Reproductive Rights

Abortion Rights And The Power Of Protest

May 27, 2019 Margaret Kimberley, Blackagendareport.com Resist! Abortion, Electoral Politics, Protests, Reproductive Rights, Women

Americans do not know how to protest. Even on those occasions when they take to the streets they also waste time with nonsense. Props like pink hats or costumes from the Handmaids Taletelevision show are poor substitutes for effective politics. It has been nearly 50 years since mass action has been coordinated into coherent political demands. Now the right to abortion is at risk and the lack of effective protest is partly the cause. The states of Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Iowa, Kentucky, and Arkansas have passed so-called fetal heart beat laws which ban the procedure before many women even realize they are pregnant.

Abortion Providers Fear For Their Safety As Rhetoric Ratchets Up

May 25, 2019 Melissa Jeltsen, Huffpost.com Educate! Abortion, Reproductive Rights, Sexism

A few weeks ago, Jen Villavicencio, an OB-GYN in Michigan, Googled her name. There, on the results page, was an anti-choice website that identified medical professionals working in the “abortion cartel.” Her name was on the list. The site had posted several photos of her, stripped from social media, along with her work phone number and the city where she practices. Villavicencio wasn’t surprised; ever since she started providing abortions six years ago, she’d expected to be targeted online. But when her husband walked up behind her and saw the photos on her computer screen, he sat down and began to cry.

Nationwide Protests And State Boycotts Planned Amid Wave Of GOP Attacks On Abortion Rights

May 22, 2019 By Jessica Corbett, Commondreams.org Resist! Abortion, Protests, Reform, Reproductive Rights

"They're coming for women. They're coming for doctors. They're coming for Roe. But we're the majority—and we're NOT going back." Supporters of reproductive rights are fighting back against Republican politicians' latest wave of attacks on abortion rights by organizing nationwide protests and boycotts of states that have passed restrictive laws to challenge the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling. "[Republican legislators] all know that these laws will never go into effect as they are written; their express goal is for them to be challenged in the courts, land in the conservative-held Supreme Court, and serve as the catalyst for a complete ban on abortions in America."

America’s Reproductive Slaves

May 21, 2019 By Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! Abortion, Birth control, Reproductive Rights, Sexism, Women

On Wednesday, the day it was announced that the U.S. birthrate fell for the fourth straight year, signaling the lowest number of births in 32 years, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law the most draconian anti-abortion law in the country. That the two developments came at the same time could not have been more revelatory. The ruling elites are acutely aware that the steadily declining American birthrate is the result of a de facto “birth strike” by women who, unable to afford adequate health insurance and exorbitant medical bills and denied access to paid parental leave, child care and job protection, find it financially punitive to have children.

In Red Pairs: Handmaids Are Resisting

June 20, 2017 AbZimet, www.commondreams.org Resist! Congress, Health Care, Legislation, Reproductive Rights, Women

By Abby Zimet for Common Dreams - Women occupying senators' offices Friday aren't alone in resisting the all-male "declaration of war on women" that would be repeal of Obamacare and enactment of a GOP health plan widely blasted as "catastrophic." Getting creative, women from Texas to Ohio have increasingly been protesting assaults on women's health care by dramatically donning red robes and white bonnets to channel Margaret Atwood's dystopian-themed "The Handmaid's Tale," wherein women are forced to bear children in a totalitarian society. Their goal: To remind persistently-backwards-looking conservatives that Atwood's vision of women defined purely by their reproductive capacity is not, in fact, "an instruction manual." Atwood's 1985 novel depicts women stripped of their rights in a theocratic, patriarchal, not-so-distant Gilead - aka America - rendered barren by environmental disaster, where fertile women, or handmaids, must bear the children of regime leaders and are controlled by them. Initially seen as a cautionary tale, the book has seen new life as a hit TV show on Hulu; it gained new resonance when Trump got "elected" in the middle of filming. Atwood has long argued its premise is based on old, real human themes: Historically, she notes, "There is no totalitarianism worth its salt that doesn't try to control women."

The Worst ‘Alternative Facts’ About Abortion

April 18, 2017 Sofia Resnick, www.rewire.news Educate! Abortion, health, Reproductive Rights

By Sofia Resnick for Rewire - During her first weekend as counselor to the 45th president of the United States, Kellyanne Conway introduced the country to a foreboding new catchphrase: “alternative facts.” Many an editorial, even from conservative writers, expressed dismay that a top aide to the president appeared to be openly challenging the meaning of the word “fact.” But longtime observers of Conway’s work and the anti-choice movement from which she rose to become the first woman to manage a successful presidential campaign should not be surprised. The leaders and lawmakers of this movement have been dealing in “alternative facts”—also known as lies—about abortion and other reproductive health issues for decades. They have created a cottage industry out of devising bogus claims and flawed researchto advance anti-choice policy. The administration of President Donald Trump promises to bring many challenges to accessing reproductive health care, helped by a GOP-controlled Congress eager to obliterate the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned Parenthood.

Trump Reverses Rule Protecting Women’s Access To Basic Healthcare

April 14, 2017 Staff, www.reproductiverights.org Educate! Donald Trump, health, Reproductive Rights, Women

By Staff of Center for Reproductive Rights - In the past few years, an increasing number of states have tried to block trusted reproductive health care providers—including providers that offer abortion care with non-Title X dollars—from participating in Title X. Since 2011, at least 13 states in which Title X funds flow through the state government have approved restrictions that would exclude qualified providers from the Title X network. Mounting evidence shows that the exclusion of reproductive health care providers from publicly funded health programs harms health outcomes, widens disparities, and erects new barriers to care. These barriers are particularly pronounced for those who are already have trouble accessing care—including low-income individuals, people living in rural communities, and people of color. In response to these political attempts to restrict where a woman can get her health care, President Obama issued the rule last year reinforcing that Title X grantees—which in many cases are states—must select subrecipients solely based on their ability to provide care to Title X patients...

A Q&A About Police Violence And Reproductive Health

April 6, 2017 Cynthia Greenlee, www.rewire.news Educate! health, Police violence, Reproductive Rights

By Cynthia Greenlee for Rewire - Police violence and interaction could be seen as particularly extreme forms of maternal stress. If one lives in a community that is frequently policed, the accumulative effects of these interactions can have health consequences more insidious than those caused by actual physical violence. When there is a police shooting, somewhere a doctor or medical staff are involved. They treat the living wounded, and as coroners, they read the bodies of the dead and produce autopsies that will be scrutinized by the public, the media, and the criminal justice system. Those documents underline that the provision of medical care is political. Physicians do not shed their biases and beliefs when they don white coats. Individual doctors and medical associations have been agents of social change and, in other cases...

For Women’s Reproductive Freedom, A Chill Wind Blows

December 1, 2016 Dorothy Samuels, www.brennancenter.org Educate! Reproductive Rights, Women

By Dorothy Samuels for Brennen Center for Justice and The American Prospect - Donald Trump’s plans for an extreme misogynistic makeover of reproductive health care received way too little scrutiny during his noxious, anti-woman campaign. Now, the damage a hard-right Trump administration could inflict on abortion rights and women’s health services more broadly has become impossible to ignore. Trump lost the popular vote and received no mandate to roll back or eliminate a fundamental right that the Supreme Court has recognized as integral to women’s autonomy and equality, but since Election Day, he has made even plainer his commitment to doing exactly that.

Black Lives Matter & Reproductive Rights Alliance For Justice

February 16, 2016 Katie Klabusich, www.truth-out.org Strategize! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Reproductive Rights

By Katie Klabusich for Truthout - Leaders from the Black Lives Matter and reproductive justice movements recently announced a formal organizational alliance through a call with press and activists around the country. "Today, we launch this statement of solidarity with Black Lives Matter to affirm that the work that we've been doing for 20 years for Black women's reproductive freedom and justice is connected to the movement for Black lives, and to recognize that Black Lives Matter has brought things to a crucial tipping point," said Monica Raye Simpson...

Reproductive Health And Rights In U.S. Under Attack

January 25, 2016 Staff, www.populationinstitute.org Educate! Abortion, Planned Parenthood, Reproductive Rights

By Staff of Population Institute - Walker warned that, “The attacks on Planned Parenthood are potentially devastating. Planned Parenthood health centers make up only 10 percent of publicly funded safety-net providers, but they serve 36 percent of the clients seeking contraceptive services. In 103 counties with a Planned Parenthood health center, the Planned Parenthood facility serves all the women who are using safety-net clinics to access contraceptive services. The restricted access to reproductive health care would be particularly devastating for poor women and women living in remote areas.”

Hearing On Planned Parenthood Embarasses Republican Lawmakers

October 1, 2015 Marina Fang, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Law, Reproductive Rights

By Marina Fang for The Huffington Post - WASHINGTON -- After enduring a marathon House hearing on Tuesday during which GOP representatives frequently interrupted her, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards accused them of political grandstanding and using the hearing to demonstrate how "they are obsessed with ending access to reproductive health care for women in America." "I'm being generous, calling it a hearing," she said in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. "I think the whole purpose of this hearing was to convince themselves that it is OK to deny women the ability to go to the health care provider of their choice, because 2.7 million women and men choose Planned Parenthood, and they were trying to say they wanted to take that choice away from them."

8 Things Women Have Successfully Fought For Since NOW Founding

July 2, 2015 Nina Bahadur, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Activism, History, Reproductive Rights, Womyn

By Nina Bahadur in Huffington Post - Forty-nine years ago today, something awesome happened. At the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women on June 30, 1966, 28 women banded together with a vow to represent women's rights and interests in governmental matters. Thus, the National Organization of Women (NOW) was born. Forty-nine years later, NOW campaigns for six core issues: Reproductive rights and justice, ending violence against women, economic justice, LGBT rights, racial justice and constitutional equality amendment. The women involved in the organization since NOW's founding have pushed for gender equality at every level, marching on Washington and getting women across the country involved in local NOW chapters.

Hobby Lobby Draws Protests Over Recent Supreme Court Ruling

July 11, 2014 Susan Abram, www.dailynews.com Resist! Hobby Lobby, Law, Protesters, Reproductive Rights, Women's Rights

One protester brought a hanger. Another dressed like a vagina. And dozens carried signs to demand that the U.S. government stop the war on women. The graphic costumes, props and banners were part of a demonstration on Monday of about 50 people who marched and chanted outside of a new Hobby Lobby store in Burbank. Protesters said they were angry with last week’s Supreme Court ruling that will allow some for-profit companies with strong religious beliefs such as Hobby Lobby to opt out of covering birth control under the Affordable Care Act. The decision, many said, gives corporations too much power on deciding what women employees can and can’t do with their bodies and it throws reproduction rights far back into the past. Protesters called on customers entering the store to turn around and shop elsewhere. “It’s very obvious that the five males on the Supreme Court want to return to a time when women were barefoot and pregnant,” said Lauren Steiner, who organized the demonstration, and who dressed in pink to mimic a vagina.

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