feminist blogs

Emily Gillingham, Resident Blogger (’15, Michigan State University College of Law)

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the many young women who, after much careful deliberation and research, have concluded that they want to be sterilized- only to be turned down by their doctors.  The story plays out .  This is A Thing That Is Happening, and it really burns my toast.  Some doctors are telling women that they won’t perform the procedure until the women are 30 or even 35 years old, in case they decide later that they want kids.

Let me be clear here- there is a long, complicated, and painful history (and present) of sterilization where the woman is being coerced or forced by a person or by the government, or targeted because of her race, class, religion or disability, or lacks informed consent.  I’m talking about women who are being denied the procedure only because their doctors are worried that they will regret it.

For those women, being denied the procedure is frustrating.  As blogger Bri Seeley wrote, “I was livid. I had asked for a procedure for six straight years with no break in my desires, opinions, or beliefs.  Why did the medical community continue to deny me of my personal right to sterilization?”

Sterilization is safer than pregnancy, and actually reduces the risk of ovarian cancer and pelvic inflammatory disease.  It doesn’t increase women’s risk of breast cancer, unlike a certain birth control method might (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, PILL), and it’s reversible in 25% to 87% of cases.  It also leaves some women options like in vitro fertilization and adoption if they decide that they want to have a child and reversal doesn’t take.  Also, although some IUDs and hormonal implants are actually more effective than sterilization, not every method is a good fit for every woman, so making sterilization available to women who want it is important.

If your brain is exploding with the effort of trying to understand why this is happening at a time where the right to choose abortion is being severely restricted, politicians seem to have some sort of bet going about who can be the about restricting contraceptive access, and raising kids is hella expensive, I totally feel you.

I hesitate to blame the medical community, because although studies vary widely on sterilization regret rates, the strongest predictor of regret is young age.

Nonetheless, there is something creepily paternalistic about medical professionals making women who’ve decided that they don’t want kids risk birth control failure for a decade or more, just in case they’re wrong.  After all, some of the research about young age and sterilization regret that the National Institutes of Health points to is based on procedures performed in the 1970s and 1980s, and our attitudes about women’s role in society and the number of women who wish to remain childless have shifted dramatically since then. It would be interesting to see future research focus on women who are denied sterilization procedures. We could learn a lot from the women’s motives, the doctor’s rationales for denial, and demographic data. The most visible blog posts on this subject are written by white women, and there is value in knowing why we aren’t reading women of color blog on this topic.

Denial of sterilization to young women is related to, and perpetuates, the myth that all women want children and that those who do not will change their minds.  As reproductive justice advocates, we should be fighting for doctors to respect women’s personal decisions about sterilization.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop shaking my head at all of the poor taste, misinformed, and flat out irresponsible pink-ribbon “breast cancer awareness” campaigns that crawl out of the woodwork every year during the month of October. This year’s apparent winner of “are-you-kidding-me” pink-washing goes to Susan G. Komen and its pink fracking bits, but as we have continued to cover here at Feministing, the breast cancer pink marketing juggernaut overlooks the experiences, perspectives, and goals of actual breast cancer survivors.

Thankfully, organizations like Breast Cancer Action exist and are fighting to reclaim activism for this disease. We were so thrilled to speak with its Executive Director Karuna Jaggar where she just came from delivering over 150,000 petitions to the Susan G. Komen to stop supporting fracking companies that lead to cancer. Breast Cancer Action and its initiatives “Think Before You Pink” motivate us to continue pushing against the co-opting of a deadly disease by massive corporations and profit-lead marketing campaigns.  I am so grateful for their passion, work, and activism.

 

Now without further ado, the Feministing Five with Karuna Jaggar!

Suzanna Bobadilla: Thank you so much for speaking with us today. I learned about your organization this week while reading about the Susan G. Komen Foundation and pink-fracking bit fiasco. In particular, I was interested in learning about how Breast Cancer Action was involved in the creation of the term “pink-washing.” Could you define that term for our readers? 

Karuna Jaggar: To start, Breast Cancer Action launched “Think Before You Pink” over a dozen years ago in response to the tremendous number of pink ribbon products flooding the market. Anyone can put a pink ribbon on anything. We have seen pink ribbon hand-guns, pink ribbon port-a-potties, pink ribbon toilet paper. You name it. Selling a pink ribbon product is not necessarily pink-washing.

We have a very specific meaning when we are talking about pink-washing, which is those companies that claim to care about breast cancer and yet their own product and services are putting women at increased risk of the disease. It may be that companies are selling products that they themselves contain chemicals that are linked to breast cancer. For example, we saw Susan G. Komen sell “Promise Me” perfume that contained chemicals of concern.

It can also be companies like Baker Hughes, a fracking company, that is inherently hazardous to health and many of their chemicals are linked to breast cancer specifically. Baker Hughes is then claiming to care about breast cancer by painting a thousand drill-bits pink, and donating $100,000 to Komen. You can see that if Baker Hughes really cared about breast cancer they would stop poisoning our food and water.

SB: I understand that Breast Cancer Action is hosting a rally tomorrow in Pittsburg that calls out the NFL’s celebration of the Susan G. Komen foundation and fracking giant Baker Hughes. For those who might not see it immediately, why is the NFL’s recognition misguided? Also, how people can support your efforts? 

KJ: There is so much irony here. First, we have the world’s largest breast cancer organization partnering with one of the world’s largest fracking companies in this pink-washing PR stunt. Then, they have chosen to do the deal in Pittsburg, which is the first city in the country to ban fracking. So, add another layer of irony there. Finally, they are doing it at the NFL game. We have been very vocal in challenging the NFL’s Crucial Catch program. Last year, there was some investigative journalist work that followed the money and examining how much of these sales of the NFL pink-ribbon products actually went to a breast cancer organization, and I believe it was 8%. There has been a lot of questioning about how much money has been going to breast cancer and given all of the resources that the NFL is putting towards pink fields, pink cleats, pink whistles and pink helmets.

We are not only questioning the money, but are actually calling out the NFL for putting out misleading medical advice for women. This is not only a question of whether or not the NFL is giving enough money. This is actually a question about why do we have a professional sports league engaged in providing medical advice for women and bad medical advice at that. The NFL claims that annual screenings save lives and it is very clear, thanks to a huge amount of research this spring, that there are flaws behind this early detection promise. We have seen a lot of data that despite the claims, early detection is not saving lives and 40,000 women continue to die of breast cancer very year. 

But back to what people can do! It’s been really exciting to see the interest here in Pittsburg from people who have been working for a long time against fracking, but we always need people to spread the word. Call your friends, tell your family — we know that public pressure matters. We have seen Komen respond to public pressure before. Join us, spread the word on social media, and we are very hopeful that we can put an end to the pink-washing.

SB: The rampant marketing of pink ribbons has long made me uncomfortable, but it has been difficult to share that uneasiness in the face of those folks who support these apparently positive campaigns. Do you have words for others that also feel conflicted in the face of pink ribbons? 

KJ: I want to tell people that they are not alone. We and our members have had these feelings for a dozen years or more, and that’s the origin of “Think Before You Pink.” We are a grassroots organization, and there was a growing discomfort with all of the pink ribbon promotion campaigns. This year’s campaign, “Stop the Distraction,” is really taking our critique to the next level, and calling out pink ribbon culture for its empty awareness, misinformation, pink-washing, profiteering, degrading of women, and tyranny of cheerfulness that obscures the harsh realities and social justice inequities of this disease.

No longer is the question, “Is the pink ribbon not doing enough?” We’re making the assertion that the pink ribbon culture is doing more harm than good. It’s doing more harm than good by defusing and distracting our righteous anger into this empty awareness. It’s doing women harm through misinformation. At the end of the day, these campaigns are meant to sell products and they manipulating our emotions by manipulating statistics. These campaigns are based on fueling fear and offering false promises. If and when a woman is evaluating to get a mammogram or is choosing to a breast cancer treatment, she has all of these marketing messages echoing around in her head that really is a disservice to women.

In regards to profiteering, corporations are exploiting the public’s concern and arguably, the public thinks they have done something, but in fact they have just lined corporate pockets. In regards to degrading women, I can’t tell you how many women I have spoken to who just want crawl under a blanket for October because of all of the “Save the Ta-tas” t-shirts and the “I Heart Boobies” handbag. It’s not doing any of us any good to reduce women to a pair of breasts and say, “Save the Boobies.” What about saving women’s lives? At the end of the day, all of these promotions through these sanitized images of white, able-bodied, thin, and very young women just send messages that women just need to fight hard and be positive to beat cancer. The implicit message is, “If you succumb to the disease, you didn’t fight hard enough. You were positive enough.” So pink-ribbon culture is not only failing to do good, but it is actively doing harm to women.

SB: Rather than engaging in pink ribbon culture and pink-washing, what are other ways people can fight against breast cancer? 

KJ: There is no single most important issue in breast cancer. While we do education and activism at Breast Cancer Action, other organizations do really important direct services, and there is a need for support groups, especially for unserved communities. There is a need for emergency services so that low income women have transportation and child-care stipends and can get to their treatments. There is a need for more research into the root cause of the disease, because despite the billions of dollars spent in the name of breast cancer, we still don’t know what causes most of it. There is a need for more effective and less toxic treatments that are affordable and can get in the hands and mouths of women who need them.

I really encourage people to think about their values and what they think is the most important, and donate directly to the organizations who are doing that work. Beside donating, I think that pushing back on the tyranny of pink-ribbon culture is an important way of reclaiming breast cancer as a women’s health and social justice issue.

SB: And for our last question, you are stranded on a dessert island and you get to take with you one food, one drink, and one feminist. What do you choose? 

KJ: I’d love some kale or brussel sprouts! I’m a water person, but if I can’t have water, give me some black tea. I’m British to my bones and some really strong black tea is a good thing. For a feminist, I’d bring my sister. I have the best sister in the world, and I would take her.

 

 Suzanna Bobadilla is grateful for health and family.  

of women who have used birth control.

That is what a new t-shirt designed by Natasha Lyonne and Selenis Leyva says. Sales of the shirts go towards supporting Planned Parenthood.

Oh yeah, on the back it says, "It's My Business, Not Politicians." I say we wear these on election day!

[Trigger warning for domestic violence]

In Florida, Stand Your Ground was used as the foundation of George Zimmerman’s defense after he shot and killed Trayvon Martin. In South Carolina, it was used to defend a man who walked out of the house with a gun to confront “women thugs” who had threatened his daughter; he ended up shooting a teenage boy in his car instead. Also in Florida, Marissa Alexander has repeatedly been denied the chance to use the Stand Your Ground defense against charges after she fired a warning shot above the head of her abusive husband.

Shannon Anthony, the South Carolina man who killed Darrell Niles without any lasting consequences for anyone but the Niles family, faced no threat from Niles, but the court ruled that that wasn’t actually a big deal.

Despite the evidence that Scott had no proof that the young man was an “imminent threat,” Scott’s attorney — who, oddly enough, is state Rep. Todd Rutherford (D-SC) — argued that if Scott hadn’t shot Niles, he would have had to go back to his home and “hope that the cavalry (police) are going to come.”

“All that matters is that Mr. Scott felt his life was in jeopardy,” Rutherford said.

Scott had a sign in his window that said, “Fight Crime – Shoot First.”

Domestic violence victims, no.

This month, Charleston prosecutors moved to further endanger the Marissa Alexanders of South Carolina by saying that Stand Your Ground shouldn’t apply to victims of domestic violence who confront their abusers. Most recently, the argument was raised in the case of Whitlee Jones, who returned to her house one night in 2012 to pack up her things after escaping an attack by her boyfriend. Jones armed herself with a knife for her own protection and was forced to use it when, she says, her boyfriend attacked her again as she left the house. She stabbed him, and he died.

By prosecutor Culver Kidd’s reasoning, Jones shouldn’t have the benefit of Stand Your Ground immunity because her risk didn’t qualify as “external.”

“(The Legislature’s) intent … was to provide law-abiding citizens greater protections from external threats in the form of intruders and attackers,” prosecutor Culver Kidd told the Post and Courier. “We believe that appliny ghte statute so that its reach into our homes and personal relationships is inconsistent with (its) wording and intent.”

On October 3, a judge disagreed with Kidd, granting Jones immunity from charges under Stand Your Ground. Circuit Judge J.C. Nicholson said it would be a “nonsensical result” that a victim of domestic assault would be allowed to defend herself against an attacker outside the home but not from an identical one inside the home. Kidd is appealing the case.

The Post and Courier has revealed that women are dying from domestic abuse at a rate of one every 12 days in South Carolina. And the most dangerous time for domestic violence victims is when they’re trying to leave — as Jones was when she was forced to defend herself against her boyfriend’s attack.

Fetuses, yes.

In April, a South Carolina state senate subcommittee voted to expand Stand Your Ground protection to fetuses — specifically, against use of deadly force to protect a fetus. The law would protect pregnant women who use deadly force against physical attacks that would harm their fetus, even if the attack wouldn’t endanger the life of the mother. It responds to the needs of women who are at a particularly great risk for domestic violence during pregnancy.

It could also serve as a stepping stone in the direction of fetal personhood and/or fetal homicide legislation. While the South Carolina law applies only to pregnant women — and duplicates existing Stand Your Ground protections that women already have for self-defense and defense of others — it establishes an official definition of “pregnancy” and “unborn child” as beginning at conception, a crucial step in establishing fetal personhood. Fetal homicide legislation in other states has been used not to protect but to persecute women who lose pregnancies. Of the 36 states that currently have fetal homicide legislation, only 24 specifically exempt abortion from the laws, and none specify that a woman’s behavior during her pregnancy — be it drinking alcohol or eating sushi — can’t lead to fetal homicide charges. In Indiana in 2011, Bei Bei Shuai was charged with murder and attempted feticide after she attempted suicide with rat poison; she survived, but her fetus was delivered prematurely and died shortly thereafter. Shuai was held in prison for 435 days before ultimately pleading guilty to criminal recklessness and being released, which must have had a great impact on the mental health of a woman who was despondent enough to attempt suicide in the first place.

The Pregnant Women’s Protection Act was discussed at the same time as two fetal personhood acts — extending constitutional rights to embryos and fetuses — that did not come to a vote before the subcommittee adjourned. While the three laws weren’t approved by the end of the legislative session, South Carolina has introduced personhood legislation every term for the past 16 years, so all three bills are almost certain to make a reappearance. And by their logic, Whitlee Jones would have been fine by Culver Kidd if she’d only been pregnant when she was forced to kill her boyfriend in self-defense.

So there we have it. South Carolina: Still voting on domestic violence victim personhood.

Still not feeling up to sitting in front of the computer for too long while convalescing from my hospital admission, but here’s a few things I’ve noted filling my feeds:

* The media hyperventilation over the way over-stated risks of catching Ebola for those in the West (and the predictably awful racism on display amongst too many people who’ve swallowed the hype). Also too many people unwilling to accept that Ebola patients have privacy rights (h/t @amaditalks).

* The specific threat to enact “another Montreal massacre” at USU if they went ahead with a talk from Anita Sarkeesian, and how Sarkeesian ended up cancelling the talk (which she normally doesn’t do following threats) after learning that Utah’s concealed-carry weapon licenses mean that the university is specifically prohibited from preventing anyone with such a licence from carrying their weapon into the auditorium i.e. USU could not provide adequate security measures.

That a public university would have the ability to ban backpacks from a speech but not loaded guns strikes me as something that even many concealed-carry advocates might blanch at.

* A selection of pithy tweets re #GamerGate:

…for publishers to withhold review copies from publications who’ve run negative reviews of their games in the past?

— Scary Monster (@ScottMadin) October 15, 2014

1999: gamers demand we stop blaming school shootings on videogames. 2014: gamers threaten a school shooting because videogames.

— Dead Cousin Squinky (@TheSquink) October 15, 2014

* The ongoing double standard about who gets to carry guns without the police freaking out:

.@gtoboy Grand jury: cops justified in shooting #JohnCrawford dead for picking up toy gun. Meanwhile in white America pic.twitter.com/eUbFXe8Pq7

— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) October 15, 2014

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Imagine this conversation with your employer:

YOU. Hey, it looks like my paycheck is $25 short.

EMPLOYER. Oh, no, that’s for Kitten Day.

YOU. I’m sorry?

EMPLOYER. Once a month, we bring in kittens for everyone in the office to cuddle for a day. Studies show that it reduces stress. It’s adorable.

YOU. I’m sure it is, but you’re paying for it out of my paycheck.

EMPLOYER. Yes. Kitten Day is part of your overall compensation package.

A “total compensation package” is the full value of all remuneration given to an employee in exchange for their work for their company. This includes their regular paycheck, but it can also include bonuses, stock and/or stock options, retirement contributions, and, for many workers in the U.S., health insurance. A good package can, for instance, offset a lower base salary, because the employee’s work will still be compensated, even if it doesn’t show up in their paycheck.

In short: The money spent on health insurance is the employee’s own. It was earned by their hard work, and it only passes through their employer’s hands on the way to the health insurance company. It’s not a favor or a gift provided by a benevolent employer — it is compensation for work performed.

Now imagine this conversation:

EMPLOYER. Yes. Kitten Day is part of your overall compensation package.

YOU. Yeah, but I could really use that money for things that actually benefit me. Like mental health care, for instance.

EMPLOYER. Studies show —

YOU. Real mental health care.

EMPLOYER. Well, the owner of the company belongs to a religion that believes that psychological and psychiatric care are of the devil, so all we’re willing to offer is Kitten Day.

YOU. But the Affordable Care Act requires —

EMPLOYER. It’s a religious belief, and that changes everything.

YOU. But you’re spending my money on –

EMPLOYER. Just take a kitten and calm your tits.

If it sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is. For your employer to compensate you for your work with a monthly kitten is as ridiculous as compensating you with a health insurance plan that doesn’t cover your health needs. (And that’s even before you get to the point that a religious exemption on the basis that kittens are God’s Xanax is as ridiculous as an exemption on the basis that hormonal contraceptives kill babies.)

So no, I don’t expect my employer to pay for my birth control. No, this isn’t about my boss subsidizing my sex life. And no, it’s not reasonable for me to hold an aspirin between my knees and call it a contraceptive. It isn’t about an employer paying for birth control any more than it would be about an employer paying for someone’s insulin. This is about an employer imposing their religious beliefs on their employees, taking those employees’ earnings and blowing them on inadequate health care in direct opposition to federal law. And if this were any health care issue other than birth control, people would be marching with bullhorns, not calling women greedy sluts for wanting the quality health care they’re owed.

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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 what you are doing

Rhiannon DiClemente, Guest Blogger (’16, Temple University Beasley School of Law)

Early Thursday morning on July 15, 2014, the Senate halls were bustling with interns, staff members, and local advocates eager to witness the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on S. 1696, also known as the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2013 (WHPA). Attendees, who managed to overflow the room, patiently awaited testimony provided by members of Congress, doctors, and activists, both for and against the bill. In light of the decisions in Hobby Lobby and McCullen, it was reassuring to see politicians taking a long over-due stand to protect a woman’s constitutional right to determine whether and when to bear a child or end a pregnancy.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), addresses medically unnecessary state restrictions claimed to “protect” women’s health. It requires that state legislators prove state laws restricting abortion are in fact medically necessary, rather than politically or ideologically motivated. It also requires that states regulate abortion providers in exactly the same way they do other clinics and doctors who provide comparable services. The bill has its shortcomings, such as failing to address clinic violence, insurance prohibitions, and parental consent laws, as a March 2014 blog post highlights. However, it is an important step forward in combatting laws that have a disparate impact on low-income women, immigrant women, LGBT persons, and women of color.

Why is this bill important? As a LSRJ chapter leader at Temple University School of Law and a summer legal intern at the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), I know that despite the fact that we have Roe , the web of state restrictions has decimated abortion access. In states like Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, the situation is dire. In 2012, the Mississippi legislature passed HB 1390, mandating that any physician performing abortions in the state have admitting privileges at an area hospital (an unnecessary practice). During the Senate committee hearing, Dr. Willie Parker, a board-certified OB/GYN and the last physician providing abortion care in Mississippi, testified that despite 13 attempts to gain admitting privileges at regional hospitals, not one of his requests has been granted. This is just one example of how seemingly ‘safety-oriented’ legislation is really aimed to shut down clinics and restrict abortion access.

At the hearing, Rep. Janet Chu (D-CA27) testified that between 2011 and 2013, states passed over 200 restrictions blocking access to abortion services. This translates to more restrictions on women’s health care in three years than in the entire preceding decade. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) highlighted that these restrictions have forced women to travel greater distances and endure longer wait times to obtain an abortion. “The effect of these laws is that a woman’s constitutional right now depends on her zip code,” stated Rep. Chu, “We need laws that put women’s health and safety first – not politics.”

By speaking out against arbitrary restrictions that do not reflect medical best practice standards, supporters of S. 1696 have declared their respect for the constitutional right to access abortion services and trust in a woman’s ability to make the best choices for her own health and life.

Full testimony can be found here.

Sasha Young, LSRJ Summer Intern (’16, Northwestern School of Law)

A couple of years ago a dear friend of mine had her dream wedding “back home” in Palestine. She’s now battling the Atlanta heat through her first pregnancy, and with the recent surge in violence in the Occupied Territories, I thought for the first time what it would have been like for her to be pregnant “back home.”  The Occupied Palestinian Territories are fraught with human rights situations. I’ve thought about many of the different aspects before, but before I imagined my friend, I had never really taken a reproductive justice lens to the conflict. Immediately, my mind jumped from sexual assault, to access to abortion services, to getting maternity care in a place where sanitary napkins were only recently removed from the list of blockaded items.

The implications for pregnant women are predictably scary. An investigation into the 2008-2009 siege in Gaza revealed horrifying stories of women walking for miles through heavy shelling to find safe places to deliver. Hospitals prioritize the injured, travel is nearly impossible, and physicians are overwhelmed by trauma injuries. One woman, Dalal, recounted her doctor shouting at her for putting the ambulance driver’s life at risk when she should have delivered at home. Another woman, Rula, recounted walking alone for more than an hour in active labor only to be turned away from the hospital because there were too many injured people and not enough staff. Another report found that between 2000 and 2007, ten per cent of pregnant Palestinian women in the Occupied Territories were forced to give birth while stopped at Israeli checkpoints. Of the 69 documented births, 35 babies and 5 mothers died.

Obviously Occupied Palestine is not the only place where women are pregnant and give birth under violent and dangerous conditions. Stories like these are undoubtedly repeated throughout Syria, Congo, Timor, and every conflict zone in between. The immediate trauma of violent conflict leaves practically everything else as “collateral damage” of war, but I suppose this is just a little known bullet point on a long list of reasons we need a sustainable solution to the conflict in Israel and Palestine.

Gavin Barney, LSRJ Summer Intern (’16, University of California, Berkeley School of Law)

According to a recent commentary in the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP) peer reviewed journal, Contraception, reproductive health care clinics are currently witnessing a notable upswing in the number of patients requesting the removal of their Mirena IUDs. Mirena is a hormonal intrauterine system that prevents pregnancy for around five years through the release of levonorgestrel. And like other types of IUDs and long-term birth control, Mirena is very popular among the public health community: the ARHP refers to the device as safe and effective a number of times throughout the commentary. However, many women are choosing to have their IUDs removed and report being frightened by prevalent online and television publicity of common and devastating side-effects, including migration, perforation, and infertility. The problem, explains ARHP, is that these side-effect are not common, and some of them are actually fake – or “medically implausible” as the article puts it.

The supposed dangers of the Mirena device have made their way into the public consciousness as the result of solicitations for plaintiffs in mass litigation against the device’s manufacturer Bayer. This all initially passed me by, but after researching for this blog post I can report back that there is a lot of if-you-or-a-loved-one-has-been… out there. Mirena, like any other form of birth control, has potential risks, but as a result of media and advertising coverage these risks appear hugely magnified. ARHP contends that this hurts women in two ways: 1) by decreasing the number of women using long lasting birth control, and 2) by deterring contraceptive development by threatening that future technology will be met with similar litigation – note that from the 1970s to the 1980s, the number of companies pursuing contraceptive research fell from 13 to 1.*

For me, the most significant impact that misinformation around the Mirena device causes is not a reduction in the overall number of women using long term contraception. Rather, I am most concerned that opportunistic Mirena litigation and junk science could dissuade women from pursuing or keeping a birth control method that they would otherwise have chosen. IUDs do have some common side-effects – especially immediately following insertion – that can range from unpleasant to awful, so there are entirely legitimate reasons to remove the device early. But for those who actually do want to use and keep an IUD, misinformation can be tantamount to manipulation. Therefore, the central question the ARHP article raises is: what does informed and dignified decision making actually look like when we are so often bombarded with misinformation?

A quick search of the word “Mirena” shows just how murky the waters are when it comes to information on this IUD. Case in point: the first search result on Google, after Mirena’s official website, is DrugWatch.com, which describes a terrifying and “frequently encountered complication,” called “migration,” in which the IUD perforates the uterus and enters the body cavity, causing pain, infection, and damage to nearby organs. The ARHP article, on the other hand, scathingly refers to this problem as “fictitious.” Another site, in its review of the truth behind Mirena lawsuit ads, refers to migration as “so rare that even with tens of millions of women using IUDs worldwide, we can’t estimate how often it happens.”

I can easily envision a situation where a woman may encounter that first explanation of migration and immediately visit her doctor to have her IUD removed. Should the doctor simply dismiss her concerns out of hand because she knows that they are unfounded? Or should the doctor obey her patient’s wishes with the knowledge that she may have been manipulated into removing a device she actually wanted? The answer, as answers so often do, falls somewhere in the middle. LSRJ’s definition of reproductive justice holds that people must be able to “exercise the rights and access the resources they need to thrive and to decide whether, when, and how to have and parent children with dignity…” Here, my hypothetical patient has the right to access the resources she actually wants and needs, so it is her doctor’s responsibility to explain the true nature of the risks and dispel the misinformation. Then, should the patient still decide that the risk is too great, that choice should be met with the same degree of respect. Of course this all relies on the doctors themselves being entirely up on the most recent data about the device they are inserting/ removing and that they themselves are not intent on spreading misinformation.  So… fingers crossed on that one.

*From the ARHP article, this appears to have resulted from the litigation concerning the Dalkon shield. I do not think the writer intended to suggest that that was a case of junk science or junk law. I certainly don’t suggest that.