Prolonged Eye Contact

stfuprolife:

teerreeffiiiccc submitted:

http://gianna-and-faith-prolifegirls.tumblr.com/post/19795756114

You may not know this but in 2008, PP performed over 300,000 abortions! Not only is the graph totally true and not at all a lie in anyway, whatever you say is wrong because I have god on my side.

I wish that infograph had actual sources.  But I won’t argue it because there’s no point.  I don’t care how many abortions Planned Parenthood performed (3% of all of its services).  There’s nothing wrong with safe abortions.  Beyonce is on my side and that’s all that matters. :)

I’m not really sure what they think they’re proving with a pie chart like this. Anyway, from a PolitiFact article, on a slightly different antichoice claim, they examine similar information and why it’s basically useless:

[…]

All stated that roughly 98 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services to pregnant women consist of abortion. They derived their information from a March 2011 fact sheet from Planned Parenthood. That fact sheet says the group performed 332,278 abortions in 2009, referred 977 patients to other agencies for adoptions, and provided prenatal care to 7,021 patients.

[…]

But there are problems with that calculation.

First, it assumes that pregnant women only go to Planned Parenthood for one of those three options.

Planned Parenthood representatives say that interpretation overstates the ratio of abortions among its pregnant clients. It ignores other statistics, such as the 1,158,924 pregnancy tests the group provided, and the fact that those 332,278 abortions were just 3 percent of the 11,383,900 total procedures that Planned Parenthood health centers provided that year to its 3 million patients.

Thirty five percent of its services consisted of providing contraception and another 35 percent consisted of testing for sexually transmitted diseases and treatment.

The fact sheet stats also don’t reflect the fact that only a tiny proportion of Planned Parenthood centers around the country provide prenatal care - just 63 out of more than 800, said Tait Sye, a spokesman for the organization. Those that don’t offer prenatal care refer pregnant women to other health care providers for those services, and Planned Parenthood doesn’t keep track of those referrals. And the 7,021 figure for prenatal clients that was used in the calculations doesn’t include pregnant women who went to Planned Parenthood for prenatal care and were sent to outside obstetricians.

[…]

The most important part, of course, is that only a small percentage of Planned Parenthood clinics have the equipment available on site to provide prenatal care and they don’t keep track of the thousands of people they referral to other clinics. So these numbers aren’t truthful and they’re not giving the whole picture.

And in terms of adoption services, it can’t really be seen as being the fault of an organization that people go to adoption agencies for such services instead of a health clinic. They provide the services their patients need and want, they can’t force them to come to PP for adoption information to increase their numbers to your liking. 

If these are the types of things you want to insinuate about PP are you also concerned about all the ob/gyns who predominantly offer prenatal care that aren’t meeting a particular quota of your liking for adoption and abortion referrals? No? Interesting. How about examining adoption agencies to see how many pregnant people they give abortion referrals to? That’s what I figured.

What the above pie chart does is make it look like these three services (abortion, adoption, and prenatal care) are the only thing PP offers and that abortion is the majority of what they do. But actually those three types of services are only a small percentage of their services, the majority of which are preventative:

(Abortion: 3.0%, Adoption referrals fall under “Other Services” 0.6%, and Prenatal Services make up only a small percentage of “Other Women’s Services” 10.4%)

And lastly, 300,000 PP abortions is next to nothing compared to the total number of abortions (1.21 million), let alone annual live births (~4.1 million) in the United States. Honestly, keep your fear mongering pie charts to yourself because 300,000 people getting safe medical care in a sterile, professional environment is not something I’m ashamed of.

P.S. You know what else is larger than the 300,000 abortions you’re crowing over? 584,000. That’s the number of unintended pregnancies PP helped prevent in 2010.

[TW RACISM and co-opting Trayvon Martin’s murder] Dear Al Sharpton,

inchristhopeisfound:

You had your 15 minutes of fame many decades ago, please stop.

I am so sick of seeing politicians and talking heads using the death of this teenager to their benefit. Mr. Sharpton if you care about this one African American boy being killed, how come you show no interest in the MILLIONS of African American lives that have been ended by abortion? Even today, in 2012 there are hundreds of African American unborn humans being destroyed in the womb. And though there’s nothing that could make that any worse than it already is, Mr. Sharpton many of these lives are being ended by white doctors, who are making good money off of slaying what is your people.

I don’t know who you’re trying to fool. You support a president who supports abortion at ANY stage in pregnancy, including late term abortions. You support a black man, who supports the PAID MURDER OF HIS OWN PEOPLE.

Do you cry for the souls lost to abortion?

Do you protest outside of clinics that purposely target poor black communities?

Are you angered by Planned Parenthoods dark, racist past? 

Are you supporting pregnancy centers, so women can access free resources for their children and families?

If Travon Martin’s life was ended for $450 dollars at an abortion clinic, would you still fight for him? Would you still hold rallies? Would you still weep and pray?

Travon Martin’s life was cut tragically short, no doubt about it. Thankfully, he got to experience life, even though he only had a short 17 years to do so. But will we turn a blind eye against the Travon’s that are still in the womb? 

NO. You are complete and utter SCUM for making Trayvon Martin’s murder by a racist man and a racist society about you and your RACIST FUCKING ANTICHOICE AGENDA. You think I can’t see through you? You think PoC can’t see through you and your disingenuous lies? This is just further proof that white, christian antis don’t give a fuck about Black people once they’re born. You gotta use their deaths for propaganda so you can control pregnant Black people. Let’s get a few things straight right now:

Spell the kid’s name right, first off. TRAYVON MARTIN. Learn it, burn it into your memory, and ask yourself why you feel entitled to take such a stance against MoC like Rev. Al Sharpton and President Barack Obama.

There is no “black genocide” happening when pregnant people of color get abortions. They don’t have it in for black embryos. They aren’t aiding in the destruction of their own people. They are utilizing their reproductive rights! JFC.

Planned Parenthood was not founded by Sanger to exterminate black people.

Planned Parenthood does not “target black neighborhoods.” This idea that abortion clinics are targeting black neighborhoods is patently false and has been thoroughly debunked. Guttmacher has a report that found that fewer than 1 in 10 abortion clinics are in neighborhoods that are predominantly black. Further, they found that 63% of clinics were in neighborhoods where one half or more of residents were non-hispanic white. They also have a followup report.

Planned Parenthood doctors are not in a lucrative business. Does the term NON-profit mean nothing to you?

CPCs are shit.

Black pregnant people do have higher rates of abortion, but that’s because they have higher rates of unintended pregnancy (67%). And that’s a result of INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM, poverty, discrimination, lack of access to healthcare and contraception and sex education, among other things. In addition, in terms of total numbers Non-Hispanic Black pregnant people make up only 30% of total abortions whereas Non-Hispanic White pregnant people account for 36%. Lastly, the fertility rate of Black and White people capable of being pregnant are on par with one another and the population growth of the Black community is not in decline due to high abortion rates.

Here’s what a WoC thinks of your offensive and derogatory billboards and racist claims about black people killing their own people with abortion [again, burn it into your memory, you might learn something]:

“Billboard Babylon” by Cherisse Scott

Black Children Are An Endangered Species?

Every 21 Minutes The Next Possible Leader Is Aborted?

The Most Unsafe Place For An African American Child Is In My Womb? 

I Guess You Assumed You Could Say What You Wanted In Jesus’ Name 

And I Would Let It Slide

Let It Ride Like You Rode A Ship And Talked Some Shit 

To Bring Me To A Land That Wasn’t Mine

Told My King I’d Be Fine And That You’d Be Kind 

But As The Story Goes 500 Years Later 

And You Still Lying

You Wasn’t Trying To ‘Make Me Betta’

At Night Together We Conceived That Child 

Forced Me To Breed That Child 

More Stock To Tend More Crops For Your Hard Labor

Back Broke, Culture Choked 

Vilifying Me ‘Cause I’m Trying To Survive

Blaming Me Of Committing Genocide?

I Just Been Trying To Live Inside America And This Dream

Trying To Keep Hope Alive While You Keep The Pope Alive

And The Pedophiles Who Would Rape That Same Child And Sweep It Under Rugs

Hail Mary’s And Hugs With Hues Of Red White And Blue

With Liberty And Justice For Only You 

My Womb Produced All The Leaders You Constantly Kill

Every 21 Minutes A Black Child Is Faced With The Real Deal 

On 58th & State 

Swallowed The Blue Pill But The Matrix Is Hate, Racial Profiling, And Rape

Prayin’ For A Clean Slate After Bargains And Pleas

Endangered In A Land Of Thieves, But A Species?

Insensitivity At Its Best 

Culturally Incompetent

Civil Unrest

Misinformed

Unworthy To Lead A Charge Then Charge Me With Murder!

Where Are You After Our Babies Are Born?

You Scorn, Jack Welfare & Health Reform

Sons And Daughters Mourned Over Caskets And Graves

But Not By My Hand

Ain’t Never Been My Plan To Kill The Next Black Man

Yet You Stand Blameless As If You Really Give A Damn

You Eating Filet Mignon, Baby Eating Spam

Food Deserts, Polluted Air

Shit Schools Setting Rules For Ritalin Ridden Babies

You Take A Time Out! 

And Put Some Time In  

Cause You Don’t Comprehend My Beginning Or My End

Covering My Roots Like Thieves Cover Tracks

One Nation Under God

Indivisible ‘Til We Visualized A Leader 

Targeting Me Again As A Breeder

With His Picture To Mock Me

Billboards To Shock Me 

This Ain’t Shit But The Next Plan To Block Me

But I See You…Pharisee.

Black Preachers Gon’ Wild 

Crucifying Queens 

Pimpin’ King James For Fame

In Jesus’ Name Pitting Blame

Like God Is Pleased 

You The Disease In The Village That We Just…Can’t…Shake

But My Back Is Something You Just…Can’t…Break

Flexible Like The Willow

Bosom Soft Like A Pillow That Was Used To Nurse

Yo Foul Ass

If I Wasn’t Spiritual I’d Curse 

Yo Foul Ass

But You Already Done

Til You Do Right By Me The Race Ain’t Run, The Spin Ain’t Spun 

You Think You’ve Won But It’s Only Just Begun

Like A Sucka Punch When You Least Expect It

I’ll Be There

Leading A Healthy Life In Spite Of Your Hypocrisy

I’ll Be There

Raising A Healthy Family Rooted In Democracy

I’ll Be There

Doing What Black Women Have Always Had To Do In Spite Of You

Rebuke That Shit…

And Continue.

Excerpt from Is Abortion ‘Black Genocide’? by Kathryn Joyce:

The argument leaves Black women facing the accusation that they are either fools or murderers—and either way complicit in what Mark Crutcher says is Planned Parenthood’s sinister plan for “convincing the target group to commit mass suicide.” The accusation cuts to the heart of an intersection of sexism and racism for Black women, who have historically been pressed to choose allegiance between two aspects of their beings: their gender and the race.

It continues today. Maame Mensima-Horn, an African American activist based in Miami who consulted for SisterSong, says that the “Black genocide” argument has remained a male-driven conversation that shuts out women of color and ignores the role they have played in the reproductive justice movement. MensimaHorn sees a new generation of male activists relegating women to “breeder” status and blaming them for a deficit in the Black population.

It seems a neat return to the 1920s debate in the Black community about how to best uplift the race. W.E.B. DuBois argued for “quality versus quantity,” saying that Black interests were best met by family planning that allowed parents to invest more in fewerchildren, not by simply birthing greater numbers. In 2010, Catherine Davis of Georgia Right to Life seems to take the latter position, saying that if Black women hadn’t had abortions, “we would be 59 million strong.”

The emphasis underscores a history of sexism in the Civil Rights Movement and its institutions, says Gray, in which Black women’s intellectual and physical labor was the backbone of the movement yet was rarely acknowledged. To day, “Black genocide” movement leaders, such as Childress and King, emphasize male leadership in both the movement and church—not surprising in conservative circles, but the destructive effect on women of color continues.

For Gray, this kind of sexism is a result of White fundamentalist outreach as well as a symptom of a larger problem: the breakdown of political education in Black politics.

He says, The result of it is that we have people claiming that the maafa is the abortion of black kids, instead of what it really is: the great catastrophe related to the slave trade. It means a bunch of frauds can rewrite your history and make it everything that it’s not. The freedom movement, which is what civil rights is about, is about the freedom of citizens to determine their lives for themselves and make their own opportunities.

And not, Grays says, to become a mother “because these people think you ought to be a mother. ”

How about what Sister Song thinks of your bullshit?

Our opposition research revealed how data and facts were mis-used by anti-abortionists to posit a “conspiracy theory” based on a historically racist past to claim that policymakers, black leaders, health officials, and community activists who support reproductive justice are all part of a scheme to kill off the black race. The cornerstone of their genocide theory is the fact that the black birth rate has declined over a number of years. While birthrates for all races of women have also declined for decades because of educational and economic opportunities, and increased reproductive health services, abortion opponents never mention the decision making of black women and how our improving educational and economic status influenced our reproductive choices.

Black women have always controlled our fertility when we could, even during the horrific conditions of enslavement. We brought knowledge from Africa as midwives that helped us practice birth control and have abortions. After the end of slavery, we were more determined than ever to end the forced breeding of our bodies, and we cut our birth rate in half in the first 40 years after the Civil War, 110 years before abortion or birth control was legalized. We continued this intentional decline as part of our racial uplift strategy, to have fewer children to provide more opportunities for the ones we did have. Ignorance of our history and lies about our agency malign the memories of our ancestors.

Black women, however, do have three times more abortions than white women, a statistic anti-abortionists use to demonize abortion providers. In fact, black women do have more unintended pregnancies, have less access to contraception, stay single longer, often have sex earlier, are poorer, are more vulnerable to childhood sexual abuse, and experience single motherhood much more than their white counterparts. Sixty-one percent of black women who have abortions already have children. The higher rate of abortion is an understandable outcome of the social context in which we find ourselves.

Higher unintended pregnancy rates are not a new phenomenon for black women. Before the legalization of abortion in 1973, African American women were thirteen times more likely to die from illegal abortions than white women. For reproductive justice activists, the solution to reduce the need for abortions is to help black women have fewer unintended pregnancies and to eliminate the obstacles that interfere with personal decision making.

We emphasized the agency and decision making of black women to refute their “disappearing race” narrative. Using historical data and current work by black women’s organizations, we projected the image of strong black women in defense of our own bodies, not the puppets of either the medical industry or the anti-abortion movement.

Another anti-abortion tactic was to claim that abortion clinics are “always” located in African American communities, especially by Planned Parenthood. In Georgia, we were able to easily refute this claim by presenting demographic data that proved that of the 15 abortion clinics in our state, only 4 are in predominantly black neighborhoods. Abortion opponents frequently use this “geographical” tactic against providers to bolster their conspiracy theories. While we were in the middle of the fight in Georgia, we were contacted by a Planned Parenthood clinic in Nashville that had recently relocated near an African American community for economic reasons that had nothing to do with race, but they were also accused of selecting their location to “kill black babies.” An accusatory billboard was erected directly across the street from the new clinic.

We retold the story of Margaret Sanger and her allegedly racist agenda. Left unchallenged, their narrative about genocide would powerfully echo in the black community. We decided to do our own research on Sanger and present the facts from the perspectives of black women.

We contacted Sanger’s biographer, Ellen Chesler, and asked Joyce Follet, an expert on Planned Parenthood’s archives in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, to provide original source materials and information. They provided a wealth of historical evidence that belied the allegations of our opponents. Most importantly, we were able to prove that African American leaders, particularly women, had worked with Sanger in the 1930s to ask for clinics to be opened in black communities. We challenged their historical revisionism by citing famous leaders like Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. Dubois, Walter White, Mary Church Terrell, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and organizations like the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the National Council of Negro Women. We dared them to call these icons of the civil rights movement pawns of a racist agenda. In the eyes of the black community, our opponents had an uphill climb to prove they knew more about helping the African American community than the famous legends they were maligning.

Go read the whole thing. Seriously, I’ll wait.

Now let’s listen to Loretta Ross, “Re-enslaving African American Women”:

[…]

African American women who care about reproductive justice know that the limited membership in the Black anti-abortion movement doesn’t represent our views and we are not fooled into thinking that they care about gender justice for women. In fact, if they had their way, we would be re-enslaved once again, based on our fertility.

[…]

They tell African American women that we are now responsible for the genocide of our own people. Talk about a “blame the victim” strategy! We are now accused of “lynching” our children in our wombs and practicing white supremacy on ourselves. Black women are again blamed for the social conditions in our communities and demonized by those who claim they only want to save our souls (and the souls of our unborn children). This is what lies on steroids look like.

[…]

The sexism in their viewpoints is mind-boggling. To them, Black women are the poor dupes of the abortion rights movement, lacking agency and decision-making of our own. In fact, this is a reassertion of Black male supremacy over the self-determination of women. It doesn’t matter whether it is from the lips of a man or a woman. It is about re-enslaving Black women by making us breeders for someone else’s cause.

I am reminded of the comments of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress, who dismissed the genocide argument when asked to discuss her views on abortion and birth control:

To label family planning and legal abortion programs “genocide” is male rhetoric, for male ears. It falls flat to female listeners and to thoughtful male ones. Women know, and so do many men, that two or three children who are wanted, prepared for, reared amid love and stability, and educated to the limit of their ability will mean more for the future of the Black and brown races from which they come than any number of neglected, hungry, ill-housed and ill-clothed youngsters.

[…]

But mostly, we need to let the world know that they do not speak for Black women. As my mother would say, “they might be our color, but they are not our kind.”

“Rep. Moore (WI) Tells Anti-Choice GOP Where to Shove Black Genocide Lie”

Click link for transcript and background info from Colorlines^.

In conclusion:

TRAYVON MARTIN was 17 years old. He had hopes and dreams. He had friends. He had a family that loved him, a family that is grieving for him and STILL haven’t gotten justice for his brutal and cold-blooded murder. Don’t you dare compare this young man to a fucking embryo. That’s disgusting and dehumanizing and a belittling of what PoC are feeling right now. How dare you co-opt a murder and use it against Black people capable of getting pregnant to insinuate that their desire to not be pregnant is destroying their entire race and is the same as a racist piece of shit killing someone’s child?! 

This is a fellow white person telling you to get off your self-righteous high horse so PoC don’t have to deal with your racist ass ever again, especially not during their time of mourning.

You.Are.Disgusting.

That is all.

Anonymous asked: gianna-and-faith-prolifegirls[.]tumblr[.]com/post/19639666726 Please help. I am too angry to even begin to tear apart this awful position.

prochoicegeneration:

http://gianna-and-faith-prolifegirls.tumblr.com/post/19639666726

I’m sorry to hear that. This post is ridiculous and sadly, it’s a pretty common attitude. But it’s going to be okay, Anon. They are wrong and I think most people know it.

Oh, dear. I just read it.

ROCKET SCIENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!

In EVERY SITUATION (except for rape, which accounts for less than ONE PERCENT of all pregnancies), if you don’t want a baby, don’t have sex. If you aren’t ready for the results of sex (a baby), then just don’t do it. EVERYONE who is old enough to have sex knows that the very probable result of sex is a baby. Men and women who fully KNOW that they are not ready to have a baby sholudn’t be allowed to take the “easy” way out, which is abortion. If men and women think that they are men and women enough to have sex, they also must be men and women enough to deal with the possible result. 

No. Read this.

And all the pro-choice trolls would probably say to me how safe it is…that is all ROT. Since you can’t ask the child inside the mother, let’s guess what they would answer. How about…”DUH! NO!” I’ve been hit with the classic, “Abortion is so much safer than pregnancy!” Yeah…if that were true, why is the world’s population roughly 6 billion? And more people give birth every year than they do have abortions, so naturally, the fatality rate of childbirth would be higher than abortion. Just like they say, “Horseback riding is safer than driving,”…except more people drive than ride. And anyway, if pregnancy were to cause death…why are you having sex anyway?? If you fear for your life so much…GOSH. 

That’s not how statistics work. At all. It is an objective fact that an individual is far more likely to experience morbidity and mortality from 10 months of pregnancy and then childbirth than they are from a single abortion, especially a first trimester abortion. That’s a fact. It has nothing to do with there being more births than abortions.

Currently, “Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion.” [Jones RK and Kooistra, K., Abortion incidence and access to services in the United States, 2008,Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2011, 43(1):41-50.]

(source)

The risk of abortion complications is minimal: Fewer than 0.3% of abortion patients experience a complication that requires hospitalization. [Henshaw SK, Unintended pregnancy and abortion: a public health perspective, in: Paul M et al., eds., A Clinician’s Guide to Medical and Surgical Abortion, New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1999, pp. 11–22.]

The risk of death associated with abortion increases with the length of pregnancy, from one death for every one million abortions at or before eight weeks to one per 29,000 at 16–20 weeks—and one per 11,000 at 21 or more weeks. [Bartlett LA et al., Risk factors for legal induced abortion-related mortality in the United States, Obstetrics & Gynecology, 2004, 103(4):729–737.]

Perhaps you’d like even newer research. How about “The Comparative Safety of Legal Induced Abortion and Childbirth in the United States” by Elizabeth G. Raymond, MD, MPH and David A. Grimes, MD in the February 2012 edition of Obstetrics and Gynecology?

OBJECTIVE: To assess the safety of abortion compared with childbirth.

METHODS: We estimated mortality rates associated with live births and legal induced abortions in the United States in 1998–2005. We used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System, birth certificates, and Guttmacher Institute surveys. In addition, we searched for population-based data comparing the morbidity of abortion and childbirth.

RESULTS: The pregnancy-associated mortality rate among women who delivered live neonates was 8.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. The mortality rate related to induced abortion was 0.6 deaths per 100,000 abortions. In the one recent comparative study of pregnancy morbidity in the United States, pregnancy-related complications were more common with childbirth than with abortion.

CONCLUSION: Legal induced abortion is markedly safer than childbirth. The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion. Similarly, the overall morbidity associated with childbirth exceeds that with abortion.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II

See? Apples to apples abortion is markedly safer than childbirth.

Here’s some more info on pregnancy and maternal* mortality:

• Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the U.S
• Complications/mere “inconvenience”
• Statistics post
• The White Ribbon Alliance Global Maternal Mortality Fact Sheet
• Pregnancy Complications (CDC)
• Pregnancy Complications (Womenshealth.gov)
• Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2008 (WHO, 2010)
• Research and Statistics on Maternal and Perinatal Health (WHO)
• Maternal Mortality Estimates (Interactive Map)
• Maternal Mortality Ratio (Interactive Map #2)

If you think that you are ready to have sex, you should be willing to sacrifice yourself or even your life for the sake of the baby that could very well be the result of your choice. It is possible! Exhibit A: Saint Gianna Beretta Molla. If you aren’t ready enough to value a child that much, don’t have sex!

WTF?

OVER HALF OF WOMEN OF REPRODUCTIVE AGE LIVE IN ABORTION-HOSTILE STATES | Over half of U.S. women who are biologically able to get pregnant live in states that would be hostile to a woman seeking an abortion, according to a new study from the Guttmacher Institute. Twelve years ago, that statistic was only 31 percent. Women are not moving en masse; due to the slew of new abortion restriction laws in states across the country, they are just suddenly finding themselves in hostile territory.

Also from ThinkProgress: INTERACTIVE MAP: The Most Restrictive Abortion Measures In The States

_____________________________________________________

*People capable of getting pregnant, not just cis women.

From the Guttmacher study mentioned by ThinkProgress:

…

This article assesses how and where the volume of abortion restrictions has changed over the last decade. To do so, we analyzed whether—in 2000, 2005 and 2011—states had in place at least one provision in any of 10 categories of major abortion restrictions.* The identified categories include

• mandated parental involvement prior to a minor’s abortion;

• required preabortion counseling that is medically inaccurate or misleading;

• extended waiting period paired with a requirement that counseling be conducted in-person, thus necessitating two trips to the facility;

• mandated performance of a non–medically indicated ultrasound prior to an abortion;

• prohibition of Medicaid funding except in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest;

• restriction of abortion coverage in private health insurance plans;

• medically inappropriate restrictions on the provision of medication abortion;

• onerous requirements on abortion facilities that are not related to patient safety;

• unconstitutional ban on abortions prior to fetal viability or limitations on the circumstances under which an abortion can be performed after viability; or

• preemptive ban on abortion outright in the event Roe v. Wade is overturned†

…

For purposes of this analysis, we consider a state “supportive” of abortion rights if it had enacted provisions in no more than one of these restriction categories, “middle-ground” if it had enacted provisions in two or three categories and “hostile” if it had enacted provisions in four or more.

Overall, most states—35 in total—remained in the same category in all three years (see map); however, of the 15 states that moved from one category to another, every one became more restrictive over the period. Two of the states supportive of abortion rights in 2000 moved to the middle category by 2011, and one had become hostile. Moreover, 12 states that had been middle-ground in 2000 had become hostile to abortion rights by 2011.

As a result, the number of both supportive and middle-ground states shrank considerably, while the number of hostile states ballooned. In 2000, 19 states were middle-ground and only 13 were hostile. By 2011, when states enacted a record-breaking number of new abortion restrictions (see box), that picture had shifted dramatically: 26 states were hostile to abortion rights, and the number of middle-ground states had cut in half, to nine.

…

2011: A Year for the Record Books

Over the course of 2011, legislators in all 50 states introduced more than 1,100 provisions related to reproductive health and rights. At the end of it all, states had adopted 135 new reproductive health provisions—a dramatic increase from the 89 enacted in 2010 and the 77 enacted in 2009.¹ Fully 92 of the enacted provisions seek to restrict abortion, shattering the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions enacted in 2005 (see chart). A striking 68% of the reproductive health provisions from 2011 are abortion restrictions, compared with only 26% the year before.

…

Although states on the West Coast and in the Northeast remained consistently supportive of abortion rights, the situation was very different elsewhere. A cluster of states in the middle of the country—including Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota—moved from being middle-ground states in 2000 to being hostile in 2011. And of the 13 states in the South, only half were hostile in 2000, but all had become hostile by 2011.

Over a third of women of reproductive age lived in states supportive of abortion rights in both 2000 and 2011, 40% and 35%, respectively (see chart, page 18).² However, the proportion of women living in states hostile to abortion rights increased dramatically, from 31% to 55%, while the proportion living in middle-ground states shrank, from 29% to 10%. Altogether, the number of women of reproductive age living in hostile states grew by 15 million over the period, while the number in middle-ground states fell by almost 12 million.

…

REFERENCES

1. Guttmacher Institute, Laws affecting reproductive health and rights: 2011 state policy review, 2012, <http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/updates/2011/statetrends42011.html>, accessed Feb. 22, 2012.

2. Guttmacher Institute, unpublished tabulations of data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

---

*Restrictions included for 2000 and 2005 were all in effect. Some restrictions enacted in 2011 are still being litigated.

†The 19 individual restrictions include: mandating parental involvement (consent or notification); requiring misleading counseling (informing a woman that the fetus is a person, that a fetus can feel pain, that having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer or that abortion can impair future fertility); requiring a woman to make two trips to an abortion facility; requiring ultrasound; limiting Medicaid funding for abortion; restricting private insurance coverage (in all private plans, plans sold on exchanges or plans for public employees); limiting medication abortion (telemedicine bans or requiring the use of an outdated protocol); instituting onerous requirements for abortion providers (medically unnecessary physical plant requirements or mandating that physicians have hospital admitting privileges); restricting later abortion (gestational limits or unconstitutional limits on later abortion); and banning abortion immediately if Roe is overturned.

This is downright vile. That set of three maps depicting the shrinking of supportive states really pulls the dire condition of reproductive rights into sharp focus. We’ve had some minor victories but the country as a whole is being pulled from a moderate middle to the extremist right by people that have no interest in human rights, science, or honesty. Time and again legislation is being passed due to the GOP’s ability to muddle the issue with religion and pseudo-science with the help of model bills drafted by antichoice groups. Seriously, go read the whole report, this is important.

POLL: MAJORITY DISAGREES WITH REPUBLICANS ON CONTRACEPTION DEBATE | According to a new poll from Bloomberg, more than 60 percent of Americans — and 70 percent of women — said that President Obama’s policy requiring contraception coverage in employer-provided insurance plans is a matter of women’s health, rejecting the Republican argument against the new rule. More than three-quarters of those polled said the topic should not be part of the national political debate. But with Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum saying Obama is violating employers’ religious freedom by mandating contraception coverage, the polls shows that the GOP presidential candidates’ views are out of sync with what voters want. “These candidates are talking to a relatively small subset even among Republicans,” J. Ann Selzer, who conducted the telephone poll of 1,002 respondents, told Bloomberg News.

bedsider:

Weekend Reading: Birth control cost varies widely, study suggests more women choose IUD if free

Following up on our post about birth control and economics from a few days ago, this is a great summary (and not just because it mentions Bedsider, though we love that too) from Lauran Neergaard of the AP of the real costs of different types of birth control and the important part cost can play in what method women choose.

*People who use contraception, not just cis women.