Emily Douglas | The Nation

Precious little time during last night’s vice-presidential debate was devoted to an issue the Republicans have been hellbent on politicizing since they took control of the House in 2010. That, of course, was the niggling question of whether Romney and Ryan would work to further restrict access to abortion and contraception—or outlaw it altogether—if they win on November 6. Romney’s long career of flip-flopping on this issue has hit some kind of time-lapse photography in recent weeks, with his flips and flops coming fast and furiously: in Des Moines on Tuesday, he told an audience “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.” Perhaps he should alert his running mate, who’s a co-sponsor of no less than thirty-eight abortion-restriction bills. (Romney’s staff walked back his statement the next morning.)

Debate #2 was a good time to clear this up, since Jim Lehrer failed to raise the issue in last week’s Obama/Romney match-up. And, with about ten minutes left in the debate, moderator Martha Raddatz finally did. But many of us watching at home, the question she asked left a lot to be desired:

RADDATZ: I want to move on, and I want to return home for these last few questions. This debate is, indeed, historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion. Please talk about how you came to that decision. Talk about how your religion played a part in that. And, please, this is such an emotional issue for so many people in this country…

RYAN: Sure.

RADDATZ: …please talk personally about this, if you could.

There is a good argument against this way of framing the question. Joe Biden and Paul Ryan’s personal and religious beliefs aren’t really the most salient issue here: their policy positions are, and the way those positions impact 52 percent of the population of this country. Raddatz’s question took the focus off how restrictions on abortion rights impact actual women (plus, as Katha Pollitt put it last night, her voice “got all mourny and tragic”).

For many Democrats and pro-choicers, talking about religion and abortion in the same breath has long felt like playing on right-wing turf. As Irin Carmon wrote, “[S]he chose to frame the late-breaking, much-yearned for question about “social issues” in just the way Republicans prefer: in terms of religion.” But does it have to be that way? Joe Biden offered voters who struggle with the morality of abortion a way to separate their personal, religious beliefs and their public, political orientation toward the issue. He didn’t quite make the case that his religion leads him to support abortion rights, but he drew a clear distinction between his religious beliefs and his political position. And he acknowledged that equally devout people can and do come to different moral determinations about abortion than he does.

BIDEN: My religion defines who I am, and I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And has particularly informed my social doctrine. The Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who—who can’t take care of themselves, people who need help.

With regard to—with regard to abortion, I accept my church’s position on abortion as a—what we call a [inaudible] doctrine. Life begins at conception in the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life.

But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the—the congressman. I—I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that—women they can’t control their body. It’s a decision between them and their doctor.

It’s not intrinsically anti-woman to grapple with abortion through the lens of religion or morality. It’s just that religion has so often and so effectively been used as a weapon against women, demeaned them, made them incapable of being moral actors and dismissed the complexities of their lives. And while “personal views” aren’t necessarily best placed at a vice-presidential debate, I’m glad we have a prominent Catholic politician on record that faith and respect for women’s own decision-making don’t have to be opposed.

I wasn’t thrilled that Sister Simone Campbell, one of the Nuns on the Bus traveling the country to oppose Ryan’s budget, identified as pro-life in her DNC speech, either—but if she was going to go there, I loved that she did it by describing support for the Affordable Care Act as “part of my pro-life stance.” Both she and Joe Biden have offered pro-choice, anti-choice and confused Catholics a way to vote for the Democratic ticket with a clear conscience. And for that I’m grateful—to Raddatz, too. Besides, as Amy Davidson notes, Raddatz made use of one of her many strong follow-ups in a way that put the attention right back on women: “I want to go back to the abortion question here. If the Romney-Ryan ticket is elected, should those who believe that abortion should remain legal be worried?” For anyone who still hadn’t figured it out, by the end of the night, the answer was clear.

For more reproductive rights coverage, check out the Nation editors on the "Year of the Woman." And be sure to sign up for Feminist Roundup, The Nation's weekly newsletter featuring feminist content, here.

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The Guttmacher Institute today released a nationally representative study, the first of its kind, finding that most women seeking abortions had experienced at least one “disruptive event” in the year prior to their abortion. Such “social shocks,” as study author Ann Moore called them, include moving multiple times, being unemployed, separating from a partner, falling behind on rent or a mortgage or having a partner incarcerated, among others. Physical or sexual abuse is another kind of “disruptive event,” one that seven percent of women obtaining abortions reported. “Women with abusive partners are substantially over-represented among abortion patients,” the study concluded. Perhaps surprising to some, more than half of the women surveyed reported using a contraceptive method in the month before they become pregnant.

The study comes as a needed reality check after Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin’s ridiculous remarks about the likelihood of pregnancy after “legitimate rape.” As this and other studies suggest, rape and sexual coercion play a role in a significant number of pregnancies. The link found in the Guttmacher study between intimate partner violence and unintended pregnancy in particular calls out for further examination, said Moore. “There are direct ways that violent partners, and nonviolent partners, can interfere with a women’s ability to prevent unintended pregnancy. There’s also a relation between the instability that comes with being in a violent relationship.” Two years ago, Lynn Harris reported on a crop of studies that identified a phenomenon researchers called “reproductive coercion” among teens in abusive relationships, “in which abusive partners subject young women already at risk of violence to the additional health risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.” Birth control sabotage also showed up in the Guttmacher study released today, with six respondents of forty-nine saying their partners had undermined their efforts to prevent pregnancy, for example by tampering with contraceptives. Researcher Elizabeth Miller has called for more study into whether “pregnancy ambivalence”—the term researchers use to describe sexually active women who don’t want to get pregnant but aren’t trying to prevent it—is really “male-partner influence on women’s reproductive health and autonomy.”

Akin’s comments have provoked a number of thoughtful responses about how often women are obligated to justify their rapes, abortions and other personal, private life events. Whether a rape victim appears “legitimate” can often determine whether the rape is prosecuted, and whether the jury convicts the defendant. Whether a woman seeking an abortion is doing so for a “legitimate” reason—her health is in danger, or the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest—can determine whether she can legally or practically access the abortion at all.

Drawing attention to women who experience reproductive coercion or seek an abortion as a result of a rape might, on the surface, suggest that we’re trying to find an “excuse” for an abortion—a “legitimate” reason—that, might, just might, placate conservatives. As Maya Dusenbery wrote on Feministing, “You don’t know anything about other people’s lives. The point is to show that we can’t categorize abortions into these different types, because every single woman’s reason for getting an abortion is absolutely unique” (emphasis in the original).

Hearing about other people’s abortions requires in us a deep humility about what we can know about others’ life circumstances and how and why they make the choices they do. We can’t categorize abortions, and we shouldn’t. But our ability, as progressives, to push for policies that respond to the realities and complexities of women’s lives would be enriched if we all understood more about what other factors are going on in women’s lives when they are pregnant and aren’t sure they want to be (or are certain they don’t want to be).

The purpose of talking about the specific situations in a woman’s life is not to pit the women who deserve abortions against unworthy ones. No one is entitled to turn a personal opinion about when a private medical procedure is ethical and when it isn’t into a law that interferes with a decision made between a provider and patient. For many women, an abortion is exactly what they need, and all they need. But for many others, it’s a sign that they lack the necessary sexuality education, access to birth control or safety at home that would enable them to prevent pregnancy. Even more pernicious is the reality that abortion can be a sign of an abusive partner who won’t use the birth control a woman knows very well about.

“For women who have a great deal of insecurity in their lives, abortion is not a magic bullet, but it helps them manage everything else they have going on,” says Moore. “All the social turbulence sets the stage on which she winds up being exposed to an unintended pregnancy.”

There’s a danger that seeking to understand more about the circumstances of women’s abortion choices reiterates the same power dynamic we’re fighting against: that a broader public is entitled to know why a woman is getting an abortion, find out all about her life, and make up their minds about her decision. And I’m not convinced that even if they do understand the real and complex reasons behind a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy, anti-choicers will see how heartless and fantasy-based their belief system is. But those of us who support women’s autonomy, in all circumstances, can’t let our commitment to non-judgment interfere with getting a fuller picture on the lives of women who have sought abortions. As anyone who has been to an abortion speakout knows, there’s a lot to learn.

“The hopeful impact of this study is to help make clear the complex social circumstances that women are experiencing at the time that they are choosing to terminate a pregnancy,” says Moore. “It helps fill out the life stories of the challenges women are facing. These are not easy experiences that we were measuring. We hope it will help raise awareness about often turbulent lives that women are having to juggle at the same time that they’re facing unintended pregnancy.”

For more of The Nation's coverage on Todd Akin's comments, read Ilyse Hogue's The Danger of Laughing at Todd Akin.

There’s been a lot of over-thinking it about poor Julia, the composite character created by the Obama campaign team. In my book, she’s a success despite the backlash, because, in keeping the focus all about policy, the infographic of her life got even her detractors to spell out the popular stuff that they’re against. Ross Douthat, usually a master of obfuscation, is forced to tick off the injustices:

The list of Obama-bestowed benefits includes Head Start when Julia’s a tyke, tax credits and Pell grants to carry her through college and low-interest loan repayment afterward, guaranteed birth control when she’s a 20-something and government-sponsored loans when she wants to start a business, all of it culminating in a stress-free retirement underwritten by Medicare and Social Security.

Oh, no! A stress-free retirement! Sounds awful.

Campbell Brown saw in “The Life of Julia” evidence of Obama’s ongoing tendency to condescend to women, calling it “a silly and embarrassing caricature based on the assumption that women look to government at every meaningful phase of their lives for help.” About a family member who lost her job, Brown writes, “Friends and family, not government, have been there at the dire moments when she has asked them to be.… [S]he, and they, wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Obama does condescend to women. But his policies generally don’t. Faux protestations that women are smarter than men: that’s condescending. Telling us it’s “common sense” that 15-year-olds can’t figure out how to take emergency contraception correctly: condescending. Backing policies that enable to women to access reasonably priced health insurance, earn fair wages, pay for college, start a small business: that’s showing respect.

“The Life of Julia” doesn’t condescend to women, either. (And don’t forget, many of the policies Julia benefits from—the Small Business Administration loan, the better kindergarden for her son Zachary, Medicare—also benefit men.) We’re just unaccustomed to having our attention drawn to the way the government provides benefits and social insurance to a middle-class person throughout his or her life. Suzanne Mettler’s work has demonstrated that far more Americans make use of government programs—like the mortgage interest tax deduction, student loans, tax deductions for employer-sponsored health insurance and Social Security—than realize they do, a phenomenon she refers to as the “submerged state.” And even when people are aware of their reliance on government programs, they tend to be embarrassed about it, as the New York Times found, or dislike that they do. The backlash to “Julia” made it clear that, as Nancy Folbre put it, “liberals need to make a stronger case for collective investments in the development of human capital.” As Folbre points out, Julia is not the recipient of public assistance—in fact, she’s a “model member of the business community” who pays taxes, might have employees, invests in the economy through consumer spending:

Sure, we could move toward an every-man-for-himself economy. But private insurers typically have a financial incentive to exclude those most at risk. And choosing to invest only in your own human capital is a lot like choosing to invest all your resources in one small company.

Most of us will do better with a diversified portfolio that includes both socially responsible commitments and protection against long-term uncertainty.

What’s most remarkable about “The Life of Julia” is how much the government doesn’t help her out with, as my colleague Bryce Covert observed. Paid leave to care for Zachary? Childcare after she goes back to work? There’s no government help for Julia there, giving her plenty of time to rely on the bonds of kinship Brown so prizes.

Nebraska’s state legislature, one of the more inventive when it comes to finding ways to restrict access to reproductive healthcare, is poised to override Governor Dave Heineman’s veto of a bill that would extend prenatal care to undocumented immigrants. Heineman, who is strenuously anti-choice, is apparently equally strenuously anti-immigrant. But other Republicans and anti-choicers in the state evidently are not: the legislation is endorsed by the Republican speaker of the legislature, Mike Flood, who has sponsored legislation to ban late-term abortions, as well as a number of other anti-choice lawmakers, and by Nebraska Right to Life and the Nebraska Catholic Conference.

The bill would restore coverage for prenatal services to pregnant women who are ineligible for Medicaid for reasons other than income (those are largely undocumented women, though not solely). Nebraska provided that care until two years ago, when the federal government said it could no longer use Medicaid funds to do so. The state could have preserved funding simply by switching its funding stream to SCHIP, but declined to do so. Sixteen other states provide such coverage to undocumented women, but no neighboring states do; Governor Heineman claims that the legislation would turn Nebraska into a “a magnet for illegal aliens.”

If the bill has made enemies of friends, it has also made for allies of usual opponents, including Right to Life and the pro-immigration reform, pro-universal health care group Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest. Jennifer Carter, director of public policy at the Appleseed Center, told me “This is first time we’ve had a common focus that I can recall” but “there’s been a lot of common ground on it from the perspective of protecting the health of unborn children. it’s foundational: you have to start with good prenatal care.” The local Planned Parenthood affiliate, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, supports the bill and has mobilized “friendly senators and our supporters” but has mostly stayed out of the coalition’s way. “Particularly in Nebraska, there is some politics that enters in whenever Planned Parenthood shows up. In this instance, we don’t want politics to get intermixed with what’s right for a women and her healthcare,” says Kyle Carlson, director of legal and public policy at Planned Parenthood of the Heartland.

The coverage provided is limited to healthcare services that affect the health of the fetus; in some cases, even postpartum care for the woman is not covered. As the Appleseed Center’s fact sheet states, “The unborn child, rather than the pregnant woman, is the recipient of CHIP-funded services.” Does it matter that the state is adopting federal policy that says that prenatal coverage is specifically for “unborn children,” not women? “We generally find that troubling, because we focus on women and on healthy pregnancies, and we try not to separate those two,” Carlson says. “We try not to get too hung up on that, but that’s not how we would word it.”

When I asked Carter whether the law might expand rights for fetuses at the expense of women, she answered, “The only thing that this law does is adopt what is already in federal law. It wouldn’t technically expand anything.”

Meanwhile, Nebraska remains a deeply inhospitable state for women, whether citizens or not, to access reproductive healthcare. Graded “F” by NARAL Pro-Choice America, Nebraska has biased counseling and mandatory delay laws on the books, doesn’t permit the use of Medicaid funds for abortion care and has in recent sessions considered both a bill to amp up counseling requirements mandating that doctors suggest to patients that they’re taking the risk harming their mental health by having an abortion, and a direct challenge to Roe that would ban abortions after twenty weeks without providing an exception for the health of the woman.

While this bill is laudable for expanding healthcare services, Nebraska’s antipathy to healthcare for pregnant women means “we have been forced into a position of fighting to fund piecemeal what is anything but the full and holistic needs of every woman,” says Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

Today is the last day the Nebraska state legislature is in session, so the bill will override Heineman’s veto or die today. I’ll keep you updated!

Update, 5:30pm: The legislature has over-riden Heineman's veto. More information coming!

Update, April 20th, 11:10am: I got another perspective from Kimberly Inez McGuire, policy analyst at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, who told me, "It’s a good policy with a bad justification. On the one hand, we know that undocumented women face so many barriers to getting healthcare, so the fact that this policy would extend care to them is a good thing. But the way that it’s done, with this language that unnaturally separates health of fetus from health of the mother, is dehumanizing to women. The health of the woman is inextricably linked to the health of her child. This sets a dangerous precedent that we’ll be watching closely."