Carol Mason and Jeanne Flavin, "Beyond Carrots and Sticks: Effective Public Education and Feminist Research in Conservative States"
(page 4 of 4)

Of course, the work in Oklahoma is not done. As we write this essay, Oklahoman reproductive rights activists continue to protest and educate the public about these and other laws that treat women as if they are too stupid to understand the consequences of their reproductive decisions. These measures include: requiring a woman seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound within an hour of the procedure and have its findings explained to her; requiring women to fill out a lengthy questionnaire and have this information recorded on a publicly accessible state website; and banning lawsuits against doctors who withhold information that could cause a woman to seek an abortion. Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry recently vetoed a bill that would have banned insurance companies from covering abortion and requiring women to purchase separate and special abortion insurance before a pregnancy occurs, thereby separating abortion—a usually exceedingly simple operation that can eliminate many life-threatening medical problems—categorically from health care.[14]

In the struggle for reproductive justice, documenting the application of carrots and sticks, as Goodwin does so capably, is important, but it cannot be an endpoint of analysis or action. The struggle requires education, advocacy, activism, and research. Especially now. As institutions of higher education implode on the west coast and as the economic downturn depletes jobs on the east coast, the "flyover" parts of America are going to see an influx of feminist scholars. Universities and colleges in middle America have unprecedented opportunities to hire newly minted PhDs from coastal schools, which in turn may go a long way to addressing regional stereotypes. This also may tip the scales in historically conservative schools and more evenly distribute progressively minded faculty across the U.S. As feminist scholars who are working on reproductive justice issues, we need to be cognizant of this shift and its potential. Now more than ever we may have the critical mass of feminist faculty, hence the opportunity, to train students in research methods that are intersectional and interdisciplinary. Promoting well-designed empirical and qualitative research, and theorizing dynamics of power based on insights that such research yields, can dovetail significantly with local and national organizing. And our students will respond. In addition to the public education forums that made current medical and social research available to policymakers and media concerned about the Hernandez case, for example, Oklahoma students have been inspired to do their own research. A group of Oklahoma State University and University of Oklahoma undergraduates have teamed up to translate their own absurd experiences with abstinence-only sex education and CPCs into data that can be used to demonstrate their ineffectual and often deleterious consequences for young women.[15]

Public education, collaborative research, and insightful feminist theory are as crucial to the legal and moral victories that have been recently won in red states as is the mobilizing of grassroots women's health activists, women in recovery, local healthcare providers, political action committees, and state policymakers. All are needed to shift the emphasis from a punitive, criminal justice approach (the stick), to a general-welfare-promoting public health approach (the carrot) that addresses the problems of pregnancy, parenting, and drug use. This requires that punitive laws and ill-conceived prosecutions be challenged. But this shift is not the full scope of the change that needs to occur. If the criminalization and regulation of women's reproductive decisions are to be stopped, the impetus must come from the women and communities most affected by them. These communities have been poorly served by health care policies based on outdated ideas and educational models based on fear and loathing. From our experiences in Oklahoma, however, resistance from communities can be overcome by presenting them with factual, evidence-based research. It is our time to offset or counter the scare tactics, stigmatizing attitudes, and punitive policies with scholarship, public education, and outreach. Important allies and potential allies in the struggle for reproductive justice exist everywhere, "even" and especially in the red states.

Endnotes

1. We prefer to avoid the term "pregnant addicts" or "crack addicts" given that most women who use drugs—and most men, too, for that matter—are not addicted to them. Also, referring to people as "addicts" or ("the disabled" or "the elderly") encourages us to define people by one particular feature of their lives. [Return to text]

2. "Discipline and punish" is a reference to the work of Michel Foucault, who argued that the modern impetus to encourage self-discipline is no less fraught with power dynamics than is old-fashioned punishment. [Return to text]

3. National Advocates for Pregnant Women, 2010. Data file is on file with Jeanne Flavin. [Return to text]

4. Rachel K. Jones, Mia R.S. Zolna, Stanley K. Henshaw and Lawrence B. Finer, "Abortion in the United States: Incidence and Access to Services, 2005," Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 40 (2008): 6-16. [Return to text]

5. Ibid. [Return to text]

6. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reforms - Minority Staff, "False and Misleading Health Information Provided by Federally Funded Pregnancy Resource Centers" (PDF), July 2006. [Return to text]

7. Sources attesting to these claims include: Oklahoma Women's Almanac, Oklahoma State Department of Health, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, and Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. [Return to text]

8. See Bob Darcy and Jennifer F. Paustenbaugh, Oklahoma Women's Almanac (Stillwater, OK: OPSA Press, 2006), for statistics and national rankings of Oklahoma's divorce rate, teen birth rate, and STD rates. [Return to text]

9. In addition to being faculty at Oklahoma State University (Stillwater) and Fordham University (Bronx, NY) respectively, we are both board members of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, based in New York City. We also grew up in conservative areas, Carol in West Virginia and Jeanne in rural Kansas. [Return to text]

10. To make this point to the local community, Tulsa physician William Yarborough, the medical director of the internal medicines clinic at University of Oklahoma College of Medicine-Tulsa and medical director of a local rehab clinic, teamed up with Dr. Barry Lester, who directs the Brown University Center for the Study of Children at Risk to write a letter to the editor of the Oklahoman. They wrote that "no credible evidence links methamphetamine use during pregnancy with stillbirth" and that sentencing Hernandez was "a travesty that flies in the face of the past 25 years of scientific research." William Yarborough and Barry Lester, "The Real Crime," The Oklahoman 3 January 2008. See also Barry M. Lester, "Prenatal Drug Exposure & Child Outcome: Time for Policy to Catch up with Research," presentation presented at the "Women, Pregnancy, and Drug Use: Medical Facts, Practical Responses and the Well-Being of Children and Families" forum at the Presbyterian Health Foundation Conference Center in Oklahoma City. [Return to text]

11. Timothy W. Lineberry and J. Michael Bostwick, "Methamphetamine Abuse: A Perfect Storm of Complications," Mayo Clinic Proceedings 81.1(2006): 77-84. [Return to text]

12. Whitner v. South Carolina 492 S.E.2d 777 (S.C. 1997). Many charges and convictions of child abuse and neglect, drug distribution, and manslaughter that are leveled against pregnant women have been dropped on the grounds that the legislation was never written with the intent that it be applied to the context of pregnancy. For example, the court in Ward v. State held that it is impossible for a fetus to "possess" the drugs since a fetus would not be capable of handling, manipulating or using drugs. Ward v. State 184 S.W.3d 874, 876 (Tex. App. 2006). See also Reinesto 894 P.2d at 736-7; and other cases cited in State v. Martinez, brief of Amici Curiae Sutin, Thayer & Browne, P.C. et al. "In Support of Respondent." Part of this discussion was previously published in Jeanne Flavin and Lynn Paltrow, "Punishing Pregnant Drug-Using Women: Defying Law, Medicine and Common Sense," Journal of Addictive Diseases 29.2 (2010): 231-244. [Return to text]

13. Johnson v. State, 602 So. 2d 1288, 1297 (Fla. 1992). [Return to text]

14. According to an article in the Tulsa World, it was the fourth veto this session that Henry used on an abortion measure. The other three vetoes have been overridden. [Return to text]

15. Oklahoma students credit attending Hampshire College's Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP) annual conference on reproductive justice as a source of inspiration. Taking the CLLP conference as a model but adapting it to local needs, Oklahoma students and faculty created a regional workshop, "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Reproductive and Sexual Health," on January 21, 2011 at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater and are planning another conference for February 2012 at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. See the Oklahoma State University Gender and Women's Studies website and contact Oklahomans for Reproductive Justice for more information. [Return to text]

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