Abortion on Demand and Without Apology! For every woman in every state!

[redqueen]

The reversal of abortion and birth control rights must stop now!

Abortion is an issue that divides this country. This is no accident. How one thinks and feels about abortion flows fundamentally from how one views women.

We recognize that women are full human beings who must have the right – through unrestricted and unstigmatized access to birth control and abortion – to decide for themselves when and whether they will have children. We reject the view that a woman's highest purpose and fundamental “duty” is to bear children, even those she does not want or cannot care for.

...

Over 80% of abortion clinics have experienced violence, threats, or harassment; eight doctors and staff have been murdered. Today, 97% of rural counties have no abortion provider. One in four poor women who seeks an abortion cannot afford it and is forced to have a child she does not want. Five states have only one abortion clinic left.

This assault has intensified, not slowed, under the Presidency of Obama. 2011 and 2012 saw record new legal restrictions on abortion. Already this year, 278 bills have been introduced to further restrict abortion, including laws set to go into effect that would shut down the last clinic in North Dakota on August 1. Added to this, the Obama administration fought relentlessly to keep emergency contraception ("Morning After Pill&quot off the shelves and out of the hands of the women and girls who desperately need it.

Reproductive rights are in a state of emergency.

...

For too long, millions have watched in alarm as yesterday's outrageous and unthinkable attack has become today's “compromise position” and tomorrow's limit of what can be imagined. This dynamic must be broken. The political leaders of the Democratic Party cannot be relied on to do this. While posing as the last bastion of defense against these attacks, these “leaders” have in fact seriously undermined reproductive rights by seeking “common ground” with fascists and religious fanatics, by ceding the moral high ground, by severing abortion from women's emancipation and by refusing to stand up when abortion providers are murdered.

...

http://www.stoppatriarchy.org/abortionondemandstatement.html

We need to start raising our voices or we are going to ensure our daughters and granddaughters are returned to the times when abortions routinely resulted in serious injury and death.

[Kath1]

1. Abortion and Contraception on Demand and Without Apology!

I am very disappointed with the erosion of rights over the last few years. If our elected Democratic officials don't protect choice, what power do we have? Will it come to widespread civil disobedience to protect women's rights?

[ismnotwasm]

2. Yup

That is the ONLY reasonable position

[LanternWaste]

3. Has there been a recent catalyst...?

I'm glad you posted this here, because I've been really curious about something and didn't want to start a thread with it...

Has there been a recent catalyst for all the choice discussions going on in GD? I've been on DU for over ten years, and don't remember a spate of so many discussions regarding the issue. Discussions which seem to include a LOT of anti-choice sentiment and implication crouched as "my opinion".

So I began wondering why, without any dramatic and systemic news from the courts re: the issue, would the discussion, with an apparent and concomitant group of posters saying everything up to and except abortion should be illegal, have begun (by my count, about a week ago...?)?

I mean, this is a fundamental platform of the democratic party... heck, it's a fundamental platform of freedom itself. But for some odd reason, I've been seeing a lot of debate about a thing that doesn't need to be debated-- at least on DU.

Am I seeing a pattern that doesn't exist? Have these threads always been part of DU, and only now am I conscious of them? Or has a stealth campaign recently started to bring it into question?

[ismnotwasm]

4. I'm not going to be around DU and the answer is connected to why

The administrators have decided its fine to post anti-choice opinions. A number of feminists started pro-choice OP's, then it took on a life of its own-- .

I've been back and forth with this, but after seeing some of the anti-choice posts allowed to stand I'm done. I have other places to spend my time.

[boston bean]

5. Ism, your voice is so valuable to me and this group.... this news is a great loss for us.

Totally understandable position, I wish it weren't so.

We had another post last night where abortion was categorized as horrifically killing an unborn child, and it was left to stay.

If you are reading, I saw from the posts, in the above referenced thread, that an ATA question was asked, I am patiently awaiting Skinners or Admins response.

I am going to miss you and I hope things around here will change for the better where full equal rights for women are honored and other viewpoints in opposition to that view are shown the door. Not people leaving because their conscience can't allow them to participate with time or money on a website that doesn't have some clear ground rules regarding this very important issue.

[LanternWaste]

7. Between your response and BB's reply to it, I think I'm getting it...

Between your response and BB's reply to it, I think I'm getting it...





(I'll let you in on a secret for what it's worth... you and a handful of other individuals (on HoF and in my workaday life) have really opened my eyes over the past six months. So if nothing else, you assisted in educating someone, and that's an absolute good-- regardless of any of the crap flung your way.

[GeoWilliam750]

9. Please stay here and keep posting

You are one of the few posters whose posts are very much worth reading.

Do not pay any mind to the MRA misogynists - they have their own demons, which they feel can only be made more bearable by making sure that somebody else has life just as bad or even worse than they have it. Their powerlessness can never be satiated.

Although it has taken much, much time, I have embraced a simple process to help avoid unnecessary stress - and it may (or may not) work for you. It is to simply listen to the people you care about, and care about the people you listen to. There are many here who listen to you, and would like to extend the converation with you. We care very much about what you have to share.

The MRA posters are mostly brain-eating zombies that should be ignored - they are mostly beyond cure or help - and probably even beyond pity. Every minute you spend responding to their taunts doesn't come back, doesn't make you feel better, and does not change their opinion in the least.

So. Stay. Please.

And ingore the zombies trying to break in - the walls are thick, and the company inside is good.

[ismnotwasm]

11. Thank you

I did read your post and I appreciated it

[PassingFair]

6. Yep. Very clearly. When put to a point, Skinner said it was OK to disparage abortion.

So that's why the anti-choicers feel emboldened.

[nomorenomore08]

13. And I wonder why? What could he or his website possibly have to gain from that?

[Sheri]

8. no apology.

the 4th Amendment right to privacy has been eroded enough. if my uterus isn't private, then what the hell is private?

[boston bean]

10. I know. why they want all up in there any ways. worried about our eggs floating around..

whether they attach, if we should use something to prevent them from attaching....

weird..... LOL

[nomorenomore08]

12. +1

And so many people are too dumb - or maybe place too little value on female human beings - to see that.

[Sheri]

14. it makes me sad to think that you may be right. nt