Choice Words

Congratulations. Words seem too small to express the historic nature of this election. A country founded on and formed by racial slavery and genocide has elected a person of color to its highest office. The fight for racial justice continues, but this is a vital moment in our national story.

And now the real work begins.

Young voters supported you by an astounding margin, over two to one. Perhaps more importantly, youths played a crucial role in your grassroots-style campaign. A new generation of organizers has been activated, and not a moment too soon.

The past eight years have been devastating for human rights in the US and abroad. The neoconservative Christian fundamentalist agenda has attacked the reproductive rights and health of young people, a crucial part of any comprehensive human rights framework. Mr. President-elect, we need you as an ally in our quest for Reproductive Justice.

Federally funded abstinence only programs have left a generation unprepared to make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive health. In this election young people have shown themselves to be highly motivated critical thinkers. Mr. Obama, we need you to fulfill your promise of providing federally funded comprehensive sexuality education that respects our intelligence and ability to make decisions for ourselves.

We’ve also seen federal funds funneled into Crisis Pregnancy Centers, far right religious organizations that often deliberately mislead women in order to prevent them from pursuing and obtaining abortions. It’s time to start trusting people to make their own decisions about their health, and to make available the necessary resources, including contraception and birth control, so those decisions can be informed and based on the a wide range of available options.

The attack on reproductive health has been part of a broader attack on the well being of Americans. Too many young people do not have the option of making the choices they want to about their health because they cannot afford medical care. Healthcare should be, must be a human right. This country is long overdue for a truly universal healthcare system. In a time of economic crisis the ability to afford medical care should never be a question. No one should ever have to worry about being able to obtain the reproductive healthcare they need.

Reproductive Justice is about more than access to quality care and prevention methods, though. Intersections of oppression along lines of gender, race, class, ability, geography, and immigration status negatively affect the reproductive health of so many young people. Environmental degradation isn’t just about moose – the harm we are doing to our environment has a huge negative effect on our health, and hurts those with the least relative power and privilege first and most dramatically. We need the right to have children, too. This is impossible when, for example, indigenous women find themselves unable to conceive or giving birth to children who are sick because of environmental toxins. Racist anti-immigrant sentiment and laws puts the health of undocumented immigrants at risk. We need you to be a president who will think about the impact to our reproductive health of every major issue that crosses your desk.

The past eight years have hurt us, but this movement has been fighting an uphill battle for a lot longer than that. For over thirty years we have watched as the right to have an abortion has been limited more and more. If young women can’t afford the procedure what good does that right do them? It’s time, finally time, to repeal the Hyde Amendment. It’s time to trust women to make decisions about their own bodies, not to limit when medical care should and should not be available based on moralistic ideas that ignore lived experience. Choice needs to be possible.

Despite legislation like the Violence Against Women Act, the nightmare of sexual violence has not gone away. Instead, such policies have led to a massive prison system that does nothing to make people safer, and in fact has the opposite effect. While we debate marriage rights, queer and trans youth are dying in cold blood. We need radical new ideas about how to address violence in a way that does not resort to government violence, to fundamentally change our culture.

US policy has a large impact on people the world over. War in Afghanistan and Iraq makes even the idea of reproductive and sexual freedom impossible for so many people. Mr. President-elect, end these wars.

And end the Global Gag Rule. Please, let healthcare providers do their jobs.

Mr. Obama, the challenges you face as you prepare to take office are daunting. I was grateful you recognized this in your acceptance speech, and heartened by your openness to hear from your constituents about our needs, our desires, our hopes. The above are just some of the issues my friends and I care deeply about. In the next few weeks, months, and years you’ll be hearing a lot more from us about these and other concerns.

The pro-choice youth of the US have a clear picture of what we want our future to be and are not afraid to demand of government what we need to realize that vision. I look forward to working with you, to an impassioned debate of ideas, to forming a government and culture in the business of ensuring human rights for all. Watch and listen, Mr. President-elect, and work with us, as a movement of young people turns our dream of Reproductive Freedom into reality.

I Came across this post on RH Reality Check by Jessica at NLIRH yesterday about the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services newly revised vaccination requirements for immigrant women seeking to adjust their status to legal permanent residency. For you loyal readers of Choice Words you’ve seen many sides of this issue come across this blog here, here and here too.

There are those that see this vaccine as a victory for women’s health, there are those that mistrust the pharmaceutical industry and their rush to get it out on the market, there are those who worry about state and federal mandates, and there are those folks who are just plain anti any vaccination.

As Jessica points out in her post, this new requirement introduces the vaccine as a barrier for immigrants seeking residency:

“This is the only sex-specific vaccination requirement, putting particular burden on immigrant women applying for a visa or adjustment of status, further marginalizing a group that already has reduced access to health information and services that are affordable, accessible and culturally and linguistically competent.”

While I believe the development of the HPV vaccine is a milestone for women’s health, I can’t help but be suspicious when pharmaceutical companies and government agencies collaborate so enthusiastically in mandating it’s use with immigrant women and in some states with school age girls. When my parents immigrated here years ago they did everything and anything to get us permanent residency. The immigration process is so messy, difficult and expensive; it literally becomes about checking things off of a list no matter how long the list gets, by any means necessary. I say this to say that although there is and has always been a strong and inspiring grassroots movement for immigrant’s rights in this country, most immigrants are not in a position to advocate for themselves when they are in the midst of attaining legal residency, much less pay for a vaccination that costs $360. Immigrant women are constantly dealing with these kinds of barriers and impediments in everyday life, and it’s certainly not fair to put this burden on families who are already risking so much.

If you are interested in finding out more about issues facing immigrant communities take part today in a Night of a Thousand Conversations. If you are a DC resident find out more here, if you want to find a conversation in your area click here.

Anyone remember former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s infamous comment?

Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our work-force. It might be because for the last 35 years we have aborted more than a million people each year who would have been in out workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973.

Now if many of you don’t know, the Christian Right is very anti-immigrant, but very pro-nativist. The Christian Right is against abortion or anything that has to do with the wonders of sex. Yet when it comes to immigrant’s reproductive rights, abortion and contraception is a-okay. Why? They believe that an immigrant’s sole purpose of coming to America is to have “anchor babies”, which is protected under the 14th amendment.

According to this article, published by the Public Eye:

If anything could discourage the Christian Right from lending support to the anti-immigrant movement, it might be that many of its most prominent organizations were created to advance a population control agenda including sterilization and abortion for immigrants of color.

Please note the “immigrants of color” part. So not only are they being nativist but also racist, as in the case of Jiang Zhen Xing. And unfortunately for these Christian Right nativist, whites will be the minorities by the year 2042.

I think that it is very hypocritical for these people to talk about how we should return to the belief that this country was founded on Christian beliefs, but we were also founded relying on immigration. Last time I was in US History, Christopher Columbus came all the way from the other side of the planet and we also enslaved many West Africans and brought them to the Americas.

I’ve been going through my mailbox and I stumbled upon this email blast about a new bill introduced last year in he House by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Senate by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Gordon Smith (R-OR), which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to remove HIV as a ground of inadmissibility from the INA. I feel pretty ignorant—for not being aware of this.

There are so many hoops you have to jump through when immigrating to the United States. An individual with HIV has an even more difficult time because HIV is still on the Health and Human Services list of “communicable diseases of public health significance”. An HIV-positive foreign national is not permitted to immigrate (permanently reside) in the United States, or even visit here, unless he or she qualifies for a very narrowly defined wavier.

Please click here to learn more about HIV and immigration.