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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY ROE v WADE
Today, January 22, marks the 40th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade, which upheld a woman’s right to choose regarding pursuing an abortion. It was a major victory for women’s rights and the feminist movement, and the end of coat hanger/back alley abortions, the end of women dying trying to access their ability to make decisions about their bodies.
But the battle is far from over. In the last year, hundreds of pieces of anti-choice legislation have been introduced around the United States. Contraceptives like birth control and Plan B have come under attack. As you are reading this, the Sanctity of Life Act has been reintroduced in the House of Representatives and threatens to not only interfere with a woman’s right to choose, but to give rapists greater say in what happens to their victims.
I promise, once this challenge ends, you will stop seeing me post these donation links, but today, I’m asking again for you to consider helping the pro-choice group I belong to with our goal of raising $2000 for NARAL Pro-Choice America. In honor of this, the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade, please consider donating any amount-~-a future where women can safely make decisions about their own health is certainly a future worth fight towards.
You can help support the cause by following the link below, by reblogging this post, or simply by talking to your friends about the pro-choice movement. And keep an eye out for another post about choice this afternoon!
http://roeturns40atau.chipin.com/the-40th-anniversary-of-roe-v-wade
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I accept my Church’s position on abortion. Life begins at conception, that’s the Church’s judgement. I accept that in my personal life. But I refuse to impose that on equally devout Christians, Jews, Muslims…I refuse to impose my view on others. I don’t believe that we have a right to tell others, to tell women, what to do with their bodies.
Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States
Bam. That’s what religious freedom looks like.
Repro Health Fact of the Day
In 2003, about 22000 underground abortions were performed in Nicaragua alone.
Nicaragua is not that big a country.
Abortion happens whether it’s legal or not.
Source: The Means of Reproduction by Michelle Goldberg
Photo with 32 notes
Also from the Unite DC Rally Against the War on Women (April 27, 2012)
This woman has it spot on.
Link reblogged from STFU, Conservatives with 105 notes
When States Abuse Women →
A great article from Nicholas Kristof about Texas’ abortion laws and the many, many states considering laws just like it.
I probably wouldn’t have reblogged this without reading it carefully if it were written by anyone BUT Nicholas Kristof
Link reblogged from STFU, Conservatives with 138 notes
STFU, Conservatives: blood-junky asked: “How girls blame pregnancies on men and say a man ‘got them pregnant’. How is this fair; If a man... →
It reminds me of a great quote from this CNN article:
“Yes, individuals can be made to pay money to support their children, even when those children are unwanted. But as a matter of common sense, the mandating of financial payments,…
Photo reblogged from Hell Yeah Feminism with 1,302 notes
![pantslessprogressive:
The front page of the New York Times on January 23, 1973 was nothing if not eventful.
The country learned of two major events that morning: Former President Lyndon B. Johnson died from a heart attack and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jane Roe of Dallas County, Texas.
39 years ago today, on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision ruled that Texas’s criminal abortion statute, which made abortion illegal except “for the purpose of saving the life of a mother,” violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, effectively legalizing abortion during the first trimester of a woman’s pregnancy.
In March 1970, Jane Roe argued the state’s abortion statute was “unconstitutionally vague” (two other complaints were filed along with Roe’s - from a physician and a married couple - but both were later dismissed).
Justice Harry Blackmun authored the Roe v. Wade opinion. While I urge you to read Roe v. Wade in its entirety if you haven’t, here are a few key points made by Blackmun:
Broader rights in earlier times: Blackmun wrote that abortion was a more acceptable practice during the adoption of the Constitution and throughout most of the 19th century compared to the time of the Roe v. Wade opinion.
”[…] a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy than she does in most States today.”
The abortion procedure is no longer dangerous: A common argument against abortion was that the procedure was too dangerous and placed a woman in danger. Therefore, state laws criminalizing abortion argued state regulation existed to protect a woman’s maternal health. The Roe v. Wade decision states modern medical techniques made abortions safer than they had been in the past, writing that abortions performed before the end of the first trimester are “relatively safe.” Therefore, Blackmun wrote, the state’s concern for protecting women from a dangerous medical procedure had “largely disappeared.”
The right to privacy includes a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy: Blackmun wrote that, although the right to privacy is not explicitly referenced in the Constitution, a multitude of previous decisions referencing a right to privacy made it “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision on whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.” He writes that the state does indeed have a “compelling state interest” in regulating abortion - “safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life” - and that the right to privacy is not absolute. The decision rules that the state has a compelling interest at “viability” (24-28 weeks into the pregnancy) and can regulate abortion after the end of the first trimester “in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health”.
The Constitution does not recognize an unborn child as a person: The Court ruled that an unborn child is not a “person” under the Constitution, specifically the 14th Amendment.
“In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.”
While they make this assertion, they explicitly write that they will not answer the question of whether or not life begins at conception.
The decision:
“…for the period of pregnancy prior to this ‘compelling’ point [at approximately the end of the first trimester], the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient’s pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State. […]
Measured against these standards, Art. 1196 of the Texas Penal Code, in restricting legal abortions to those ‘procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother,’ sweeps too broadly. The statute makes no distinction between abortions performed early in pregnancy and those performed later, and it limits to a single reason, ‘saving’ the mother’s life, the legal justification for the procedure. The statute, therefore, cannot survive the constitutional attack made upon it here.”
The dissent: Justice Rehnquist wrote the dissenting opinion. He disagreed with the Court’s lack of restrictions on a woman during the first trimester of her pregnancy and argued that the right to privacy was not applicable in this case.
“Texas, by the statute here challenged, bars the performance of a medical abortion by a licensed physician on a plaintiff such as Roe. A transaction resulting in an operation such as this is not ‘private’ in the ordinary usage of that word. Nor is the ‘privacy’ that the Court finds here even a distant relative of the freedom from searches and seizures protected by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution…”
Why choice still matters today:
Numerous states across the country have enacted laws just in the past year to restrict abortion services. From the Guttmacher Institute (including photo above):
Fully 68% of these new provisions, 92 provisions in 24 states, restrict access to abortion services, a striking increase from last year, when 26% of new provisions restricted abortion. The 92 new abortion restrictions shattered the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions adopted in 2005. About the only bright spot for reproductive rights supporters was the defeat in Mississippi of a ballot initiative that would have sharply restricted women’s access not only to abortion but also to various contraceptive methods by defining a person under state law as “a human being from the moment of fertilization.”
Today we are surrounded by GOP presidential hopefuls who wish to criminalize abortion, some even in the case of rape and incest.
“The child did nothing wrong,” says Rick Santorum.
Mitt Romney, 2002: “I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose, and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard.”
Mitt Romney today: ”My view is that the Supreme Court should reverse Roe v. Wade and send back to the states the responsibility for deciding whether they’re going to have abortion legal in their state or not.”
Newt Gingrich says he’ll end “taxpayer subsidies for abortion by repealing Obamacare, defunding Planned Parenthood and reinstating the ‘Mexico City Policy’ which banned funding to organizations that promote and/or perform abortions overseas.” While Newt said earlier this year that he didn’t think life began until “implantation,” he changed his tune later to say he believes life begins at conception.
Ron Paul, this week: “I see abortion as a violent act. All other violence is handled by the states — murder, burglary, violence. That’s a state issue.So don’t try to say that I’m less pro-life because I want to be particular about the way we do it and allow the states the prerogative.” His website clearly outlines his views: “Not even the most radical feminist would find it okay to tear apart a recently-born baby just because it is not wanted by its mother. All other considerations aside, the only reason many individuals can support abortion with a good conscience is because they believe it’s not murder… and that unborn babies do not count as human beings. Ron Paul has delivered more than 4,000 babies. He believes that human life starts at conception, and that casual elimination of the unborn leads to a careless attitude towards all life.”
I still find it a complete joke to assume that being pro-choice indicates a leaning towards radical feminism. But these GOP candidates, plus numerous Republican governors across the country, seem convinced. There is nothing radical about viewing my right to privacy in my decision whether or not to get an abortion as a right that truly makes me proud to, say, be here and not there.
Throwing aside any language of a state’s “compelling interest,” a right to privacy, etc., my belief that life does not begin until viability had led me to decide that I simply don’t want the government legislating my uterus. Think that’s radical? Take a number.
[Photo: Chellie Bowman participates in a pro-choice rally in Jackson, MS, in 2006. Credit: Barbara Gauntt, The Clarion-Ledger]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly7ukuYHbt1qzr73ro1_500.jpg)
The front page of the New York Times on January 23, 1973 was nothing if not eventful.
The country learned of two major events that morning: Former President Lyndon B. Johnson died from a heart attack and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jane Roe of Dallas County, Texas.
39 years ago today, on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision ruled that Texas’s criminal abortion statute, which made abortion illegal except “for the purpose of saving the life of a mother,” violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, effectively legalizing abortion during the first trimester of a woman’s pregnancy.
In March 1970, Jane Roe argued the state’s abortion statute was “unconstitutionally vague” (two other complaints were filed along with Roe’s - from a physician and a married couple - but both were later dismissed).
Justice Harry Blackmun authored the Roe v. Wade opinion. While I urge you to read Roe v. Wade in its entirety if you haven’t, here are a few key points made by Blackmun:
Broader rights in earlier times: Blackmun wrote that abortion was a more acceptable practice during the adoption of the Constitution and throughout most of the 19th century compared to the time of the Roe v. Wade opinion.
”[…] a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy than she does in most States today.”
The abortion procedure is no longer dangerous: A common argument against abortion was that the procedure was too dangerous and placed a woman in danger. Therefore, state laws criminalizing abortion argued state regulation existed to protect a woman’s maternal health. The Roe v. Wade decision states modern medical techniques made abortions safer than they had been in the past, writing that abortions performed before the end of the first trimester are “relatively safe.” Therefore, Blackmun wrote, the state’s concern for protecting women from a dangerous medical procedure had “largely disappeared.”
The right to privacy includes a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy: Blackmun wrote that, although the right to privacy is not explicitly referenced in the Constitution, a multitude of previous decisions referencing a right to privacy made it “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision on whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.” He writes that the state does indeed have a “compelling state interest” in regulating abortion - “safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life” - and that the right to privacy is not absolute. The decision rules that the state has a compelling interest at “viability” (24-28 weeks into the pregnancy) and can regulate abortion after the end of the first trimester “in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health”.
The Constitution does not recognize an unborn child as a person: The Court ruled that an unborn child is not a “person” under the Constitution, specifically the 14th Amendment.
“In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.”
While they make this assertion, they explicitly write that they will not answer the question of whether or not life begins at conception.
The decision:
“…for the period of pregnancy prior to this ‘compelling’ point [at approximately the end of the first trimester], the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient’s pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State. […]Measured against these standards, Art. 1196 of the Texas Penal Code, in restricting legal abortions to those ‘procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother,’ sweeps too broadly. The statute makes no distinction between abortions performed early in pregnancy and those performed later, and it limits to a single reason, ‘saving’ the mother’s life, the legal justification for the procedure. The statute, therefore, cannot survive the constitutional attack made upon it here.”The dissent: Justice Rehnquist wrote the dissenting opinion. He disagreed with the Court’s lack of restrictions on a woman during the first trimester of her pregnancy and argued that the right to privacy was not applicable in this case.
“Texas, by the statute here challenged, bars the performance of a medical abortion by a licensed physician on a plaintiff such as Roe. A transaction resulting in an operation such as this is not ‘private’ in the ordinary usage of that word. Nor is the ‘privacy’ that the Court finds here even a distant relative of the freedom from searches and seizures protected by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution…”
Why choice still matters today:
Numerous states across the country have enacted laws just in the past year to restrict abortion services. From the Guttmacher Institute (including photo above):
Fully 68% of these new provisions, 92 provisions in 24 states, restrict access to abortion services, a striking increase from last year, when 26% of new provisions restricted abortion. The 92 new abortion restrictions shattered the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions adopted in 2005. About the only bright spot for reproductive rights supporters was the defeat in Mississippi of a ballot initiative that would have sharply restricted women’s access not only to abortion but also to various contraceptive methods by defining a person under state law as “a human being from the moment of fertilization.”
Today we are surrounded by GOP presidential hopefuls who wish to criminalize abortion, some even in the case of rape and incest.
- “The child did nothing wrong,” says Rick Santorum.
- Mitt Romney, 2002: “I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose, and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard.”
- Mitt Romney today: ”My view is that the Supreme Court should reverse Roe v. Wade and send back to the states the responsibility for deciding whether they’re going to have abortion legal in their state or not.”
- Newt Gingrich says he’ll end “taxpayer subsidies for abortion by repealing Obamacare, defunding Planned Parenthood and reinstating the ‘Mexico City Policy’ which banned funding to organizations that promote and/or perform abortions overseas.” While Newt said earlier this year that he didn’t think life began until “implantation,” he changed his tune later to say he believes life begins at conception.
- Ron Paul, this week: “I see abortion as a violent act. All other violence is handled by the states — murder, burglary, violence. That’s a state issue.So don’t try to say that I’m less pro-life because I want to be particular about the way we do it and allow the states the prerogative.” His website clearly outlines his views: “Not even the most radical feminist would find it okay to tear apart a recently-born baby just because it is not wanted by its mother. All other considerations aside, the only reason many individuals can support abortion with a good conscience is because they believe it’s not murder… and that unborn babies do not count as human beings. Ron Paul has delivered more than 4,000 babies. He believes that human life starts at conception, and that casual elimination of the unborn leads to a careless attitude towards all life.”
I still find it a complete joke to assume that being pro-choice indicates a leaning towards radical feminism. But these GOP candidates, plus numerous Republican governors across the country, seem convinced. There is nothing radical about viewing my right to privacy in my decision whether or not to get an abortion as a right that truly makes me proud to, say, be here and not there.
Throwing aside any language of a state’s “compelling interest,” a right to privacy, etc., my belief that life does not begin until viability had led me to decide that I simply don’t want the government legislating my uterus. Think that’s radical? Take a number.
[Photo: Chellie Bowman participates in a pro-choice rally in Jackson, MS, in 2006. Credit: Barbara Gauntt, The Clarion-Ledger]
Source: pantslessprogressive
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Which Republican Candidates Want to Take Away Your Reproductive Rights? (Hint: It’s All of Them)
Photo reblogged from Radical Notions with 1,182 notes
JUST POSTED NEW RADICAL IDEA MATERIAL ABOUT THIS. http://theradicalidea.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/if-only-conservatives-would-pick-a-side/
Source: petshopgirl
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Virginia Is Losing It
NO OFFENSE MEANT IF YOU LIVE IN VIRGINIA.
This week, decisions by the powers-that-be in Virginia determined that same-sex couples will not be allowed to adopt. This makes literally no sense with a foster care system overflowing with children and gay parents who would LOVE to adopt them and give them loving homes…especially when there is no evidence that heterosexual couples are better suited to raise children.
This is just another case of the government trying to say that a person’s gender determines what that person can or cannot do. It’s the whole “you need a mom AND a dad” theory, because there is NO WAY a woman can be tough or a man can be soft and nurturing.
That gender binary has got us in quite a bind now hasn’t it.
Oh, and this is from a state that apparently has ALSO moved to introduce a new concept of personhood that will, hopefully, be shot down just like Mississippi’s personhood amendment did. Virginia is ALL ABOUT what’s best for kids…until they’re born. After that, well…it’s up to foster system.
Read contributing writer Hayley Cavataro’s post at http://theradicalidea.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/virginia-loves-the-fetus-does-not-give-a-fuck-about-the-child/
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