

Which brings me on to the next commenter (after I had deleted the first comment, and of course banned the commenter from my page and reported him to FB) who posted one of the aforementioned pictures of what's probably corn syrup with red food colouring plus some doll parts in a kidney dish designed to look as gory as possible. Well, shit, have they ever seen what childbirth looks like? That isn't a pretty picture either, and it's 12 times more likely to kill you than an abortion, but anti-choicers don't ever mention that little fact, or even care about it because women are expendable whereas foetuses need constitutional rights, apparently. The snidey comment accompanying it was "Doesn't look like a clump of cells now, does it?" Ah, where to even start with that one. Well, how's about the fact that most abortions, if you could see them (and as if anyone working in an industry so regularly threatened with fatal attacks that security in all abortion clinics has to be better that Fort Knox's would somehow be allowed to photograph the aftermath of the procedure anyway, come the fuck on) would look indistinguishable from a heavy period, because 90% take place before 13 weeks? How about the fact that the ones that take place later are often of wanted foetuses that didn't present with serious deformities until the 20-week scan? Or that other reasons for having later abortions including being abandoned by your partner, being prevented from accessing abortion services by an abusive partner, being diagnosed with cancer, being homeless or being misled by an anti-choice doctor? But ultimately, again, to hell with having to justify ourselves to those who think we should fall to our knees and beg for forgiveness just because they wave around pictures of blood and body parts. I don't give a fuck if abortion is gory. I am unmoved by talk of heartbeats, little hands and feet, of foetuses screaming in pain as they're ripped to pieces (and please, fuck all the way off to Uranus with your medically inaccurate fairy tales anyway). Why? Because my belief in a woman's right to control her body is non negotiable. It will not be chipped away by the goriest story or picture you can manufacture. It will not be softened in any way by romanticising of a foetus at the expense of an already live human. It will only ever be strengthened by your nonsense.

(Which, in case it's not already clear, will earn you instant deleting, banning and reporting if you wish to post more of it here or in any of my social media channels. So before you post that meme, why not use your time better by going and volunteering at the local children's home, seeing as you're so invested in mandatory childbirth regardless of whether kids are wanted or not. Better yet, go get some papers and start the process to adopt or foster as many unwanted children as you can. It's called walking the walk, folks. You want no woman to ever abort again? Then you've got a fuck of a backlog to clear first, folks - 102,000 children are currently awaiting adoption in the US alone)

The fact that anti-choice tactics only ever serve to bolster my determination to fight for women's freedom to choose goes to the heart of the matter, I think. We spend so much time pandering to anti-choice jackasses that we forget to stop and ask ourselves, why are we even bothering? Why are we letting them set the terms of the argument, when they would never extend the same courtesy to us? Why should we feel the need to point out that Planned Parenthood don't just provide abortions, but also provide mutiple other crucial sexual health services such as smear tests, contraception, STI testing, tubal ligations (the woman I mention above, who I witnessed being handed a picture of blood and body parts after she emerged from the clinic, visibly woozy, told me that she had just had that very procedure) and that terminations constitute a miniscule percentage of their overal services? As Imani Gandy says, it doesn't matter how much of PP's services are abortions. It wouldn't matter if 100% of them were. Abortion is legal. They are not doing anything wrong. Except in the eyes of anti-choicers, who will always say that PP are doing something wrong, however we try and mollify them. So why do we bother?

On that note, this pro-choicer is announcing that I'm done with respectability politics. And I'd like to thank the anti-woman morons who reminded me of that fact by taking time out of their day to post the most predictable, easily debunked propaganda on my Facebook wall (oh, and for giving my writing more exposure! Really. Cheers, guys). I'm going to say it all, loud and proud.

I don't care if Planned Parenthood provide nothing but abortions. I don't care whether they make money from it. I don't care if they make use of their legal right to pass on foetal tissue for stem cell research. All I care about is that women who need abortions have access to them.

I don't care if women abort in the 9th week or the 24th week, and I don't give a damn what the foetus might look like at any of those stages. All I care about is that women who need abortions have access to them.

I don't care if a woman has an abortion "as a form of birth control," if she has ten abortions in a row, if she has an abortion at 24 weeks because she just lay around eating chocolate and watching Netflix for the previous 23 weeks and then suddenly decided to get off her butt and do something about her situation. I seriously doubt that's ever actually been the case, but my point is, I'm here for that woman's rights just as much as I'm here for the women who were raped, who were let down by contraception, whose circumstances changed, who got cancer, who were already mothers and couldn't care for more kids. I'm here for all those women. I don't need them to pass a respectability test for me to believe in their right to do what they fuck they choose with their bodies.
Because that's a right that men sure as hell enjoy every single day.

*I refuse to use the term "pro-life" as I believe it's a deceptive and manipulative term that paints those who would deny women access to safe and legal abortion as somehow merciful and positive. They are anything but. They are not pro women's lives, safety or autonomy. They are not pro unwanted babies being supported by the state, or pro single mothers, or low income mothers of colour. They are pro sadistically mandated births, and thus they are anti-woman and anti-choice and deserve to be described thus.

As a happily childfree woman who intends to stay that way for life, I'm a member of several groups on Facebook where the childfree can get together and discuss the various issues we encounter in a society that still seems to view women who don't wish to reproduce with, at best, suspicion and at worst, outright hostility. One of the discussion topics that seems to come up with regularity is abortion, which is not entirely surprising as pretty much everyone on the group seems to be pro-choice. I don't really see how you could intend to stay childfree for life and not believe in the right to abortion on demand, but anyway. While the majority of commenters tend to be agreed on the need for abortion access, any discussion about it inevitably includes some kind of comment about 'people using abortion as birth control' or 'people who wait 20 weeks then get a late-term abortion'. Firstly, I always wonder why, when it's obviously impossible to legislate to account for all the possible reasons someone might want an abortion, anyone even bothers making a comment such as 'I think it's fine to get abortion if X, Y and Z [the implication being that if you were just let down by your contraception, or raped, or the foetus had serious abnormalities, you somehow are more DESERVING of the abortion] but if you just weren't careful then I don't think you should get one'? Does anyone actually think doctors are going to start asking women for proof that they've 'been careful' or were raped, or aren't just 'using abortion as birth control', and does any pro-choice person actually think that's a desirable state of affairs?

Similarly, the discussion about late-term abortion always seems to involve a similar abandoning of the sense and logic that I would usually expect from pro-choice people. Even though 91% of abortions in the UK are carried out at 13 weeks or less, and abortions are being performed earlier and earlier thanks to better detection rates, there is often a disproportionate focus on later abortions, presumably because the more 'it looks like a baby', the more emotive people tend to get about the issue of terminating a pregnancy. What people tend to forget that, however distasteful they might find the idea of a 6 month old foetus being terminated, UK doctors technically have the right to terminate the foetus right up to the point of birth if the mother's life is actually in danger, so there's no point pretending that, under our law, the foetus' 'right to life' ever trumps the mother's right to live, however developed it is - because as long as it's inside the mother's body, there are always circumstances under which it could still be terminated.

What got me thinking about all this was reading an article from The Times, published in July this year, which described the work of Dr Susan Robinson, who performs abortions at a clinic in New Mexico, where there are no time limits on the gestational age at which abortions can be performed. I was interested to hear someone on the front line respond to those who believe that abortion should be granted to women if they have 'earned' the right through an unfortunate mishap, but not if they had simply been careless, or 'left it too long'. I hear these arguments far too often, even from those who are supposedly pro-choice, and I wonder if they genuinely believe that any woman gets pregnant, sits around for 20 or 24 weeks and then says 'Hey ho, better go see about an abortion'. As someone for whom children are simply not an option, I know that the first inkling of pregnancy would send me straight to the pharmacy to find out the truth, and then straight to the doctor to, as Ellen Page's character puts it in Juno, 'nip it in the bud'. I also know however, that I am a healthy, well-off middle-class woman living in a 1st world country where abortion is available locally, quickly and for free. So it interested me to read some statistics on abortions carried out at 25 weeks and beyond. In a study of 268 cases in the US, Glenna Halvorson-Boyd found that 29 percent of these women had experienced no symptoms of pregnancy - either they still had periods, or had had erratic periods to begin with (I fall into the latter category - the progesterone-only pill Micronor means I don't menstruate, so I do not have any periods to 'miss' in the first place). Another 19 percent were 'overwhelmed by extraordinary circumstances, such as homelessness or drug addiction'. I think even those who wish to 'punish' women for being so 'irresponsible' as to wait 25 weeks to end a pregnancy might think twice about the wisdom of forcing a homeless or heroin-addicted woman to become a mother.

A further 18 percent were told that the foetus was very ill late in pregnancy - another unfortunate aspect of biology that a lot of people forget. Many foetal abnormalities don't show up until the 20 week scan, which means women in 8 American states may have to carry seriously ill foetuses to term, as the law in their states prohibit abortions after 20 weeks. 2 percent of post 25-week abortions were carried out on 'teen athletes who did not menstruate', and 3 percent on women pregnant from rape. Another 3 percent 'had planned to have their baby until their circumstances dramatically shifted (most were abandoned by the man, but one was diagnosed with cancer'. Ever noticed that those who are most disapproving of abortion are also those who tend to have a massive downer on single mothers, deeming them to be the root of most social ills? So I wonder what solution they would advise, if a woman is pregnant and then her partner walks out on her, cheats on her or starts to beat her? Which reminds me - two women out of these 268 'had only been able to reach an abortion provider after escaping from abusive captors'. And in one case 'a pro-life doctor may have intentionally misled the woman', telling her she was not pregnant.

So, not so much a case of pregnant woman sitting on the sofa scoffing Doritos until 6 months have passed, and more a case of factors such as unreliable biology, money, health, life shitting in your lap and male coercion/violence combining together to create a world where late-term abortions are still very much necessary.

However, even if the woman exists who does 'use abortion as birth control' and doesn't take responsibility for her fertility in a way we might like, it's still not for any of us to judge. Either abortion is available to us all for whatever reason, or 'trusting women' means nothing. If we have to be treated like Oliver Twist begging for what is rightfully ours, we cannot call ourselves full or free citizens. Men's reasons for wanting to have a safe, legal medical procedure (a procedure which, in this case, has a risk of death 14 times LOWER than that associated with childbirth) are not questioned or attacked, and neither should women's. As Susan Robinson says, she trusts all the women who come to her "have good reasons... They may not be the reasons that you would need or I would need... But who am I to tell somebody that their story is not good enough?".

Another day, another ‘pro-lifer’ ...

...decides their viewpoint on the ethics of abortion must be heard. Today, our resident anti-choicer is Mehdi Hasan, who considers it greatly important that we know one can be both left-wing and pro-life. Quite what relevance he thinks this has to the abortion debate I’m not sure, but Hasan seems to think he’ll get some kudos for not being a right-wing extremist as anti-choicers usually tend to be. Sorry chap, it doesn’t work that way. Ladies are well aware that men can pride themselves on saying and doing all the correct liberal, lefty political things, and still be downright women haters. Julian Assange, anyone?

But let’s consider what Hasan feels he has to bring to the debate. He starts with a defence one of my painfully right wing (Islamophobic, homophobic, anti-feminist) relatives has trotted out to me before, pretty much word for word “Who is weaker or more vulnerable than the unborn child? Which member of our society needs a voice more than the mute baby in the womb?” Anyone who canonises a zygote, embryo or foetus over a living woman has pretty much shown which flag they’re nailing their colours to. Yet Hasan’s article was (seemingly) defended by James Bloodworth, another left-wing man, who tweeted “not all pro-lifers are simply anti-women.” Sorry fellas, but I’m not buying it. If you want to erase women from the picture and rate their life behind those of the unborn, then you’re anti-woman. You don’t get to wriggle out of that just because you put your argument forth nicely and calmly and don’t stand outside women's clinics hollering and holding up pictures of dead foetuses.

Hasan then puts forward the bizarre argument that because the UK is ‘the exception and not the rule’ with its abortion time limit being higher than the rest of Europe, that’s somehow reason enough for us to fall in line and follow suit for the sake of consistency. Hmmm, just like Britain went into the Euro just for the sake of fitting in....oh, wait. Anyway, why compare Britain to the likes of Italy – where the Catholic church has massive influence – when you could compare it to Canada, another liberal Western country, where there is no time limit on abortion? 

He also point outs “how 91 per cent of British abortions are carried out in the first 13 weeks”, which is actually a fact that I do wish more people would take notice of in the argument about the 24 week limit. Unfortunately he goes on to say “You may disagree with a 12-week cut-off but to pretend it is somehow arbitrary, or extreme, or even unique is a little disingenuous.” No, where I disagree is with people who act like the small percentage of women who do get late term abortions just get pregnant, hang about for 23 weeks twiddling their hair and then decide to ‘kill their baby’ at the last minute. The majority of late term abortions are given to women who WANTED to give birth, but discovered major deformities or life-threatening conditions after the crucial 20 week scan, and to vulnerable women such as rape victims and sexually abused minors, who are often in denial about a pregnancy. How denying much-needed abortions to women in either of these terrible circumstances is ‘protecting the vulnerable’, I'll never know. To me it sounds like utter sadism.

But Hasan’s clever – he’s even trying to manipulate feminism to support a pro-life agenda. Wot, you mean some women who fought for votes and equal treatment in the 1700s and 1800s were anti abortion? Oh right, better alter my whole ideology on that basis. For the record I love Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony, but  I can accept that they were wrong or misguided on some points. They also lived in an extremely different era where childbearing was seen as effectively mandatory due to the lack of available/reliable birth control, let alone abortion access. The likes of Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes changed that by promoting birth control and were harangued for it (much like those defending the right of women to control their fertility are today - hmmm, I see a pattern). Neither of those women were perfect either – Sanger made some very unfortunate statements about using birth control for eugenics. But I support and believe in the good things they did, without believing I have to subscribe mindlessly to everything they say just because they’re a) women and b) feminists.

But Hasan even has a 21st Century feminist up his sleeve, or so he claims. He describes Daphne De Jong as a New Zealand feminist author – all I can find about her is that she has written a lot of Mills and Boon novels, oh and - she just happens to be part of ‘Feminists For Life’, an organisation that claims to be both feminist and pro-life. Much like my mate who’s both Palestinian and Zionist. But OK, let’s address De Jong's claim that “If women must submit to abortion to preserve their lifestyle or career, their economic or social status, they are pandering to a system devised and run by men for male convenience.” Yes, that's a good point. It’s utterly wrong, and counter to the aims of feminism, that women should ever have abortions simply to fit in with a male-dictated system. Funnily enough, it’s also counter to the aims of feminism that women should be made to give birth simply to fit in with a male-dictated system. And what is Mehdi Hasan asking us to do? Legislate about women’s bodies based upon what he, Jeremy Hunt and Christopher Hitchens think. Last I checked, that's a pretty fucking male-dictated system.

But Hasan just can’t let go of this idea that being a woman automatically makes you a feminist, or pro-woman. Apparently 49 percent of women would support a reduction in the abortion limit – OK, I’ve never met any of them apart from the wife of the anti-abortion relative mentioned above, but I’ll assume the poll was taken from a broad enough pool. I wonder how many of those women are past reproductive age, single or happy mothers who can’t imagine ever wanting or needing an abortion. It’s easy to argue against abortion when it’s theoretical and will not impact upon your own life. Just look at how ‘pro-life’ US Representative Scott DesJarlais switched from saying “all life should be cherished and protected” to pressuring his pregnant mistress into getting an abortion the moment his happy little set-up was threatened by an unwanted pregnancy. Or have a read of the deeply revealing article ‘The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion’, where abortion clinic workers reveal that many of the ‘pro-lifers’ who picketed outside their clinics later turned up wanting a termination themselves.

As my dad, who manages to be both a man and pro-choice, often says ‘It’s easy to argue from a position of no consequence’. It’s easy to be a woman who doesn’t want or need an abortion, or a man whose bodily autonomy will never be threatened, and say abortion is wrong. Wait til your needs or your life changes. I wonder how Hasan would feel if one of his daughters (and it bears saying he is lucky to have two WANTED children) came to him after a rape, or with a life-endangering pregnancy, and he had to explain to her she was morally obliged to go through with a birth that might ruin her life, or kill both her and her baby, because her dad felt she should not be allowed to make a decision about her own body.

I think Hasan is using his credentials as a ‘left-wing’ man with ‘progressive principles’ (I use quotes because I do not believe him to be progressive in any way) to try to obscure the fact that being anti-abortion does make you anti-woman. The fact is, his left-lean has nothing to do with this argument. Neither does the fact he is not religious. They are not even worth mentioning, and the fact he does shows he feels he needs to try and pre-empt the inevitable accusations of being a woman-hater by hiding behind the ‘Moi? Impossible? I’m a liberal kinda guy!’ defence.

But feminists are smarter than that. We know that you can be left or right wing, male or female, religious or atheist, and still be insidiously trying to erode women’s right to bodily autonomy. So when Hasan asks “my fellow lefties and liberals to try to understand and respect the views of those of us who are pro-life, rather than demonise us as right-wing reactionaries or medieval misogynists”, it’s a pretty bloody tall order. Because on this issue, Mr Hasan your ‘principles’, make you indistinguishable from those ‘right-wing reactionaries’ and ‘medieval misogynists’ you are trying to distance yourself from. And that is why I am not interested in trying to ‘understand and respect’ your views.

Anti-choice = anti-woman. It’s always that simple.

The madness has been setting in....

...and I've been too busy to write about it, unfortunately. That is, the madness of so-called 'Women and Equalities Minister' Maria Miller suggesting that the abortion time limit needs reducing to 20 weeks, and then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt deciding to run with the baton and saying actually, it needs cutting to 12 weeks.

So it's just as well some other writers have been on the case. Wendy Savage asks "Where's the evidence, Mr Hunt?".

Laurie Penny wonders about Hunt's ulterior motives in "The right time for a debate, or the right time for a diversion?"

Mary Ann Sieghart points out Maria Miller is not just misguided, but downright wrong, as "advances in medical science have had no effect on babies’ survival rates below the legal limit of 24 weeks."

Tanya Gold suggests "Miller does not understand why any woman would want an abortion, because she has never needed one".

And Sarah Ditum simply calls Miller's stance what it is - simplistic and dishonest.

On a related note, this excellent video from Guttmacher institute shows that "Some of the highest of abortion rates are where abortion is highly restricted. The world's lowest abortion rates are where the procedure is legal and highly accessible. The way to reduce abortion is not to outlaw it."

One might add that another way to reduce abortion is not to try to erode existing laws that are working fine and pretend you are doing it out of 'concern for women'. MPs Hunt and Miller, take note.

Round-Up - Latest Posts By Me

If you haven't already, get yourself hence to Bitch and check out my blog series on BDSM and pop culture.

Still blogging for Ms., this time about fashion editors claiming black eyes on women are somehow 'beautiful'.

And reporting for Women's Views on News why those who dislike abortion need to start throwing their weight behind contraceptive access.

Saturday Morning at the Clinic

It was a hot and sunny Los Angeles morning and we were standing on the dirty paving stones as the traffic blasted past. The sidewalk was narrow, with a constant flow of people trying to get past, to the 7-11, to the dry-cleaners - it was not a comfortable place to be. So why we were there? Because they were there.

They were a mixed group - from a young, olive-skinned man who looked to be in his 20s, to a white man probably in his 60s. A Hispanic lady in her 30s had brought two beautiful young boys with her, wide-eyed long-lashed angels no older than five. A tall, grey-haired man in a light green polo shirt with mirrored aviator shades walked up and down the pavement handing out small business-size cards. And a lady with a too-perfect dyed red bob cut and a face that betrayed the effects of more than one cosmetic procedure slithered up and down the pavements at such an eerily slow pace she appeared to be in a trance. There were a few others, but they were the ones I noticed.

What did this diverse group have in common? Well, they were all clutching rosary beads. They were all murmuring in prayer, and at one point recited the entire rosary in one voice. But the thing that united them was something no one actually mentioned - that they were all anti-abortion, and they were there to try to persuade, intimidate or emotionally blackmail the women who passed them into eschewing the services of the women's clinic around the corner.

They couldn't go any closer to the clinic than this sidewalk, which gave those entering the clinic a buffer zone and, if they came in via car, a chance to enter unmolested. But anyone on foot would have to walk the gauntlet of people praying, swaying, murmuring, and be handed a card depicting pictures of miscarried foetuses.

We were a smaller group, but still diverse. Male and female, white and Hispanic, mothers and childfree. Orange-vested, we stood and chatted and smiled, breaking away every now and then to tell a passer-by 'These are protesters. You don't have to listen to them, you don't have to take anything from them' or to offer to dispose of the disturbing card they'd just been handed. A young woman who was clearly disgusted by the image she'd just been presented with gratefully handed the card over saying, 'Yes, please, throw it away'. A young man looked at the card and boomed 'I don't need to see that shit, I got one on the way'.

A Hispanic lady left the clinic and leaned against the outside wall, clearly waiting to be picked up. Green Polo Shirt swooped in like a vulture, handing her a card. I followed quickly and asked if she wanted me to throw it away. She said it was OK, then asked me what we were doing. I explained that we were volunteers there to help women get into the clinic without harassment, and that the other group were anti-abortion protesters. The woman told me she had just had a tubal ligation and was feeling dizzy. I found it hard to quash my anger that in the middle of a sweltering day, having just had an anaesthetic and an invasive procedure, this woman was being bothered by proselytisers handing her an image likely to make most of us feel queasy even if we hadn't just undergone an operation. The woman pointed out that the clinic provides many other services other than abortions, and delicately said of the protestors 'I think these people are a little confused'.

A college-age white woman stood looking at the protestors for a while. I stepped forward and told her she could ignore them. 'Oh no,' she said, breaking into a smile. 'I think they're great!'. She gave the group a thumbs up as she walked past them. I cringed inside to see a young person so supportive of those wishing to take her bodily autonomy away, but I suppose her 'Catholic University' hoodie should have given me a clue that I wasn't going to win this one.

A fellow escort told me that she had formed a 'good relationship with some of the protestors', and that she even swapped stories of motherhood with one of the anti-choice women. The shouting, confrontation and violence my partner and I had been expecting were nowhere to be found, although we were told that this was not necessarily a typical example, with other clinics being much more beseiged. Instead, the protestors murmured their prayers, and the two little boys played on the sidewalk, at one point even wrapping their mother's rosary beads around themselves and pretending it was a seatbelt. I had to laugh at that one.

It was the later shift so most women were already inside the clinic and we didn't have to do any real 'escorting' - it was more just like a quiet turf war to see who could influence pedestrians the most. So many people accepted the dead-foetus-picture cards without a blink, and only a few threw them away. I suppose it's just a reflex to put out your hand when someone comes towards you offering something. Some groups walked through the protestors totally oblivious - the most likely group, I was heartened to see, being teenage girls, preoccupied with their cellphones and conversations. The protestors didn't even register to these groups, and for once I was grateful for the self-obsession of adolescents.

Gradually the protestors peeled off, and as the mother walked her two boys away they grinned and shouted a cheery 'Goodbye!' to us. Their mother pulled them away angrily. We waited until the last protestor had left, then called it a day. 

I hoped we had done something good, but I couldn't be sure how effective we'd been. Despite our orange shirts stating 'PRO CHOICE ESCORT' in huge letters, many people seemed unaware of what we were doing. A man even congratulated us, under the impression that we were protestors. 

What I wondered most was how the protestors would have been able to justify their actions without religion to hide behind.

So many wars are being waged on women across the USA

...that it can be hard to know where to begin. One piece of legislation that really got me thinking - amongst all the other pieces of woman-hating guff - was the bill currently being debated in Kansas which would effectively allow doctors to lie to pregnant women if the doctor believes that imparting certain information to a woman might cause her to have an abortion. It's pretty stunning in its naked contempt for women, and I don't think I need to analyse how it's just one in a long line of bills that treat women as a) worth of less rights than a foetus and b) complete morons incapable of knowing their own minds or making informed decisions. However, it did get me thinking how anti-choicers love to point to the 'eugenics' of abortion. A commentator on the Guardian argued that feminists had no right to get up in arms about sex-selective abortion whilst at the same time arguing for abortion on demand, and without apology. I can understand that, if you're already anti-choice, no reason for obtaining an abortion is going to wash with you, and if feminists want to protect female foetuses from being 'unjustly' aborted, then anti-choicers can't understand why the same protection isn't afforded to foetuses with Downs syndrome, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, cystic fibrosis.

Well, let's start with the consideration that being aborted because you're female, and being denied an abortion, actually emanate from the same poisonous root - a society that views women as inferior. A female foetus is not a disabled one unless the society it is going to be born into pushes it into that narrow box. However, a foetus with cystic fibrosis is sadly always going to be disabled however many accommodations society makes for it. The child it grows into will spend a short, painful, illness-ridden life enduring daily aggressive pummellings to stop it drowning in the fluid that accumulates in its lungs. And that's probably one of the milder examples of how disability will affect a child's, and their parents', life. I've worked with disabled children. I've seen parents wracked with guilt over sending their child to disabled boarding schools because they can no longer cope with the violent rages of their autistic son, or their 18 year-old daughter's incontinence. I've seen plenty of couples split from the stress of trying to raise a severely disabled child. I've seen parents who will never do what other parents do - see their grown child 'fly the nest', because their child is so disabled it will either have to live with those parents until they die, or be institutionalised for life. And what I've gleaned from that is twofold - one, that parents who raise disabled children do a 24/7 job so hard it would slay most of us, and thus deserve our utmost respect, and that two, no one should EVER EVER EVER be forced into that role.

But that's exactly what the Kansas bill would do - force women to give birth to disabled or deformed children; or worse, suffer serious, possibly even fatal, health complications from carrying to term a non-viable foetus. It would also deny parents who fully intend to go through with a pregnancy regardless of disability, the chance to learn about their child's condition and prepare for the arrival of a baby who will need massive amounts of help, both practical and financial, just to live from day-to-day. But, should this contempt for women and potential parents be any surprise when recently this country has seen bills introduced which would let women die in order to save a foetus? The only surprise is that all women of childbearing age haven't packed their bags and left these shores in disgust - but I guess like this legal alien, some of them are willing to stay and fight.

Finally.

Doctors confirm what feminists have been pointing out for a long time. Namely, that abortion
a) is actually medically safer than continuing a pregnancy
b) isn't linked to psychological trauma
c) and it'd be a good idea to let women know this.

Thank god some level-headed medics have cut through the ridiculous scare-mongering (the next person who mentions 'post-abortion trauma' will be required to go through a mandatory pregnancy and report back to me which they think is more traumatic) and spoken sense. Of course, anti-choicers are already decrying the supposedly 'liberal agenda' that led to this study...I'm thinking what really led to it was a group of people deciding they'd had enough of women-hating freaks distorting the facts.

Thoughts on watching Cabaret

When I realised that even my dad has seen the classic musical Cabaret, whilst I remained ignorant of its charms, I knew I was guilty of a serious omission. I obtained myself a copy of the 1972 film straight away and sat down to watch. I knew that the film comprised glamour with an uneasy undertone, being set in the Weimar Republic during the rise of Nazism. What I was pleasantly surprised by, however, was how forward-thinking the film was, and how it beat the hell out of many modern films in that arena. I was also quite taken aback at the ripeness of some of the subject matter considering the era. Having an openly gay character in the shape of Brian, who was neither the subject of ridicule/abuse, nor an insultingly camp caricature, seems a brave move only 5 years after homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK, and while it remained a criminal offence in many US states. So does the portrayal of the rather kinky love triangle between Sally, Brian and Maximilian, all of whom sleep with one another at some point in the film. Although the modern penchant for a bit of crowd-pleasing lesbianism for the sole pleasure of watching males seems to translate into film and TV being happy to portray threesomes between two women and one man, I can't remember the last time I saw the reverse being celebrated (although I should point out, the three characters don't actually get together as a group, but you see what I'm getting at).

The storyline which gave me most cause for thumbs-up, however, was where Sally, faced with pregnancy and leaving the Cabaret to be Brian's wife, aborts the baby and decides to remain in Berlin whilst he goes back to Britain. They part amicably, and it's far more satisfying than any fairy-tale romantic ending would have been. I struggle to remember many films that I've seen which don't portray heterosexual relationships as the sole aim and source of fulfilment for women. I'm racking my brains for a scene in a recent film where we see the heroine heading off happy and alone into the sunset. It seems we've become more afraid, not less, to accept that being single or childless can be fulfilling. Why else would it be easier for a film made in 1972 to acknowledge this, whereas today the subject seems taboo?

Speaking of taboos, the most laudable part of the movie was, for me, the portrayal of a woman going through with an abortion, being happy with her decision, and continuing with her life. Again, it struck me as very brave to do this at a time when Roe v. Wade wouldn't happen for another year in the US, and the UK was only 5 years into the era of legalised abortion. And again, the willingness to depict what is a daily fact for many women - they have abortions and are fine - seems to have reduced, not grown, in the intervening time. I've lost count of how many books, films or TV shows I've encountered where women are shown considering abortion and changing their mind at the last minute, the implication being that the 'brutality' of the act is simply too much for them, and they decide they want to surrender their lives to motherhood after all - even if they've never shown the slightest inclination previously. Sex and The City, Juno, and Scrubs to name but a few, all depicted this do-si-do, much to my chagrin. Six Feet Under did earn my respect by showing the character of Claire going through with her abortion, but then completely undid all its good work through a dream sequence where Claire meets dead people and the foetus she aborted is shown as a fully grown baby, pretty much feeding into every tiresome piece of pro-life propaganda imaginable.

Suffice to say, I do think a realistic depiction of abortion that doesn't show a woman being emotionally blackmailed into changing her mind at the last minute, or suffering endless guilt afterwards, is long overdue in popular cinema. It's pretty telling that, in 2009, we have so much to learn from a 37 year-old film. The majority of women get abortions and get on with their lives, and don't regret it. The concept of psychological suffering following abortion such as 'Post Abortion Syndrome' have been exposed and dismiessed as unsubstantiated propaganda flung around by pro-life groups, when in fact it's worry over pregnancy and stress of not being able to obtain a timely termination that causes far more trauma to women. As I watched the film, I wanted to stand up and applaud Cabaret's unsentimentalised portrayal of Sally's decision to be true to herself and remain the flighty, fun-loving entertainer she was meant to be, rather than surrendering her life and body to marriage and motherhood.

Odd how you can sit down expecting a camp, glitzy musical and instead find the kind of storyline that makes you want to jump up and start singing yourself. Just goes to show that meaning can be found in many unexpected locations.