The Politics of Sexual Health | Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project

The Politics of Sexual Health:

The backlash against emergency contraception

and HIV prevention technologies

Tuesday, July 25, 2006
6:30 - 8:00PM

LGBT Community Center, New York City

From condoms to the morning-after pill, medical tools and technologies help people of all genders take control of our fertility and health, preventing unwanted pregnancies as well as HIV and other STDs. But political leaders and social conservatives in the U.S. and around the world are trying to stop their use, attacking the reproductive rights of women, the lives of LGBT people, and all sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

This forum explored the connections between the attacks on reproductive health and HIV prevention. Activists from the intersection of these movements shared vital information and lead discussion on debates and strategies to further our struggles for justice.

Speakers:

Esther Kaplan, author, With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right
Supriya Pillai, International Women’s Health Coalition
PowerPoint Presentation
Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, Pro-Choice Public Education Project (PEP)
Alisa Wellek, LGBT Community Center
Moderated by: Gina Arias, Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC)

Co-sponsors:

Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) – http://www.genderhealth.org
Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) – http://www.champnetwork.org
International Women’s Health Coalition – http://www.iwhc.org
Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) – http://www.gmhc.org
LGBT Community Center – http://www.gaycenter.org
NARAL Pro-Choice New York – http://www.prochoiceny.org
National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health – http://latinainstitute.org
Planned Parenthood of NYC – http://www.ppnyc.org
Pro-Choice Public Education Project (PEP) - http://www.protectchoice.org
Women’s Liberation Birth Control Project – http://www.birthcontrolproject.org

Summary:

Esther Kaplan, Journalist, AIDS Activist

Below is a summary of Esther’s remarks:

My background is as an AIDS activists, and I have spent the past few years attending Christian right events, advisory panel meetings, etc.

The politics underlying the backlash against condoms and contraception present a fundamental conundrum. To the Christian right, homosexuality and promiscuity, outside marriage, is ungodly, unnatural, and their job is stopping it. Jerry Falwell has spoken openly of homosexuality as a sin and AIDS as punishment for violating laws of nature. The Traditional Values Coalition calls homosexuality a public health danger. Condoms and contraception prevent people from pursuing the only moral path. Concerned Women for America asked in 1998 article “Furthering the Safe Sex Lie” – why abstain from sex when there can be protection from disease?

Senator Tom Coburn – Former member of Board of the Family Research Council and head of the PACHA (President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS) – and others are trying to turn this anxiety into policy. They argue that “promiscuity” and homosexuality cannot be safe and must be avoided. One Evangelical commentator wrote a book called Sex has a price tag. Their goal is to keep it that way. The Christian Right is opposed to condoms, abortion access, HPV vaccine, etc – because these things remove the cost of engaging in sex.

The goal of this forum is to bridge reproductive health and HIV prevention. There was a time when the Catholic pro-life community operated independently of the evangelical anti-gay agenda. These agendas have now come together as a combined moral values agenda to “restore order” to world. They want to return us to time when the heterosexual family was standard and sex only occurred within marriage. They want to restore a hierarchy of gender. Safer sex enabled by condoms and contraception encourages “ungodly sex” and lulls women “into thinking they can control their bodies.”

When the US withdrew millions in grants because of the global gag rule, this also harmed HIV prevention and care in the Global South. Family planning clinics had served as backbone for HIV services.

Conservative evangelicals legislated an emphasis on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs through PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). This became the leading edge for escalation in abstinence-only funding more broadly as well as attacks on reproductive health.

The leaders of the Christian right have identified a common political utility in defunding or attacking organizations that promote reproductive health and HIV prevention – those seen as important elements of Democratic political base. The original leaders of right wing religious groups created a list of organizations that supported liberal values, and their goal was to defund these groups from government money. The agenda has been to defang and defund progressive movements overall. The right wing sees us as part of same movement, even if we don’t see ourselves as such.

Opposition to condoms and contraception is NOT about public health. Let that sink in. We know that comprehensive sex education combined with condom access does more to prevent HIV than abstinence-only. We know easy access to emergency contraception will lower the need for abortion. The right wing knows the importance of science in public discourse, but it is not data that drives their positions. A desire to draw a moral line in the sand drives it.

Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, Pro-Choice Public Education Project (PEP)

Below is a summary of Aimee’s remarks:

Often reproductive rights and HIV prevention spheres don’t interact or connect. The way funding is allocated does not support collaborative work – it encourages competition. The religious right has leveraged this phenomenal opportunity to target us while keeping us apart.

In 2001, the Center for Reproductive Rights submitted a proposal on behalf of over 60 groups around the country to FDA for approval to make emergency contraception available over the counter. Barr (makers of Plan B) submitted an application a few years later. Two different internal advisory committees staffed with scientists overwhelmingly approved emergency contraception over the counter. Many assumed that all left was to make announcement – that we had cleared all the barriers.

Instead, in Spring 2004 it was rejected. This was unprecedented because there is tremendous respect for senior scientific staff within the FDA. There was also sense that Barr should resubmit, but as two applications – for those ages 17 and older and those 16 and younger (some argued that need prescription). No company had been asked to do that kind of dual application before.

They were supposed to get the decision in Jan 2005 – two years after initial submission – but they still have no sense of where the application is going.

Those ages 16 and under are the more vulnerable ones. The reality is no one is getting Plan B over the counter. Plan B is being fought by political evangelicals – not just conservatives or Christian fundamentalists. It is a political movement that supports hostile and hate-filled ideology. Five years later, we still don’t have emergency contraceptives (EC) over the counter.

We are also dealing with “refusal clauses” – stories about pharmacists and doctors who refuse to dispense EC. A number of states have something on the books allowing this – stuff like “conscience clauses.” There are procedures doctors can opt-out of too. Patients have no protection against this kind of power. For example, there was a piece in Washington Post a couple weeks ago about married woman who couldn’t get a prescription from her doctor for EC. She had to have an abortion, and she attributed it to the Bush administration’s policy on EC in an op-ed she wrote. This wasn’t a person who is the stereotype of woman the right-wing offer. She said that the Bush administration denied her the opportunity to exercise what she thought was her best judgment for her family.

There is also the Weldon amendment – “Abortion non-Discrimination Act” – that would allow health care institutions to refuse to comply with federal and state regulations regarding reproductive health. This would allow doctors and pharmacists to opt-out of procedures and duties. What does that do to us as patients? These are attacks on sexuality and control of our bodies—an attempt to reinstate patriarchy and traditional definitions of family.

Similarly, there is resistance to the promotion of other HIV prevention strategies like mircrobicides.

Activists should stop saying they only work on this one issue. We need to break out of our silos. HIV is a major concern for young women of color, but my organization (Pro-Choice Public Education Project) doesn’t have someone working on HIV prevention, for example. This is a problem. We must get out of the boxes that we’re used to talking about our work. We must link the battles that we’re having between reproductive rights and LGBT liberation. The right wing has done a good job of linking together LGBT, abortion, and feminism. They have no problem making those connections. We would be better served by embracing collective resources.

Supriya Pillai, International Women’s Health Coalition
PowerPoint Presentation

Alisa Wellek, LGBT Community Center

Below is a summary of Alisa’s remarks:

The “Causes in Common” Program at the LGBT Center seeks to bring activists from the reproductive health movement and the LGBT rights movement together. Its origins are in a family programming at Center (Center Kids), which helped queer people create families amidst legal, medical, and social barriers. We didn’t see different communities talking about each other’s issues. Reproductive health was often conflated with abortion rights, so it was hard to relate to for queer people. The queer movement was often conflated as gay marriage and equal rights, which doesn’t relate to reproductive rights either.

But there are opportunities for pro-active coalition building. One of them is the framework of “reproductive justice.” This concept was first developed by women of color working on reproductive health but not seeing their needs being met. Reproductive justice refers to complete physical, spiritual, economic, social, personal well-being.

When we start thinking about our work, these connections become a lot clearer. They make sense on level beyond just policy work. Some connections through the Causes in Common program have a historical dimension. For example, queer liberation came out of the feminist movement of 1970s and the civil rights movement. These movements have the commonality of people having the right to have sex that is not just about reproduction. Legal connections also exist– The 2003 Supreme Court case overturning the sodomy ban rested on reproductive health cases.

Reproductive health and queer liberation have shared enemies and policy intersections.

How can we make the reproductive justice approach a reality? Reproductive and queer rights are not just about the individual. Rights are tied to communities. Women or gay men aren’t just the ones singled out—there are multiple dimensions that are not separate. But sometimes when we are working in movements, we are forced to choose one identity. We must address multiple identities and multiple issues of oppression.

We can talk about an even broader framework – human rights. This is one way to look at how reproductive rights and the HIV/AIDS movements are connected. In the US, human rights are usually seen in context of international rights. We usually think of this as something for folks abroad. We have been trying to bring that home – what would a human rights framework look like within the US as well as abroad?

In 1948, the United Nations passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was in the aftermath of genocide that took place within the legal framework of countries. How could there be an international body that would take a stance on what human rights could actually look like? Eight types of rights are mentioned in the declaration. For example, there are civil (equal rights) and political (freedom to engage in different activities) rights; economic rights (right to manage economy in a way that meets our needs); social rights (basic human needs – food, shelter, health care, education); and cultural rights (right to practice cultural, like language or religion). In the1980s people started talking more about environmental rights. Countries in the global south talked about the control of their own resources. Reproductive rights were talked about in the 1970s. This issue unites fundamentalists. The 1984 Women’s meeting talked about this. 1994 in Cairo was first articulation of sexual rights, even though it was not a part of plan of action.

In the 1980s people began to talk about the human rights of people living with AIDS, against the background of gross violations (discrimination, access to health care, social services, etc). Vulnerability to HIV is often determined by social and community barriers - queer, trans people, people of color, women, sex workers, youth – anyone who’s facing oppression on other levels.

There are important political and moral dimensions to using this framework. It allows us to bring in our whole selves.

The US has only ratified three of the treaties. In San Francisco, NYC, and other cities, people are trying to get their city councils to sign onto human rights treaties.

What can we do? Organizations can join Causes in Common. Visit our website at http://www.causesincommon.org.

We can build campaigns around shared goals. We can be allies even when our primary issue not at the forefront. We can write letters to the editors with other groups who work on the issues. Service-providers can integrate services. We must come together and say what we want in addition to fighting the right. We can’t be afraid to loudly proclaim who we are.