More Than A Magazine, A Movement
The similarity between Britney Spears’s limitations in decision-making regarding her reproductive decisions and the regulation of the child welfare system on poor, disabled, minority parents is clear. Their individual rights to choice and privacy are erased and structural limitations imposed on them.
Spears’s fame has brought attention to a major issue—but the same energy needs to remain for everyone fighting for their freedom within a system actively working against them.
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases challenging a Texas law banning abortion after six weeks, but refused to block the law while it considers the case—leaving Texans without access to safe, legal abortion health care. The Court set oral arguments for the cases on November 1.
“For the second time, the Court declines to act immediately to protect these women from grave and irreparable harm,” Justice Sotomayor wrote a searing dissent to the Court’s refusal to enjoin the law.
In this Power Talk, Ms.’s Roxy Szal spoke with four reproductive health experts— Power to Decide CEO Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley and VP of policy Rachel Fey; PRH’s Jennifer Blasdell; and State Innovation Exchange’s Jennifer Driver—on restrictions to reproductive healthcare and how advocates and lawmakers can protect abortion and contraception access.
Pennsylvania-based abortion providers and reproductive rights lawyers filed their brief in a lawsuit—Allegheny Reproductive Health Center v. Pennsylvania Department of Human Services—asking the state’s Supreme Court to strike down the Pennsylvania ban on Medicaid funding for abortion as a violation of the Equal Rights Amendment and equal protection provisions of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
Democratic members of Congress like Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Cori Bush are using the platforms and legal maneuvering they have access to, building political pressure to ensure that enacted laws reflect the will of the bipartisan pro-choice majority in the U.S.
On Dec. 1, the Supreme Court will hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Mississippi’s brief in Dobbs claims Roe v. Wade must be overturned because “scientific advances show that an unborn child has taken on the human form and features months before viability.”
But aren’t women human beings? The answer must be: Yes, and they must be able to control their lives, their reproduction and their bodies.
“on my back,” a poem written by Sheri Lynn, is based on and dedicated to the Women’s March for Reproductive Rights that took place on October 2, 2021.
The past few months have seen escalating attacks on abortion access, with states passing increasingly restrictive and unconstitutional laws. But policymakers can help ensure that abortion is more accessible by allowing easier access to medication abortion care.
The Christian right has been unambiguous about their long-term plans to limit access to abortion. But change is possible if the pro-choice religious community comes together to support reproductive rights.
On the heels of Texas’s newly-enacted abortion ban—blocked by a federal court on Oct. 6, then reinstated on Oct. 8 by the Fifth Circuit Court—Governor Greg Abbott signed into law S.B. 4 making it a felony for doctors to mail abortion pills to a patient. The law applies only to doctors and explicitly exempts pregnant people from criminal penalties for ordering pills online.
But unless Texas is willing to post abortion police at every woman’s mailbox to check and intercept her mail, Texans will still have access to medication abortion online and through the mail.
