ARTICLE ON BANNING OF ABORTION
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Explanation:
When she found out she was pregnant, Sam Blakely balled up her shower curtain, bit down, and screamed.
“There were so many emotions: Overwhelming devastation, anguish, terror, despair,” the 25-year-old said. “And I didn’t tell anyone about it except my rapist. I didn’t feel like I could.”
A few weeks before taking her first pregnancy test, a friend whom Blakely now refers to as a coworker “because friends don’t rape you” sexually assaulted her in her own apartment. She stayed in the same clothes for three days. Raised in Eclectic, Alabama, by devout Christian parents who taught her to not look boys in the eyes a certain way or wear revealing clothing, she couldn’t tell her family. Then, she missed her period.
“I googled a lot of dangerous things: tea from China that would induce labor, some sort of pills, natural remedies I looked up and considered,” she said. “There’s so many things I didn’t know as a young black woman in Alabama. We are given no information and there are so many barriers and obstacles to get an abortion, and I believe that is on purpose.”
At the time, Blakely was 23, fresh out of college, saddled with student loan debt, and trying to budget for groceries. Raising a kid seemed impossible. Giving birth to the child of the man who raped her “was a death sentence.”
After three frantic days, she learned there was one clinic close to her in Montgomery, but she had no idea she would have to find $600 to pay for the procedure up front, sit for hours in the crowded waiting room for her first appointment, undergo mandatory counseling, wait 48 hours, and then come back.
“I had to call in sick from work, have an ultrasound, and follow all these rules,” Blakely said. “It was traumatic.”In 2017, five clinics performed abortions in Alabama, down from about 20 in the 1990s. There are now three strung across the state in a wide triangle and shouldering an increasingly heavy patient load as the South continues to solidify its position as one of the largest abortion deserts in the US. Only one provider, the Women’s Center in Huntsville, performs abortions on clients who are up to 20 weeks pregnant, the state’s current legal limit.
Emboldened by the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, conservative lawmakers across the country have been successfully purging abortion services from their states. Last week, Louisiana’s governor signed a bill banning nearly all abortions, making it illegal for doctors to provide the procedure after 6 weeks of pregnancy. Missouri is in danger of losing its last remaining clinic, while Kentucky, West Virginia, South Dakota, Mississippi, North Dakota, and West Virginia are down to one.
About 90% of counties in the US do not have an abortion provider, according to a 2017 study by the Journal of Medical Internet Research, and experts and abortion rights advocates emphasize that restrictive laws disproportionately cripple lower-income communities of color.
While Alabama’s recent law, which is currently being challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood, may have attracted national attention, state lawmakers have been chipping away at access to reproductive care since Republicans won a legislative supermajority in 2010.
“This has been a long time coming. No one is surprised. It’s about controlling women’s bodies and sexual agency,” said Kari Crowe, codirector at the group POWER (People Organizing for Women’s Empowerment & Rights) House, which works with the Montgomery Area Reproductive Coalition. “We sue the state basically every year.”
The clinic performs about 50 abortions a week, treating patients from Mississippi, Louisiana, and the Florida Panhandle, but just getting them in the door is a challenge. The staff uses donations to help patients buy gas and food. Sometimes they need a ride and a place to stay, or someone to watch their kids because most can’t afford to pay for or tell people about their abortion.
“We have had women who call and say they are pawning everything they can pawn to make it up here,” Crowe said while filling out new patient forms. “They borrow money. We had one young woman who was doing sex work to pay for her abortion. Women are desperate and they will do what they have to do.”
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Explanation:
Anti-abortion laws are built on anti-abortion lies. Lies about things like who has abortions, how abortions work, how women’s bodies work and how fetuses develop. The lies pave the way for the laws.
There are the old lies, like the ones suggesting that the women having abortions are careless hussies (51% of abortions are to women who were using contraception; 59% are to women who are already mothers; 75% are to poor and low-income women). Lately, there’s a huge new lie making the rounds, that women and doctors are conspiring to kill babies at birth and calling it abortion. This is a lie that encourages conservatives to regard pregnant women and medical caregivers as potential ruthless killers who should be hemmed in with yet more laws targeting them. While a lot of older abortion lies were distortions and exaggerations, this one is a complete and dangerous fabrication.