For those of us trying to discern whether the rights of women will truly be at the center of this Family Planning Initiative, as promised by DFID and the Gates Foundation in response to our months of advocacy, there were moments of disquiet.
Steph Herold will be on to talk about her new project chronicling women’s abortion stories. Mississippi’s battle over the last abortion clinic ends on a strange note, for now, and the nation actually has a somewhat productive conversation about rape jokes.
It’s time to set aside politics and recommit ourselves – as a city, a state and a nation – to family planning and sexual health. As recently as the 1980s, these were civic ideals that united us. If the global community can revive them in 2012, so can we.
Dear Representative Trent Franks and other anti-choice politicians: Stop claiming you care about women and babies. You didn't care about me when I was raped, and you don't care about the suffering of American people. How dare you suggest otherwise.
H.R. 3803, sponsored by Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ), denies a woman access to a medically necessary abortion and includes no exceptions for situations where continuing a pregnancy will place at risk a woman’s health or ability to have children in the future.
In clinics nationwide, young women — mostly poor women — are lured into so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" which falsely advertise themselves as health clinics, but which are anything but. These crisis pregnancy centers are often set up and run by Catholic churches, which, for obvious reasons, doesn't bode well for any woman seeking information about contraception or terminating a pregnancy. Instead of offering counseling about a woman’s choices, these CPCs steer women towards a right-wing, anti-choice agenda, using Jesus and guilt as weapons.
Melinda Gates anointed herself as the new saviour of women's and children's health, and the press ate it up in both pictures and words. A truly Hollywood event, except this is not entertainment. This is women's lives.
