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By HC116 and mim3@mim.org, May 6, 2005
The Florida legislature today passed a bill, CS-HB 1659, that would require doctors to notify the parent/guardian of a minor before the minor aborts her pregnancy.(1) Referring to a November ballot proposal to amend the Florida Constitution, the act itself says: "The Parental Notice of the Termination of a Minor's Pregnancy Act of 2005 is necessary to protect the fundamental right of parents to raise their children free from unnecessary government interference and to comply with the mandate of the citizens of Florida."(2) The Florida Senate passed the act yesterday. The House has sent the bill to Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
It is necessary to point out that this is not just a Bu$h clique thing, and it is basically nothing new: the u.$. Supreme Court ruled on parental notification for abortion before the 1980s. Most States in the united $tates already require either parental consent or notification for minors' abortions. The Florida act requires only notification, with some exceptions including medical emergencies or a history of child abuse "by a family or household member." This actually gives minors some leeway compared with requiring parental consent, but then the minors have to deal with their parents' objections and hostility.
MIM's line recognizes three strands of oppression in the world: nation, class, and gender, which includes the gender oppression of children: the principal contradiction in the Euro-Amerikan nation today is in age. Restricting abortions for young people under eighteen is for different reasons relevant to gender in particular.
Concretely, abortion practices are not without problems in patriarchal society and do not exist outside the context of imperialist and patriarchal methods in medicine. But having an abortion is a way to limit patriarchal oppression and its effects. There is no reason to force childbirth on wimmin or young people as a group, even less so with the lower life expectancies associated with childbirth and motherhood. Compared with childbirth and the lower life expectancy from motherhood, abortion results in higher life expectancy even given the alleged health risks of abortion. Still, according to a March 10, 2005, Quinnipiac University telephone poll of registered voters in the united $tates, 77% of men favored parental notification before abortion. 73% of wimmin, slightly fewer men than wimmin, did. The men and "women" of the united $tates are in agreement on the supposed need for parents to surveil and control their children's bodies; yet, children have rarely been allowed to even criticize adults for what they do with their own bodies or even the children's bodies. The gender oppressors' control of children's bodies for oppressive purposes is harsh, invasive and monopolized by adults, and it is a condition of exploitation of children and violence against children.
Interestingly, Florida's parental notification act coincides with a reported new Food and Drug Administration guideline apparently prohibiting men who have sex with men (within five years and regardless of protected/unprotected) from being anonymous sperm donors.(3) The guideline seems to have been in the making for years, since as early as 1999.(4) Unscientificially, the FDA focuses on the heterosexual/homosexual status of sex, rather than indicators of unsafe sex. What is concerning about this is not just the simplistic singling out of homosexual sex and the stigmatizing effect of that exclusion, but the FDA's restricting men who have sex with men's ability to participate in reproduction and making it further necessary for reproduction to involve straight men. Men who have sex with men do not necessarily identify as gay, but straight men who have had sex with men would probably be less likely to identify with the FDA's guideline.
MIM's line does not preclude changing reproduction practices in order to end the oppression of wimmin. Artificial insemination does not itself end patriarchy, and MIM is not chauvinists who worry about ways to increase the population growth rate of the oppressor nation. However, artificial insemination is a way to have biological reproduction without sex in this patriarchal society where all sex is rape socially; no practice of sex in patriarchal society is completely separate from power relations. If it were possible to have biological reproduction without necessitating even individual females to be part of biological reproduction, MIM would consider that, too. Such reproductive technology is for the most part theoretical, but the imperialist-patriarchy's efforts to reinforce the bond between reproduction and patriarchal sex practices--by discouraging young people from aborting their pregnancies and now by limiting artificial insemination--is a reactionary trend.
In the process, the FDA guideline not only humiliates gay men and makes them vulnerable but raises the specter of eugenics against gay persyns with their "gay" blood. For almost two decades, the FDA has prohibited men who have (had) sex with men (since 1977) from donating blood on the most specious unscientific grounds not even distinguishing between protected and unprotected sex for any type of sex, heterosexual or homosexual. Now, it tries to prohibit sexually active gay men and other men who have sex with men from donating sperm. Contracting HIV through artificial insemination is practically unheard of regardless of heterosexual/homosexual sex. "Currently, 15 women are known to have been infected with HIV via artificial insemination using sperm from anonymous donors [in five different countries] . . . . All but one of these cases of insemination-related infection occurred before the availability of HIV antibody testing."(5)
Limiting gay donation of blood and sperm is a political approach to solving a problem where money is lacking for scientific testing. There are techniques for artificial insemination used in Italy that separate HIV from sperm that comes from HIV-positive donors.(5) Yet techniques to use HIV-positive blood and sperm cost more money and time. This is another reason that socialism is important to health care and the battle against anti-gay chauvinism simultaneously. Under capitalism there are "good reasons" to prevent gays from blood and sperm donation--HIV and money. MIM is not in favor of people's risking their lives so that MSM (men having sex with men) can donate sperm and blood under capitalism. If capitalists decide not to spend money in a certain way in a blood drive and ask MSM not to donate blood, we hope these men respect it. Under socialism, we realize that the world has plenty of unemployed people and that money is really nothing but a call on labor. So we socialists are for putting the labor into eliminating practices discriminatory against gays. At the same time it would be wrong to expect today's hospital administrators and the like to behave like socialists: it won't happen. That's why MSM and other HIV risk groups need to cooperate under capitalism in questions of blood and sperm.Just from the viewpoint of increasing the population growth rate, the gender oppressors are behaving in a contradictory if not irrational way to defend their system. They discourage abortion for minors, but then they want to ban MSM as sperm donors except in cases of directed sperm donors where the womyn already knows the man, thus lowering the already scarce supply of donor sperm. And this is happening at a time when the white oppressor nation's population growth rate is declining (and some MSM are white) and the fascists and crypto-fascists are carping about the so-called immigrant invasion.
If in fact a higher population growth rate is in the oppressor nation's interests, then we can see more clearly the divergence between the gender and nation strands of oppression/struggle. The decadent Amerikans wanting more leisure time decide not to have children. Yet, many of them want to force teenagers to have children--effectively shifting the reproduction burden to youth. And they still want to prevent gays and lesbians from participating in reproduction / child rearing through sperm donation as well as adoption and foster parenting. The fascists and other white nationalists whine about the declining white proportion of the u.$. population. It's stupid: they want to have the imperialist-patriarchal cake and eat bits of it too by attacking gay people.
Another reactionary seeming irrationality is when the assorted white nationalists attack Latino migrants but then some of the nationalists want to use Latina wimmin as nannies and surrogate mothers. The gender and nation strands are clearly entangled here.
All of these contradictions put wimmin--especially those outside the Euro-Amerikan nation--youth, and sexual minorities, in a precarious position. MIM has the line to advance beyond these contradictions.
Notes:
1. Jackie Hallifax, "Lawmakers pass parental notice bill for abortions," May 6, 2006, http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/ sfl-56abortion,0,146502.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
2. http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/bills_detail.aspx?Id=17456& iSessionSelectedIndex=0&sBillSubjectText=&sBillNumberText=1659& iSponsorSelectedIndex=0&iBillListSelectedIndex=0&sStatueAmendedText=& iBillTypeSelectedIndex=0&iReferredToSelectedIndex=0& iChamberSelectedIndex=2&iBillSearchListPageIndex=0
3. David Crary, "FDA set to implement new rules rejecting gay men as anonymous sperm donors," May 6, 2005, http://www.canada.com/health/story.html?id=1ab80615-934f-4ed5-b07a-c5daf79f1e31
4. "The FDA is trying to prevent gay men from having children," April 8, 1999, http://www.familypride.org/preleases/pr_fda.php
JoSelle Vanderhooft, "Unwanted Organs : Why are gay men excluded from tissue donor programs?" http://slmetro.com/2004/5/feature.shtml
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/01/briefing/3817b2_09.pdf
"At its Human Tissue Seminar on April 8, 1999 the FDA announced proposed regulations which would make it illegal for gay men to be sperm donors, block medical assistance for infertility and almost eliminate the possibility of having biological children. Outlining the regulations was the FDA's chief architect of the proposal, Ruth Solomon, M.D., Director of the Human Tissue Program, Office of Blood and Research and Review, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) of the FDA."
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/00/jan00/012800/c000447.pdf
Tom Musbach, "FDA weighs ban on gay sperm donations," February 12, 2002, http://hivworkshop.com/feb02-3.htm
5. Elizabeth Donegan, "Transmission of HIV by Blood, Blood Products, Tissue Transplantation, and Artificial Insemination," October 2003, http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/InSite?page=kb-07&doc=kb-07-02-09
6. "Male Pregnancy Now an Option, Beijing Surgeon Says," May 29, 2002, http://www.china.org.cn/english/2002/May/33452.htm
7. Gary Younge, "Activists furious at limits on gay sperm donors," May 21, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1221520,00.html
8. Aimee Dolloff, "FDA blood donor rule upsets UM students," April 19, 2005, http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=112288&z=176
9. Dennis Bueckert, "Sperm in jeopardy: Bill critics," October 6, 2003, anoe.ca/channel_health_news_detail.asp?channel_id=39&menu_item_id=4&news_id=8594