Viva la Feminista

Like a lot of people I turned to Planned Parenthood during college.  Those were the days when Planned Parenthood sold birth control pills that fell under some weird rules that ended in the Dubya era so a pack of pills was maybe $10, maybe a bit less if I bought more than one at a time. But most of the time I bought a pack each month, having to hike over to the clinic off campus and say hi to the staff. Which might be why I love Planned Parenthood so much and ended up volunteering with them soon after college. via GIPHY Ah, the good old days of the late 1990s when passing out free condoms seemed to be the height of being a radical. That's how I spent one summer...passing out free condoms at street fairs in Chicago. But of course that was just to get people to the table. To get them talking. Once we lured people in with the free condom we would register people to vote, talk to them about how even with a Democrat in the White House, reproductive rights were being threaten...

While everyone is obsessed with how much damage the Fake Tanned One has done in 100 days , I'm more interested in what WE have done in the 100 days since the Women's March. Let's recall that 250,000 women, men, and children descended on Grant Park on one of the most beautiful days Chicago has seen in January. This so exceeded expectations that the march part of the March was officially cancelled, but you know when you have a quarter million people show up somewhere and they move, it's kinda a march. I've been to a lot of marches and few compare to the optimism this one had. I know it was too happy for a protest and all the marches had issues, but the turn out was a great way to kick off four years of resistance. And the diversity of those in attendance made me hopeful that no matter how bad things would be getting, we would fight every fight and maybe even win a few.  I think in 100 days feminists have put on quite a resistance. I truly be...

According to the CDC ,  664,435 legal abortions were performed in 2013. The Guttmacher Institute states that in 2014 1.5% of women aged 15-44 had an abortion . On average 1 in 3 women will have had an abortion over the course of their lifetime . This makes abortion or pregnancy terminations one of the most common surgical procedures, but most likely the only medical procedure that requires armed guards to ensure the safety of professionals performing them. The virulent attacks against reproductive justice - including medically accurate sex education, birth control, and abortion - has resulted in an atmosphere of fear. Fear that providers are assassinated in their churches or homes. Fear that providers being harassed outside their own homes. Fear that loved ones won't understand. This has resulted in silence. And this silence has resulted in people worrying if their decision to abort means they are terrible people or if the fact they valued the lives of their children over the...

100 years today Margaret Sanger opened her first birth control clinic in New York. It was soon shut down because 100 years ago birth control was outright illegal. While Sanger is fraught with complications due to her strategy to partner with wealthy eugenicists to bankroll the development of the bitch control pill and other aspects of the birth control movement, her work lead to the founding of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is where myself as well as many friends first sought out reproductive healthcare. It is where the protagonist in Judy Blume’s Forever heads to when she decides she is ready to have sex with her high school sweetheart. They have always been a target of conservative forces who wish to reduce women’s access to healthcare. From being painted as abortion mills to targeting communities of color, Planned Parenthood has had to fight for its existence from day one. As an 18-year-old I was lucky to have plenty of Planned Parenthood clinics to choose from when...

This year I am asking you to consider giving to one (or both) of these organizations: Bitch Media is an almost-20-year-old feminist media organization. You may be most familiar with their magazine, but they also publish an amazing blog and podcast. They are independent and rely on reader support. Bitch Media has given a lot of writers their first paid outlet. Recently they launched a fellowship to further support their efforts to launch emerging writers. Earlier this year, I joined the board of directors. As a board member of Bitch Media, I need your help to raise $1,000 by the end of December 2015.  Please donate an amount that is a slight stretch for you. It can be $10 or even $100. Join me in being a sustaining member of Bitch Media by giving a small amount every month. When you do, you get to be a member of the B-Hive! How cool is that name? The Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF) has a goal of $8,000 this year! They are a 25-year-old organization where countless in...

Hundreds of thousands of Texas women may have attempted to self-induce abortions, according to a “first of its kind” study released Tuesday by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP).  [ link ] When I heard this stat today I wanted to puke. It is actually quite difficult for me to form an intelligent rant about this. I am just. Ugh. I have been active in the reproductive justice movement for a long time and this is as bad as I feel it has gotten. I have heard stories of women resorting to self-induced abortions before. Heard rumbles of the return of back-alley abortions. Known of women who have given birth despite not wanting to add another baby to their family. But to have a study that quantifies how much we are failing women in this country? I'm sickened. This is exactly the type of work that one Missouri state senator wants to stop by censoring a woman's dissertation . In a letter to University of Missouri officials, state Sen. Kurt Schaefer (R-Columbia) argues...

Monday, August 4 to Sunday, August 10, 2014 The Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice is an initiative that elevates Latina leadership, power and activism to transform the cultural narrative via a collective call to action on critical reproductive justice issues facing our community. Despite what the NYTimes thinks, reproductive justice is not a new term , rather one that comes from women of color organizing beyond the "pro-choice" box to ensure our work is not about one procedure, one action, but rather a holistic view of women's lives and how we make decisions about when, how, and why we become mothers or not. To mark this week you can: Organize an in-district visit with your elected officials Host a rally, street action, community meeting or cafecito Write a blog (VLF is open for guest posts!) Mobilize using social media using the hashtags: #WOA14 and #RJrevolution Contact Angy@latinainstitute.org to learn more ways to get involved and share ...

Obvious Child opened in NY and LA already, but I live in the rest of the country, so we get the movie on June 27th. AND YOU SHOULD GO SEE THIS MOVIE! I was lucky to get invited to a media screening and seriously, this is the feminist movie of the year. Hands down. There's no way this movie can be beat. Why? Because for too long we have been subjected to movies and TV shows where women have a pregnancy scare, maybe consider abortion and end up 1) getting their period late; 2) miscarry; or 3) changing their minds. I have written before pondering why Hollywood can not imagine abortion being part of a love story. And thanks to director & writer, Gillian Robespierre, we have it! It is far more in line with quirky Juno and slapstick Knocked Up with its comedic genius. There are a few political moments (Thank the goddess for Gaby Hoffmann), but overall it is a sweet movie about a young woman in crisis. Her boyfriend dumps her, she drunk dials him a zillion times, she mee...

I reported last summer that Illinois now has a parental notification law being enforced and on my sidebar is a link to resources for minors who need a judicial bypass. But we know that a bypass is not the solution for every minor who is need of abortion care. That is why the ACLU of Illinois and the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health are heading down to Springfield to call for a repeal of this harmful law. #STOPPNA Advocacy Day  Thursday, April 3, 2014 Buses leave Chicago at 6am Buses then leave Springfield at 3 pm Register for the day!    Of course, if you are not in Chicago, get to Springfield anyway you can. You can join the campaign, even if you can't make it to Springfield (I can't) by submitting your story and/or taking a selfie of your shadow and tagging it with #StopPNA on Instagram or Twitter . I am asking all #365FeministSelfie participants, especially those in Illinois to submit a shadow selfie on April 3rd. Share your thoughts on the paren...

Yes, it's that time of the year again when the Chicago Abortion Fund holds its annual bowl-a-thon! Sadly this year I can't make the actual event, but I'm still fundraising for them. I started the day out waaaaay behind in fundraising, but got a good number of donations to bring my total up to $390. So I'm only $110 from my goal of $500! So I'm hoping that I can count of my readers here to bring me over the finish line! How do you help do that? IT IS EASY! Simply head over to my fundraising page and click donate next to my avatar. I got a $200 donation on my team page & $50 off page, thus the thermometer thing will always be $250 off. But who cares as long as I reach my goal of $500. OK, Ok, you want to know why you should donate to the Chicago Abortion Fund? This nifty infographic tells the tale... The stat that always bowls me over (see what I did there?) is that 79% of the women who call CAF for assistance are mothers. They know what bringing a ...

CAL L FO R PAPERS Demeter Press is seeking submissions for an edited collection, entitled Interrogating Reproductive Loss: Feminist Writings on Abortion, Miscarriage, and Stillbirth  Co-Editors: Emily R.M. Lind & Angie Deveau Deadline for Abstracts: June 1, 2014 Deadline for Acceptances: July 1, 2014 Deadline for Completed Papers: November 15, 2014 Publication Date: Early 2016 Feminist theories of the body, reproduction, and the institution of motherhood typically focus on issues of rights, autonomy, and choice. These themes become increasingly complicated when applied to questions of reproductive loss. Interrogating Reproductive Loss: Feminist Writings on Abortion, Miscarriage, and Stillbirth seeks essays, poems, short stories, and artwork that imagine a feminist epistemology of loss. Whereas biomedical and feminist literature treat abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth as differently concep...

New York Magazine has an amazing feature this week and the title says it all: 26 women sharing their abortion stories. Honestly, they are heartbreaking to read because of the wall of shame the women know they are breaking. No woman should have to hide their experience, yet society or families keep these tales from being widely shared. As their stories show, the experience of abortion in the United States in 2013 is vastly uneven. It varies not just by state but also by culture, race, income, age, family; by whether a boyfriend offered a ride to the clinic or begged her not to go; by the compassion or callousness of the medical staff; by whether she took the pill alone at home or navigated protesters outside a clinic. Some feel so shamed that they will never tell their friends or family; others feel stronger for having gotten through the experience. The same woman can wake up one morning with regret, the next with relief—most have feelings too knotty for a picket sign. “...

The NY Times broke new ground earlier this week when they published Udonis Haslem of the Miami Heat and Faith Rein's wedding announcement and included how they decided to abort a pregnancy while they were in college. It is little shock to me that this story is popular. One of the most popular posts for this blog is one where I mused about why we rarely hear about abortion being part of love stories.   Popular culture is filled with stories of men who push women to have abortions. That they are emotionally wrecking to women. That abortion happens when a man walks out on a woman. Yet, rarely do we see or hear about couples who are deeply in love, yet know that having a baby RIGHT NOW is not the answer. That it may actually harm their love and thus impair their ability to parent to the best of their ability. And before you think that is selfish, I am sure we all know some couple who had a baby, split and now are the worst of enemies that their parenting is seriously impaired by ...

Starting August 15, 2013, minors seeking abortion services will need to either notify their parents/guardians or obtain a judicial bypass. And there is help for this! Young women in need of their sevices can contact them: Call toll free: 877.44BYPASS Call or text: 312.560.6607 Email: judicialbypass@aclu-il.org  Additional resources can be found on their website too. Y en Espanol, tambien! PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS LAW IS NOT IN EFFECT UNTIL AUGUST 15, 2013!

There's a lot of chatter about how President Obama addressed, in person, a Planned Parenthood conference . In my opinion he gave a fab speech, filled with all the things I would want him to say. The first time I met the President he was still an Illinois State Senator and it was at a Planned Parenthood lobby day. He bought us lunch. He took the time to come say hi and thank us for our work. Honestly, I can't remember if he said the word "abortion" or not. But he was there. For me, that says a lot. But to some the fact he did not say the word "abortion" last week was a disappointment. What say you? BTW - The Illinois Planned Parenthood Gala is coming up soon. 

I am so honored to know Brittany and even more proud of all the work she has done in the reproductive justice movement. She's like a fish to water. Here she is telling her story in Ebony ! When 28-year-old Brittany Mostiller got an abortion in 2008, talking about it with her family was hard enough. She never expected she’d be telling her story in high schools or in the Chicago neighborhoods where she now passes out condoms and information on laws related to reproductive health. But the organization that helped pay for her procedure, Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF), invited her to join a group of women who meet regularly for peer support and to organize in their communities. Last year, CAF raised $60,000 to help 184 low-income women access second trimester abortions. Four out of five women who receive funds from CAF are of color, said its executive director, Gaylon Alcaraz. The process of getting these women engaged takes time. After checking in to see what help they need post-...

First, for the past few days I've been posting infographics from the Guttmacher Institute . I love infographics. They pack in so much information in an easy-to-consume format. They really could act as a FAQ on their own, which is why they were posted without comment. I know I get asked those questions a lot. This year's theme is for Blog for Choice 2013 is to share personal stories of choice. This was cross-posted at Flyover Feminism yesterday: I cannot recall how many times people have asked me if becoming a mother has changed my feminism. It is a question that I suppose people think I will answer with a tale of being changed by having my daughter grow inside of me for 40 weeks and that I believe in feminism in theory, but in practice, I am a wee bit conservative now. A so-called feminist mom wrote such a post for the NYTimes Motherlode over the weekend: “Yes, we believe in a woman’s right to choose. No, we don’t actually believe she should use it in the face ...

Infographic courtesy of the Guttmacher Institute 

I was too busy with homework to see this live, but OMG, so happy that the Chicago Abortion Fund got a mention on the Melissa Harris Perry Show. According to their latest newsletter , there should be a shiny new CAF website on the 22nd. Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy

Infographic courtesy of the Guttmacher Institute