Carol Mason and
Jeanne Flavin,
"Beyond Carrots and Sticks: Effective Public Education and Feminist Research in Conservative States"
(page 2 of 4)
Regional differences in abortion access are well-documented. 87% of
all counties in the country (in which about 34% of all women live) do
not have an abortion provider.[4]
Nearly one in ten women obtaining an
abortion in the United States must travel more than 100 miles to reach
an abortion provider.[5]
By contrast, the number of "crisis pregnancy
centers" (or CPCs) far surpasses that of abortion providers. CPCs are
often designed to resemble legitimate reproductive health care clinics
but in reality many are fronts that exist mainly to pressure women to
continue their pregnancies to term. CPCs have a well documented history
of misleading and intimidating women in order to prevent them from
accessing abortion care. A 2006 study found that nearly 90% of federally
funded crisis pregnancy centers provided false and misleading
information about the physical and mental health effects of
abortion.[6]
In addition to being at the nexus of punitive responses to drug
addiction and limited access to reproductive and other health services
(including drug treatment), many regions suffer the disadvantage of
being under-estimated as a site for effective public education and
grassroots advocacy. There has been little attention paid to how
regional or local educators and activists combat punitive measures and
advance the cause of reproductive justice. Although many of the major
reproductive rights organizations are concentrated in New England,
public education, advocacy and effective activism most certainly can and
do take place outside of the liberal East and West coasts.
Consider Oklahoma.
Oklahoma has been deemed among the most conservative states, in part,
because of its draconian anti-choice laws and its punitive attitudes
toward women. Despite the fact that some progress has been made in
reproductive services (for example, the gap between white women and the
large population of Native American women living in Oklahoma who receive
prenatal care has diminished in recent years), Oklahoma has very high
rates of domestic violence, mandates abstinence-only education, suffers
the highest rate of incarcerating women in the U.S., and is ranked third
for least access to abortion.[7]
In 2005, there were only six abortion
providers in Oklahoma; and 96% of all counties (serving 57% of Oklahoman
women) had no abortion provider. Five years later there were only three
clinics offering abortion services in Oklahoma, while 42 CPCs pepper the
state.
Not all young people in Oklahoma and other red states reject
pro-choice or reproductive justice positions. On the contrary, often
they are only exposed to anti-abortion and right-wing messages and when
life circumstances, such as a desire to have sex outside of marriage or
an unplanned pregnancy, place them at odds with such messaging they
actively look for different perspectives but don't find them. Finding
information about access to abortion is incredibly convoluted for young
women in these states, even with the Internet. When women in Oklahoma
can finally see their way around the ubiquitous fake crisis pregnancy
centers to a proper clinic that offers comprehensive reproductive health
services, receiving these services is not usually a gateway experience
to political action or empowerment. Indeed, the shame and secrecy
surrounding such a medically safe and legally sanctioned operation as
abortion are palpable. Even distributing condoms on Oklahoma college
campuses is controversial. The divorce rate in Oklahoma is far above
the national average because, local knowledge attests, young men and
women are taught that it is necessary to wed before having intercourse.
Factors that may contribute to Oklahoma's teen birth rate being higher
than the national average include the stigma of abortion and
contraception, as well as sexual assault and domestic violence rates,
which are more than triple the national rates in the Sooner State. STD
rates are high because (again according to anecdotal reports) young
people receive scare-tactic lectures that show gruesome, advanced-stage
diseases and—instead of relying on regular exams that constitute
routine reproductive and sexual health care—they presume that someone
who looks "clean" is infection-free.[8]
Under the pressure of these punitive and shaming attitudes and scare
tactics that are instituted in schools and churches, young women in red
states like Oklahoma are not often encouraged to claim the basic human
right to reproductive and sexual health and education. Many mainstream
organizations wrongly believe that it is a waste of resources to invest
in states where right-wing and fundamentalist ideologies prevail. But
writers, researchers, educators, students, and activists in these states
know that plenty of women, especially young women, are hungry for
factual, evidence-based education and have the potential to become
effective grassroots and state based leaders for reproductive justice.
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