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.

Latest Posts By Me

A review of Hillary Jordan's excellent When She Woke - a feminist dystopian novel envisioning the US if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned - for Bitch.

A piece for Women's Views on News about North Wales judge Niclas Parry, who told a rape victim she 'let herself down badly' - even as he was sentencing her GUILTY attacker.

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.

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.

I’m going to be living in the US for the next 3 months, and I think it will be a real eye-opener. I’ve followed the American feminist news for several years, through the excellent mediums of the magazines Ms. and Bitch, and more recently via the fertile grounds of feminist blogging and Twitter. But now I’m actually here on US soil, the reality of the war on women seems just that little bit more real. Only yesterday the right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh caused outrage by labelling a young woman defending her right to birth control paid for by her health insurance provider, a ‘slut’ – because, as his logic went, she wants to be ‘paid for having sex’.

To a Brit, this kind of thing is just gobsmacking. For starters, women’s right to free contraception on the NHS goes without saying in the UK, and any attempt to undermine this would be met with such a stink that a politician insane enough to suggest it would be laughed out of parliament. Furthermore, any British public figure who likened women who use contraception to prostitutes could kiss their career goodbye as they would instantly be labelled a crank, an extremist and unworthy of public airspace. It just wouldn’t happen. Sure, we have our share of buffoons in Britain – who can forget Kenneth Clarke proposing that there’s a difference between rape and ‘serious rape’, or the delightful Eamonn Homes telling a rape victim attacked in a car “Well, I hope you take taxis now”? But we can take comfort in knowing that there’ll be a predictable shitstorm – Twitter exploding in apoplexy, the idiocy of the man in question hotly debated on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine who – and then a quiet climbdown from the offending party. In the US, however, the stakes seem a lot higher. Rush Limbaugh may be an attention-seeking jackass who deliberately antagonises feminists and liberals for a living, but his doesn’t seem to be an isolated voice. There is a real anti-contraception faction in the US, and they are the reason that Sandra Fluke was testifying in the first place.

Not content with the erosion of abortion rights (see Virginia’s recent ultrasound bill), anti-choicers are now focusing their attention on restricting access to the contraceptive pill. (It's telling that some anti-choicers don't even see a difference between the two; one female Republican on TV this evening referred to the pill as an 'abortion causing drug' - someone please give the lady a basic science lesson) Seems they want it both ways – they don’t want women aborting babies, but nor do they want women using anything to prevent those babies being conceived in the first place. The total lack of logic here cannot be interpreted as anything other than a wish to see women entirely at the mercy of their biology – ‘barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink’. It’s certainly not about protecting babies – it’s just about ensuring that enough of them, wanted or not, are spewed into this world to keep women in natal chains.

Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Sandra Fluke betrays a belief that women should only be having sex for the purposes of procreation, and that to demand the freedom to a sex life unburdened by the threat of pregnancy is unreasonable and audacious. He is saying women should be punished for wanting to be sexual for any other reason than making babies, and he has already passed his own sentence – that of being called of a whore.

One can only wonder what kind of mire the debate would enter if male hormonal contraception is considered too – I somehow doubt right-wingers would be quite so enthusiastic in challenging men’s right not to create a baby every time they have sex. To be anti-contraception is to be anti-woman, it’s that simple. And it’s probably worth adding that in a world which needs no more unwanted children, and can barely handle all those it already contains, to be anti-contraception is also to be wilfully stupid.

LIFE is what happens when you're busy being a feminist

I was at a charity jumble sale today in Milton Keynes, where local charities such as animal shelters and hospices had stalls to raise funds. I bought a book and a DVD, browsed the arrays of home-baked delights, rifled through the clothes, had a few goes on the tombola. As I was perusing one stall, I was dismayed to look down and see a banner proclaiming that it was for the MK branch of the anti-abortion organisation 'LIFE'. For those not in the know, LIFE is against abortion in any circumstances, including rape, incest or threat to the mother's life, envisions a world where abortion is 'unnecessary, even unthinkable', and also campaigns against stem cell research and IVF. I was absolutely disgusted to see what I consider a dangerous, anti-woman, propaganda-distributing pressure group masquerading as a 'charity', and went straight to one of the organisers to complain.

I said I thought it totally inappropriate that LIFE be canvassing for funds alongside legitimate charities raising money for those genuinely in need of help. The organiser responded that any registered charity, which LIFE sadly qualifies as, was allowed to participate. She then said 'If people don't agree with the principles of a certain charity, then they won't give money to their stall.' I argued that not everyone would be aware of what LIFE's actual purpose is, especially as the literature they had displayed was pretty misleading (lots of happy mums and babies, and no mention of abortion anywhere). My point was neatly confirmed by a man standing nearby who overheard us and asked what it was LIFE actually do. Nowhere on LIFE's website does it come out and say 'We are anti-abortion in all circumstances' - instead, their mission statement is summed up by the somewhat long-winded and disingenuous claim that "LIFE exists to save lives and transform the futures of some of the most disadvantaged children and young people in the UK by supporting vulnerable pregnant mothers and young families through difficult times".

The organiser I was complaining to acknowledged my point but said there was nothing she could really do - and also asked me if I was from a charity myself, which presumably meant 'Do you belong to a pressure group with an agenda too?'. I replied that I didn't and that I was just there as a shopper. But I left straight afterwards because I was really quite sickened at the presence of a group that have nothing to do with 'charity' and everything to do with bullying and manipulating women into relinquishing control over their lives and bodies.

It made me think about how to apply the name 'charity' fairly - after all, plenty of charities are not neutral and do have some kind of political or ethical agenda. Christian Aid, Amnesty International, Friends of The Earth - just a few examples of organisations with charitable status, who hold particular beliefs which affect their mission statement. However, I feel there still is a difference. None hold an agenda which dogmatically seeks to reduce the rights and status of a particular group of people. Any organisation which wishes to eradicate abortion is, whether they care to admit it or not, and however much they claim to 'support' the women who come to them, seeking to deny women their right to personal freedom and bodily autonomy. And that is why such an organisation has no place amongst charities who are trying to care for the terminally ill, help abandoned animals, or support people with learning disabilities - aims which can be universally agreed upon as worthy and which are not the subject of any ethical debate.

I wished there was more I could do to protest, but I was glad I at least said my piece to the organiser - who knows, maybe it will give her food for thought when organising the next event. I just found it a frightening indictment of how people turn a merrily blind eye to the erosion of abortion rights happening right in front of us. And I was appalled to see the underhand way in which a group - which exists purely to spread religious propaganda and promote the idolisation of the unborn over living women - had penetrated public space to take people's money. Buyer beware - you never know which anti-woman organisation you might be innocently handing your money over to.

Stuff to get horrendously depressed about:

US-style anti-abortion tactics begin infecting the UK.

New enemy of women # 1 Nadine Dorries begins pushes for abstinence only, girls-only sex education in schools although at least some commentators here speak sense on the matter.

Life, an anti-abortion lobbying group, are invited to join and advise on the Government Sexual Health Forum.

Anyone got any news that won't make me want to reach for my flamethrower?

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.

Possibly the most depressing news of the year so far...

...is the article on P13 of today’s Independent, titled ‘US-style anti-abortion protestors target clinics in Britain’. The picture of a frankly ridiculous looking ‘pro-life’ protester in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-type mask holding up the obligatory doll does undermine the notion that these woman-hating loonies actually pose any serious threat to our rights, but the article still makes for uneasy reading.

Apparently a Texas-Based group calling itself 40 Days For Life has begun targeting abortion clinics in the UK, clearly no longer satisfied with just harassing and browbeating women born on American soil. They call their actions ‘peaceful, prayerful and [a] legal vigil’, a claim not exactly borne out by the fact they have been filming women and staff walking into clinic (presumably to ‘name and shame’ those goddamn whores who dare to kill cute ickle babbas) and pressing misleading literature on women seeking abortion. Oh, that old literature, with its claims about all those terrible ‘risks’ of terminating a pregnancy. I love the way they never get around to pointing out that giving birth is actually 11 times more likely to prove fatal than having an abortion. And that there’s no such thing as ‘post-abortion syndrome’. And that the only thing that’s likely to cause a woman mental trauma or depression is being prevented from GETTING THE FUCKING ABORTION WHEN SHE NEEDS IT. But I guess the only people to acknowledge such facts are ones who see women as autonomous, full human beings deserving of respect – instead of as wombs on legs.

I don’t know who in the article is more deserving of my contempt, the male British head of 40 Days for Life who claims “I am pro choice. But I am not pro-choice about rape, burglary, kidnapping or killing children”(because a 12-week old zygote is the same as a child. Riiiiight), or the British paediatrician joining in harassing women and staff outside the London Marie Stopes clinic, who claims “We’ve seen seven clinics close because of our vigils and at least 3100 women, who were going to have an abortion, but didn’t”. Sure they didn’t just go to another clinic where your unevolved, woman-hating asses weren’t outside giving them shit, sista? Jesus fucking christ.

Darinka Aleksic, campaign co-ordinator at Abortion Rights, gets right to the crux of what these crusaders are actually up to. “We are strongly in favour of women receiving as much support, counselling and information about abortion as possible. But we’re worried about the tenor of a lot of the advice being given out by these picketers. There’s a lot of emphasis on guilt and misleading scientific information.” Yesss, you can just never quite get away from guilt when it comes to religious, right-wing propaganda, can you? Ms Aleksic is being pretty fucking restrained in her comments in a way I’m not sure I could manage – my own phrasing would probably go a little along the lines of “they can’t stand the idea of all women not being barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink, so they’re making sure they shame women a) for daring to have sex in the first place and b) for wanting bodily control, by haranguing them at a time when they’re already vulnerable, with sinister propaganda that prioritises the rights of a ball of cells over a living human. What a bunch of retarded, Bible-bashing, misogynistic losers”.

What’s more disheartening than the fact that the American lunatic fringe has invaded our peaceful shores with its slut-shaming, “weren’t things great back in 1830 before these bitches got too uppity?” attitude, is the short post-script to the article reflecting on the erosion of British abortion rights. When the motion to reduce the abortion time limit from 24 weeks to 22 weeks was voted on two years ago in Parliament, the three men who are now respectively the current PM, Foreign Secretary and Health Secretary, voted in favour of it. Therese Coffey, a newly elected Tory MP, has put forward a motion requiring women “seeking an abortion on mental health grounds to receive counselling and be warned of possible risks to their mental health”.

It may all sound fairly minor in comparison to the insane assaults on abortion rights in the States (having to have an ultrasound before you abort, anyone? Having to sign a death warrant for that cute li’l baby you murdered, bitch?), but you’ve only got to look across the Atlantic to see where this insidious, piece-by-piece, peeling away of abortion rights is getting its ideas from. The motion by Coffey particularly disturbed me, and not just because of the total lack of evidence that abortion causes any other mental sensation for women than one of RELIEF. As someone who has mental health problems in my past and hence on my medical records, I’m concerned that should I ever require an abortion, the validity of my request for one would be called into question by that very fact. The idea of having to be ‘counselled’ – which in any pro-life/anti-choice arena means, having your decision aggressively questioned and undermined, and fed anti-abortion propaganda – before you’re ‘trusted’ to undertake a procedure which should be available on demand and without apology, makes me shudder.

I just hope that, if this bizarre, condescending motion actually gets taken seriously in parliament, and it sparks ‘a renewed debate on abortion laws’, that the debate results in these audacious erosions of women’s rights being brought to full light, and both MPs and the wider world reflecting on just how woman-hating, freakish and sinister they are. And realising our laws need to stay the way they are for very good reasons.

Women, men, politicians and doctors who are pro-choice trust women. Anyone who is 'pro-life', or, let's call it what it really is - anti-choice, mistrust, and therefore wish to oppress women. It’s as simple as that.

Whilst I'm sure most Americans are intelligent, right-thinking people...

...the mind simply boggles at the actions of US law-makers. The latest piece of jaw-droppingly misogynistic legislation hails from Louisiana, where it has recently become part of state law that women seeking an abortion must undergo an ultrasound scan first. Even more depressingly, perhaps, than the nakedly woman-hating law itself, is the fact it was brought in by a female senator - a Democrat as well! - who claimed the law 'empowered women'. And even worse than that, the bill passed with absolutely zero opposition from the 78 other members of the state house.

Words. Fail. Me.

If I were a woman living in Louisiana right now, I'd be packing my bags and heading for the border, as I don't think the state can make it any clearer just how much contempt it has for women and their autonomy. Never mind that the sheer cost of an ultrasound, thanks to the American health 'system', will put abortion out of the reach of many low-income women. Never mind the nauseating implication that if a woman realises that what she's aborting 'looks like a baby', she'll suddenly start cooing and decided she couldn't possibly murder that cute prawn-shaped thing on the screen. What is most despicable about this piece of legislation is its total undermining of a woman's right to choose, its attempt to put conditions on a medical procedure which SHOULD and MUST be available on demand and without apology, if we can ever claim that women are truly treated equally in society.

My painfully right-wing uncle started spouting off recently about how 'the measure of a civilised society is how it treats its most weak and vulnerable members, and you can't get any more vulnerable than the unborn foetus'. He didn't seem to consider the vulnerability of the 9 year old raped by a family member (a true case which occurred in Brazil), or any other woman carrying an unwanted pregnancy, for that matter. Much like the ultrasound process, which neatly removes the mother from the pregnancy scenario and makes it all about the 'baby' (NOTE quote marks - to me, it's a zygote, embryo or foetus, NOT a baby), my uncle seemed to have entirely forgotten that the unborn are housed within a WOMAN. A person. A living, breathing, already-existing full human being. It always seems very easy for a man to be pro-life, doesn't it? I wonder how pro-life my uncle would be if laws suddenly started telling him he couldn't have his cancerous liver removed, 'because it's a living organism'. An early-stage pregnancy is probably technically less of a developed organism than a liver, so that seems a fair comparison to me. Something tells me he wouldn't stand for it. But telling women they've got to endure a pregnancy because they're less important than a clump of cells? No probs, because it's all about the ickle ba-ba at the end of the day.

At least some commentators on the Louisiana legislation got right to the point:

"One sentence into this article, and i am already filled with rage.
Hey, darlin'! i know your daddy raped you, but are you SUUUURE you don't wanna have his baby? You'll go to Hell if you don't! Think about it, and let us know!"

"Pregnant women aren't mothers. They're pregnant women."

"Let's be plain. This is NOT a bill that "empowers" women. No one is dumb enough to believe that. This is a bill that presumes women are too frail and stupid to have realized what they are about to participate in."

"Jeez...why don't they also require the woman to frame the ultrasound picture and hang it over her fireplace..."

Refreshingly, the majority of comments were in this vein and socked it to the occasional (all male, from what I could see) pro-lifer who put their two-bibles' worth in. If so many American men and women can see this legislation for the vile piece of woman-hating it is, why can't US state government do the same?

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.