USA – Meet the Religious Crusaders Fighting for Abortion Rights

Christian conservatives worked to topple Roe. Can members of different faiths save abortion access?

ABBY VESOULIS, Mother Jones
FEBRUARY 17, 2023

The Torah tells its followers to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,” so that’s what Lisa Sobel, a devout Jewish woman from Louisville, Kentucky, set out to do.

It wasn’t easy. First, she endured three years of infertility. Then, she and her husband embarked on a $50,000 in vitro fertilization (IVF) journey, during which they had to discard four embryos before implantation because of genetic abnormalities. Finally, in April 2019, Sobel delivered a healthy baby girl. Immediately after, she began hemorrhaging and almost died.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/02/religious-clergy-fighting-for-abortion-rights/

Abortion rights: history offers a blueprint for how pro-choice campaigners might usefully respond

BMJ 2022; 378
doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o1846
Published 26 July 2022
Agnes Arnold Forster, research fellow

In October 1971, the New York Times reported a decline in maternal death rate.1 Just 15 months earlier, the state had liberalised its abortion law. David Harris, New York’s deputy commissioner of health, speaking to the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, attributed the decline—by more than half—to the replacement of criminal abortions with safe, legal ones. Previously, abortion had been the single leading cause of maternity related deaths, accounting for around a third. A doctor in the audience who said he was from a state “where the abortion law is still archaic,” thanked New York for its “remarkable job” and expressed his gratitude that there was a place he could send his patients and know they would receive “safe, excellent care.” Harris urged other states to follow the example set by New York and liberalise their abortion laws.

Continued: https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o1846

USA – The Deep Ties Between the Catholic Anti-Abortion Movement and Racial Segregation

The Deep Ties Between the Catholic Anti-Abortion Movement and Racial Segregation

Photo collage: Jim Cooke, Photos: Getty
Gillian Frank
Jan 22, 2019

The video of MAGA hat-wearing Covington Catholic High School students, who were in Washington DC for the March for Life, in a tense standoff with Black Israelites and a Native American contingent from the Indigenous People’s March, has become hotly debated national news.

Though the close focus is on the immediate chain of events, it’s important to note the historical intersection of conservatism, race, and abortion that set the stage for the arrival of these white Catholic students. The modern Catholic anti-abortion movement was born in white enclaves and shaped by the politics of white flight and anti-integration activism. .

Continued: https://pictorial.jezebel.com/the-deep-ties-between-the-catholic-anti-abortion-moveme-1831950706