Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (11 page)

Oh, and by the way—your taxes pay for these places. Sit on that one for a while.

Another big fat lie is that anti-choicers are just trying to protect children from scary child molesters and abortionists. The biggest proponent of this bullshittery is former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who, until 2006, was on a one-man crusade to make sure that teens didn’t screw—I mean, are protected.

While in office (he was voted out in 2006), Kline tried to get the medical records of more than ninety women who had abortions. But medical records are private, you say? Not his problem. Kline claimed he was looking for evidence of statutory rape, to see if any of the women who had abortions were under sixteen. Never mind that Kline ignored a case in which a thirteen-year-old in his state got knocked up and married a twenty-two-year-old. It’s simply anti-sex nonsense and privacy invasion shrouded in rhetoric about protecting kids. Case in point: Kline also tried to get a law passed requiring healthcare professionals to report (as in, to the police)
any sexual activity
between people under sixteen years old. Even if both hooker-uppers are underage. Even if they don’t have
sex. (I love the idea of getting reported for going to second base. Hysterical.)

But this kind of nonsense is par for the course when it comes to teens and abortion rights.

There isn’t anything quite as annoying to me as parental consent and notification laws for abortion. Not only do these laws presuppose that young women aren’t capable of making decisions for themselves about their own bodies, but they also assume that kids
won’t
tell their parents—which just isn’t true.

Thirty-four states have some sort of parental involvement law. Some states require that parents be notified; others say you actually need a written note from your parents okaying the procedure. Arizona even requires that young women have a notarized written note! Next you’ll have to jump through flaming hoops while balancing a spoon on your nose or some shit.

The logic behind the laws is that parents should be involved in their kids’ lives. Okay, I can understand that. But the truth is, most teens
do
tell their parents if they’re pregnant. And the ones who don’t generally have a pretty good reason not to—like incest or abuse. These laws don’t take that into consideration.

Imagine that a teen girl gets raped by her father and becomes pregnant. She’s seriously supposed to go to
him
to get
permission for an abortion?! Now, most states do have some sort of judicial bypass, which means you can go in front of a judge and explain why you can’t tell your parents about the pregnancy. This is just crap. If you’re being abused at home, you know that if you tell a judge, officials are going to have to intervene somehow. You’re risking your whole world being turned upside down. Besides, the idea of going in front of a judge is terrifying to anyone—let alone a scared, pregnant, abused teen!

As scary as it is, some teens don’t even have that option. Republican Senator Chris Buttars of Utah recently tried to defend a bill that would get rid of the judicial-bypass option—even for victims of incest. But you have to love that he didn’t even deny his real motives. Senator Buttars said, “Abortion isn’t about women’s rights. The rights they had were when they made the decision to have sex. . . . This is the consequence. The consequence is they should have to talk to their parents.”
¹⁰
Even if your parent is the one who got you pregnant. Love that logic. (The consequence of having the last name Buttars is apparently being a huge asshole. Appropriate.)

The bottom line is, these laws are not about keeping teen girls safe. They’re about controlling them. Apparently we’re too naive to decide what to do with our own bodies without permission from a parent or husband. Yeah, you heard right: husband. A lot of these parental involvement laws are only enforceable if the teen is unmarried. So if you’re a married teenager, you can get an abortion. Somehow a sixteen-year-old with a husband is better able to decide if she wants a child?

Once again, just more slut-punishing. If you’re married, it means you’re a good girl. Your prize for not having unmarried sex? Control of your body. You’re single and pregnant? Well, then someone else has to make the decision for you. Sucks for you, slut.

These gross consent laws are starting to trickle down into birth control, too. Like I mentioned before, the irrational fear of
Girls Gone Wild
has made for quite a difficult time for young women. Some states even require teens to get a written note from their parents just to get birth control. My parents were cool with my being on birth control when I was younger, but I doubt they wanted to know the details. I mean, imagine knowing the intimate details of your mom’s diaphragm. Ew.

Other states just defy logic. In New York, Governor George Pataki refused to make EC available over the counter for fear that teenage girls would have access to the drug. The kicker? Teenage girls can get abortions in New York without parental notification or consent. So they’re allowed to end a pregnancy, but not prevent one. Yeah, I know.

At the end of the day, though, the entire basis for consent laws doesn’t make sense. We’re not old enough to decide if we
don’t
want a baby, but we are old enough to have one?

Of course, if we’re not straight and white—it’s a different story.

You would think, given how gung ho anti-sexers seem to be about making sure you have babies, that it would be easy for everyone. But slow down, sister. Not everyone is “appropriate” for child rearing under the narrow guidelines of the chastity club.

In one of the cruelest moves ever, the anti-sex, anti-gay crowd (they tend to go hand in hand) is trying to keep anyone who isn’t straight or married from being parents. Both Indiana and Virginia have been trying to pass laws that would keep unmarried women from using “reproductive technology,” like artificial insemination or fertility treatments. While the legislation would affect all unmarried women, it was written specifically with lesbians in mind. They’re the ones who the lawmakers figured are more likely not to be married (because it’s illegal) and to be seeking help getting pregnant.

In fact, the proposed law in Virginia made it pretty clear—if you’re not having heterosexual (married) sex, you can’t have a kid:

So basically: No dick, no deal.

Given how hard the anti-sexers are trying to keep birth control away from so many young women, the idea of forcing birth control on someone seems a little wacky. But of course, these are the teen-sex-cult people we’re talking about.

When women started fighting for reproductive rights back in the ’60s and ’70s, the most attention was paid to the battle for birth control and abortion rights. But what went unnoticed by many—and still is largely ignored to this day—was the fight to stop women from being sterilized. As in no more kids, ever.

Coercive sterilization and forced long-term birth control (like Depo or IUDs) were pushed on women fairly often back then. But because this was happening mostly to poor women and women of color, it didn’t garner national attention.

Women who were on welfare were misled into thinking they wouldn’t receive their benefits if they didn’t go
along with the sterilization. One story stood out among the hundreds that went unreported. In the ’60s, three African American sisters—sixteen, fourteen, and twelve years old—were subjected to forced sterilizations without their consent. By the government. While the Relf family was being directed to a housing project, a congressional program recommended that the girls take advantage of family planning services. One of the daughters was given an IUD; the other two were sterilized. Their mother—who was illiterate—was told to sign a form that said the girls were just being given “some shots.”
¹²
Beyond horrifying.

Unfortunately, initiatives like that aren’t a thing of the past. Coercive sterilization and long-term birth control are still being pushed—under the guise of helping women. Back when I was interning at
Ms.
magazine, I heard about an organization called CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity) that was absolutely terrifying. It’s since changed its name to Project Prevention (much friendlier sounding), but its tactics are still the same. The organization pays female drug addicts in exchange for getting long-term birth control and surgical sterilization. Outside of how disgusting that is on its face—let’s just sterilize women, not get them treatment—the group’s blatant racist and classist tactics make it beyond reprehensible.

These women, after all, aren’t just any drug addicts. The project puts up billboards in poor black neighborhoods that say things like: ADDICTED TO DRUGS? WANT $200? One of its other strategies is to approach women in soup kitchens. I wonder how many billboards went up in rich white areas
where women are snorting coke at their kid’s birthday party or popping Xanax like Tic Tacs.

Barbara Harris, the organization’s founder, has compared her clients to animals: “We don’t allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children.”
¹³

“These women,” huh?

Wyndi Anderson at National Advocates for Pregnant Women says that CRACK (I’m sorry, I refuse to call it Project Prevention) relies on the same economic arguments to support its program as were used to justify eugenics sterilization in the United States and Nazi Germany. She points out that there are real solutions to help women:

But it’s so much easier to do some tube-tying!

The repro rights movement is probably the most well-known women’s issue around, but this aspect of it is hardly ever talked about. Don’t forget that repro rights and health are about a lot more than abortion and birth control.

So, I know it sounds bleak. And in a big way, it is.

The Supreme Court is mostly anti-choice—there’s a good chance Roe will be reversed. And the prevailing anti-sex attitude that’s behind all of the rollbacks on repro rights isn’t showing any signs of going away.

I don’t mean to be a downer, but best to be honest, right?

All isn’t lost, though. Women are fighting like crazy to make sure that we hold on to the rights we have and get back the ones we’ve lost. The pro-choice effort in South Dakota was an amazing example of this. Women collected more than 38,000 signatures (more than twice the number needed) to put the issue on the ballot. Then, even in the face of the anti-choice community putting out straight-up lies about the law (saying there was a rape and incest exception), they went out, door to door, and made sure the truth was being told. And it paid off. Young women across the country are having parties, events, and fundraisers to raise awareness about repro rights and take action. A group in Brooklyn, for example, is having a “Burlesque for Choice” party. Fun. And remember creepy Senator Bill Napoli, who said only super-sodomized virgins should be able to have abortions? A female comic did a strip making fun of him and included his home and office numbers. Women from all over the country gave Mr. Sodomy a call and told him exactly what they thought of him.

Young women are the ones who are being royally screwed by all this, but we’re also the ones taking innovative action.
I’ll sometimes hear that women my age or younger “don’t know how good they have it,” or that we take our rights for granted. I call bullshit. We know what the stakes are, and we’re doing what’s necessary. The only question is—what will you do?