Today marks three years since the death of Savita Halappanavar. Savita suffered health complications from a miscarriage at 17 weeks, presented to University Hospital Galway in Ireland for care, and was denied what would have been a life-saving abortion. Savita did not have to die. She was murdered by medical ineptitude, deadly and outdated abortion laws and moral outrage.

A Rally In Dublin In Memory Of Savita Halappanavar (2012) – William Murphy on Flickr

The New Republic published an article today called Let’s Just Say It: Women Matter More Than Fetuses Do. In the article Rebecca Traister talks about her own awareness of abortion as a crucial medical option during her two wanted pregnancies. She puts abortion alongside nuchal screening, amnio, and early Cesarean – that is, one of many tools that may need to come into play during a routine pregnancy. The article did not focus solely on “abortion as medical necessity” – this was simply the opening salvo.

In the article she put words to an old idea that we all know and understand:

“…we need to make it clear that abortions are not about fetuses or embryos. Nor are they about babies, except insofar as they enable women to make sound decisions about if or when to have them. They’re about women: their choices, health, and their own moral value.

Abortions are not about fetuses. Abortions are not about babies.

This will be my sidewalk mantra when I clinic escort. It’s short, sweet and I can scream it as loud as I want (in my mind) when Scary Grandpa tries to lean around me to implore a client to not “kill her baby.”

Traister goes on to say that this idea that women matter more than an unborn human may sound “heartless and baby-hating.” But it shouldn’t. It sounds like common sense to me. Abortions are not about fetuses. Abortions are not about babies.

We should think that people who say that an unborn human matters as much as fully grown human sound heartless and woman-hating (and out of touch with reality and manipulative and cruel and…). But “we” don’t say that. We say that people are entitled to their opinion, their religious beliefs. We say that anti-abortion protesters mean well, and are just standing up for what they believe in. We do say that unborn humans matter as much as fully grown humans. We say this when we depict clinic protesters as kindly looking grandmothers and we bow to their wishes of calling them “sidewalk counselers” in news coverage. We say this when we pass laws that make it hard for women to access abortion. We say this when we detach abortion from routine medical facilities and force it into separate buildings and then impose TRAP laws on these places. We say this when we drag our feet on threats against clinic workers and acts of vandalism at abortion clinics.

We are not willing to come out and say that women matter more than fetuses.

I don’t understand the mentality of the medical staff who could look at Savita Halappanavar while she lay suffering in front of them and possibly think that this living, breathing woman didn’t matter more than the 17-week, non-viable fetus inside of her. No one on her medical team thought that Savita mattered more than her fetus. No one placed her health care first.

Later in Traister’s article she examines the shadowy acceptance of birth control, including abortion, in the early 1900s, and then the steady rise of toxic anti-abortion arguments after Roe v. Wade in 1973:

After Roe was decided in 1973, the varied experiences of mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, friends, and selves suddenly seemed drained of their value. It was as if in gaining rights, not just to abortion, but also to greater professional and economic and sexual opportunity, women lost any claim to morality—a morality that had, perhaps, been imaginatively tied to their exclusively reproductive identities.

What rose up instead was a new character, less threatening than the empowered woman: the baby, who, by virtue of not actually existing as a formed human being, could be invested with all the qualities—purity, defenselessness, dependence—that women used to embody, before they became free and disruptive.

Again, we know that abortion has never had anything to with fetuses. Abortion has never had anything to do with babies. We’ve always known that.

On this October 28th, 2015 I remember Savita Halappanavar and her family and their great loss.

*******

Also on Freethoughtblogs see Aoife’s article Three years on: My country still kills women.

The post Remember Savita Halappanavar appeared first on Biodork.

Hey everybodyyyyyy!

I was jumping online to do a blog post about this convention that I’m attending this weekend, but it has to wait because I have to tell you about This Other Thing That Is Really Awesome!

H/T to Niki for pointing me in the direction of Michael Stone’s article Appeals Court Rules Pharmacies Cannot Cite Religion To Deny Medication

In Washington state it is no longer legal for pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception based on the justification that to do so would violate their deeply held religious belief that slutty women should literally bear the consequences of their sluttiness. Well, a clarification: These pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions… as long as they are on duty with a coworker who acknowledges that women are sentient life forms capable of making medical decisions about their own bodies, and who will fill the prescriptions.

This is huge! Not just for reproductive rights, but for putting a slight damper on the creep (tidal wave) of religion into public life and government.

Stone cites a statement by The Washington, D.C.-based Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty: “The government has no business punishing citizens solely because of their religious beliefs.”

No. If you refuse to provide professional assistance to someone because they don’t share your political beliefs, then you are the one who is doing the punishing.

And thanks to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this kind of petty-minded punishment is not going to be tolerated. Pharmacists no longer get to decide that they know better than the doctors who prescribe emergency contraception and the people who are choosing to take it. They no longer get to use their professional status as an opportunity to prostelytize and pass moral judgments that have very real consequences to their clients. They no longer get to be the gatekeepers of this type of medical care.

You know, at least in Washington state.

{AD}

The post No You Can't Refuse Service appeared first on Biodork.

Hey everybodyyyyyy!

I was jumping online to do a blog post about this convention that I’m attending this weekend, but it has to wait because I have to tell you about This Other Thing That Is Really Awesome!

H/T to Niki for pointing me in the direction of Michael Stone’s article Appeals Court Rules Pharmacies Cannot Cite Religion To Deny Medication

In Washington state it is no longer legal for pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception based on the justification that to do so would violate their deeply held religious belief that slutty women should literally bear the consequences of their sluttiness. Well, a clarification: These pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions… as long as they are on duty with a coworker who acknowledges that women are sentient life forms capable of making medical decisions about their own bodies, and who will fill the prescriptions.

This is huge! Not just for reproductive rights, but for putting a slight damper on the creep (tidal wave) of religion into public life and government.

Stone cites a statement by The Washington, D.C.-based Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty: “The government has no business punishing citizens solely because of their religious beliefs.”

No. If you refuse to provide professional assistance to someone because they don’t share your political beliefs, then you are the one who is doing the punishing.

And thanks to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this kind of petty-minded punishment is not going to be tolerated. Pharmacists no longer get to decide that they know better than the doctors who prescribe emergency contraception and the people who are choosing to take it. They no longer get to use their professional status as an opportunity to prostelytize and pass moral judgments that have very real consequences to their clients. They no longer get to be the gatekeepers of this type of medical care.

You know, at least in Washington state.

The post No You Can’t Refuse Service appeared first on Biodork.

Did you hear about Oklahoma abortion doctor Naresh Patel who did some illegal, horrible things and was consequently investigated, arrested and had his medical license pulled? Yeah, so did every anti-abortion supporter and organization in the country. And boy are they gloating about that and using it as an excuse to rally the troops. They’re trying to paint Patel’s arrest as the turning of the tide, as a sign that Americans are starting to see that abortion is an arrest-worthy crime.

One organization, Pro-Life Action League (PLAL), got soooooo excited about this idea that they came up with an awesome campaign which they coordinated with last Thursday, the 42nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. They sent care packages (because they care) to abortion doctors all over the country, which consisted of a picture of Naresh Patel in handcuffs, a pair of plastic handcuffs and a note that said “Could you be next? If you want to get out of the abortion business, give me a call – Eric Scheidler, Pro-Life Action League”

What a smarmy, gross, fallacious campaign.

Naresh Patel was not arrested for providing abortions. The government is not bringing him up on charges to punish him for providing abortion. Abortion is legal and you cannot be arrested for it. Patel was arrested for fraud. No abortion provider will “be next” unless they get caught committing fraud.

But this doesn’t matter to Eric Schleider, executive director of PLAL, who – in a truly gag-worthy, gloat-filled video, claims that abortion is “extremely corrupting” and that being an abortion doctor will naturally lead you to “other” criminal activities. The PLAL article on the “care packages” implies the same thing. Quote: “It’s no surprise that someone willing to kill unborn babies for a living would turn to crime.” And to make their point, they list three abortion doctors who have been charged with crimes.

Hey PLAL – being a doctor doesn’t make you a good person. Lots of people who also happen to be doctors (and not just abortion doctors!) have been charged with crimes. And do you know what else? Doctors aren’t the only people who have been accused of crimes. We’ve got a fairly long list of anti-abortion activists who have been charged with criminal activity like arson, vandalism, stalking, assault and murder. Hmm…what do you think is the corrupting force in those crimes?

What Naresh Patel did was wrong. He broke laws that have been put in place to discourage doctors from taking advantage of the patients who trust them, and so he was arrested. He committed crimes that warranted professional censure, and so his medical license was revoked. Doctors that operate within the law while they provide safe and legal abortion don’t have to worry about being arrested.

I’m happy to see that this publicity stunt hasn’t been getting a lot of coverage from pro-choice groups. One of the things that PLAL is jumping up and down excitedly about is how the “abortionists” will react to their care packages. Aside from a few derisive laughs and eyerolls, I’m not seeing much of a reaction at all. Sorry, PLAL. Maybe next time. Probably not, though.

The post Today in Pro-Lifers Annoy Me News appeared first on Biodork.

It’s that time of the year again! Good Friday marks the annual organized anti-Planned Parenthood vigil here in the Twin Cities and it’s celebrated with much somber walking, very pray, so clutching of rosaries and wow crosses outside of the St. Paul Planned Parenthood:

Anti-choice crowds line the fence and stare over at the pro-Planned Parenthood celebration with a mixture of anger, contempt, pleading, sorrow, curiosity and indifference.

And on the other side – a celebration of accessible and legal abortion, comprehensive reproductive options, sex education and outreach:

This year a bunch of jerks – not satisfied with marching with their anti-choice brethren – decided to make a nuisance of themselves on “our” side of the rally. As always with these harassers, they’re not satisfied unless they’re edged right up to the public property line, which was particularly annoying because they were standing between us and our food trucks. Buttheads. These special friends had a penchant for screaming about hellfire and damnation. For the most part we all minded our manners, but me, Niki and our friend Chris couldn’t resist stopping for a quick photo op:

 Happy atheist trio mocks your angry sky fairy – Mwuahahaha!

We had happy music, warm drinks and supportive signs. We took pictures and laughed and raised money and cheered and ran to give hugs when we saw friends and supporters arrive to join in the march. It was a great time.

Me and fellow clinic escort Niki take a photo at the march in our vests – shiny!

Happy Lich Jesus Day, everyone!

The post Planned Parenthood Solidarity Event appeared first on Biodork.

An embryo is not a baby.

A fetus is not a baby.

A woman who aborts an embryo or fetus, whether by intentional abortion or by miscarriage, is not a murderer.

If you’re thinking “but what if”…

Just stop.

Your puny hypothetical insults the majority of people who will never be in the position you’ve conjectured.

Moving on.

Miscarriage is a medical emergency, not a criminal offense.

A woman who is miscarrying a fetus is due emergency medical treatment.

A miscarriage that is “in progress” means that there is no saving the embryo or fetus. Game over.

Don’t punish women who are miscarrying by denying them emergency medical treatment. You cannot save the fetus; treat the human being who is alive.

If you criminalize a woman who has aborted or miscarried a fetus, you are harming a human being.

Also you’re an asshole.

Next,

Pro-life activism is a waste of all of our lives, and is harmful to the lives of the women and men and gender-nonconforming people which it attempts to shame. Pro-life activism harms one human life for the sake of a potential human life. It places a higher value on a potential human life than on the life of someone who is here now and needs our support.

Recognize pro-life activism for the moral masturbation that it is.

If you are a pro-life activist, you are doing a bad thing.

Also, you’re probably being an asshole while you’re doing it.

And you’re a hypocrite.

If you spend your time trying to pass pro-life, anti-woman, woman-shaming legislation you are wasting your life and wasting the time, money and very short attention span of the constituency and the rest of the world and your’re holding our society back from evolving into a more enlightened state.

Stop it.

Sending a mother to jail for having an abortion or a miscarriage, and in the process depriving her for reals kids of a guardian is bad for the mom, bad for the kids and bad for society.

Interrogating women who have stated that they have miscarried to make sure that it wasn’t really a secret abortion is cruel and nothing less than a totalitarian action by government.

Forcing families to spend precious resources on a legal defense to prove their “innocence” in having a miscarriage is heartless and callous and ignorant and a odious way to advance a political objective.

Today’s rage blogging is brought to you by Think Progress and the ACLU.

• Pregnant Women Who Lose Babies Face Criminal Charges In Mississippi, Alabama
• Alabama Hospitals To Pregnant Women – “Sorry, honey, we won’t help you here.”

The post SAY IT WITH ME appeared first on Biodork.

You may have seen my call for volunteers in the Twin Cities area to take part in last Saturday’s clinic escort training in Minneapolis. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of inquiries I received and by the number of people who said they wanted to attend, to the point where I set up a Facebook event to track the numbers of “maybes” and “yeses” so that the coordinator could plan for an appropriate number of visitors.

All in all, last Saturday was an outstanding success.

That morning I was running late to the training due to heavy snowfall from the night before, and when I walked in to the break room where everyone was gathered, I almost lost my breath. There were people who I knew from different social groups, from Minnesota Atheists, from my old job at Barnes and Noble – including a B&N coworker’s daughter who had found the invite through her mom! Plus there were people who had heard about the training from other escorts and the clinic’s volunteer coordinator. It was really inspiring to see so many people come together from all of these different places to stand up for access to reproductive healthcare and destigmatization of abortion.

There were a total of 16 people who showed up to escort on Saturday. We ran out of vests! Six of us were regulars, but I don’t think the other 10 had ever done any escorting. And they came out on a day when the temperature started at -6°F.

Robin is astounded at the outpouring of support at Whole Women’s Health last Saturday.

As for protesters, it was really slow. The cold kept many of the regular sidewalk prayers away, but a few of the more vocal harassers couldn’t resist showing up. Being so outnumbered is a novel thing for them and I think they were a little miffed. Because there were so many of us, and because this was the first time many people had escorted, there was new adventure excitement in the air. And since there are really only two main entrances into the clinic, we tended to congregate in large groups where we shared stories and did stupid-looking dancing and hopping around to keep the blood flowing! And the giggling and outright laughing – oh, the protesters HATE that. It’s a very serious situation, you know – wimmin killin’ babies and all. And us just giggling as if all that was happening was some people going in to their doctor appointments.

Five of us smiling and bundled up in winter clothes and blankets!

Me and a friend who came down to volunteer. I haven’t seen her – literally – in years. I had a happy.

Five intrepid clinic escorts brave the Minneapolis chill to offer support to clinic patients.

For anyone who wasn’t able to make it last week, we will be at Whole Women’s Health at 7am – 10:45am this Saturday 12/14/13. Come on down!

Whole Women’s Health
825 S 8th St #1018,
Minneapolis, MN 55404

It’s a tall glass and brick building called “Meadowbrook” on Chicago Ave between 8th and 9th Streets. The entrance to the building is on the side by the tennis courts, parallel to Chicago, but one block up – it’s technically 9th Avenue/9th Street because 9th street does this weird wrap around thing. There is a lot of parking on the street, although the spots along 9th Street are only $0.25/hr vs. 8th Street where it’s $1.25/hr. The ramp is $2/hr.

And here are the usual offers: If you’re in the area and would like to volunteer, but are lacking in some resource that you think I might be able to provide – e.g., a ride to the clinic, help with directions or bus routes, warm clothes – let me know. If you think you might be interested, but want to ask me some questions beforehand – ask! If you can’t make this week, but would like to attend at a later date, shoot me an email and we’ll work out an alternate way to get you trained in. I can be reached at [email protected]

The post Clinic Escorting Training Was…WOW appeared first on Biodork.

This billboard was placed in my neighborhood for a few weeks.

Apologies for the crap quality – I took this photo at night, on my cell phone, over my shoulder as the Hubby was driving through an intersection. If for some reason you’re interested in seeing a “better” version, NYCyclist over at Jezebel Groupthink took a photo of the same sign when it was put up in the Bronx.

I used to not see the problem with the “real men” campaigns, especially when they were used for good* instead of evil. I once very proudly sent an anti-homophobia campaign video that used the “real men” message (in this case, a bunch of smiling women holding signs that read “real men don’t discriminate”, etc), to More Than Men in the hope that they would help spread the message. Sasha was kind and patient enough to rip apart the (several) problems with the video, and I haven’t used or endorsed the term “real man” since. I’ve also become more tuned in to when other people do. Like when shitty forced-birth proponents push that shit on their shitty anti-abortion signs.

My husband doesn’t like babies. I have male friends who would rather get a root canal than be in the same room with a toddler or a crying baby for a prolonged amount of time. They all identify as men. And I know lots of men who love babies who are pro-choice and pro-abortion. Oops, must be something wrong with the anti-choice logic there.

 Religious fundamentalism, illogical? Shocking.

But this isn’t an original message by any means. When I’m clinic escorting, protesters always target male companions (or they may be unwittingly harassing clients, not that the right wing fundies would ever consider that a man could get pregnant – that’d just ‘splode their little brains) with phrases like “Now’s the time for you to stand up and be a man.” “You don’t have to let her do this!” “That’s your baby too!” “God expects more from you, son!” “A real man would stand up for his child – don’t let her murder your baby!”

*deep breath* Give me a second, I have to get the nausea that’s rolling through my stomach under control.

So many things wrong with all of these arguments. The idea of “being a man”, meaning what? That he isn’t currently a man? Should he establish his male dominance and order her to not get an abortion?  “You don’t have to let her do this.” Uh…yeah he does. What’s the alternative – coercion? “That’s your baby, too!” Uh, nope. That’s her body and it’s her decision to make about what to do with the clump o’ cells that’s in her autonomous self. “God expects more from you, son.” Expects more from him than…what? Than he does from her? What exactly does God expect him to do, anyway? Are we back to coercion? (Secondary response: Haha! There is no god!)  “Don’t let her murder your baby.” Not a baby, not his property (neither woman nor clump o’ cells), not murder, not his choice.

But yeah…Real Men^TM Love Babies. And according to the anti-choice crowd the only way one can be a Real Man^TM is to deny your lady-folk their bodily autonomy. So all you non-baby loving, not real men take that. Or something.

**********************

*Good = You know…things that I agreed with.

The post You May Not Be A Real Man(TM) appeared first on Biodork.

Niki M. is a published author and an advocate for science, skepticism, atheism and reproductive rights – among many other things. Niki is one of my fellow clinic escorts, and she is subjected to the same kind of targeted harassment as the rest of us who provide care to the clients who visit our clinic. However, as a woman of color she gets a little extra love from the protesters. This open letter is a guest post by Niki to her harassers, and to all of those protesters who think that it’s okay to target a clinic escort based on her skin color. You can follow Niki at @jailawrites

Dear White Anti-Choicers,

Hey, how’s it going? Nice day we’re having. it’s a mite chilly, though, but the sun’ll be up soon on this glorious Saturday morning. Then again, the sun will make those all of that lovely fetal snuff porn you have on display inescapable. And you brought your kids too. How nice.

By the way, thanks for waiting for me to pay for my parking and put on my escort vest before launching into the weekly “Think of the babies” spiel. I find our relationship to be kinda like Ralph and Sam from the Looney Tunes shorts way back when. You know, we gather at the front of the clinic, occasionally exchange good mornings, then once the vest is on we begin the weekly shift. In case you’re missing my metaphor, see, I am Sam the sheepdog and you’re the coyote, and the sheep we’re fighting over are the patients who come in for appointments.

You’re not exactly a very bright coyote; at least Ralph had some cunning and brains. You guys run after any young face that walks past. You run after every old face. You run after faces in scrubs going in to work. You go after faces that have no idea that there’s a clinic that performs abortions nearby. One of you goes into the nearby park looking for faces. All of you are trying to push those brochures full of lies.

Sometimes you engage the escorts. Again, you’re not very bright. Your arguments are tired and false, your insults hilarious. My fellow escorts, the Sams that look after and lead scared and worried and harried patients inside with a big smile and understanding and empathy, tend to ignore you directly. We mock you behind your back, because it’s funny and what else are we going to do when we’re standing in the weather for up to two hours?

Then I show up and the arguments get…very targeted.

“Did you know that Margaret Sanger was a racist?”
“And abortion was a means to eradicate the black race?”
“Have you heard of Alveda King?” and when I don’t respond, “Well, have you heard of Martin Luther King?”

…let us reflect on the sheer guts and spine and stupidity it takes to ask a Black woman in America who looks as if she didn’t just come out of the womb herself yesterday whether she heard of MLK.

How lovely of you to save such pointed questions for lil ol’ me, anti-choicers. I bet you were sitting on those for a while, waiting for a very special someone to spring them on. Someone with a certain appreciation. Someone with..aw, hell I’m not wearing a vest right now, I don’t need to be subtle.

Thanks for concern of the future of my race, dipshits, but somehow I think all of Black America will do just fine without your sort of concerns. Your sort of concern seems to imply that we folk just are too stupid to realize the genocide that happens whenever one of ours decides to end a pregnancy. Why, to hear you go on, the rivers of Black blood will only be stopped by old white folks with rosaries and graphic pictures of medical waste.

And yes, I AM aware of who Alveda King is, and I am aware that she is a conservative fame glutton of the worst sort, preporting to speak for a man who died when she was a teenager. I am aware of the shade she try to throw to her aunt, Coretta Scott King, a woman with more caring and class in her decayed fingertips that Miss Alveda has in her entire living body. Also, way to assume that we’re some sort of hivemind and I’m the one out of step.

And yes, I AM aware of Margaret Sanger’s backwards and fucked up and deeply racist views on eugenics and so called lesser races. I also know that she didn’t invent abortion, and I’m enough of a grown up to see that letting people who wish to have abortions to get them safely is a boon to our culture. Maybe you should picket a VW plant next, because Hitler.

Let me ask you a few questions, Sister Mary All In My Business. I’ll ask them here since you can’t interrupt with the same looping nonsense you say to everyone. If you are so concerned about the future of the population of Black people, as opposed to wielding this like an anti-choice arrow in your quiver of bullshit, what are your views on the prison pipeline, the disparity of black mothers getting maternity care, the number of minority kids left to linger in the foster system, the cuts to Head Start, welfare, SNAP, and other government programs that help care for black babies, our broken public school system and closings that just happen to happen in minority communities, the wholesale assumption that black children are tiny adults and are not allowed the innocence of youth, the stigma of single black mothers are everything that is wrong with society, and I can go on for hours. Because these are just the tip of the iceberg of things that actually affect black babies.

If you’re not willing to get off your cross and work on those things, don’t fucking talk to me about the future of my race.

Sincerely,
Niki M.

The post Dear White Anti-Choicers appeared first on Biodork.

We’ve seen a lot – a LOT – of legislation introduced at the state and federal levels that have been designed to limit people’s access to safe, legal abortion. With Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme court disallowed many types of restrictions that would prohibit people from obtaining abortions. But as we have seen in the past several years, anti-abortion proselytizers have found and abused a major loophole: while still allowing legal abortion, it has been possible to limit access to abortion by closing down abortion clinics via regulatory technicalities. Their hope is that by making abortions harder to obtain, there will be fewer abortions. The laws in which these technicalities are housed are referred to by pro-choice advocates as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Clinics, or TRAP laws.

TRAP laws might require that abortion clinics obtain weird licenses having to do with the physical construction of their buildings, or the way they staff their clinics, or the procedure that they have in place. I say “weird” because these laws only apply to medical providers that perform abortions, and are not imposed on other providers of comparable medical procedures. That’s why we call them Targeted Regulation of Abortion Clinics. Another type of TRAP law might require that an abortion clinic be designated as an “Ambulatory Surgical Center”. From ReproductiveRights.org:

Ambulatory surgical center (“ASC”) requirements mandate that abortion providers – including, in at least one state, those that provide only first-trimester medical or surgical abortions – be licensed as ASCs, which are sophisticated facilities designed for the performance of a range of out-patient surgeries. These requirements go far beyond the recommendations of the national health organizations in the field of abortion care, and converting a physician’s office or outpatient clinic into an ASC can be too expensive for many providers.

And the thing is, TRAP laws are working. Reproductive rights legal advocacy groups are having a tough time fighting them in court and abortion clinics ARE closing. From the Huffington Post:

More than 50 abortion clinics across the country have closed or stopped offering the procedure since a heavy wave of legislative attacks on providers began in 2010, according to The Huffington Post’s nationwide survey of state health departments, abortion clinics and local abortion-focused advocacy groups.

At least 54 abortion providers across 27 states have shut down or ended their abortion services in the past three years, and several more clinics are only still open because judges have temporarily blocked legislation that would make it difficult for them to continue to operate.

So what does that translate to for a person who is seeking an abortion? From Guttamacher.org:

Some 87% of U.S. counties do not have an abortion provider and 35% of women aged 15–44 live in those counties.[32] The proportions are lower in the Northeast (53% and 18%) and the West (74% and 13%). In 2005, nonhospital providers estimated that while more than seven in 10 women traveled less than 50 miles to access abortion services, nearly two in 10 traveled 50–100 miles and almost one in 10 traveled more than 100 miles.[42]

So 70% of women travel less than 50 miles, 20% travel between 50-100 miles and 10% travel more than 100 miles. Let’s look at what that means for just one recent year. From the CDC, in 2009 784,507 legal induced abortions were reported from 48 reporting areas. If the stats regarding travel distance were applied to that number it would mean that 78,450 people would have had to travel greater than 100 miles to obtain an abortion. Can you imagine having to drive over 100 miles for any other outpatient medical procedure? It’s ridiculous.

And there are a whole other host of laws that further limit a person’s ability to obtain an abortion. We’ve made the clinics hard to get to, and once the patients arrive they must jump through all sorts of hoops like meeting a doctor 48 hours in advance of the actual procedure (perhaps necessitating overnight stays, more time off of work, more financial stress) to listen to government-mandated guilt-, fear- and doubt-inducing speeches about viability and “options”. We tell them that they must watch ultrasounds of the undeveloped fetus. And of course, to even get inside the clinic they are often forced through a gauntlet of religiously-motivated abortion protesters who are willing to use virtually any tactic to get the patient to not enter the facility, including kidnapping. Here’s what that feels like, from the perspective of one woman who visited the  EMW Women’s Surgical Center, the only abortion clinic in Louisville, KY.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDC7lZxGZsY

But finally…some relief: The Women’s Health Protection Act [link downloads a PDF of the proposal*], a federal law that is being unabashedly touted by it’s backers as a response to the particularly nasty recent TRAP laws that have been chipping away at our access and right to legal abortion over the past several years. This is it. Legislators who advocate for legal abortion and women’s rights are saying “ENOUGH.” From the Huffington Post:

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) will introduce the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2013, joined by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Reps. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Lois Frankel (D-Fla.). The bill would prohibit states from passing so-called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, which impose strict and cost-prohibitive building standards on abortion clinics, require women seeking abortions to have ultrasounds, and create other barriers to abortion access.

[snip]

“The Women’s Health Protection Act will provide a clear and certain response to these regulations and laws that impose unnecessary tests, procedures and restrictions — including requirements for physical layout in clinics — on reproductive services.”

Blumenthal’s bill wouldn’t automatically overturn states’ existing anti-abortion laws, but because federal law trumps state law, it would provide a means to challenge them in court. The bill would direct judges to consider certain factors in determining whether a restriction is legal, such as whether it interferes with a doctor’s good-faith medical judgment, or whether it’s likely to interfere with or delay women’s access to abortion.

Yes.

So much this.

Please.

Much of the language in the bill would restrict TRAP laws by requiring that legislation that would affect abortion clinics must be applicable to providers of medically comparable procedures and professions. It would protect providers’ abilities to provide abortion services via telemedicine, which has recently been a hot topic in Iowa. It would make it so women no longer have to make medically unnecessary visits to the clinic prior to obtaining an abortion.

If you want to show your support for the Women’s Health Protection Act you can sign the “Draw the Line” petition being circulated by the Center For Reproductive Rights. And you can send thanks to those Senators who have lent their names to the proposal:

• Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)
• Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)
• Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.)
• Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio)
• Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.)
• Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.)

I needed to see this bill. I don’t know if I can adequately convey how heartening it is to me as an abortion rights advocate to see lawmakers introducing legislation that would help not only in the constant battle to keep abortion safe, legal and accessible, but which has the potential to fight abortion stigma in this country.

A tired yay.

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*I recommend reading the proposal. I found it incredibly cathartic to read the concerns that we have long been voicing, and the fixes we’d like to see put in place, written in the official language of a proposed bill. Rarely does reading legalese make me grin like a fool, but this one did.

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