Mmhm... focus...
There we go!
So, should we be worried about Roe v. Wade being overturned?
The short answer is "kind of, but not yet".
Today, January 22nd, is the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which was a landmark Supreme
Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States.
When Donald Trump was elected last year, he and the Republican Party vowed to overturn
Roe v. Wade and make abortion illegal.
This is something that troubled me deeply, it troubled others deeply, but is Roe in any
immediate danger?
Amy Miller, the plaintiff in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, doesn't think so.
Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt was another landmark decision in June of 2016, stating
that if a law was so difficult to follow that it resulted in the closing of abortion clinics
without actually making abortion safer, then the law is unconstitutional.
Miller says she was "thrilled but not surprised" by the decision, which was a 5-3 majority.
In order to overturn Roe, Trump would have to fill 2 Supreme Court vacancies, get a case
before the Court in time, and go against 45 years of Court precedent and public sentiment.
According to the Pew Research Center, over 70 percent of Americans support Roe v. Wade.
The anti-choice camp is working very hard to get another case before the Court, but
in the meantime, there are far more insidious issues.
According to Miller, "With a Democrat in the Oval Office for 8 of the past 15 years, in
Texas, we have still seen more restrictions placed on abortion care and family planning
than nearly any other state in the Union.
As a result, our maternal mortality rate is the worst in the country -- worse than many
developing nations."
The victory of Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt hasn't actually resulted in much improvement,
as the ruling doesn't automatically overturn unconstitutional laws, and anti-abortion groups
are continuing to behave as though nothing has happened.
This leads me to a topic that I am very passionate about: TRAP laws.
TRAP stands for Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers.
These laws place medically unnecessary restrictions on abortions and abortion providers, making
abortion more difficult to access and sometimes even impossible.
I plan on making in-depth videos on some of these specific tactics, but in the meantime,
Riley J. Dennis has made a fantastic overview of the topic, which you can watch by following
the link in the description below.
Anti-abortion groups seem to have taken a more aggressive tack recently, shifting their
focus from regulating the clinics themselves to regulating waste disposal, as well as outright
intimidation.
Created Equal, a group that is regularly on our campus, has the goal of forcing people
who have abortions to bury or cremate the fetus instead of letting the clinic send it
to a medical waste disposal.
This has the effect of humanizing the fetus, but it also has the more alarming effect of
possibly closing clinics.
In November 2017, Specific Waste ceased services to Kentucky's last remaining abortion clinic,
EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville.
This creates yet another hurdle for a clinic that is struggling to stay open, as no hospital
president nor CEO is willing to sign a transfer agreement with the clinic.
This is another example of a TRAP law.
The federal government already requires hospitals to accept any patients who come to their emergency
room, regardless of the existence of a "transfer agreement" between the hospital and the clinic,
and yet the requirement still exists; hospitals still refuse to give it, and this could close--I
can't emphasize this enough--the only clinic remaining in the entire state of Kentucky.
That would make Kentucky the first state in the nation to not have a single abortion clinic.
On top of this, blatant intimidation can be seen at virtually any clinic in the entire
country.
I actually made a video about my escorting experience last summer?
Maybe 2 summers ago.
You can watch that in the description and see how bad it is.
This intimidation has recently escalated to illegal levels, with so called Red Rose Rescuers
physically walking into abortion clinics and praying in the waiting rooms until they are
physically removed by police officers.
And, on top of all of this, crisis pregnancy centers continue to receive state funding
while actual abortion clinics do not.
The topic of CPCs is way too broad to cover in this video, but I actually organized a
protest against my local CPC last fall, which you can check out, again, in the video description,
and there are many other videos about this topic on YouTube.
B. Jessie Hill states in an article in The Conversation, "What is more immediately at
risk is the long-term fate of abortion clinics, women's access to safe abortion, and even
the availability of other forms of reproductive healthcare.
In other words, what is at risk is everything other than Roe v. Wade."
Pro-choice activists need to get asses in gear and go on the offensive instead of constantly
reacting.
We've learned in 2017 that we can't trust Democrats to defend abortion, either.
In August of last year--this is a mouthful so I need to consult my notes--Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Ben Ray Luján stated that the Democratic Party
will not withhold financial support from anti-abortion candidates, instead saying that there will
be "no litmus test" on abortion in 2018.
The only way to push back against abortion restrictions, then, is to hold our elected
representatives accountable and change the shape of public discourse surrounding abortion.
The Abortion Positive movement, led by groups like All* Above All and URGE: Unite for Reproductive
and Gender Equity, seeks to reduce the stigma surrounding abortion by encouraging people
to talk about it.
In spring of 2016, URGE's Abortion Positive Tour visited 10 college campuses in 5 different
states.
The tour celebrated abortion access with music, giveaways, and guest speakers.
You can help reduce the stigma by talking unapologetically about abortion in your community
and encouraging people to actually get out and vote for pro-choice candidates.
The right to have an abortion isn't necessarily in danger, but the right to access one definitely is.
Mobilize against your local laws that make abortion inaccessible.
If you'd like to support me in making more videos like this, you can donate to my Patreon,
which, like everything else, like I've said a million times, is linked in the description
below, and you can subscribe if you'd like to see more controversial content, like this.
Abortion on demand and without apology.
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