Posts Tagged: anti-choice
Minors Know Best: Whats Wrong with West Virginia’s New Anti-Abortion Law
Last week, the West Virginia state senate passed legislation for a bill that would prevent physicians from performing an abortion for unemancipated minors unless they have prior parental consent 48 before the procedure. Currently, West Virginia’s law surrounding a minor’s abortion access allows doctors to waive the need for parental notification for an abortion if the physician believes that is in the patients best interest. If the proposed bill went through, physicians would no longer legally be able to waive the need for parental notification. The bill, HB 2002, is yet another example of anti-choice legislation. With a large population of West Virginians considering themselves anti-choice, the law suggests that most parents would opt for their minor not to have an abortion. The bill also represents a continuous push to pull… Read more »
Alabama Debates Anti-Choice Amendment
While most of Alabama has spent the past few weeks following the sexual misconduct scandal surrounding Governor Bentley, the Alabama House of Representatives quietly began debating a resolution that would add an amendment to the state constitution claiming that life begins at conception. The bill was sponsored by Decatur representative, Ed Henry, with five speakers acting on his behalf during the March 23 meeting of the Health Committee, who took no vote on the subject. According to the ACLU, such an amendment could spell the end for all abortion clinics and medications in the state, as well as removing existing exceptions to abortion laws based on rape or incest. Perhaps the biggest thing working against the law is that many forms of contraception, including birth control products like Plan B,… Read more »
States are Continually Attacking Abortion Access
Since Texas’s anti-abortion bill, HB2 made it to the Supreme Court, many other states have followed suit with similar anti-choice legislation. Louisiana has recently tried enforcing legislation from a 2014 clinic regulation law that would close all but 1 of the abortion-providing clinics in the state. However, the Supreme Court blocked the law until the courts reach a decision about HB2. Although some clinics have already had to cease operation due to this law. On March 2nd, Oklahoma joined in on the frenzy and passed a bill that would require anti-abortion curriculum to be taught at all of the state’s public high schools. This goes beyond abstinence-only education, and goes as far as asserting the “evils” of abortion. It’s important to note that Oklahoma doesn’t have any sort of required… Read more »
Reverse Abortions are Pseudoscience
According to most studies, very few people regret having an abortion. This, however, does not stop unlicensed “crisis pregnancy centers,” staffed by activists (many of whom have no medical training), from proselytizing to people who want to make the decision to have an abortion in a safe environment. Said pregnancy centers often give people false information about abortions, including any of these things published by hopeafterabortion.com. Their lies include: abortions make women “155 percent” more likely to have suicidal behavior and “138 percent” more likely to have mental health problems than “women who have given birth.” Now, one anti-choice physician is claiming that people can reverse the effects of an abortion, without a shred of medical evidence to back it up. According to advocates of “reverse abortion,” all it takes to… Read more »
What I Learned Escorting at an Abortion Clinic
When a friend of mine told me she went “escorting” on weekends I wrongly assumed she meant either she was joking or working nights to pay for college. What she actually meant, I learned, was that she helps escort people into an abortion clinic in town. On Saturday mornings, she will stand in front of a local abortion clinic with a bright orange vest and an umbrella, offering to walk into the clinic with patients. Her job involved calmly talking to the patients, offering to help them into the clinic, asking them about their day, and other things of that nature. This may not seem necessary to some readers, except these patients have to, on a weekly basis, deal with overt and cruel harassment from a crowd of people standing… Read more »
Call It Anti-Choice, Not Pro-Life
I’ve never understood why “pro-choice” and “pro-life” are considered to be opposites. More specifically, I’ve never understood why people are called pro-life when they would be more accurately referred to as anti-abortion or anti-choice. Why? Because a lot of “pro-life” people aren’t even what I’d consider to be pro-life. Breaking the label down, pro-life means that you’re in support of, well, life, just as pro-choice means you’re in support of the right to choose. Making “pro-life” the antithetical adjective to “pro-choice” makes it seem like the two are opposite. But I consider myself to be very much pro-choice and also very much in support of life. By that, I mean that I support the right to live how you should choose to live. The right to a good life. The right… Read more »
Flyover States Matter
With all of the recent news coverage of Indiana’s new “religious freedom” law and the imprisonment of Purvi Patel for having a miscarriage, we have an opportunity to look at how people across the country view Reproductive Justice in the Midwest. Unfortunately, the conversation has been going in the same direction we usually see when problematic things happen in a red state. This scenario leads us to a discussion about flyover states, what it means to work for change in them, and how national organizations can support people on the ground. Too often we run into the problem of local organizations not having the funding or resources to handle these fights alone. However, national organizations in some cases are either unwilling or unable to offer the support that is needed… Read more »
Hey Congress, We See You
This week it looked like Congress was poised to pass a bipartisan bill, the Justice for Trafficking Victims Act (JVTA). However, after the bill made it out of the Judiciary Committee and before the Senate could vote on the bill it became clear that it included a prohibition on funding for abortion services. There has been a lot of finger pointing from both sides of the aisle about who is at fault for not acknowledging this harmful language. What we do know is that the bill from the last Congress did not include the language prohibiting funding for abortion services. Democrats claim that Republicans added the language and negotiated in bad faith. Regardless of where the blame lies, what we do know is that no bill is safe from unfair… Read more »
Kansas Is Poised to Ban Second Trimester Abortions
Recently introduced in the Kansas Legislature was a bill that could shape up to be the strictest abortion law in the country. The proposed bill is a ban on a specific type of procedure that is primarily used in the second trimester, Dilation and Evacuation. Anti-choice advocates have been pushing to define this method as “dismemberment abortion.” If this bill were to pass, it could effectively outlaw any access to safe abortion care beyond 14 weeks of pregnancy. This past Monday, I attended an Advocacy Day at the Kansas Legislature that was hosted by URGE. Our focus for the day was a sex education bill that was recently introduced, outlined in my preview several weeks ago. However, in the days leading up to our trip, we were made aware of… Read more »
Marching against Birth Control?
Every year on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, the March for Life holds their annual protest in Washington D.C. Every year their goal is the same- the removal of a person’s right to choose abortion. But this year, the tone of the event may be different, at least for some participants. Following the recent Hobby Lobby decision over contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act, many organizations have been filing suit to remove the requirement they cover contraceptives in their health plans. March for Life Education and Defense Fund, the nonprofit that organizes the protest, is no exception. In July 2014, they filed suit for that very purpose. Although the group carefully avoids talking about whether birth control should be legal and available, it is certainly not… Read more »
