Opinion: Madame Restell, and the history of abortion in America

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD
July 10, 2023

Last year, as we watched the U.S. Supreme Court destroy reproductive freedom for women, more attention was paid to the outcome of the Dobbs abortion case than the Court’s reasoning and justification. Justice Samuel Alito, Dobbs author, relied heavily on history in supporting his opinion.

What happened in earlier American history is contested terrain. I would submit that Justice Alito got his history very wrong. He argued that abortion was not deeply rooted in U.S. history and traditions. Alito wrote, “…an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”

Continued: https://www.concordmonitor.com/My-Turn-Abortion-history-Madame-Restell-and-the-revival-of-Comstockery-51539521

10.07.2023

American Historical Association

American Medical Association

New York State Society for the Suppression of Vice

quickening

Samuel Alito

USA – Why Anti-Choice People Are Okay with IVF

Why Anti-Choice People Are Okay with IVF
If you dislike abortion because you believe every embryo is a person, you should hate IVF, which results in the destruction of millions of embryos.

By Jennifer Wright
Jun 14, 2019

Like a lot of women in America, I have had some fertility challenges.

At times, this has made me very sad and frustrated because I would love to have a child. But it has not made me think that we should force other women to have babies they don’t want so I can adopt them, because, while voluntarily putting a baby up for adoption is an act of enormous kindness, I do not regard women as walking wombs who should pop out infants for my convenience.

Continued: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a27888471/why-anti-choice-people-against-abortion-are-okay-with-ivf/

14.06.2019

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Opinion

anti-choice hypocrisy

anti-choice misogyny

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The Catholic Church Has No Moral Argument on Abortions

The Catholic Church Has No Moral Argument on Abortions
After the pope revealed nuns were forced to get abortions while being held as sex slaves, the Church doesn’t seem well positioned to lecture on what women should or should not do with their bodies.

By Jennifer Wright
Feb 11 2019

If you are going to get your information regarding abortion from anyone, perhaps it is best not to get it from an institution that has no women in its higher orders, and is keeping women as sex slaves.

Like, for instance, the Catholic Church. This week Pope Francis admitted there has been clerical abuse of nuns, including sexual slavery. The BBC reports, "He said the Church was attempting to address the problem but said it was 'still going on.'"

Holy shit.
Continued: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a26236433/nuns-sex-slaves-abused-catholic-church-abortion/

Abortion Is Not Murder

Abortion Is Not Murder

Even if we granted the most generous possible terms to the anti-abortion camp, even if we pretended the fetus was fully rational and contemplating Shakespeare in the womb, abortion would still not be murder.
By Jennifer Wright
Apr 13, 2018

It is not surprising that Kevin Williamson, who called for women who had abortions to be hanged (because they are, to his mind, murderers), was recently fired from The Atlantic.

It ought to surprise us that he was hired at all.

Continued: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a19748134/what-is-abortion/