Abortion

Roe v. Wade is important to me because no one should be allowed to force a woman to have a baby that she’s not ready to have. Not the man who got her pregnant. Not her family. And certainly not a bunch of politicians. But what’s more important, I think, is that the one out of three women who will have an abortion in her lifetime start to talk about it.

Advocates for Youth and their 1 in 3 Campaign are helping to make that conversation happen. But, still, when I posted on Facebook about my abortion, some people suggested it was TMI (too much information). Well, actually, it wasn’t enough, because context is everything when it comes to reproductive health. Read more »

As the Roe 40th anniversary approaches, I’ve been reflecting on pop culture and what it tells us about how people feel about the issue of abortion. And, I’ve concluded, I think it reflects reality pretty well.

There seems to be a wide-spread assumption that Hollywood believes that abortion is too “dangerous” an issue to talk about. There have been myriads of articles about this that question why movies and television don’t show more women deciding to have a procedure that we know approximately one-third of women will have in their lifetimes.

Here’s the thing - the assumptions underlying this whole debate miss a really important point. There are many examples of films and TV shows that have proved that addressing abortion does not instantly turn a film into “box office poison.” There are both recent and older examples of films and shows that have succeeded – some amazingly – that included abortion storylines.

Although most of you readers may be able to name some recent examples pretty easily (like Ides of March, Grey’s Anatomy and Girls) what you might not realize is that there are several iconic films and TV shows that most people don’t even connect with the issue of abortion – even though they contained an abortion storyline. Here are my top 4:

• Image courtesy of Great American Films Limited Partnership & Vestron Pictures

  Dirty Dancing: This classic movie about romance across class and ethnic lines is mostly remembered for Patrick Swayze saying “Nobody puts baby in a corner” and for the finale dance to “I’ve Had the Time of My Life.” How many people remember that the plot device used to get Swayze’s and Jennifer Grey’s characters together is a pre-Roe illegal abortion? The abortion (which nearly kills Swayze’s character’s professional dance partner) is also the means the screenwriters use to have Grey’s father find out about the relationship. Dirty Dancing succeeded both financially and critically, and it is still considered one of the most romantic movies of all time.

• Fast Times At Ridgemont High: If you are a straight man or a gay woman, your main memory of Fast Times is probably Phoebe Cates in the red bikini. For the rest of us, it is probably Sean Penn’s Spicolli ordering a pizza to Mr. Hand’s history class. But there’s a sub-plot involving Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character getting pregnant and going to a clinic to have an abortion. You may recall the scene where she tricks her older brother (Judge Reinhold) into taking her there and then he unexpectedly shows up to support her and take her home.

Remember how Virginia became a national laughingstock last year and “transvaginal ultrasound” became a new buzz word? Remember how Virginia women let it be known that they didn’t want their legislators forcing them to undergo medically unnecessary and physically invasive ultrasounds? Remember how Virginia politicians didn’t listen – they passed a mandatory ultrasound law anyway? Well, Virginia politicians had a chance to right their wrong, and show that they listen to and respect women. A Virginia state senator introduced a bill last week to repeal the ultrasound requirement. And just a week later, a Republican committee has killed the bill. Read more »

Think the holidays were just a time for joy, merry making, and generosity? Think again. This holiday season, state politicians continued their attacks on women's reproductive health. Here's a wrap up of from the past 2 weeks.

• Michigan Governor Snyder signed into law unnecessary and burdensome requirements on clinics that provide abortions and a ban on the use of telemedicine for medication abortion, threatening access for women in rural areas.
• In Virginia, Governor McDonnell signed off on burdensome and unnecessary regulations on abortion clinics, which could shut down as many as half of the state's clinics and threaten access for thousands of Virginia women. 
• A state court judge ruled that Texas can exclude Planned Parenthood from its state health program for now, leaving 48,000 women without care.

Importantly, the holidays also brought a few victories for women's reproductive health:

• A Georgia judge temporarily blocked a state law that would criminalize virtually all abortions starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy, with only an extremely narrow exception for the woman's health. 

Remember the terribly tragic story of Savita Halappanavar who was refused an abortion at a hospital in Ireland, and died because of it? Some legislators in Michigan evidently think refusing abortion in such cases is not only acceptable, but should not even bring any punishment on the hospital. 

Michigan Senate Bill 975 passed the Senate last week – when they locked the public out of the state capitol – and is scheduled to be considered in a House committee this morning. It would allow a hospital to let a pregnant woman die, without risking its license or a lawsuit or even a fine. Read more »

Over the past months the nation has witnessed a heated conversation about reproductive healthcare. In several states anti-abortion law-makers have been outspoken in their attempt to convince states to deny their citizens access to abortion. Unfortunately, opposition to abortion has often been fueled by dangerous misinformation. Former Illinois Representative Joe Walsh claimed that the abortion bans he supported never endangered women’s lives or seriously threatened their health. “With modern technology, you can’t find one instance [of an abortion that saved the mother’s life]…There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing.”

Walsh ignores the reality that abortion is a medical procedure that can save women’s lives or improve their health. With maternal mortality on the rise, restrictive abortion policies that disregard these facts do more than overlook inconvenient truths—they can produce fatal outcomes.

In Ireland, a country with a near total ban on abortion, the procedure could have saved Savita Halappanaver’s life.

Savita Halappanaver was a young dentist attempting to start a family with her husband in Ireland. She was 17 weeks pregnant when severe back pain drove her to seek medical care at a local hospital. There she received the painful news that she was miscarrying and her fetus had no chance of survival. Knowing this and in tremendous pain, Savita asked that the doctors to terminate the pregnancy. They refused. Her family repeatedly pleaded with the hospital to treat Savita, but they only said that “Ireland is a Catholic country” and they would not abort while there was a fetal heartbeat. Read more »

Yesterday was Veteran’s Day. I have had the honor of meeting some of the incredible veterans – retired military officers and non-commissioned officers – who have come together to right a wrong. Currently, federal law bans coverage of abortion for military women (and military dependents) who become pregnant due to sexual assault. The vets are working to get this unfair law changed.

These officers told us that the first thing they had been taught was that it was their responsibility to “take care of the troops.” To a person, these veterans are fighting against this ban as an extension of that responsibility.

Specifically, they support an amendment to the National Defense Re-Authorization Act (NDAA) that Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) offered in the Armed Services Committee to end this ban. And, they succeeded. The Shaheen Amendment passed out of Committee with a bi-partisan vote. In fact, both Senators Carl Levin and John McCain (the Chairman and Senior Republican on the Committee) voted for the provision. Read more »

If you are wondering why they would need a study to show 2+2=4, that’s exactly how I felt when I saw the two headlines:

“Free birth control cuts abortion rate dramatically, study finds”

“HPV vaccine not tied to increased promiscuity for girls”

The results of the first study followed an experiment “when more than 9,000 women ages 14 to 45 in the St. Louis area were given no-cost contraception for three years.” And the results? “Among teen girls ages 15 to 19 who participated in the study, the annual birth rate was 6.3 per 1,000 girls, far below the U.S. rate of 34.3 per 1,000 for girls the same age.” And “abortion rates dropped from two-thirds to three-quarters lower than the national rate.” So providing women access to no-cost contraception means dramatically lowered unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. All right. Sounds good. Read more »

Last Wednesday started off a week’s worth of bad court decisions in cases that directly affect women’s reproductive health.

It all started off with the 8th Circuit upholding a South Dakota law that requires doctors to tell a woman seeking an abortion that she would be subjected to “increased risk of suicide ideation or suicide” if she had an abortion. The court seemed unconcerned with the fact that a woman would likely interpret the disclosure as telling her that having an abortion would cause her to be at an increased risk of suicide (a link the scientific studies do not support). Making constrained arguments about relative risk and scientific “uncertainty,” the court rubberstamped a misleading disclosure that will only confuse women in South Dakota seeking abortion care. Decision outcome: it’s ok to mislead women? Check.

Second, a district court in Colorado temporarily stopped the health care law’s contraceptive coverage requirement from taking effect for a for-profit CO company, which specializes in heating and cooling systems, based on the claim that requiring coverage of birth control in a health insurance plan violated the company’s religious freedom. After the judge determined that questions like whether a for profit HVAC company can exercise religion “merit more deliberate investigation,” the court then decided that the government had failed to show it had a compelling interest in providing women access to contraceptive coverage and that there were less restrictive means for doing so. Decision outcome: it’s ok for your boss to make health care decisions for you? Check. Read more »

I have learned in the last few weeks about a new great threat to America’s national security and infrastructure. Perhaps you did too?

According to Congressional opponents of women’s reproductive health, birth control is going to destroy the Naval fleet and kill 2403 people. A woman getting an abortion will infiltrate our most secure databases and bring down our computer systems. And, abortion will have something to do with damage from rising waters . . . . . I can’t even come up with a snarky line for the last one.

If this all sounds outrageous, it is. Yet, yesterday, Rep. Mike Kelly (PA) compared the health care reform law’s coverage of contraception with no co-pay to Pearl Harbor. He even called its start date a “day that will live in infamy.” Read more »