Abortion

Oh no he didn’t! Virginia Governor McDonnell Monday night added a ban on insurance coverage of abortion to a health care bill passed by the Virginia legislature. The underlying bill was meant to bring the state into compliance with the federal health care law – in other words, to help ensure affordable and comprehensive coverage for people, not take benefits away. But that’s exactly what Governor McDonnell’s amendment would do. And he’s not the only one.

Abortion insurance coverage bans have been introduced so far this year in at least 10 states. Some of these states are already among the 21 states that have such bans. But this year abortion opponents in those states want to prohibit even more women from obtaining abortion insurance coverage. Like Alabama, where a bill has been introduced to expand their exchange ban to all private plans and to take coverage away from survivors of rape and incest. Read more »

Traveling on subways in NY, I often saw ads asking if a woman was “alone, scared, pregnant” and suggesting she call a Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) hotline for help. Spread throughout the city, these seemingly-innocuous English and Spanish ads often faded into the background—designed to capture your attention only if you, a friend, or family member needed help.

Since one in two pregnancies across the U.S. is unintended, women daily face a need for reproductive healthcare that might prompt them to call one of the 2,500 to 4000 CPCs located across the country. Unfortunately, instead of offering transparent, unbiased, comprehensive information that allows a woman to make her own informed choices, CPCs adamantly advocate against abortion regardless of the woman’s life and health circumstances, and needs.

If you’ve been reading our blog, you know we just launched a toolkit that helps women who have been deceived by CPCs’ harmful tactics to file complaints and seek justice. What you may not know, is that CPCs have been deliberately targeting women of color in urban communities. Read more »

They're Wrong

When you try to ban abortion in one state — you are hurting women in every state: join our Twitter campaign and stand with the women in North Dakota.

Last Friday, North Dakota's legislature passed a bill that bans almost all abortions in the state. This outrage comes on the heels of Arkansas politicians passing an extreme abortion ban in their state. These politicians don't think that people across the country will notice or care if they eliminate the rights of women in their state.

They're wrong. When you try to ban abortion in one state — you are hurting women in every state.

The abortion ban isn't the only harmful piece of legislation aimed at North Dakota women and families. In the next week, North Dakota politicians will work to push through a sweeping package of bills that also aim to close down women's health centers and could prevent couples from using in-vitro fertilization to build a family. In the face of such an assault, organizations across the country are joining together to remind North Dakota's women (and the politicians that are supposed to represent them) that we are watching.

Will you take two minutes to join our Twitter campaign and show your support for the women of North Dakota? It's simple:

• First, make sure you're signed in to your Twitter account(s)
• Visit our Thunderclap page at https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/1622-stop-the-bans and click "Support with Twitter"
• A pop-up will appear — click on the orange "Add my Support" button
• Another new pop-up will appear. Click the blue "Sign In" button on the left side of the pop-up
• Once you click the blue button the pop-up will close and you'll be set

On Tuesday, March 19 at 2:00 p.m. ET, everyone who joins the campaign will send the same tweet at the same time to send one loud and resounding message to the state's politicians: RT 2stand w/ #NorthDakota women. Tell Gov Dalrymple 2veto and shut down abortion bans. #NDleg #stopthebans http://thndr.it/WlP5kA Read more »

I love anniversaries, and not just because there’s usually some sort of cake involved, but because they mark significant and positive milestones in our lives and allow us to reflect proudly on overcoming setbacks and making progress throughout time. Last week marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that recognized the right to safe and legal abortion nationwide. Excitingly enough, one of the few things that I like more than anniversaries and cake is being able to exercise my own reproductive freedom. So wouldn’t it have been great to have a big “Happy Birthday, Roe v. Wade!” party with balloons and ice cream and stories happily recounting the wonders and advancements that the last 40 years have brought us? Yeah, not so fast. While women across the country should have spent January 22nd celebrating the 40th anniversary of this landmark decision, our would-be celebration was being rained on by the lingering reminders of hundreds of restrictive laws and stringent policies that have impeded a woman’s ability to access safe and legal abortions since Supreme Court decision was handed down in 1973.

Last Wednesday I had the privilege of attending a panel discussion at Georgetown Law School, entitled “Reproductive Rights 40 Years after Roe”. The discussion featured four panelists who each represented a different facet of the reproductive rights movement: Jessica González-Rojas from the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Helene Krasnoff of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Walter Dellinger, partner with O’Melveny & Myers LLP and former acting U.S. Solicitor General, and Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center. Read more »

As I venture my way through my early twenties, I’ve come to realize that my generation has become a fish tank for our younger and older counterparts. We are viewed as entitled (You expect me to pay my cell phone bills?! Do you think groceries grow on trees?) yet we desperately yearn for what we imagined our independent twenties would be like (walking briskly with a cup of Starbucks, probably on our way from one world-changing meeting to the next) and to be taken seriously and trusted. There are countless articles, books, movies, TV shows written about our generation – but you really don’t know what it’s like to be in our shoes. (Shameless plug: Check out This is Personal’s Not in Her Shoes blog!)

We are truly in a state of transition, but that doesn’t make us any less of an adult, and that doesn’t make us any less capable of making our own decisions. We’re all learning and we need the freedom to be trusted to make decisions for our own private lives.

As a twenty something, on top of worrying about my career path, or grad school, or whether the fact that I texted somebody I’m dating means the downfall of courtship as we know it, I also have become increasingly worried about the growing threats to my right to make decisions about my future – issues that many think were settled ages ago. Read more »

Happy birthday Roe! If you’re turning 40 this year, it means that I am too. Given that we share this significant milestone, let’s take a look back at how we’ve fared over the last 40 years. Both of us are a little worse for wear. The Supreme Court weakened you in subsequent decisions. Your opponents have repeatedly chipped away at you – passing new restrictions on abortion and thinking up creative new ways to attack you.

As for me, well, let’s just say that I think I’ve held up pretty well for someone who grew up in the pre-sunscreen era and has two kids under the age of 4. Still, there’s no doubt I have more wrinkles, more aches and pains, and less flexibility than I used to. Read more »

The recent report that a majority of Americans under 30 don’t know what Roe v. Wade was about is not really shocking. But it is telling.

Today, the fight to protect Roe v. Wade isn’t about Roe. The fight isn’t even about winning society’s opinion on whether Roe should be overturned, because, as polls have consistently shown over the years, the majority of America thinks it should not be. 

No, instead, the fight has turned into a battle of which side is the most successful in capturing state governments. Unfortunately, the voice of those wanting to ban abortion has been quite successful in getting states to make it impossible to get an abortion even if Roe theoretically remains intact. This is the voice that is driving abortion facilities out of existence, forcing women to undergo unbelievably long waiting periods, make unnecessary, burdensome visits to “crisis pregnancy centers,” and receive medically unnecessary ultrasounds. This is the voice that wants to interfere with the physician-patient relationship and force doctors to lie to their patients. The voice that wants to shame, scare, or physically prevent women from getting abortions. This is the voice of a small minority who wants to impose its religious and moral beliefs on women’s lives they know nothing about. It’s the voice that hurts women and their families.

But things are changing. The voice of the majority is starting to be heard again. Read more »

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.

When my coworker posed the question, why are you celebrating women being able to access preventative services without a copay, my answer was sure and simple, “Because women deserve it.”

Not everyone agrees with that statement. If the last months of public debate have shown anything, it’s that there are a wide variety of views on the women’s right to access reproductive healthcare. Some people think it is good public policy and long overdue; others think that it’s a gift or worse, immoral.

I’m personally inclined to side with Justice Ginsberg. In reflecting on Roe she said, “[In] the balance is a woman’s autonomous charge of her full life’s course, her ability to stand in relation to men, society and to stay as an independent, self-sustaining equal citizen.” As I celebrate the ACA and Roe, I celebrate women’s ability to build lives they lives they desire. I’m grateful that reproductive healthcare is one of the tools that expands rather than constrains women’s decisions.

born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself? Read more »

I have a friend who almost died from an abortion. 

She was unwed and pregnant. She found an abortion provider. She had the procedure. But something went wrong. She ended up in the emergency room bleeding with an infection that could have taken her life.

 This was in New York in the 1960’s. This was pre-Roe. Women died from complications of illegal abortions.  Read more »

For those of us born after Roe v. Wade was decided the reality of back alley abortions can seem remote. Stories of dirty facilities, infections and even death can sound fantastical to our modern ears. And, yet, they shouldn’t. Worldwide, there are 70,000 maternal deaths each year caused by unsafe abortions. Abortion bans can threaten the health and, even life, of women facing pregnancy complications.

Last year, 31 year old Savita Halapanavar died from blood poisoning after doctors in an Irish hospital refused to perform an abortion even though she was miscarrying and there was nothing they could do to save the pregnancy. In 2010, a nun in Phoenix Arizona was excommunicated from the Catholic Church after she allowed an abortion to save the life of a woman suffering from heart failure. Read more »