5 Reasons Feminists Should Vaccinate

Ravishly recently published a piece by feminist anti-vax author Jody Allard, who-- in a string of convoluted drivel-- claimed that opposing vaccines is a feminist thing to do, and that mandatory vaccination is incompatible with feminism. As a vaccine advocate and a feminist: I call bullshit. 

Allard is right about one thing. Vaccination is a feminist issue. Immunization is one of the key elements that allows the progression of women's

rights.Although science has noted that feminism has been an influence on the anti-vax movement, it's critical to realize that many of the greatest wins of feminism have relied on immunization. Here's how.

1. Vaccines save women's lives.

Sure, they save the lives of men and children, too, but one of the most successful (and controversial) vaccines in modern history was designed with the specific intent of protecting women. HPV vaccination can prevent over two-thirds of cases of cervical cancer, which is one of the most common forms of cancer affecting women. The efficacy of the HPV vaccine will depend on herd immunity, and it is distinctly unfeminist to jeopardize the lives of women and girls by failing to have yourself and your own children vaccinated.

2. Vaccines provide reproductive freedom.

Deaths from cervical cancer are fairly rare in the industrialized world, but hysterectomies and cervix-damaging surgeries are not. In the past, countless women lost their fertility because of cervical cancer. We spent decades fighting for our right to choose when and whether we become pregnant. Feminism was the driving force behind birth control, abortion rights, emergency contraception, IVF, fertility treatments, and surrogacy, and it should be the driving force behind compliance with fertility-saving immunization.

3. Vaccines enable sexual liberation.

Although the majority of women are exposed to HPV at some point, women who have symptoms are still heavily stigmatized because of the notion that only "sluts" or dirty people can contract sexually transmitted disease. The HPV vaccine, which prevents genital warts in addition to cancer, allows women who have been exposed to the virus to continue their lives without shame and stigma. In addition, other vaccines that protect against sexually transmitted illness-- including the Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B vaccines-- can offer similar peace of mind and safety. Vaccination is part of safe sex, and safe sex is a cornerstone of feminism.

4. Vaccines protect women's dignity.

Preventative medicine for women can be upsetting, degrading, and even sometimes traumatizing. No one enjoys being drilled about her sexual history and then being poked with a cold speculum and having her cervix scraped. Feelings of embarrassment are actually among the leading causes of avoidance of preventative care. While at-risk women still need pap smears, the National Cancer Institute notes that immunization can reduce the need for invasive examinations and tests.

5. Vaccines facilitate workplace equality.

This is likely the most important way that immunization protects women's rights. In a world without vaccines, women's rights suffer. I've written before about the way dedication to "natural" parenting can hurt women's rights, but it goes beyond the failures of "crunchy" culture. Without vaccines, schools and daycares are unsafe. Immunocomprimised children can't attend them. Illnesses like rotavirus and chickenpox spread like wildfire. And, as a glance at any of your local crunchy groups will show, it's not the fathers who stay home and take care of the children in these situations. It's the mothers, many of whom wish that they had careers outside the home, but who are bound in their kitchens, making breast milk yogurt to soothe rotavirus-infected tummies. We can not have workplace equality if our children are not kept safe and healthy through modern medicine.

 Vaccines are not an enemy to feminism. They are a necessary ingredient in the ongoing advancement of women's rights. If you care about the rights of women and girls, care about them enough to protect them: vaccinate.

A Mother's Worth Isn't Measured By Pain

I was in hard labor with my son and my blood pressure was through the roof, thanks to a severe case of late-onset pre-eclampsia. Even after I was given several medicines to bring my blood pressure down, it was still getting dangerously high during contractions, with systolic reading climbing above two hundred. Still, I had my heart set on "natural" labor. When the nurse said that I may need an epidural-- both to control the pain, which was worsening my blood pressure, and to prepare for the possibility of an emergency C-section-- I shook my head in horror.

"But what if the baby thinks I don't love him as much as I love his sister?" I squealed, white-knuckled and in tears through another contraction.

It didn't make sense, but pain and panic will do that. In that moment, I honestly thought that, if I got an epidural with one child and had a natural labor with the other, it would somehow mean that I loved one child less than the other. Fearing a C-section, I ended up consenting to an epidural-- though, as fate would have it, my scoliosis prevented it from working. My son was born a few minutes later, perfect and beautiful. The needle in my back didn't make any difference in the immediate feelings of love that I felt for my son.

Of course, now that the pain and anxiety are behind me, I realize how silly it was that I ever thought that the amount of pain I experienced during labor was somehow a reflection of how much I loved my children. But I can also understand why that thought was there. I had gotten caught up in the culture of birth-shaming that tells women that their willingness to endure unnecessary pain (or not) makes them better or worse mothers. And, though I wouldn't have held anyone else to the same standard, I told myself that I could only be a good mom if I went through unmedicated labor with both of my nine-pound posterior babies.

The feeling followed me through my first few months with my son. I endured an extraordinarily painful surgery to correct trauma from childbirth, and took as low of a dose of pain medication as possible to avoid passing medication to him through breast milk... Even though that meant spending hours of every day for two weeks curled into a ball, sobbing my eyes out and sometimes even involuntarily screaming. Surgical recovery hurt as much as transition-stage labor (something I've experienced twice without medication), yet I endured it because I thought that I would be a bad mother if I exposed my son to pain medication-- or, Sanctimommy forbid, formula.

It didn't end there, and here's where my dangerous commitment to unnecessary pain nearly cost me my life. As I wrote in another article, my doctor repeatedly urged me to wean my son so that I could take the high-dose central nervous system depressants that she said were necessary for controlling my extreme case of postpartum anxiety. But I believed that doing so would make me less of a mother. I felt like breastfeeding was the one thing that I still "had" of my identity as a crunchy martyr of a mom. Even when I became so sick that my lips were blue and I was fainting a dozen times a day, I refused to wean my son because I didn't want to be selfish. As a result, my two children nearly lost me.

Two days ago, my daughter brought up natural childbirth for the first time in her seven years. She asked me why it hurts to have babies. I explained to her that the pain is because a mommy's uterus needs to squeeze very hard to push the baby out, and because the mommy's vagina has to go very quickly from being the size of a nickel to being the size of a watermelon. Here was the convesation that I had once, in my juvenile naivete, somehow expected to be my opportunity to prove my worth as a mother to my kids.

"Can't they give you medicine so it doesn't hurt as bad?" she asked.

"They can," I explained, "But I chose not to. I wanted to be able to experience everything and I didn't want you to be exposed to any medicine that might hurt you."

Somehow, all these years later, it seemed like a pretty pathetic reason to go through that kind of pain when there's an alternativce. She paused for a long time. Where was the applause, the gratitude, that I had somehow expected? And why had I expected it?

"I think I would have taken medicine, if I were you," she said plainly, with a shrug.

Seven years ago, I had expected this conversation to be one about what an amazing mother I was. Seven years ago, I had expected to be able to say, "It was twenty-three hours of labor, and you were backwards, and it hurt so bad that I cried, but I loved you so much that I went through it." Seven years ago, I had thought that this made me an amazing mother. But this was a completely different conversation, and hindsight is 20/20.

"When you have children of your own, that's a completely okay choice for you to make," I said, "Now that I think about it, it's kind of funny that I thought I had to go through a lot of pain just to make myself a good mom."

"I think you'd be a good mom even if you'd taken medicine," she agreed.

And she was right. My value as a mother isn't in how much pain I went through, or how many hours of labor I endured, or how long I breastfed them. My value as a mother is in how many hugs I give, how many stories we read, and how hard I'm willing to fight to keep my kids happy, healthy, and comfortable. I didn't have to go through as much pain as I did. I could have accepted the interventions that could have made labor less stressful and traumatic to me. If I had wanted to, I could have even had a C-section, and it wouldn't have made me less of a mother.

Ultimately, I don't regret my unmedicated births-- my daughter's, which was planned, and my son's, which happened because of a failed but medically indicated epidural. I don't regret them, because my daughter's made me feel empowered and accomplished. It gave me the ability to say that, as young and vulnerable and unprepared for parenthood as I was, I was able to do something that many women can't do. And I don't regret my son's because it taught me that addressing pain can be a medical necessity and that I wasn't selfish for accepting it-- even though, in my unfortunate case, it didn't work anyway. But I am glad that I learned what just might be my most important lesson as a mother: that we can't judge our worth as parents based on how much pain we endure.

10 Reasons Why "The Feminist Breeder" Is Not a Feminist

If you've spent any time at all in feminist or parenting circles on the internet, you've no doubt encountered Gina Crosley-Corcoran, who runs the blog and Facebook page "The Feminist Breeder." Despite the name, there is nothing  remotely feminist about The Feminist Breeder. Gina Crosley Corcoran is, in fact, the very antithesis of what a feminist is.

Let me make this part clear upfront: I agree with Gina that childbirth is a feminist issue. It absolutely is. I also agree with Gina that, in the most cases, unmedicated childbirth is an empowering and beautiful process that benefits the mother and the child. But, unlike Ms. Corcoran, I don't think that I have any business demanding what other women do with their own bodies, because I have the radical notion that other women's bodies don't belong to me. 

Here's why The Feminist Breeder is no feminist.

1. Feminists don't control other women's vaginas.

Gina's blog and Facebook page are completely covered in her condemnation of doctors who perform C-sections that she deems unnecessary. It's a little strange to me that she thinks she's qualified to offer a second opinion on a C-section, since she is not a doctor or nurse-midwife and has never treated any of the patients she discusses on her blog. But there it is, almost every day: Gina telling other women that how they give birth is wrong because they decide, under the care of their health care providers, not to give birth through their vaginas.

2. Feminists don't control other women's breasts.

I breastfed my babies. I loved every moment of it. But those are my breasts. The Feminist Breeder's utter condemnation of formula-feeding is decidedly anti-feminist, because you can't possibly call yourself a feminist if you think you have any business policing what other women do with their bodies. There are many women who can't nurse for medical reasons-- I reluctantly had to admit that I was one of them-- and sometimes women can't breastfeed because they can't face issues like body shaming, traumatic memories of abuse, and internalized sexist stigma. Forcing women to undergo something emotionally or physically dangerous to them is decidedly unfeminist.

3. Feminists don't shame women who need medication.

The Feminist Breeder is full of shame and anger toward women who use drugs, either legally to cope with childbirth pain and complications, or illegally because they suffer from addiction. Exhibit A:

Addiction is a disease, and a serious one at that. Not to mention, some women can not tolerate the pain from labor and need relief. Controlling and shaming women who use medication for whatever reason is not feminist. It's especially not feminist when it's hypocritical, since it comes from a woman who by her own admission actually lives "on a steady diet of Lexapro and Abilify."

4. Feminists are intersectional.

Modern third-wave feminism is, by definition, at its core, intersectional. It addresses the needs of other oppressed communities besides women, particularly the LGBT community and minority races. A feminist would not say things that are openly racist and culturally appropriative. A white feminist, would not, for example, declare herself "a strong black woman" just for shits and giggles.

5. Feminists care about abused women.
More than they care about whether or not those women can give birth in their own apartments. The Feminist Breeder made a post claiming that she had been contacted by a pregnant woman who was being abused by her husband. A feminist would get an abuse victim the help she needed to escape the relationship safely. But what did Gina do? Instead, she tried to pan-handle to help the alleged abuse victim give birth at home. 

6. Feminists believe unplanned pregnancies are a private, not public, matter.

But Gina felt a need to get attention over the fact that her period was a day or two late and that her husband's vasectomy had not failed. Feminism supports the notion that women's bodies, and the unplanned conceptions that may happen in them, are not subjects that should be brought to the attention of the public. Gina disagrees and seems to think that her audience should weigh in on what may or may not have happened in her fallopian tubes three weeks ago.

7. Feminists don't want or expect to have sugar daddies.

Many feminists are stay-at-home moms or have husbands who out-earn them. There's nothing wrong with that. There is, however, something wrong with declaring that you wish your husband made more money, when he's already the one pulling the vast majority of the financial weight of the marriage. Here's a suggestion, Gina: if you're going to wish for something and still try to keep that "Feminist" on your blog name, wish that you yourself were a more competent earner in a more fair economy. Don't wish for your husband to magically become the wealthy Prince Charming you've been waiting for. 

8. Feminists support the inventions that have liberated women.
While it is perfectly acceptable to choose to birth naturally, breastfeed, and eschew hormonal birth control (these are all decisions that I myself have made), it's not acceptable to condemn women who choose epidurals, formula, or The Pill. These inventions are among the most powerful forces of women's liberation. Because of epidurals, women are able to give birth without having to endure horrendous pain. Because of formula, women who have been traumatized by sexual abuse don't have to do something that triggers panic attacks ten times a day. Because of hormonal birth control, women are not enslaved into decades of pregnancy and childbirth spanning the entirety of their reproductive lives. The Feminist Breeder's complete condemnation of these inventions, as "The Skeptical OB" Amy Tuteur points out, means that she has more in common with the anti-feminist Quiverful movement than she has in common with feminism.

9. Feminists support women's mental health.

Gina has openly stated that she suffers from severe depression, and she routinely posts vague, thinly veiled threats of suicide on Facebook and Twitter. This is no laughing matter. Depression kills. And, as much as I can't stand The Feminist Breeder, I don't wish harm on her and I would call for help if I were the first person to see her post a suicide threat. Yet, during the many occasions in which she has made public suicide threats and her followers have called for welfare checks, she has immediately expressed outrage and anger. This isn't an appropriate response. A feminist who cares about women's health would be grateful that her audience understands how serious suicide threats are.

10. Feminists want childbirth to be safe.

We've come a long way since the dark days when women and children died constantly from complications of childbirth. There were a few times in history when as many as half of women succumbed to infection and hemorrhage from childbirth. Even still, today, in areas where women can not access C-sections and other life-saving interventions, the rate of complication is staggeringly high. Babies are stillborn after days of agonizing labor. Mothers are left with obstetric fistulas-- holes in their vaginas that leak foul-smelling combinations of urine, feces, and pus. Mothers bleed to death in front of their spouses and children, who are helpless to stop it. Childbirth is beautiful when it goes right-- but when it goes wrong, it is one of the most horrific and deadly realities that we face as a species.

The Feminist Breeder hides the reality of childbirth to fit her own agenda. She gives incorrect, skewed, and dangerously misinformed medical advice to her clients and audience. She hides information about mothers and babies who die during childbirth. She advocates for homebirths overseen by under-qualified lay midwives and judges those who question their safety. Much of this battle is played out on The Skeptical OB, a blog run by heroic feminist doctor Amy Tuteur, whose advocacy for safer birth has led to dozens of tantrums and threats from Gina herself.

My feminism is about choice. I chose to make many of the same decisions as the woman who calls herself The Feminist Breeder. But, unlike her, I understand that my choices end with my own body. Just as I have no right to choose how other women have sex or whether they have abortions, I have no right to choose how other women give birth or feed their babies. That's what makes me a feminist. That's what makes Gina Crosley-Corcoban an enemy of feminism.