Acknowledging the importance of investing in the well-being of women and girls, the world has evolved dramatically over the past three decades when it comes to reproductive health and rights, and so should U.S. foreign policy.
As we gather across the country to march for women’s rights on January 21, let us embrace this game-changing technology and take concrete steps to make it widely available.
I feel like celebrating our inevitable progress toward victory for equality, dignity, and justice, despite the reasons we are marching in the first place: to unite to challenge the immoral and probably illegitimate presidency of Donald Trump.
As women's health-care providers, we've seen contraception benefit our patients. The ability to choose if and when to become a parent gives women the power to control their future, be more economically successful through improved educational opportunities and wages, and raise healthy families.
Sen. Maggie Hassan, the former Democratic governor of New Hampshire, grilled Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) about whether an employer “should be able to fire a woman because she uses birth control.”
Advocates at the New York-based public policy organization, the National Institute for Reproductive Health (NIRH), said the public should not “rely solely on federal protections to ensure residents’ basic rights."
“Unfortunately for Republicans, banning abortion nationwide, which this bill effectively would do, is unconstitutional thanks to Roe v. Wade,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said. “The bill also exposes Republicans’ clear lack of understanding of science and how the human body actually works.”
As one of the most anti-choice administrations in U.S. history is set to take office this week, just two days before we mark the 1973 decriminalization of abortion through Roe v. Wade, pro-choice activists must make a concerted effort to create space for all those who need and have had an abortion, including those who felt regret.
“Part of what Carafem wanted to do was to speak openly and unapologetically about abortion in the same way that other providers speak about their services,” said Melissa Grant, Carafem's vice president of health-care services. “This feels like a First Amendment issue .... It feels wrong.”
