Tag Archives: 20-week abortion ban

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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  • Arizona Republican Don Shooter has been expelled from the state Legislature over years of sexually harassing women. Good riddance to bad rubbish. (AZ Central)
  • It’s so nice to be able to report that the useless and arbitrary 20-week abortion ban being peddled by Republicans failed in the Senate! Republicans run every branch of government but, embarrassingly, continue to lose their battles. (Politico)
  • In the post-#MeToo era, it is crucial that children learn not just about their bodies and hormones, but about safety, consent, and healthy relationships. These are all topics that should be part of a compassionate, fully comprehensive sexual education program for all children. (Chicago Tribune)
  • The Virginia Senate agrees: They just passed legislation to require high schools in Virginia to include consent in their curriculum. (The Breeze)
  • Good news: A federal district court on Monday blocked a Texas measure that would require health care providers to bury or cremate embryonic or fetal tissue from abortions, miscarriage, or treatment for ectopic pregnancy. (Rewire)
  • Bad news: STD cases among people 55 and older are on the rise here in Arizona. (Fox 10)
  • If you’re relying on an app for birth control, please read this! (Self)
  • There is a growing underground movement of people across America who have taught themselves to help women terminate pregnancies without a doctor. How sad that this is even necessary 45 years after Roe v. Wade. Is this what we want for women? For them to have to go “underground” and risk life and limb in order to have access to a legal medical procedure? Do we realize that is what we’re fostering in this country by making it impossible for women to end unwanted pregnancies? This breaks my heart. (Mother Jones)
  • Three civil rights organizations have filed a lawsuit against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for rolling back protections for students who report sexual assault. (Huff Po)
  • A question any thinking person should be asking: Why does it cost $32,093 just to give birth in America? (Guardian)
  • Could Ireland, one of the most anti-abortion countries in Europe, be close to decriminalizing abortion? (NY Times)
  • The Trump administration officials in charge of the Office of Refugee Resettlement were so set upon forcing an undocumented teen to give birth against her will, they worked themselves into a crazed lather contemplating ways to “reverse” the termination of her pregnancy, which was already in progress. (Vice)
  • Could a toxic plant really be the precursor to an effective male birth control option? (Gizmodo)
  • Get a load of this malarkey: A recent focus group on abortion views shows anti-abortion respondents seem to believe that men understand abortion better than women and that women who have abortions are unintelligent and irresponsible. When asked whether men whose partner was having an abortion understood that it was ending a potential life, 51 percent of abortion opponents said yes. But when asked if women getting abortions understood the procedure, only 36 percent of anti-choicers agreed that a woman knows what she is doing. Abortion foes were also more likely to say they were more comfortable when women were housewives instead of seeking careers.

    Always remember: This is what people who don’t want women to control their bodies and lives think of us. They hold the sincere belief that we lack basic intelligence and the ability to think critically. They think we are inferior to men and that we have no value outside of some man’s kitchen. Gag me. (Salon)

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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  • Earlier this week, the tools in Congress voted to ban abortion at 20 weeks. They totally, ignorantly ignored the fact that many fetal anomalies cannot be discovered until past that period in a woman’s gestation. Alexis Miller, who was overjoyed to be pregnant, is one of those women and her story of needing a late abortion is powerful. (Time)
  • More Congressional tomfoolery to report on this subject. These morons justified their vote to criminalize abortion after 20 weeks by using the awful mass shooting that took place a few days ago in Las Vegas to illustrate how much they value life and “have” to protect it. Really? How about passing some restrictions on guns, then? How many 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children died in Sandy Hook? Why do these lawmakers value an unborn fetus the size of a kidney bean more than they do living, breathing human beings??? (Think Progress)
  • Studies indicate that black women have fewer sexual partners and are more likely to use condoms than white women from similar economic backgrounds. And they are not members of the highest-risk demographic: gay and bisexual men. So why are black women in Philadelphia at a higher risk of contracting HIV than their white counterparts? (Philly.com)
  • One thing I never hear anti-abortion folk (who cling to the term “pro-life”) cry over? The fact that the U.S. infant mortality rate among black babies is more than twice as high as it is for white babies. How can you be “pro-life” and never put your advocacy efforts toward helping born children survive? It’s baffling, isn’t it? Luckily, some people DO care, and many cities are turning to doulas to help these babies survive. (WaPo)
  • Anyway, while the folks in the House were passing an abortion ban because they care so much about babies, children, and “life” … they let the Children’s Health Insurance Plan expire, potentially leaving millions of poor children without any health insurance. I guess it’s OK if already-born children suffer and die since technically they’re out of the womb? (HuffPo)
  • Republican hypocrite Tim Murphy, who is SO pro-life he’s never fostered or adopted any children in need, is resigning from Congress after the news that he urged his mistress to have an abortion became public. Murphy, a House Pro-Life Caucus member, voted this week to restrict abortion AGAIN and has a lengthy record of similar votes. The hypocrisy, while not at all stunning, is infuriating. This wretched human being has done everything in his legislative power to take away women’s choices and dominion over their bodies under the guise of valuing life. Yet when a life that HE helped create threatened to disrupt his double life, he was all too willing to terminate it. Good riddance to this trash legislator. Pennsylvania deserves better. (Politico)
  • Could male birth control finally be on the horizon, like, for real?! Maybe! The creators of a male birth control gel (which will be applied on the shoulders, of all places!) designed to inhibit sperm production — while maintaining healthy testosterone levels in the bloodstream — will soon start recruiting 420 couples from around the world to enroll in a new clinical trial. (Scientific American)
  • Rewire has a heartbreaking write-up on the first victim who lost her life due to the Hyde Amendment. Rest in grace, Rosie Jimenez. (Rewire)
  • STDs are at an ALL-TIME HIGH in this country right now! (Time)
  • The Ontario government has introduced groundbreaking legislation that will create protest-free buffer zones around abortion clinics, the homes of doctors and staff, and even pharmacies and offices that provide pills used to terminate pregnancy. Yasss Canada! Kudos to you! (Toronto Star)

Movie Night: After Tiller

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After Tiller is an award-winning documentary film that takes us inside the lives of the remaining four doctors who were openly providing third-trimester abortions in the United States after the 2009 murder of Dr. George Tiller, a staunch defender and provider of those abortions. The 88-minute film, released in 2013, seeks to shed light, rather than more heat, and move beyond the national shouting match about abortion later in pregnancy.

You can see the trailer here:

Is this film for you? Probably, if you ponder the following:

  1. Why would a pregnant woman wait so late into a pregnancy to decide to have an abortion?
  2. Why would a woman who loves her unborn baby have a late abortion?
  3. After 24 weeks’ gestation, should abortion (always, sometimes, never) be illegal?
  4. What kind of people provide third-trimester abortions?
  5. Do third-trimester abortions differ much from premature, natural childbirth?

Continue reading →

Political Posturing: The Federal 20-Week Abortion Ban

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U.S. Representative Trent Franks (R-Arizona) of the 8th congressional district speaking at the Arizona Republican Party 2014 election victory party at the Hyatt Regency in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo: Gage Skidmore

U.S. Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona’s 8th congressional district speaking at the Arizona Republican Party 2014 election victory party in Phoenix. Photo: Gage Skidmore

The idea of a 20-week abortion ban is nothing new for the Grand Canyon State. In 2012, the Arizona Legislature enacted a law prohibiting abortions after 20 weeks, except in cases of narrowly defined medical emergencies. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously struck down the law under clear Supreme Court precedent, and the high court itself later declined to hear Arizona’s appeal.

Even though the Supreme Court refused to uphold Arizona’s initial 20-week ban, the issue remained a central policy concern for Arizona politicians. In June 2013, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a similar bill that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks of gestation. The bill, sponsored by Arizona’s own Rep. Trent Franks, never reached the floor of the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Almost all late-term abortions are due to a life-threatening condition or severe fetal abnormalities.

Yet, despite the outright failure of Arizona politicians to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks, either here in Arizona or at the federal level, they’re back at it again. This year, Rep. Franks successfully spearheaded a bill nearly identical to the one he introduced two years ago. Approved by the House earlier this month, H.R. 36 would severely restrict access to abortion services in the fifth month of pregnancy.

Notably, even Franks’ most recent attack on women’s reproductive rights did not pass the House without controversy; the current edition of H.R. 36 is actually the revised version of a bill introduced in January. A handful of Republicans objected to the original draft because it mandated that women who suffered rape or incest must report all crimes to law enforcement before being eligible to receive a late-term abortion. Continue reading →