Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Re-Think the Pink

Cancer is never far from my mind, especially at this time of year. My mother was diagnosed with gastric cancer in November 2008, and two people very dear to me died of cancer in the fall. So as someone who cares deeply about cancer, you would think that I would be excited about and invested in the various campaigns associated with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Wrong. I have a complicated relationship to all the pink (the color associated with breast cancer) and the entire rainbow of colors that symbolize the various campaigns to educate the public about cancer.

A common complaint I hear about these campaigns, especially from those who are currently fighting cancer or have survived their fight is, “Aren’t we already aware?” Enough awareness, they say. We need more action. I understand the frustration. At what point have we saturated all the media outlets and platforms with information about cancer and advice about how to take better care of ourselves. Yet only some of us are aware, and extremely aware at that. Many of these campaigns are not targeting low-income communities, immigrant communities or communities of color. Materials aren’t available in multiple languages or written for people with low literacy. Pamphlets and public service announcements don’t represent the diversity of people in the US. So despite the ubiquitous presence of pink, there are still many people who don’t know what breast cancer is and don’t connect it to their lives.

Then there is also the question of action. Many people are frustrated that more isn’t being done to fight cancer, but what would that look like? Is it more research into possible treatments and cures? Are we talking about more investigation into environmental toxins and their relationship to cancer? We could advocate for stricter regulation of chemicals and oversight of industries that leak carcinogenic materials into the environment. Or we could devote more resources to programs that support cancer fighters and their families. I don’t get the sense that there is consensus on what action to take. Based on my experience in the reproductive health, rights and justice movement I think we need to devote more resources to all of the above. No one strategy is going to deliver us from cancer. We need more research into treatments as well as factors that cause cancer. We need more legislation, more funding, more community-based programs, and yes, more awareness campaigns.

What particularly bothers me about Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the pink is something altogether different. When I see products with pink ribbons on them, or NFL players wearing pink cleats, I don’t see their connection to people I know who have fought cancer. It’s as if the pink ribbon has replaced the faces of women who are fighting breast cancer at any given moment. During the month of October you can get anything you want in pink. But where does all of the money go? What does the awareness get us? Are there more mammograms as a result of the campaigns? Do African-American and Latino women have better survival rates as a result of the waves of pink? [Black women have a higher mortality rate than other women] In other words, what do we get for all this pink every October?

Then I begin to wonder, is Breast Cancer Awareness Month part of the problem or part of the solution? We have created an entire industry devoted to raising awareness about breast cancer with its own institutions, structures, and funding streams. We have walks and runs to raise money and awareness for cancer and build community among cancer activists. We have also provided corporations with great public relations opportunities. And every year these campaigns get bigger. Maybe it’s time to step back and really look at what we have created. Is this really what we want? Is this what we think will help us conquer cancer, once and for all? Or is it time to re-think the pink?

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My Take on "Open Hearts, Open Minds and Fair-Minded Words"

Princeton University hosted the Open Hearts, Open Minds, Fair-Minded Words Conference on October 15th & 16th. These are my reflections on the conference. Originally posted at RH Reality Check.

I have to confess that I registered for this conference with neither an open heart nor an open mind. I intentionally don’t engage in conversations about abortion with people who oppose it. It’s a form of self-preservation. I don’t understand a worldview that espouses curtailing women’s autonomy and human rights as necessary and even good in order to protect potential human life. I simply will not abandon my conviction that women retain their agency, dignity and self-determination, regardless of whether they are pregnant or could become pregnant. Nor will I judge women for making decisions about their reproductive lives that are best for them. Knowing that this conference would be a radical departure for me, I ventured to Princeton anyway. Unsure of what to expect and anxious, I nevertheless wanted to lend my support to allies who supported abortion. I also intended to bear witness to conversations that at least on their surface centered on abortion outside of its actual context, that is, outside the bodies, lives, and experiences of the women who get pregnant and have abortions.

The organizers of the conference, Frances Kissling (Center for BioEthics, University of Pennsylvania), Peter Singer (University Center for Human Values, Princeton), Jennifer Miller (Bioethics International), and Charles Camosy (Department of Theology, Fordham University), challenged the hundreds of participants to view the conference as an opportunity to understand the thinking of those who feel differently about abortion than we each did personally, and to see disagreement as an opportunity to learn something, not to attack. The discussions ranged across many issues including the moral status of the fetus, the concept of fetal pain, and the potential discriminatory affects of abortion (as in sex selection or after pre-natal diagnosis of fetal differences). While each session was thought-provoking in its own way, I want to focus on the opening plenaries on Friday and Saturday morning because they challenged me the most and helped me reaffirm my own values around abortion.

The conference began with a plenary entitled “Bridging The Abortion Divide: Recurring Challenges, Emerging Opportunities.” Of the five speakers on the panel, David Gushee, a faculty member at McAfee School of Theology struck me most. He described abortion as “tragic” and implored people to resist abortion as a common social practice. He defied the idea that abortion was an exercise in women’s human rights or moral agency, but rather he framed abortion as an act of desperation in every case. And while he shared that he believed every person deserved respect, he also made clear that abortion was never, could never be, a moral good.

Gushee's reflections on the need to address the social and economic conditions that perpetuate poverty (one of the main reasons that women choose abortion is because of lack of social and financial resources) resonated with me. Yet, he never addressed inequality, patriarchy or sexism. In fact, he seemed to gloss over exactly how those conditions adversely affect women’s lives. Instead, he repeated the need to limit our engagement in contributing to or supporting the tragedy that is abortion. He made me think of the movie, the Princess Bride. After one character repeatedly uses (and misuses) the word “inconceivable,” another character says, “I do not think it means what you think it means.” I think David Gushee and I have extremely different ideas of what tragic means, and moreover, what it means to resist. I don’t believe abortion is tragic in itself. I don’t believe that what drives abortion in every case is desperation. I’ve known too many women who have had abortions to believe that. I only wish that the conference had valued those experiences enough to lift up their voices, instead of silencing them.

Saturday morning began with the plenary, “From Morality to Public Policy” and featured several legal scholars. I personally felt challenged by Helen Alvare’s premise that as a woman, “I was chosen to care” for others and that my support for abortion distorted my essential nature. Alvare, who is affiliated with the George Mason University School of Law, also added that bodily integrity was not an important enough issue to discuss in the context of abortion. I found these statements patriarchal and offensive.

I was relieved, however, when David Garrow (Homerton College, University of Cambridge), avowed that Roe v Wade and related cases were rightly and inevitably decided and carried the moral weight of Brown v Board of Education. He put forward that the crux of the conflict around abortion was society’s feelings around sex, which were also reflected in the political right’s opposition to birth control, gay rights and marriage equality. Cathleen Kaveny (University of Notre Dame Law School), spoke movingly about views of morality and how they interact with the law. She was the first person at the conference to raise sexism and its contribution to inequality. She was also the first pro-life person to really address ideas of justice, and though her ideas stemmed from a religious background, she allowed for different ideas of justice and how to consider the disproportionate burden of injustice born by certain communities, including women, people of color and low-income people. Kaveny was the only self-identified pro-life speaker, who spoke to values that I understood. Like other speakers, she spoke about the social conditions that shape and condition women’s decisions about pregnancy. She also spoke about women with empathy and understanding and brought them into the conversation more than her pro-life colleagues had before or since.

Finally, Dorothy Roberts (School of Law, Northwestern University) called for the recognition of the moral agency of women and argued that women matter equally outside of the context of the fetus. She was also the first person to talk about the reproductive justice framework as a broad-based approach that addresses the entire social context in which a woman lives and which deeply affects all of her reproductive decisions, not just abortion. Professor Roberts highlighted that motherhood among women of color, particularly African-American women, and poor women was constantly under attack and devalued. She called our attention to the pattern of blaming reproduction by women of color as the source of inequality and many social problems. She cited the numerous campaigns taking place across the country that equate abortion in the Black community with genocide as another example of how society devalues motherhood by questioning Black women’s moral agency. Professor Roberts also criticized the idea offered by earlier speakers that adoption was a universal, common good and suggested that adoption was a racist, classist system meant to benefit middle-class families, often at the expense of low-income people and people of color. She appealed to the audience that any movement toward common ground on abortion had to be based on values of social justice.

Professor Roberts then outlined the numerous policies that hurt and devalue the parenting of women of color and offered positive policies that government could implement to support families. I was grateful to Dorothy Roberts for giving voice to the work of the reproductive justice movement, where women and their families are central to all discussions, as actors and as leaders. For the first time during the conference, I felt like someone was speaking about abortion in the context of women’s lives and all the other realities that women must confront every day.

I tried my best to keep an open heart and an open mind and remain engaged in the various conversations. Yet I kept returning to several key questions. What about the woman? I couldn’t move past the idea that the conference was afraid of bringing women who have had abortions into these discussions. To talk about abortion as if women were not central to the conversation, was just a further devaluing of women and all the reproductive decisions we make over the course of our lives.

Where was the discussion about the moral status of the woman? From the comments of many speakers and audience members, I was not convinced that we were in agreement on the moral status of women, and what society’s obligation was to them. As one speaker proposed, “Is there a category of personhood for pregnant women that is separate from other people?” And if so, when does that take affect? Once a woman is pregnant? Does it start at puberty and end at menopause? What about women who cannot or are highly unlikely to ever get pregnant? Are they exempt from this “separate, but equal” categorization? Or as my colleague, Lynn Paltrow says, “At what point during pregnancy do women forgo their human rights and dignity?” Until we all agree that women are moral agents, who are free to exercise their full human rights, I’m afraid these conversations won’t bring us any closer to bridging the gap between those who support the right to choose abortion and those who do not.

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Keep Abortion Safe and Legal? Yes. Make it Rare? Not the Point.

Originally posted at RH Reality Check

A common narrative in the political and cultural discussions of reproductive health focuses on reducing the number of abortions taking place every year. It’s supposed to be one thing that those who support abortion rights and those who oppose abortion can agree on, the so-called common ground. The assumption is that we can all agree that abortion itself is a bad thing, perhaps necessary, but definitely not a good thing. Even President Clinton declared (and many others have embraced) that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. According to the Guttmacher Institute, almost half of all pregnancies among American women in 2005 were unplanned or unintended. And of those, four in 10 ended in abortion. In other words, between one-fifth and one-quarter of all pregnancies ended in abortion. Without any other information, those statistics can sound scary and paint a picture of women as irresponsible or poor decision-makers. Therefore reducing the number of abortions is a goal that reproductive health, rights and justice activists should work toward, right?

Wrong. Those numbers mean nothing without context. If the 1.21 million abortions that took place in 2005 represent the number of women who needed abortions (and in my opinion, if a woman decides she needs an abortion, then she does), as well as the many women who chose to terminate pregnancies that they very much wanted but could not afford to carry to term, then that number is too high. The work of reducing the number of abortions, therefore, would entail creating an authentically family-friendly society, where women would have the support they need to raise their families, whatever forms they took. That could include eliminating the family caps in TANF, encouraging unionization of low-wage workers, reforming immigration policies and making vocational and higher education more accessible.

On the other hand, if those 1.21 million abortions represent only the women who could access abortion financially, geographically or otherwise, then that number is too low. Yes, too low. If that’s the case, then what is an appropriate response? How do we best support women and their reproductive health? Do we dare admit that increasing the number of abortions might be not only good for women’s health, but also moral and just?

What if we stopped focusing on the number of abortions and instead focused on the women themselves? Much of the work of the reproductive health, rights and justice movements would remain the same. We would still advocate for legislation that helps our families. We would still fight to protect abortion providers and their staffs from verbal harassment and physical violence. What would change, however, is the stigma and shame. By focusing on supporting women’s agency and self-determination, rather than judging the outcomes of that agency, we send a powerful message. We say that we trust women. We say we will not use them and their experiences as pawns in a political game. We say we care about women and want them to have access to all the information, services and resources necessary to make the best decisions they can for themselves and their families. That is at the core of reproductive justice. Not reducing the number of abortions. Safe – yes. Legal– absolutely. Rare – not the point.

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I Give Thanks

A few hours ago, I turned 37 years old. And in a few hours from now, I will be on a plane with my mother and aunt to Puerto Rico. I wish I could say it was a celebratory trip, but it's not. My grandmother is in the hospital. Although I originally hoped she would recover enough so that we might be able to bring her home, I now know that is not going to happen. So I'm going home to say goodbye to my grandmother for the last time.

Since I turned 30, my birthday has taken on a different meaning for me. It's a time when I look back on the past year of my life to think about what have I done, where can I still grow, and where am I going. My birthday has been a chance to ask myself, "Am I the person I want to be? Am I living the life I want to live?" And while my heart is breaking, I can look back on the last year and be thankful for all the love I have in my life.

So on this birthday, more than anything else, I want to give thanks for the women in my life.

I will start, where most things in my family start, with my grandmother, Carmen. I give thanks for her enduring strength, her love and loyalty to family, and her ferocity in life. She is the center of my universe, the backbone of my family, and a major reason why I do what I do.

I give thanks for my mother, Zaida, who sacrificed herself for me, my education and my chance to live my own life. My mother let me be me, and loves me anyway. My mother, who fought like hell against cancer so she could live. My mother possesses a joie de vivre I can only dream of.

I give thanks for all my aunts, Camelia, Myrna, Nereida and Rosario (gone too long), and my other mother, Diana, in whose arms and presence I learned all the lovely complexities of family and womanhood.

I am thankful for my older cousins, Millie, Lorraine, Roxanne and Michele. I give thanks to my younger cousins, Barbara, Annie, Sarah, Lindsay, Kelli, Samantha, Ashley, and now Kailey, Alyssa and Sophia, too. They looked out for me and made space for me in their lives. They accepted me, warts and all, and stood by me. They taught me how to dance and how to laugh, especially at myself.

I give thanks for my best friend, my partner in crime, and my pillar of strength, Maribel. She has celebrated my best moments, and held me during my worst. She has never let me down. I don't know what I would without her.

I am thankful for my nieces, Brianna, Ciara, Adrianna and Alexis, and my stepdaughters, Gudrun, Ella and Ruby. I am awed by their strength and courage. I am inspired by their love and devotion. I couldn't love them more if they were mine.

I give thanks for my girls, from my oldest to my newest friends. They have shown me patience and understanding. They have pushed me to take chances, taught me to be fearless and helped me grow into a better person.

On this, my 37th birthday, I give thanks for all the women in my life, who have made me what I am today.

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Growing Up With Roe

I first became aware of abortion around the same time I became aware of many things related to sex and sexuality – during puberty. It was 7th grade, and I was nursing both a broken heart and raging hormones. One day during a break between classes, my best friend slipped me a piece of paper. On it were the names and numbers of every family planning clinic in NYC. Neither of was us was sexually active – YET, but we both understood the risks of becoming pregnant at such a young age. Although we were aware of HIV at that time, an unplanned pregnancy still posed the greater risk to our educations, happiness, and possibly our very lives. We all knew of girls who were beaten, forced to drop out of school, thrown out of their homes, and expected to get married because of an unplanned pregnancy. When we became sexually active, we needed to know where to go for information, advice, and yes, abortions.

At the time, abortion represented survival to me. As a little brown girl from the Bronx, I knew what the statistics said about girls like me and our chances of “success”. If I knew one thing, I knew this: I was not going to come home and tell my mother that I was pregnant. I was not going to have to tell my father that I was pregnant. And I would do anything to make that true. So I was always practiced safer-sex (my first boyfriend, poor guy, had to wear two condoms the first time we had sex). I limited the number of partners I had. And for years, I kept that piece of paper Selene gave me. For me, abortion meant a chance to go to school and get a job – to create the life I had dreamed of. Abortion gave me the chance to be a mom when and if I wanted to be, not just because my body said it was time. Abortion represented the chance to live.

During high school and college, abortion represented the awakening of my social and political consciousness. I argued on behalf of women’s rights to bodily autonomy and self-determination. I raged when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court for many reasons, the foremost being his opposition to abortion rights. In fact, for a great deal of my life, abortion was an IDEA. I placed a lot of my identity, political, social and cultural onto my support for abortion rights. In my view, if you didn’t support a women’s right to safe, affordable abortion, then you didn’t support women. No discussion needed. That line was drawn in not in the sand, but in concrete. That was my one non-negotiable.

As I began my 30s and my work in the reproductive justice movement, I carried all the past history with me. And I realized for all my ranting and raving, I had lost sight of the most important part of the abortion experience – the woman. On any given day, I could count more than two dozen women in my life that had had abortions: family, friends, acquaintances, sorority sisters, classmates, co-workers, and neighbors. Each experience was unique, and I was deeply thankful that each had legal access to abortion. My focus shifted from abortion as survival or political to abortion as a lived experience. The innovative work of Exhale and the life-saving efforts of the National Network of Abortion Funds and many other amazing organizations, reminded me that ultimately abortion is about each woman doing what is right for her.

Despite the barriers to access, the constant legislative and legal challenges to abortion, and the ongoing cultural warfare over abortion, I remain grateful for the rights granted under Roe v Wade. And as I approach my own 37th birthday I am more committed to Roe than ever before.

Originally posted at

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Don't Judge Me...Empower Me

How many women have you heard say, "I don't like girls/I don't hang with girls; they're petty/jealous/haters/bitches (insert negative noun here)?" It's such a bad look for us females, and it's so common that many men have picked up on this sort of gender betrayal and self-hate. Why are women so quick to judge another so harshly? Why do many women only find comfort in dealing with men where we know we have the ultimate power? Why are we so distrustful of each other?

The incredible goddess sisters at WEEN (Women In Entertainment Empowerment Network) are hosting a one-day interactive seminar, "Don't Judge Me...Empower Me," this Saturday, September 18 at the Alaine L. Locke School in Harlem (21 West 111 Street between 5th and 6th Aves) at noon. Join WEEN Chair Valeisha Butterfield among industry goddesses such as radio hostess, Angela Yee and activist, Maria Davis. It's open to women and young ladies of all ages.

And it's on the recession pricing tip--free! You must have a ticket for entry, get them here. So no excuse to not surround yourself with powerful, positive women in entertainment, law, health and other realms.

WEEN is committed to supporting, promoting and defending the balanced, positive portrayal of women in entertainment and in society. Their network is made up of women and men throughout the entertainment and social service industries dedicated to improving the quality of life women and girls worldwide.

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