Pro Female Condoms, Anti Mandatory HPV Vaccine for Immigrant Women

Nonviolent Choice has signed on with Prevention Now, a coalition that wants to expand global access to female condoms in order to address the spread of HIV/AIDS as well as unintended pregnancies.

We are also an organizational endorser of a letter to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum. The letter protests mandatory HPV vaccinations for immigrant women. These are not mandatory for citizens, so why single out immigrant women? The policy also plays into a long history of demeaning immigrant women as supposed bearers of sexually transmitted diseases into the country.

Want to sign on as an individual? By 5 PM Eastern Time (US) on January 30, 2009, please sign the petition
here.

Violence Against Women: A Frequent But Neglected Cause of Unintended Pregnancies

Many thanks to Esta Soler at RHRealityCheck for calling attention to the often-neglected role of sexual coercion and contraceptive sabotage against women in causing unintended pregnancies. And that means often, accelerated battery during pregnancy, and/or abortion.

Soler discusses the Know More campaign of the Family Violence Prevention Fund. According to an announcement on the Fund's website, the Know More campaign is "designed to create a dialogue about the birth control sabotage and reproductive coercion that many teens and young women face, which can result in unintended pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, miscarriage, infertility, coerced abortion, and a range of other serious health issues."

And if you are in the US, please respond to the campaign's action alert to "Help Abused Women who are Pregnant & Help Prevent Unintended Pregnancies".

Both prolifers and prochoicers have so often shared the assumption that women are free and equal actors in intimate male/female relationships. This has resulted in such toxic judgments as "Why are *you* so upset about your abortion, it was *your choice*!" and "What a feckless, irresponsible slut, she got pregnant when she could have just used birth control." And this assumption has really thwarted effective solutions to women's reproductive health and justice problems--including unintended pregnancy and abortion.

Prolife feminists have been speaking for centuries about violence against women as a major cause of unintended pregnancies and abortions..

For centuries, who has listened to us?

Better late than never for a more widespread public recognition of what is really going on with so many women who face horrific pregnancy dilemmas. We are all that much closer (one can only hope) to a world where women and children, the born and the unborn, are both alive and safe and well.

The Palin Pregnancy Uproar

Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin identifies herself as a prolife feminist. Now I do not understand how that self-description squares with her poor environmental record, or her vote for abstinence-only sex education (among other things). But evidently (as of 2006, anyway) she is pro contraception. And to all signs, she has personally responded to not only her own but her daughter's crisis pregnancy as one hopes a prolife feminist would.

The US is all abuzz about the just publicly disclosed unplanned pregnancy of her 17 year old Bristol. The governor and her family decided to make this disclosure in the wake of ugly rumors that she was actually the grandmother and Bristol the mother of Trig, Sarah's baby born earlier this year with Down Syndrome.

The rumors evidently first got publicity from a diary posted on the liberal blogging site Daily Kos. It has since been removed, but, wanting to go to the source and form my own impressions, I saw it before it was.

I think people of any political school could agree, it was pretty low down. Some of the inhouse comments on the diary said as much, questioning whether this was slander and do you really want to sacrifice a teen just to bring down a candidate.

But others exulted about the Antichoice Harridan 'n' Hypocrite Exposed!, even saying that Gov. Palin shamed and used her daughter and took credit for not aborting the baby so she could look like a big fat antichoice saint and make others feel guilty for having abortions.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama responded to the uproar in a dignified manner. He pronounced candidates' families and especially their children (he is a protective father) off-limits in the campaign. And he promised to fire any of his own staff who spread around any of the abovementioned rumors. Barack did note that his own mother gave birth to him at age 18--suggesting even further sympathy with the Palin clan.

I think the whole onslaught against Sarah Palin and her daughter just goes to show, in a writ especially large fashion, the point Linda Naranjo-Huebl made in this blog not two weeks ago about the onslaught of ugly judgments still heaped on women with crisis or unplanned pregnancies.

I can only hope that Barack Obama's empathy for the Palin family-- along with Sarah Palin's now fully public welcome of not only her own fetus with Down Syndrome, but her pregnant daughter, and unborn grandchild-- will suggest something to the US collective consciousness/conscience. Namely, that there are other and better ways of responding to difficult pregnancies than such judgmentality-- whether that judgmentality puts on progressive or conservative clothes.

What's New: Still More Resources in Our Directory

We have expanded our Directory even further, especially the sections on Crisis Pregnancy Support (direct URL http://www.nonviolentchoice.info/crisispregsupport.html) and Adoption and Foster Care (direct URL http://www.nonviolentchoice.info/adoptionfostercare.html).

But we can always stand to hear about still more resources, on these and other topics. Please email editor@nonviolentchoice.info with your website and topic suggestions.