USA – Abortion Is Not a “Choice” Without Racial Justice

After Roe v. Wade, Angela Davis wrote about how the reproductive rights movement was failing women of color. As Roe is dismantled, her diagnosis is more crucial than ever.

Sara Matthiesen
January 25, 2022

In 2016 researchers at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a public health project focused on reproductive well-being, made headlines with their “Turnaway Study.” The groundbreaking longitudinal study was comprised of nearly 8,000 interviews with 1,000 women who had either been “turned away” from abortion because they were past a clinic’s gestational limits or had successfully received abortions. Through interviews conducted every six months over a period of five years, the study compared the life circumstances of study participants following these two reproductive outcomes. The study, the first of its kind, sought to quantify the effects of being denied a wanted abortion.

Contrary to anti-abortion claims about the supposed psychological harm of ending a pregnancy, researchers found that obtaining an abortion did not increase women’s risk of developing PTSD, depression, or anxiety. Those denied abortions, on the other hand, did not fare as well.

Continued: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/abortion-is-not-a-choice-without-racial-justice/

25.01.2023

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Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health

USA – I’m Black. I Thought White Feminism Would Keep Abortion Safe.

White women who once saw Roe as core to second-wave feminism seem not to be putting up much of a fight. Is it time for Black women to pick up the mantle?

05/27/2022
Erin Aubry Kaplan

When I was in my 20s, I had an abortion. Actually, I had more than one. It’s taken me more than a month even to write those sentences — a single, simple truth I had to break into two parts to make palatable. The impending official demise of Roe v. Wade has forced me to look at the depth of my reticence about this. People have lauded me over the years for allegedly brave things I’ve said in columns, for putting myself “out there,” but I’d never shared this. I always told myself it was because abortion wasn’t relevant to racial justice, which is the bulk of what I write about. Yet I’ve written about plenty of personal matters that are ostensibly nonracial — depression, money, crises with my dogs, my unfolding struggle with alopecia. All these things at some point have racial implications, as most things in America do. Those things certainly include abortion rights. But I left it alone.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/abortion-feminism-essay-white-black-00032987

Abortion Is Not a “Choice” Without Racial Justice

After Roe v. Wade, Angela Davis wrote about how the reproductive rights movement was failing women of color. As Roe is dismantled, her diagnosis is more crucial than ever.

Sara Matthiesen
January 25, 2022

Continued: https://bostonreview.net/articles/abortion-is-not-a-choice-without-racial-justice/

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