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Abortion

Abortion Fight Is About Controlling Women

By Dennis Trainor Jr. for Acronym Tv - As we near the 43rd anniversary of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court is getting ready to hear a case that could radically restrict the number of women’s health care facilities in the United States and may make abortion services inaccessible in many parts of the country. Before the Supreme Court will hear that case, radical religious extremists from all over the country will come to Washington, D.C. for the annual ‘March for Life’. Sunsara Taylor, the initiator behind the group Stop Patriarchy calls the march a “march for forced motherhood.” Taylor is leading the counter protests in Washington DC, and sat down with Dennis Trainor, Jr for this extended conversation just before the “March for Life.”

Stand Up For Abortion Rights

By Stop Patriarchy. Abortion rights are in a state of emergency! Clinics across the country have been forced to close through unjust laws and anti-abortion violence. Women and staff are shamed, harassed, and threatened. Christian fascist politicians are fighting to shut down Planned Parenthood. Thousands of women are once again risking their lives and prison to self-induce their own abortions. Eleven people have been murdered by anti-abortion terrorists. And a looming major Supreme Court case will affect abortion rights for decades to come. Each year, tens of thousands of fanatics march against women's right to abortion and birth control on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Be part of standing up in counter-protest, letting the world and the powers that be feel our demand that abortion be available to every woman without shame, restriction, or stigma.

For Abortion Providers, A Constant Barrage Of Harassment

By Nina Martin for ProPublica. Shootings like the one at a Colorado clinic are rare. Stalking, hate mail, and intimidating protests are the daily reality. Since 1993, 11 people have been killed in abortion-related attacks — doctors, clinic staff, and last week, a police officer and two visitors in the line of fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. While the investigation continues into the shooter’sbackground and motives, David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University, says that stalking and harassment pose a much more common threat to abortion providers and their families. For their May 2015 book “Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism,” Cohen and co-author Krysten Connon interviewed 87 providers in 34 states — clinic owners, doctors, and other employees.

Stop Clinic Violence By Stopping Extremist Anti-Abortion Rhetoric

By Jessica Valenti for The Guardian - Words matter. When we dehumanize people – when we call them demons, monsters, and murderers – we make it easier for others to do them harm. Let’s not pretend that we don’t know that. How we talk about abortion matters. We know it, and anti-choice extremists and politicians know it. Anti-abortion activists are not making WANTED posters or revealing doctor’s addresses for fun. They’re doing it to harass and intimidate, and they’re doing it knowing the long history of violent fanatics using their rhetoric to justify crimes against providers and clinics.

Reprieve In Texas, Assault On Reproductive Rights Continues

By John Queally in Common Dreams - Advocates for reproductive rights welcomed the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday which put a block on a Texas law that would have shuttered nearly every abortion clinic in the state. In a 5-4 decision (pdf), the ruling came in the form of a stay that will delay enforcement of the law—originally passed in the Texas legislature as H.B. 2 and signed into law in 2013—until a full challenge is taken up by the court. The stay, in effect, suspends a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit earlier this month which upheld specific provisions of the law that would have likely resulted in the closure of all but nine abortion clinics in the state.

Abortion: A Right In Name Only?

A desperate pregnant woman emailed my office recently. She was in a tough spot: She had enough money to buy diapers for her baby, or food for herself, but not both. She wanted help to pay for an abortion. She faced a pregnancy she could neither afford to continue nor afford to terminate. This is typical of the stories I hear in my job as executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, which serves the northern half of Texas. Even sadder than her predicament was the fact that our organization only has enough money to support fewer than half of the thousands of people who call us asking for help. An abortion typically costs anywhere from $450 to $3,000, depending on factors including number of gestational weeks. The per capita household income for Texas is $26,327.

Clinics To Close As Court Upholds Texas Abortion Restrictions

By Samantha Lachman in The Huffington Post - A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld some of the most onerous parts of a Texas abortion law, which is likely to cause most of the state's abortion clinics to close. The ruling, released Tuesday, allowed provisions requiring clinics to meet hospital-level operating standards and requiring providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals to go into effect. It did exempt the last open clinic in the state's Rio Grande Valley from the provisions, which were passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature and signed by former Gov. Rick Perry (R) two years ago. In court, attorneys opposing the law said it could close all but eight clinics in Texas.

Why These Kansas Ob-Gyns Are Suing To Stop New Abortion Ban

By Samantha Lachman in Huffington Post - Hodes and Nauser are serving as plaintiffs in a lawsuit against a new law that could block them from using the most common method for second-trimester abortions, called dilation and evacuation (D&E). The suit, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, seeks to have the legislation blocked before it takes effect July 1. A hearing for the suit hasn't yet been scheduled. The law in question bans what the anti-abortion advocates behind it describe as "dismemberment abortion" by prohibiting doctors from using forceps, clamps, scissors or other instruments to remove a fetus from the womb. Reproductive rights advocates say the measure is a public relations stunt, aimed at using graphic language to turn people against the procedure altogether.

Trial For Four Who Support 17 Women Imprisoned In El Salvador

Four activists, who appeared in court on May 15th for a pre-trial status hearing, will have to return to Washington, DC on July 7, 2015 to stand trial on the charge of unlawful entry, which carries a maximum sentence of 6 months in prison. The four were arrested on April 24, 2015 at the Embassy of El Salvador where they staged a sit-in to call attention to 17 Salvadoran women currently serving extreme 30-year prison sentences for having had miscarriages. The charges are for aggravated homicide and receiving illegal abortions, though there is little to no evidence as to the causes of their miscarriages. Carmen Guadalupe Vásquez Aldana made international headlines last month as the first of the 17 to be released. "This is a grave injustice. Where there is injustice, silence is complicity," said Father Roy Bourgeois.

House Passes ‘Blatantly Unconstitutional’ Abortion Ban

The politicians behind this bill clearly learned nothing from the outrage provoked earlier this year by its gross intrusions into women’s private lives and decisions. As if it weren’t enough to severely limit women’s options for confronting potentially devastating challenges during their pregnancies, this noxious legislation would also require rape survivors to undergo additional medical care or counseling whether they want it or not. This bill is a danger to women’s lives and well-being, an affront to their dignity, and a threat to the rights and liberties all Americans hold dear. Congress must reject this callous and unconstitutional bill.

Attempt To Pass Extreme Abortion Law Backfires

Proving that its long-planned assault on a women’s right to control their own bodies was too contentious even for some of its own members, the Republican majority in the House on Wednesday night withdrew plans to debate a bill that would have banned nearly all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Citing dissent among some female GOP lawmakers and others who acknowledged that the bill would have turned off women voters. The failure of the bill was characterized by some as a political “embarrassment” for the party which for first time in more than eight years now controls both chambers of Congress. Dana Milbank, at the Washington Post, described the attempt to pass the extreme law as a classic case of “bait and switch,” in which the party tried to ram through a policy it knows is unpopular with a majority of voters, especially women.

People Return To Traveling For Abortion

Despite strong U.S. support for the right to choose, the past three years have seen dramaticcuts to reproductive health care access, with states passing over 231 laws restricting abortion, according to the Guttmacher institute. In the face of these cuts, impacted communities have found creative ways to help each other get needed reproductive health care, while at the same time organizing to defend abortion rights on a broad scale. An article published Thursday in the New York Times describes one such creative grassroots action. Journalist Jackie Calmes tells the story of Lenzi Sheible, who at the age of 20 is the co-founder of Fund Texas Choice, which describes itself as a "non-profit organization funding abortion travel for low-income people in Texas."

Praying for Women, or Preying On Them?

In this episode clip from Acronym TV’s full program on the Catholic War on Women, Katie Klabusich relates her harrowing experience as a target of a “Wanted Poster” campaign from the Pro-Life Action League. “They decided for Lent this year to put together an Internet meme asking people to pray for (three people): me, (and also) an abortion doctor, and a pro-choice journalist. They put the three of us, with our names, cities, where we work, etc., (and published) it in the blog post and told people to ‘pray’ for us.” This was a major concern because, as Katie says,” the anti-choice movement has used wanted posters to kill people. It has lead to assassinations.” As Katie wrote on her blog when this story first broke (read more)

Coming Out of The Abortion Closet

In the United Sates, one out of every three women has had an abortion. If you are a women living in Texas, and a growing number of states, access to this basis, simple and safe procedure has been severely restricted with the passage of Hundreds of new laws in the last several years that strip a women's right to privacy, limit access to abortion and shame women into thinking that their choice about what to do with their bodies is wrong. It’s been over 40 years since the Supreme Court decided, in Roe v. Wade, that women had a constitutional right to abortion. The legal argument was based around the concept that women had a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, and that right extended to their right to have an abortion. Perhaps no time in the 40 years since Roe v Wade have female reproductive rights been so under attack. From Texas to Alabama to Congressmen saying that women can’t get pregnant when raped because their bodies have a way of shutting that down, men, usually white conservative men with ties to patriarchal religious institutions are working their balls off trying to control women; specifically a woman access to birth control and abortion.

Patriarchy and Religion: Built to Oppress Women

In the United Sates, one out of every three women has had an abortion. If you are a women living in Texas, and a growing number of states, access to this basis, simple and safe procedure has been severely restricted with the passage of Hundreds of new laws in the last several years that strip a women's right to privacy, limit access to abortion and shame women into thinking that their choice about what to do with their bodies is wrong. It’s been over 40 years since the Supreme Court decided, in Roe V Wade, that women had a constitutional right to abortion. The legal argument was based around the concept that women had a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, and that right extended to their right to have an abortion. Perhaps no time in the 40 years since Roe v Wade have female reproductive rights been so under attack. From Texas to Alabama to Congressmen saying that women can’t get pregnant when raped because their bodies have a way of shutting that down, men, usually white conservative men with ties to patriarchal religious institutions are working their balls off trying to control women; specifically a woman access to birth control and abortion

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