How realistic is the abortion solution flooding social media? : NPR

A Berlin protester in 2020 holds up a banner reading “Anti-abortion?! Get a vasectomy” during a protest against Poland’s near-total abortion ban.

Tobias Schwarz / AFP via Getty Images

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Tobias Schwarz / AFP via Getty Images

A Berlin protester in 2020 holds up a banner reading “Anti-abortion?! Get a vasectomy” during a protest against Poland’s near-total abortion ban.

Tobias Schwarz / AFP via Getty Images

With abortion now heavily restricted in many US states following the fall of Roe v. WadeSocial media is already filled with complexities and in some cases unfounded workarounds that experts say should be scrutinized before one considers pursuing them.

Compulsory vasectomy, building pre-booked Native American abortion clinics, and placing children in adoption or foster care are among the most popular options for postpartum women.Roe abortion solutions, but experts say these suggestions are unrealistic.

Here’s what those researchers had to say about why theseRoe the workaround is not as practical as they might imagine.

Compulsory vasectomy

When news broke that abortion was almost completely banned in some states, it was reported throughout the United States that calls to vasectomy appointments are on the rise.

While many of the men are quoted saying that they are doing it for their lovers or because they are not interested in having children, Twitter is full of suggestions, both serious and not, that Men should be forced to have a vasectomy.

“I understand that they are trying to show how restrictive abortion is [bans] on the body and how unfair it is and how it’s an attack on women, but I find them quite hard to hear when it comes to the actual history of eugenics and forced sterilization of men, “Georgia Grainger, a PhD student at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland who is studying the history of vasectomy, told NPR by phone.

In one topic Grainer explains why the idea of ​​forced sterilization is bad for men, especially men of color and men with disabilities.

Eugenics in the 20th century was a form of sexism and racism in the United States, a report from the University of Michigan explains.

The report states that the first sterilization law was enacted in 1907 from Indiana, and other states passed similar legislation almost immediately after. Currently, those laws are still exist in 31 states.

Grainer says there are ways to talk about unfair restrictions on body autonomy without suggesting additional restrictions on someone else’s body.

“As long as it’s voluntary,” Grainer said, “and by choice, any contraceptive is fine, any fertility option is fine in my book. But when it’s not an option, I think there’s a real problem.”

Build pre-booked Native American abortion clinics

The reservation status of Native Americans gave rise to the idea of ​​building clinics that offered abortions by reservation.

The tribal sovereignty that the United States granted to Native Americans gives the native tribes self-governance and allows them to regulate their own affairs in the home, which means they are exempt from laws such as the ban. abortion took effect after-Roe.

One suggestion that has gone viral on social media is to start building clinics on booking as they are sovereign countries where decisions from state governments do not apply.

However, Aila Hoss, an associate professor at IUPUI’s McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis, says that building clinics on reservation is much more complicated than imagined.

“First of all, legally, it’s not as simple as ‘Oh, the tribes are sovereign nations,’ although that should be the case,” Hoss told NPR by phone.

She says the differences between criminal and civil law, who provides the services, funding and tribal membership are among the many reasons why it is difficult for tribal states to provide abortion services to people. outside.

Hoss says that booking practitioners typically work under a federally funded system known as I / T / U. The I/T/U consists of three parts: Indian Health Services (IHS), which is the federal government’s direct help with clinics and other medical services for Native Americans; tribal health services, which are medical services funded by IHS directly by tribes; and Urban Indian Health Programs, also funded by IHS but handled by non-profit organisations.

Medical practitioners in the I/T/U system cannot perform abortions on tribal land, except in certain situations, because of the Hyde Amendment. This 1976 law prohibits federal funding of abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or the life of the pregnant patient is at stake. This means that if reservations want to continue to provide abortions to non-pedigree patients, they will have to use their own resources to get a federally funded non-network doctor. and who will not have some of the legal protections granted to practitioners working in the federal system.

For example, under the federally funded system, students are insured from having to shoulder the financial burden of a malpractice lawsuit on their own. But Hoss said non-federal practitioners won’t have this protection in the event of a medical process malfunction. She added that in order to build clinics that offer abortion services to non-members, tribes will have to accept these legal and financial risks.

In addition to the legal issues surrounding the idea, it also ignores ethical and cultural factors.

Hoss says that none of the proposals to build abortion clinics came from the tribes themselves, but instead came from non-Indigenous national organizations who didn’t think of The legal and ethical implications of tribal volunteering bear the weight of a complex issue.

Reproductive health care, including abortion, is already difficult for Native American women to access on their own, Hoss said, so the proposal is to build custom clinics. This reservation comes only at a time when lack of access to abortion is affecting the non-Indigenous population. .

According to a study published in 2014 in American Journal of Public Health, more than 80% of Indian Health Services facilities, the primary provider of reproductive health care for Native American women, do not comply with IHS and Hyde Amendment regulations because they do not provide abortion services in case of rape, incest or the life of the pregnant patient is in danger. Only 5% of these facilities performed on-site abortions, and none of them stocked Mifeprex, a drug used for medical abortions.

Native Americans also have highest poverty rate of any racial group in the United States, which has negatively affected access to appropriate health care.

“And I think the first point is to think about why this isn’t important to you beforeDobbs. Why do people make these kinds of broad generalizations without thinking about the legal, ethical, and cultural implications of this? “

Adoption as an answer

When protests take place across America in the morning Dobbs sues Jackson Women’s Health Organization The decision is overturned RoeA tweet featuring an image of a couple holding a sign that read “We’ll Adopt Your Child” became a meme.

The couple in the picture, Neydy Casillas, and Sebastián Schuff, are attorneys who have spent most of their careers supporting conservative Christian legal struggles. Casillas has ties to an anti-LGBTQ law firm, Alliance Defending Freedom, which has pushed to make the US a country with more “Christian values”.

To convince people not to have abortions, many have proposed putting babies up for adoption or placing them in the foster care system.

More than 100,000 children are waiting to be adopted in the foster care system by 2020, According to the Number of Children Data Center.

Dana Davidson, co-director of adoptions and family support at The Cradle, a company that helps facilitate adoptions for families nationally and internationally, told NPR via email that the impact of the adoption overthrow Roe v. Wade and its effect on adoption will vary in different parts of the country.

“What we do know is that adoption is complicated and born of loss,” Davidson said.

Davidson says that in the agency’s experience, clients don’t make decisions between abortion and adoption at the same time.

“Adoption is an alternative to parenting, not an alternative to pregnancy,” she said.

States like Texas, have activate the law banning abortion Once Roe v. Wade was overturned, among those with the most foster youth as of 2021, according to the project Who Cares: A National Earl of Adoption and Family.

“I think it’s important to point out that although there’s been a lot of talk online suggesting a Roe v. Wade Davidson said. [is] the best choice for themselves and their families. “