Dana Goldstein

New Studies Find Use of Ulcer Drugs to Induce Abortion

A stomach turning article in the New York Times today reminds us that the fight for reproductive justice isn't just a legal one, but is also deeply cultural. Two new studies of Latina women, particularly Dominicans, have found widespread use of prescription ulcer medication to induce abortion. Side effects include excessive bleeding, shock, and even rupture of the uterus. Nevertheless, some pharmacists are willing to sell the drug without a prescription for about $30. In a Catholic, anti-choice culture, many teenagers and women find this painful, dangerous abortion method preferable to visiting a family planning clinic or doctor's office, even if they are insured.

It was 12 years ago, but the memory remains vivid: She was handed a packet of pills. They were small and white, $30 for 12. Ms. Dominguez, two or three months pregnant, went to a friend’s apartment and swallowed the pills one by one, washing them down with malta, a molasseslike extract sold in nearly every bodega in the neighborhood.

The cramps began several hours later, doubling Ms. Dominguez over, building and building until, eight and a half hours later, she locked herself in the bathroom and passed a lifeless fetus, which she flushed.

Affordability remains a factor here; with abortions costing upwards of $1,000 and uncovered by public insurance plans, many women simply cannot afford them. Another option that should be more available and affordable is RU-486, the "abortion pill," which also includes misoprostol, the active ingredient in the ulcer medication. Yet RU-486, administered by a doctor and taken in private, is safe and intended for this purpose. It still gives women the advantage, if necessary, of passing their abortions off as miscarriages to anti-choice partners, family, or friends.

Most disturbingly, the Times reports on two cases of immigrant women being imprisoned by American judges for the crime of inducing abortion with ulcer drugs. Desperation and lack of health insurance should not be criminalized. It's hard to believe that any judge would see women -- not society and culture at large -- as the problem here.

Update: It just came to my attention that The American Prospect's deputy editor, the estimable Ann Friedman, was all over this story two years ago when she worked at Mother Jones. Go Ann!

cross-posted at TAPPED

Race and IQ

My knowledge of genetic science is limited, but for the sake of conversation, I'd like to point to a series of Slate columns by William Saletan that buy into the theory that black people, on the whole, are less intelligent than whites, who are in turn less intelligent than Asians. Saletan says he's been mostly convinced by race-matters IQ studies, no matter their small correlation values. He points to the smaller brain size of sub-Saharan Africans, and to studies showing that African children develop earlier and grow into more dexterous adults, while whites and Asians are late bloomers with bigger brains.

But after laying out an argument that confirms centuries of racist ideology, Saletan reassures his readers that yes, he's still an egalitarian! After all, many individuals within each race buck the IQ trends. Hey, there are lots of stupid white people! And there's always Barack Obama! (Saletan's example, not mine.) So, despite everything Saletan has just written, he chides readers who might assume it's now okay to judge people based on the color of their skin.

The argument is schizophrenic, not least because while IQ may be a good predictor of an individual's academic and career success, Saletan doesn't grapple fully with the fact that while we know both genetics and environment affect a person's IQ, there's little evidence that genetics are the more important factor. Indeed, as Saletan points out himself in an aside:

Hereditarians admit that by their own reading of the data, non-genetic factors account for 20 to 50 percent of IQ variation. They think malnutrition, disease, and educational deprivation account for a big portion of the 30-point IQ gap between whites and black Africans. They think alleviation of these factors in the U.S. has helped us halve the deficit. Trans-racial adoption studies validate this. Korean adoption studies suggest a malnutrition effect of perhaps 10 IQ points. And everyone agrees that the black-white IQ gap closed significantly during the 20th century, which can't have been due to genes.

Does discussion about possible links between race and intelligence belong in our public discourse? Only if we exercise great caution. Deciding to believe that historically discriminated against Americans are dumber than whites, and then patting yourself on the back for remaining a political "egalitarian?" That doesn't cut it. We should never talk about how American children of different races perform on IQ tests without noting the vast inequalities in access to health care, nutrition, early childhood education, safe schools, and good teachers that still exist -- not in some theoretical society, but right here in the United States. Black children are much more likely to have been born preterm, to be uninsured, and to live in extreme poverty. About two-thirds of black kids attend racially and economically isolated schools, and those who don't are much more likely to be as proficient in math and reading as their white peers, even when they come from poor families.

How can we possibly draw conclusions about race, genetics, and intelligence in America until we significantly close these environmental disparities? Until then, any claim that black Americans are genetically inferior to white Americans is counterintuitive guesswork at best, and nefarious at worst.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Rich People's Money

One of my first assignments as an intern at BusinessWeek in 2005 was to write a capsule profile of Eli Broad, the real estate magnate who has, in retirement, become one of the country's foremost philanthropists in the arts and education. His project at the time was the flash-in-the-pan reality television show "The Scholar," which provided the high school winner with a $250,000 college scholarship paid for by Broad. Today the New York Times uses Broad as a jumping off point for an exploration of philanthropy's utility, asking the question of whether society benefits more from lavish private acts of charity that earn tax-breaks, or simply from the taxes the wealthy pay. For every $3 a wealthy person donates, the government loses $1 in tax revenue.

The wealthy generally favor museums, universities, libraries, and other cultural insititutions in their philanthropy. In my view, high culture, and even beautification of the public space, is important. The Jackie Kennedy Onassis-championed renovation of New York's Grand Central Terminal in the 1980s restored grandeur, safety, and a sense of pride to one of the city's most important landmarks. And when I travel in Europe, I'm consistently struck by the fact that most of the magnificent public buildings we enjoy today were paid for by regressive, anti-democratic regimes whose values we now abhor. Yet from Michaelangelo, to the Impressionists, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Western high culture has always been in thrall to the wealthy institutions and individuals who can pay for its production. Today, philanthropists argue that by funding elite institutions, they are creating a trickle down effect; for example, a better funded university biology lab might make a stem cell breakthrough that could save millions of lives.

Still, the Times reporting is pretty depressing. It seems that the richer an American is, the less likely they are to direct their philanthropy toward poor Americans: "Research shows that less than 10 percent of the money Americans give to charity addresses basic human needs, like sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the indigent sick, and that the wealthiest typically devote an even smaller portion of their giving to such causes than everyone else." That should quiet claims that the private sector can fight poverty, disease, and inequality as effectively as government could -- if it tried.

Prison Abolitionists and Paris Hilton

Why, asks Jeremy Bearer-Friend at WireTap, didn't progressives do more with the Paris-goes-to jail story? The travesty wasn't only that a celebrity white woman was treated differently by the California police and courts than poor people of color. Rather, no one's substance abuse problem should be answered with incarceration. It's a strategy that just doesn't work. And the anti-Paris frenzy was another example of our society's knee-jerk zeal for putting more and more people in jail.

-cross-posted at TAPPED

Pets in Poverty

 I've never had a pet in my life (nope, not even a fish), so this angle on American poverty is certainly not one that would have occurred to me: In poor regions such as Appalachia, animal welfare is a big problem, as pet-owners can't afford to neuter their pets or get them basic veterinary care. The animal population swells, overwhelmed owners abandon their pets, and big-hearted neighbors -- who often don't have many more resources -- adopt more animals than they can care for. One family in the Times article has 13 dogs.