Access to safe abortion is a human health care right

A few days after SCOTUS’s barbaric decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, I spent time with one of my daughters who lives in Seattle. Her friend gave me a button that she had been distributing through her work, which reads: “Ask me how to aid and abet Abortion.” I immediately pinned it to the strap of my purse. With its letters in a clear black font against a pink background, it was easy for others to read. I received many immediate responses to the button’s message that night, all of them from women, all supportive, because all enraged by the ruling.

I want to share this statement, revised to say, “Ask me how to aid and abet SAFE Abortion.” And in sharing it, I want to gather as much information for myself as possible so I can be true to my intention — to aid and abet this fundamental health care right.

Included in this article is a list of resources and ways of being informed and active in fighting for the right to safe abortions.

The work is critical: protection of health care justice is the protection of human rights. We all need to be alert to how to help and be involved.

— Carter

To give context regarding the long struggle to protect reproductive rights, Kelli offers the following experience:

The current rollback of reproductive health rights is a visceral reminder of an experience I had in college of the anti-abortion movement’s deceit targeting vulnerable individuals in need of care. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan in the early 2000s, living on the main campus in Ann Arbor. The city was a vibrant place of political action and liberal thought and ideas that spurred me into organizing. As a student volunteer with Planned Parenthood and member of our campus pro-choice club, I was conscious of information related to women’s health, access to care for people of color, and reproductive rights.

The pro-choice club president and I came across information for a new pregnancy counseling center opening across the street from the main quad, and we brought it to the group. The marketing included pictures of medical professionals counseling young crying women, and described its services as including confidential support, resources, and ultrasound testing. We investigated more deeply by visiting the center with the intention of learning more, and were provided misinformation disguised as patient education about the benefits of pregnancy, adoption, and supportive resources families (free diapers, etc.) that masked the pro-life and anti-choice mission of the organization. We discovered the world of “crisis pregnancy centers” or CPCs that target people in crisis situations and obscure their pro-life agenda. In addition to spreading misinformation that impacts public health, CPCs tend to target groups that historically have been denied easy access to quality healthcare such as teens and young adults, people of color and people with low incomes. These same groups are disproportionately affected by STIs and HIV and unintended pregnancy. Our club, along with Planned Parenthood, advocated with the city to have the center moved off-campus, and we provided public education on clinics and healthcare services that offered all-options counseling in the case of pregnancy.

While that particular CPC has since moved, the pro-life movement continues to obscure facts and distribute false information. Even today, there are more than 100 CPCs in Michigan, including one still in Ann Arbor, and recent studies suggest that seeking services at CPCs is not uncommon among people of reproductive age. The numbers could be even higher in states that have not expanded Medicaid or passed anti-abortion legislation, where reproductive healthcare is limited or now completely unavailable for many people and disproportionately impacts people of color.

I think of my experience of 20 years ago and the direct impact it had on my peers when I support the incredible organizations and advocates who ensure accurate and transparent information is accessible to all, especially Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, who are disproportionately impacted by the injustice of anti-abortion laws because of the brutal systemic inequities perpetuated by white supremacy.

-Kelli

Recognizing, supporting, being part of resistance against denial of this health care right

Brief selection of related Articles, Books, & Documentaries:

• World leaders condemn US abortion ruling as ‘backwards step’ Leaders of UK, Canada, France and New Zealand denounce the overruling of Roe v Wade as WHO chief calls its ‘disappointing’ 6/24/22, The Guardian. Read in The Guardian: https://apple.news/AVRBiQjuTQ7y52vH5YUuikQ
• Mad about Roe? Here’s what to do now. 6/24/22, NY Times. Read in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/opinion/abortion-roe-activism-how-to-help.html?smid=url-share
• The Janes, documentary film. “The Janes is a documentary film about an underground network of women in Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s who provided safe, affordable, illegal abortions to approximately 11,000 women in need.” Released January 2022.
• Hello. This Is Jane. Book by Judith Arcana. Published May 2020.
• Jackson, documentary film. The award winning documentary film about the only abortion clinic in Mississippi. http://www.jacksonthefilm.com/
• New Handbook for a Post-Roe America: The Complete Guide to Abortion Legality, Access, and Practical Support, by Robin Marty (second edition, 2020).

Locating Abortion Resources:

• How to find, contact, and donate to your local abortion fund: https://abortionfunds.org › funds
• Northwest Abortion Access Fund: http://CascadesAbortionSupport.org/
• “Providing free, compassionate support to anyone considering or experiencing abortion throughout Oregon.”
• Finding care:
• Planned Parenthood https://www.plannedparenthood.org/get-care Or abortionfinder.org

Stay Aware, Learn More:

• What are crisis pregnancy centers? Crisis pregnancy centers (also called CPCs or “fake clinics”) are clinics or mobile vans that look like real health centers, but they have a shady, harmful agenda: to scare, shame, or pressure you out of getting an abortion, and to tell lies about abortion, birth control, and sexual health. https://www.plannedparenthood.org/blog/what-are-crisis-pregnancy-centers
• The limits of infant safe haven laws: As many American women reckon with the sudden loss of their constitutional right to abortion, conservatives have floated an alternative they say makes abortion less necessary: safe haven laws. But women rarely use them. Read on via CNN, 8/9/22: https://apple.news/AyAeikA3yTiy_RBC9UmNL8g