The Continued Erosion of Reproductive Rights

From s. e. smith:

The attack on reproductive rights in the United States is likely to heat up in 2012, and we have an early entrant in the race to the bottom in the form of a court decision that went through on Friday, ordering the immediate enforcement of a mandatory sonogram law in Texas. More specifically:

The law, enacted in 2011, requires abortion providers to perform an ultrasound on pregnant women, show and describe the image to them, and play sounds of the fetal heartbeat. Though women can decline to view images or hear the heartbeat, they must listen to a description of the exam…unless she qualifies for an exception due to rape, incest or fetal abnormality.

This is not the first state with such a law and I fear it’s going to become a growing trend in the US, right along with dismembered fetus anti-abortion ads on television. The right wing is bent on making abortions as difficult to access as possible through every possible means, and that includes coercive, invasive, and unwanted interference from their medical providers. As spelled out under the law, this is yet another hoop in the series people with unwanted or dangerous pregnancies must jump through to get access to medical care, and it’s a humiliating and shaming one.

Says Texas Governor Rick Perry:

The Fifth Circuit’s decision requires abortion providers to immediately comply with the sonogram law, appropriately allowing Texas to enforce the will of our state, which values and protects the sanctity of life.

Texas "values and protects the sanctity of life," said, I am sure, without irony.

But... this is Texas, number one in the number of executions carried out in the last 35 years and the state where the legislature hoped, just last year, to gut education, health care, and social services.

I guess, however, with regards to a state in which lawmakers "slashed family planning funding by two-thirds," we should not be surprised at the continued erosion of reproductive rights.

Doesn't make it any less scary.

See What I'm Up Against?

Okay, you probably all know the stories of the Texas Education Board's attempts to change the state's social studies curriculum to "downplay the contributions of civil rights leaders, minimiz[e] an 'emphasis on multiculturalism,' and try to 'exonerate' Joe McCarthy." (Follow the links in that article for more details). The Texas Freedom Network has accused the board--comprised of 10 Republicans and 5 Democrats--of "blatant politicization of social studies curriculum."

Well, here comes a new highlight of their efforts:

What do the authors of the children's book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and a 2008 book called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation have in common?

Both are named Bill Martin and, for now, neither is being added to Texas schoolbooks.

In its haste to sort out the state's social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children's author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain "very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system."

Trouble is, the Bill Martin Jr. who wrote the Brown Bear series never wrote anything political, unless you count a book that taught kids how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, his friends said. The book on Marxism was written by Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

The Texas students subjected to years of what I call "only-white-men-and-war-battles-are-important" history are the ones I get in my surveys, fresh out of high school. A good portion of them will already question my ability, authority, teaching style, etc, because I am a woman of color. Combine that hostility with the fact that I teach the survey from a social and cultural history perspective and emphasize "shifting the lens"--viewing an event or era or concept from diverse perspectives--and you get a situation that makes me dread-until-I-am-sick walking into a classroom sometimes.

And this does not just affect elle, the historian. It affects elle, the mama, as well. Last week, I wrote on facebook and twitter about experiences my son was having in social studies classes. As one of a few black kids in fifth grade, he notices the other students look at him when black people come up during class (last week it was Harriet Tubman and Cinque of the Amistad). I'd point out that that is partially a result of teaching a history in which black people randomly pop up rather than being understood as an integral part of the story of this country. Of course, that is a reflection of a much larger scale erasure and othering--my son exists not as an individual, but as representative of a group in which one can easily stand in for another.

My son, big admirer of President Barack Obama, was also upset by the fact that his teacher talked negatively about "Obama Healthcare," telling the children that it was going to cost a trillion dollars and that even their grandchildren's children would still be paying for it. I already had an encounter with her when she sent out a short, snippity note about how our school district wouldn't be showing Obama's speech to school children a few months ago (ours was the only district here that didn't--probably speaks volumes).

From my position in the Lone Star State, I have to ask, that fear that conservatives had--that Obama was trying to indoctrinate their children--is that called irony or hypocrisy?

Because I'm really worried about what they're teaching--and not teaching--my son.

Officer Jack Sparrow?

**Updated**

Do the police in Tenaha, TX, "shake down" drivers, particularly drivers of color, in what one attorney calls "a piracy operation?"

Roderick Daniels was traveling through East Texas in October 2007 when, he says, he was the victim of a highway robbery.

The Tennessee man says he was ordered to pull his car over and surrender his jewelry and $8,500 in cash that he had with him to buy a new car.

But Daniels couldn't go to the police to report the incident.

The men who stopped him were the police.

This story caught my attention because my family and I routinely travel through Tenaha on our way to and from Louisiana. I have my own stories about East Texas police:

My experiences with the police have included:

My father and I being pulled over while I was an undergraduate, separated, and questioned. We were in Texas, our car had Louisiana plates, and the cops admitted they suspected drug trafficking.

Similarly, I was tailed closely by a cop for a while in a small East Texas town who didn't turn on his lights, initially. He was following me so closely that I put on my signal and got into the next lane. Then he turned on his lights--said I was supposed to wait until I'd traveled at least so many feet after turning on my signal to switch lanes. The problem, again, was my Louisiana plates in a Texas town. He wanted to know where I lived currently, where I was traveling to, and why. I answered, simply because I didn't know if I was allowed not to answer and I had no intention of disappearing in East Texas.

More recently (several weeks ago), my sister and her fiance were pulled over in East Texas after meeting me in Houston. Her description:

The cop pulled out behind us and trailed us for five minutes before turning on his lights. He made [my fiance] get out and come to the back of the car and made me stay in. He shined the light directly in my baby's face, woke him up, and wouldn't move the light. Of course, he started crying and I was digging for the insurance papers and wanted to cry myself.

He kept asking the same questions over and over, trying to find inconsistencies. Then he asked for permission to search the car. I told him yes because he wouldn't find anything and offered to show him all my prescription medicines. When he realized we were telling the same story, he didn't want to search the car anymore. I'll be honest, I definitely felt like it was racial profiling--he saw a black man who didn't live there, driving through town late at night. But, I threw him off by agreeing to let him search the car.

My sister's experience and one of mine occurred in Diboll, TX, 70 miles from Tenaha.

There seems to be some element of racial-profiling in the Tenaha cases, as well.

[Attorney David] Guillory, who practices in nearby Nacogdoches, Texas, estimates authorities in Tenaha seized $3 million between 2006 and 2008, and in about 150 cases -- virtually all of which involved African-American or Latino motorists -- the seizures were improper.

Emphasis mine.

You might wonder, if the stops seem suspect, why people sign waivers forfeiting their property. There is of course the very immediate fear of what can happen to you, particularly as a person of color being pulled over in a rural town by the police. Then there are the threats. According to the article, the officers routinely threaten people with jail time and the loss of their children.*

Of course, town officials deny all wrongdoing. I scoffed while reading that. Stops like this are often the result of the so-called war on drugs. You know, the "war" that disproportionately targets people of color and takes away their liberty, property, and rights. It feeds into racial-profiling which 1) encourages cops to conduct searches of people of color and their vehicles more often when they are stopped (and treat them more harshly) 2) perpetuates the stereotype that all African Americans and Latin@s with large sums of cash must be drug dealers or doing something illegal 3)justifies the intense focus on communities of color which contributes to the disproportionate numer of arrests and convictions.**

I also scoffed because the racial disparities in arrests and convictions, and the concurrent violation of PoC's rights, have been particularly well-documented in small Texas towns.

We'll see how this plays out, though I can already here the faint cries of the coming, "It's the damn outsiders trying to make something racial outta this!"

H/T Bint via Twitter

(cross-posted)
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*This is a particularly salient threat--the state intervenes disproportionately in families of color, a fact partially attributable to both racism and classism--as Dorothy Roberts said in Shattered Bonds, "the public child welfare system equates poverty with neglect," (p 25).

**For statistics about the claims I made in this paragraph, I referred to a fact sheet I put together for my class's discussion of the prison industrial complex. The fact sheet was culled from these sources.

Things Seen 7

Part of the flyer for "Freedom Week" at my son's school:


Firstly (what an ugly word!), I don't think they're teaching the kids anything about what freedom means, beyond U.S.A. = Freedom. Of course I want my child to be able to analyze and deconstruct that with his eyes closed. And I'm frightened to think about how patriotism will be defined.

Secondly, I'm bothered because despite my largely-wordless-but-obvious sarcasm, my son wants to participate. That's how most kids are--they want to do what other kids around them are going to do. That's why people who brush off objections to school prayer and recitation of the pledge are clueless (or don't give a damn)--it doesn't matter if you say kids don't have to participate, they don't want to stand out like that. My saying, "Patriotism and freedom are not about wrapping yourself in some colors," has absolutely no effect now.

Finally, "Freedom Week" is the week after Spetember 11. How many more ways can a legitimate tragedy be milked of all meaning to 1) make a political statement and 2) demand false displays of nationalism?

I know there are some things I have to accept, living in the South (and as I told my Texas students, you joined the Confederacy, you are at least partially southern :-), but damn, this is ridiculous.
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P.S. What does it mean, to "support the flag?" That was strange to me.