"Anti-abortion measures pose a risk to all pregnant women, including those who want to be pregnant."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/opinion/pregnant-and-no-civil-rights.html
"Based on the belief that he had an obligation to give a fetus a chance
for life, a judge in Washington, D.C., ordered a critically ill
27-year-old woman who was 26 weeks pregnant to undergo a cesarean
section, which he understood might kill her. Neither the woman nor her
baby survived."
"In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal
bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree
murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at
11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy."
"Florida has had a number of such cases. In one, a woman was held
prisoner at a hospital to prevent her from going home while she appeared
to be experiencing a miscarriage. She was forced to undergo a cesarean.
Neither the detention nor the surgery prevented the pregnancy loss, but
they did keep this mother from caring for her two small children at
home. While a state court later found the detention unlawful, the
opinion suggested that if the hospital had taken her prisoner later in
her pregnancy, its actions might have been permissible."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/opinion/pregnant-and-no-civil-rights.html
MANY
"What did it mean that my mother had to break the law to end a pregnancy?
It meant that America basically said to her: It’s the twentieth
century, so we’re going to let you vote and go to college, and have a
family and a job—not a great job, not the one you wanted, because
unfortunately that job is for men—and your own charge accounts at
Bonwit’s and Altman’s and your own subscription to the Heritage Book
Club, but underneath all that normal, forward-looking,
mid-twentieth-century middle-class New York life is the secret
underground life of women, and that you must manage outside the law. If
you are injured or die or are trapped by the police, you’ll only have
yourself to blame, because the real reason you are here on Earth is to
produce children, and you shirk that duty at your peril."
http://www.thenation.com/article/184321/exclusive-excerpt-how-pro-choicers-can-take-back-moral-high-ground
WORDS
"I don't mean to say men are the criminals and women are the victims —
it's not like that at all — but men can be quite disengaged with this
issue. I've been to a lot of conferences about reproductive rights. And
the only men you ever see there are gay. Why is that? You don't see a
lot of activism on the part of men.
Why is that?
Because
it affects them less directly. It's not their body. I put out a call
for abortion stories when I was beginning to write this book. There were
so many that said, "I told him I was pregnant and I never heard from
him again," or, "He said it wasn't his," or, "He wouldn't come with me
to the clinic," or, "I came home and he wanted to show me the clothes he
bought that day." That's one thing I liked about [the film]
Obvious Child — he's taking care of her and being nice and they're going through this experience together."
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a31868/katha-pollitt-pro-abortion-rights/
"Can you be a pro-life feminist?
You can be a
pro-life feminist for yourself. You can say, "I would never have an
abortion," and then when you got pregnant, you never would have an
abortion — because a lot of people who say, "I would never have an
abortion" actually have abortions. But I don't think you can restrict
freedom for women in such a fundamental way and be a feminist."
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a31868/katha-pollitt-pro-abortion-rights/
~~~~~
