WTF OK?

Wow, it looks as though 2010 is the year of eliminating states from my list of possible new homes in the US. Oklahoma's new abortion legislation (HB 2656 and HB 2780) is up there on the f-ed up scale with SB 1070 in Arizona. And I have not heard as much about this new legislation, maybe because everyone is distracted trying to bring awareness to Arizona's new law. Vetoes to both bills were overruled, meaning that HB 2656 and HB 2780 are now laws in Oklahoma. How does this all happen so fast?

Let us begin with HB 2780, which makes it so that a woman having an abortion is required by state law to see an ultrasound of the unborn fetus before the abortion, and have it described to her in detail. So she knows what she's getting into, you see... This is supposedly going to deter women from using abortion as a first-resort method of birth control. While I do believe that having an abortion is a serious matter requiring careful consideration of the consequences and what exactly all of this means, I must admit that I cannot see that too many women getting abortions are going about it all willy-nilly. This is an intense medical procedure, and I am sure that a lot of hard thinking goes into the decision for such a serious procedure. Currently, pro-choice advocates are relating this procedure to state-mandated rape, because these women have no choice whether or not they will be penetrated by the instruments used to produce an image of the fetus. Of course, nay sayers are poo-pahing the whole thing. According to one representative, you use similarly (or more) invasive techniques in order to perform an abortion, so it falls under the same umbrella. Oh wait, except the whole definition of rape revolves around consent, (meaning that there is a lack thereof in cases of rape), and in all of these cases the abortion procedure itself would have been requested by the woman, but not the ultrasound.

Moving on to HB 2656. According to this new Oklahoma legislation, doctors can outright lie to a patient about the state of her unborn fetus. Why would s/he do that? In order to prevent the woman from aborting a fetus if it shows signs of birth defects. To quote Mary Alice Carr in the above-posted article, this is "anti-motherhood and anti-medicine." You should definitely read her article, because she puts my outrage better than I ever could, speaking as a mother who was always relieved to hear that everything is fine with her unborn fetus in the doctor's office. Now, a doctor in Oklahoma stating "everything is fine" may not bring this relief, as they are allowed to violate their Hippocratic oath if they think that telling you there is a problem with your fetus will lead you to seek an abortion.

Frankly, I am a little confused with the conservative push for so much controlling legislation lately. If you buy into the liberal-conservative dichotomy as it is popularly illustrated, you will see that conservative=fights for freedom (and small government), and liberal=fights for equality. Talking to my family about the healthcare bill you would definitely get the impression that our freedom in this country has gone out the window. Yet the biggest violations of freedoms that I am witnessing are being posited by the conservative representatives. Do you like freedom? Well in Arizona you're going to have to sacrifice just a little bit of that and carry documentation of legal citizenship around with you, no matter who you are. That is so that no one else can enjoy the freedom that you earned(?) by being born in this great nation. Do you want an abortion? Well not so fast now. We didn't make it ILLEGAL, so you still have your freedom there. But we will make it an even more uncomfortable process. Oh, and there might be even more medical woes for you in the process, but no biggie, right? I mean that affects so few people, that it shouldn't even matter. Hey, 50% of us don't even have to worry about pregnancy, so there's some more freedom! FREEEEEEDOM!

Well, Oklahoma, you can now join North Dakota and Arizona on the list of states I won't be visiting or frequenting any time soon. To inhabitants of those states, keep fighting the good fight. Show the world that freedom and equality are not mutually exclusive.

"Too Posh to Push"

Before I let too much time come between now and this year's Ohio Latinamericanist Conference, I wanted to write a little about it.

By far my favorite presentation was Jill's presentation during the "Empowering Women through Change" panel (avec moi) entitled "The Rising Rate of Cesarean Birth in Brazil." I never thought I would be interested in any discourse about pregnancy or birth, but I became fascinated. The presentation was so informative and inspiring in fact, that I offered to present the information in my Women's Studies capstone class this week, as it is relevant to the topic we are covering right now which is "Maternal and Permeable Bodies." (That presentation never came to fruition, but I was totally willing!) Because I don't have any of the information in front of me, I will not explore this topic in as much depth as Jill did. I will simply touch upon the main points I remember. Some of the reflective points will be my own, but most of the information I am paraphrasing from Jill's research. She's the brains of this operation.

I want to make a disclaimer here: I am not demonizing or blaming women who do have C-Sections. This procedure exists for a reason, and I know several women in my own life who have had to deliver in this fashion. I want to explore here how c-sections are resorted to for reasons that have nothing to do with preserving the health of the mother and child.

C-section rates are rising in many places all over the world, but in Brazil the figures are unprecedented. Here you can see the rates represented all over the globe, up to 80% in private clinics in Brazil. Already, Jill's audience was engaged and gasping at the statistics.


So why are women going through a more invasive procedure during childbirth, electing to be cut open and have a higher risk of infant mortality and secondary infection in the mother? Granted, there are legitimate reasons that lead to cesarean section births. But the line of necessity often begins to blur, especially in a country where 80% of private clinic births are c-section births.

1. Pregnancy as Sickness- Pregnancy is often seen as a malady, and not associated with a very normal and natural part of the life of many women. Thus, removing a fetus like a cancer, that is with scalpel and sponge, may seem like a natural medical procedure.

2. Doctor/Patient Disconnect- Doctors are often guilty of thinking that their patients do not understand the medical procedure or terminology they are using. This is not necessarily a myth, as many people clearly are not familiar with complex medical terminology. However, this is an opportunity for the doctor to explain his or her way through the procedure and complexities, rather than just leave the patient in the dark because they “couldn’t possibly understand.”

3. The Marvels of Modern Medicine- We still live in a world of positivism. Science seems to trump all knowledge, and anything involving modern technology is said to "revolutionize" just about everything. Juxtapose shiny, sterile medical instruments with a woman grunting and pushing a being through the holiest of holy orifices, and we can start to get a picture of how the modern way is seen to be more medical, scientific and modern. An audience member shared that when she had her child through vaginal birth in the US, her friend had recently given birth in Chile via C-section. When said audience member admitted to delivering "traditionally," her friend replied, "like an Indian?" This shows that vaginal birth is even racialized.

4. Too Posh to Push- Victoria Beckham had a C-section, so did Angelina Jolie, Christina Aguilera and Claudia Schiffer. It is more expensive and thus it is a kind of status symbol. Classism is thus at play along with racism. (Update: At least Kourtney Kardashian did it this way!)

5. The Virgin and the Whore- Straight up, in layman’s terms, women want a tight vagina. Or rather, men want women to have a tight vagina. Vaginal birth clearly messes with this. But you can stay good and tight for your man. Your sacrifice is an incision just below the bikini line (which can often be small or later corrected with plastic surgery).

6. Health Insurance- Of course we cannot talk about any problems in the world of medicine without revealing the seedy underbelly that is health insurance. Jill shared that in Appalachia women who have one c-section are required to give birth through c-section every time after that in order to have it covered by health insurance.

I could go on forever, but I will stop there and I hope I have convinced you of some of the underlying reasons that many women go under the knife unnecessarily during childbirth.