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March and rally for reproductive rightsin GoldenHundreds marched to a rallv at Marx MeadowsGate Park to defend women's reproductivetheir cases and gain support.Forced SterilizationDee Fairbanks, Director of Native American Studies, spoke of forced sterilizations as genocide. She quoted statistics which .showed that in four cities with Indian Health Service Hospitals, over five percent of all Native American women had been sterilized over a three year period. Of all Native American women of child, bearing age, one third have been sterilized at Indian Health Service Hospitals, shesaid.Fairbanks called for a moratorium of all sterilization of Native American women until a study could be done on all Native American women sterilized from 1966 to the present. She demanded that the study document the blood lines of the women to determine if the past practices selectively focussed on full-blooded Native Americans. Lastly she called for an end to a population control myth. “Having fewer children,” sherights.said “ would not mean greater wealth, because in my culture our children are our wealth “Mary Foran, the rally moderator, spoke about the status of the recently adopted state guidelines to protect women from forced sterilizations. The California Medical Association has filed suit claiming that the guidelines would endanger the health of woman.Foran told the audience that there will be intervention in the suit by the persons who workedContinued from Page 1 stop her husband’s physical abuse, she left her children with her parents so she could come to California to establish a home for her and the children. Her children were then taken from her parents home and she was charged with abandonment.Jeanne Jullian, a lesbian mother, spoke of her similar case. Custody of her children has been granted to her husband on the grounds that there is possible stigma to them being raised by a lesbian mother. Jullian is currently trying to regain custody in the final divorce suit in Alameda County. Complete written evaluation of her home and her relationship with her two sons verified her fitness as a parent, she said, and yet recommended that custody be granted to her former husband.Jullian stated that current depositions in her case focus on the bedroom and not on her adequacies as a parent. “We want the government out of the bedrooms,” she said, “and out of our bodies.”Both Gill and Jullian stressed the need for going to the community for support. As a result of their organizing, however, both have had gag orders placed on them, thus limiting their ability to inform the community of the facts offor passage of the guidelines. The purpose of the intervention will be so that community groups can demonstrate to the court that the CMA does not speak on behalf of women and that the guidelines protect rather than endanger women.Joan Kelly, a representative of the Black Panther Party, called the abortion cutbacks a further oppression of Third World women. She called on people to work together to “make the Hyde Amendment a piece of forgotten history that never happened”.Sylvia Weinstein spoke of the need for quality prenatal care and child care, demanding reallocation of tax dollars away from investment in bricks for Market Street and into programs which would truly give women a choice in their reproductive decisions.The Berkeley Women’s Music Collective performed at the beginning of the rally. Louisa Teesh read her poem,“What Don’t Kill is Fattening”, a poem of women shouldering the burden of their oppression. “Poor women eat their pain. What Don’t Kill is fattening.”
Newspaper Details
San Francisco Synapse
San Francisco, California, US
Thu, Sep 29, 1977
Page 19
Full Page
Clipped by
Katlyn O.
USA 12 May 2022
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