Gosnell’s clinic is an extreme version of what I call “rogue clinics,” facilities that today prey on women, primarily women of color and often immigrants, in low-income communities.
Around the world — even here in Pennsylvania — women face obstacles to legitimate medical care, including preventive services like contraception, prenatal care and safe abortion care. However, such obstacles — legal and financial barriers, social stigma or language barriers — do not affect all women equally.
A nationally-representative poll found that African Americans overwhelmingly support keeping abortion legal and believe that women in our community should have access to safe abortion care when they need it.
The Shaheen Amendment currently has 12 cosponsors. It should have all 100. This amendment should be entirely non-controversial and should appeal even to those who generally oppose abortion but are sympathetic to its need in cases of rape or incest. Even the Hyde Amendment — the original ban on government coverage for abortion — allows for abortion in those circumstances.
In an editorial today, the New York Times discusses the vital role the courts have played in recent weeks in blocking viciously regressive laws seeking to deny women access to both self-determination and to basic reproductive health care.
In the first six months of 2011, states enacted 162 new provisions related to reproductive health and rights.
Dr. Susan Poppema, a close colleague of Dr. George Tiller’s, reflects on what Dr. Tiller offered his patients and their families, something missing from the recent push for abortion restrictions in Congress and state legislatures.
I feel so lucky to work in a clinic where we can offer women respectful and safe services regardless of income or medical acuity.
During Monday’s smug, self-congratulating second reading of House Bill 15, a Republican talk radio host from Houston, may not have realized how much he slipped when he said he liked the bill because of its power in “addressing the needs of the members in the House and the Senate.”
Now that anti-choicers have moved the fight to contraception in a dramatic way, it’s tempting to stop defending abortion altogether. But we need to make sure we’re defending all women’s rights.
