USA – How Black clergy are reframing approach on abortion with congregations

Even as some of the largest Black denominations oppose abortion, Black clergy face the reality that their congregations are disproportionately affected by lack of access to reproductive health services.

April 4, 2023
By Amethyst Holmes

(RNS) — For the Rev. Irene Prince, discussions around reproductive choice start in Bible study.

Prince, pastor of Mount Olive AME Church in Emporia, Kansas, has taught on the biblical concept of free will in connection with choice — a connection she hopes will move her congregation to “demonstrate the love of God” by being kinder and not passing judgment on how people decide to live their lives.

Continued: https://religionnews.com/2023/04/04/how-black-clergy-are-reframing-approach-on-abortion-with-congregations/


Biden is a pro-choice Catholic. Will he expand reproductive healthcare?

BY STEPHANIE RUSSELL-KRAFT, Sojourners
DEC 10, 2020

When Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20, he will become the most prominent pro-choice Catholic in the country.

Although the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops opposes abortion and advocates for religous exceptions to birth control coverage, the majority of U.S. Catholics support access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including 56 percent of U.S. Catholics who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Jamie Manson, president of Catholics for Choice, said she hopes these Catholics will have more of a voice under the incoming Biden-Harris administration.

Continued: https://sojo.net/articles/biden-pro-choice-catholic-will-he-expand-reproductive-health-care https://sojo.net/articles/biden-pro-choice-catholic-will-he-expand-reproductive-health-care


Why Tennessee’s Quickly Passed Abortion Ban Is Racist

Why Tennessee’s Quickly Passed Abortion Ban Is Racist

Lauren Rankin
June 25, 2020

In the early-morning hours of June 19, the Tennessee Senate rallied to pass a last-minute healthcare bill. It had nothing to do with mitigating the coronavirus pandemic that had claimed the lives of more than 530 Tennesseans, nor did it address the widespread police violence on display in cities across the country. Instead, it was a wide-ranging anti-abortion bill. Passed in the dead of night after back-room negotiating with Republicans in the Tennessee House, it included one of the most extreme abortion bans in the U.S., banning the procedure at six weeks, before many people even know they’re pregnant.

Simply put, Tennessee just signed into law a near-total abortion ban.

Continued: https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2020/06/9882861/tennessee-abortion-ban-racist


USA – The #MeToo Case That Divided the Abortion-Rights Movement

The #MeToo Case That Divided the Abortion-Rights Movement
When an activist accused one of the most respected physicians in the movement of sexually assaulting her, everyone quickly took sides.

Story by Maggie Bullock
March 2020 Issue, Atlantic Magazine
(Posted Feb 21, 2020)

On a 92-degree morning in September, three clinic escorts gathered in the meager shade of a tree outside the Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives. They arrive here at 8:30 a.m. on the dot, regular as clock-punchers, on the three days a week the Huntsville clinic is open to perform abortions. The women and girls arrive dressed for comfort in sweatpants and shower slides, carrying pillows from home or holding the hand of a partner or friend. The escorts, meanwhile, wear brightly colored vests and wield giant umbrellas to block the incoming patients from the sight, if not the sound, of the other group that comes here like clockwork: the protesters.

Sometimes there are as many as a dozen. This day there were four: one woman, three men, all white. Four doesn’t sound like that many until you’re downwind of them maniacally hollering: Mommy, don’t kill me! You’re lynching your black baby! They rip their arms and legs off! They suffer! They torture them!

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-abortion-doctor-and-his-accuser/605578/


USA – ‘Personhood’ Film Shows the Cost of the Push for Fetal Rights

‘Personhood’ Film Shows the Cost of the Push for Fetal Rights
“If [the personhood movement] succeeds, the people who get pregnant are going to lose their fundamental rights… to privacy, to equality, to due process of law.”

Nov 7, 2019
Elizabeth Dawes Gay

Premiering this week, Personhood is the latest film highlighting the state of reproductive rights in the United States and how efforts to undermine the constitutional right to abortion cause unnecessary harm. In addition to exposing how fetal “personhood”—or the anti-abortion idea of legal protection for fetuses—immediately threatens the lives and well-being of pregnant people, the documentary film covers important issues concerning what the future could hold if state and federal policy continues in this trajectory. Personhood serves as a reminder that more organizing and political activism are needed to meet the challenges ahead.

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2019/11/07/personhood-cost-push-fetal-rights/