New Alabama Bill Seeks Both to Fool and Misinform Women Seeking Safe Abortion Care →

stoneagechronicles:

 If HB 350 becomes law, women seeking safe abortion care will receive a list of sites where they can obtain free ultrasounds, all of which are crisis pregnancy centers that do not provide the  forced ultrasounds required by the state, but do intend to talk women out of their decisions. Women would also receive information on a state website of resources allegedly available for a woman who continues her pregnancy to term. She would also have to be provided with the business card of the physician who will be doing the abortion, and printed materials telling her abortion increases her risk of breast cancer (it does not), and that “Abortion terminates the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

Whoa.

Appalling. I can’t believe state legislators have nothing better to do with their time than finding new ways to screw over their constituents.

(Source: rhrealitycheck.org)

Help Someone Access a Safe Abortion

The lone abortion provider in Mississippi is in danger of being shut down in a little over a week. They are being flooded with calls from people desperate to get the health care they need before it’s too late. Already, many people in Mississippi must travel out of state to get a safe, legal abortion. This requires driving for hours, possibly staying overnight, and finding someone to take care of their children (61% of people who get abortions already have at least one child).

Now’s the time for that famous southern hospitality. Mississippians need help accessing abortion. They may not have transportation, a place to stay, or child care. If you can provide any of these things, even just a ride to the clinic or a couch to sleep on for a night, please contact the Abortion Assistance Blog. Here are some of the clinics people will be visiting:

Mississippi:

Jackson Women’s Health Organization

Alabama:

New Woman All Women Health Care, Birmingham

Planned Parenthood, Birmingham

Planned Parenthood, Mobile

Reproductive Health Services of Montgomery

West Alabama Women’s Center, Tuscaloosa

Arkansas:

Planned Parenthood, Fayetteville

Planned Parenthood, Little Rock

Little Rock Family Planning Services (only clinic that provides abortions after 8 weeks)

Florida:

All Women’s Health Center, Inc., Gainesville

Bread & Roses Women’s Health Center, Gainesville

North Florida Women’s Health & Counseling Service, Tallahassee

Louisiana:

Bossier City Medical Suite

Causeway Medical Clinic, Metairie, New Orleans

Hope Medical Group for Women, Shreveport

Tennessee:

Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health

Memphis Area Medical Center for Women

Memphis Center for Reproductive Health

Planned Parenthood of the Greater Memphis Region

Planned Parenthood, Knoxville

Planned Parenthood, Nashville

The Women’s Center, Nashville

Volunteer Women’s Medical Clinic, Knoxville

If you live near any of these clinics, or have a place to stay along the journey from Mississippi, you could be the one to help someone in need access a safe, legal abortion. Please contact the Abortion Assistance Blog, and make a difference in someone’s life.

The Criminalization of Bad Mothers →

…Alabama’s chemical-endangerment law was never meant to apply to pregnant women’s drug use. “The words ‘womb,’ ‘uterus,’ ‘pregnant women’ don’t appear in the law,” Ketteringham says. “It was a law meant to protect children from meth labs.” One state legislator has filed an amicus brief, claiming the law was not intended to be used this way, and the Legislature has repeatedly rejected amendments to expand the law’s definition of “child” to explicitly mean “fetus.” But shortly after the law passed, Alabama prosecutors began extending the term “environment” to also mean the “womb,” and “child” to also mean “fetus.” In 2006, Tiffany Hitson was charged with chemical endangerment the day after she gave birth to a baby girl who tested positive for cocaine and marijuana but was otherwise healthy. When that prosecution was successful (Hitson was incarcerated for a year), other counties followed suit, making Alabama the national capital for prosecuting women on behalf of their newborn children.

Update on Forced Ultrasound Laws

rhrealitycheck:

Virginia is now the 8th state with forced ultrasounds before abortion. When it passed its law, it joined Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. 

Texas has the harshest forced ultrasound law currently in effect. As Andrea Grimes reported,

“Texas has the most extreme law that’s being enforced right now,” says the Center For Reproductive Rights’ Julie Rikelman, the lead attorney on the CRR’s lawsuit filed against the Texas legislation. Despite the sympathetic leanings of a federal district judge who initially ruled on the case, the suit has more or less been stalled by a vehemently anti-choice Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which denied the CRR’s requested injunction against enforcement last month.  Now, that means that all aspects of the law—mandated ultrasounds, 24-hour waiting periods, and forced speech—are now in full force in Texas.

Oklahoma’s forced ultrasound bill, which was similar to TX’s, was struck down by a federal court recently.

North Carolina, which also has passed a harsh TX-style forced ultrasound bill, is unable to enforce their law pending a court decision.

Pennsylvania’s forced ultrasound bill is officially kaput, at least for this year.

And, as Robin Marty reports, Iowa:

What is the difference between a traffic light camera and a mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasound?  One is a violation of privacy, according to Iowa legislators.

Can you guess which?

The Iowa legislature is considering banning traffic cameras due to “privacy concerns.”  And those who are arguing for the ban are the same who think all women should be forced to undergo forced ultrasounds prior to an abortion.

These laws will affect all those with the ability to become pregnant.

(via stfuconservatives)

This is DAY 44 of TEXAS HAVING MANDATORY TRANSVAGINAL ULTRASOUNDS before abortion

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

While Texas is only state currently forcing people to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, AND VIRGINIA all have forced ultrasounds before an abortion. 

Oklahoma and North Carolina have passed similar laws to the one in Texas but they are not being enforced due to pending court decisions.

Guttmacher’s updated .pdf of what ultrasound laws are passed and in effect in which states.

(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)

Virginia is in the sex ed Hall of Shame →

This week people were abuzz over news that New York City had mandated sex education — and some were simply scratching their heads at the realization that this wasn’t already the case. Seriously, it took this long?

Well, seriously, there are still 24 states that haven’t mandated sex education, including New York state.

That’s too many states to cover in any detail, so I’ll narrow it down to the worst of them. These are states that not only fail to mandate sex ed, but require that when it is taught, abstinence and the “importance of sex only within marriage” are stressed. These states make sure to defend “traditional” values, but they don’t protect scientific ones: Unlike some states, they don’t require that classes provide medically accurate information. Without further ado, the embarrassing eight that meet this criteria:

• Alabama has “among the highest rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis of any state in the union,” according to youth advocate Amplify, and has the 15th highest teen pregnancy rate in the country. Another not-so-fun fact: It bans schools from teaching anything positive about homosexuality.
• Arkansas has landed on some unfortunate top-ten lists: When it comes to STI rates among young people, it ranks 5th in terms of chlamydia, 7th for gonorrhea and 10th for syphilis. It also has the 8th highest teen pregnancy rate in the country.
• Florida has the sad distinction of ranking 1st in HIV infections and 12th in teen pregnancies.
• Indiana fares well in terms of teen pregnancy and STI rates — relatively speaking — but the state’s teens “are among the least likely to report having used condoms the last time they had sex,” according to Amplify.
• Louisiana has the highest syphilis rate among young people in this country. It’s also in the top ten for both chlamydia and gonorrhea, and 11th in terms of teen HIV.
• Missouri was given a “C” rating on teen health by Amplify — while most of the states on this list received closer to a “D” — but, still, “the state has higher than average rates of STIs and lower than average rates of condom use among sexually active high school students.”
• Texas has several claims to sex-shame: It ranks 5th for teen pregnancy, 3rd in young people with AIDS and 4th in terms of syphilis among teens. A whopping 96 percent of Texas school districts teach abstinence only, according to a study by the Texas Freedom Network.
• Virginia has the 8th highest syphilis rate among young people. While it’s seen a decline in unplanned pregnancies, a study found that between 1991 and 2004 teen births still cost taxpayers roughly $3.1 billion.

The good news is that there are 20 states, along with the District of Columbia, that currently mandate sex education. But that’s a very basic achievement — it says nothing of the requirements and restrictions that are made on curricula across the country. Guttmacher reports that “26 states require that abstinence be stressed” in sex ed classes; meanwhile only 19 states insist on any mention of contraceptives. And we wonder why the U.S. has the highest teen birth rate in the developed world.

(Source: naralprochoiceva)

Anti-Choice Legislation Abounds [and how later term abortions happen] →

And, as we know, only 1.5% of abortions are done after 20 weeks, so this is a very small number compared to the total number of women getting abortions.

The women who are getting these later abortions generally have special (aka fucked up) circumstances. They didn’t find out they were pregnant until later in the pregnancy, the pregnancy has fetal anomalies, cases of rape and incest, etc.
In my experience, though, this is usually what happens:

1. Woman finds out she is pregnant when she is about 10 weeks along. She has 2-4 weeks to get the money together together before the price will go up.
2. She usually can’t get the money together in time. This is because most women getting abortions already have children and are single mothers living under the federal poverty line.
3. She pawns most of her possessions, tries to clean houses, babysit, etc other random jobs to get the money. She will ask the guy involved and invariably he will be completely out of the picture/unavailable/say no/make excuses/etc.
4. Week 14 comes and the price goes up $250.
5. Now she needs even more money.
6. I can try to contact local or national funds, but because of the economy being so bad many funds are low/out of money.
7. Patient is now 16 weeks along; no clinics in her area will now see her because she is too far along for them.
8. In addition to getting the money together, she must also figure out extended child care for her children because her procedure will now be multiple days. She also needs a hotel.
9. She tries and tries to get the money but it just isn’t happening.
10. She is now 18 weeks and cannot be seen in her state because of the state’s gestational limits.
11. She must now travel a couple hundred miles to a clinic that will see her. So in addition to child care, hotel, etc she has to factor in travel costs. Additionally, she has to wait 24 hours once she sees the clinic staff once because her state has a law that she has to wait 24 hours after the initial consultation, just so she has time to think about it. She has clearly not had it on her mind, so. Thank God.
12. Many clinics have laws that require the second opinion of another doctor who agrees the woman can have the abortion. Because at this point, she is probably just pulling everyone’s leg, right? This usually involves a fee and can be a logistical nightmare.
13. If she can get the money, funds can help out, a miracle of child care/transport, etc happens, AND she makes it to the clinic, she can finally get her abortion.
14. Let’s keep our fingers crossed she doesn’t have a negative blood type, because once she gets to the clinic and they do the blood testing, that will be an additional fee. Let’s also hope she doesn’t have a sonogram and turns out to be a few days farther along that we thought; that will cause the price to up as well.

Sounds so easy and fun, right? No wonder so many women get late term abortions.

With more and more states banning abortions after 20 weeks, they are only making it harder for these women to get to a provider that can help them. Making it harder for women to attain a later term abortion isn’t going to make them go away; it’s just going to cause more women to self-abort or do other desperate things.

State Abortion Facts: Alabama

rabbleprochoice:

Number of Providers: 8 providers as of 2008

Percentage of counties without a provider: 93% of counties in Alabama did not have an abortion provider in 2008; 61% of people seeking abortions in Alabama lived in these counties.

Abortion Restrictions in Alabama as of 2011:

• Parental Consent
•  24-hour waiting period, including state-mandated counseling aimed at discouraging abortion 24 hours prior to getting the abortion
• Public funding only for rape, incest, or life endangerment

Abortion rates in Alabama are lower than the national average.

Alabama Laws:

• Alabama has laws on the books that would ban abortion if Roe v. Wade were overturned and abortion rights were given back to the states.
• Alabama law requires that a person be given mandatory counseling 24 hours prior to receiving abortion. This counseling refers to the fetus as “unborn child” and is made to discourage an abortion by providing enlarged photos of the gestational development of a fetus, a list of adoption agencies and other assistance groups, and the person must be offered the opportunity to be given this information a second time via video presentation.
• Alabama restricts funding to state organizations or employees that promote abortion services.
• Alabama requires parental consent for people under the age of 18 who have never been married or emancipated by a court of law.
• Alabama does not allow state funding to be used towards abortions for poor people who are eligible for/on state medical assistance for general health care unless the life of the pregnant person is at risk, the pregnant person was raped, or a victim of incest.
• Alabama requires abortion providers to get a special medical license not required of other M.Ds if they perform a certain amount of abortion procedures a month for two months out of the year or if they advertise abortion services. If they do not obtain this extra license they can have criminal penalties brought against them for operating without a medical license.
• Alabama only allows doctors who are licensed by the state of Alabama to perform abortion procedures. These doctors must be able to perform ultrasounds and have at least 12 months of experience in gynecological surgery.
• Any and all abortion clincs in the state must have a board certified OB/Gyn as the medical director.

Good Things:

• Alabama covers reproductive health care services for low-income ciswomen (ciswomen between the ages of 19 and 55 that fall below 133% of the poverty line) but this assistance will expire in September 2011.*
• Alabama allows people to obtain abortion post-viability if two physicians determine it is necessary to prevent impairment of major bodily function of the pregnant person, but this definition does NOT take into account the mental health of the pregnant person and is a very narrow definition.

Sources:

Guttmacher

NARAL Pro-Choice

*As far as my research has shown, this only covers cis-women but someone else can correct me if they discover otherwise.

*This post was made in the summer of 2011 and because of the political climate of 2011 it may be inaccurate because there are so many abortion bills being considered in various states that the laws might have been altered at some point. Information for the laws listed for this state were compiled from its NARAL Pro-Choice profile and summarized but it might not be an exhaustive list of all of the laws in this state. If you find an inaccuracy, please message me so I can correct it.

Love, 

Rabble*

"

That’s real life Handmaids Tale stuff and it should scare the hell out of women everywhere. Sure, console yourself that it’s only those “bad girls” who use drugs. But once you start criminalizing stillbirths and miscarriages, it leads in only one direction: women having to justify to the state one of nature’s most common and personal events. And who gets to define what’s criminal and what isn’t? If this fetishization of the “humanity” of the fetus over the humanity of the vessel in which its incubated (i.e. a “woman”) is allowed to continue, every person who has undergone a miscarriage or stillbirth must understand that they could be questioned about everything they did during pregnancy, not just drug use. After all, perhaps they didn’t “eat right” or stayed out too late or fell down — who knows what kind of “negligence” caused the miscarriage? Certainly, depending on the law to use common sense in these situations is foolish because the very fact they are doing this much proves their malevolent intent.

This is a new thing. Even in the barbaric past, it was accepted that miscarriage it was a natural act. Nobody knows what causes them — they happen to the cleanest living people and some of the most degenerate carry their pregnancies to term. Some things just happen in life and this is one of them.

"

Digby, on the criminalization of miscarriages and stillbirths in Mississippi and Alabama. (via ryking)

(Source: diadoumenos, via stfueverything)

Women who lose babies to still births or miscarriages face criminal charges in Mississippi and Alabama. →

Targeting women who use drugs while they are pregnant is exactly the wrong policy for protecting the health of their future children. When a woman who is addicted to drug becomes pregnant, she needs immediate treatment to ensure that her addiction does not lead to serious birth defects for her child. But the threat of criminal prosecution — especially for a crime as serious as murder — will only drive her into the shadows. For this reason, dozens of public health organizations including the American Public Health Association have all denounced these prosecutions as harmful to both woman and child.

Other prosecutors are twisting laws designed to protect pregnant women and their unborn children into attacks on childbearers themselves. At least 38 states have introduced fetal homicide laws that were intended to be used against violent attacks by third parties like abusive male partners. But in South Carolina, only one case has been brought against a man for assaulting a pregnant woman, while up to 300 women have been arrested under the law, according to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

(Source: queerwashing)

New bills in Alabama would grant personhood at the 'moment of fertilization' | The American Independent →

dammitjean:

Alabama lawmakers last week introduced three heavily-sponsored bills that in concert would change how a person is defined in the state and potentially make abortion in all circumstances illegal.

Senate Bill 301, introduced by Sen.  Phil Williams (R-Cherokee, Etowah), is a proposal to amend the Alabama Code of 1975 to change the definition of the term “person” to mean : “any human being from the moment of fertilization or the functional equivalent thereof.”

Williams’ bill — read for the first time last Tuesday — has 18 co-sponsors and has been referred to the Senate committee on Health.

Rep. John Merrill (R-Tuscaloosa) filed an identical personhood bill in the House on Thursday, House Bill 405. But taking a step further from just amending the state’s legal code, Merrill also filed House Bill 409, which is a ballot proposal to amend the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, so that every time the word “person” is used in that document it would include “‘all humans from the moment of fertilization.” If HB 409 goes forward, Alabamans would have the opportunity to vote on this amendment either in special election at the end of the year or in 2012.

These bills, which have been referred to the House Health committee, both have 31 co-sponsors, which, according to the attorney Ben DuPré of the Foundation for Moral Law, is “astounding” and a good indication that the laws will pass. DuPré and the national organization Personhood USA helped draft the earlier versions of the legislation, though several anti-aboriton rights groups, such as Alabama Citizens for Life, have backed the bills.

“We must protect all Alabama children,” said Sen. Williams in a Personhood USA statement. “At the same time we have to send a message that Alabamians value the sanctity of life. Every heartbeat is as important as the next.”

I think what they’re trying to say is that personhood ends as soon as you come out female-bodied.

What are they going to do about chemical pregnancies and miscarriages? Anyone?

I’m waiting for one of these ignorant bills to be taken to the Supreme Court. Any day now…

(Source: thecurvature, via stfuconservatives)

How Have We Missed This?! →

propaganda-for-life:

rumblesketch:

depressingfacts:

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

Alabama REDEFINES PERSONHOOD AS BEING FROM FERTILIZATION!!!!!
This bill is in the FINAL stage!  

What is this fuckery, seriously? Alabama, WTF?

Then will they allow uterus-bearers with unwanted pregnancies to start prosecuting feti for unauthorized use of their bodies?

Ugh Fuck Alabama.

Whoa, this is what I get for being out most of the day. Holy shit, Alabama. Stop with all the self-righteous bullshit; you’re only hurting, oh I don’t know, everyone with a uterus. Except I get it, once we get pregnant, we’re no longer people, and our rights don’t matter.

Alabama legislature, fuck you.

This sounds like an attempt to challenge Roe v. Wade, since it would ban abortions in the first trimester, something Roe is supposed to prevent.

The medical community agrees that a pregnancy begins when the blastocyst implants into the uterine wall, not when the egg and sperm meet in the fallopian tube. 50% or more of fertilized eggs do not implant, or implant but spontaneously abort, and are flushed out with the next period. What do these people propose we do about that? This would possibly ban all forms of hormonal birth control, since they all in part prevent implantation.

Tell everyone you know about this. I would hope that most who identify as pro-life are not this extreme and will find this bill absolutely ridiculous. If people see this is where anti-choicers want us to end up (and further; I’d guess these people would love to introduce legislation banning non-reproductive sex), they may think twice about supporting the cause.

(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)