Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

  • I love to start the rundowns off with happy news, and the departure of an anti-choice zealot from office is always a happy occasion!

    When news broke last week that AZ Rep. Trent Franks was resigning from Congress, it sent shock waves through the state of Arizona. To hear that he had reportedly been hounding female members of his staff to serve as pregnancy surrogates for him and his wife was stunning for many reasons:

    1. Ewwwww, this is your boss asking you to have his baby. ACK! NOT NORMAL! AND GROSS!

    2. Surrogacy contracts are illegal in Arizona.

    3. Trent Franks is “pro-life” and surrogacy is almost surely not in line with “pro-life ideals.”

  • All of that aside, we should mark the demise of this horrible man by reminding you all of just how terrible he truly was. The one instance that sticks out most in my mind? When he said that more black babies are “devastated” by abortion than slavery. What a repulsive, malicious, and sickening thing to suggest. That blacks are better off suffering through a lifetime of brutality, torture, and subjugation than never having been born. Adios, Trent, you will NOT BE MISSED, fella! (Rewire)
  • We think this is great news, but for some reason, the teen abortion rate dropping in Colorado by 64 percent isn’t causing jubilation among the anti-choice crowd. Anyone else find that weird? (HuffPo)
  • I don’t know about you, Dear Readers, but yesterday’s plea from that creepy little GOP weasel, Paul Ryan, for Americans to “have more babies” for economic reasons REALLY ticked me off.

    This rich pipsqueak (who whines incessantly about people sometimes needing to draw upon government “entitlements”) sits in total opposition to EVERY policy that would entice people to have more children: universal health care, free or low-cost access to higher education, better funding for public schools, paid family leave, extended social services, a livable minimum wage for all, subsidized childcare, etc. … He and his Republican cohorts are literally opposed to ALL of that which makes having a family less insurmountable.

    It’s hypocritical and callous to try to shame people into having “more babies” when he and his party go to extreme lengths to ensure people have NO financial safety net or governmental aid to rely on when they need it. Let’s hope the rumors of this jerk leaving the Senate in 2018 are true. Maybe he can find it in his icy heart to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program before he goes. It’s in danger of leaving millions of children without insurance otherwise. I mean, come on. The health of all the babies he wants us to have has to matter to him, right? (Splinter News)
  • There have been a lot of headlines lately about the correlation between birth control pills and cancer. But left out of many of these news stories is the fact that hormonal birth control can also protect against certain cancers. Like everything, have conversations with actual medical professionals to figure out what’s best for you! (NY Times)
  • There may be hope that 45’s attempts to overturn Obamacare’s birth control mandate will fail! (Reuters)
  • As an Ohio native, I must say I’m horrified at how virulently anti-choice the state seems to have become in the 12 years since I left. Currently, a bill is headed to the governor’s desk that would ban abortion in the event a fetus is diagnosed with Down syndrome. Doctors who perform an abortion while aware of the diagnosis would lose their medical licenses in the state and face a fourth-degree felony charge. Is there any chance that maybe the men behind this bill are parents or adoptive parents of children with Down syndrome? I’m guessing no, but it’s nice to know they value the lives of these children. We can only hope that since they are taking families’ choices away, they will somehow provide meaningful support each time one is born rather than adopted. (Scientific American)
  • Remember how all the lying liars in the GOP claimed that they could defund Planned Parenthood and  “community health centers” could easily absorb our clientele and do our work better than us? Welp, the lie detector determined that was a lie. Planned Parenthood will have to start taking on more patients in a suburb near St. Louis because St. Charles County will no longer offer treatment and exams for sexually transmitted diseases through its public health department. And mind you, this is despite increasing STD rates in that county. Unfortunately, the county’s clinic is closing now and re-opening in 2018 with a reorganized clinic model “formulated to reduce expenditures and generate opportunities to increase revenues …” So basically, STD testing and treatment, while a public good, hasn’t been good for their bank account so they’re giving the job to us. Planned Parenthood is here and ready for you STL folks. (STL Today)
  • And lastly, I just want to shout out to my peers and fellow black women in Alabama. They turned OUT in the special election this week and helped Democrat Doug Jones win a seat in the Senate! To quote Cosmo, “White women preferred the accused child molester.” And I have nothing further to add. (Cosmopolitan)

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

  • Something good is emerging from the horror that is Hurricane Harvey — a Texas clinic is offering free abortions to women affected by the storm who may have missed appointments or had their finances severely impacted. Their help will be “financial and logistical” and includes helping women travel to one of their clinics in the state. (Vice)
  • Another piece of good news? Planned Parenthood and the developers of the HPV vaccine will be recipients of one of the nation’s most prestigious prizes in medicine! (NY Times)
  • Betsy DeVos is probably going to ruin any progress currently being made with regard to sexual assault on school campuses. (NPR)
  • Count me as one of the black women who think it’s time for the monument of J. Marion Sims in New York to come down. He is often flatteringly referred to as the “father of modern gynecology,” but he was actually a sadistic monster who performed genital surgeries on black women (whom he purchased as slaves) without anesthesia. (Essence)
  • Anti-choice lawmakers’ attacks on abortion clinics have been sadly very effective. Fifty-six independent abortion clinics have closed over the past two years, and 145 have shut down since 2012. (Rewire)
  • Kentucky could definitely be a casualty of this trend. They could soon be the first state in the country with no abortion clinic. (Reuters)
  • Birth control is good for many things: preventing babies, regulating periods, preventing ovarian cysts, managing endometriosis … and now we learn oral contraceptives are also tied to lower rheumatoid arthritis risk! (NY Times)
  • A Texas judge temporarily blocked a law that would have banned dilation and extraction abortions in the state. (The Cut)
  • Awful news: A 10-year-old Indian rape victim gave birth after a court denied her request for an abortion. (WaPo)
  • An “activist” Ohio Supreme Court judge spoke at a pro-life event and now refuses to recuse herself from a case that could close Toledo’s only abortion clinic. (Jezebel)
  • Anti-Abortion Activists Are Using Down Syndrome Parents to Argue Against Women’s Rights (Double X)
  • More black women are using PrEP as a way to protect themselves from HIV. (Real Health Mag)