“Women’s Reproduction, Christian Fascism, and Women’s Emancipation: The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Want to Take it Away.”
Part 1 of a two-week special hosted by Sunsara Taylor!
Audio here!
As the 35th anniversary of Roe V. Wade approaches, it is appropriate to take stock at the degree to which the rise of Christian fundamentalism in American politics and culture has brought with it an unprecedented assault on the most fundamental rights of women.
Access to abortion is out of reach for many poor and rural women, abortion providers are still under constant physical – and increasingly, legal – threat, and the Supreme Court – with their decision to uphold the so-called “Partial Birth Abortion Ban” – has begun the process of criminalizing abortion. A growing number of pharmacists are refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, the life-endangering “abstinence-only” programs are being pushed onto our school children by Democrats and Republicans alike, and “Purity Balls” where young girls pledge their virginity (and receive a ring) to their fathers until they get married, are spreading like wildfire across the country.
Meanwhile, Hollywood blockbusters like “Knocked Up,” “The Waitress,” and now, “Juno,” are working to re-enshrine motherhood as women’s most fulfilling role (and to re-condemn abortion), in the minds of a whole new “post-feminist” generation.
Sunsara Taylor will talk with Cristina Page, author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America. Page has pointed out that there is not a single “pro-life” organization that upholds the right to birth control and has tracked how much further the assault on abortion and birth control has gone than most people yet realize.
“Devastating. This book [How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America] exposes the anti-woman, anti-family, anti-American, and anti-democratic goals of the far right’s true agenda.” — Roseanne Barr