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2022 An abortion rights activist outside the Supreme Court in D.C

1 The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion that was guaranteed nearly 50 years ago by the decision in Roe v. Wade. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was released Friday morning. The justices, voting 6-3 along ideological lines, sided with the Mississippi abortion law that was in question. Reactions were mixed across the country, with anti-abortion-rights supporters celebrating what they view as a victory, and abortion-rights activists expressing their frustration over the decision. Here are some of the scenes from D.C., and across the country. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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2020s Gina Leon
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1. 2017 Why communities fighting for fair policing also demand environmental justice
2. Children in Cages
3. 2020 - Downfall of the Two Party System The Gazette - So how did the United States settle into a two-party system in contrast to multiparty democracies such as France, Germany and Canada? Historians say the pattern was set in motion two centuries ago with the embrace of winner-take-all elections nationally and locally - that means that coming in second or third place in most elections is worthless. As two major parties emerged and grew in power, third parties found it harder to attract public notice and get their candidates invited to debates or listed on ballots. In addition, voters who supported these candidates but never saw them win eventually drifted away, and third parties found it harder to create enthusiasm, given their likelihood of losing. And that brings us to our current national election. On the Republican side, Donald Trump is seeking a second four-year term as president. The Democrats have Joe Biden, a former vice president, atop their ticket.
4. 2020 Is America's 2-Party System Fracturing?
5. 2020s Las Patronas
6. 2020/21 Black Lives Matter - reflection in the UCLA Centennial Mural
7. Remembering George Floyd
8. Angela Davis - UCLA hired her to teach in the philosophy department in 1969. After the four-hour LAPD attack on the Black Panther headquarters in South Central (1969), Angela Davis led a protest march to LA city hall and spoke from the front steps.
9. 2021 Assembly Bill 32, a law that took effect last year, mandated that the state could no longer enter or renew contracts with private, for-profit prisons and detention facilities, with some exceptions, by 2028. California tries again to close down privately operated prisons and immigrant detention facilities - CAP Radio by Janelle Salanga: California’s first-of-its-kind ban of privately operated prisons could be back on the table. Assembly Bill 32, a law that took effect last year, mandated that the state could no longer enter or renew contracts with private, for-profit prisons and detention facilities, with some exceptions, by 2028. But last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the law couldn’t be enforced because it would likely interfere with the federal government’s detention of immigrants facing deportation or legal proceedings. Judge Kenneth Lee wrote in his decision that Congress granted the Department of Homeland Security “broad discretion over immigrant detention,” so the law could not stand because it conflicted with that power. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who authored the bill as an Assembly member, filed a petition Wednesday asking the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its 2-1 ruling. “The record is clear: For-profit, private prisons and detention facilities that treat people like commodities pose an unacceptable risk to the health and welfare of Californians,” Bonta said in a statement. GEO Group was the company that filed the suit striking down A.B. 32. CapRadio reached out to GEO Group via email to discuss Bonta’s petition. The attorney general’s office has been tasked with tracking conditions in privately operated detention facilities, as mandated by Assembly Bill 103 passed in 2017. In January, the California Department of Justice released its second report, finding that private facilities now account for 97% of the total beds for immigrant detainees in California, compared to 77% in February 2019. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency still has direct contracts with three groups — MTC, CoreCivic and GEO Group — that are valid for at least five years. Then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra wrote that the Department of Justice saw “deficient conditions of confinement” and insufficient mental health care in the three facilities. “Extremely restrictive conditions for detainees in protective custody and placement of vulnerable detainees with mental health conditions in restrictive housing to the detriment of their mental health … were evident at the three facilities, with female detainees facing especially harsh conditions,” he wrote. In 2019, the Department of Homeland Security released a report that found detainees lived in dangerous, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in ICE and U.S. Border Patrol detention facilities in southern Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. President Joe Biden signed an executive order into law this January that ordered the attorney general to let existing contracts between the Department of Justice and privately operated detention facilities expire. But the executive order doesn’t affect private facilities contracted with ICE. NorCal Resist, a grassroots organization offering legal support for detainees and other services for immigrants, said in a statement that it was pleased to see Bonta defending the ban and called all ICE prisons “inherently inhumane and unsafe.” “Taking the profit motive out of the immigration system in California is a good step in the right direction,” it read. California’s petition for a new hearing asserts that the current ruling doesn’t account for states’ traditionally held power to regulate private entities that affect residents’ health and welfare. Bonta’s petition, which would require the case to be presented before a full bench of judges, is a request seldom granted. The court will not order a rehearing without giving GEO Group an opportunity to express whether it believes one is appropriate.
10. 2021 California plans to be abortion sanctuary if Roe vs. Wade is overturned SACRAMENTO — With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state Legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a “sanctuary” for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states. The California Future of Abortion Council, made up of more than 40 abortion providers and advocacy groups, released a list of 45 recommendations for the state to consider if the high court overturns Roe vs. Wade — the 48-year-old decision that forbids states from outlawing abortion. The recommendations are more than wild ideas. Some of the state’s most important policymakers helped write them, including Toni Atkins, the San Diego Democrat who leads the state Senate and attended multiple meetings. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom started the group himself, and in an interview last week with the Associated Press said some of the report’s details will be included in his budget proposal in January.
11. Restrictive Voting Rights is the New Jim Crow 2021 Protesters gather outside of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta to protest HB 531, which would place tougher restrictions on voting in Georgia, March 1, 2021. The new law has mostly gained attention for its measures to strengthen absentee ballot identification requirements, curtail ballot drop box use and penalize members of the public who offer food and water to voters in line. Months after former Republican President Donald Trump falsely claimed voter fraud in the 2020 elections, Republican backers say Georgia's law is needed to restore confidence in election integrity. Civil rights groups have filed three lawsuits asserting the law illegally restricts voting rights, particularly for minority voters.
12. What Jim Crow looks like in 2021 Protesters gather outside of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta to protest HB 531, which would place tougher restrictions on voting in Georgia, U.S. March 1, 2021. Protesters gather outside of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta to protest HB 531, which would place tougher restrictions on voting in Georgia, U.S. March 1, 2021. Dustin Chamber/Reuters “It’s a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie.” That’s how Stacey Abrams, who spearheaded efforts to organize Black voters in Georgia for the 2020 election, recently described the deluge of new voter restriction laws proposed by Republicans in the Georgia state legislature in the wake of their defeat. Cliff Albright of the Black Voters Matter Fund echoed Abrams, saying the new restrictions, which include new ID requirements and limits on drop boxes, are just “putting a little makeup and cologne on Jim Crow.” Nicole Hemmer Nicole Hemmer The idea that these new voting restrictions are a more sanitized version of Jim Crow says a lot about popular understanding of that era of racism and discrimination (something Abrams and Albright clearly know, and are speaking to). Next to images of White protesters snarling at civil rights activists at sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960 or police officers siccing German Shepherds on Black schoolchildren in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1963, the image of legislators calmly enacting a series of discriminatory restrictions seems far more civilized. Yet, even at its violent peak, Jim Crow had another side, one that always wore a suit and tie, especially when it came to voter disenfranchisement. Required to navigate around the 15th Amendment, which explicitly prohibited barring Black men from voting, White Southern legislators innovated a kind of colorblind racism that would go on to become the right’s preferred tool for opposing civil rights advances in the post-Jim Crow era. Looked at through that lens, the current rush to restrict voting rights is less proof of the resuscitation of Jim Crow than evidence that it never really went away.
13. 2021 After John Lewis dies Democrats renew push for Voting Rights Law
14. 2021 John Lewis: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/us/john-lewis-voting-rights-act.html
15. 2021 COVID-19 job losses will worsen L.A. homelessness by 2023, new report says
16. 2021 The John Lewis Voting Rights Act
17. 2021 Stop Asian Hate Feng Shen holds up a sign stating “Asians Are not Viruses Racism Is!” in front of candles left out for the eight victims of the Atlanta Mass shooting during the candlelight vigil held in Thousand Oaks, CA. on March 20. 2021. Photo credit: Ryan Bough https://moorparkreporter.com/4016775/news/there-is-no-vaccine-for-racism-ventura-county-asian-american-and-pacific-islander-community-holds-candlelight-vigil-for-atlanta-murder-victims/
18. 2022 Three Strikes
19. 2022 Inglewood Shooting- The Guardian- "Killings in LA spotlight a crisis" ‘Black women are being murdered and no one is paying attention’ - Three recent killings in the Los Angeles area have put the spotlight on the disparate impact of American gun violence on Black women and the lack of attention their stories receive, as the country reckons with some of the most intense spates of gun violence in years. girl holding a sign which reads 'stop gun violence' California city requires gun owners to carry liability insurance in first measure of its kind Read more Both killings took place on weekends, a mere two weeks apart. On 8 January, California officials found the body of Tioni Theus, a 16-year-old girl who was found shot at a busy onramp of the 110 freeway. On 23 January, sisters Breahna Stines and Marneysha Hamilton were among four people shot dead during a mass shooting at a birthday party in Inglewood. Neither incident received much coverage outside of local news, raising questions about which stories are elevated in the national spotlight and which mass shootings grasp the country’s attention. While discrepancies between the attention for white victims of violence and Black victims of violence is nothing new, community organizers and researchers worry about the message this phenomenon continues to send to young Black girls about their worth and potential. “This image of a young Black girl on the side of a highway with cars driving by speaks to the invisibility of Black life,” said Nikki Jones, a professor of African American studies at UC Berkeley. “Black girls are contending with the messages that their life is disposable, and that’s an extremely dangerous message.”
20. 2022 Column: They never thought they’d see a Black president, or another assault on voting rights
21. 2022 The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is Passed. United States federal legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime Beulah Melton, widow of Clinton Melton, talks with civil rights activist Medgar Evers. Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Earlier this month, the Senate unanimously passed legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime. It was a historic moment. Congress has tried and failed to pass anti-lynching legislation more than 200 times over the course of more than a century. According to the NAACP, more than 4700 people were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968. The new Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act – as it’s called – is named for the 14-year-old boy whose murder, 67 years ago, shocked the nation. In 1955, Emmett Till had traveled from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta to visit family when he was kidnapped, beaten, and killed by white men after allegedly flirting with a white woman. His body was later found in the Tallahatchie River. Emmett Til’s death became a media sensation, partly because of a widely distributed photograph of his disfigured face. Today, his murder is considered the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement. But for every Emmett Till, there are many others whose names are lost in time. One of them was a Black gas station attendant who lived just a few miles from where Till was killed.
22. 2022 Woman cries while kneeling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Woman cries while kneeling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 2, 2022. The Supreme Court is poised to strike down the right to abortion in the country, according to a leaked draft of a majority opinion that would shred nearly 50 years of constitutional protections. Credit: Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/overturning-roe-v-wade-could-have-devastating-health-and-financial-impacts-landmark-study-showed/
23. 2022 Roe vs. Wade falls
24. 2022 An abortion rights activist outside the Supreme Court in D.C The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion that was guaranteed nearly 50 years ago by the decision in Roe v. Wade. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was released Friday morning. The justices, voting 6-3 along ideological lines, sided with the Mississippi abortion law that was in question. Reactions were mixed across the country, with anti-abortion-rights supporters celebrating what they view as a victory, and abortion-rights activists expressing their frustration over the decision. Here are some of the scenes from D.C., and across the country. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Reproductive Rights Movement Gina Leon
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1. La Operación - The Subversion and Portrayal of Female Agency in Latinx Reproductive Rights Widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. La Operación is a documentary from 1982 that shows the widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico. Ana María García directed the film which highlights how the United States pushed for increased female sterilization in Puerto Rico. She mixes in the documentary a blend of interviews with women from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds but the interviews are not the only focus of her work; she also incorporates scenes showing a sterilization procedure in addition to other historical and contextual parts. account from the documentary displays the same message as the propaganda above, that there are prosperity and good living associated with sterilization, based on the belief that too many kids lead to a perpetual state of destitution. These false beliefs led many women to give up their agency over their bodies and cave into getting sterilized—except they did not know all the time what they were signing up for.
2. 1960s Puerto Rican Women Sterilized as a "solution to poverty"
3. The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/the-racist-history-of-abortion-and-midwifery-bans. Today’s attacks on abortion access have a long history rooted in white supremacy. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo this week, it is worth reflecting on the racist origins of the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which date back to the ideologies of slavery. Just like slavery, anti-abortion efforts are rooted in white supremacy, the exploitation of Black women, and placing women’s bodies in service to men. Just like slavery, maximizing wealth and consolidating power motivated the anti-abortion enterprise. Then, just as now, anti-abortion efforts have nothing to do with saving women’s lives or protecting the interests of children. Today, a person is 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion, and medical evidence has shown for decades that an abortion is as safe as a penicillin shot—and yet abortion remains heavily restricted in states across the country. Prior to the Civil War, abortion and contraceptives were legal in the U.S., used by Indigenous women as well as those who sailed to these lands from Europe. For the most part, the persons who performed all manner of reproductive health care were women — female midwives. Midwifery was interracial; half of the women who provided reproductive health care were Black women. Other midwives were Indigenous and white. However, in the wake of slavery’s end, skilled Black midwives represented both real competition for white men who sought to enter the practice of child delivery, and a threat to how obstetricians viewed themselves. Male gynecologists claimed midwifery was a degrading means of obstetrical care. They viewed themselves as elite members of a trained profession with tools such as forceps and other technologies, and the modern convenience of hospitals, which excluded Black and Indigenous women from practice within their institutions. History would later reveal that it was literally on the backs of Black women’s bodies that such tools were developed. Dr. Marion Sims famously wrote about his insomniac-induced “epiphanies” that stirred him to experiment on enslaved Black women, lacerating, suturing, and cutting, providing no anesthesia or pain relief. Only recently have the terrors that Black women endured through nonconsensual experimentation by gynecologists of the 19th and 20th centuries been acknowledged. Successful racist and misogynistic smear campaigns, cleverly designed for political persuasion and to achieve legal reform, described Black midwives as unhygienic, barbarous, ineffective, non-scientific, dangerous, and unprofessional. Dr. Joseph DeLee, a preeminent 20th century obstetrician and fervent opponent to midwifery, stated in a much-quoted 1915 speech, “Progress Toward Ideal Obstetrics”: The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong … The midwife has been a drag on the progress of the science and art of obstetrics. Her existence stunts the one and degrades the other. For many centuries she perverted obstetrics from obtaining any standing at all among the science of medicine … Even after midwifery was practiced by some of the most brilliant men in the profession, such practice was held opprobrious and degraded. At the root of these stereotypes were explicit efforts to destroy midwifery and promote white supremacy. As the surge of lynchings, “separate but equal” laws, police violence, and the decimation of successful Black communities during Jim Crow revealed, Black Americans post slavery suffered greatly due to white supremacy, as did Chinese and Japanese workers and their families. Indeed, the racist campaigns launched by doctors against Black midwives extended to anti-immigration legislative platforms targeted at Chinese and Japanese workers. The Page Act, which restricted Chinese women from entering the United States, is a part of this shameful legacy. This broader 20th century anti-Chinese campaign became known as “yellow peril.” DeLee and Horatio Storer urged white women to “spread their loins” across the nation, a dog whistle about the threat of too many Blacks and Asians in the U.S. Gynecologists explicitly revealed their motivations in undermining midwifery: They desired financial gains, recognition, and a monopoly. As Dr. DeLee wrote in a 1916 article published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Disease of Women & Children, “There is high art in obstetrics and that it must pay as well for it as for surgery. I will not admit that this is a sordid impulse. It is only common justice to labor, self-sacrifice, and skill.” They believed that men should be paid, but not women — particularly not Black women. To better understand racial injustice in the anti-abortion movement, remember that American hospitals barred the admission of African Americans both in terms of practice and as patients. And, the American Medical Association (AMA) barred women and Black people from membership. The AMA, founded in 1847, refused to admit Black doctors, informing them, “You come from groups and schools that admit women and that admit irregular practitioners.” For this reason, Black doctors formed the National Medical Association in 1895. In 2008, the organization issued a public apology for its active campaigns to close Black medical schools, deny Blacks membership, and other efforts to marginalize Black patients and practitioners. Gynecologists pushed women out of the field of reproductive health by lobbying state legislatures to ban midwifery and prohibit abortions. Doing so not only undercut women’s reproductive health, but also drove qualified Black women out of medical services. For these groups, there was no meaningful path to the formalized skill set DeLee claimed necessary. Abortion was an expedient way to frame their campaign to create monopolies on women’s bodies for male doctors. The American Medical Association explicitly contributed to this cause through its exclusion of women and Black people. Today, as people debate whether anti-abortion platforms benefit Black women, the clear answer is no. The U.S. leads the developed world in maternal and infant mortality. The U.S. ranks around 50th in the world for maternal safety. Nationally, for Black women, the maternal death rate is nearly four times that of white women, and 10 to 17 times worse in some states. In the wake of both Whole Woman’s Health and June Medical Services v. Russo, keep in mind that both Texas and Louisiana, where these cases originated, are considered the deadliest in the developed world for a woman to give birth. Sadly, pregnancy has become a death sentence for many in the very places that make reproductive health care access the most fraught and hard to reach. Many of these states (though not all) are former slave states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. As Black people in these states continue to fight for equal access the reproductive care they need, Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech continues to resonate. And as the Supreme Court demonstrated this week, the fight for justice in reproductive health care and equality in abortion access is far from over. The decision does not advance the equality of poor Black women — it maintains all other burdensome restrictions already in place. We have much more work to do such that not only DeLee’s words, but also his racist and exploitative viewpoints, are relegated to history.
4. 1970 A member of the Third World Womens Alliance demonstrates https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/the-mississippi-abortion-case-and-the-fragile-legitimacy-of-the-supreme-court /The Mississippi Abortion Case and the Fragile Legitimacy of the Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is an open challenge to the Court’s authority, and perhaps broadly reflects a spirit of legal self-help that is running through the land. in this latest round of attacks on Roe, a novel line of argument has emerged: that forced pregnancy and parenthood no longer constitute a hardship for women. Lawyers representing Mississippi, the appellant in the lawsuit, describe a world that has fundamentally changed over the past fifty years, in which the burdens of parenting have been lifted and women have been empowered to have it all—to assume a career while still raising families. As for those women who would prefer not to parent, they now have the option to simply terminate their parental rights. In a legal brief, Mississippi described a fantasy land, where “many (largely post-dating Roe) laws protect equal opportunity—including prohibitions on sex and pregnancy discrimination in employment,” where the law guarantees parental leave, and where there is “support to offset the costs of childcare for working mothers.” The brief continued, “Sweeping policy advances now promote women’s full pursuit of both career and family.” In an interview with a local television station, the state attorney general, Lynn Fitch, added, as a flourish, “Fifty years ago, for professional women, they wanted you to make a choice. Now you don’t have to. Now you have the opportunity to be whatever you want to be. You have the option in life to really achieve your dreams, your goals, and you can have those beautiful children as well.” These would be wild claims under normal circumstances, but, in the midst of the pandemic, when child-care costs have been rising dramatically and when intermittent and impromptu school closures have forced nearly two million women out of the workforce, they are ludicrous.
5. 1964 Forced sterilization policies in the US targeted minorities and those with disabilities – and lasted into the 21st century In August 1964, the North Carolina Eugenics Board met to decide if a 20-year-old Black woman should be sterilized. Because her name was redacted from the records, we call her Bertha. She was a single mother with one child who lived at the segregated O'Berry Center for African American adults with intellectual disabilities in Goldsboro. According to the North Carolina Eugenics Board, Bertha had an IQ of 62 and exhibited “aggressive behavior and sexual promiscuity.” She had been orphaned as a child and had a limited education. Likely because of her “low IQ score,” the board determined she was not capable of rehabilitation. Instead the board recommended the “protection of sterilization” for Bertha, because she was “feebleminded” and deemed unable to “assume responsibility for herself” or her child. Without her input, Bertha’s guardian signed the sterilization form.
6. 1960s Reproductive Justice for Latinas: Coerced, Forced, and Involuntary Sterilization By 1934, there were 67 birth control clinics operating under federal funding through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Puerto Rican Relief Administration; in 1936, the Maternal and Childcare Health Association, a private entity, opened 23 more. A law passed the following year—Law 116—made sterilization legal and free for Puerto Rican women. Family planning clinics offering free sterilization were installed in the new factories of the industrial wave; women were encouraged to work in needlework and textile industries there, and were shown favoritism for sterilization compliance. Health officials campaigned door-to-door for sterilization throughout rural communities, too. In a dire economic situation and with few affordable alternative contraceptive methods available, the operation—or la operacion, as it was referred to locally—became commonplace. By the 1960s, about one-third of the female population had been sterilized—and many of those women hadn’t been educated about the permanency of tubal ligation.
7. 1960s A doctor at Los Angeles Community Hospital during the 1970s contested the notion that they targeted the Mexican community for sterilizations. Maria Figueroa returns to the maternity ward at Los Angeles county hospital. Her story is part of the PBS documentary “No Más Bebés.”Kevin Castro/In this case, the lack of similar efforts to conduct sterilizations in other hospitals underlines the racist sentiments in these forced surgeries. Specifically, in the Los Angeles region, only east LA and LA Community Hospital performed these operations and received such pushback. In other words, the only community that suffered due to uninformed and nonconsensual sterilization was east LA, a predominantly Mexican community. Furthermore, the tactic of asking non-English speakers to sign a form in English in most cases applied to the Mexican community in Los Angeles. A common argument given by doctors is that nothing they did shows they specifically targeted the Mexican community. Nevertheless, the standard operating procedures implemented at the hospital included asking patients to sign forms while under labor, not translating forms into Spanish for Spanish speakers, and overall not ensuring the informed consent at the time of signage. Combined, the doctors’ lack of concern for their patients and systematic targeting of patients while under labor and with English forms is understood to be forced sterilization. Regardless of original intention, be it money due to extra surgeries or increased prestige due to more successful surgeries completed, these doctors ultimately forcibly sterilized hundreds of women from a minority group, terminating their chances for reproduction and raising a family; they were able to do so primarily due to the race of their victims.
8. On May 9, 1960, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control pill On May 9, 1960, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control pill—Enovid-10, made by the G.D. Searle Company of Chicago, Illinois. Development of “the pill,” as it became popularly known, was initially commissioned by birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger and funded by heiress Katherine McCormick. Sanger, who opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States in 1916, hoped to encourage the development of a more practical and effective alternative to contraceptives that were in use at the time.
9. 1973 Roe v Wade was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court
10. 1969 Redstockings Abortion Speakout n 1969, the members of the radical feminist group Redstockings were furious that legislative hearings about abortion featured male speakers discussing such a crucial women's issue. They, therefore, staged their hearing, the Redstockings abortion speak-out, in New York City on March 21, 1969. The Fight to Make Abortion Legal The abortion speak-out took place during the pre-Roe v. Wade era when abortion was illegal in the United States. Each state had its own laws about reproductive matters. It was rare if not unheard of to hear any woman speak publicly about her experience with illegal abortion. FEATURED VIDEO Roe v. Wade Supported By 70% Of Americans Before the radical feminists' fight, the movement to change U.S. abortion laws was more focused on reforming existing laws than repealing them. Legislative hearings on the issue featured medical experts and others who wanted to finesse the exceptions to abortion prohibitions. These "experts" talked about cases of rape and incest or a threat to the life or health of a mother. Feminists shifted the debate to a discussion of a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body. Disruption In February of 1969, Redstockings members disrupted a New York legislative hearing about abortion. The New York Joint Legislature Committee on the Problems of Public Health had called the hearing to consider reforms to the New York law, then 86 years old, on abortion. They roundly condemned the hearing because the "experts" were a dozen men and a Catholic nun. Of all women to speak, they thought a nun would be the least likely to have contended with the abortion issue, other than from her possible religious bias. The Redstockings members shouted and called for the legislators to hear from women who had had abortions, instead. Eventually, that hearing had to be moved to another room behind closed doors. Women Raising Their Voices The members of Redstockings had previously participated in consciousness-raising discussions. They had also drawn attention to women's issues with protests and demonstrations. Several hundred people attended their abortion speak-out in the West Village on March 21, 1969. Some women spoke about what they suffered during illegal “back-alley abortions.” Other women spoke about being unable to get an abortion and having to carry a baby to term, then have the child taken away when it was adopted. Legacy After the Demonstration More abortion speak-outs followed in other U.S. cities, as well as speak-outs on other issues in the subsequent decade. Four years after the 1969 abortion speak-out, the Roe v. Wade decision altered the landscape by repealing most abortion laws then in effect and striking down restrictions on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. Susan Brownmiller attended the original 1969 abortion speak-out. Brownmiller then wrote about the event in an article for the "Village Voice", "Everywoman's Abortions: 'The Oppressor Is Man.'" The original Redstockings collective broke up in 1970, though other groups with that name continued to work on feminist issues. On March 3, 1989, another abortion speakout was held in New York City on the 20th anniversary of the first. Florynce Kennedy attended, saying "I crawled off my death bed to come down here" as she called for the struggle to continue.
11. 2021 California plans to be abortion sanctuary if Roe vs. Wade is overturned SACRAMENTO — With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state Legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a “sanctuary” for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states. The California Future of Abortion Council, made up of more than 40 abortion providers and advocacy groups, released a list of 45 recommendations for the state to consider if the high court overturns Roe vs. Wade — the 48-year-old decision that forbids states from outlawing abortion. The recommendations are more than wild ideas. Some of the state’s most important policymakers helped write them, including Toni Atkins, the San Diego Democrat who leads the state Senate and attended multiple meetings. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom started the group himself, and in an interview last week with the Associated Press said some of the report’s details will be included in his budget proposal in January.
12. 1960 Birth Control Pill tested on Puerto Rican Women
13. 2022 An abortion rights activist outside the Supreme Court in D.C The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion that was guaranteed nearly 50 years ago by the decision in Roe v. Wade. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was released Friday morning. The justices, voting 6-3 along ideological lines, sided with the Mississippi abortion law that was in question. Reactions were mixed across the country, with anti-abortion-rights supporters celebrating what they view as a victory, and abortion-rights activists expressing their frustration over the decision. Here are some of the scenes from D.C., and across the country. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
14. Feminist Health Movement From its earliest days in the 1960s, the women's liberation movement focused on abortion and women's right to control their bodies. Some of the more radical groups engaged in underground abortion clinics, most notably in Chicago; others, like the Boston's Women's Health Collective began writing/publishing projects; and organizations like NOW formed Task Forces to work on the issue of reproductive rights. In fact, it was in NOW that leaders of the feminist health movement, Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman, first became active and initially demonstrated gynecological self-examination. And while Downer and Rothman went on to open the first Feminist Women's Health Center at the Crenshaw Women's Center, other women, like Vi Verreaux worked at and opened more conventionally structured, service-oriented clinics for women. This series is comprised of interviews with these three women. The long interviews with Downer and Rothman document the evolution and expansion of their work, and although the much shorter interview with Verreaux barely touches on her clinic work, it does provides a glimpse into a service-oriented, community-based clinic.
15. Draft 1960s Reproductive Rights
16. 1960s - 1970s Uninformed Consent to Sterilization - Latina Women in targeted in East LA
17. Attacks on Roe v. Wade Threaten Nationwide Reproductive Rights
18. The Abortion Counseling Service of Women's Liberation began operating in Chicago under the code name "Jane."
19. Abortion rights demonstrator Elizabeth White leads a chant in response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2022.