Author: Carol King

Not the singer/songwriter Carole King. Been a feminist for as long as I can remember and committed to reproductive rights even longer.

Will Kenya’s New Constitution Protect Women’s Lives?

Wonder what happens when abortion is illegal? Then take a look at Kenya. Every year, more than 2,600 women there die from complications of unsafe abortion, accounting for 35 percent of the country’s maternal deaths. Close to 30 percent of the Kenyan women hospitalized with abortion complications suffer highly severe problems, including uterine perforation, hemorrhage, sepsis, […]

The Next 10 Myths About Abortion

Last week, I posted the 10 Worst Myths About Abortion. Since I couldn’t cover all of the many bad myths, here are the next 10: Myth 11: Making abortion illegal will stop abortion. Fact: Of the approximately 42 million abortions that occur annually worldwide, almost half are unsafe and/or illegal. Making abortion illegal will not […]

Jack Kevorkian and the Right to Choose

Watching You Don’t Know Jack, an extraordinary new HBO film about Kevorkian brought these memories flooding back. Al Pacino, playing the physician, captures the complexity of an odd man on an unusual mission. Kevorkian loves music, plays the flute, paints and writes poetry. Yet, he is obsessed with euthanasia, is detached from real life and can’t understand how anyone would consider outlawing his methods and his suicide machine, which he considered to be humane.

When Violence Usurps A Woman’s Choice

It wasn’t really much of a choice for her. Her boyfriend said, “If I find out you have an abortion, I’m gonna kill you.” She was 18, had just gotten into college on a full scholarship and didn’t want to have a baby. She did have the baby. Her boyfriend attended the delivery against her will and […]

They’re Back: Personhood Initiatives

They’re back. Like a bad dream. After a solid rejection by 73 percent of Colorado voters in 2008, an anti-choice group, Personhood USA, has returned with another slightly different proposed constitutional amendment to confer legal “personhood” on zygotes. If passed, Amendment 62 would apply the term “person” to “every human being from the beginning of […]

This Is What Young Feminist Leaders Look Like

The conferees at the National Young Feminist Leadership Conference filled classrooms for workshops on international family planning, access to affordable birth control, exposing fake clinics, LGBTQ isues, sexual assault and the impacts of climate change. Each workshop was lively with discussion, as people shared their successes, challenges and plans for their next action.

Do Young Women Care About Abortion Rights?

Conventional wisdom among women of a certain age holds that young U.S. women aren’t concerned about preserving the rights we fought so hard to secure—especially the right to abortion. What can be done to build cross-generational bridges to make sure this right is protected?

Criminalized Abortion: Coming to a State Near You

An anti-abortion bill introduced by Rep. Carl Wimmer became law this week in Utah. Now, women who obtain “illegal” abortions can be charged with murder — as doing so constitutes an ‘intentional or knowing’ act to cause the death of an “unborn child.”

What’s Your Abortion Story?

Abortion is legal, but abortion rights are still severely restricted across the U.S. and around the world. Because of this, I’m developing ideas for a documentary and a play about abortion. My hope is that if we can stop talking about abortion in hushed voices, we can help the world acknowledge that motherhood should always be a choice.