USA – Abortion Wins Elections for Democrats. What Should Advocates Demand in Return?

How can this popularity translate into political power for a movement that is not accustomed to making bold demands of its political leaders?

AMY LITTLEFIELD
Nov 20, 2023

If abortion were a 2024 presidential candidate, it would wipe the floor with Donald Trump. On November 7, abortion helped Democrats take back the Virginia House, keep the Kentucky governorship, and secure a Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat. In Ohio, 57 percent of voters approved enshrining abortion access in the state Constitution; it was the seventh time abortion has faced a direct vote since Dobbs and the seventh time it’s won.

Abortion wins. Abortion rights activists have known this. Voters have often chosen to defend abortion when they get a direct vote, including in red states. What’s changed is that Democrats have finally started treating abortion like an issue they can win on—and in the wake of Dobbs, they’re doing just that.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/abortion-democrats-elections/


Is adoption the alternative to abortion? Unpacking the complexities of unplanned pregnancies

For National Adoption Day, let’s dive into the truths behind the conservatives’ ‘Adoption, not Abortion’ slogan.

By Annabel Rocha
November 17, 2023

Adoption, not abortion.

This idea has become a conservative slogan used by pro-life protesters, at crisis pregnancy centers, and by elected officials who push the notion that placing a child for adoption solves the problems faced by an unwanted pregnancy.

“Adoption, not abortion. With Roe overturned, we should find ways to make the adoption process in our country easier and safer,” tweeted former U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo, two days after Roe was overturned.

Continued: https://www.reckon.news/news/2023/11/is-adoption-the-alternative-to-abortion-unpacking-the-complexities-of-unplanned-pregnancies.html


Examining how Hollywood portrays abortion access

A researcher from the University of California says that the majority of television characters who obtained abortions faced few barriers

Stephanie Herold, The Conversation
June 18, 2023

Two doctors sit, despondent, on the side of a busy road as they watch an EMT zip up the body of their patient into a body bag. The patient died as a direct result of a fatal ectopic pregnancy, which her OB-GYN refused to treat because of a new anti-abortion law in her home state.

Tears in her eyes, one of the doctors responds to questions from the EMT about the death. Then she shouts: “It’s the lawmakers, they should actually be made to come out here … look at the carnage they’ve caused. I mean, how are we supposed to be doctors? Women’s lives are on the line, and our hands that are trained to help them, our hands are tied.”

Continued: https://www.longmontleader.com/beyond-local/beyond-local-examining-how-hollywood-portrays-abortion-access-7140325


Why authentic abortion stories in TV and film are a sign of the times in post-Roe era

Hollywood has rich history of abortion storytelling, according to researcher

Jenna Benchetrit · CBC News
Aug 06, 2022

In 2004, a Canadian TV show made headlines for a controversial episode in which a pregnant teenage girl decides, much to her boyfriend's distress, to get an abortion. Her mother drives her to the clinic.

Yes, it was Degrassi: The Next Generation — and the infamous episode, entitled Accidents Will Happen, was postponed for American viewers after a U.S. cable channel decided to pull it before it could air.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/abortion-storytelling-tv-film-1.6543210


USA – Abortion rights funds brace for impact ahead of court ruling

Wed, February 16, 2022
Haleluya Hadero, The Associated Press

In the past few months, the number of women who call Fund Texas Choice has doubled to more than 100 per week. The demand, driven by a state law banning abortions at roughly six weeks of pregnancy, has forced the abortion rights fund to hire more people. But it’s still been difficult to keep up with the avalanche of requests.

Texas has tightened abortion restrictions over the past two decades, leading women there to increasingly seek out-of-state abortions. Even before the new law took effect last September, at least half of the women who sought help from the fund got abortions in neighboring states. Today, nearly all of them do.

Continued: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/abortion-rights-funds-brace-impact-230059128.html


It’s not as simple as abortion v. adoption. Just ask Bri

December 14, 2021
AMY ISACKSON

Bri had wanted to be a mom for as long as she can recall. "I remember in high school, one of my aunts had a large family, so I used to say I wanted five kids like her," she said.

But seven years ago, Bri got pregnant by accident. She was 21 years old and the reality she confronted was very different from her teenage fantasy.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/14/1063784711/its-not-as-simple-as-abortion-v-adoption-just-ask-bri


Sociologist says women are more likely to choose abortion over adoption

December 3, 2021
Heard on All Things Considered
Mary Louise Kelly

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at UCSF, who has studied whether the option to put a child up for adoption alleviates the need for a woman to get an abortion.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In oral arguments this week before the Supreme Court over Mississippi's ban on abortion after 15 weeks, the court's newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, brought up the issue of adoption as a viable alternative to abortion. Well, sociologist Gretchen Sisson has studied and written extensively about the choices people make when they don't wish to have a child, and she joins me now.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061333491/sociologist-says-women-are-more-likely-to-choose-abortion-over-adoption


The new anti-abortion tactics of the far right in the Americas

ISABELLA COTASTEPHANIA CORPI
OCT 24, 2021

An EL PAÍS investigation in five Latin American countries has found that a network of centers affiliated with the far-right US organization Heartbeat International (HI) promote themselves online as feminist support groups and use misleading language in favor of abortion, but in reality they work to manipulate and institutionalize women to get them to carry their pregnancy to term.

Five female reporters and one male reporter went undercover to centers in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Mexico between 2019 and 2021, as a follow-up to an OpenDemocracy investigation into HI’s operations in the region.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-10-24/the-new-anti-abortion-tactics-of-the-far-right-in-the-americas.html


USA – In 2020, TV and film still couldn’t get abortion right

December 29, 2020

Stephanie
Herold and Gretchen Sisson

According to decades of research, abortion is an incredibly common and safe
medical procedure.

But if you learned about abortion only from movies and TV, that’s not the story
you’d see. For the last eight years, we’ve been studying onscreen depictions of
abortion. We’ve found that Hollywood tends to dramatically exaggerate the
medical risks associated with abortion while downplaying real barriers to
access.

Aside from a few exceptions, 2020’s onscreen content continued to reflect
patterns we’d identified in previous years.

https://theconversation.com/in-2020-tv-and-film-still-couldnt-get-abortion-right-152223


How The “Abortion Road Trip” Movie Became An Instant Classic

KAYLA KUMARI UPADHYAYA
OCTOBER 20, 2020

Conversations about abortion have been playing out on the big screen since decades before Roe V. Wade legalized them in the United States in 1973. One of the first known movies that deals with the topic is a 1916 film called Where Are My Children? Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the early year, it was a negative portrayal of abortion.

In recent years, however, depictions of abortion in movies have become more common and somewhat more realistic. In 2020 alone, there have been nine films that depict a character obtaining an abortion, double the number of 2019, according to Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH)’s Abortion Onscreen Database. Only two of these movies showed an adverse physical outcome as a result of an abortion, and none portray an adverse psychological outcome. Two are comedies.

Continued: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/10/10015436/abortion-road-trip-movie-trend