reproductive rights

Sexuality/Gender

Contraception Furor v. Catholic Realities

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Efforts by the hierarchical institution to spin the current controversy as a matter of religious liberty are unconvincing. After all, it is not the Catholic Church whose liberty is impinged upon. Members, even bishops, can still teach and believe what they wish. No one forces them to use contraception. Rather, it is employees of Catholic institutions, including janitors and housekeepers, whose rights to make their own decisions about health care are impinged upon. Blaming the victim is an old trick, but, in this case, few people are buying it.

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Sexuality/Gender

God’s Body, God’s Plan: The Komen Furor and Abortion as Black/Latino “Genocide”

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Over the past several years, Black and Latino fundamentalist anti-abortion groups have vigorously aligned themselves with the white religious right in the battle to take down family planning. The current furor over the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to withdraw funding for Planned Parenthood highlighted the role of Eve Sanchez Silver, founder of a little-known group called the International Coalition of Color for Life. According to the Los Angeles Times, Sanchez Silver, a former medical research analyst for and charter member of the Komen Foundation, has been a leading advocate against Planned Parenthood within Komen.

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Sexuality/Gender

Of Personhood and the Pill: What’s at Stake?

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The Personhood Amendment, MS26, is a deceptively simple sentence: “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.” There’s not a word about IVF, or about contraception, or about ectopic pregnancy treatment or miscarriages. Anyone who considers himself or herself pro-life will almost certainly reflexively agree with it. The implications, though, are drastic. Because there’s no established legal standard for what rights are conveyed by the term “personhood,” it can be applied as broadly as the state legislature and judicial system will support. Everyone, supporters and dissenters alike, agrees that it will prohibit elective abortion, the morning-after pill, and discarding frozen embryos. What else, though, might be prohibited under the same logic?

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Sexuality/Gender

“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

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What makes the claim that “pregnancy is not a disease” compelling right now? Why does it have cultural traction? Where does it come from? I suggest that this idea is idiosyncratic and particular to our own day. Precisely because it’s such a timely notion, it’s predictable that this would be the anti-contraception rebuttal. At the same time, it’s a claim that’s full of tensions.

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