Women's Issues?

marjorie says...

I highly recommend this article about abortion and gender inequality in Latin America:

http://www.womensenews.com/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2086/context/archive

Abortion is illegal throughout Latin America, with the exception of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and this report gives us some incredible numbers. There are over 5000 deaths per year due to botched abortions, and another 800,000 hospitalizations due to complications. In addition, there are an estimated 4 million abortions across the region every year. As an example of the high rate of abortion, the report notes that Chile has roughly 200,000 abortions per year, compared to 100,000 for Canada, which is twice its population size.

The report gives gender inequality as the most likely reason for the high rate of abortions, noting that the culture is such that men have strong inclinations to control female reproduction, not to mention the sexual double standard between men and women. We are all familiar with it – sex happens and women are the ones who bear the overwhelming responsibility as well as the stigma and poverty of single parenthood. The report notes that countries in which abortion is legal have a lower rate of abortion than Latin America probably due to the other services that come along with abortion provision: contraceptives, family planning, education and better public health services.

This article offers interesting data for our own debate about abortion here in the U.S. In the aftermath of the election, many have wondered where we have gone wrong in our discourse. I think this gets at what it means to be truly progressive, recognizing the intersection of race and gender with CLASS and not being afraid to talk about CLASS. I’m not interested in emphasizing the right to abortion so much as I am the right of women and children to live in a secure and stable environment. If we were to tackle the enormous problem of male violence towards and control of women as well as the fact that so many single mothers live in poverty, and also how these issues intersect, we would be truly promoting “family values” and making it easier for women to have their children. Of course, we should continue to emphasize the right of women to have an abortion. But being pro-choice is about the right of women to have their children as well and I don’t think the national women’s organizations emphasize this enough. If they did, they would have strong policy agendas focused on the desperation of poor single mothers and the stress suffered by poor children. We would hear about these things just as vociferously. But instead we let the right wing determine the discourse by spending all of our limited resources and energy reacting to their narrow framing of women’s issues in terms of whether or not abortion should be legal. Rather we should be throwing it in their face and saying that if they truly wanted there to be less abortions they would pay attention to these other issues rather than taking a punitive approach toward abortion.