abortion

The anti-choice movement is and has always been about fear and shame. If it weren't, you’d see anti-abortion protestors standing outside clinics with charter buses that take patients to social work centers where they assist them in getting housing, childcare, job support — including maternity leave, enrollment in food programs, and parenting classes.

It’s that last phrase — “at a location appropriate to the patient” — that is the biggest deal. What that means is the doctor and patient can, together, decide where the patient can take the second dose and complete the abortion process. For many (if not most) patients, the most appropriate location is at home.

There are so many reasons why I and countless other women walking down countless sidewalks aren’t smiling. Our rights are still being violated, still being stripped from us, and still being fed to presidential candidates as topics for the latest debate. We’re against fighting gender inequality, sexism, racism, homo- and transphobia, income inequality, gender stereotypes, domestic abuse, and the constant threat of rape.

No mention is made of what happens should a teen be estranged from one parent, should a teen be in a single-parent family, if there are geographic distances between a teen and a parent, and did I mention that abortions are nobody’s beeswax? Yeah.

Mark your calendars for The Reproductive Freedom Festival on the evening of March 20. Over three hours of live performances will be streamed from a studio in Manhattan to viewers across the country — and the world. It will be accessible via computers and other digital devices for free. Pre-show highlights begin at 5:15 pm EST. The goal of the event is to foster awareness of and focus attention on the issue of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, while anchored in Women’s History Month.

Yes. That’s right. Texas passed laws to allegedly make abortion safer when abortion is already nearly perfectly safe. Our good friend Justice Breyer honed in on this yesterday, when he asked the lawyer defending the law how often Texas patients are transferred from abortion provider to hospital.

Use insect repellent, sleep under a mosquito net, and just don’t get pregnant — is this the best we can do for Latin American women?