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Catholics Working to Make “Pro-Life” Less of an Oxymoron

January 28, 2013 By 5 Comments

It’s been a busy seven days in abortion-related news, even in light of the recent 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. A new abortion clinic is preparing to open in the space previously occupied by Dr. George Tiller’s clinic. Arizona state Rep. Cathrynn Brown introduced a bill that would charge pregnant rape survivors that terminated their pregnancies with “tampering with evidence.” Reliably conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat tried to make the case that focusing on pregnant women was “too simplistic” when talking about abortion. And a group of Catholic nuns, priests, and scholars spoke out about the need for Catholics that call themselves “pro-life” to support gun control.

While the Wichita news is encouraging, the Douthat op-ed unsurprising, and the Arizona news infuriating—can someone explain just why politicians in that state hate women so much?—it’s this last item that really jumped out in a crowded week. Frankly, I’m impressed that a number of high-profile Catholics are finally making it plain that if you claim to care about one aspect of life, you should logically care about all aspects.

After all, if you just care about life insofar as it exists in a woman’s uterus, that’s a pretty limited view. And that’s also not really being “pro-life”—it’s more accurately being “pro-fetus,” or “pro-birth.” Which is a very limited viewpoint, as it ignores what happens to people after they are born and able to live independently in the world. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Abortion Tagged With: , , , , ,

Why I Am Pro-Choice

January 22, 2013 By 3 Comments

bfcd-2013This post was written for Blog for Choice Day.

Why am I pro-choice? Because I don’t want a complete stranger telling me to do with my body. Because I don’t want to tell a complete stranger what to do with hers. Because I know that the decision about whether to have a child is too precious and important to be made by anyone other than the woman that is pregnant. Because I don’t think that there is only one right way or right time to become a mother. Because every child should be a wanted one.

Why am I pro-choice? Because of my friends that were able to graduate college. Because of the thousands of women, voices on the other end of the phone, that were able to leave troubled relationships and take care of their sons and daughters and choose how to end much-wanted pregnancies in a way that gave their fatally ill unborn children a measure of dignity, and themselves a measure of peace.

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Celebrate Roe v Wade!

January 15, 2013 By 3 Comments

The 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade just a week away, and a slew of events are planned across the country and online. To see what’s in your area, check out Words of Choice’s roundup of events, some of which are already underway and others that will continue beyond January 22nd.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Abortion, Quick Hit Tagged With: ,

Notes From Pro-Choice Parenting

January 9, 2013 By 2 Comments

A few weeks ago, a friend and I were talking about the intersection of personal beliefs and independent thought. Specifically, she was wondering if buying a onesie that said, “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” for her infant son would be expressing her beliefs through her child’s clothing or if it would just be cute. (We agreed that it would be both.) I was reminded of this conversation recently, thanks to a situation that caught me totally off-guard.

As part of our seemingly endless quest to find reliable daycare for our child, my husband and I set up an appointment at a small, local center. I did some research on the facility before our meeting, and came across information that indicated that one of the directors worked at a crisis pregnancy center (CPC). Since it’s not uncommon for online searches to turn up misleading information, I decided to keep the appointment, and was impressed with the facility. Yet my concern lingered, and further conversation with the director revealed that she did, in fact, work at the CPC.

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Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: , , , , ,

Is Roe Taken for Granted?

January 8, 2013 By 4 Comments

January 22, 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. All month, we’ll be running posts examining various aspects of this landmark ruling. If you’d like to contribute, let us know!

Time’s recent cover story on the challenges faced by the pro-choice movement in the four decades after Roe, “What Choice,” couldn’t come at a better time. As the anniversary of Roe approaches at the end of this month, it seems appropriate not just to examine the current state of abortion rights and restrictions, but the other obstacles that the pro-choice movement is facing—in particular, the idea of a generational divide among activists. (Full disclosure: Kate Pickert, the author of “What Choice,” interviewed me for this article, but my quotes were not in the finished piece.)

By highlighting the work of the Red River Women’s Clinic—the only clinic in North Dakota that provides abortion services—readers were given an engaging picture of just how difficult it can be for women to access a legal medical service. The graphics accompanying the piece also made this point quite clearly.

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Filed Under: Abortion Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Importance of Doe v. Bolton

January 4, 2013 By 4 Comments

January 22, 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. All month, we’ll be running posts examining various aspects of this landmark ruling. If you’d like to contribute, let us know! 

Roe v. Wade wasn’t the only significant abortion decision released by the Supreme Court on January 22, 1973. The Court also ruled on the constitutionality of Georgia’s abortion laws, in the equally important but lesser-known case Doe v. Bolton, which the Court first heard in 1971.

The plaintiff, identified as “Mary Doe,” was nine weeks pregnant when she sued the state’s attorney general, Arthur Bolton, for the right to an abortion. At the time, Georgia allowed for abortion for state residents in cases of rape, severe fetal deformity, or the possibility that the mother could sustain a severe or fatal injury to her health. In its ruling, the Supreme Court found that the existence of the three conditions upon which abortion was allowed violated the Fourteenth Amendment and that the residency requirement violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause.

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Filed Under: Abortion, History Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Ireland Legalizes Abortion Laws

December 20, 2012 By 5 Comments

Following the death of Savita Halappanavar in October, the Irish government has decided to legalize its abortion laws. The 31-year-old Halappanavar was seventeen weeks pregnant when she was admitted to Galway University Hospital on October 20 with back pains; tests performed at the hospital showed that the pregnancy was not viable. Though Halappanavar repeatedly requested an abortion, she was reportedly told that Ireland “is a Catholic country” and the pregnancy would not be terminated. Four days after Halappanavar was admitted, the fetal heartbeat stopped; however, her condition continued to deteriorate and she died of septicemia three days later.

Currently, abortions in Ireland are allowed only when the woman’s life (distinct from health) is in danger; however, there is no one agreed-upon method for determining when that is the case. The new laws, which, according to the Telegraph, are expected to be “ready by Easter,” would mean that abortion is no longer considered a criminal act. This legislation would also clarify when doctors can terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s life is considered to be at risk, “including by suicide.”

Filed Under: International Issues Tagged With: , , ,

What an Ohio Dry Cleaner Has to do With Michigan Politicians

December 17, 2012 By 5 Comments

You might have missed this story if you don’t watch The Daily Show or read RH Reality Check, but a dry cleaner in Ohio has been putting “Choose Life” messaging on, of all things, wire coat hangers. This strikes me as a pretty brazen action, and not just because wire coat hangers are, to put it mildly, fairly loaded images when it comes to abortion. It’s also because this dry cleaner is, as best as I can tell, a private business whose day-to-day activities, not to mention income, have nothing to do with the abortion issue.

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Filed Under: Activism Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Anti-Choice Laws Defeated in Oklahoma

December 5, 2012 By 1 Comment

This week, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down two anti-choice laws. One law would have made it mandatory for a woman seeking an abortion to see an ultrasound image and hear a description of the fetus; the other sought to ban “any off-label use of medications for abortion or treatment of ectopic pregnancy,” although it would have still allowed “off-label use of the same medication for other purposes.”

The ultrasound law had been passed by the state legislature in 2010, and the drug law was approved the following year. Following challenges by the Center for Reproductive Rights, both laws had been halted by lower court judges. In its decisions, the state Supreme Court said that both laws violated a 1992 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, and that it must “follow the mandate of the United State Supreme Court on matters of federal constitutional law.”

 

Filed Under: Abortion, Quick Hit Tagged With: , , , ,

Update: Heartbeat Bill Really, Truly Halted … For Now

November 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Seems like just the other week that Ohio politicians were trying to place severe restrictions on when women in the state could have abortions. Oh wait, that’s right, it was: right after the election, anti-choice Republicans began trying to push through a modified version of the previously-failed “heartbeat bill,” which would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat could be detected.

Looks like the second attempt proved no more successful, as on Tuesday the state senate president said that there were no plans to vote on the bill before the legislative session ends in December. According to an Associated Press report, both lawmakers and Ohio Right to Life were concerned that banning abortions at such an early stage (fetal heartbeat can generally be detected by the sixth week of pregnancy) would be unconstitutional and could jeopardize “other abortion limits.” Senate President Tom Niehaus also said that he wants to “continue our focus on jobs and the economy … [t]hat’s what people are concerned about.”

Well, yeah. That’s probably what they were concerned about the first time this bill was introduced, too. Yet a whole bunch of elected politicians still decided that it was more important to grandstand about a blatantly unconstitutional bill, rather than direct their time and energy into more pressing and relevant issues. I’d like to hope that they wouldn’t make that mistake a third time, but let’s be honest, common sense doesn’t seem to be the driving force here.

Filed Under: Abortion, Quick Hit Tagged With: , , , ,
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