Abortion is a difficult topic to talk about, and not just because the experience can stir up a lot of challenging emotions. It’s hard to talk about because the two main sides to the cultural arguments about it don’t have much common ground. The anti-abortion folks (I refuse to call the pro-life until I see […]

This image from Post Secret is exactly why we need Planned Parenthood. Over the last several months, Planned Parenthood has been under even more intense attack than usual. Despite the fact that abortion accounts for only 3% of their services (36% of their services were for contraception, 31% for STI screening and treatment, 17% for […]

This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine. Last week, hyperconservative Maggie Gallagher wrote a piece in which she rather unsuccessfully tries to link women’s right to make reproductive choices and anal sex. The first thing that set off alarm bells for me was her citing a research article mentioned in the book “Premarital […]

According to some new research from the Guttmacher Institute,  the majority of women seeking abortions (82%) report that the men with whom they became pregnant were aware of the abortion. What’s more, nearly 80% of the women said that the men were supportive of their decision. The paper, Perceptions of Male Knowledge and Support Among […]

The Guttmacher Institute has just released a report that shows that worldwide increases in contraception use between 1995-2003 led to a reduction in the number of unintended pregnancies and therefore abortions. Now, that seems pretty obvious to me, but there’s some backstory to this. At the same time that contraception has become more widely available, […]

I’ve written about Exhale before, but I want to mention them again. Exhale is a hotline for women who are considering or have had an abortion and their partners. Almost all of the resources and support around abortion come from anti-abortion groups and they tend to use incredibly judgmental and shaming language, provide inaccurate information, […]

Here we go again. The Orange County Board of Supervisors has suspended Planned Parenthood’s funding, terminating a contract that PP had to provide health and sex education for thousands of teens because they also provide abortions. Never mind the fact that this funding was for education programs and none of it was ever spent on […]