Show 389: Merle Hoffman – Abortion & Women’s Reproductive Rights

Merle Hoffman – Abortion & Women’s Reproductive Rights

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This Saturday on ETFF, Sunsara Taylor will be speaking with Merle Hoffman about her new memoir, “The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Boardroom.”

In 1971 – two years before the Roe V. Wade decision which legalized abortion nationally – Merle Hoffman founded Choices, and abortion clinic in NY. As a medical provider, she pioneered Patient Power, encouraging women to participate in their own health care decisions. Whether addressing the murder of abortion providers like Dr. George Tiller, or challenging women to understand and explore their own power over their bodies and the language used to wield such power, Merle Hoffman has been on the front lines of the feminist movement – a fierce warrior in the battle for choice.

Show 344: The Morality of Abortion…

The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Would Force Women to Bear Children Against Their Will.

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For the 38th anniversary of Roe V. Wade, join Sunsara Taylor for a special hour of Equal Time for Free Thought celebrating the right to abortion, celebrating the doctors and health care providers who risk their lives every day to provide women access to this essential right, and to examine the state of abortion rights today.

The hour will begin with Dr. Leroy Carhart, one of the few doctors left who provides second trimester abortions.  After the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in 2009, Dr. Carhart stepped out even further – and became targeted by the anti-choice fascists as “enemy # 1” – by declaring that he will continue to serve the women who need abortions in his area.  Further, he has expanded his practice to Baltimore and is working to train more doctors in later term abortion services.

Then, the show will feature a three way conversation between:

Merle Hoffman, the President and Founder of Choices Women’s Medical Center and the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of On the Issues Magazine.  She has been on the front lines providing abortions since 1971 and an outspoken activist and women’s rights advocate.

Debra Sweet, the National Director of World Can’t Wait.  She was central to organizing clinic defense against Operation Rescue across the country throughout the 90’s and continues to expose and mobilize against the attacks on women’s right to abortion and the providers who serve them.

Carole Joffe, author of “Dispatches From the Abortion Wars: The Cost of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us,” as well as, “Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe V. Wade.”

Together, we will look back to the days before abortion was legal, examine the changing moral discourse surrounding abortion, confront the full scope of the danger now posed to women who so desperately need this right, and celebrate – and draw inspiration from – those who have committed themselves to fighting to protect and expand abortion access.

Show 320: Abortion via Racism

Black Women Committing “Womb Lynchings”!?  The Latest LIES from the Anti-Abortion Fundamentalists.

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Across Atlanta, ominous billboard ads have appeared with the face of a young Black child and the words, “Endangered Species.”  But rather than objecting to the massive incarceration of Black youth or the rampant police brutality and abuse that confronts them… rather than challenging the decaying inner city school systems or the massive transfer of wealth through foreclosure out of Black families… these ads are targeting Black women!  They are religiously motivated ads that are seeking to equate Black women who choose abortion to the white supremacist slave-owners and lynchers of U.S. history.  They call abortion by Black women, “womb lynchings.”

Continue reading “Show 320: Abortion via Racism”

Show 285b: “Abortion – the Debate That Won’t Go Away” II

In the Aftermath of Dr. Tiller’s Assassination: Abortion, Morality and the Liberation of Women

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When a hero of women is hunted, demonized and finally cut down for saving the lives and the quality of life of women everywhere, it is women as a whole who have been violently assaulted.  And a society that does not rise up in massive repudiation against this is a society that accepts as normal the degradation, subjugation, shaming and blaming of half of humanity.

This Sunday, Equal Time for Freethought will run a second segment on the question of abortion in the aftermath of Dr. Tiller’s assassination.  Sunsara Taylor will speak with Susan Wicklund, author of ‘This Common Secret: My Journey As an Abortion Doctor.

Susan Wicklund, like Dr. Tiller, has been stalked, blockaded, harassed and assaulted for decades for her continued determination to provide safe abortions for women who need them.  She attended Dr. George Tiller‘s funeral along with other colleagues from around the country and will join Equal Time for Freethought to discuss why her work is so central to women’s ability to live full and equal lives.  She will discuss the atmosphere surrounding abortion providers in the aftermath of Dr. Tiller’s murder.