a bug

Тема легализации абортов постепенно овладевала умами европейцев и американцев. У сторонников идеи стали появляться вожди и целые организации. В 1921 г. по инициативе М. Зангер в США была создана Американская лига по контролю за рождаемостью. Опыт работы этой Лиги был широко использован гитлеровской Германией для регулирования рождаемости «генетически второсортных рас», сокращения территории их проживания, уменьшения площадей, которые были заселены «биологическими отбросами». Расовая теория и националистическая практика использовали аборты как эффективный способ снижения рождаемости.

Наследником идей М. Зангер и её лиги в 1948 г. стала Международная федерация планирования семьи. Виртуозная демагогия членов этой организации позволила им действовать повсеместно. Далеко не сразу стало понятно, на что направлены защита права женщины на аборт, программы раннего сексуального воспитания, контрацептивны и стерилизация. Ведущую роль в ней и сейчас играют американцы. В деятельности этой организации наибoлее полно отражены два тренда: стремление к резкому сокращению населения стран мира (не менее, чем на 10%) и укрепление культа семьи в самой Америке. В первом случае широко используются «вакцинация» населения, «планирование семьи», поддерживаются однополые браки и т.д., во втором – проводится сильная социальная политика, утверждаетсяи укрепляется культ американской многодетной семьи.

unfortunately understand nothing

Tres científicos prueban que las políticas contraceptivas no frenan sino que disparan el aborto

Expertos de Moscú y Rostock han confirmado las misteriosas diferencias estadísticas entre Rusia, Bielorrusia y Ucrania.

гугел ЖЖот: Три политологи проверить контрацепции выстрел, но не остановить аборты Эксперты из Москвы и Росток подтвердил таинственное статистических различий между Россией, Белоруссией и Украиной.

Birth control does not mean abortion

By George J. Marlin Wednesday, 14 December 2011

Excerpt:
Yet despite her harangues against the Church and her insistence that “for the welfare of children, for the happiness of husbands and wives, and for the full realization of Women’s rights, birth control by scientific methods of contraception [should] properly and wisely be exercised,” she did make one exception to an otherwise thorough pro-choice agenda: abortion.

That’s right. Margaret Sanger actually stated that: “Birth control does not mean abortion.” Here are her exact words:

“The real alternative to birth control is abortion,” wrote Dean Inge, [Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London]. It is an alternative that I cannot too strongly condemn. Although abortion may be resorted to in order to save the life of the mother, the practice of it merely for limitation of offspring is dangerous and vicious. [Emphasis added] I bring up the subject here only because some ill-informed persons have the notion that when we speak of birth control we include abortion as a method. We certainly do not. Abortion destroys the already fertilized ovum or the embryo; contraception, as I have carefully explained, prevents the fertilizing of the ovum by keeping the male cells away. Thus it prevents the beginning of life.

I bet you never heard that Sanger considered abortion “dangerous and vicious.” You can take it to the bank that there are no posters hanging on the walls of Planned Parenthood clinics quoting those particular words of the founder.

Margaret Sanger actually believed that abortion destroys an innocent life because she was honest enough to recognize that life begins at the moment of conception (without reference). Hence, she would have disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s conclusion in Roe v. Wade.

the rest

How Birth Control And Abortion Became Politicized

audio

Sanger is pro life

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger, adored and reviled as the mother of birth control, published her autobiography in 1938 when she was 59 years old. Republished in 1971 by Dover, the book is still in print. I found it while browsing the biography section of the public library, and I thought I’d like to know more about this controversial pioneer. It turned out to be the most fascinating book I’ve read so far this year.

I know that some social conservatives despise Mrs. Sanger. One of her organizations evolved into Planned Parenthood, which is hated primarily because it gives women access to abortions and secondarily because it gives unmarried women access to contraception. In reaction, some have portrayed Sanger as a eugenicist of near Nazi ferocity, eager to improve the race through selective breeding, sterilization and murder of the unfit. They accuse her of aiming to exterminate people of color. They attribute her widespread support among African American leaders to a diabolical campaign of duplicity.

It’s hard to imagine anyone quite so powerful as the monster they depict, particularly if the supposed villain is a diminutive woman in an era when women did not have the vote and were barred from most influential occupations. Indeed, much of the book is a record of the obstacles Sanger faced as she struggled to help disadvantaged women learn how to space their children and produce fewer of them. She had frequent run-ins with Catholic prelates, of course. Time and again the police raided her headquarters, destroyed her property, terrorized her clients, and hauled her off to jail. Courts usually ruled against her. Congress repeatedly refused to consider bills favoring the distribution of information about contraception.

Yet nothing could stop the hundreds of thousands of women who wrote to her begging for help, and nothing could stop Sanger from attempting to provide it.

On “one stifling mid-July day of 1912,” Sanger, a public health nurse who worked in New York’s slums, had had an epiphany. A truck driver, Jake Sachs, had called a doctor to help his 28-year-old wife, who was dying of septicemia following a self-induced abortion. The young couple already had three children, and the wife was convinced they could afford no more. The doctor sent for Sanger, and for two weeks the two of them worked to save Mrs. Sachs. At the end she pulled through, but the doctor warned that another pregnancy would kill her.

“I know, doctor,” she replied timidly, “but,” and she hesitated as though it took all her courage to say it, “what can I do to prevent it?”
   The doctor was a kindly man, and he had worked hard to save her, but such incidents had become so familiar to him that he had long since lost whatever delicacy he might once have had. He laughed good-naturedly. “You want to have your cake and eat it too, do you? Well, it can’t be done.”
   Then picking up his hat and bag to depart he said, “Tell Jake to sleep on the roof.” [91]

Three months later, Jake Sachs again called Mrs. Sanger, who again rushed to their apartment. Mrs. Sachs died within ten minutes of her arrival. That night, Sanger paced for hours through city streets.

When I finally arrived home and let myself quietly in, all the household was sleeping. I looked out my window and down upon the dimly lighted city. Its pains and griefs crowded in upon me, a moving picture rolled before my eyes with photographic clearness: women writhing in travail to bring forth little babies; the babies themselves naked and hungry, wrapped in newspapers to keep them from the cold; six-year-old children with pinched, pale, wrinkled faces, old in concentrated wretchedness, pushed into gray and fetid cellars, crouching on stone floors, their small scrawny hands scuttling through rags, making lamp shades, artificial flowers; white coffins, black coffins, coffins, coffins interminably passing in never-ending succession. The scenes piled one upon another on another. I could bear it no longer.
   … I went to bed, knowing that no matter what it might cost, I was finished with palliatives and superficial cures; I was resolved to seek out the root of evil, to do something to change the destiny of mothers whose miseries were as vast as the sky. [92]

In 1912, contraception was illegal. Doctors could not dispense contraceptive devices to women (though apparently they were allowed to give men condoms to prevent STDs). The Comstock law prohibited even speaking or writing about contraception. Somehow the rich knew how to get around those laws; their families tended to be of modest size. The poor, however, had no idea how to space their children or limit their number. As a result, many desperately poor women gave birth 12, 15, even 18 times, if they lived so long. The majority of immigrant and working-class children died before reaching adulthood, and the survivors were often malnourished, sickly, uneducated, and often brain damaged as well.

Today Americans rightly protest the cruel treatment of dogs in puppy mills. A mere hundred years ago, many urban Americans lived in conditions that were just as bad. And almost nobody dared to tell women that they didn’t have to have a baby every year, that they could limit their children to a number they could support. Nobody dared to provide them with devices that would enable them to have fewer births, but also fewer deaths and more surviving children. Almost nobody, that is, but Margaret Sanger and the people who worked with her.

Her story is more than a history of birth control in America. Much of it reads like a vivid travel memoir: Sanger visited many countries and recorded her observations and impressions. It is also a fascinating social history of the now almost-forgotten lifestyles and mores of the early 20th century. Besides, the book is fun to read: Sanger is a clever writer. She describes one newly married couple, for example, as having “little but love, faith, and hope to save them from charity.” Here is her one-sentence characterization of a lawyer she consulted: “The seeds of social service had been planted in him; his legal training only temporarily slowed down their growth.”

So what about Sanger’s supposed secret schemes of race purification? I found no evidence of them in this book. Some of her supporters were indeed eugenicists – people who thought that the mentally and morally unfit should be sterilized. That view was quite common until at least mid-20th century (my own evangelical parents said similar things) and Sanger probably shared it, but it was not her primary concern. The way she wanted to purify the race was to allow people to choose the number of children they bore, so that they could adequately feed, clothe, and educate their families. Then, she believed, far fewer children would be sickly, far fewer mothers would die in childbirth, and far more children would live to adulthood. In this way, she thought, the human race would become stronger.

Interestingly, some of Sanger’s views are at odds with the views of many Planned Parenthood advocates today. In October of 1916, she opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Women were admitted in groups to learn how to plan their families.

To each group, [she writes,] we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way – no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way – it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun. [217]

Her pro-life views conflicted with those of a prominent German gynecologist she interviewed in 1920. When she opined that abortion was a ridiculous substitute for contraception,

the doctor rose, his chest sticking out; he buttoned his coat, bowed formally, and inquired, “Where did you say you came from?”
   “New York City.”
   “Are you sure you are not from France or Belgium?”
   “Certainly not.”
   “Nobody who has the welfare of Germany at heart could talk to me as you have this morning. Only enemies could come here to give such information [about contraception] to our women.”
   I wished he would sit down; he made me nervous. But I went on. “Why is it such an act of enmity to advocate contraceptives rather than abortions? Abortions, as you know yourself, may be quite dangerous, whereas reliable contraceptives are harmless. Why do you oppose them?”
   To my horror he replied, “We will never give over the control of our numbers to the women themselves. What, let them control the future of the human race? With abortions it is in our hands; we make the decisions, and they must come to us.”
   That was not the tone of this doctor alone but also that of most of his confrères. [286]

Margaret Sanger was, I believe, pro-life. She was also pro-choice. People on both sides of today’s culture war have a lot to thank her for.

It’s easy for us older folks to complain that the world is going to hell. Whenever I get in a curmudgeonly mood, the surest cure is to watch an old movie or read an old book and notice how people lived and how women were regarded back then. Sanger’s autobiography made me profoundly grateful to live in an era when women are, comparatively speaking, respected; when most children – even of the poor – survive to adulthood; and when the Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech is taken for granted.

Planned Parenthood and the Soviet Model

пионер = всем ребятам пример

By Paul Kengor on 4.15.11 @ 6:08AM [- источник -]

"[W]e could well take example from Russia," advised Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, "where birth control instruction is part of the regular welfare service of the government."
My, how far modern liberal Democrats have progressed.
Sanger, Planned Parenthood matron and racial-eugenicist, who ran a "Negro Project," who spoke to a KKK rally in 1926, who wished to rid America of its "human weeds" and "morons" and "imbeciles," and who wanted birth control for "race improvement," had just returned from a pilgrimage to Stalin's Russia. Like many Potemkin progressives, she went there to soak in the glorious triumphs of the communist motherland. Each progressive dupe had a particular interest; John Dewey, for instance, hailed the Bolsheviks' "Great Experiment" in public education. Sanger marveled at Lenin's and Stalin's wondrous advancements for women.
And so, in the June 1935 edition of her flagship publication, Birth Control Review, in an article titled, "Birth Control in Russia," Sanger concluded:

Theoretically, there are no obstacles to birth control in Russia. It is accepted … on the grounds of health and human right…. [W]e could well take example from Russia, where there are no legal restrictions, no religious condemnation, and where birth control instruction is part of the regular welfare service of the government.

I could quote more, including this jaw-dropping prediction: "All the officials with whom I discussed the matter stated that as soon as the economic and social plans of Soviet Russia are realized, neither abortions nor contraception will be necessary or desired. A functioning Communistic society will assure the happiness of every child, and will assume the full responsibility for its welfare and education."
Now there, ladies and gentleman, is progressive utopianism, an absolute faith in central planners. Contrary to the Planned Parenthood founder's optimism, abortions skyrocketed to seven million annually (overestimte;) in the USSR.
Looks like Margaret Sanger was wrong on that one. Talk about being duped.
What struck me in recently re-reading this article is how Democrats in America have arrived at Sanger's ideal, where Planned Parenthood's services have become, in their mind, "part of the regular welfare service of the government" -- just like good old Stalinist Russia.
Consider the hysterical response by Democrats to completely legitimate Republican attempts -- amid record deficits and debt levels -- to cut taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood:
"The dangerous, ideological cuts to Planned Parenthood that passed the House are never, never, never going to pass the Senate," vowed Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), echoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who told House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) that there's no chance defunding would pass the Senate. Indeed, how could there be? Democrats have a majority there.
Reid said Republicans had placed a "bull's eye on women in America," preventing them from getting "health services they need."
Democrats are united in their vitriol: "The real reason that the right-wing extremists in Congress orchestrated this outrageous government shutdown is to try and defund Planned Parenthood as part of their ideological assault on women's health care," said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO).
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) calmly explained, "This is a war on women. They're trying to inject their politics and their religion into local family planning."
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) insisted that defunding efforts were "nothing more than an opportunity for the right wing in the House to sock it to women."
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called it a "very dangerous situation for the health -- the reproductive health -- of women across our country." Pelosi told reporters: "It's degrading to women; it's disrespectful; it doesn't make any sense; and if you want to reduce the number of abortions in our country, you must commit to supporting contraception and family planning." The lifelong Roman Catholic and mother of five said Republicans were using Planned Parenthood as a "whipping boy."
And the always measured Barbara Boxer described Republican efforts as a "vendetta" against women, insisting, "Behind each of these Republican proposed cuts, there are thousands, maybe millions of people who would be hurt."
I thought liberals had called for civility? Well, I guess civility stops when conservatives want to kill American women.
Remember when President Obama referred to "tax cuts for the wealthy" as the Republicans' "Holy Grail"? Well, taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood appears to be the Democrats' Holy Grail (click here). As was reported earlier this week, as Obama and Boehner battled over a budget compromise, Obama drew a line in the sand. As Boehner pushed the president to defund Planned Parenthood, Obama finally snapped: "Nope. Zero. John, this is it."
The room fell silent. Obama had hoisted the Holy Grail.
You'd think from Democrats' reaction that taxpayer funding of the nation's largest abortion provider was Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, an inalienable right in the Declaration, the heart of Federalist 10, Washington's Farewell Address, the writings of Franklin and Adams and John Locke, the cornerstone of the New Deal and Great Society, a sacred political covenant with the American taxpayer, etched in cement at the base of the Washington Monument.
It's preposterous that America has run so far aground that one could even seriously entertain directing taxpayer dollars to America's largest abortion provider. The "right" to an abortion had to be read into the Constitution, at the total exclusion of sections guaranteeing a right to life, such as the 14th Amendment. Abortion was read into the "right to privacy," three words which themselves don't exist in the Constitution. Democrats should praise their stars that they have that much; even then, it isn't enough. Now they want those of us who are pro-life to fork over our dollars to an organization that exterminates more unborn babies (millions of them) than any other. It's downright obscene.
The Democratic Party has truly lost it.
It took Democrats a while to get there, but, finally, almost a century after the launching of the Bolshevik Revolution and Margaret Sanger's organization, they've finally arrived at where Sanger and the Soviets found common ground. They indeed act as if, as Sanger said about Stalin's Russia, "birth control… is part of the regular service of the government."
The saddest thing of all is that neither they, nor their supporters, nor America, seem to comprehend the outrageousness of their position.

Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include  The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and the newly released  Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.

TV abortion debate

Legalized abortion saves lives

This billboard is not a reflection of reality.  Legalized abortion saves lives.  As Linda Greenhouse points out in her recent Opinionator Column, anti-abortion activists have at times tried to sow seeds of doubt in minority communities where legalized abortion plays an important role in family stability and minimizing the effects of poverty by suggesting that abortion is an intentional movement on the part of whites to limit the number of black and latino babies born in this country.  Greenhouse also rightly pairs this fact with the historical figures showing the danger of illegal abortions to those same communities.

Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman in Congress and once an honorary president of Naral, called the comparison of abortion and family planning to genocide “male rhetoric, for male ears.”  Greenhouse says of Chisholm, “She cited a study of women who died in pregnancy. Illegal abortion was the cause of 25 percent of the white women’s deaths, 49 percent of the black women’s, and 65 percent of the Puerto Ricans’. She also observed that 90 percent of the “therapeutic” abortions in New York City — the safe and legal ones during the regime of criminalization — were performed on white women.”
Chisholm fought for the legalization of abortion, to make the procedure safe and on-demand for women in New York and around the country.  After New York legalized elective abortion, “[m]aternal mortality in New York City dropped by more than half during the first year, to an all-time recorded low. Infant mortality also dropped to a new low, which the New York City Health Services Administration attributed to the availability of abortion to women most likely to give birth to babies at the greatest risk of dying, including very young women and poor women who had not received adequate prenatal care. The number of births to unmarried women dropped for the first time. As knowledge spread of the availability of abortion, more and more women terminated their pregnancies in the first trimester — from 67 percent during the first two months of legalization to 86 percent 10 months later. (The figure today is 88 percent.)”
Greenhouse’s piece brings to the forefront of the abortion issue the fact that whether or not abortion is available as an option to women is about more than the moral implications for the fetus.  There are moral, social, medical, and other implications for the mothers and for the society of which they are a part.  As the House continues to try to use legislative tactics to throw up obstacles in front of women seeking abortions, advocates for safe and legal abortion need to read critiques like Greenhouse’s and be prepared to confront abortion opponents with the realities of prohibition.

source +
на десерт :
Wells, Hitler And The World State

US historically legal abortion

In fact, abortion was legal in the U.S. up until the mid-1800s, when Victorian, Christian moralists pushed forward a national censorship campaign to rid the country of “pornography” and other sexual deviances. In 1873, the Comstock Act criminalized contraception throughout the country and Anthony Comstock himself sought to arrest Margaret Sanger decades later when she returned from Europe with “new” contraceptive methods based on practices dating back thousands of years.

...Philosophers, such as Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, midwives and abortionists, including Dame Trotula of Salerno and Madame Restelle, and activists, such as Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger, are memorialized through their portraits.

have a look @ 40 Days for Life

The 40-day campaign tracks Biblical history, where God used 40-day periods to transform individuals, communities ... and the entire world. From Noah in the flood to Moses on the mountain to the disciples after Christ's resurrection, it is clear that God sees the transformative value of His people accepting and meeting a 40-day challenge.

source:  4000 Years for Choice

abortion timeline from 3000s BCE till Roe v Wade 
статейко оказалось весьма провокативной и полезной :)

'Glenn Beck': Segregation in the 20th Century

Over 100,000 Japanese-Americans alone were forced into camps called war relocation camps. It sounds pleasant. Can we go?
There were separate camps for German-American citizens to relocate.
OK. So, we got that. Oh, and here's science.
You have Margaret Sanger. Science lauded by the left for her family planning. Evil! Read her words. Evil!
She was an open proponent of eugenics, who wrote something to a congressman called in 1932, "a plan for peace," in which she proposed keeping the doors of immigration closed to all of those who would be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as the feeble-minded idiots, morons, insane, criminal and others.
She advocated abortions to stop from creating socially undesirable people. Oh! Who were they?
You see how the forces are beginning to move? The government, segregating. Commerce, segregating. Science, breed, the perfect race.

надо почитать повнимательнее

NEW LEGISLATION, NEW PILL, OLD PROBLEM FOR AMERICAN WOMEN

For OpEdNews: Elayne Clift - Writer

The recent success of mega-wealthy, so-called Pro-Life Republican women in their political campaigns for U.S. Senate and several gubernatorial seats, coupled with new legislation by some states to curb abortion, and the conservative right's attempts to stop a new contraceptive pill, are reason for concern. For women of childbearing age, and those who care about them, it's déjà vu all over again as they try to keep abortion available, legal, and punishment-free, and to keep contraceptive choices available.

The use of ultrasound to stop a woman having an abortion has been mounting for the past several years. To date twenty states have enacted legislation to encourage or require the use of ultrasound to this end. For example, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi require abortion providers to use ultrasound in order to give women a chance to peek into their wombs prior to terminating a pregnancy.

Oklahoma went a step further. The Republican-controlled legislature there forced through a law over the governor's veto requiring that women be shown an ultrasound image and that they be given a detailed verbal description of the fetus's developmental stage. While women needing an abortion for emergency medical reasons are exempt, victims of rape or incest are not. The law has since been suspended because of a pending legal challenge. Limited research on this practice shows that while women may well choose to view what's going on in their uterus, it does not alter their abortion decision. Sometimes it reinforces it.

Ultrasound isn't the only way to stress out women who have made one of life's most difficult and private -- decisions. In Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who could be a Republican presidential candidate in 2012, signed a bill that bars insurance companies from covering abortion in insurance exchanges as called for under new federal health regulations. In Oklahoma, Gov. Brad Henry's veto was overridden by a zealous Republican legislature which now requires doctors who perform abortions to answer a set of more than three dozen questions about each procedure they do, including the woman's reason for ending her pregnancy. Arizona, which has a conservative woman governor, passed a law banning coverage of abortion in the state employees' health plan while in Nebraska all abortions are banned after twenty weeks even though the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that viability occurs at twenty-six weeks. In view of that, the Nebraska law is likely to face a legal challenge.

According to the well-respected Guttmacher Institute, close to 400 state bills regulating abortion have been introduced this year and at least two dozen of them have passed. These bills are "of serious consequence" according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which describes the onslaught of new legislation as "an avalanche." The Center has filed suits against six of the laws to date while the National Right to Life Committee calls 2010 "a good year" in a "friendlier climate."

Meanwhile a battle was mounted recently against a new "morning after" contraceptive pill developed by a French company and currently available in 22 countries. The drug, called Ella, works for 120 hours after sexual intercourse, notably longer than Plan B's 72 hours. But Ella is chemically similar to the controversial RU-486 in that it also acts to block the action of progesterone. While RU-486 can induce abortion, it is unclear whether Ella would do that; still, "Pro-Lifers" wanted to see it banned. The Food and Drug Administration convened an advisory panel to consider Ella in June. The panel voted unanimously that the FDA should approve the drug, which it did last month.

American women have been fighting for the right to reproductive privacy and self-determination ever since Margaret Sanger began her struggle to provide sex education and contraception to women in the early 20^th century. They've made many gains since then, to be sure. Still, ten years into the 21^st century women continue to confront forces that present serious challenges to their human right to bear children if and when they choose. The latest challenges, whether from repressive state legislators or misguided individual zealots, are a reminder that the task is far from complete.

www.elayneclift.com
Elayne Clift is a writer,lecturer, workshop leader and activist. She is senior correspondent for Women's Feature Service, columnist for the Keene (NH) Sentinel and Brattleboro (VT) Commons and a contributor to various publications internationally

колорадские пионэры

In 1967, Colorado became the first state in the US to legalize abortion.
Colorado’s bill was carefully steered through the lower house by then Denver Representative Richard D. Lamm. Lamm was the abortion bill’s principle sponsor. The abortion bill was the first one to pass a state legislature in the United States setting off a domino effect of other bills in various other states. It was signed into law by then Governor John A. Love.
Richard D. Lamm is Co-Director of the Institute for Public Policy Studies at the University of Denver, and the former three-term Governor of Colorado, (1975-1987).
Today Lamm sits on the boards of several anti-immigration organizations the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and (PFIR), Progressives for Immigration Reform, and (CAPS), Californians for Population Stabilization.

source

Without women's voice in government, these laws might not exist

If in 1920, the 19th Amendment had never been ratified, many rights and laws that women (and in many cases men) enjoy today may never have passed.

If in 1920, the 19th Amendment had never been ratified, many rights and laws that women (and in many cases men) enjoy today may never have passed. Here are some of the most significant rulings that may have always been “What Ifs” if it weren’t for early suffragists.

The Pill (1960)

Prior to 1960, women used Lysol and lemons to stop procreation. Almost 50 years before that, Margaret Sanger became the voice of birth control. She began trying to overturn the Comstock Law — birth control legislation that outlawed contraceptives — as early as 1916.

In 1936, she helped bring the case of United States v. One Package to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision allowed physicians to legally mail birth control devices and information throughout the country.

In May 1960, the Federal Drug Administration approved the birth-control pill. On Aug. 18, 1960, it was sold for the first time. By 1963, 1.2 million women were on the pill.

Finally, in 1965, the Supreme Court case of Griswold v. Connecticut overturned the Comstock Law, ruling that the private use of contraceptives was a constitutional right.

Title IX (1972)

At the time it was passed, fewer than 30,000 female students participated in sports at NCAA member institutions. To put that in perspective, that’s the average amount of students in total that attend Texas Tech — and that was nationwide. Today, thanks in large part to Title IX, that number has increased six-fold. At the high school level, the number of girls participating in athletics has increased ten-fold.

The origins of Title IX arose from the feminist movements of the late 1950s and 1960s. However, sports were not the only arena the law affected. Research shows that females in the classrooms of colleges and office environments felt its rippling effects across America.

Roe v. Wade (1973)

Fought and won by two female lawyers, this historic Supreme Court decision overturning a Texas interpretation of abortion law and making abortion legal in the United States is still one of the most controversial verdicts by the court. The Roe v. Wade decision held that a woman, with her doctor, could choose abortion in earlier months of pregnancy without restriction, and with restrictions in later months, based on the right to privacy. The alias “Jane Roe” was used for Norma McCorvey, on whose behalf the suit was originally filed, alleging the abortion law in Texas violated her constitutional rights and the rights of other women.

Sexual harassment (1986)

A law that gave women the right to fight back against workplace cat calls and indecent proposals, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Vinson v. Meriton Savings Bank that sexual harassment can be illegal sexual discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The court held that sexual harassment is illegal when the workplace is permeated with “discriminatory intimidation, ridicule and insult” that changes the conditions of the victims’ employment and creates an abusive working environment.

Family Leave Act (1993)

Thank this law if you announced you were pregnant to your employers and didn’t lose your job. The FMLA is a labor law requiring larger employers to provide employees job-protected unpaid leave due to a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform his or her job, or to care for a sick family member, or to care for a new child (including by birth, adoption or foster care). Prior to its passing, the provision of leave for family or medical reasons (i.e., a hysterectomy, breast cancer) were up to the discretion of the individual employers. At the time, if you announced you were expecting, you could be expecting to find a new job.

The Lilly Ledbetter Act (2009)

It was passed, but it hasn’t truly kicked in yet. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law by President Obama as an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It all began when Lilly Ledbetter, a production supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama, filed an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination.

The ruling ensures that women everywhere can effectively challenge unequal pay for doing the same job as a man.


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shelly.gonzales@lubbockonline.com • 766-8747

Little white pills that may end the abortion impasse

link

Could the decades-long global impasse over abortion worldwide be overcome - by little white pills costing around 60p each?
That seems possible, for these pills are beginning to revolutionise abortion around the world, especially in poor countries. One result may be tens of thousands of women's lives saved each year.
Five-sixths of abortions take place in developing countries, where poor sterilisation and training often make the procedure dangerous. Up to 70,000 women die a year from complications of abortions, according to the World Health Organisation. But researchers are finding an alternative that is safe, cheap and very difficult for governments to restrict - misoprostol, a medication originally intended to prevent stomach ulcers.
"I feel like people must have felt when they discovered the nuclear bomb," said Dr Beverly Winikoff, president of Gynuity Health Projects, a non-profit research institution on reproductive health. "This technology is world-shaking."
This pharmaceutical approach is called "medical abortion". In Europe and the US, it typically consists of two sets of "M" pills. The first is mifepristone, formerly known as RU-486, and then a day or two later the misoprostol. Using the drugs in combination produces a miscarriage more than 95 per cent of the time in early pregnancy. But mifepristone is difficult to obtain in much of the world as it is used only to induce abortions. In contrast, misoprostol is widely available and can't easily be banned because it is also used for ulcers and can save lives of women with postpartum haemorrhages. Whatever one thinks of misoprostol for abortions, it also is a potential lifesaver.
Researchers are finding that if women take misoprostol alone, effectiveness drops to 80 to 85 per cent. That may sound low, but it's typically far better and safer than alternatives that women turn to, Dr Winikoff noted.
"Medical abortion represents a revolution in women's reproductive health," said Dana Hovig, chief executive of Marie Stopes International, which provides women's reproductive health services in 43 countries. "It saves women's lives and has potential to increase access to safe abortion."
Medical abortion causes a miscarriage that is indistinguishable from a natural one. That's important for women in countries where they risk arrest if they seek hospital aid after a botched abortion. The risks to a woman seem no greater than with a natural miscarriage, and there's no known harm to a woman who turns out not to have been pregnant after all. One serious downside is that misoprostol is suspected of causing birth defects, perhaps 1 per cent of the time, but only if it fails and the pregnancy continues to term.
It's not clear how late in pregnancy medical abortion is feasible.

Source: Nicholas Kristof, The Scotsman, 3 August 2010

http://www.thepillispersonal.org/?source=pillispersonal_afhp

The History of The Pill is Personal!
отличная флэшка -- оч полезная, но изрядно романтичная

Nationally, there seems to be less of a emphasis on reversing Roe v. Wade, and more of an emphasis on limiting access to abortion services. This especially seems to have come to a head in Iowa recently because Planned Parenthood has begun to use closed-circuit video conferencing to administer pills for medical abortions, effectively increasing access for women who live in the state’s more rural areas. Are those who are against abortion highlighting this so emphatically because they see it as a direct assault to a strategy that seemed to be working?

источник

Contraception, abortion, and the eugenics movement

What Sanger’s liberal admirers are eager to downplay is that she was a thoroughgoing racist who subscribed completely to the views of E. A. Ross and other “raceologists.” Indeed, she made many of them seem tame.

Sanger was born into a poor family of eleven children in Corning, New York, in 1879. In 1902 she received her degree as a registered nurse. In 1911 she moved to New York City, where she fell in with the transatlantic bohemian avant-garde of the burgeoning fascist moment. “Our living-room,” she wrote in her autobiography, “became a gathering place where liberals, anarchists, Socialists and I.W.W.’s could meet.” A member of the Women’s Committee of the New York Socialist Party, she participated in all the usual protests and demonstrations. In 1912 she started writing what amounted to a sex-advice column for the New York Call, dubbed “What Every Girl Should Know.” The overriding theme of her columns was the importance of contraception.

European abortions' map

В оригинале карта кликабельна, что на ней и написато

адрес оригинала на бебеси

карта 2007 года -- с тех пор Испания и Португалия отодвинулись от польского мракобесия

упг: пришол в голову адвокативный (прости хоспади) хот:
имея в виду Испанию и Португалию пока в Европе маятник движется в сторону дальнейшей либерализации абортного законодательства, исключая Польшу, которая (руками покойного Качинского) возможно запускает (весь евро) маятник в противуположную сторону

уместно вспомнить, что Гайдар полагал, что траектория России -- повторение траектории Польши с неким лагом по времени

наблюдается пока безрадостное шествие в фарватере Белоруссии, но это уже не к адвокации, а ваще

Dutch Abortions

Induced Abortion in the Netherlands: A Decade of Experience, 1970-80, by Evert Ketting and Paul Schnabel

ссылка на jstor

статья про Тиллера

в русском ньюзвике

см

needed services

Margaret Sanger made statements on eugenics nearly a century ago that were wrong and are
completely unacceptable. They have never represented the values of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood's mission is to provide preventive health care to everyone — in every community — regardless of their race, ethnicity,sex, religion, sexual orientation, or ability to pay.

Planned Parenthood provides needed services