For years now at the Sisterhood we’ve been following a series of rollbacks of abortion rights and contraceptive access known as the War on Women. Despite losses at the voting booth and public opinion, far right wing legislators can’t stop and won’t stop pushing laws and regulations that hurt women and threaten providers. Resistance is…
Abortion should be banned because fetuses—male ones—are busy pleasuring themselves in the womb, didn’t you know? Yes, that is the logic that seemed to have come out of a legislator’s mouth this week. It appears that two of the Right Wing’s favorite bogeyman—abortion and masturbation—have come together in a perfect storm. These comments are giving…
Usually on the internet when Nazi analogies come into play, it means Godwin’s Law—the theory that all online arguments will eventually devolve into a Hitler comparison—has been invoked and the conversation is over. But in the case of the “women who are raped can’t get pregnant” myth, a myth Republicans love to perpetuate, there’s actually…
After years of cajoling, protesting, advocating and pleading from women’s health advocates, Plan B, the most commonly-used brand of emergency contraception, has been released from legal limbo. Hopefully this morning after pill will now be able to spend the rest of its days in the friendlier, more accessible haven of the pharmacy shelf rather than…
The old second-wave feminist slogan goes: “Not the church; not the state; women must decide our fate.” The horrifying case occurring in El Salvador today is an example of both church and state brutally interfering in the endangered life of a woman for the sake of misogynistic ideology. Beatriz is a young mother in heavily…
A few months ago, a friend from college told me about her miscarriage, which happened between her first and second child. “It’s so common,” she said. “I just think people should know that.” After this friend’s disclosure, another friend told me she had had the same experience. And then another. Miscarriages are common, which was…
The gruesome case of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortion provider accused of murdering four live fetuses by “snipping” their spinal cords after botched abortions, has emboldened those who want to further restrict and erode a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. Abortion rights advocates argue that that is the wrong conclusion — that desperate women…
Legal abortion could become a thing of the past in a handful of states if anti-choice efforts are successful. Note that I don’t say abortion will become a thing of the past, because the need for abortion will persist, but safe and legal abortion will be outlawed as a spate of new state-level laws curtail…
