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Our Bodies, Their Battleground: Reproductive rights in the age of the anti-gender movement

A workshop on reproductive rights, the grey zone, and ourselves.

We are all in favour of reproductive rights. But the fight for those rights also requires honesty about our own blind spots. This workshop zooms in on the pink pill movement as an emerging and underexposed front, explores how the anti-gender movement uses our own language against us, and asks the questions we tend to avoid.

Photos: © Michelle Geerardyn

Illustrations: © Valentine Zhang (https://www.instagram.com/valentinezhang/)

Facilitators

Alina Chakh and Juul Priester are both members of Ava, a Dutch advocacy organisation that stands up for people of reproductive age who use abortion care and contraception.

Ava put the lack of pain relief during IUD placement on the national agenda in the Netherlands, with tangible results. The organisation collaborated with doctors to launch the first online platform for abortion pills in the Netherlands, and was the first to ask users about their experiences with ultrasound during early abortion care. Ava conducts research, gathers experiences and needs, and uses this to improve policy and care.

Alina Chakh is chair and founding board member of Stichting Ava. She is a moderator and speaker on women’s health and reproductive rights, writes and is politically active in the city of Amsterdam. Juul Priester leads research within Ava and works alongside this at Ipsos I&O, a leading research agency.

Brief introduction of Ava

(Ava stands for Anticonceptie Vrije keuze Abortus or “voice” in Persian)

Ava has worked on various different projects, one of which is on IUD placement and pain relief. They had conversations with many doctors about pain during IUD placement, pushing to include pain relief options as part of the standard treatment protocol.

They recently finished their first research on abortion care and how women perceive the care they had gotten.

The first half of the workshop is centered around introducing Ava and the work they have done in the Netherlands; discussing abortion rights in other countries together with the participants, majority of whom are actively working towards protecting reproductive rights in their respective countries. The second half of the workshop sets to challenge our ideas and beliefs regarding abortion rights and contraception as we break into smaller groups to discuss topics to a deeper extent.

Agree or disagree?

“The greatest threat to reproductive rights in Europe currently comes from politics, not from society.”

Agree

• Society is in odds with the political agenda against reproductive rights, in the Netherlands, in Poland, … There is a broad consensus on abortion from society.

• Politicians are responsible for the law; “there is no good law on abortion”.

• Politics is not an accurate representation of society either: women are underrepresented.

Disagree

• Politics and the rhetoric used holds the power to influence society’s views, i.e., abortion stigma in Poland. The rhetoric that when abortion is easily accessible, it will be used as a form of birth control.

Politics as it is today does not represent society’s view on abortion, nor does it form an accurate representation of society. At the same time, politicians possess the power to change, challenge and normalize views of society as a whole, and actively do so as well.

“We are currently losing the battle for reproductive rights in Europe.”

• Rights, yes, because abortion rights are being restricted. However, reproductive justice: access to abortion in Poland has never become this easy.

• Anti-abortion actors have been organizing massively and created a steady, coherent story on why abortion should not be accepted. Fear of the coherence they are representing.

“In practice, doctors have more power over our bodily autonomy than politicians.”

• Even if politicians rule that abortion is legal now, doctors can still be scared due to fear of having their license revoked.

• Doctors can also practice illegally, going against the law to make abortion possible.

• Through the abortion pill, the power shifted more toward our own hands.

• Destigmatization, decriminalization, demedicization

Both doctors and politicians are external authorities who hold power over the bodily autonomy of individuals with a uterus. Politicians’ regulations not only affect our own bodies directly, but can also be argued to interfere with the agency of doctors when they have to choose between potentially losing their license and doing their job. At the same time, doctors are able to go against the law if they so wish.

Barriers

• In Belgium: lack of knowledge on where to go in order to get help and language barrier(s)

• In Italy: shame surrounding the topic of abortion (and emergency contraception), e.g., pharmacy giving the emergency contraception under the counter

• In Poland: lack of finances and limited resources of activists (which are ending in Poland)

The state of abortion law in EU

Financial barriers, forced requirements (waiting periods, approval from three doctors, refusal of care, criminal regulation, information deficit all form barriers.

EU is still in a danger zone, and even when it comes to countries such as the Netherlands, abortion policies can still be improved. Ava exists to also insert the user’s point of view into the discussion on abortion.

A lot of ongoing discussion is still present about abortion pills in the Netherlands, e.g., GPs and pharmacies who are against abortion pills or refusing abortion access, concerns about non-consensual/forced abortions, …

Influence from the US: funding cuts of organizations that work with reproductive health rights in EU, conservative political parties that fund anti-abortioin organizations.

The anti-gender movement

Definition from Atria: an international movement playing out on different levels (politicians, organizations, opinion makers, influencers) who try to push anti-gender narratives into the mainstream, centralizing traditional gender roles in society.

• For example, physical threats to Rutgers a couple years ago for their “week van de lentekriebels”, hate campaign, concerns of parents that children are learning about blowjobs, …

• Wellness influencers on the far-right: the use of birth control is declining in multiple places in the world, including the Netherlands. Scientists and the government point towards misinformation (“people are afraid of birth control”), at the same time people want different contraceptives + the Pink Pill movement restricting access.

Discussion

Some questions that we discussed in smaller groups include:

“If someone says they feel better without the pill; I always believe her.”

“An abortion in week 20 deserves as much support as abortion in a week.”

When does a pregnancy start?

How do you feel about these terms?

• Right to life

• Holistic wellbeing

• …

How to tackle it? Do we need new frames or do we reclaim the old ones?

Take-aways

• “Abortion = contraception: so what?” The rhetoric used by right-wing politicians that access to abortion means people will use it as a form of contraception: Does that even matter? Instead of being pulled in by the tactics deployed, we chose to actively challenge it instead. Conflation of anti-rights movement between abortion and contraception: Is it really that bad or is it really so different? Instead of leaning into it, accepting it.

• At the same time, publicly it could not be a good strategy/a counterproductive statement. So: a new frame is needed.

• Burdens are often put on an individual to be medically informed. This also highlights the need for accessible knowledge dissemination networks.

• The idea of thinking as menstruation as natural abortion - a different lens to look at abortion and your own body.

• Pregnancy starts when you are pregnant: in the end it doesn’t matter, because you should still have the option to end it if it’s unwanted.

• Respect for the felt experience and definition: if they call it/they feel pregnant, it is a pregnancy; whatever they call the embryo/fetus is valid.

Key words:

• Aborception

• So what?!