In response to several state ballot initiatives that would restrict reproductive freedom, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women have put together this video with the stories of real women - many of them profoundly anti-abortion - whose rights and health were jeopardized by similar laws.
Laws that "protect" a fetus from the moment of conception on may sound good, but they're short-sighted and have no basis in reality. How exactly is a law that would send a woman to prison for having a miscarriage "pro-life"?
Today the Winston-Salem Journal endorsed Senator McCain for president, in part because McCain's philosophy frowns on government intrusion into people's private affairs. Um...? What could be more personal than conceiving, bearing and having a child? Yet it's the conservative lawmakers like McCain who are leading the charge to put hospitals, anti-choice groups, some random guy in Congress - anyone other than the mother herself - in charge of her health. Or, as McCain put it, "health."
I'll say it until I'm blue in the face - reproductive freedom is about so much more than abortion. Laws that supposedly protect children have been used to strip childbearing women of their most basic rights and even their lives, and they will be used that way again. As I wrote in my letter to the Journal this morning, is it crazy to think that women deserve at least a portion of the autonomy McCain would grant to, say, oil company executives? I think we're capable enough to handle ourselves, personally.
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