Browsing Tag

Women’s Health

Guest Posts, Abortion

What’s at Stake? Abortion Restrictions and Choice

October 16, 2023
women abortion alone

Will Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Rise in the Near Future?

When I was seventeen, I left my school, walked to Planned Parenthood a few blocks away and after discussing all my options, left with a safe and inexpensive method of birth control. I walked back to school confident that I would not add my story to the many accounts of Delfen Contraceptive Foam pregnancies. Babies spawned by the mighty sperm that swam bravely through the toxic sea, resulting in the victorious zygote. My classmates and I were not of the abstinence-only crowd. Our school had a copy of Our Bodies Ourselves. Many of us has our own copies.

More than a decade later, I worked every-other Saturday at the same Planned Parenthood while my husband stayed home with our two-year-old. Most Saturday mornings there were protesters on the sidewalk. Sometimes they would say vile things or spit at us as they tried to block our path, knowing nothing about why these women were coming to Planned Parenthood. Not caring about their stories, but feeling great compassion for the clump of cells hidden in their uteri, protesters would attempt to dissuade women from entering the building, offering their prayers and their alternatives. Fueled by righteous indignation, the protesters were willing to fight for the rights of the unborn but not for the women who would bear them.

There are more than a hundred documented ways to induce an unsafe abortion. Methods are categorized by route of administration.

In the category of Taken by mouth: turpentine, bleach, acid, laundry bluing, anti-malarial drugs.

In the time I worked at Planned Parenthood, I never met a woman who wanted an abortion. This is just not something one wants. But I did meet women who needed an abortion. Shall I tell you their stories? Will you care?

Do you want to know about the 40-year-old who lived in her car with her young son and needed money for food? The man said he’d pay her extra if he didn’t have to use a condom. She decided to risk it. There were many others, but not a single death. Not one of those women left with a punctured uterus or bowel or an untreated infection that would leave them sweating and damaged.

There were the high-school girls who drove to Planned Parenthood with a trusted friend in nice cars their parents bought them. They had manicured nails and good haircuts and they cried like babies. I suspect they carry this still, this thing they can never talk about. This This act of desperation, this truth buried because no one must ever know. But the procedure was clean, and safe and they are alive now and taking their own daughters to their doctors for access to responsible, safe birth control paid for by their health insurance. Should the contraceptives fail, these girls will not need to swallow bleach. They can pay for the right to own their bodies.

Still, desperate women, facing the financial burdens and social stigma of unintended pregnancy will continue to risk their lives by undergoing unsafe abortions.

In the category of Foreign Bodies inserted in the Cervix: stick, wire, knitting needle, coat hanger, bicycle spoke, chicken bone, ballpoint pen.

I resigned from Planned Parenthood when my second pregnancy became apparent. I thought it would be cruel to wear maternity clothes there. But also, I quit to protect myself from the feeling I might have, already protective of the cells growing and replicating inside me. Already in love with who those cells would become.

Many of us who are pro-choice like to think we’re different from those women who seek abortions. I often hear such condescending statements as, “I could never have an abortion but I think it’s up to the woman to decide.”

Can you really say that? That you could never have an abortion? Have you ever been raped by an uncle, a brother, a father, five frat boys at a party? Have you ever been told that the baby you planned, the one for whom you’ve converted your home office to a nursery, bought tiny socks and t-shirts, poured over books of baby names, has a genetic anomaly with no chance of survival? Or that your pregnancy will put your life at risk, possibly orphan your two other children? Have you ever thought that under certain circumstances you might consider an abortion? Did you ever think that no matter your reason, that decision might not be yours to make?

In the category of Enemas: Soap, hot oil, laundry detergent, vinegar, coffee.

Beginning in 1973, following the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion, researchers demonstrated a dramatic decline in the number of deaths related to illegal abortion.

When denied access to safe abortion, women and adolescent girls with unwanted pregnancies will, as they always have, resort to unsafe, illegal means to terminate the pregnancy.

There is no way to tell how many girls and women died of sepsis, shaking with fever, afraid to tell of what they’d done. Or how many suicides resulted from failure to abort. A fact sheet published in September 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) lists barriers to accessing safe abortion as restrictive laws, high cost, poor availability of services, stigma, and unnecessary mandatory waiting periods. That fact sheet tells us that estimates from 2010 to 2014 showed that around 45% of all abortions were unsafe and that almost all of these unsafe abortions took place in developing countries. Here in America with access to safe abortion, we had no need for bicycle spokes or chicken bones.

Texas lawmakers smiled and made heart symbols with their hands as they signed what they call the Fetal Heartbeat Law. Legislation that will put the lives of girls and women, whose hearts also beat, in danger. Texas took us back to a dark time in history as governors in a half-dozen other states, emboldened by the inaction of the Supreme Court, nodded their approval and planned their next move.

Today, we’ve returned to 1972.  We may be on a path to align our maternal morbidity and mortality statistics with those of Africa and Asia as we deny women access to safe, legal abortion.

Eileen Vorbach Collins is an RN and award-winning essayist. She has been both a client and employee of Planned Parenthood. She’s glad she’s old, but is very worried about the health and safety of girls and women. Eileen’s work has been published in SFWP, Barren Magazine, The Columbia Journal and a number of other literary magazines as well as Shondaland, Next Avenue and the NYT Tiny Love Stories.

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Wondering what to read next? 

We are huge fans of messy stories. Uncomfortable stories. Stories of imperfection.

Life isn’t easy and in this gem of a book, Amy Ferris takes us on a tender and fierce journey with this collection of stories that gives us real answers to tough questions. This is a fantastic follow-up to Ferris’ Marrying George Clooney: Confessions of a Midlife Crisis and we are all in!

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Statement on Black Lives Matter and support for social change

Women, Health

We Must End Period Poverty For All Women And Girls

September 10, 2020
period

By Rita Serra

I chose to backpack around the world as a 22-year-old, pierced-nosed, May You Stay Forever Young-tattooed, Hubba-Bubba pink, blue and purple-haired, flower child. Equipped with a degree in US history and ample youthful exuberance, I was ready to feel the unparalleled freedom of solo travel. My only armor for this eight -month endeavor was my blind faith in good vibes. What could go wrong?

Four months into my wanderlust pilgrimage, airport security procedures had become a mundane chore rather than a cause for stress. With off-handed indifference, I referred to the time spent waiting in lengthy passport control lines as, “the traveler’s tax.” As I stood in the diminutive security line of Lombok International Airport (LOP,) I was pleased to pay these meager taxes that evening.

Measuring forty-seven miles across, the tranquil island of Lombok, Indonesia is relatively untraveled by tourists compared to its neighboring island of Bali, allowing the landscape and pace of life to remain much closer to its organic form. The majority of Lombok consists of rural villages separated by large swatches of undeveloped land. Although LOP is the only airport on Lombok, a single terminal is apt for receiving all domestic and international fights.

I stood in line with a placid smile as I watched the female agents check every pocket of every traveler’s bag with a Swiss watch-maker’s precision. But then, like Isaac Newton and the infamous apple he took to the head, I was struck with a sudden realization that overtook my idle thoughts. In the top pocket of my backpack was a plastic bag that contained; a brick-sized stack of Laotian currency, US dollars, Euros, Cambodian Riels, anti-malaria medication, traveler’s diarrhea pills, and a smaller zip lock bag containing off-brand Advil. The lack of original packaging making it seem as if the Advil could be any drug. In my effort to maximize packing efficiency, I set myself up to look like a suspicious character while attempting to enter a country that regularly applies capital punishment to drug traffickers and drug dealers.

Light-headed, my mind went into a hazardous spin. I oscillated between berating myself for committing such a blunder and conjuring ill-fated visions of myself sitting in an Indonesian jail cell. Stress-induced sweat droplets rose to a beady line of attention along my brow. I pushed past these negative thoughts and began to practice my explanation. Yes ma’am I know this looks weird, but I purchased all of the Laotian money from a friend to save him from a bad exchange rate, as if my inherent altruism would help me out of this situation without issue.

My turn came and an Indonesian woman with soft brown eyes and dark hair pulled into a tight bun, started to rummage through my bag with silent diligence. Standing at 5 foot 10, I towered over this woman by nearly a foot, yet I felt as if I was small enough to fit in a front shirt pocket standing in her authoritative presence. I attempted to hold a pleasant, unsuspecting smile as I wondered if this agent would believe the reason for this money and various pills, some unmarked, was due to my naiveté and not because I was a drug dealer.

The agent used her thumb and right index finger as a pair of tweezers to pluck a tampon out of my bag. Mystified, she raised the tampon until it was even with her eyes and after a few moments of greater inspection, she inquired in English, “What is this?”

I surmised that it must have been unfamiliar packaging throwing her off, so I gave what I though was a simply yet efficient answer, “a tampon.”

The bewildered expression remained suspended across her caramel-toned face. I wondered if my bluntness had been misinterpreted as curt, but then it hit me; she had never seen or heard of a tampon before. A piece of my innocence expired as I explained to this woman, who was at least ten years my senior, what a tampon was and how it is used. Her cheeks pulled back like an accordion, forming elongated, vertical smile lines and the austere formality of her uniformed appearance melted away. With an enlightened sounding, “ahh” the woman placed the tampon back in my bag, forgetting to check the final pocket, and sent me on my way.

I walked through the sliding glass doors and was greeted by the hot, sticky, humid night air like an impassioned lovers kiss. I breathed out a sigh of relief, and inhaled sharply making my lips form a tight O as my mind unpacked what just transpired. What did this woman use while on her menses? Will this woman tell her friends about what she just learned? Her mother? Her sisters? Her daughter?

 I had never considered that a tampon was not basic knowledge for all women. I sat with this profound knowledge for some time, not knowing what to do with it. But the unanswered questions remained, so I launched into conducting research on women’s reproductive health among different countries. In doing so I came across the topic of period poverty.

“Period poverty” refers to the estimated 500 million women and girls around the world who lack the monetary funds and /or access to menstrual products each month. For a myriad of these females, the root causes and devastating effects of period poverty extend much deeper. In developing regions of Africa, Asia, Central, and South America there is a substantial lack of education about women’s reproductive health, what sanitary products are, and how to use them. This issue is often compounded by the absence of hand washing stations and other sanitation facilities, leading women and girls to not be able to manage their menses in a safe, dignified manner. Extending deeper for many women and girls, the crux of period poverty is caused by the long-standing cultural stigma that menstruating women are dirty.

Within numerous communities around the world, the topic of menstruation is taboo. Women in rural India are perceived as impure and unholy, leading to them being treated as lepers and banned from entering temples and participating in prayer during their menses. Considering that the overwhelming majority of India’s population are either devout Hindus or Muslims, two religions based upon praying multiple times a day, the act of menstruating is debilitating to Indian women’s daily lives. In Nepal, woman and girls are forced to undergo the custom of “Chhaupadi” in which females are ostracized from their family homes and made to live and sleep in cramped, window-less huts because they are seen as unclean while on their menses. Due to poor ventilation and snake bits, this practice has claimed the lives of many. Chhaupadi continues today, in defiance of a 2018 law forbidding the dangerous practice. For young ladies in Uganda, they feel they must hide their periods from their brothers and fathers for fear of crippling shame and utter embarrassment.

The disempowerment millions of females suffer through every month is marked by bitter irony because without the act of menstruating, the creation of life would halt all together.

Adding to the gravity of this gender inequality issue, is the fact that period poverty impedes girls’ educational endeavors and constricts their future prospects. Worldwide, millions of girls stay home from because they lack sanitary products and/ or fear becoming a social outcast. One in five American girls have reported staying home from school due to the inability to afford sanitary products. Across Africa, it is estimated that at least one in every ten girls will miss up to fifty days of school a year because of menstruation. These habitual absences cause girl’s grades to suffer and for them to fall behind their male counterparts. Even more damning is the fact that a multitude of girls will drop out of school because they are not able to adequately manage their menses. This is the case for at least twenty percent of girls in India.

Navigating the dust-kissed, stone streets of Morocco, I often happened upon a group of school children walking in their uniforms of white coats, casting the illusion that every one of them was a young scientist on the verge of discovery. In Luang Prabang, Laos I was always tickled to see a young lady zipping through traffic on motorbike with two of her female compadres riding side-saddle, (a feat much more difficult than they made it look.) Their long ponytails waved wildly like streamers in the wind, making them seem so free, despite their school attire of navy-blue jackets, knee-length grey skirts, and nylons.

Of all my carefree experiences interacting with locals, I most fondly reminisce on a day spent in Koh Rong, Cambodia on the beach with a cohort of travelers. Three Khmer children, two boys and one girl, stopped by our blankets after spotting our idol tennis ball. The kids ushered us to our feet by means of animated hand gestures and arranged us in a large circle. Captivated by the childlike-wonderment that marks the lighthearted days of travel, we played a laugh-filled game of catch for nearly an hour.

I occasionally look back with concern at the array of silly-faced selfies of myself and the little girl on the beach in Koh Rong. It is disheartening to imagine her, the girls on the motorbike, or the young ladies in Morocco, who bubbled with life and were free from inhibition, are now routinely filled with shame for simply menstruating. I cannot help but think about all the bright, young ladies around the world whose academic standings have slipped due to the constricting realities of womanhood imposed by their cultures.

Before traveling to Indonesia, I had never equated a tampon with freedom. Awareness is the first step in bridging inequality. From my experience in the airport, I became aware that hygienic products allow women the ability to play sports, receive a full education, work a steady job, participate in religious events, go about their daily life unencumbered, and to rise to the same playing field as male counterparts.

We have made great strides in America in the field of women’s equality and reproductive health thanks to the activism of Margaret Sanger and our other feminine predecessors. In 1960, the FDA approved the use of the pill as contraceptive which was a divisive issue at the time. Many women took the pill in secrecy, afraid of being outcast or labeled as promiscuous. After decades of continued activism, these same women now lead women’s gatherings with pride and conduct ceremonies that celebrate young ladies’ menstruation, and empower them as they cross the threshold into womanhood. Today young girls are taught about menstruation health in school and women have access to an array of contraceptives and sanitary products. Furthermore, there is a Red Tent movement sweeping the nation, where menstruating women and girls are invited to come together and celebrate their menses on a monthly basis. Nevertheless, we still have ground to cover in America when it comes to eliminating period poverty.

Ending period poverty is a matter of accepting and normalizing female biology.

One way to get involved in the movement is to vote. In recent years there has been a large push to remove the “tampon tax.” Although the FDA considers tampons and other menstrual products as medical devices, in forty states they are still subject to sales tax unlike other medical devices. For the women who live in poverty or work low income jobs, removing taxes on sanitary products would make managing their menses less of a struggle. Georgia House of Representative member Debbie Buckner, presented a bill in January 2019 that would make Georgia the eleventh state to remove the “tampon tax,” As of today, activists in Georgia are still working to have this bill passed. Scotland made history in February 2020 by becoming the first country to make period products free to all women.

Supporting organizations such as, Alliance for Period Supplies, is another way to get involved in this movement. This organization was founded by U by Kotex and aims at ending period poverty in the US. Support can be a simple as shopping for your own sanitary products. For every U by Kotex purchase, sanitary products are donated to women and girls in need through Alliance for Period Supplies. For people who want to go a step beyond, consider hosting a period supply drive. This is done by linking with your local allied program, (which can be found online through allianceforperiodsupplies.org) food bank or women’s shelter to distribute the collected products. This might be of particular interest to women who have stopped menstruating, but still have unnecessary sanitary products.

On the international level, donating to organizations such as WASH United or the World Bank is a way to help end period poverty. These organization partner with groups such as UNICEF, UN agencies, the Global Water Security and Sanitation Partnership, and other NGO’s to promote advocacy and provide menstrual hygienic management (MHM) education designed to empower woman and remove cultural taboo. They also provide woman and girls with hygienic products and improve conditions for women to manage their menses in a safer, more dignified manor such as providing clean water, constructing hand washing stations, and sanitary facilities.

Finally, spreading the word is a way to promote advocacy and transform period poverty into “period positivity.” Since writing this piece, I have begun discussing period poverty with my male roommates who have all been receptive to discussing the topic. May 25th – 31st 2020 is period poverty awareness week, by sharing stories on social media and using hashtags such as, #EndPeriodPoverty #EndPeriodStigma #WithUSheCan #eachforequal #NoMoreLimits and #MenstruationMatters, we can normalize the topic of menstruation.

As the torch is carried forward in the women’s health and equality movement, we must ensure some women are not getting left in the dark.

Rita Serra graduated from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with a degree in US history with a special interest on the social and political moments of 21st century America. For two and a half years, Rita backpacked around the world, often solo, on a quest for human connection, cultural enlightenment, historical intrigue and natures wonderment. After her period of Rolling Stone Embodiment, Rita found herself in Northern California where she currently spends her days writing prose & poetry and farming.

Anti-racist resources, because silence is not an option.

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Guest Posts, Self Image, Self Love

Loveless at 34

July 12, 2017
garbage

By Shauna Lange

The day I found out I was having a heart attack, was a day like any other.  Other than the radiating pain in my arm and chest every time I moved, it was a fairly average day.  I smoked my two cigarettes on the way to work.  I typed my spreadsheets, drank my coffee, enjoyed some laughs with friends, binged at every meal, and smoked my last 2 cigarettes on the way to my second job.  Most importantly, I spent a good portion of the day internally bullying myself for every calorie, every mistake and bullshit excuse, with the good old stand-by “I’ll just try again tomorrow” – rationalizing every ugly moment.

Since complete self-loathing accompanies the decision to eat a few too many McDonald’s french fries, sans ketchup (to save some calories) you can only imagine my emotional state when the ER doctor came to me later that evening.  With a look of shock on her face, she told me that I was having a heart attack. As the tears streamed down my face, with a gaggle of hospital staff staring at me, paralyzed by my meltdown, I realized how truly broken I was.

I felt rejected by my own body.  How could it do this to me?  Stupid heart.  Lazy ass.  Ugly idiot. Fucking food addict.  I stayed up all night in the hospital in this state of anger and loss. I cried or I berated myself.  I sat there for hours and tried to figure out all the things I had done that lead me to that moment.  The years of poor eating and binging, the avoidance of exercise over the last year, the decision to take myself off my diabetes meds while putting myself on birth control to avoid my fear of pregnancy, all the way to the final cigarette I tried to have in the car as I drove myself to the hospital with pain shooting from my chest to my arm.

March 22, 2017 was my day of reckoning.  It was time to pay for my sins.  At 34 years of age, I was now confronted with the reality that all aspects of my life needed to change.  Each health issue needed to be addressed; each coping mechanism needed to be taken away and replaced with something healthy.  And while I had spent the last four years of my life making some healthy strides emotionally and physically, it was time to take off the kid gloves and dig into the mess.  Quit smoking, control my diabetes, exercise, and most importantly, finally deal with my compulsive eating.

I spent the first few weeks after getting out of the hospital lost.  For me, it’s been difficult not to blame my own actions for my heart attack.  “If only.”  The words circled around in my brain every day. While I was able to quit smoking and start exercising fairly easily, the food continues to be a struggle.  For the last 15 years, binging has been a way of life.  Food is used to celebrate or mask all emotion.  Hating myself for eating is an automatic response.  Choosing to eat poorly is easy, and frankly, safe and comforting.  Once that food is shoved into my mouth, an insult immediately follows.  With each bite I take, I berate myself, and imagine years of fast food piled on top of each other, an impenetrable wall in my stomach while the self-hate has created a wall around my heart so I feel loveless.  No love can get in, and no love will come out.

Where did my love go?  I don’t have problems expressing love, or cheering people up.  In fact, making people laugh is my favorite thing about life.  Making someone truly laugh is powerful.  So, why do I stop the love from penetrating my heart?  Where is my self-compassion, my patience, my own truth?  Even when people asked me how I was doing, I replied very upbeat and excited and made sure to reassure them that I was good.

I finally admitted to myself that I failed.  Not at losing the weight, or taking care of myself, or listening to the experts, or any of the shit the world throws at you.  I failed at loving my body, inside and out.  I became loveless at 34. “You gotta love yourself first” they say, right?  Fuck that. You have to love period. I realized that so often, I’m not actually sad or mad or angry.  I THINK I need to feel this way.  That my life should have some drama in it, or it’s not worthy.  But when I asked myself – “Worthy of what?”  – I came up with a lot of bullshit and decided enough was enough.  I admitted that while I can enlist the help of family, friends, doctors, nurses, nutritionists and therapists, they can’t do the work for me.  They can love me, and I can love them, but I still need to love myself.  This is starting to sound like an ad for masturbation….Let’s move on.

I admitted that regardless of the number on the scale, size of my boobs, the strength of my arms, the color of my nails, or the shininess of my hair, what is actually important to me are the beating organs that keep me alive. The gifts of the senses.  The ability to sleep and dream and wake up rested and ready to take life by the proverbial lady balls.  My body is not a garbage disposal, a punching bag, or a broken piece of glass. It’s fucking beautiful, in all its messy, fatty, sexy glory.

I may have a stent in my artery, but that just means I’m one piece closer to being bionic! I’ve got amazing bedhead.  I love my eyes, and sometimes I look at them in the mirror because the color is so unique.  If you ask me, my boobs are perfect.  I hate wearing a bra, and thankfully, my breasts are still a little perky!  My brain never stops, and while sometimes it’s exhausting, I love the constant state of randomness it’s in.

I’m learning to love the bloody, messy bleeding heart inside me.  I want to tear the wall down and build a nice soft pillow to protect it and keep it safe.  My heart is my queen, and she’s getting stronger every day.

I am beautiful, and I am fat. I have heart disease, and I am a diabetic. I am both complicated and simple.  I am love, and I am pain. I am loud and shy. We are all these amazing dichotomies and creations of our own choosing, and I am learning to embrace all the good and the bad, because I no longer want to be perfect.  I just want to be me, and as corny and cheesy as it sounds, it took breaking my heart to find the courage to accept that I want to live a life full of love.

Shauna Lange was born and raised in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. She has a BA in Psychology from Lemoyne College in Syracuse NY. While she dreamed of being a writer since she was a kid, it’s only been recently that she has allowed myself to write, and share it with the world. Shauna can be found on facebook and on instagram. She also loves photography, comedies, and the beach.

 

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Guest Posts, Health, Women

Endo

June 21, 2016
pain

By Janet Frishberg

Age 12: In the afternoons when I’m bleeding, I double over as I stagger home up the hill. I hold onto a telephone pole on the way to the white-walled apartment where my mom and I live, where I can sit on the toilet and cry, trying to imagine myself out of my body, writhing on the carpeted floor, wanting to find a place of comfort. I slouch at the computer console, my feet resting on its grey plastic side, crying and playing games to distract me from the pain. It feels like my insides are a room and someone is peeling off the wallpaper very slowly, with a straight-edge razor. In the quiet apartment, alone, I know I can scream or groan as loud as I want; everyone is at work. My mom and I go to doctors, more than two, less than five. They say, “That’s part of being a woman.” And, “Sometimes menstruation is painful. You’ll get used to it.”

The pain overwrites the past. It becomes difficult to remember my body from before my body is in pain. Continue Reading…