While local news establishments claim, ala Fox News, that a 20-week abortion ban is a priority of the people of Council Bluffs, Iowa, only 34 people showed up to a rally in favor of the ban, many of whom were not from Council Bluffs... or even from Iowa. Meanwhile a local news reporter is seen hugging a leading anti-choice organizer.
Mother’s Day always makes me think about the up and down journey motherhood has been for me and many of the women I know. I had my first child at nineteen and I still don’t know how I made it. I worked two jobs, with the first one starting at five in the morning and the second one finishing at nine at night. I couldn’t afford full-time childcare, so I moved my son Danny between two part-time centers that weren’t as good as I hoped for but better than I could afford.
The pro-choice movement and the birthing community alike are waking up to the fact that abortion rights and the rights of childbearing women are inextricably linked.
Next week the Tennessee legislature will vote on a law to prevent teachers from talking about homosexuality in class. This is not the first or the last time lawmakers have censored educators.
As immigration debates have increasingly cast immigrant women as “unfit” and “undesirable”, the reproductive rights and ability for immigrant women to make healthy decisions for themselves and their families has been increasingly undermined.
The most dangerous place for an African-American child is not in the womb, but in hands of lawmakers and anti-abortion groups that fail to realize the critical importance of funding family planning medical services.
Childbirth can be a deadly matter in the U.S., especially if you are middle or working class. But it was when looking at race and income together that one civil rights organization decided it needed a new lens.