Thirty-nine years after women won the right to abortion, this fundamental right is hanging by a thread. 2011 saw the greatest number of restrictions passed on womens access to abortion ever – and now, more than 90% of counties don’t have abortion providers, millions of women face unnecessary and humiliating legal restrictions to access, doctors who provide this service are hunted and terrorized and women who get abortions are stigmatized and shamed.
But that is not all. Now, even birth control is under siege. Pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions. “Personhood” amendments seek to criminalize miscarriages and ban all contraception. And President Obama openly upheld Kathleen Sebelius’s unprecedented decision to overrule the FDA to ban the over-the-counter distribution of Plan B (emergency contraception).
Sunsara Taylor convened a round-table of experts and commentators to look back at the past year in the battle over women’s right to birth control and abortion… and, to look ahead to the battles to come.
Guests included:
Irin Carmon, staff writer for Salon, whose recent titles include, “Why women have second trimester abortions,” and, “The next front in the abortion wars: Birth control.”
Amanda Marcotte, author of “2011: The War on Contraception,” and, “Restricting Plan B Is Bad Politics,” for rhrealitycheck.org.
Erin Gloria Ryan, writer for Jezebel whose pieces include, “The Year In Your Uterus.”
Left Forum Panel led by Debra Sweet, of World Can't Wait, with Pardiss Kebriaei, CCR attorney for Guantanamo detainees, Eric Stoner, journalist, Matthis Chiroux, veteran and Iraq War Resister, about buzzphrase "National Security" providing a dubious logic for police state usurpation of so many of our civil rights, and the need for our resisting Obama's continuation of Bush's criminal war making. Event March 20, 2011.
"God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms—if not, we're doomed as a species. I will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens. I want people to see the truth... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."
Pardiss Kebriaei, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, discusses the revived Military Commissions and Obama’s broken promise about closing Guantanamo; the broken system of checks and balances in government, in favor of the Executive; the dismissal of the lawsuit challenging Anwar al-Awlaki’s targeted assassination, giving Obama the power to kill US citizens without review, oversight or challenge; the scores of “worst of the worst” Guantanamo prisoners who turned out to be innocent; and how the US government picks and chooses which laws of war are applicable, and which aren’t (remarkably, the conclusions favor US government positions).
