Blog for Choice

Thirty-five years ago, I was a 20-year-old hippie travelling through the US with my hippie boyfriend in a VW van. Life was pretty groovy. Like most 20-year-olds, I didn't have much historical sense. Events seemed to be unfolding as they should. Civil rights were on the march. The Merkin people seemed to be succeeding in protesting an unpopular war.

Then, women's rights took a leap forward with the USian Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.

Groovy.

Thirty-five years later, women's rights in the US are going backwards.

Harvard puts out an annual review of the laws on abortion around the world. Scroll down to the United States there to view the state of play in the 50 states.

Parental notification laws. Extended wait times. Mandatory counselling. Mandatory ultrasounds.

And in an election year the word 'abortion' is on the lips of every slimey huckster seeking office. The less slimey merely want to 'reduce' the number of abortions. The truly scary theocrats want to outlaw abortion entirely and jail women who succeed in obtaining one.

(I won't even get into the creeping attack on contraception in general.)

While we at Birth Pangs stand in solidarity with our USian sisters, we sometimes despair. You've got a fuck of a long way to go yet, baby.

(First published at Birth Pangs.)