Is it just me, or does anyone else have a problem with the fact that virtually all rights of women are signed away upon entry to a maternity unit, and that most women do not even know what rights they've given up? I myself was lucky enough not to have to experience the hospital at all for my 2 kids' births, but seeing as this is not an option for every woman, it feels as though there is a whole (and very important!) part of the female life cycle in which womens' essential sovereign rights are totally compromised.
For example, I've done a lot of work with CPS cases over many years, and the majority of them were Kanaka Maoli women who tested positive for ice in the hospital. Now, don't get me wrong -- ice is bad stuff and the problem needs to be addressed for sure. However, I found it really disturbing that hospitals routinely check the moms in the first place without them knowing it. Again, the sovereignty and sanctity of a woman's body just does not seem to be respected as it should, and it feels deceitful that women are not told clearly that they are giving up the basic human right of choice regarding their physical being.
Also, because there is virtually no regulation of what the hospitals do under "any treatment or procedure deemed necessary for...health and well-being", I really get the feeling that racial profiling is quite rampant, and totally unchecked.
Pehea ko 'oukou mana'o?
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This is an area of deep conflict for me. On one hand, I am a strong believer in the sovereignty and sanctity of a woman's body, as you so aptly put it. On the other, when it comes to health concerns of the impending unborn, there are few more violent first moments of life than to be born and go through w/drawals. I have seen babies go through withdrawals. I know many children and young adults today who were exposed to meth when their mothers were pg with them. I am not going spend several paragraphs addressing their collective quality of life, for if I were to do so, I would end up in a mess of angry tears.
For me, these collective experiences shaped my view about the intellectual honesty that we women go through when each of us looks in the mirror and says "I am going to have this baby." If a woman chooses to terminate her pregnancy, then do so, and by all means I will fight for a woman's right to make that choice. But if she chooses™ to bring that child to life, then that pregnancy harbors a viable fetus™ and then the rules change, including refraining from exposing her viable fetus to illegal substances (and I think that fetal alcohol exposure should also be a felony). I would like to see that the moment of choice be declared, something done at x time with a certain blood test, with caveats along the way to allow for late-term abortions for medical reasons, and health insurance (inc quest) covering treatments for addicted mothers who want to birth a healthy baby.
This is how I honestly feel about the issue. Granted, I know there are many exceptions to the above scenarios (like scared pg women who will avoid prenatal care because she doesn't want to get busted or lose her other children), but the older I get, the less patient I become for adults when their rights intersect with children's rights. I will always side with the children.
I appreciate the mana'o! Don't mind me; I'm really opinionated and I love a good discussion. So even if I disagree with you, know that I very much respect where you are coming from!
I certainly agree that in-utero ice exposure is not a good thing! Like I said, it is definitely a very serious problem that needs very, very serious solutions. However, I cannot see how the "random" testing of practically all women who enter the hospital (especially if they're, um, randomly Hawaiian...) is justified by this. It is not always a woman's choice to have her baby in a hospital setting, and I do not think that her entering this setting should automatically mean that her blood can be taken without permission and tested without her consent. Especially without her informed consent -- the secrecy of the hospital M.O. is very frankly a large part of what creeps me out. Our blood is sacred, just as kalo and 'iewe, and I just don't think it should be messed with (and certainly not "policed") by anyone without the mother's own mana'o firmly guiding the process.
That being said, I greatly respect your care for the children so painfully affected by methamphetamines, as I too know many who were born this way. However, I caution strongly against being too reactionary. "Illegal" substances (the issue of "illegality" under an illegal government aside for a moment!) are not all the same, and I have witnessed many children removed by CPS because a mother tested positive for cannabis, which is simply not in the same league in terms of health and cognitive effects on the fetus (except perhaps in unrealistically massive quantities). The overall "harm" of general cannabis use is unproven, but the harm to children through forcible removal is a very, very solid fact.
Also, to be blunt, if alcohol were a felony I would be in jail, I guess, because I sometimes drank some -- and did not hide it -- when pregnant with both of my children. For me, small, judiciously timed amounts were very medicinal, and I believe that I can say with confidence that it did not harm my kids at all. I think it was and is important for people to understand that it's not the alcohol itself that is harmful (it does not jump out of the bottle by itself!), but the loss of grip on what is pono. To maintain the grasp of pono, I feel very strongly that women must be sovereign.
I respect your view of always siding with the children. I, too, side with the right of future generations to be healthy, strong and pono, and I will fight for that right. In my view, the only way that the balance will ever be restored is when the sovereignty of women to choose their own path of pono is restored in full.
and is important for people to understand that it's not the alcohol itself that is harmful (it does not jump out of the bottle by itself!), but the loss of grip on what is pono. To maintain the grasp of pono, I feel very strongly that women must be sovereign.
This is where the slope gets slippery. But when we are talking about heavy addiction, a person risks losing her ability to keep a grasp on being pono, and one interpretation of "sovereign" is synonymous with "unchecked&untreated". How do we reconcile this?
Occasional/ceremonial moments of a pregnant woman drinking a glass of wine during the holidays isn't the same thing as my old neighbor banging budweiser by the case daily during her pg, a baby later found @ 8mo crawling in a stairwell in downtown Hilo at 2am and removed; this boy today was adopted into a loving home of two teachers, is my daughter's classmate, and still wrestles with the behavioral and intellectual development issues of FAS. Likewise, hitting a joint to keep food down or her blues at bay because she is scared and lacks support deserves its advocacy wrt medical mj laws. That's not the same as my classmate's wonderful son, who is 12 and was born to his biomother who snorted crank daily and was turned in by her own grandmother, already weary of taking care of her two older ggrandchildren.
Returning to the pregnant mother who lacks the faculties to make pono decisions, several questions beg:
1)how do we help those who aren't helping themselves
2)at what point do we, as caring citizens, decide to infringe on the sovereignty of a woman for the sake of her unborn baby, who otherwise has no voice?
I admit it; I wring my hands over this. Reactions result upon action; yours is a sound caution, but one's inner analysis guides one's inner compass. Statistics drive human action. Its a fundamental of society and the social contract we each make when we reconcile the rights we are willing to give up for the sake of community harmony.
(I really should be working right now, but this is much more interesting!)
I agree most definitely that drug abuse of any kind is a very serious problem that needs to be addressed by everyone. I think the solutions need to be comprehensive and powerful.
As far as "enforcement" goes, it's a complex issue. I would agree in general -- though cautiously -- that enforcement is needed in some cases. But what kind is a very serious question.
I have worked with CPS cases for many years. I do not believe that the current system works very well, to say the least. Overall, more harm than good is done by their involvement. I could start a list of problems, but it would be so long that this would not be practical. However, I will say that it is not the fault of any social worker or even administrator per se -- the entire system is pretty screwed up, and good-hearted individuals find it nearly impossible to do the right thing inside of it. The (especially federal) laws upon which it is based are a major source of the problem.
I think the key is in families, and in the communities that support them. We have to take the power back from the State. American law says that individuals have rights, and that the State has the right to interfere with these rights. The 'ohana is left out. But when there is abuse, it is often the 'ohana who knows about it, watches helplessly as the abuse progresses, and then in desperation turns over their rightful (as defined by our culture, anyway) power to the state by reporting their 'ohana -- only to then watch the keiki suffer in foster care, sometimes leaving Hawai'i forever when they are adopted by military families who cut off family and cultural ties entirely. Happens all the time, despite the fact that this exactly fits the UN definition of genocide!
Families need to be able to take action -- strongly and earlier in the game. Ultimately, I think that force needs to be seriously rearranged. Until then, there is a lot that can be done through agreements. Most who fall into abuse depend on their families, and that can be used to make change happen. But in order for this to happen, there needs to be strong support on many levels, and resources in place. It's a major paradigm shift, but it really can work, and it can work right now.
It is true that sometimes the abuse runs through the whole family. This is even more serious, and in this case sometimes community intervention is needed. However, there are still many means of lower-impact involvement than what is currently being done in general.
Also, what is lost through de-involving the State is the FCB money. People have come to depend heavily on this, especially in situations in which poverty was the real problem in the first place. This is a bigger, deeper issue that needs its own set of solutions.
Ultimately, the real causes of abuse need to be addressed at the roots, and this is hardly being done. The 'opio (and keiki) need so much more in terms of resources, support, and empowerment. If they are solid, we will not have a problem as we know it. But as it is, these things are painfully lacking. There is not enough hope, many are faced with a future of either long-term oppression or joining the diaspora (or military, which can do even worse brain damage than ice!), and they have no real power over their own 'aina. Powerlessness and a sense of inadequacy (fueled also by the "movie star"/"gangster" images pushed daily by the media) are the roots of ice. Like a Koa Haole tree, the problem must be dealt with at its roots or it's just going to keep coming back.
Now, back to the blood-testing issue. Number one, it does not solve the problem. Often it makes the situation worse. Number two, it violates the rights of all women, not just drug abusers. Isn't it interesting that they don't test men, when they come in to sign the birth certificate? I mean, the baby is born already, and dads' drug use is just as relevant, isn't it? Let's face it: the current testing of moms is a function of control, not of safety. 10,000 years is too much already. I'm over it. Especially the colonial variety, which involves domination of both women and native peoples. Number three, it's done in secrecy and that's not pono. Women and our koko are both sacred, and I think that the disrespect of both is part of the problem, not of the solution.
We're in a new millennium, and we need to hemu some of the b.s. of the old one. One major thing that has to go is this thing about abuse of force and systemic power in order for certain people to continue to control power that is not theirs in the first place. What is needed is a lot of creativity -- abuse of force is a junk substitute for real problem-solving. We gotta let our powers of creation flow. And in order to do that, we gotta hemu the fear.
Eh, one more side note (not to distract you more from your baseboards -- you go girl!) is in regards to two other points you mentioned: that of statistics and that of the question of a "social contract".
Statistics are really interesting. I love 'em and hate 'em....they are not my strong point, to say the least; I suck at numbers. But I came to be fascinated at how they are created and used. I think it's interesting how much the gathering methods used to create the statistics impact what the numbers end up being, and on how they are displayed. There is very little "clean" data to be found, because most studies are funded by agendas. And then what is published is almost always a summary of the study's findings, not the study itself, which can cast its own light. I'm not dissing the statistics outright, I'm just feeling cautious because there is almost always a rather large "no laila" implied, which is usually the reason that the findings exist in the first place. I guess I'm basically saying that I trust your eyes, ears and na'au much more than I trust any numerical analysis of the situation. I know you're not lobbing numbers or anything like that but speaking from your na'au -- I guess I'm saying that I really like it that way. And if you do bring up numbers, that's ok too, because it is clear that your native knowledge comes first.
The other thing is the concept of "social contract". It's interesting that you mention this, because I've been pondering it a lot lately in relation to Kanaka Maoli at this point in time. The questions involved in social contracts are especially interesting in the context of occupation/colonization, don't you think? I mean, native peoples have generally not entered into social contracts with their colonizers, they have been forced into them. And contract law says that anything "signed" under duress is invalid. I think this is basically the logical base that Ghandi used this in his fight with the British, right? Whatever social contracts we held previous to occupation have become impossible to actualize. So in a sense, we are not currently bound by any social contract other than the elements of culture that we choose freely to adhere to. Now, these should not be underestimated; they are very powerful. As a professional peacemaker, I rely on them a LOT! This is why I am such a stickler for voluntary solutions. They have a lot more power.
Sorry, I know it's unfair of me to keep going on while you're trying to catch up with your hale! It is so rare that I have a good opportunity like this that I just can't help myself.
Blessings on your cleaning efforts, and I look forward to your mana'o!
the cliff notes version, as I am taking my dusty house to task…I really mahalo having this discussion with you. This is one of those areas where the ideas and intentions are of the most noble of conflicts and the kiapolo is in the details.
I will come back later when I can really help take this puaʻa down and shred some good kālua with you. ;-)
blessings (and back to my baseboards, ugh!)
Luahiwa
mahalo nui, Laulani, for your like-minded respect and willing candor! I deeply appreciate a person who uses her voice, and finding common ground does not require a 100% consensus. With that, I am comfortable having this conversation with you, for we are both advocating from what we each regard is a noble and/or sensible and/or practical place. Peace to you, my fellow koa Hawaiʻi.
Replies
Aloha kāua e Laulani,
This is an area of deep conflict for me. On one hand, I am a strong believer in the sovereignty and sanctity of a woman's body, as you so aptly put it. On the other, when it comes to health concerns of the impending unborn, there are few more violent first moments of life than to be born and go through w/drawals. I have seen babies go through withdrawals. I know many children and young adults today who were exposed to meth when their mothers were pg with them. I am not going spend several paragraphs addressing their collective quality of life, for if I were to do so, I would end up in a mess of angry tears.
For me, these collective experiences shaped my view about the intellectual honesty that we women go through when each of us looks in the mirror and says "I am going to have this baby." If a woman chooses to terminate her pregnancy, then do so, and by all means I will fight for a woman's right to make that choice. But if she chooses™ to bring that child to life, then that pregnancy harbors a viable fetus™ and then the rules change, including refraining from exposing her viable fetus to illegal substances (and I think that fetal alcohol exposure should also be a felony). I would like to see that the moment of choice be declared, something done at x time with a certain blood test, with caveats along the way to allow for late-term abortions for medical reasons, and health insurance (inc quest) covering treatments for addicted mothers who want to birth a healthy baby.
This is how I honestly feel about the issue. Granted, I know there are many exceptions to the above scenarios (like scared pg women who will avoid prenatal care because she doesn't want to get busted or lose her other children), but the older I get, the less patient I become for adults when their rights intersect with children's rights. I will always side with the children.
aloha,
na Luahiwa
I certainly agree that in-utero ice exposure is not a good thing! Like I said, it is definitely a very serious problem that needs very, very serious solutions. However, I cannot see how the "random" testing of practically all women who enter the hospital (especially if they're, um, randomly Hawaiian...) is justified by this. It is not always a woman's choice to have her baby in a hospital setting, and I do not think that her entering this setting should automatically mean that her blood can be taken without permission and tested without her consent. Especially without her informed consent -- the secrecy of the hospital M.O. is very frankly a large part of what creeps me out. Our blood is sacred, just as kalo and 'iewe, and I just don't think it should be messed with (and certainly not "policed") by anyone without the mother's own mana'o firmly guiding the process.
That being said, I greatly respect your care for the children so painfully affected by methamphetamines, as I too know many who were born this way. However, I caution strongly against being too reactionary. "Illegal" substances (the issue of "illegality" under an illegal government aside for a moment!) are not all the same, and I have witnessed many children removed by CPS because a mother tested positive for cannabis, which is simply not in the same league in terms of health and cognitive effects on the fetus (except perhaps in unrealistically massive quantities). The overall "harm" of general cannabis use is unproven, but the harm to children through forcible removal is a very, very solid fact.
Also, to be blunt, if alcohol were a felony I would be in jail, I guess, because I sometimes drank some -- and did not hide it -- when pregnant with both of my children. For me, small, judiciously timed amounts were very medicinal, and I believe that I can say with confidence that it did not harm my kids at all. I think it was and is important for people to understand that it's not the alcohol itself that is harmful (it does not jump out of the bottle by itself!), but the loss of grip on what is pono. To maintain the grasp of pono, I feel very strongly that women must be sovereign.
I respect your view of always siding with the children. I, too, side with the right of future generations to be healthy, strong and pono, and I will fight for that right. In my view, the only way that the balance will ever be restored is when the sovereignty of women to choose their own path of pono is restored in full.
Aloha, Laulani
This is where the slope gets slippery. But when we are talking about heavy addiction, a person risks losing her ability to keep a grasp on being pono, and one interpretation of "sovereign" is synonymous with "unchecked&untreated". How do we reconcile this?
Occasional/ceremonial moments of a pregnant woman drinking a glass of wine during the holidays isn't the same thing as my old neighbor banging budweiser by the case daily during her pg, a baby later found @ 8mo crawling in a stairwell in downtown Hilo at 2am and removed; this boy today was adopted into a loving home of two teachers, is my daughter's classmate, and still wrestles with the behavioral and intellectual development issues of FAS. Likewise, hitting a joint to keep food down or her blues at bay because she is scared and lacks support deserves its advocacy wrt medical mj laws. That's not the same as my classmate's wonderful son, who is 12 and was born to his biomother who snorted crank daily and was turned in by her own grandmother, already weary of taking care of her two older ggrandchildren.
Returning to the pregnant mother who lacks the faculties to make pono decisions, several questions beg:
1)how do we help those who aren't helping themselves
2)at what point do we, as caring citizens, decide to infringe on the sovereignty of a woman for the sake of her unborn baby, who otherwise has no voice?
I admit it; I wring my hands over this. Reactions result upon action; yours is a sound caution, but one's inner analysis guides one's inner compass. Statistics drive human action. Its a fundamental of society and the social contract we each make when we reconcile the rights we are willing to give up for the sake of community harmony.
(I really should be working right now, but this is much more interesting!)
again, mahalo for the discourse!
aloha, Luahiwa
Ok so here's my mana'o (basically).
I agree most definitely that drug abuse of any kind is a very serious problem that needs to be addressed by everyone. I think the solutions need to be comprehensive and powerful.
As far as "enforcement" goes, it's a complex issue. I would agree in general -- though cautiously -- that enforcement is needed in some cases. But what kind is a very serious question.
I have worked with CPS cases for many years. I do not believe that the current system works very well, to say the least. Overall, more harm than good is done by their involvement. I could start a list of problems, but it would be so long that this would not be practical. However, I will say that it is not the fault of any social worker or even administrator per se -- the entire system is pretty screwed up, and good-hearted individuals find it nearly impossible to do the right thing inside of it. The (especially federal) laws upon which it is based are a major source of the problem.
I think the key is in families, and in the communities that support them. We have to take the power back from the State. American law says that individuals have rights, and that the State has the right to interfere with these rights. The 'ohana is left out. But when there is abuse, it is often the 'ohana who knows about it, watches helplessly as the abuse progresses, and then in desperation turns over their rightful (as defined by our culture, anyway) power to the state by reporting their 'ohana -- only to then watch the keiki suffer in foster care, sometimes leaving Hawai'i forever when they are adopted by military families who cut off family and cultural ties entirely. Happens all the time, despite the fact that this exactly fits the UN definition of genocide!
Families need to be able to take action -- strongly and earlier in the game. Ultimately, I think that force needs to be seriously rearranged. Until then, there is a lot that can be done through agreements. Most who fall into abuse depend on their families, and that can be used to make change happen. But in order for this to happen, there needs to be strong support on many levels, and resources in place. It's a major paradigm shift, but it really can work, and it can work right now.
It is true that sometimes the abuse runs through the whole family. This is even more serious, and in this case sometimes community intervention is needed. However, there are still many means of lower-impact involvement than what is currently being done in general.
Also, what is lost through de-involving the State is the FCB money. People have come to depend heavily on this, especially in situations in which poverty was the real problem in the first place. This is a bigger, deeper issue that needs its own set of solutions.
Ultimately, the real causes of abuse need to be addressed at the roots, and this is hardly being done. The 'opio (and keiki) need so much more in terms of resources, support, and empowerment. If they are solid, we will not have a problem as we know it. But as it is, these things are painfully lacking. There is not enough hope, many are faced with a future of either long-term oppression or joining the diaspora (or military, which can do even worse brain damage than ice!), and they have no real power over their own 'aina. Powerlessness and a sense of inadequacy (fueled also by the "movie star"/"gangster" images pushed daily by the media) are the roots of ice. Like a Koa Haole tree, the problem must be dealt with at its roots or it's just going to keep coming back.
Now, back to the blood-testing issue. Number one, it does not solve the problem. Often it makes the situation worse. Number two, it violates the rights of all women, not just drug abusers. Isn't it interesting that they don't test men, when they come in to sign the birth certificate? I mean, the baby is born already, and dads' drug use is just as relevant, isn't it? Let's face it: the current testing of moms is a function of control, not of safety. 10,000 years is too much already. I'm over it. Especially the colonial variety, which involves domination of both women and native peoples. Number three, it's done in secrecy and that's not pono. Women and our koko are both sacred, and I think that the disrespect of both is part of the problem, not of the solution.
We're in a new millennium, and we need to hemu some of the b.s. of the old one. One major thing that has to go is this thing about abuse of force and systemic power in order for certain people to continue to control power that is not theirs in the first place. What is needed is a lot of creativity -- abuse of force is a junk substitute for real problem-solving. We gotta let our powers of creation flow. And in order to do that, we gotta hemu the fear.
That's my mana'o anyway.
Mahalo!!!
Aloha,
Laulani
Statistics are really interesting. I love 'em and hate 'em....they are not my strong point, to say the least; I suck at numbers. But I came to be fascinated at how they are created and used. I think it's interesting how much the gathering methods used to create the statistics impact what the numbers end up being, and on how they are displayed. There is very little "clean" data to be found, because most studies are funded by agendas. And then what is published is almost always a summary of the study's findings, not the study itself, which can cast its own light. I'm not dissing the statistics outright, I'm just feeling cautious because there is almost always a rather large "no laila" implied, which is usually the reason that the findings exist in the first place. I guess I'm basically saying that I trust your eyes, ears and na'au much more than I trust any numerical analysis of the situation. I know you're not lobbing numbers or anything like that but speaking from your na'au -- I guess I'm saying that I really like it that way. And if you do bring up numbers, that's ok too, because it is clear that your native knowledge comes first.
The other thing is the concept of "social contract". It's interesting that you mention this, because I've been pondering it a lot lately in relation to Kanaka Maoli at this point in time. The questions involved in social contracts are especially interesting in the context of occupation/colonization, don't you think? I mean, native peoples have generally not entered into social contracts with their colonizers, they have been forced into them. And contract law says that anything "signed" under duress is invalid. I think this is basically the logical base that Ghandi used this in his fight with the British, right? Whatever social contracts we held previous to occupation have become impossible to actualize. So in a sense, we are not currently bound by any social contract other than the elements of culture that we choose freely to adhere to. Now, these should not be underestimated; they are very powerful. As a professional peacemaker, I rely on them a LOT! This is why I am such a stickler for voluntary solutions. They have a lot more power.
Sorry, I know it's unfair of me to keep going on while you're trying to catch up with your hale! It is so rare that I have a good opportunity like this that I just can't help myself.
Blessings on your cleaning efforts, and I look forward to your mana'o!
Aloha, Laulani
I will come back later when I can really help take this puaʻa down and shred some good kālua with you. ;-)
blessings (and back to my baseboards, ugh!)
Luahiwa
I will be back later…
aloha, Luahiwa