Progressive Analysis

Liberal and progressive commentators have followed the Right’s incremental method of limiting access to abortion and other reproductive justice issues. These are examples of their analysis.

Limiting Abortion Access Step by Step

Laws Targeting Abortion Providers

“Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers” written by (TRAP Laws) the Center for Reproductive Rights, discusses the trivial and arbitrary laws that are being created across the country to make it more difficult for freestanding abortion clinics to stay open. (PDF)

This article from the Kansas City Daily Record discusses the tactic of requiring abortion clinics to be registered as “ambulatory surgical centers.”

Ultrasounds

This article from Time discusses how having ultrasounds in crisis pregnancy centers affect a woman’s decision about abortion.

A news feature about how pregnancy crisis centers have become powerful anti-abortion sites, using their locations—often close to abortion clinics—to further their cause of dissuading women from having abortions.

Global Gag Rule

Population Action International, a progressive reproductive health advocacy not-for-profit, produced this fact sheet that explains how the Global Gag Rule harms women and children.

Limiting Public Funding for Abortions

This fact sheet on the Hyde Amendment presents evidence that the Congretional funding amendment, passed annually since 1976, violates the human rights of women by denying federal funds to support low-income women’s abortions. Despite a dedicated campaign to end this law, the Hyde Amendment continues to discriminate against low income women. (PDF)

Conscience Clauses

A summary of the issues about pharmacists’ refusal to dispense reproductive medications in fact sheet form. (PDF)

A news story about a drugstore in Chantilly, Virginia that is one of a growing number of “pro-life” pharmacies that refuse to sell contraception, either over the counter or by filling prescriptions.

Women’s ENews summarizes the issues behind “pro-life” pharmacies that deny women the right to choose what to do with their bodies based on stories from across the country of women being denied goods or services that pharmacists viewed as immoral or unethical.

The Guttmacher Institute’s fact sheet on the status of state laws that permit some health care providers to refuse to provide services based on conscience. (PDF)

Assertion of Fathers Rights

Feminist commentator Eleanor Bader analyses why some fathers are claiming to be victims of abortion.

PRA founder Jean Hardisty analyzes the Bush administration’s promotion of marriage as a cure for poverty, including a look at the father's rights movement.

Fears of a Population Implosion

Progressive journalist Kathryn Joyce examines the ideology behind the anti-abortion and racist concept of a “European Winter,” a future derailed by moral decay, lack of respect for families, and the prospect that western civilization will be replaced by immigrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Responding to the claim that abortions harm women

Discussion of the argument that the link between abortions and breast cancer is a false but powerful tactic used by the pro-life movement to scare women into not getting abortions.

This article ,“How Anti-Abortion Myths Feed the Christian Right Agenda,” discusses how the ideas in alleged scientific studies by the Right frequently give out false and biased information.

A revealing article from the New York Times Magazine about women who work in pregnancy crisis centers helping others overcome Post Abortion Syndrome.

Attacks on sexual activity thwart public health

An historical review of the federal “condom controversy” in Congress and at the Centers for Disease Control.

A discussion of the backlash against Gardasil, the vaccine for HPV. This article challenges the idea that an HPV vaccine “promotes promiscuity” as well as presenting the idea that there is already a mandatory vaccine for Hepatitis B, which is also an STI, for which there was no backlash.

Looking at the claims of abstinence-only education

Summarizes non biased studies of abstinence education on this fact sheet. (PDF)

This article from PRA’s Public Eye magazine argues that abstinence-only education is based on ideology, not science.

The Compromise Pitfalls of a “Reducing Abortions” Campaign

Two experts on the Christian Right examine the underlying problems with efforts by moderate faith community leaders to work with anti-abortion forces seeking compromise.

Where Did the Abortion Reduction Agenda Come From?

The Truth About Abortion Reduction

Examining fetal personhood

A description of why the idea of fetal personhood is important to “pro-lifers.”

Attacks on contraception

A discussion by feminist blogger Christina Page on the July 2008 draft regulations from United States Department of Health and Human Services that would support the idea of contraception as abortion.

What the Unborn Victims of Violence Act means

The Center for Reproductive Rights responds to the UVVA here.

Arguments against stem cell research called misleading

An analysis of the opposition to a 2006 Missouri ballot question that allows embryonic stem cell research in that state, including references to the Focus on the Family’s brochure, “Women’s Voices Against Cloning.”

Vulnerable Populations Highlight Need for Reproductive Justice for All

Women with Disabilities

Disability rights activist Marsha Saxton suggests that sensitivity to disabled women’s issues will help feminists negotiate the difficult path through assisted reproductive technologies. (PDF)

Five reproductive justice activists discuss the feminist implications of assistive reproductive technologies. (PDF)

This fact sheet from the Pro-Choice Public Education Project explains the reproductive justice issues affecting women with disabilities.

LGBTQ Persons

This interview with Carmen Vazquez for the feminist magazine off our backs explains an activist’s perspective on the connections between LGBTQ freedoms and reproductive justice.

Low Income Women and Women of Color

The Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment prepared a fact sheet on Depo-Provera that outlines its liabilities.

Immigrant Women

Immigrant rights have become part of the struggle for reproductive justice, says Priscilla Huang of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum in this essay that received wide circulation when it was written in 2007.

Prisoners

Women prisoners, most of whom are mothers, experience great difficulty in securing quality health care and exercising their reproductive rights. This brief essay by a leading progressive analyst of women in prison explains why.