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Fighting
the War at Home No one expected George W. Bush to protect a woman's right to choose — he's been explicitly anti-choice since 1994. You would think, however, that those who oppose a woman's right to choose abortion would at least be committed to providing the kind of sexual health information and contraceptive access that can reduce the need for abortion in the first place. But inexplicably, the administration and its anti-choice allies in Congress are also actively attacking the family planning and medically accurate sexual health education programs that are proven ways to reduce the number of abortions and the spread of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. This coordinated assault on women's rights, which Planned Parenthood has documented in the report, George W. Bush's War on Women: A Pernicious Web (http://www.plannedparenthood.org/library/facts/030114_waronwomen.html),began back in December 2000 and continues to gather steam. Ultimately, anti-choice politicians hope to stack U.S. courts with justices who will help them overturn Roe v. Wade — but they're not waiting for that day to begin undermining the right to choose. Legislative infringements on women's rights are an integral part of the anti-choice approach. In early November, President Bush signed the first federal legislation banning abortion in the history of the United States. Without a health exception for women who need abortions, the bill is clearly unconstitutional, and is being fought vigorously in the courts by Planned Parenthood and other pro-choice groups. In the 2003 legislative session in Oregon, for their part, Right to Life and anti-choice hardliner legislators introduced numerous bills to impose restrictions on access to safe and legal abortion services. Many state legislators across the country continue to pass bills that limit women's choices little by little, hemming in our freedoms bit by bit. Waiting periods before abortions impose a huge burden on women who must travel to access abortion services, while state mandated biased information laws force women to view or listen to anti-choice propaganda before they are allowed to exercise their right to choose. Mandatory parental notification laws, present on many state books, often don't take the complexities of real families into account, and force adolescent girls who may be the victims of abuse or incest or neglect to testify in front of a judge if they cannot gain parental consent for an abortion. By targeting abortion providers and imposing restrictive regulations on the kinds of facilities and providers who can perform abortions, anti-choice hardliners ensure that even women who are eligible to obtain an abortion will have a hard time finding a place that can perform the procedure. Of course, some women, and all men, will never need an abortion. But that doesn't mean that they don't suffer when anti-choice forces are allowed to succeed. The attacks on reproductive rights and health encompass contraception and sexual health education as well. Anti-choice ideologues who testified at FDA advisory panel hearings against making emergency contraception (EC) available over the counter presented ideologically based opinions about pregnancy as if they were medical fact. Their statements were the clearest proof yet that anti-choice forces are trying to limit access to contraception as well. In Oregon, anti-choice hardliners have worked to oppose contraceptive equity repeatedly over the last decade. And if they can't keep contraception from being available, they'll make sure that as few people as possible know how to use it. Funding for abstinence-only education is on the rise, even though there is simply no proof that these programs work. There is, of course, ample evidence that medically accurate, age-appropriate comprehensive sexual health education can keep teens healthier and safer. And a majority of American parents want their children to receive just that kind of education. But anti-choice hardliners don't. And their desire to withhold information from the public exposes one of their most deeply held, and most insulting, beliefs: that women cannot be trusted to make their own sexual health decisions. This fundamental assumption illustrates the larger, dangerous, misogynistic agenda at work. Women do not need the government to make medical and moral decisions for them. Anti-choice lawmakers want the public to believe that it is appropriate for them to impose their narrow ideological vision on American society, eliminating reproductive choice and taking away women's agency. But women are autonomous human beings, and we deserve the rights, respect, and freedom that accompany that responsibility. Kellie Shoemaker is the Public Affairs Co-Director of Planned Parenthood Health Services of Southwestern Oregon. The 31st anniversary of Roe v. Wade will be celebrated at 6 pm, Jan. 22 at the Wild Duck.
Good
Timing Only a powerful grassroots movement can stop President Bush and his anti-choice colleagues in Congress . . . we must save the freedom to choose the same way we secured it — one person at a time. — NARAL Pro-Choice America Thirty years ago I was young and wild and so were my ovaries. One sassy egg, not yet adjusted to my new lesbian identity, sent out its biological call. "Woo hoo, IUD's gone. Let's par-tay!" I was in my last year of college at the UO. To fulfill the foreign language requirement, I'd enrolled in a three-month intensive Spanish program in Mexico City. I was eager for lesbian liberation, but I cast off my birth control method one sperm cell too soon. Next thing I knew there I was, pregnant in Mexico. I was never mommy material. My DNA code is DNR — Do Not Reproduce. Being a lesbian was the best birth control, except for that unexpected adjustment period. Speaking of periods, I wanted mine. I'd found only one feminist in all of Mexico City. She was the first responder to my new how-to-meet-women strategy — a copy of Sisterhood is Powerful sticking out of my backpack. While I filled out forms in the university registration office, a short-haired woman in faded overalls flashed me a smile. Nice. But, as I was disappointed to find out, she wasn't a lesbian. Still, Becky was funny and fun and we clicked immediately. It didn't take her long to pick up on the subtle cues of my pregnancy, such as puking in the gutter every morning on the way to our composition lesson. I was embarrassed because I'd already made this big deal of being a dyke. Becky was cool, though. "Promise me one thing," she said. "Do not get an abortion in Mexico." Her best friend had bled to death in an unregulated Mexican clinic only two years before. That was enough to scare me into being pro-life — mine! Becky helped me call the Feminist Women's Health Center in L.A. and make an appointment. In three weeks I'd finish the Spanish program and then would rush my rapidly bloating body back to the States while I was still in my first trimester. I'd be cutting it close. I waved goodbye to Becky and pulled my old Volvo wagon into the Pemex station to gas up. I hid the $300 for the abortion in a text book. If I drove 12 hours a day, I could be out of Mexico in two days. I slept in my car at the side of the road. Stretched out in the back I made up stories — in my best polished Spanish — to tell any banditos in case I got hassled. The old Volvo, dusty, and weak from bad Mexican petrol, finally lugged me across the U.S. border. The sleepy Texas town of Eagle Pass was populated by folks who were unlikely to take kindly to a Jewish, abortion-bound lesbian. Even so, I was glad to be in the USA. While my tires crunched along the unpaved main road, every dumb patriotic song I'd ever learned sprang to mind. Growing up on anti-war politics, I've always protested obscene nationalism. I'm the one who, despite contemptuous glares of sports fans, sits down during the national anthem. So naturally, when I saw an American flag flying over the Eagle Pass post office, one thought crossed my mind. Home! "Oe'r the land of the freeeeee," I sang through tears of relief and ricocheting hormones. I parked in front of a little café and went in to freshen up. Three wide, sweaty, hairy-backed, Caucasian men sat at the counter, their gray hair buzzed short above their bulging red necks. My people! I slipped into the bathroom and ran the water while I sobbed. I washed my pregnancy-swollen face and steeled myself for the last thousand miles of my journey. Thank God and the feminists, in my country a woman's right to choose was protected, guaranteed and safe. I made it to L.A. and the clinic workers' welcoming arms just in time. Abortion rights are in peril. To find out what you can do, log on to http://www.naral.org/takeaction/ Sally Sheklow has been a part of the Eugene community since 1972 and is a member of the WYMPROV! comedy troupe. Her column, which began at EW in 1999, also runs in several other newspapers and magazines around the country and Down Under.
A
Range of Jobs I was surprised to pick up the Jan. 8 issue of EW and read Michael Shuman's guest column laying out the arguments he wished he had made at our debate during the Sustainability Conference last November. In the spirit of "better late than never," I'd like to respond to some of his statements. It is simply not true that the Lane Metro Partnership is guilty of "preferring non-local business" in our economic development activities. I tried to make that point repeatedly in our debate. We simply try to help "non-local" businesses relocate here in addition to helping local businesses expand and grow here. The truth is that most of our time and effort is spent helping local businesses both because there are more of them and because they are the most likely candidates to grow and expand here. The problem with Shuman's argument is that he posits a false "either/or" dichotomy. He believes economic development efforts must target either local businesses or non-local businesses, but can't do both. A corollary of this seems to be that you can either target small businesses or large businesses, but not both. Most of Shuman's arguments center on retail businesses: Wal-Mart versus small specialty retail or Borders versus the local bookstore. Whatever the merits of this argument, it has nothing to do with economic development as we practice it in Oregon. Economic development here focuses on what is called the "traded sector;" that is, businesses that make, assemble or distribute things for sale primarily outside of its geographic location. This includes things like manufacturing, natural resources, tourism, even call centers. It doesn't include things like grocery stores and bookstores, or for that matter accountants or dentists. Generally, about two-thirds of a local economy consists of sales of goods and services primarily to people who live in that community. That economy rises and falls based on the income and population of the local area. The remaining one-third of the economy is what we call the traded sector, which means money coming into the area to help support that local, largely retail, economy. That ratio remains roughly constant over time. If the traded sector grows, the other two-thirds of the economy grows with it. If the traded sector declines, the rest of the economy shrinks as less money circulates in the region to support it. The key to economic development is to help the traded sector grow. That includes existing businesses and start-ups as well as businesses that expand or relocate here from outside the area. In other states, where a sales tax is a primary source of local tax revenue, there is tremendous competition for large retail outlets among local economic development agencies. In Oregon, without a sales tax, it is far less important to local governments where a retail establishment locates, and therefore our scarce economic development resources are not spent trying to attract or assist retail businesses. Instead, we use those resources in an effort to retain and attract traded-sector businesses and the jobs they produce. The idea that local businesses don't leave is simply false. Just ask Portland what happened to homegrown Louisiana Pacific. For that matter, look at Nike, which started in Eugene and now is headquartered in Beaverton. Rosen Products was a local high-tech firm that started here but was bought out by a national firm and later left the area. By contrast, Symantec is an out-of-state company that moved here more than a decade ago. It has not only grown and expanded, it has produced several spin-off companies that are still here. Are those spin-offs local or non-local? Many of the complaints Shuman makes about non-local businesses are really complaints about big businesses and growing businesses, whether homegrown or imports. The problem is that an economic strategy that embraces small businesses only is a low-wage, low-benefit strategy. What most of us want is a diversified economy that produces a range of jobs for people at different points in their lives, requiring different skills and interests, and providing a variety of employment opportunities. Shuman's strategy of only encouraging small, local businesses cannot achieve this. In his book Going Local, Shuman claims that his strategy doesn't need any government assistance to succeed, that it can prove its superiority in the marketplace. I told him in our debate that this was music to my ears. Unfortunately, we are still waiting to see evidence of that success. Jack Roberts is executive director of the Lane Metro Partnership.
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