Pitts is the Pits: The Right to an Abortion About to Become Yet Another Privilege of the Rich (Only)
Pitts needs to be surrounded, diminished, shown to be unfeeling, harassed at every turn, picketed, criticized in his hometown papers and otherwise made to understand that the Pitts plan is the pits.
A doctor who performed late abortions mostly on poor and immigrant women is facing eight counts of murder. How does stigma and fear around abortion contribute to such a deadly scenario?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said a “right delayed is a right denied.” The Hyde Amendment delays and sometimes entirely denies poor women access to abortion.
The death of Robin Rothrock, who ran an abortion clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana for many years, is a huge loss, not only, obviously, to her family and close friends, but also to the close-knit community of abortion providers who cherished her.
Pro-choicers prefer women not to need late abortions, just as we’d prefer there not be any unintended pregnancies. But the answer can never be to refuse women abortions.
Is the pro-choice movement doing enough to ensure access for poor women? Ask yourself what more you can do, and act on at least some of the recommendations included here.
In a victory for Irish women, and to some degree women everywhere, the today ruled that Ireland’s strict law forbidding abortions even in dire circumstances violated the right to life of a pregnant woman suffering from cancer.
In Sunday’s New York Times, buried on page 34A, Robert Pear outlines what we can expect with Representative Joe Pitts as chair of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. Pitts’ path is a straight line to denying women their fundamental rights. He wants to get rid of a woman’s right to make her own determinations about her health and reproductive life.
When leaders in the pro-choice movement start to speculate about restricting abortion rights to appease the anti-choice movement, they have lost sight of what the pro-choice movement is about: respecting women as moral decision makers.
Dr. Baird Bardarson of Seattle and Whidbey Island, Washington, was a true champion, pioneer, humanitarian, and heroic abortion provider. His loss cuts very deeply for our community of abortion providers.
