Some links re: "Blogs for Choice Day" 1.22.06

[bloom]

http://bushvchoice.com/

Blogging for Bodily Integrity, as explained to the men in our audience


Today we’re observing the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that handed women power over our own bodies. This was a power white men had enjoyed since the founding of our republic, and one that black men had achieved legally (though not practically, of course) a hundred years before.

You see, that’s what the right to an abortion is: it’s power over your own body. It’s the right to decide whether or not you’re going to incubate a fetus. It’s the right to fundamental bodily integrity.

I’ve always thought the pro-choice movement made a serious error when it settled on “choice” as the euphemism for the right to an abortion. Choice sounds like something you get at a Chinese restaurant. It sounds like having a nice variety of car colors to choose from, instead of only basic black, as Henry Ford envisioned.

It’s not “choice.” It’s personal, physical sovereignty....

http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/

Happy Birthday Roe, and Thank You.

...On one visit to a family planning clinic, a nurse blurted out to my mom how disheartening it was to see this one Latina woman come back time and again for an abortion. The nurse wanted to vent that this was such irresponsible behavior, which was sentiment that 20 years earlier my mom might have shared.

My mom then asked the nurse if she had ever talked to her about why she kept finding herself pregnant after her abortions. She encouraged her to be non-judgmental in her approach and try to start a dialogue with her about how birth control worked for her, her attitudes toward pregnancy etc. My mom left the clinic.

Several months later, when my mom returned to check up on this site, the nurse flagged her down to tell her about her experience talking with the patient who kept getting multiple abortions. It turns out that each time she would leave the clinic with birth control, her husband would find it, beat her, and then try to impregnate her. When she would show up to the clinic, and someone would tell her that she was pregnant, they would then tell her, by state law, all of her options: adoption, abortion, continue the pregnancy. With little sense of any control over her body, her home, or her well-being, she would choose to terminate the pregnany before her abusive husband would find out. During the pregnancies she had carried to term, his beatings only intensified.

After having this conversation with the patient, the nurse, who formely had assumed that she was facing a irresponsible woman, was now telling my mom how she had creatively brainstormed with her colleagues to find a form of birth control that would be effective and that she could hide from her husband. They gave her depo shots and then referred her to a battered women's clinic...

http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/

(Very) Basic Economics and Abortion

...Let's introduce another concept from (very) basic economics into the discussion: elasticity of demand. I'd argue that for pregnant women who don't want to be mothers, the demand for abortion is extremely inelastic. If I'm correct, then raising the price of abortions - for instance, by making abortions illegal - will have a relatively small impact on demand.

The problem with before-and-after Roe v Wade abortion rate comparisons is that too many people mix up the rate of legal and reported abortions - which obviously went up post-Roe - with the rate of abortions. But in fact, there were about a million abortions a year in the US in the few years before Roe - about the same as there were in the few years just after Roe.

What we need, to lower abortion, is a substitute for abortion. Attacking the supply side won't do much to lower abortion rates, but attacking the demand side can work. For instance, policies which push birth control on teenagers (including the importance of always using two types at once) so hard the teens get bruised. Countries like Belgium have used this sort of policy to have the lowest abortion rates in the world. I don't understand why pro-lifers have so little interest in imitating that....

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2006/01/22/very-basic-economics-and-abortion/

:bounce:

[TaleWgnDg]

1. Overall, you will achieve your "wish list" only when

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Overall, you will achieve your "wish list" only when religion-into-law becomes less political. That is, when the neo-cons are no longer in power.

Since Roe in 1973, there has been a drastic turn of politics against individual rights across America. Although, Roe acknowledge and re-affirmed the "right of autonomy" in its ruling for pregnant woman across America, it was verbalized to also grant the freedom of choice whether to have or not to have an abortion and that choice of freedom was between the pregnant woman and her M.D. (upon whom she had to medically consult in order to have an abortion). Simple, really. "Choice" is a word often used in law and has been used also by civil libertarians (not the same as capital letter "L" Libertarians).

BTW, there has never been, nor should there ever be, an "absolute" right to an abortion. No right in our constitution is absolute. All rights are weighed and balanced against other inferred and express rights in our constitution. Therefore, words such as "sovereign" have no legal meaning as to a women's right of autonomy of her own body. "Sovereignty" is, itself, not absolute but is typically not used in any legal definition as to human beings.

All that being said, keep up the great work. You're right on track!




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