Category: Blog Posts

Blog posts.

Blog Posts

“Black Children Are Not Baby Seals”

Jen R

The post is from March 2010, but I recently came across this important perspective on the Radiance Foundation billboards from a pro-life African-American woman: Black Children Are Not Baby Seals. An excerpt:

Think about how we often regard animals on the Endangered Species list: they are protected with the hope that they can be released back into the wild, where they can survive on their own.

The late Spencer Perkins identified the problems with this kind of thinking back in 1989, when he raised the question of a “pro-life credibility gap.” In Perkins’ view, those Christians who were most visible in leading the pro-life movement were often not as interested in other issues of justice for African Americans. He wrote, “I feel that if the love of Christ compels me to save the lives of children, that same love should compel me to take more responsibility for them once they are born.” Though Perkins was making the point about white pro-lifers, it’s a question for all of us to consider.

An “endangered species” mentality de-contextualizes and dislocates many children from the possible sources of the issues they may face. This mentality doesn’t imply that these children will need places to live free from poor environmental settings and polluted air, or a neighborhood that isn’t a food desert, or a street that’s safe from the bullets of warring gangbangers, or church families to help support them, or high-quality public schools to prepare them for life, or intact families with parents whose relationships provide a secure home, or people (of any race!) who will adopt them and raise them lovingly.

Blog Posts

Budget cuts threaten program for pregnant and parenting teens in Philadelphia

Jen R

The ELECT (Education Leading to Employment and Career Training) program in Philadelphia is under threat from budget cuts. ELECT is helping about 1,000 pregnant and parenting teens finish high school and start building a solid future for themselves and their children.

When Quentina Fields found out she was pregnant – at 17, a junior at Bartram High School – the news was so disorienting, it felt as if it were happening to someone else.

"Like out of a movie," she said.

Teachers took Fields to the school ELECT program, which helps pregnant students and young mothers stay in class and graduate.

In November, Fields gave birth to a son. And in June, bolstered by parent training and academic tutoring, she accepted her diploma.

Now the future of ELECT has grown hazy.

"Program for pregnant students has unclear future" – Philadelphia Inquirer

The program will probably not be eliminated, but may be scaled back. Nationwide, about 60 percent of girls who have children while in high school drop out. Without programs like ELECT, girls in high school who get pregnant face bleak prospects — and strong incentives for abortion.

Blog Posts

Great news for women’s and children’s health

Jen R

The Institute of Medicine has issued its recommendations for a range of preventive health services that it says should be covered for all U.S. women without a co-pay under the Affordable Care Act. Several of these recommendations improve not only women's health, but that of their children as well.

The eight recommendations include:

  • screening for gestational diabetes
  • HPV testing as part of cervical cancer screening for women over 30
  • counseling on sexually transmitted infections
  • counseling and screening for HIV
  • contraceptive methods and counseling to prevent unintended pregnancies
  • lactation counseling and equipment to promote breast-feeding
  • screening and counseling to detect and prevent interpersonal and domestic violence
  • yearly well-woman preventive care visits to obtain recommended preventive services

The recommendations will now go to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is scheduled to issue the final rule for insurers in August.

The report will be discussed Wednesday, July 20, at a public briefing beginning at 10 a.m. EDT at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. A live audio webcast of the briefing will be available at www.nationalacademies.org if you would like to listen.

Blog Posts

Plan B Is Prolife

Marysia

All Our Lives is preparing to take part in the National Women’s Law Center “Birth Control: We’ve Got You Covered” blog carnival on July 21. Please join if you too have a blog and support the inclusion of contraceptives as essential, copay-free preventive services in US health plans.

National Public Radio ran a story this morning called “Birth Control Without Co-Pays Could Soon Become Mandatory”. Unfortunately an interviewee for the story repeated an all too often repeated bit of misinformation, in the name of prolife.

As well as contacting this interviewee, All Our Lives sent this message to NPR.

 

–In your piece on [the effort to abolish] contraceptive copays, Jeanne Monahan of the Family Research Council explains her opposition with the misinformation that the emergency contraceptive Plan B causes abortions. Levonorgestrel emergency contraceptives like Plan B work *prior* to conception, by suppressing or delaying ovulation and possibly by altering sperm function. They do *not* prevent implantation. (Details: http://www.cecinfo.org/custom-content/uploads/2012/12/ICEC_FIGO_MoA_Statement_March_2012.pdf). Anyone who identifies as prolife has the responsibility to expand access to Plan B and indeed all contraceptive methods, because this is one of the most powerful ways to help women prevent crisis pregnancies and abortions.–

Blog Posts

When You Don’t Want to Dismantle Misogyny, Blame It on Women

Marysia

What explains the 160 million plus total girls and women gone missing from the world, largely because of sex-selective abortion? Why, explains New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, it isn't misogyny, not even misogyny internalized and perpetuated by women. It's the spread of "female empowerment." This dynamic is also operative in the Dominque Strauss-Kahn case, where an immigrant hotel room cleaner to the US from Guinea has accused the now former International Monetary Fund head of rape. The defense has rushed to the oldest trick in the book for discrediting rape victims: painting them as women of bad character. As if rape weren't a crime no matter who the victim is. Don't institutionalized structures of male privilege have anything and everything to do with sex-selective abortion, which has imbalanced gender ratios in the world's two most populous countries, and rape, suffered by one in three women globally?

Blog Posts

Contraception does not increase abortion

Jen R

One of the arguments contraception opponents commonly make is that the acceptance of contraception leads to abortion. For a good debunking of that argument, read "Examining the argument that provision of contraception leads to increased abortion rates".


What leads to increased use of both contraception and — especially when contraception is unavailable or inadequate — abortion is the desire for relatively low fertility. Contraception and abortion are going to be much less of an issue when people fully expect to have six or eight or ten kids. Those days are over for most people in the developed world, for complex social and economic reasons. What we have to decide now is whether we're going to deal with that reality in an evidence-based manner, or pretend it's not happening (or that it shouldn't be happening, and therefore people who want to have sex but not have a lot of babies are just immoral).

Blog Posts

Medicaid cuts: harmful for pregnant women and their children

Jen R

When I attended the helping pregnant women Open Hearts, Open Minds and Fair Minded Words conference last fall, pro-choice and pro-life attendees alike expressed frustration with politicians who talked a good game about protecting human life but then tried to cut funding to programs that help women choose life for their children.

We're told that the government doesn't need to help people, because that's what private charity is for. But private charity can't do the job alone. Crisis pregnancy centers rely not only on volunteers and donations, but on referring clients to government assistance programs such as Medicaid and WIC.  Medicaid pays for more than 40% of births in the United States. Ask a crisis pregnancy center volunteer how much harder their job will get if Medicaid is cut.

Please urge your members of Congress to reject Medicaid cuts.

Blog Posts, Past Actions

Another Way to Boost Reproductive Health & Save Lives

Marysia

All Our Lives has joined over 200 other organizations in endorsing this call for 3.5 million more health workers, especially in the Two Thirds World. This figure includes 350,000 more midwives and 1 million community health workers, who can help with providing certain reproductive health services, such as sex education and some family planning methods. No human being should ever have to die-or live less abundantly than he or she could-for lack of enough health workers.

Blog Posts, Past Actions

Victory! Catherine Ferguson Academy to remain open

Jen R

The Catherine Ferguson Academy will remain open as a charter school, the Detroit Public School Board announced today:

The Detroit Public Schools today announced that the school for pregnant and parenting teens will not close , but be operated as a charter school. The announcement came an hour before a noon rally planned to try to save the school.

Ferguson was scheduled to be one of three alternative schools to close this summer due to the district’s $327 million deficit.

[…]

G. Asenath Andrews, the principal of Ferguson since it opened 27 years ago, said the planned rally will become a celebration. “I am relieved, excited and pleased,” she said.

So are we, Ms. Andrews. Congratulations to the students and staff of the Catherine Ferguson Academy, and thank you to everyone who sent messages of support.

Blog Posts, Past Actions

Can you help us?

Jen R

All Our Lives seeks dedicated volunteers to help us:

  • Upgrade our global directory of abortion-reducing resources.
  • Design visually appealing PowerPoint slides, fact sheets, flyers, and posters, especially for our new "Contraception Is Prolife" campaign.
  • Form an outstanding board of directors.
  • Launch as a US-based official nonprofit with a global focus.


Email your statement of interest and resume to volunteer@allourlives.org.  We especially encourage applications from women, people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBT persons. All Our Lives fosters a pro every life, pro nonviolent choice agenda.