Two of the things important to me are: a) ways to contribute to political causes that resonate with me and b) to break out of my isolation, working alone as a visual artist, by joining projects that are carried by like-minded people.
Both goals have been realized in working with a documentary film team that is just now putting the finishing touches to a film to be released later this year. Conceptualized and directed by Jan Haaken, Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at Portland State University, the film investigates how stigma is attached to being an abortion provider and how a new generation of gynecologists and family medicine practitioners handle the challenges of their profession. Among them was Dr. Willie Parker, who is probably the most famous of the bunch given his visibility. Click on image to get his NYT profile by Nicholas Kristof.
Below is a link to the upcoming documentary:
On the day that an anti-abortion democratic candidate won the race in Illinois I thought we need to look at this. The documentary is timely in light of threatened legal restrictions to the current, already limited provisions of a woman’s right to chose.https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/us-supreme-court-skeptical-toward-california-law-anti-abortion-centers/
It is, however, not just the federal government or the courts who impede self-determination. There are other, insidious way to undermine the ability to obtain or provide abortions. If your city’s hospitals are run by administrations associated with religious institutions, their choice to deny services trumps those of women who seek them. In Seattle, for example, now more than 50% of all hospital beds and associated medical doctors are in the hands of the catholic church.
In many mid-western and southern states there are no longer a n y functioning clinics that women seeking an abortion can turn to. They have to cross state lines to find help, an impossibility for those who are poor due to associated travel cost and loss of wages. Often doctors from other states have to fly in on a weekly or monthly basis (including some of the docs we filmed in the NW.)
The film describes the status quo and how those working in the field experience the obstacles put in their way. These include not just what I described above, and the constant sense of threat to one’s personal safety when encountering protesters, but also the increasing refusal by many medical training institutions to teach the required skills and to ostracize those who chose this specialty.
In addition, may of the small, progressive women centers who were at the core of protecting women’s right face closure because larger institutions like Planned Parenthood dominate the market place.
I worked as a production photographer for the project, and chose for today’s blog some of my favorite portraits of the many courageous people, doctors and nurses, I encountered.
Some more portraits in link below.
Last but not least here is the crew – a fun and thoughtful bunch of people to work with.
For your viewing pleasure here is one of my favorites, at full length, so save it for a rainy day when you are in desperate need for cheering up. It comes with my personal guarantee that it will ! And since we’re out of rabbits today, you’ll get some deer….
“Marston was a man of a thousand lives and a thousand lies. “Olive Richard” was the pen name of Olive Byrne, and she hadn’t gone to visit Marston—she lived with him. She was also the niece of Margaret Sanger, one of the most important feminists of the 20th century. In 1916, Sanger and her sister, Ethel Byrne, Olive Byrne’s mother, had opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States. They were both arrested for the illegal distribution of contraception. In jail in 1917, Ethel Byrne went on a hunger strike and nearly died.
Byrne stayed home and raised the children. They told census-takers and anyone else who asked that Byrne was Marston’s widowed sister-in-law. “Tolerant people are the happiest,” Marston wrote in a magazine essay in 1939, so “why not get rid of costly prejudices that hold you back?” He listed the “Six Most Common Types of Prejudice.” Eliminating prejudice number six—“Prejudice against unconventional people and non-conformists”—meant the most to him. Byrne’s sons didn’t find out that Marston was their father until 1963—when Holloway finally admitted it—and only after she extracted a promise that no one would raise the subject ever again.“
Scarecrow (1971) with Al Pacino and Gene Hackman
Which brings me to today’s subject in this week’s theme of people I’d like to have known.
