Posts Categorized: Abortion
Fake Health Centers (aka “Crisis Pregnancy Centers”)
Fake health centers deceive people into thinking they are getting comprehensive healthcare, including abortion services. In reality, these centers only give biased and medically inaccurate information to coerce, judge, and shame young people seeking abortion services.
H.R. 2972: The EACH Woman Act
Passing the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (the EACH Woman) Act would allow any pregnant person seeking an abortion to do so regardless of where they live, how much money they make, or how they are insured.
20-Week Ban on Abortion
States all over the country have passed bans on abortion after 20 weeks. Now federal legislation aims to make this ban law nationwide.
The Hyde Amendment
The Hyde Amendment has been in place since 1976, only three years after Roe V. Wade, and it has prevented countless people from accessing abortion.
Keeping All Families Together Is An RJ Issue
The recent and mainstream reproductive rights conversation in the United States has been narrowly limited to the discussion of reproductive “choice” and abortion access. However, the media and legislative attention on the topic of abortion fail to convey all the issues encompassed by reproductive justice. While abortion and “choice” are extremely important topics for individuals with the ability to become pregnant, only looking at abortion access restricts conversation about another significant aspect of reproductive justice: the right to family life. The right to family life, which can be loosely defined as the right of an individual to have and keep a family, is included across various pieces of international law, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If you can’t have your family recognized, have or parent your children,… Read more »
Abortion Shouldn’t Be Rare and It Isn’t
From the most recent data available from the Guttmacher Institute and the American Journal of Public Health, approximately 1 in 4 women will have had at least one abortion by the age of 45. While this statistic does not include research around trans men and non-binary people that obtain abortions, it still goes to show that this is a very common procedure; but people do not choose to talk about it that way. I’ve seen protesters outside of clinics with signs that say “women regret abortion” and “men regret lost fatherhood”, and other anti-abortion phrases. In my early exposure to organizing around and for abortion rights, I found that many people I worked with, and even myself, would say things like, “No one wants to get an abortion…it is such… Read more »
Abortion In-Access
The Roe V. Wade decision recently had its 46th anniversary January 22. Though reproductive rights have constantly been the point of contention between old, white men and other old, white men, I am grateful this decision still stands today. Old white men, especially those in Texas, have tried their hardest to shut down as many clinics as possible through TRAP laws requiring obscene equipment and “regulations”. In 2014, the only abortion clinic available to my community of the Rio Grande Valley was in San Antonio-a four hour drive away. Having a clinic so far and passed a check-point can be terrifying for some people from the Rio Grande Valley. In a community where over 68% of the population lives below the poverty line and ⅓ of people and ½ of… Read more »
A Reflection On The Midterm Elections
The midterm elections were a tough time for anyone invested in seeing progress for reproductive rights. While most were focused on candidates, wins in the House of Representatives and the Senate, many narrowly missed reproductive rights amendments that passed that set states back years in regards to protecting the safety of those seeking effective reproductive rights legislation. Alabama and West Virginia both rolled back the rights of so many on November 6th. West Virginia’s Amendment 1, which blatantly states that “Nothing in this constitution secures or protects a right to an abortion or requires the funding of an abortion,” will roll back any and all state funding to abortion providers in the state in the future. Alabama’s Amendment 2 goes one step further by saying explicitly to “declare and otherwise… Read more »
The Science Behind Telemedicine Abortion: Filling in Health Care Gaps
For people seeking abortion care in rural areas and/or states with few abortion clinics, telemedicine abortion is a way to increase access to this particular form of health care. Telemedicine abortion involves the prescription of the two medications that induce an abortion before 10 weeks gestation when the provider and the patient are in different locations. How does this procedure work? First, we must know how medication abortion works. Medication abortion is a non-surgical means of terminating a pregnancy. According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, medication abortion, also known as the abortion pill, can safely be used to terminate a pregnancy up to 10 weeks. The method was approved by the FDA in 2000. The “abortion pill” actually consists of two different medications taken at two separate times…. Read more »
Alabama Amendment 2 and Other Trigger Bans: A Poem
They’re coming They’ll say they don’t want to control our bodies They just want to protect the innocent The pure, the precious, the untouched, unborn The hardworking, the virtuous, the God-fearing men They’re here, If they’re “woke” they’ll preach protection But he calls my “protection” “abortion-inducing pills” He who lays the law of the land, the law of my body Spits out the words like they are venom Calling our trauma “a joke, a farce” Commanding a gold star commendation From our ever faithful commander-in-chief But how did it come to this? They’ve always been this way, Preaching “abstain” From such a young age, Don’t distract him! His natural male urges Are pushing too hard against his zipper of self control “He doesn’t know any better, You know boys will… Read more »
