USA – The white, conservative Southern women who asked me to keep their abortions secret

My middle-class evangelical peers quietly took advantage of abortion rights, while publicly advocating against them

By LEAH HAMPTON
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 24, 2022

The day one of my closest childhood friends got married, she asked me to keep two secrets: The first was her high school abortion. "It was so long ago," she said in a terrified whisper, "I can't tell him; it doesn't even matter anymore." She was peeking down the hall, where everything was draped in rented white satin—a traditional, Southern wedding, officiated by an odious Calvinist preacher. She frowned at her family, who were busy decorating. "Nobody except you understood."

She was desperate not to be overheard, so I squeezed her hand to tell her wordlessly, We buried that memory together a long time ago. (Even now as I write this, I can't bring myself to type her name.) Her body relaxed, and she took a breath. As I opened her makeup kit, she added abruptly, "And don't you dare say a word about last summer, either."

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2022/09/24/the-white-conservative-southern-women-asked-me-to-keep-their-abortions-secret/

The Women Who Leave Anti-Abortion Picket Lines to Get Abortions

The rank and file of the so-called pro-life movement is full of people who need reproductive care—even if it means literally leaving a protest outside a clinic to ask for it.

Patrick Adams
Jul. 02, 2022

A few days before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, a woman who described herself as an anti-abortion activist showed up in the waiting room of Dr. Marissa Lapedis, a family-medicine doctor who performs the procedure in Atlanta.

But she wasn’t there to protest—she had an appointment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-women-who-leave-anti-abortion-picket-lines-to-get-abortions?ref=scroll

Opposition to abortion doesn’t stop some Americans from supporting friends and family who seek one

April 22, 2022
Tricia C. Bruce, Sociologist, University of Notre Dame.

Maxine, a pseudonym for a 58-year-old woman, is among a sizable proportion of Americans who are morally opposed to abortion.

Republican, Christian and a grandmother, Maxine “can’t believe that anybody could honestly say that life doesn’t begin at conception. … That’s the black and whiteness of it, for me: Either it’s life or it’s not.” Abortion is “murder,” she told me.

But Maxine has also driven a friend to a clinic to get an abortion.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/opposition-to-abortion-doesnt-stop-some-americans-from-supporting-friends-and-family-who-seek-one-176660

22.04.2022

Commentary

Featured

anti-choice hypocrisy

discordant benevolence

General Social Survey

Jamaica – Church hypocrisy on abortion

Junior minister Cuthbert-Flynn lashes religious leaders for ignoring rapists, men who impregnate teens

Monday, May 03, 2021
BY BRITTNY HUTCHINSON

CHURCH leaders came in for strong lashing yesterday for their strident opposition to the decriminalisation of abortion while remaining mostly silent concerning men who rape and impregnate women and girls, often forcing them to abort the pregnancy.

Seemingly a lone voice in the parliamentary wilderness as she battles for decriminalising of abortions — pre-term removal of the foetus from the uterus — junior minister for health and wellness Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn also wants the men who put women in that situation to be punished, including being sent to prison.

Continued: https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/front-page/church-hypocrisy-on-abortion-junior-minister-cuthbert-flynn-lashes-religious-leaders-for-ignoring-rapists-men-who-impregnate-teens_220538

Polish woman’s quest for abortion exposes conflicted society

By Alicja Ptak
OCTOBER 19, 2020

WARSAW (Reuters) - In April, in the midst of a nationwide coronavirus lockdown in Poland, Katarzyna found out that the baby she was carrying had a severe genetic disorder and would probably die before birth or shortly after.

She immediately decided to terminate the pregnancy. When she finally managed to, five weeks later and after meeting some 10 doctors, securing a fallback plan in Germany and researching home methods, she knew she would not try to get pregnant again.

Continued: https://ca.reuters.com/article/idCAKBN27429N

Malawi – Religious leaders express support for abortion bill

Sep 22, 2020
Malawi24 Reporter

Religious leaders under the Religious Network for Choice (RNC) in Malawi have expressed support for the Termination of Pregnancy Bill and have condemned assertions that those who support the bill are evil.

At a press conference in Blantyre today, the RNC members said individual faith leaders and religious mother bodies that are against the bill want to portray those that are supporting the bill as evil people who do not care about the unborn babies and their rights.

Continued: https://malawi24.com/2020/09/22/religious-leaders-support-abortion-bill/

Malta – Sant on abortion debate: ‘shaming of pro choice voices must stop’

Labour MEP Alfred Sant, who scorned 2005 bid to entrench abortion crime in Constitution, calls for open
debate

20 September 2020
by Karl Azzopardi

Labour MEP Alfred Sant has welcomed the growing debate on abortion, stating the time of shaming people who are pro-choice must stop.

“It’s useless for those who are against abortion to present people who are in favour of abortion as outsiders or heartless people,” Sant said.

Continued: https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/104811/labour_mep_alfred_sant_insists_on_open_abortion_debate_#.X2fCN2hKhPY

20.09.2020

anti-choice hypocrisy

USA – How Anti-Abortion Advocates Are Co-opting and Twisting Calls for Racial Justice

“It’s like the anti-abortion movement
out-pivoted the reproductive rights movement on race.”

Aug 14, 2020
Becca Andrews

The argument seemed reasonable in theory: “We are pleased that our state values
life no matter an individual’s potential disability, gender, or race.”

In reality, it wasn’t.

Back in March 2016, Mike Fichter, the president and chief executive of Indiana
Right to Life, was talking about the law then-Gov. Mike Pence just signed that
would bar “the knowing provision of sex-, race-, or disability-selective
abortions by abortion providers.” The bill was not nearly as innocuous as
Fichter and his ideological peers in state government made it seem. In fact,
the legislation, colloquially known as a “reasons ban,” operates very much on
racist and ableist assumptions—and has the power to inflict acute harm on
pregnant individuals.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/08/abortion-reasons-ban-race-justice-language/

14.08.2020

Commentary

Featured

American Birth Control League

Anti-Abortion Crusaders: Inside the African-American Abortion Battle

anti-choice deception

anti-choice hypocrisy

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice racism

anti-choice restrictions

Ben Carson

Black Lives Matter

Box v. Planned Parenthood

Indiana Right to Life

Justice Clarence Thomas

Kristan Hawkins

Margaret Sanger

Marjorie Dannenfelser

Planned Parenthood of Greater New York

race-selective abortion

reasons ban

Rev. Clenard Childress Jr.

Star Parker

Students for Life of America

USA Study: Most Anti-Abortion States Offer Least Support for Women and Families

By Val Wilde
August 5, 2020

It’s common knowledge in pro-choice circles that the anti-abortion movement as a whole stops caring about babies’ precious lives as soon as they’ve passed through the birth canal.

For all the emphasis on stopping an abortion from taking place, there’s precious little concern for the real-world problems that may have made abortion seem like a necessity: poverty, food insecurity, housing insecurity, unemployment, lack of access to education, lack of health care, etc.

Continued: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/05/study-most-anti-abortion-states-offer-least-support-for-women-and-families/

06.08.2020

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice hypocrisy

anti-choice misogyny

Center for Reproductive Rights

Elisabeth Smith

Ibis Reproductive Health

TRAP laws

In ‘Personhood,’ Seattle filmmakers document the human cost of giving legal rights to embryos

Aug. 5, 2020
By Megan Burbank, Seattle Times features reporter

“Did you feel they treated you like a person?” The question is posed near the end of the new documentary “Personhood” to Tamara Loertscher, a Wisconsin woman who was imprisoned in 2014 while pregnant after disclosing prior drug use to her doctor; tests showed traces of methamphetamine in her body.

Loertscher and her attorneys have maintained that she stopped using drugs when she found out she was pregnant, but as the case unfolded, her history of drug use and Wisconsin’s “Unborn Child Protection Act” became the state’s justification for giving her fetus more legal rights than she had. Loertscher’s fetus was appointed an attorney; she, initially, was not. When Loertscher refused drug treatment, she was jailed, which effectively cut off the prenatal care she had sought.

Continued: https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/movies/in-personhood-seattle-filmmakers-document-the-human-cost-of-giving-legal-rights-to-embryos/