[Content Note: War on agency.]
"Antiabortion activists...have enacted an unprecedented wave of coercive state laws that will likely force growing numbers of women to give birth rather than end an unwanted pregnancy. By contrast, reproductive health advocates back policies like the Affordable Care Act that expand access to contraceptive services to help women prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place, along with the abortions that often follow. ...Abortion opponents may try to cloak their policies in pro-woman rhetoric, but the simple fact remains that these laws are intended to push reproductive decision making in one direction: toward pregnancy and childbearing. Viewed this way, the question is not whether coercive approaches 'work' in reducing abortion incidence. The question is how to ensure that U.S. reproductive health policy is grounded in voluntarism and informed consent."—Joerg Dreweke, author of a new policy analysis for the Guttmacher Institute, on the "mutually exclusive...rival policy approaches of the antiabortion and prochoice movements."
I have mentioned once or twice or three million times that I love the Guttmacher Institute SO MUCH, and I am very pleased to see them explicitly tying antiabortion politics to reproductive coercion and hostility to consent.
[Related Reading: You Really Got Me.]
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