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.
The press continues to label funding for contraception, STD testing, and cancer screening as “abortion funding”. Obviously, there’s a lot of confusion over what is an abortion. This primer should help clear things up.
Planned Parenthood is touring the country in a hot pink bus to rally support, a march for women’s equality in Egypt turns sexually violent, and men in Texas don’t want to play politics with forcing ultrasounds. Except that is exactly what they are doing.
Operation Rescue holds breath, stamps feet about Planned Parenthood funding, Arkansas legislature introduces “fetal pain” bill, will GOP choose budget cuts or denial of women’s rights, and a Montana judge orders a hysterectomy against a woman’s will.
Virginia is poised to enact regulations that would close all but five abortion clinics in that state, a town in the Philippines now requires a prescription for condoms, Medicaid considers STD screenings for the elderly, and an anti-choice plea to John Boehner.
How did Planned Parenthood come to be so demonized? This after all, is an organization once so mainstream that former presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower agreed to be co-chairs of an honorary advisory board in 1965.
Subjecting women and other vulnerable communities to reductions in health care access in the name of budget cuts and moral wranglings over abortion is both dangerous and absurd.
The Governors of Connecticut and Vermont and the Mayor of New York City described the devastating effects the GOP’s cuts to Title X and Planned Parenthood would have on women in their states.
