Health care reform: The anti-woman chess board

[Cross-posted to Femocracy.net .]

Are there ever days you just get really fed up? That no matter how hard you try to be rational and make reasoned arguments, it seems like the world has decided to throw up obstacles in your way? And then you just want to resort to ripping out your hair, because forces are conspiring to make you always lose? This is how I feel about health care reform and its impact on women – specifically, how I reacted yesterday as I was reading about latest fight over contraceptives. (Reader beware: This is probably going to get ranty.)

Today I began thinking about how health care reform has seemed like a giant chessboard battle over women’s health and reproductive rights. On the one hand, you have an anti-choice side that will jockey at all costs and make the crassest moves possible to win it; on the other hand, you have a supposedly pro-choice side that seems perfectly willing to move all pieces aside so the other team can take down the queen and immediately slide into checkmate. So yes, the Democrats had to make an awful concession that is already law under the Hyde Amendment that no federal funds will cover abortions – thereby writing it into the new law permanently and making it much harder to remove. This will probably have the ripple effect of making abortion access more difficult for everyone, both under the state insurance pools and those who already have it covered under private insurance. If you anticipate ever having an unintended pregnancy (kind of an oxymoron) and needing an abortion, you can kindly purchase a rider to cover it. Democrats tried to placate women by pointing out that they had stripped insurance companies of the right to commit the dastardly practice of charging women higher premiums than men because we might cost more one day – because of, oh, say, pregnancy, child birth, and DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, even. Never mind that that victory was partially erased by charging women more anyway, for insurance coverage of a procedure we have a lawful right to. Get it, feminazis? You should be happy when the party you thought aligned more closely with your interests signs them away as part of a political calculation. Never mind the fact that we heard nothing about mechanisms for party discipline being deployed for getting the Bart Stupaks of Congress in line – like, for instance, Democratic leadership maybe taking away committee positions or not working so hard on re-election fundraisers.

But there was a bright spot on the horizon. Maybe, just maybe, under the new White House guidelines for preventative services, contraceptives would be made available to women for free. See, contraceptives are preventative in that they prevent babies. (Or, if you want to go all clinical, "unwanted pregnancies.") Please understand – I have nothing against babies. They’re cute, when they’re not crying. I may have some myself one day. I also have nothing against motherhood. What I do have a problem with is forced motherhood. I believe every woman should get to make choices about her reproductive health and decide if and when she wants children. But from a purely economical perspective, from a vantage of trying to decide what makes sense to make our health-care system work, babies are expensive . It can cost $10,000 for a vaginal birth alone. Imagine that. You push a little person out of your lady parts and get handed a bill for ten grand. Seems like a bargain, right? This doesn’t include the hospital stay afterwards, which can be thousands more, or the OBGYN visits beforehand complete with ultrasounds. Nor does it include insuring your new baby and getting through all the illnesses, infections and other maladies of childhood. In comparison to this, the cost of a pill subscription, or, hell, even the few hundred for an abortion suddenly starts looking like pennies to the insurance company. So there is an economic incentive to make sure that every child is a wanted child.

This brings me to the false conception of "common ground" between the pro- and anti-choice sides. Since we have a system of politics that is based on compromise when it’s functioning properly, we have convinced ourselves there must always be middle ground. When there isn’t a clear middle ground, we make one up – like suggesting a way to reduce abortion rates was to convince all women who found themselves unexpectedly pregnant that they should "do the right thing" and put the baby up for adoption. Never mind that the adoption process is a difficult grind, and can be traumatic for birth mothers, and we push them aside and ignore them once they’ve given up their child For the Good of Society. So when Obama stood up and said we can all agree that we want to reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancies, and while we may not agree on the contentious issue of abortion, we can certainly find other ways to work together, I thought fine. I can get on board. I will agree that reducing abortion rates is a worthwhile goal – if anti-choicers can agree that we live in the 21st century, people have sex, not every sperm and egg has to be sacred and result in a blessed union, and women shouldn’t be punished by childbirth if she didn’t choose abstinence. I was ready to sit back and be convinced that anti-choicers really, truly weren’t anti-woman and trying to control female sexuality, but deeply, deeply cared about each and every fetus and would do whatever it took to prevent pregnancies that weren’t planned.

I was skeptical, but thought, hey, it could happen. Well clearly I was on drugs, or living in a total fantasyland. You know, one in which the shrubbery was made of psychedelic gum drops. There is no common ground. This is a fairy tale we’ve been telling ourselves to sweep misogyny under the rug.

This is not to say there aren’t people in the middle who don’t support abortion but do support contraceptives. It’s just that the most vocal wings, the most motivated memberships of pro- and anti-choice organizations – those that donate, write letters, show up and hold protest signs – aren’t just standing on different ends of a spectrum of life. They are in different spectrums. They are speaking different languages. The institutions of feminism, whatever their faults, clearly stand on the side of women having rights and respect, and the ability to determine her own path to a full, healthy and happy life. The side of anti-choice organizations, to put it lightly, does not. Because not content with a win over strict anti-choice language in the health care reform bill, the anti-choicers are trying to keep contraception from being free.

And the White House appears to already be caving.

We are told there’s hope. Well pardon me, but I’m not holding out any. In a post yesterday, Matthew Yglesias expressed optimism , saying, "Politically speaking, I think this is the fight progressives have been wanting to have for some time now—something that would highlight the deeply reactionary and anti-woman ideology that drives the main institutional players in the anti-abortion movement." I think he’s only partially right. I think this is a fight that feminist progressives want to have – and we do have it, every day, on feminist blogs, op-ed pages, speeches, whatever tightly-controlled institutional space we’re allowed to squeeze into. However, I think this is a fight fauxgressives want to shy away from, because it’s easier to seem like a noble centrist, a grand compromiser, and to declare the culture wars over so we can focus on the deficit, as if we can’t juggle multiple things at once. How can the culture wars be over if we still can’t agree that women are equal and free to make their own choices? Or if a supposedly Democratic White House can’t stand up for women to get them free contraceptives?

Oh, I know. This would deny us the female bonding opportunity of comparing how much our birth control pills cost. Or the good clean fun of making our sexual partners write us a check for half the price tag. Or navigating the world of generic versus name brand. How will Yaz make its commercials under reform?

As Dana Goldstein points out in the Daily Beast, "Yet many pro-life conservatives still oppose free contraception, because what bothers them is not just abortion, but the whole notion of sex without consequences, outside the bounds of traditional marriage." But see, "sex with consequences" applies more heavily to women, because men can walk away – without having to grow a human for nine months because a condom broke. And expecting everyone to wait for marriage to have sex is just unrealistic – not just because others may have different personal or religious beliefs than you, or have different expectations from their relationships. Let’s get real. Ninety-five percent of people have sex before marriage , and this has been going on for some time. This is not a blip on the radar. This is not a few ill-behaved teens getting a little wild. This is how society works now. And even matrimony is not a guarantee that spouses will not have sex outside of marriage. (See: Every politician who has ever espoused "family values" and had a subsequent sex scandal.)

We can’t deny that this vitriol is more directed at women than men. My example? Birth control pills seem far more contentious to me than condoms. I’ve never seen anti-choicers buy up all the condoms at a drugstore and burn them in the parking lot. Pharmacists can’t deny you the right to buy condoms because "it goes against their personal beliefs." Or look at abortion laws. Men who have sex aren’t forced to undergo mental health screenings if they pay for a woman’s abortion. Men who impregnate someone aren’t made to look at the ultrasound. Protesters don’t stand outside their doctor’s door, and shout slurs at them because they dared to have sex. Their rights aren’t gambled away by politicians. The list goes on.

The truth is, anti-choice organizations aren’t interested in reducing the rate of abortions. They are interested in having purity balls for young women, so their fathers can creepily vow to protect their virtue in front of a crowd. They are interested in signing teens up for virginity pledges. They want women to wear white on their wedding day and for it to have meaning – one of "purity." They want women to have sex with one man – her husband. And if she conceives, they want her to have that child, and wear an apron, and bake cookies, and smile patiently at their rugrats like an actress out of a 1930s movie.

Anti-choice organizations care more about keeping women from having sex than they are about "protecting unborn life." If they wanted to put their money where their mouth was, they would face facts and support free contraceptives. They don’t. And the White House is more interested in avoiding a fight than fighting for women. What do you do when your elected leaders don’t stand up for you when they said they would?

Let’s look at it from a cold political perspective. The Democrats are facing a tough election year. A majority supports increased access to contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Women tend to vote for Democrats. We make up half the population. Yet it feels like they are already ceding ground, rather than staking out a strong position in advance.

What does that say to you, feminists? That our votes don’t matter?

It’s hard not to get discouraged. But this doesn’t mean the fight isn’t worth having. And we have to say it loudly and over and over again – anti-choice organizations aren’t about protecting life. They are about shaming and controlling women.