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Abortion

Inside New Jersey’s Fight Against Anti-Abortion Centers

Pilgrim Medical Center is a small, privately-owned abortion clinic in downtown Montclair, New Jersey, offering abortions conducted by licensed and board-certified medical professionals. Just three blocks down the street stands First Choice Women’s Resource Center. Its website promises “compassionate care” with cost-free services, and answers questions about abortions: How late can the abortion pill be taken? How much does an abortion cost? When is the latest I can get an abortion? “If you think you could be pregnant, please come in for a pregnancy test and to receive information about your options,” the website encourages. But First Choice does not actually provide abortion services or referrals to abortion providers.

Arizona’s Abortion Rights Showdown

The fight for reproductive rights in Arizona has reached a critical turning point as Proposition 139, a proposed constitutional amendment to secure abortion rights, will be on the ballot this November. The initiative’s path to the ballot is marked by a record-breaking signature collection effort, reflecting widespread public support amid a national landscape of increasing restrictions on abortion access. Arizona has long been a battleground for abortion rights, with its laws reflecting the broader national struggle over reproductive health. The state’s history includes an 1864 territorial statute that banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy, a law that was reinstated in 2022 following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Mexico’s Supreme Court Decriminalizes Abortion Nationally

On Wednesday, September 6, Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice (SCJN) unanimously ruled to decriminalize abortion at the national level. The SCJN resolved that the legal system that criminalizes abortion in the Federal Penal Code is unconstitutional as it violates the human rights of women and people with capacity for pregnancy. The ruling came two years after the SCJN first declared criminal penalties for abortion as unconstitutional and ordered the northern State of Coahuila to remove sanctions for abortion from its criminal code in September 2021. The ruling was in response to a case filed in 2018 challenging a criminal law in the Coahuila State legislation that punished women and pregnant individuals for terminating their pregnancy.

Attacks On Abortion Rights Are Attacks On All Workers

Over the past year, workers have seen our lives irrevocably changed. The Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs decision gutted a fundamental right to bodily autonomy and plunged millions into crisis and uncertainty. Almost immediately, a litany of horror stories emerged. Doctors denying life saving care for fear of retribution; women trapped with their abusers or killed for accessing abortion care; children — already subjected to unspeakable violence — forced to seek the procedure in the shadows, lest they bear children of their own. Since the ruling, 14 states have implemented full abortion bans, and several others are working tirelessly to restrict access.

Doctors Emerge As Political Force In Battle Over Abortion Laws

In her eight years as a pediatrician, Dr. Lauren Beene had always stayed out of politics. What happened at the Statehouse had little to do with the children she treated in her Cleveland practice. But after the Supreme Court struck down abortion protections, that all changed. The first Monday after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling was emotional. Beene fielded a call from the mother of a 13-year-old patient. The mother was worried her child might need birth control in case she was the victim of a sexual assault. Beene also talked to a 16-year-old patient unsure about whether to continue her pregnancy. Time wasn’t on her side, Beene told the girl.

Resisting Abortion Bans A Year After Dobbs

On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The culmination of a years-long political struggle between health care providers and right-wing politicians in Mississippi, the Dobbs decision overturned 50 years of legal precedent that guaranteed the federal right to abortion. Now that abortion’s legal status is left up to individual states, 20 have moved to restrict or ban abortion so far, especially in the South and Midwest. Many of these states have used so-called “trigger laws” that were already set to take effect if Roe v. Wade were ever reversed.

Graduate Students Across The US Are Organizing For Abortion Rights

This week, graduate students from more than fifty colleges and universities across the United States launched the Graduate Student Action Network (GSAN), a coalition centered around fighting for abortion rights and other forms of reproductive justice. GSAN’s first action is to coordinate a National Student Day of Action for abortion rights, to be held on October 6, the anniversary of the day a federal judge first blocked the draconian anti-abortion law in Texas. The network includes graduate student unions, graduate student governments, and student advocacy organizations like Socialists of Caltech and CUNY For Abortion Rights.

How Latin America Could Inform The US Fight For Reproductive Justice

When Dobbs vs. Jackson was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, overturning Roe v. Wade, the case drew all eyes to reproductive rights issues in the United States. For half a century, advocates around the world looked to Roe v. Wade as a landmark decision and advocacy model for reproductive justice. But the Dobbs decision now places the United States behind other countries that center women’s autonomy and human dignity in the regulation of abortion. As Latin American feminist advocates, we have seen firsthand how the lack of access to safe and legal abortions has impacted the life and health of many women, girls, and pregnant people across the Western hemisphere. Making access to sexual and reproductive health services a reality is a matter of social justice, democracy, and human rights.

Black Women Will Face The Brunt Of Abortion Bans

On July 29, Louisiana reinstated a controversial abortion ban, which led to the immediate cancellation of procedures in the state. Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in late June, a number of states across the country have moved to outlaw abortion, and in Louisiana, women in poverty will bear the worst burdens of the newly reinstated ban. These women are the true experts regarding the fatal risks of taking away reproductive freedom in the state — not anti-abortion politicians. The politicians gutting abortion rights likely don’t understand the pain of holding a friend as she sobs on the bathroom floor, assuming it’s the worst menstrual cycle of her life, only to discover that she is experiencing a missed miscarriage and her life is at stake. But I do.

NYPD Violently Arrest Five Abortion Rights Activists At A Clinic Defense

New York City, New York - On every first Saturday of every month, anti-abortion protesters gather to harass patients at the SoHo Planned Parenthood in the heart of New York City, supposedly a “safe city” for abortion rights. In response, local activist group NYC for Abortion Rights organizes a monthly clinic defense and counter-protest. The  NYPD always go out of their way to protect the anti-choice crowd, enabling them to harass patients trying to enter the clinic, as well as physically assault abortion rights activists. In that regard, today was no different. But today, the end of the morning, five clinic defenders were in handcuffs. The anti-choice mob usually leads a procession from the Basilica of Old St Patrick’s Cathedral to the nearby Planned Parenthood, but today they chose to forgo the procession.

Kansas Votes Overwhelmingly To Protect Abortion

Kansas - Kansans have voted to protect abortion rights in their state. Yes, Kansas — the deep red state where Trump won by more than 15 percentage points last election cycle has voted to protect abortion rights. In fact, Kansas has a history of violence against abortion providers, including the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller in 2009.But the vote wasn’t even close. At the time of publishing, the vote was roughly 60% in favor of abortion rights and 40% against. It was overwhelmingly in favor of protecting abortion rights in the state, with a huge voter turnout and by a wide margin. Amidst the dystopian chaos that is the post-Roe world, legislators in Kansas tried to slip one past Kansans, holding a referendum in the middle of the summer, during a mostly Republican primary, in an effort to capture a repeal of the state’s constitutional protection for the right to abortion in a low-turnout event.

Privacy Is The Entry Point For Our Civil And Basic Rights’

From the outset, the gutting of Roe by Dobbs is so devastating for, of course, the constitutional reasons, that at one time, Roe codified and really affirmed that abortion was a basic right. Dobbs, in overruling that, overturning that, has laid open states to pick and choose whether they will allow abortion providers and individuals that kind of right. But we’re in a very different moment now in 2022 than we were in the 1970s, and that’s really because of the rise of the digital age. With it, as you mentioned in your opening, is that the Internet is our primary pathway for almost everyone, I think, to information, to healthcare to, you know, telehealth appointments. And so there are these huge questions now about how people will access both just information, and then who is going to have access to that data that we are all of us engaging in and creating a footprint for.

Planned Parenthood Workers In Five States Unionize

Minneapolis, Minnesota - On July 21, 435 Planned Parenthood workers from Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska joined the Service Employees International Union, Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa (SEIU HCMN&IA) in a resounding 90.1% yes vote. 238 workers voted to join the union, and only 26 voted not to. The Planned Parenthood workers began working with organizers at SEIU HCMN&IA in early summer of 2021. Over the next year they built an organizing committee among their coworkers with workers from all five states represented on the committee and wide representation from the 28 locations involved. In May of 2022 they felt they finally had a strong enough organizing committee to move forward and began talking to coworkers and having them sign union cards committing to join the union.

Medical Students Walk Out On Antiabortion Speaker

University of Michigan medical students walked out on a speech Sunday by an antiabortion speaker during their “white coat day” to mark the start of medical school. In the weeks before the speech, students petitioned to have the speaker changed. The speaker was Kristin Collier, an assistant professor at the medical school. She has spoken out many times against abortion. “While we support the rights of freedom of speech and religion, an anti-choice speaker as a representative of the University of Michigan undermines the University’s position on abortion and supports the non-universal, theology-rooted platform to restrict abortion access, an essential part of medical care,” said the petition. “This is not simply a disagreement on personal opinion; through our demand we are standing up in solidarity against groups who are trying to take away human rights and restrict medical care.”

Antifascists Mobilize To Defend Clinic From Threats Of Far-Right Violence

On July 1st, Chris Reyes and other forced birth activists posted a flier for a “Babies Lives Matter” event on Saturday, July 9th. About one hundred responded to the call, gathering at the Santa Monica pier, harassing and threatening passersby, and then marching on Planned Parenthood. Those in attendance included Proud Boys and known J6 rioter and violent fascist Tony “Rooftop Korean” Moon. Moon gained prominence after assaulting several women, including a journalist, unprovoked, at a Proud Boys rally in Southern California. He later made stickers of the attack, changing the image of a female journalist to that of an antifascist to bolster his violent image. When the second event on July 16th was announced by the far-Right, antifascists immediately began planning and spreading fliers to defend the clinic that same day.

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