Birth Control

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April 23, 2015

“Metonyms” and Abortion

Posted by Kimmie Farrell under Abortion, Abortion lies, Birth Control | Tags: , , , , , , |
[28] Comments 

In a recent Daily Beast article concerning abortion-related comments between Rand Paul and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, Samantha Allen wrote, “By turning late-term abortions into a metonym for the issue as a whole, [Rand] Paul is clearly attempting to challenge the American consensus on the legality of abortion earlier in pregnancy. It’s a tactic as old as Roe: make first-trimester abortions guilty by association with the more easily demonized late-term procedures.” Nothing new was said here about the intent to frame all abortions as happening in the third trimester. “Metonym” is what caught my attention.

It is metonyms that keep the average person confused about abortion. Since most people, politicians and regular voters included, do not go out of their way to educate themselves about abortion and the numerous complexities of the debate, they are influenced by metonyms.

Not to be confused with a metaphor, a metonym is “a word, name, or expression used as a substitute for something else with which it is closely associated.”  We use metonyms all the time. Online sources cite “Washington” as an often used metonym for the federal government, “sweat” for hard work, “plastic” for credit card and so on. Most of us take care in everyday conversation to avoid metonymic usage if it will misinform. That is not the case in politics and, after reading Allen’s article, I realized how pervasive metonyms are in the language used to discuss abortion, primarily by those opposed to abortion.

What is the most destructive are the efforts to present abortion as something it is not. Achieving public policy objectives through false data and building public support by misleading the less passionate into a belief system based on ideology presented through using inaccurate and incorrect word choices is wrong, yet never effectively challenged.Embryos-Human

Responding to the same Rand Paul – Debbie Wasserman-Schultz comments, Casey Mattox shared in the Federalist that Wasserman-Shultz and the Democrat Party support abortion “through all nine months of pregnancy.” He later states, “Democrats are big on abortion euphemisms. When they say, as Wasserman-Shultz did, that abortion should be a woman’s ‘choice’ through all nine months, they want you to focus on something other than the reality of what abortion is. Simply put, there is no clean and humane way to kill a seven-pound, full-term baby.”

I am not sure what specific euphemisms Mattox had in mind, or if he incorrectly thinks that correct terms, such as blastocyst, embryo, or fetus, are euphemisms and that pro-choice advocates should use his preferred set of ideological words or metonyms. All pro-choice people I know would agree that it is inhumane to kill a full-term baby. We also tend to believe it inhumane to have public policies that would force a woman to compromise her health or die in order for a fetus to evolve into a born person. Mattox used the “choice” term in the context of the abortion debate as a metonym for “abortion on demand at all stages of pregnancy for any reason.”  Sadly, the dispassionate all too often believe such rhetoric.

Over the years, many of us have written about the language used to discuss abortion. Often divisive and steeped in emotion, the language is powerful. The terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life” have always created barriers to productive discourse about abortion to the point that many people now refuse to be categorized as one or the other.

Decoding Abortion Language imageFetus and unborn baby are frequently used as metonyms for blastocysts and embryos. Abortion opponents use murder metonymically for the abortion procedure itself.  Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: The Communication of Social Change (Celeste Michelle Condit 1990) discussed how metonymic language shaped public policy on abortion. That was 25 years ago and metonyms continue to define each and every facet that leads to abortion-related public policy today. Another book, Lexical and Syntactical Constructions and the Construction of Meaning, published in 1995, also discussed the metonymy of abortion language. When “embryo” is used by abortion opponents, it is as a metonym for stem cells, which has dramatically limited potentially lifesaving research. As author Mark Bracher stated in yet another book, Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change: A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism (1993), “Insofar as antiabortionist discourse convinces its audience, through such operations of metaphor and metonymy, that the fetus is an instance of human life, it succeeds in positioning abortion…” (p105).

Metonymy has positioned abortion in public policy outcomes. What it cannot accomplish is altering the experiences so many Americans have had, directly or indirectly, with abortion. Abortion polls that both sides use to claim victories from time to time are not reliable. What is reliable are the personal and family experiences people have with abortion rights and access.  Those experiences reject the metonyms and steer people to the belief that abortion is a personal decision between a woman and her medical provider.

 

July 23, 2013

Is She a Womb or a Woman?

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion Advocates, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Rights, Birth Control, Roe V Wade, War on Birth Control | Tags: , |
[103] Comments 
Abortion

Abortion

Speaking bluntly, I believe our nation is deeply conflicted about a woman’s body, especially her reproductive organs. While this conflict can be traced to a Platonic duality of mind and body whereby a man and his mind is valued as superior to a woman and her body, the ensuing cultural impact has situated man as subject/actor and woman as object/acted upon. In the United States, this duality is particularly curious because our nation embraces the value of autonomy as reflected in broad social and political changes of the voting rights for women, the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism and constitutional right to abortion for women. But, a cursory review of media research illustrates this duality in media’s ambivalence toward women who are too thin or too thick, casting them, respectively, as either deviant or normal or in media’s proliferation of make-over television programs for (mostly) women who fail to conform to socially constructed notions of beauty. Brenda Cowlishaw*  warns that we can easily fail to notice its controlling, limiting, structuring presence because of the ubiquity of the subject-object binary in modern western thought. Amused and amazed by entertainment, we often ignore the hegemonic forces that view white, heterosexual males as authority figures and render others as less. Her warning is relevant for the argument I want to make in this post. Despite years of progress toward full citizenship, women’s bodies are increasingly under the panopticon of male regulation and control regarding their reproductive organs, which, consequently, diminishes a woman’s subjectivity and full citizenship. Managing women’s reproductive organs is enacted through gender management called paternalism. As Gurevich**** explains, gender management, in the form of paternalistic body regulation and control, is a way to benevolently limit women’s freedom through social regulation for her own protection. And there’s historical precedence for regulating and controlling women’s bodies, much as we controlled the bodies of slaves, from popular culture’s expectations to the Supreme Court’s rulings to various presidencies and state legislators discourse. I’ll begin with an overview of the expressions of ambivalence toward women’s bodies and continue with a brief overview of the function of legal proceedings then move to Supreme Court’s paternalistic discourse in the Roe v Wade decision and then finish with current discourse about how paternalism impacts women’s bodies in the abortion war.

Ambivalence over Women’s Reproductive Organs

People often freely assert their opinions and policies about a woman’s bodies, particularly her breasts, her uterus, her ovaries and fallopian tubes, and her labia and vagina. Recall the local kerfuffles that have occurred in various municipalities over public breastfeeding or the intrusive school policies against young schoolgirls displaying excessive cleavage or the lingerie manufacturers’ padded bras designed to eliminate the stigmatized nipple. These kerfuffles are more easily recognized as absurd politics when framed against popular culture’s enthusiastic support of film and television representations of female cleavage and full frontal nudity or the tolerance of the multi-billion dollar pornography industry.

A woman’s labia and vagina are another part of anatomy for which there seems to be much conflict. While it’s hard to forget the public outrage and titillation when actress Sharon Stone revealed a crotch shot in Basic Instincts, it’s easy to recall the derogatory terms (like pussy, sugar jar, cunt, bearded clam, beaver, camel toe) people use describe this female territory. The current cosmetic surgery offering, labial reconstruction, illustrates the assumed flaw with a woman’s anatomy. According to most plastic surgery web sites, the procedure is meant to rejuvenate the structure and appearance of a woman’s genitalia.  But the message is clear: Your labia and vagina are disgusting. Despite this disgust, it seems important to point out that most of us have made the trip through a woman’s vagina on the first day of our life. Pardon my pointing out the ick factor of your birth.

As for ovaries and fallopian tubes, little media coverage, popular expressions or snarky remarks are made about them. Think about it. When was the last time you heard a joke about a fallopian tube? When did you share a snarky remark about some woman’s ovaries? But, let’s not deceive ourselves into thinking that these body parts are unimportant. Two examples should suffice to illustrate their importance to my argument. First, if a young woman, say 24 years old, requests a tubal ligation because she has no interest in becoming pregnant, she will encounter resistance and, often, disappointment because physicians are disinclined to oblige believing that they know better than the woman knows herself. “She might change her mind about becoming a mother,” the thinking goes. Second, ovaries and fallopian tubes are key players in producing viable eggs and in transporting a fertilized egg to the uterus for implantation. This second action is all too often overlooked in the war of the womb, the site of normal implantation. So, let’s give accolades to the ovaries and fallopian tube then pause to ponder the common denominator in this national angst over these body parts.

The common denominator, I argue, is gender management through paternalism. In examining how legal strategies use gender narratives about defendants who are mothers, Liena Gurevich**** calls gender management a form of paternalistic body regulation and control to benevolently limit women’s freedom through social regulation for her own protection. We can look to the function and discourse of legal proceedings to unpack the power of paternalistic regulation and control.

Legal Institutions as Bastions of Male Power and Control

Consider that legal institutions and their proceedings are forms of governance and normalization to maintain the social and political order and advancement of the interests of professional groups. Simply put, they are bastions of male power and control So, to name two examples, legal decisions have drawn, in the past, on the standards of moral purity with the enforcement of the Comstock Laws against birth control for married couples until Griswold v. Connecticut invalidated the law. The decision that legalized abortion, Roe v. Wade, is another example of male power. Often viewed as a legal decision to give women a choice about reproductive options, Roe v. Wade, written by Justice Blackmun, framed the decision as inherently and primarily a medical decision with basic responsibilities resting on the physician. As Katie Gibson** has noted, the decision has two central constructs that justified his decision: “a controlling ‘doctor knows best’ philosophy and the characterization of the ‘woman-as-patient’ in the apotheosis of medicine. Decades later, we see again the courts deference to male authority and the subjugation of women’s agency. In fact, in a more recent article, Katie Gibson*** claims that Justice Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion in the 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart conveys that majority decision was profoundly wrong and also exposed the law as an instrument of patriarchy led by the Roberts’ rightward leaning court.

Today, the discourse circulating in all levels of legislative activities denies agency to women (particularly if pregnant), confers rights to a rapist over the rights of a woman, compares the fetus to the slave who needs to be rescued while symbolically annihilating the woman, conflates consent to sex to consent to pregnancy and scorns the sexuality of women as shameful and deserving of retribution. In 2013, despite years of progress toward full citizenship, women’s bodies are increasingly under the panopticon of male regulation and control regarding their reproductive organs, which, consequently, diminishes a woman’s subjectivity. Comparing the man or woman who was in the involuntary servitude of the slave owner to women forced into involuntary servitude to the fetus, Kuswa, Achter & Lauzon**** conclude that the state has no justification to exert biopower. The paternalistic rhetoric, that slavery was good for the slaves, that slave owners were benevolent in exposing their superior culture, finds resonance in the management of women’s reproductive organs through the regulation and control to benevolently limit women’s freedom through social regulation for her own protection.

For Her Own Protection

Benevolently limiting women’s reproductive freedom through social regulation for her own protection is evident in targeted regulation of abortion providers that require ambulatory surgical standards such as wide hallways, hospital admitting privileges, drinking fountains and state-mandated (mis)information called counseling. The smokescreen, that these regulations are mandated to protect women, is bogus. These regulations do nothing to facilitate access to abortion, do nothing to ensure a doctor’s quality healthcare, do nothing to improve the lives of women, and do nothing to protect the universality of human rights for women. More to the point, laws against abortion are a form of sex discrimination, a heinous attempt to essentialize woman-as-womb and a de facto denial of women’s full citizenship.

Citations

* Cowlishaw, B. (2001). Subjects are from Mars, objects are from Venus: Construction of the self in self-help. Journal of Popular Culture, 35(1), 169-184.

**Gibson, K. (2008). The rhetoric of Roe v. Wade: When the (male) doctor knows best. Southern Communication Journal, 73 (4), 312-331.

***Gibson, K. (2012). In defense of women’s rights: A rhetorical analysis of judicial dissent. Women’s Studies in Communication, 35, 123-137.

****Gurevich, L. (2008). Patriarchy? Paternalism? Motherhood discourses in trials of crimes against children. Sociological Perspectives, 51(3), 515-539.

*****Kuswa, K., Achter, P., & Lauzon, E. (2008). The slave, the fetus, the body: articulating biopower and the pregnant woman. Contemporary Argumentation & Debate, 29, 166-185.

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November 7, 2012

Charity or Justice

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Birth Control, Lies, Republican Party | Tags: , |
[15] Comments 

The expression “Charity pulls people out of the river, Justice jumps in, 
swims up stream and stops the people throwing them in” certainly connects to war against women. While Charity attempts to deal with the short term, Justice takes a longitudinal approach to addressing the root causes of personal and social problems. This expression succinctly captures the essence of the Charity types outside abortion clinics who offer free pregnancy tests and free ultrasounds, free prenatal care and baby showers. It is the Charity-minded, curbside anti abortion activists who demonstrate their own short-sightedness and sense of urgency (and futility) to save someone’s unwanted fetus for their own personal glory. Meanwhile, the Justice workers strive to ensure access to family planning services, abortion services, childcare, early education, fair housing, job training and an environmentally sound world.

This election season illustrated the folly of those who claim to be prolife Republicans. Their platform preached to the choir about their views on abortion while ignoring the bigger picture that illustrates the multitude of reasons women choose abortion like poverty, too many kids, not the right time to have a child, not the right person with which to share parenting responsibilities. Some of their cronies, with seriously offensive and deeply disturbing comments about contraception and abortion, illustrated how out of touch they are with women.

In particular, the Romney/Ryan duo surely showed the nation how they would expect privatized Charity workers to throw crumbs at those who were unable to resolve their social problems or were too lazy to achieve the American Dream like they did with government support.  Meanwhile, these two rich guys would dismantle the very infrastructure of Justice, AKA, Planned Parenthood, Social Security, Affordable Care Act, public education, the EPA, the FDA and other institutions.Their worship of corporatism— whether through direct handouts, corporate bailouts, eminent domain, licensing laws, antitrust regulations, or environmental edicts — inflicts a measurable degree of harm on Americans. For example, the fact that measurable levels of hundreds of corporate manufactured chemicals are routinely found in the bodies of all Americans, including newborns sheds a sinister light on their shiny prolife platform.

Fortunately, despite the blitz of propaganda and outright lies, Americans were able to see the deceptions and malevolent intentions of the anti life, pro corporations Romney/Ryan team and told them to go back home.

And best of all, the global news media shared a huge sigh of relief when learning that Obama was re-elected. Across the world, there was a collective Phew! I agree.

 

May 3, 2012

The War on Women

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Information, Abortion Rights, Birth Control, Republican Party, Vote, War on Birth Control
[31] Comments 

Mainstream media is so predictable with their binary framing of controversial issues (as either pro or con), their proclivity toward sensationalism and their power to set the agenda for what they think is important. A cursory review of news sources frames the war on women as an exercise in finger pointing. Obama, Democrats and feminists accuse the Republicans of starting the war. Republicans counter by accusing the Democrats of making up the war for political gain. That’s the binary framing that the media promotes. Regardless of who started the battle, the sensationalism is highly entertaining.

One Charleston Gazette editorial claimed that “the current Republican presidential campaign contains a weird assault on rights of American women.” Another post from the Progressive asserted “The Republicans are on a rampage. Like a bunch of drunken frat boys, egged on by their leader — that big, fat, bullying lout Rush Limbaugh — they’re taunting women, calling us “sluts,” and suggesting policies like forced vaginal probes for abortion patients and letting a woman’s boss decide what kind of birth control coverage she should get.” And from politcususa, Jason Easley called the Republican war on women “a poltical affirmation of misogyny.” Kellie Overbey (asisfor.org) claims that this viral power grab from a misogynistic cultish, maniacal lust for power” threatens women at their very core. But my all time favorite comes from Charlotte Taft, Abortion Care Network, when she wrote “My observation is that if the Republican Taliban has its way only corporations and fertilized eggs will be recognized as people with any rights!”

Beyond the sensationalism is the utterly egregious assault on women’s reproductive health. The Republican pandering to the religious right and to less educated and lower income white men, codifies the GOP as womb warriors. From attempts at state-mandated transvaginal ultrasounds to fetal personhood laws, from actual defunding Planned Parenthood to justifiable homicide law to a killing committed in the defense of an unborn child, the war has been an attack on women, their agency, and their legal and reproductive rights. Ruth Conniff, Editor of the Progressive wrote “It’s one thing to drive a wedge between Americans over issues like regulating late-term abortion. But it’s quite another to pivot to an all-out campaign to control, intimidate, and humiliate women as a group.” I’m not sure I’d call it a campaign. It’s more like a 21st century Inquisition. But modern women aren’t taking this battle sitting down.

In a call to action to defend women’s rights and the pursuit of equality, UniteWomen.org women gathered in state capitals across the nation this past weekend to shout “Enough is Enough!”  Angry with Congress, the White House, Democrats and Republicans, the outrage expressed by young and old alike points to one clear message: The men running this country are out of touch. As half of the nation’s population, women know more about what is in their best interest than a handful of men, mostly religious, many playing cheap political games and orchestrating a war against women. Their messages went right to the heart of their concerns. One woman carried a sign with an image of a uterus and text that listed things that belong is a uterus (hormones, baby, IUD) and things that don’t belong in a uterus (government, ‘persons’, religion, misplace moral outrage). Another sign read “women’s rights are human rights.” Or one I found particularly funny was an e-card “Ever notice when the Muslims suppress women’s rights, we call them terrorists, but when Catholics do it, we call them Bishops? ROFL” And then there is the elegance of simplicity, “I have the uterus. I make the rules.”

So, did the media provide much coverage for UniteWomen rallies? Nope. That’s how it goes. While bloggers and journalists posted editorials, commentaries and cartoons, mainstream media chose to avoid the fuss. But that didn’t stop thousands of women and men from rallying in state capitals from Austin, Sacramento, Denver, and Atlanta to Harrisburg, Richmond, Juneau and Montgomery.

 

And in cyberspace, women continue to rally. When women are pissed, they will find a way to get their messages known, mainstream media or not. I strongly suspect that the good ole boys, particularly the GOP, will finally realize in November that women have had enough.

Women know, as Andy Ostroy writes, if the Republicans “truly cared about women as much as they contend, they’d stay out of their bedrooms and vaginas and stop trying to cut everything that supports them and their families. Don’t think women won’t go to the polls in November remembering who’s on their side and who isn’t.”

 

March 25, 2012

Birth Control May Decide This Election

Posted by Pat Richards under Abortion, Abortion Information, Abortion Law, Abortion Pill, Birth Control, Catholic, Romney, Santorum | Tags: , , , , , , |
[26] Comments 
Abortion Law

Abortion Law

Many years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that unmarried people were actually allowed to use birth control.  Can you believe it! Yes, on March 22, 1972 the Court confirmed this outlandish notion in Baird v. Eisenstadt – a case that was seen as the precursor to Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion just a year later.

And now it’s fifty years later.  Since that decision men have walked on the moon, the computer was invented, it was discovered that there are homosexuals in our community, we started drinking non-fat milk and the Red Sox finally won a World Series.  And, amidst all of this progress, today the Republican candidates for President are talking about birth control again.  Talk about going Back to the Future.

Abortion

Abortion

Now, to be fair I have yet to find any of the candidates declare outright that they would “ban birth control,” although that is what many Democrats and left-leaning pundits are suggesting.  But where Rick Santorum, et al made a mistake is that they just started talking about birth control in the context of the Obama health care bill – and their opponents jumped all over it.

Santorum has acknowledged that he and his wife do not use birth control, hence his seven kids.  Good little Catholic he.  And ole Mitt Romney has said, well, I haven’t checked today to see what he said last night.  I’ll get back to ya on that one.  But the fact that they are even talking about this issue boggles my mind, especially in light of the fact that 95% of the Catholics in this country use birth control anyway – the Pope be damned.

R v W March

R v W March

But there is a method to their madness.  They are talking about this issue and religion in general because, to get the Republican nomination, they need to go as far right as possible.  I mean, to the right of Genghis Khan.  You’ve heard the speeches:  “I am a true conservative in this race, I’ve always been a true conservative, I wear conservative shoes and use conservative toothpaste.”  And, early on, they learned that if they just mentioned birth control and religion and Obama’s secret plan to deport every Catholic, the right wingers at the rallies sucked it up big time.  Hey, this is a good stuff, I gotta keep this up!

It’s gotten so crazy that a few days ago Ron Paul made headlines in certain media when he announced that, when he was a practicing Ob-Gyn, he actually – I hope you’re sitting down – PRESCRIBED birth control.  OMG!  A Republican running for President actually participated in this pernicious practice (one, by the way, that would reduce the number of abortions).  Lynch him, cried the Tea Partyers!

Of course, the good news is that all of this talk about birth control – in any context – is welcome news to the Obama gang.  They’re just sitting back and having a hell of a good laugh.  And I’ll betcha anything that they got the commercials in the can right now warning women that the nominee is gonna take away their pills.  The good news is that Republicans talking about that nasty little pill may win them the nomination, but it will lose them the election.  Keep it up, boys.

 

February 19, 2012

Just Too Good to be True

Posted by Pat Richards under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Advocates, Abortion Candidates, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Information, Abortion Law, Abortion Medical, Abortion MisInformation, Abortion Pill, Abortion Rights, Abortion Terrorism, Birth Control, GOP, Republican Party, Santorum, War on Birth Control | Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
[47] Comments 
Birth Control

Birth Control

My head is spinning out of control.   There is just too much stuff going on that is beyond my comprehension.  I mean, can the Republican Party really be this dumb?

Maybe I should talk about how the GOP is now concerned about President Obama’s “WAR ON RELIGION.”   Yep, our Commander in Chief is actually against religion, they say, suggesting that he and his staff actually spend countless hours trying to figure out how to make ours a totally secular society.  Now that would be a great political strategy, wouldn’t it?  I can hear Obama now, telling his staff that he wants to alienate that 80% or so of the populace that actually subscribes to a religion.  Don’t worry, he assures the skeptics, we can ride that atheist vote back into the White House in November!  And while we’re at it, let’s go after GOD himself.  We don’t want anyone to even say HIS name in a public place.  Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Santorum

Santorum

Or maybe we should talk about the Republican Party’s own little war on birth control.  Oh, we all know about their constant attacks on abortion rights, how they are pursuing those silly “personhood” resolutions in a bunch of states.  And, yes, one or two of them might even slip through, but then the next day the pro-choice groups will get an injunction and the measures will slowly make their way to the Supreme Court.  At that point, when the Court suddenly has to think about how we’d be counting those little zygotes in our census, how movie theaters might have to charge for another ticket, how whether or not they should be given a tax exemption, cooler heads will prevail.  Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t even take the case.

Birth Control

Birth Control

But there’s the rise of Senator Rick Santorum, who opposes using federal dollars for birth control and who even once denounced birth control as “harmful” to women and society:  “I don’t think it works. I think it’s harmful to women. I think it’s harmful to our society to have a society that says that sex outside of marriage is something that should be encouraged or tolerated, particularly among the young…”  I wonder what Newt thinks about that “sex outside of marriage” line?   But I say go for it, Rick, tell the women in this country, including all of those good little Catholic women, that they shouldn’t be taking birth control.  Yeah, that’s a clear winner!

Abortion

Abortion

Then there was the congressional hearing the other day on Obama’s attempt to provide better access to birth control through his health insurance program.  Sure, the announced title of the hearing did not have the word “birth control” in it, but that is what they were talking about, folks.  And by now everyone knows that their panel of “experts” was all men.  For good reason, the videos of the testimony went viral and I could not keep from laughing when I thought of the grief that some staff person was going to get for not anticipating what the pictures of that panel would like in the media.  Dumb move, guy.   Not to mention totally arrogant.

Abortion

Abortion

This is all just too good to be true.  The women in this country, including the millions of “pro-life” women who still get their monthly pills at the drug store, gotta be watching these yahoos, wondering what they are gonna do next.  Obama and his crew are sitting back with the champagne on ice, watching this re-run of some black and white caveman movie.

And I didn’t even touch upon that friend of Santorum who thinks “gals” should put aspirins between their knees.

Keep it coming, boys.

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