Tag: a woman’s right to choose

Abortion rights face most difficult test yet at Supreme Court

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Abortion rights groups are issuing dire warnings that abortion access is likely to be sharply curtailed across the country if the Supreme Court uses a Mississippi case to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision.

The admonishments come after Mississippi on Thursday explicitly urged the justices to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling when the court reviews Mississippi’s ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

“It cannot be overstated how dire the implications would be if Roe v. Wade were overturned,” said Vangela Wade, president of the Mississippi Center for Justice, which is co-counsel on the case. “Women across Mississippi and this nation would lose their fundamental right to chart their own future. Instead, that power would be in the hands of the government.” Continue reading.

Roe v. Wade gave American women a choice about having children – here’s how that changed their lives

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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case challenging a Mississippi state law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, much earlier than the 24-week threshold generally established by the pivotal abortion rights case Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Roe v. Wade granted women the right to terminate a pregnancy under specific conditions, and subsequent court rulings have strengthened that precedent. Analysts on both sides of the abortion debate will be watching closely this fall to see whether the court’s new six-justice conservative majority – cemented last year in the waning days of the Trump administration – will weaken Roe v. Wade to restrict the abortion rights of Americans.

As a sociologist who studies women, work and families, I’ve closely examined how the landmark ruling affected women’s educational and occupational opportunities over the past half-century. Continue reading.

DeVos compares abortion rights debate to slavery

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos compared the abortion rights debate to the battle to eliminate slavery during remarks at a Colorado Christian University event in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night, and her comments are drawing angry responses from Democrats.

DeVos, a Christian conservative, discussed the Trump administration’s record of opposition to abortion, and said she was reminded of President Abraham Lincoln. “He, too, contended with the ‘pro-choice’ arguments of his day,” she said, according to prepared remarks shared Thursday by the department with POLITICO. “They suggested that a state’s ‘choice’ to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it.”

She said Lincoln reminded “those pro-choicers” that a vast majority of Americans viewed slavery as a vast moral evil. “Lincoln was right about the slavery ‘choice’ then, and he would be right about the life ‘choice’ today,” she said. “Because as it’s been said: Freedom is not about doing what we want. Freedom is about having the right to do what we ought.” Continue reading.

Supreme Court rejects bid to restore Alabama abortion law

The Hill logoThe Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear a case on a 2015 Alabama abortion law that bans a common form of the procedure during the second trimester of pregnancy.

Alabama had sought to overturn lower court rulings that struck down the law, but the justices rejected that bid in their order.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion that he agreed the court should not hear the case, but called it a “stark reminder that our abortion jurisprudence has spiraled out of control.”

View the complete June 28 article why Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

The abortion debate is not about the sanctity of life — it’s about corporate capitalism

A declining birthrate is driving the war on abortion rights. Our ruling capitalists know they are doomed if women cannot be forced to reproduce.

On Wednesday, the day it was announced that the U.S. birthrate fell for the fourth straight year, signaling the lowest number of births in 32 years, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law the most draconian anti-abortion lawin the country. That the two developments came at the same time could not have been more revelatory.

The ruling elites are acutely aware that the steadily declining American birthrate is the result of a de facto “birth strike” by women who, unable to afford adequate health insurance and exorbitant medical bills and denied access to paid parental leave, child care and job protection, find it financially punitive to have children. Not since 1971 have births in the United States been at replacement levels, considered to be 2,100 births per 1,000 women over their lifetimes, a ratio needed for a generation to replace itself. Current births number 1,728 per 1,000 women, a decline of 2% from 2017. Without a steady infusion of immigrants, the U.S. population would be plummeting.

“The effort to block birth control and abortion is not about religion nor about politicians pandering to a right-wing base, nor is it a result of prudery, nor is it to punish women for having sex,” Jenny Brown writes in her book “Birth Strike: Hidden Fight Over Women’s Work.” “It is about the labor of bearing and rearing children: who will do it and who will pay for it.”

View the complete May 20 article by Chris Hedges from Truthdig on the AlterNet website here.

Trump bans abortion providers, referrals from family planning program

Family planning clinics that provide abortions or refer patients for abortions will not be eligible for certain federal funds under a new rule finalized by the Trump administration Friday.

Under the rule, women’s health clinics must be “physically and financially” separate from abortion providers to be eligible for Title X Family Planning grants, which fund organizations providing reproductive health services to low-income women.

Clinics will also not be allowed to refer women to other facilities for abortions, or promote or support abortion as a method of family planning.

View the complete February 22 article by Jessie Hellmann on The Hill website here.

FACT CHECK: Wardlow Would Make Limiting a Woman’s Right to Choose a ‘Priority’ as Attorney General

Wardlow has repeatedly made clear he would politicize the Attorney General’s Office to limit a woman’s right to choose

Wardlow peddles discredited conspiracies about the University of Minnesota and Planned Parenthood

Minnesota – During tonight’s Attorney General debate between Congressman Keith Ellison and Doug Wardlow on KSTP, Wardlow was pressed on his intention to use the Attorney General’s Office to advance his anti-choice views against Minnesota women. Wardlow has made it clear that he strongly opposes a woman’s right to choose, and that he would make it a “priority” to use the power of the state’s top legal office to enforce his views on Minnesota.

“I am absolutely 100 percent pro-life, and that will be a priority in the Attorney General’s Office,” said Wardlow at the Minnesota State Fairin 2017.

Last month, a Wardlow campaign document was released, stating that “Doug Wardlow will institute these duties when he is your MN Attorney General,” including: “Prosecute illegal trafficking of fetal body parts.”

This refers to Wardlow’s belief in a discredited, far-right conspiracy theory which has inflamed violence. As Rewire News reports, this rhetoric “comes from the anti-choice front group called the Center for Medical Progress and its discredited anti-abortion propaganda videos, which falsely alleged Planned Parenthood profited from legal donations of fetal tissue.”

Recent polling from Minnesota Public Radio News and the Star Tribune shows that only 12 percent of Minnesotans share Doug Wardlow’s hardline view that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. As Attorney General, Congressman Ellison will defend a woman’s right to choose, and will defend access to essential health care for all Minnesotans. Ellison is proud to have a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro Choice.

The Trump-Pence Administration Uses Alternative Facts to Drive Major Policy Decisions Around Women’s Health

The following article by Osub Ahmed and Jamila Taylor was posted on the Center for American Progress website August 8, 2018:

Thousands march in Portland, Maine, for the Women’s Walk on January 21, 2017. Credit: Derek Davis, Getty Images

The Trump-Pence administration has been using alternative facts and fake evidence with alarming regularity to justify major policy reversals and attacks on women’s health. Evidence-based decision-making has taken a backseat to an extreme conservative ideology, and the administration frequently uses disproven and demonstrably false information to rationalize its radical actions. Now, for no reason other than conservative ideology and partisan gamesmanship, the administration has decided to put the legal and regulatory foundations of the Title X family planning program and abortion rights in its crosshairs.

Roe v. Wade faces one of its greatest threats yet

When the Supreme Court issued its landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, it affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to abortion—ushering in an era in which women had more agency around their reproductive choices and a better ability to pursue safe abortion. Today, abortion access is considered fundamental to women’s reproductive rights and has been found to be safer than childbirth and other common medical procedures. Access to abortion also confers significant social and economic benefits, supporting women in their aspirations to pursue educational and professional goals that allow them to care for themselves and their families.

And yet, with clear evidence to support its importance, access to abortion has become increasingly regulated at the state level through a series of bans and restrictions, under the guise of safeguarding women’s health. In fact, between January 2011 and July 2016, states enacted an astounding 334 restrictions to abortion access. For some women, particularly women of color and young women, access is so restricted that this safe, legal medical procedure is virtually unattainable.

View the complete article here.