Why We Must Put Our Bodies on the Line to Fight Against the Right-Wing War on Women's Rights [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/story/153545/why_we_must_put_our_bodies_on_the_line_to_fight_against_the_right-wing_war_on_women%27s_rights/

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A sticker at NYC's SlutWalk.
Photo Credit: Sarah Seltzer

In case you haven’t noticed, pro-choicers are getting pissed off.

In the halls of power, we’re not making progress. As Sarah Jaffe discussed earlier this month, in the wake of the Plan B disaster there’s an escalating sense that all the hard work abortion-rights supporters do making donations, phone calls and signing petitions hasn’t convinced most Democratic lawmakers not to use women as a bargaining chip.

Despite some modest gains, overall there’s a steady chipping away of abortion rights and access to contraception, no matter who’s in office or what he or she pledges to do.

In the cities and towns of America, the effects of that chipping are showing. Austerity budget cuts, the absolutely brutal legislative war on women and the further stigmatization of abortion mean that clinics are shutting their doors, costs and travel times for procedures are rising and the back-alley abortion (now more commonly done with a pill obtained over the Internet than with a coat hanger) is very much back with us. But of course since the passage of the now "accepted compromise" of Hyde Amendment banning funding for low-income women to have abortions, the truth is it never really left.