Results tagged “Pro-Choice” from Blog for Choice

Thanksgiving is one of those win-win holidays: your responsibilities are to eat, sleep, and enjoy family.

This year, the Thanksgiving conversation may focus on recent topics like...oh...let's say, the elections. Uncle Marvin can't help himself and he starts in on a few of your favorite lawmakers who defeated a few of his favorite candidates.

Fortunately, you know your stuff. You've checked out our info pages for the lowdown on how to talk about your pro-choice values in the face of "hostile interrogators."

Thanks to all our pro-choice supporters proudly talking about protecting women's access to birth control and abortion, we were able to defeat so many anti-choice candidates. You can tell Uncle Marvin about the anti-choice politicians who oppose abortion services even for survivors of rape or incest.

You can tell Uncle Marvin that voters broadly support the new contraceptive-coverage policy and don't want to see Planned Parenthood defunded.

You can let him know that on Election Day, voters rejected these extreme anti-choice positions. Not only did they re-elect our pro-choice president, they also voted 43 new pro-choice faces into Congress.

Also, you can let him know that pro-choice Americans still have some challenges ahead.

Anti-choice politicians in Ohio clearly didn't get the message, because they're pushing for legislation that could ban abortion services before a woman even knows she's pregnant.

And when a judge in the court case against Arizona's 20-week abortion ban asked about the tragic circumstances of a woman with a wanted pregnancy facing a severe fetal anomaly, the state's solicitor general showed his complete lack of compassion by saying, "With due respect, that's a woman's problem. She should have made that decision earlier."

Even if you and Uncle Marv have disagreed in the past, you never know...maybe you can share a point of view he hadn't considered before. And maybe your cousin in college, who overhears the discussion, will keep your conversation in mind and talk to her friends when she goes back to school.

Have a safe and wonderful holiday. Happy Thanksgiving!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

It's... 

January 22, 2012--the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which recognized a woman's right to choose safe, legal abortion--will be the seventh (yes, seventh!) annual Blog For Choice Day.

Thanks to all the pro-choice bloggers who've joined us over the years, Blog for Choice Day gets more people reading and talking about reproductive rights online on one of the most important days surrounding a woman's right to choose.

Without a doubt, 2011 was an intense year for the pro-choice community. Anti-choice politicians ignored the American people's call to focus on jobs and the economy. Instead, they spent the year waging a War on Women. The U.S. House of Representatives held more choice-related votes than in any year since 2000, and states have thus far enacted a near-record number of anti-choice measures.

That's why our Blog for Choice Day 2012 question is: What will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?

What you write up is up to you. Whether you're running for office yourself, canvassing for a pro-choice congressional or state legislative candidate, registering people to vote, or simply chatting with your friends and family about why voting pro-choice matters, we want to hear your plans for pro-choice victories at the polls. Just be sure to sign up now so we can get in touch with you and add your blog to our list.

If you don't maintain a blog or personal website, you can still participate through Facebook or Twitter. Post the Blog for Choice Day graphic on your Facebook wall.

Update your status with your plans to elect pro-choice candidates. Tag your tweet with #Tweet4Choice.

So, please join us for Blog for Choice Day 2012 on Sunday, January 22, the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade! Let's make this another successful year!

You can learn more and sign up here.

Coming on the heels of Mississippi voters' decisive rejection of Initiative 26, the extreme "personhood" measure, we have more evidence that American voters do not want politicians who attack women's freedom and privacy.

A new poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research on behalf of NARAL Pro-Choice America shows that President Obama's pro-choice position is shaping up to be a key asset for him in the 2012 election.

The poll revealed an identified group of women voters who supported the president in 2008 but are currently unsure about supporting his reelection. A large bloc of these voters says they would never vote for anyone running for president who opposes a woman's right to choose, regardless of that candidate's position on other issues.

All of the candidates for the Republican nomination oppose a woman's right to choose.

Al Quinlan, president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, explained the implications of the findings:

There is a group of women who voted for President Obama in 2008 but are not currently supporting him, and these data suggests many of them should be in his camp. Choice provides an opening for President Obama and other Democrats to create a sharp contrast with anti-choice Republicans.

In 2012, we will continue to communicate with voters to highlight the contrast between President Obama and his anti-choice Republican opponents, and ensure that the White House stays safely in pro-choice hands.

Paid for by NARAL Pro-Choice America, www.ProChoiceAmerica.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

This post originally appeared on Latinovations' La Plaza guest-blogger series. It is posted here as part of the Latina Reproductive Justice Week of Action 2011 blog carnival.

They appeared last month in Los Angeles: billboards that read in Spanish and English "El lugar más peligroso para un Latino es el vientre de su madre/The most dangerous place for a Latino is in the womb."

These billboards are the latest front in a cynical campaign by anti-choice activists targeting women of color. For several years, this campaign has used inflammatory rhetoric to attack African-American women's right to make personal, private medical decisions. Now, the campaign has shifted to attacking Latinas' rights as well.

At NARAL Pro-Choice America, we believe that no woman's reproductive choices should be questioned or subjected to more scrutiny or control based on her racial or ethnic background. Being pro-choice means protecting women's access to safe, legal abortion. It also means working on ways to help reduce the need for abortion, like improving access to birth control. And it also means supporting women who choose to carry their pregnancies to term.

NARAL Pro-Choice America is the political leader of the pro-choice movement. We use the political process to elect lawmakers who share our pro-choice values and defeat candidates who don't. We also partner with sister groups that focus on reproductive justice. Reproductive justice puts choice among broader issues important to women's equality and human rights.

You can learn more about our work by checking out our Facebook page, reading Blog for Choice, or following us on Twitter.

As president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, I'm excited that members of our organization will start blogging at La Plaza. Latinas and Latinos are key leaders of the pro-choice community, and their leadership is central to the future of our cause.

Listening is the only way we will broaden our constituency of activists. And listening means recognizing that different communities of women understand and talk about choice in different ways.

More than two years ago, we convened a task force and developed a plan to translate a portion of our website into Spanish. After a great deal of discussion, collaboration with our partners at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and coordination with our talented and tireless translator, Ligia Rivera, we launched our first Spanish-language pages last summer.

Our team spent several months working with Ligia to produce an accurate and idiomatic translation. We're all very proud of the way they've turned out, and we'll continue to add more Spanish-language pages.

I'm looking forward to continuing a dialogue here at La Plaza. Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments, either here on the comments section or at Blog for Choice, or let us know if there's a choice-related issue you're curious about, and we'll get back to you.

Tomorrow morning, I'll be heading to Minneapolis for Netroots Nation. It's one of my favorite events of the whole year -- a great chance for progressive activists to get together, plan strategy, engage in panel discussions, and make new friends. I'm looking forward to seeing some familiar faces, as well as meeting new pro-choice, progressive activists.

Ted Miller, communications director at NARAL Pro-Choice America, Elizabeth Shipp, our political director, and Linnea House, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota, will join me in Minneapolis. I'll post updates on my Facebook page and live-tweet.

NARAL Pro-Choice America is a sponsor of Netroots Nation, and we'll have a booth set up. Stop by for some pro-choice gear, and learn more about how to stop the War on Women.
 
Take a look at some of the great sessions, including Protecting Reproductive Rights in Your State and The War on Contraception.

Will I see you there?

I've always supported the notion that taxpayer dollars should not go towards funding abortions. What I don't support is creating a new bureaucratic boondoggle that forces millions of private small businesses to waste amazing amounts of time going over the fine print of their health insurance policies because Republicans in Congress can't resist politicizing an issue that's already been laid to rest.

"Knock, knock."

Once again, the so-called "small-government" politicians are interfering in D.C.'s local affairs as well as women's personal, private medical decisions. 

So, the question today for all of us who are frustrated with the current landscape is, "What's next?"

As a national organization that helps elect pro-choice candidates and fights to advance pro-choice policies, we know that we must change who sits in the House of Representatives.  

We will fight until no woman's right to choose is dependent on her ZIP code or income.

I just got back from putting some democracy into action!

I went with some colleagues to visit pro-choice representatives' offices in the Longworth House Office Building. We brought petitions signed by their constituents thanking these champions for their commitment to a woman's right to choose.

We visited the office of Rep. Jim McDermott, who represents the seventh House district of Washington. We let his staff know that 1,906 people in his district had taken action calling for an end to the War on Women. That's the highest action-taking House district in the country.

We also visited the office of Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who represents the seventh House district of Arizona--and got a huge and awesome surprise. As we were thanking his staff, the representative himself came out of his office and thanked us for standing up for a woman's right to choose!

No woman's reproductive choices should be questioned or subjected to more scrutiny or control based on her racial or ethnic background--and that's exactly what these billboards do. We also find it deeply offensive that the group behind these billboards is wrapping its anti-choice agenda in the language and framework of civil rights. This cynical campaign represents politics at its worst, and will not succeed in Illinois or anywhere else these billboards appear.