Today is the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade.
The theme this year, and rightly so, is “what is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress”?
My hope is that our legislatures and our leader recognizes the right of a women to make decisions about her own physical situation. As we have seen in Mississippi, where there is but one state abortion clinic left, those most affected by this continue to be the poorest among us.The private clinics where those with substantial income can go still exist in Mississippi, as they existed in this country long before Roe v Wade. It is very clear those who have had the funds have been able to get abortions even in times where it wasn’t legal. We perpetrate the poverty when we take away choice. We need to make clear to our legislatures that we want protection in states which would deem to take away the rights of those choosing to terminate a pregnancy. Making the means to carry out these choices inaccessible, or in some cases illegal is a crime against the right of a woman.
No one has the right to take away choice, my choice or the choice of any women in this country.
Please get rid of abstinence only education policy and any codicil to policy and funding which require abstinence only education as a condition. Abstinence only education does not work.
Studies have continually shown that abstinence-only students have almost the same number of sexual partners, and have sex almost as early, as students who receive traditional sex ed. In fact, abstinence-only programs may actually increase the risk of STDs and unintentional teen pregnancies. That’s because those abstinence-only students who do have sex tend to be less likely to use protection.
Stop using religious figures and their work as examples in the fight against aids in Africa, ask Uganda where it is possible the success of their abstain, be faithful, use condoms program was undermined by the later sway away from the ABC approach to the US-backed abstinence-only programs, programs which may be responsible for an increase in risky behavior, as comprehensive sex education and condom promotion are no longer mainstream. The decease seen in Uganda with the ABC program appears to be suffering a reversal in fortune as a result.
Rick Warren’s Africa Problem
The history of AIDS in Uganda
Keep up to date at Reality Check and see what else you can do to help.
Choice for everyone means supporting the means of choice, be it the choice to have sex and protect with condoms, the choice of comprehensive sex education, or the choice to terminate a pregnancy.
While you are giving back rights to the world, please leave our rights alone.
Peace


