Abortion

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 »

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 »