By Sikivu Hutchinson
I have always considered so-called “pro-life” anti-abortion
zealots to be virulently pro-death. Not
just the male stalkers who terrorize and police women with plastic bloody fetuses
outside of abortion clinics, but the female anti-abortion architects who wear
their complicity with white supremacist capitalist patriarchy proudly and
unabashedly, rail against birth control and welfare, and demonize black
children who are warehoused in foster care, jails and in the streets because of
the neoliberal destruction of the social safety net. In a 2014 discussion between
feminist cultural critic bell hooks and trans activist and actress Laverne Cox,
hooks argued that folks who are against reproductive health care can’t be
considered feminists. In this era, when
women’s right to self-determination is under siege on multiple levels, being for
reproductive justice is non-negotiable for a feminism based on economic justice.
The Trump administration’s potential restoration of
the so-called domestic
“gag rule” (which was originally implemented by the Reagan administration
in 1988 and was rescinded by president Clinton in 1993) is the latest act of
state violence against women’s right to self-determination which directly
attacks poor women of color. It would prohibit
health care providers who receive federal Title X funds from informing
patients about abortion services. It would also
“require physical and financial separation” of a clinic’s abortion-related
services from its Title X services. Instituted
under the Nixon administration, Title X funds are specifically designated for
family planning and preventive health care for low income and uninsured patients. Title X provides funding for birth control,
cancer and STD/STI screening and pregnancy counseling services. As part of the
Religious Right’s “death by a thousand cuts” strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade,
the policy takes direct aim at Planned Parenthood, one of the biggest sources
of health care for women in the U.S. Planned Parenthood and other health care
providers which receive Title X funding are frequently the only federally
funded providers in rural and low-income communities. The gag rule is opposed by the American College of Physicians (ACP) and the
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
Restricting providers from giving women full and
accurate information about their options for abortion subverts the very
foundation of trust between patient and practitioner. Like the totalitarian prohibitions on speech
and information in George Orwell’s novel 1984,
the gag order would effectively condemn working class women to incomplete and/or
inaccurate information while middle class women with private health coverage
would continue to be empowered with the resources and information to control
their bodies. The gag rule essentially extends
the anti-abortion ethos of the 1976 Hyde Amendment (which
banned federal funding for abortions except for rape and incest) to medical speech. It lays bare the most dangerous element of
the Trump administration’s anti-abortion crusade—the complete and utter fascist
colonization of women’s reproduction via state violence.
Women of color
overwhelmingly rely on Title X funded clinics for comprehensive care and
counseling on family planning. According
to California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, Latinas comprise 53% of the nearly one million women who receive
services at Title X clinics in California. Further, nearly a
million African American women rely on Title X funded health care. According
to the Black Women’s Health Imperative, 21% of patients who rely on Title X
for birth control and reproductive health care are African American. The gag rule—coupled with the wave of reproductive
health care clinic closures that have devastated poor communities of color in
the South and Midwest—are clear examples of how abortion is an economic justice
issue, a vital pathway that affords women access to jobs, housing, education
and wealth equity when they’re in control of their bodies and destinies. And any entity that would aid and abet Trump’s
criminal gag rule is not “pro-life” but an accessory to state violence.
Reproductive justice organizations are calling on
communities to protest the gag rule by submitting
comments to Health and Human Services by July 31st.
Twitter @sikivuhutch
