marlowe

"I sit and drink pennyroyal tea... distill the life that's inside of me. I sti and drink pennyroyal tea. I'm anemic royalty."
How many of you knew that the song was about abortion? Pennyroyal is a oil or herb that you can get to cause spontaneous abortions... It can also lead to internal hemmoraging and death. If we don't protect our rights to abortion, more people will be risking their lives everyday on methods like this tea.


"WALK for JUSTICE and SPEAK UP FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS

Walk with the NARAL Pro-Choice Georgia Team at the 2006 Walk for Women's Lives! This is a very dangerous time for women's reproductive freedom in Georgia, and we must take our message to the streets. Now is the time to take action and here is your opportunity.

The Georgia Walk for Women's Lives in Atlanta is April 9, from 2:00 - 5:00 pm outside the Georgia Capitol building in downtown Atlanta.

Registration is at 2:00 pm, Walk step-off is at 2:30 pm, and the Rally, speak-out and lunch will immediately follow.

Come out and help stop the war on women's reproductive choice and freedom! Walk with NARAL Pro-Choice Georgia - RSVP today!! We will soon host a sign-making party, so don't miss out.

Don't let Georgia become the next South Dakota!

For more information and to register, please email Olaava at olaava@prochoicega.org, with "Walk Participant" in the subject line."



77% anti-abortion leaders are men. 100% of them will never be pregnant.

I'll be there. This is one of the few things in life that I feel passionately about. If you have ever known anyone sexually active who wasn't ready for kids... come out and support our right to birth control, support our right for plan B emergency contraceptives (even though the gov. already said that pharmacists have the right to refuse to fill your prescription if it goes against there morals... could you imagine trying to get plan B and having on 72 hours to do so that you won't get pregnant and the pharmacists refusing to give you the pill???!!!???), our right to abortions, and other countries' rights to have planned parenthood come in and help them (The government had a gag rule that planned parenthood couldn't go over to other countries and hand out condoms or help since they were an institution that supported abortion.)

Women are consistently held down. We are paid less for the same jobs when we have the same qualifications. There are glass ceilings that we can't prove exist (when women won't be hired into the system higher than a certain rank or position). These wage gaps force women to stay at home with the kids and in the kitchen since most people can't afford to make less money by having the man do so. We don't even have a choice... We are stereotyped into people that are too weak and fragile to take care of ourselves. We are treated as invalids by men who want to "take care of us". We are viewed primarily as sexual objects. They put 50 billion women on tv with a very few percentage of them actually looking like the average women (most are models), but can put "ugly men" on all they want... enforcing the idea in the people's subconscious mind that all women are supposed to be beautiful.

We are working on breaking all of these walls down and if we don't have a choice right now about who is going to have to stay home and take care of the kids... we should at least have a choice on whether or not to have them. One slip up should not condemn these women and make them either (a) give up their lives to raise a child or (b) contribute to an overpopulated orphanage system (of which I have had many friends who were taumatized by being in).

Keep your laws off of my body.



Two articles from Planned Parenthood:


Medical and Social Health Benefits Since Abortion Was Made Legal in the U.S.
Despite the claims of anti-choice ideologues, many demonstrable health benefits physical, emotional, and social have accrued to Americans since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in its decision,Roe v. Wade .

The most important benefit, of course, has been the end of an era that supported the proliferation of "back alley butchers" who were motivated by money alone and performed unsafe, medically incompetent abortions that left many women dead or injured. And compassionate mainstream physicians, who provided clandestine, medically safe abortions, who did not exploit their patients, and who were motivated by principle rather than by financial concerns, no longer had to fear imprisonment and the loss of their medical licenses for performing abortions after Roe was decided (Joffe, 1995). Today, as the 33rd anniversary of this landmark decision approaches, it is important to remember how far Roe has brought us as a society and to note some of the many benefits that resulted from the legalization of abortion.

Roe v. Wade did not "invent" abortion.

* Estimates of the annual number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s range from 200,000 to 1.2 million (Cates, et al., 2003; Rock & Jones, 2003; Tietze & Henshaw, 1986).
* In 1969, one year before New York State legalized abortion, complications from abortions accounted for 23 percent of all pregnancy-related admissions to municipal hospitals in New York City (Institute of Medicine, 1975).
* After California liberalized its abortion law in 1967, the number of admissions for infection resulting from illegal abortion at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center fell by almost 75 percent (Seward, et al., 1973).

Since Roe v. Wade, women have obtained abortions earlier in pregnancy when health risks to them are at the lowest.

* In 1973, only 36 percent of abortions were performed at or before eight weeks of pregnancy (CDC, 1999).
* Today, 88 percent of all legal abortions are performed within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and 59 percent take place within the first eight weeks of pregnancy. Only 1.4 percent occur after 20 weeks (CDC, 2004).

Deaths from abortion declined dramatically during the past two decades.

* In 1965, when abortion was still illegal nationwide except in cases of life endangerment, at least 193 women died from illegal abortions, and illegal abortion accounted for nearly 17 percent of all deaths due to pregnancy and childbirth in that year (NCHS, 1967).
* In 1973, the risk of dying from an abortion was 3.4 deaths per 100,000 legal abortions. This rate fell to 1.3 by 1977 (Gold, 1990). Today, abortion is one of the most commonly performed clinical procedures, and the current death rate from abortion at all stages of gestation is 0.6 per 100,000 procedures. This is eleven times safer than carrying a pregnancy to term and nearly twice as safe as a penicillin injection (AGI, 2005; Rock & Jones, 2003; Paul et al., 1999; Gold, 1990).

Medically safe, legal abortion has had a profound impact on American women and their families.

* Couples at risk of having children affected with severe and often fatal genetic disorders have been willing to conceive because of the availability of amniocentesis and safe, legal abortion (Milunsky, 1989).
* Following the legalization of abortion, the largest decline in birthrates were seen among women for whom the health and social consequences of unintended childbearing are the greatest women over 35, teenagers, and unmarried women (Levine, et al., 1999). Today, thirty percent of the abortions in the U.S. are provided to women over 35 and to teenagers (CDC, 2004).
* In 2001, nearly 60 percent of all abortions were performed at or before eight weeks of pregnancy, when the procedure is the safest one death for every one million procedures (AGI, 2005).
* Half of all pregnancies in the U.S. each year are unintended, and about half of these are terminated by medically safe, legal abortions. In 2002, 1.29 million abortions took place, down from an estimated 1.61 million in 1990. From 1973 through 2002, more than 42 million legal abortions occurred (AGI, 2005; Henshaw, 2003).
* If safe, legal abortion were not available, more women would experience unwanted childbearing, and unwanted childbearing affects the entire family. Mothers with unwanted births suffer from higher levels of depression and lower levels of happiness than mothers without unwanted births. They spank and slap their children more often than other mothers, and spend less leisure time outside the home with their children. Lower-quality mother/child relationships are not limited to the child born as a result of the unwanted pregnancy all the children in the family suffer (Barber, et al., 1999).
* The legalization of abortion has also improved the average living conditions of children. Because of increased access to abortion, cohorts born after 1973 are less likely than those born before 1973 to be in single-parent households, to live in poverty, and to receive welfare. They also experience lower infant mortality rates (Gruber, et al., 1999).
* In 1973, the majority of abortions were performed in hospitals. Today, most abortions are performed in clinics. This change in locale has also allowed more women to have access to comprehensive reproductive health services, including, but not limited to, contraceptive counseling, family planning services, and gynecological care (Cates, et al., 2003).

The health and well-being of women and children suffer the most in states that have the most stringent anti-abortion laws.

* Compared to pro-choice states, anti-abortion states spend far less money per child on a range of services such as foster care, education, welfare, and the adoption of children who have physical and mental disabilities (Schroedel, 2000).
* The states that have the strongest anti-abortion laws are also the states in which women suffer from lower levels of education and higher levels of poverty, as well as from a lower ratio of female-to-male earnings. They also have a lower percentage of women in the legislature and fewer mandates requiring insurance providers to cover minimum hospital stays after childbirth (Schroedel, 2000).

In sum, no amount of controversy over abortion can negate the evidence that American women, men, children, and families have reaped great benefits to their physical, mental, and social health from the U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision in Roe v. Wade. Any erosion of a woman's right and access to medically safe, legal abortion jeopardizes the health of women, their families, and the nation as a whole.



Clinics Nationwide Stay Open
The South Dakota ban on nearly all abortions, recently signed into law by Gov. Mike Rounds (R), poses a significant threat to reproductive rights. However, the law is not currently in effect, and it's important for women to know that for the time being, abortion remains legal and accessible in South Dakota, in other states considering similar bans, and in all of the United States.

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that it was unconstitutional for states to ban all abortions. Since that ruling, states have not been able to enforce bans on all abortions. Unless the court overturns its decision in Roe, abortion will remain legal in all 50 states. The threat of the court overturning Roe is a real one, but for now, as long as Roe stands, abortion bans like South Dakota's will not be enforced.

The Planned Parenthood health center in Sioux Falls, SD is still open to support the needs of the women of South Dakota. In addition to birth control and the full range of reproductive health services, the Sioux Falls clinic still offers pregnancy testing, pregnancy options information, and abortion services to women who need them.

We have learned that some women believe that abortion has been made illegal in some states. This is not the case. We urge women who need abortion in states that are considering abortion bans to contact us or other reputable providers. They should not attempt to provide themselves with abortion. Self-induced abortion without medical supervision is very dangerous and is an unnecessary risk.

Women in South Dakota and any other state seeking abortion services can call 1-800-230-PLAN to be connected to the nearest Planned Parenthood health center.