Roe v Wade

With the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade a little over a month away, and the 2012 election right around the corner, I can’t help but think about the popularly speculated relationship between abortion rights and young people.

Betty Ford’s tenure as First Lady was the last time in American politics someone in that role could inspire bi-partisan admiration—even while expressing her own political views. Her passing reminds us of what has been lost in our political culture.

For centuries Nepal banned abortion under any circumstance. Women were imprisoned and many more died in the process. Now the highest legal authority in the country has explicitly recognized a woman as the master of her own body.

Gosnell’s clinic is an extreme version of what I call “rogue clinics,” facilities that today prey on women, primarily women of color and often immigrants, in low-income communities.

When my best friend faced an unintended and unwanted pregnancy, I made the choice to stand with her, and I have been an advocate for reproductive justice ever since. 

In Sunday's New York Times, buried on page 34A, Robert Pear outlines what we can expect with Representative Joe Pitts as chair of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health.  Pitts' path is a straight line to denying women their fundamental rights.  He wants to get rid of a woman's right to make her own determinations about her health and reproductive life. 

The opinion in Burton v. Florida, in which an appeals court reversed an order forcing a pregnant woman to go on bed rest and undergo cesarean surgery, raises a question about our courts: what is it about pregnancy that they just don't understand?

State legislators fight to restore family planning funds in New Jersey, while the Texas GOP is unabashed in efforts to limit the rights of all living persons.  One bright spot in New York.

Despite a long career in legal academia, Kagan has published very little and seems to have studiously avoided taking a stand on almost any controversial issue.