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Jennifer Senior has a nuanced article about the current state of the abortion debate in this week's New York magazine, in which she says that the current generation of twentysomethings is the most anti-choice since the generation born during the Great Depression. I found this very upsetting, not just because I am pro-choice, but because the reason my peers are anti-choice is they have no sympathy or empathy for people who become pregnant accidentally. They take abortion for granted because they've always lived in a world where it was available .. (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).
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In reading all the accounts from fellow pro-choice women—like Emily's from earlier this week—bemoaning
the Stupak abortion restrictions, I noticed that many of the women who
were outraged by the concessions of the health care bill used the terms
feminist and pro-choice almost interchangably. Over at Salon,
Kate Harding writes, "Feminists have been up in arms about the latest
assault on access to abortion," but if you take one look at the website
for the group Feminists for Life, one of the first things you see is the banner proclaiming "Women the Winners in U.S. House Amendment Vote" ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)
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A post from DoubleX writer Amanda Marcotte:
I'm sorry, Rachael, but this story you linked about Abby Johnson's sudden conversion
from a Planned Parenthood director to an anti-choice fanatic has more
holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese after being used for target
practice. Johnson's story fits way too neatly into a bunch of easily
disproven anti-choice myths, the main one being that all it takes is
one glance at an ultrasound to cause someone to "realize" that hey!
abortion removes a fetus from your uterus. Pro-choicers already know
that. Johnson seems to be selling a story that's a tad too pat, too
close to what anti-choicers want to hear.
After all, your average person in the United States has
seen probably hundreds of sonograms in their lives, and most of them
show a fetus at gestational age well beyond the point that most women
get elective abortions. If you compare the ultrasound taken prior to an
elective abortion, the feeling is actually one of being underwhelmed,
because there's not much there compared to the ones we're used to
seeing. The anti-choice sentimental devices rely therefore on ignorance
more than illumination—their own mistaken understanding of what goes on
in an abortion clinic ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).
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Stats sweetheart Nate Silver ran abortion-rate data from the CDC and has found that states with higher numbers of people who identify as pro-life have lower rates of abortion than pro-choice states. But, this finding is somewhat deceptive. As anyone who receives Guttmacher Institute press releases knows, 87 percent of counties do not have abortion providers,
and the CDC data does not always count state of residence, only the
state where the abortion is performed. Additionally, since CDC abortion
data is self-reported by each state... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com.)
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I’ve been mulling the responses I got, via email and comments,
to my question about
why a recent Gallup poll might show a seven point jump in the percentage of
people who define themselves as prolife (from 44 percent last year to 51 percent
this year). Several theories from readers:
The Election.
I think this past year forced me to think about how I really felt. The election
has something to do with it . . . Obama’s mother also set me on a course of
reflection. As an intelligent, curious single mom who struggled to give her son the best, I could relate.
I really want to be liberal, but in my life the most tangible support as a
poor, single mother came from people who looked, acted, and talked just like
Sarah Palin. Other high-status women didn’t give me chances; they were the first
to complain when I needed time off for a sick child. Academics can write about
women’s issues but the evangelicals made sure I could afford to go to work. In
contrast, my university still doesn’t offer onsite child-care.
The Aging Population.
Perhaps when folks pass the age at which their daughters may be faced with
this decision they can more easily be moved...
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The striking jump in the new Gallup poll of people defining themselves
as pro-life—7 percentage points in one year, for a total of 51
percent—doesn't explain itself. You may be right, Hanna, that scientific advances or a truly deep shift in attitude aren't the rationale,
given that the breakdown didn't change when Gallup pinned people down
further by asking them if they think abortion should always, sometimes,
or never be legal. But the words "pro-life" and "pro-choice" have long
been... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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