South Dakota Measure 11

I received this in my email today and thought I'd share it with you.

WOMEN ARE SACRED
Vote "NO" on Initiated Measure 11
Protect Your Rights!
Keep abortion safe and legal!

"Women are sacred" is a sacred traditional teaching for the Dakota/Nakota/ Lakota Nations. Traditionally, decision-making regarding childbearing was the business of women. Those decisions were based on the health of the women and the good of all the Oyate. Those decisions were respected.

As women, our decision-making abilities have been taken from us in many ways. Our voices have been diminished throughout the centuries… until now. Those who do not understand our traditions will not silence us.

Our voices and decisions do not belong to a religion or a government legislature – you may not legislate our minds or our bodies. It is our inherent right as sovereign Dakota/Nakota/ Lakota women to make our own decisions.

Key issues to consider before you vote:

This measure will make it even harder for women to get an abortion. There would be only three exceptions that would grant an abortion option:

Risk of death to the pregnant woman or serious and irreversible injury to a major bodily organ or system.
Pregnancy as a result of a rape.
Pregnancy as a result of incest.

In all three of these "exceptions" the woman is forced to report her story and be judged by someone other than herself as to what is best for her health and life. These laws not only take away a woman's right to choose, but they also force her to report something that she may not want to, thus furthering her suffering and potentially challenging her safety and security.

Though there is nothing in this measure that prohibits the sale or prescribing of contraceptives, limiting access to legal abortions in this state is even more harmful because Emergency Contraception (EC) is hard to obtain. Not all hospitals provide a victim of rape with EC, such as Catholic Hospitals. Also, South Dakota has a refusal clause that allows pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription for Emergency Contraception because of their religious or moral beliefs. This restriction further limits your ability to choose important aspects about your own health.

Press Release to be Delayed

I wanted to write and apologize to all donors for not getting the memorial package with the fundraiser information out to Senator Biden in a timely manner. My own mother took a turn for the worse in her battle with pancreatic cancer right at the end of the drive, and she died yesterday morning.

I won't be in the frame of mind to get everything together for a few more days, but I will definitely do it toward the end of next week.

Thanks for your understanding,
Betsy

A Press Release Will Be Forthcoming

Folks, on Sunday night, the Daily Kos community came together and ended the fundraiser.

You all are amazingly generous and compassionate people, and my hat goes off to each and every one of you.

We will now be working on a press release, and sending a package to Senator Biden's office that will include a letter explaining the history of the shelter and the Netroots' support for it, an official acknowledgment from the shelter, and your messages to Senator Biden's family and the Pretty Bird Woman House staff.

Thank you all so much for supporting this shelter. You are making a big difference in the lives of the women on the Standing Rock Reservation, who will now have a WARM shelter to escape to if they become victims of domestic violence.

Lets Honor the Biden Family's Loss with a Furnace In Bonny Jean Jacobs' Name

Many of you may know that Senator Joe Biden's mother-in-law died over the weekend.

One of Senator Biden's accomplishments in the Senate was the authorship of the Violence Against Women Act, which, among other things, provides funding for shelters like Pretty Bird Woman House.

I would like to propose that we honor the Biden family by buying a furnace for the shelter in his mother-in-law's name (Bonny Jean Jacobs).

What do you say? $5 or $10 from a couple of hundred people will do it. We can send an official card to the Biden family saying that the Netroots has done this in their name...

Are you in?

By the way October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which makes this tribute especially appropriate.



And, as usual:

Native American Women Face Poor IHS Care, Especially after Being Raped

Good article from the Redwood City Daily News.

Here are a few excerpts from an interview with Charon Asetoyer, who is from the Yankton Nakota Reservation in South Dakota, and is the founder of the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center (link on right at Native Shop).

First, we see that other Federal agencies are aware of the problems with poor care through the Indian Health Service (IHS).

Not that you need to be reminded, but here are some statistics that give us an idea of the scope of the problem, again from the article:

Bernadine Healy, MD, former director of the National Institutes of Health, described the Indian Health Service (IHS) in 2004 as "everyone's worst nightmare of what government healthcare would look like. The system is riddled with crumbling facilities, mindless regulations, ancient equipment, and far too few nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and dentists." When it comes to the care of Indian women who have suffered sexual assault, the current IHS is all that and more.

One in three American Indian women (34.1 percent) experience rape in their lifetimes as compared with 18 percent of white women and 19 percent of African American women, according to a Department of Justice study. Despite this high rate, there are few nurses trained within the IHS as sexual assault nurse examiners (SANEs), training which includes use of a police rape kit to gather forensic evidence and instruction on how to care for a rape victim in a respectful and medically appropriate manner. One report found that 44 percent of IHS facilities had no SANE-trained staff available. Other necessary care such as STD screening is also not being done.

The journalist posed the following questions to Ms. Asetoyer:

Q: What challenges face reservation-based Indian women who seek post-rape care?

A: At the local level, there are no standardized sexual assault policies and protocols within Indian Health Service emergency rooms. In some service units, there are protocols and procedures, but this is a federal agency that needs to be standardized - especially for Native American and Alaska Native women.

We also have a situation in which 44 percent do not even have [forensically] trained staff. If you don't have a rape kit done on a woman who has been raped, you don't have any forensic evidence. There needs to be trained SANE nurses able to do rape kits in every single reservation and Alaskan native village. You've got villages in Alaska where the plane only comes in on Wednesday. If you were raped on Thursday, Friday or Saturday, you have to wait that long - and they expect you not to bathe and wash away the evidence. That is totally unrealistic.

Q: Why do American Indian women receive less comparable care than women outside of the reservation?
A: Tribal leadership has their plate full just trying to keep our IHS facilities open - even though the incidence of sexual assault and rape is so high within the Indian community. But it is a top priority for victims and women. Even though health care is a right guaranteed to us through treaty, the IHS still has to work on financial authorization from Congress. We receive less than half of what every other American is afforded for health care, and this has allowed the IHS to deteriorate to the level that it is now. The doctors do an incredible job with the resources that they have, but they don't have resources necessary to improve the health status for us.

Ms. Asetoyer went on to describe how non-Native men know they can go into an area and rape the women with impunity, partly because of jurisdictional problems and partly because the IHS lacks enough personnel to administer rape kits and collect the forensic evidence necessary to prosecute them.

IHS does not have the staff or funding to set up women's shelters to help battered and sexually assaulted women, so it has been up to local community groups like Pretty Bird Women House to set up shelters. Currently, many reservations who lacked shelters are in the process of setting them up and hiring court advocates.

I've covered the jurisdictional problems that Amnesty International highlighted in their report last year, but this article highlights how the underfunded and understaffed Indian Health Service also contributes to the problem.

The article also serves as a reminder of what a big impact your help has had on the Standing Rock Reservation. The women face so many challenges to their health and well being, and the fact that there is now a functioning shelter located in a safe building (that YOU bought!!) is a huge help to them. The only reason it exists right now (aside from the incredible dedication of its director, Georgia Little Shield), is because of the generosity of the Netroots. I will always be in awe of that.

One more thing, I'm going to be continually reminding people that Pretty Bird Woman House will need a new furnace this winter. This is the last big ticket item that they need help with, since the federal grants that they've procured don't cover this expense.

On that note, see the post below.

Reminder: We Really Need a New Furnace

Hi everyone,

With the Netroots all consumed with the Presidential campaign, I wanted to delay pressing for funds for a new furnace until more people could focus on it. However, it's now getting colder, and the poor condition of the furnace will become more and more apparent as we get further into the fall.

So, can we re-kick off this fundraiser? If you're coming here for the first time, or, if you're a past contributor and are checking for news on the shelter, could you click on the ChipIn and give just $5 or $10? These small contributions from the many, many people who read this blog will quickly add up to a warm winter for battered women on the Standing Rock Reservation. Of course, we'd welcome large donations as well :)

Do you have your own Blogspot, LiveJournal, or Wordpress blog? If so, we'd be so grateful if you would either copy the ChipIn widget or link to the fundraiser.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.