Reproductive Justice News Roundup: Are Things Still Terrible? Yes, Yes They Are

I hadn’t written a post in a while, so I thought that maybe all the anti-reproductive rights and bodily autonomy problems we have had cleared up.  Turns out I was wrong! 

Don’t Get Too Excited About Texas: Yes, it’s true that District Court Judge Yeakel overturned a component of Texas’s omnibus bill that would have closed several clinics yesterday. However, he did the same thing last year, but was overruled by the ultra-conservative Fifth Circuit. Expect to see the number of abortion providers in Texas dwindle even further. [Texas Tribune]

California Passes “Yes Means Yes” Bill for Campus Sexual Assault: The bill states that lack of resistance does not indicate consent. If Governor Jerry Brown signs it into law, it will make it easier for colleges to address issues of sexual assault, especially in cases in which students feel uncomfortable going to the police. Let’s hope that a positive model of sexual consent becomes the norm in law and in sexual health education. More of this, please! [Think Progress]

In Local News, Massachusetts Also Terrible Sometimes: A District Court judge ruled that a Western Massachusetts prison’s policy of male guards videotaping female strip searches is unconstitutional. Because women prisoners experience especially high rates of sexual violence from their guards and prisons are disproportionately African-American, the guards’ freedom to humiliate and harass prisoners is an issue of race, gender, and poverty that we should all be deeply concerned about. I’m not optimistic that this ruling will do much to change the system, but it is a start. [Mass Live]

In More Terrible News, Feticide Laws Harm Women: An Indiana woman faces up to 50 years in prison after delivering a possible stillbirth at home. She took drugs to induce an abortion at 28 weeks but had severe bleeding and went to the hospital. She could go to jail whether or not the fetus was already dead when it was delivered. Laws that penalize pregnant women prevent them from seeking care, and it’s not a coincidence that Indiana has focused on charging women of color. [Bustle]

I Wish This Guy Had a Chance of Winning: Arizona congressional candidate James Woods responded to pro-life haters by sending them condoms with the phrase “prevent abortion” on the wrappers. This guy is great. Also he’d be the first blind congressman in nearly 100 years (and the first open atheist ever)! By the way, he’s absolutely right that birth control and sex ed do way more to prevent abortion than hateful rhetoric and anti-abortion access laws. [Jezebel]

WELP now I’m depressed, so here’s a hilarious flowchart from Playboy, of all places.

 

 

 

The Rocky Path to Birth Control

Contraception coverage has turned into an increasingly complex Rube Goldberg machine.

Whatever they may say, conservative Christians who oppose the contraception mandate are not ultimately arguing for freedom of religion. They don’t have a problem with IUDs when they benefit their retirement plans. What they really care about it preventing women from accessing birth control. They want to control our bodies, especially the bodies of poor women who could never afford to pay for many kinds of birth control out of pocket. 

First, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, which included a provision requiring insurance plans to cover preventive care without any copay. The Department of Health and Human Services later announced that this provision included birth control.

There was a Republican temper tantrum, but the law was more or less upheld in court.

Next, some religious (read: Christian) nonprofits argued that they should not have to pay for insurance plans that included birth control because birth control went against the religious beliefs of the mission of the organizations. Obama sighed, rolled up his sleeves all sexily, and created a loophole: nonprofits with religious missions could tell their insurance companies that they did not want to provide birth control coverage. The insurance companies would then have to provide birth control coverage to the female employees of those nonprofits separately.

From here, two cases have taken the religious exemption from “irritating, but ultimately fine” to “a complete waste of time and taxpayer money, and also, misogyny.” The cases are Hobby Lobby, which I’ve ranted about extensively here, and Wheaton College v. Burwell. In essence, the Supreme Court first declared that even for-profit corporations can be people who have religious freedom, and therefore must be granted the same exemption as religious nonprofits. They then closed the loophole earlier described, leaving women no real way to access no-copay birth control. (Note that they officially only closed the loophole temporarily; they haven’t decided the Wheaton case yet—just issued an injunction.)

The Obama administration has enacted a new loophole, which will require companies to tell the government, rather than the insurance companies, that they have a religious opposition to birth control. The government will then tell the insurance companies, which will provide birth control coverage directly to employees and their families, rather than doing so through the employers’ plans.

However, the ultimate issue remains: these conservative men don’t want women to be able to access cheap birth control through any means. It doesn’t matter to them whether their own insurance plans pay for it or if they have to fill out a form. Anything they do, in their eyes, results in women’s greater reproductive freedom, and that is unacceptable to them. The Supreme Court now has to answer this question: do women have reproductive autonomy? Do we have the right to birth control? The ball is in their court.

Pro-Choice News Roundup: Buffer Zones, Satanists, and the Notorious RBG

Massachusetts Buffer Zone Is Baaaaack: The Supreme Court may not recognize women’s right to enter health clinics undisturbed (though they allow themselves a nice big buffer zone against protestors), but Massachusetts took another stab at a law protecting women who enter Planned Parenthood and other health care clinics. Protestors who intimidate women or who block clinic entrances will be forced to move 25 feet from the clinic for the remainder of the day. [Boston]

Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic to Stay Open: The Fifth Circuit Court’s decision sends a clear message: states have to provide at least some access to abortion. They cannot pass off their obligation to other states. As more and more clinics that provide abortions close, we may see similar cases—hopefully with the same outcome—in the future. [News 96.5]

Toledo’s Last Abortion Clinic Closes: The clinic doesn’t comply with new, useless state laws, and so women in northwest Ohio will essentially be stranded, unable to access local, legal abortion. [RH Reality Check]

Satanic Temple Requests Religious Exemption to Anti-Choice Laws: I’m doubtful that this will actually accomplish much, since they are neither Christians nor a wealthy corporation, but I admire the move. The Satanic Temple argues that because they believe in bodily autonomy and science, their members (and others who agree with their beliefs) should be exempted from laws that require physicians to give women seeking abortions medically incorrect information about the procedure and its effects. [The Satanic Temple]

“I Would Have to Say No”: This Justice Ginsburg interview is just plain fabulous. Watch it—you need a boost. [Yahoo News]

The Slow Decline of Gideon

The disclosure that prosecutors across the country are reading communications between inmates and their lawyers is just the latest blow in the seemingly endless dismantling of Gideon.

 

Gideon v. Wainwright was a 1963 Supreme Court case that mandated that all defendants in criminal cases must have attorney representation in court. As a result, the government created the public defender system that is still used today. Gideon theoretically allows all people equal access to the American justice system, but our country often falls far short of our ideal. For example, some public defenders have up to 800 felony cases per year, far more than they can reasonably handle. Public defenders should be able to vigorously defend all the people who they represent, but lack of funding and training currently prevent that from happening. Many accused people never even meet their lawyers before setting foot in the courtroom.

 

Budget cuts have made the already untenable situation even worse. Without money to pay public defenders, the federal government and some states are relying on private attorneys to make up the shortfall. However, private offices are not always equipped to deal with such a diverse range of cases, and so can end up costing the government even more money. Their clients, therefore, end up having little and inadequate representation.

 

The New York Times recently published an exposé on the controversial practice of reading emails sent between inmates and their attorneys. Inmates must agree to have their emails monitored in order to use the prison email system. Communication between lawyers and their clients is privileged and confidential, meaning that the lawyer must keep their discussions secret and those discussions cannot be used as evidence against the accused. However, it is difficult for inmates to communicate with their lawyers in a confidential manner while in prison. Public defenders, in particular, are unable to make many trips to meet in person with their clients. Therefore, clients must make phone calls or send emails in order to talk to their lawyers, especially about urgent matters.

 

Phone calls may not be monitored, but email is generally a faster and cheaper method of communication between inmates and overworked lawyers. It’s clear that the rights of poor inmates—who often don’t have a better method of contacting their lawyers—are not considered as important as those of richer inmates. Federal judges are divided on the constitutionality of this practice. My personal belief is that the practice of defense is more important than its theoretical availability. If inmates cannot reasonably communicate with their lawyers in a confidential way, then they do not have true representation.

Pro-Choice News Roundup: Racism, Sexism, and More

Republicans Hate Things That Actually Help Babies: Anti-choicers are all like, “bluh bluh I’m pro-life I protect the innocent,” but they definitely don’t support policies that would help women and babies. A new study has shown the obvious: access to medical care makes pregnant women, and their future children, healthier. Food assistance to pregnant women also improves fetal health. So basically the best way to show your pro-life credentials would be to stop cutting food assistance and start expanding Medicaid. (Side note: since these programs help poor women, defunding them disproportionately affects non-white women and immigrants. If Republicans actually want to improve their abysmal credibility with these groups, maybe they can start here?) [Vox]

This Is Just Depressing: Apparently, high schools are even worse than colleges when it comes to investigating rape and punishing rapists. Why do people behave so horrifically towards rape victims? [Al Jazeera]

Racism! Sexism! Detroit!: The maternal death rate in Detroit is depressingly high—higher than that of Libya, Uruguay, or Vietnam. This death rate has been linked to both race and poverty, since Detroit has a high number of black women and of poor women. Such women have a harder time getting comprehensive health care, both prenatal and general, and so they and their children are at greater risk for death and serious health problems. Hopefully, the Affordable Care Act will provide better health care to all women in need. Thanks, Obama! [The Nation]

Nothing Good Today So Read the Onion: Laugh so you don’t cry. [The Onion]