Blog for Choice Day

Today is National Blog for Choice day to mark the 34th anniversary of the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade. Today remember these women.

Notice in reading that link that some of the women who have died from botched abortions died in the post-Roe years. There is no reason this should happen. Why do we have to keep fighting for basic human rights? The right to control our bodies and the spacing of our children?

Because the anti-choice side won't be satisified until women are left with no options. I know this because my own state is hearing house bills just this morning regarding making performing abortion a felony and also making it illegal to prescribe or give out emergency contraception and possibly even birth control! (Gee- I can only imagine how helfpul that will be in decreasing the number of unplanned pregnancies-- give women no birth control)

A statement from NOW President Kim Gandy:

"We have endured more than three decades of challenges and roadblocks from a well-funded opposition, and our rights are more tenuous than ever -- but we are determined to fight, and we will not go back to the days when women had 12, 15, 18 children, often dying in childbirth, their bodies spent. Or they died in back alleys or dirty motel rooms, or were left injured and infertile after botched illegal abortions. Most of our grandmothers had no self-determination when it came to pregnancy and childbearing, and we are determined that our daughters will never suffer that fate,"

Don't forget--

In the next few months, the U.S. Supreme Court will be deciding two cases regarding the deceptively-named Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Nine justices will determine the constitutionality of the first federal law ever to ban a medical procedure -- a law virtually identical to the Nebraska ban that was struck down by the Court in 2000 because it didn't have an exception to protect the woman's health.

All eyes will be on the high court's two newest justices -- will they be devoted to precedent as they profess to be, or will they deviate from mainstream opinion and follow their own opposition to abortion? Also under close watch is Justice Anthony Kennedy, who voted to uphold the Nebraska ban seven years ago, and whose swing vote may determine whether the federal ban, already struck down by three federal courts of appeal, will become law.

"In this time of many challenges to our liberty, preserving women's reproductive freedom calls for constant vigilance and concerted action," said Gandy. "Abortion opponents are attempting to eliminate access to abortion in many states -- by passing TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws to put clinics out of business, passing waiting periods and notice requirements that cut access for rural women, poor women and young women, and by enacting outright abortion bans that would jail doctors and revoke their medical licenses."

As we move forward in our battle of choice we have to fight the Hyde Amendment (enacted 30 years ago) which said Medicaid would not pay for a poor woman's abortion. This was the cause of death for Rosie Jimenez.

First Freedom First said it best:
"You can be personally opposed to abortion yet respect the right of women to make their own life decisions free from government intrusion.

Creating laws that are grounded in religious belief conflicts with the separation of church and state, and compromises our religious liberty."

Fight for rights and fight for the lives of your mothers, daughters, sisters and friends.