Day 30, Ways 28, 29 & 30Bad waydayer, no biscuit. Two days in a row I've missed now. It's the beginning of baseball season, what are you going to do. Anyway, today's 3 Ways all have to do with women's health. This is an idea suggested by my partner, who is the best woman in the world and also the smokin' hottest (yes, she does read these entries, but I would say it anyway--because it's true!). Over and above the fact that in general one should listen to such a woman, it is true that whenever civilian life is disrupted in some horribly traumatic way, like say in a war zone or in the path of a massively destructive hurricane, the women wind up with more than their fair share of suffering. So the women of the Gulf Coast get three ways today!
Way number one: Fighting Domestic ViolenceThe
Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence is a network of
various anti-domestic violence initiatives in the state of Louisiana. They have set up a
Hurricane Relief Fund to help the women's shelters that were destroyed or compromised during the hurricane and to assist victims of domestic violence who have to relocate. There's also a
list of shelters to which you might donate, although the only one that apparently has a website is
CAFVIC/Battered Women's Project, which is based in Baton Rouge. They are seeing
increased volume, and could use
your help. They are asking for "pillows, towels and wash clothes, cleaning supplies, and personal care products...bus tokens, gift cards for gas, and other assistance" as well as money. There's a more detailed
wish list of everyday items they always need.
What I mainly like about the LCADV's website is this paragraph:
"Woman abuse cannot be adequately understood as solely an individual or family problem. Intervention at these levels will never stop woman battering, though services to provide safety for victims and their children are vital until violence against women is ended. In many ways, our society supports the idea that violence is an acceptable means of problem solving and that women are appropriate targets of violence. This Coalition recognizes that inequality between men and women is a major cause of woman abuse. Additionally, we recognize other forms of oppression, such as racism, classism, and homophobia, contribute to woman abuse in our society. Therefore, we support the ideal of equality among all people and appreciate that social change toward this end is necessary to stop woman abuse."Thank you. Thank you, LCADV, for not allowing people to just blame one asshole and forget about the vast network of assholes high and low in whose context he is enabled to operate. May I live to see the day when the rich and powerful assholes are serving their sentences alongside the less fortunate assholes whose sense of entitlement they inflame with their rhetoric and then thwart with their policies.
Also of interest is their page on
What Is Domestic Violence?, which includes a list of "Signs of a Battering Personality." See how many you can find in your favorite right-wing talk show host!
Anyway. The
Ms. Foundation for Women has set up a
Katrina Women's Response Fund which made one of its first grants to the LCADV; you can still donate to the fund, though there are no updates on the site to indicate what they're doing now, so my instinct would be to donate directly and skip the funneling-it-through-the-bureaucracy phase.
Way Two: Reproductive FreedomPlanned Parenthood has set up a Hurricane Relief Effort designed to help Planned Parenthood centers that were affected by Hurricane Katrina, such as
Planned Parenthood of Lousiana and the Mississippi Delta, which has announced that their Baton Rouge and New Orleans clinics are back up and running. Startling though it is in today's world, Planned Parenthood appears to be holding on to its tax-exempt status, or so it says on its donation page. No doubt it will be the next thing to go.
Now, of course, reproductive freedom does not just mean the freedom not to have children, it means the freedom to have them; so I went looking for an organization in New Orleans dedicated to helping lesbians and single women out with alternative insemination, to see if such an organization might need any help. I am giving up now, because I couldn't find such an organization. (If you know of one, by all means speak up.) The closest I could get was
The Fertility Institute, which from its
website appears to cater pretty much to straight couples, and which, I would imagine, is rolling in dough anyway. Not that they weren't affected by Hurricane Katrina, of course. In fact, I found this
amazing story about a dramatic rescue operation mounted in the days after Katrina hit to save the Fertility Institute's stash of frozen embryos:
"With the assistance of Louisiana state Rep. John Alario, the clinic's staff was able to accompany Louisiana state troopers, members of the National Guard and Illinois Conservation Police to the abandoned hospital.
"We started with the police and the National Guard about 7:30 and we got there about 12:00," Pyrzak explained. "The Army was guarding the hospital."
Dark and abandoned, the first floor of Lakeland Hospital was flooded with several feet of water. Using an abandoned skiff they found nearby, the rescue team carried the canisters out of the hospital by flashlight."You know...look, IVF is painful and expensive and risky and I can understand how if you'd gone through it and you had a dozen fertilized eggs on ice at the Fertility Institute, you'd be really, really upset if they all got destroyed. And indeed these embryos do have "the potential to become live people." I get that. Y'all have no idea how deeply I get that. Still, to call this a "rescue" is just a little...I dunno...I mean I understand these embryos are conveniently portable and you can save a lot more of them at a time, but I think if I were the National Guard, and Fertility Institute Guy called me up to organize an embryo "rescue mission," I might have said, "I'm rescuing the born right now, I'll get back to you Thursday." But maybe that's me.
All right, on we go to
Way Three: Women's Mental & Emotional HealthOne of the problems that will persist long after the houses are gutted and rebuilt and people have their housing and food and clothing situations worked out and whatnot is the emotional aftershock of having lived through the destruction of your city and the loss of your community, home, belongings, and loved ones. This article at the APA website suggests that
post-traumatic stress disorder is going to be a major problem in the years to come, and that
"Women, school-age children, middle-aged adults, and people with a prior mental health history are at higher risk of developing PTSD as well as other mental health disorders after a major disaster." All right, so, what can we do to help make sure these women get the care they're going to need?
You'd be amazed how hard it is to answer that question.
Everyone can agree on one thing: the need is huge. It doesn't help that Charity Hospital, New Orleans'
"primary mental-health crisis center", was damaged so badly by Katrina that it has now been
condemned. Articles about the
epidemic of depression and PTSD and the spike in suicides and calls to suicide hotlines are plentiful as hen's eggs; suggestions about how an ordinary citizen can help meet this need are scarce as hen's teeth. I've got to finish this up and get home now, so basically what I'm saying is: your Third Way is to find an organization or fund or something that is working on getting women access to quality mental health care. If you find it, I will write it up. Or, I can try again tomorrow and see if Google likes me better. It doesn't seem like it oughta be this hard.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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