USA – The FACE Act was enacted to protect reproductive health clinics − here’s why its history matters today

March 10, 2025
Micki Burdick, Assistant Professor of Women & Gender Studies, University of Delaware

Soon after taking office for a second time, President Donald Trump pardoned anti-abortion activists who had blockaded and restricted access to the entrance of a reproductive health clinic in Washington, D.C., in October 2020.

These protesters were convicted of violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. Protesting outside clinics is a way for conservative anti-abortion activists to directly influence access to reproductive health care.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/the-face-act-was-enacted-to-protect-reproductive-health-clinics-heres-why-its-history-matters-today-249427

Now Is the Time for Kamala Harris to Flip the Script and Win Big on Abortion

The Democrats have a chance to become the party that wants to grant you the freedom to terminate a pregnancy and the freedom to raise the children you want.

Amy Littlefield
Aug 21, 2024

Something unexpected happened to me while I was watching the Democratic National Convention on Monday night. I was sitting in my pajamas listening to Hillary Clinton’s speech when I started sobbing. Did Hillary Clinton just make me cry? I thought, horrified, afraid I might be having a sudden-onset midlife crisis. This was the woman I had protested in college over her support for the Iraq War. In 2016, I was a Bernie girl, and today, in 2024, I’m so outraged over Democrats’ support for the Israeli war on Gaza that I expected to watch the entire convention with my jaw clenched. But then Clinton invoked the legacy of Shirley Chishom. “In 1972, a fearless Black congresswoman named Shirley Chisholm, she ran for president, and her determination let me and millions of others dream bigger,” Clinton said. “Not just because of who she was, but because of who she fought for: working parents, poor children, the last, the least, and the lost.” Suddenly, I could see a portal between Chisholm’s “unbought and unbossed” feminism and this moment, and it dawned on me that the fall of Roe v. Wade had cracked that portal open.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kamala-harris-abortion-reproductive-justice/

21.08.2024

Commentary

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Planned Parenthood v. Casey

Post-Roe, anti-abortion groups target law protecting clinics from violence

The Face Act penalizes people for blockading and threatening abortion clinics. Anti-abortion activists want it repealed

Carter Sherman
Sat 16 Sep 2023

The inside of the abortion clinic was chaotic. Anti-abortion protesters lined the walls. A few had sat down on the clinic’s lime green chairs and draped themselves in chains. “Please inspire these parents to keep their babies!” one man shouted, before he started singing about the Virgin Mary. As some of the protesters sang and prayed loudly, the police officers crowded inside the clinic tried to urge them to move. They didn’t want to budge.

It was 22 October 2020, and one anti-abortion advocate was livestreaming a group of activists who were at the Washington DC-area clinic to, in their view, “rescue” people from having abortions. One redheaded young woman turned to the camera.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/16/face-act-anti-abortion-threaten-clinics

With Roe endangered, Democrats divide on saying the word ‘abortion’

By Caroline Kitchener
April 2, 2022

After Texas passed its restrictive abortion law last fall, Democrats started talking more about abortion than they had in decades.

House Democrats coalesced around a bill to turn into law the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing most abortions, Roe v. Wade, voicing their support for the landmark precedent in tweets and public statements. A few days later, three congresswomen shared their abortion stories on the House floor. And when he delivered his State of the Union address in March, President Biden became the first Democratic president since Roe to use that platform to call for action on abortion rights.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/02/abortion-rhetoric-roe/

USA – Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wishes This Case Had Legalized Abortion Instead of Roe v. Wade

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wishes This Case Had Legalized Abortion Instead of Roe v. Wade

By Olivia B. Waxman
August 2, 2018

When the U.S. Senate confirmed President Bill Clinton’s nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Supreme Court by a 96-3 vote on Aug. 3, 1993 — precisely 25 years ago Friday — that decision set Ginsburg on the path to legal (and viral) history. That process was also noteworthy for her decision to take “the unprecedented step of strongly endorsing abortion rights” in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, as TIME reported back then.

“It is essential to woman’s equality with man that she be the decisionmaker, that her choice be controlling,” Ginsburg told Senators during her four days of questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee. “If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.”

Continued: http://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/