#protectthezone

After federal courts repeatedly upheld Pittsburgh’s 15-foot clinic buffer zone ordinance, opponents of legal abortion are still fighting to knock it down. The fight in Pittsburgh is an important one, with implications for the safety of patients and providers across the country.

“This ruling is a great victory for the City of Pittsburgh and will help protect both the patients in need of medical care and the doctors and medical staff at Planned Parenthood,” said Sue Frietsche, senior staff attorney at the Women’s Law Project’s Western Pennsylvania office in Pittsburgh, which represented Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania and its volunteer escorts in the suit.

Then the plaintiffs appealed the case.

From a woman living in Texas since 1979

In 1968 at 22 years old I realized I was pregnant. I tried to find what we used to call underground abortion providers. The amount of money that was being charged for a procedure that left a couple of my friends dead was more money than I could have come up with under the best of circumstances.

So I carried the fetus to term and had a daughter. Her and me were both homeless on the streets of New York since I had no support system of family.

At a certain point when we had hitch hiked to Philly for what I thought was going to be a job opportunity it was down hill from there. When she was 3 years old and we were still out on the streets I realized I am not giving her even the basic requirements of life, roof over her head, food on a daily basis I ended up giving her up for adoption.

DON’T let them tell you adoption is a viable alternative to abortion. DON’T let them forced you into mother hood against your will. Don’t spend the rest of your life wondering how is she/or he doing. Don’t put a child in a situation that they wonder why you didn’t want them.

We can’t go back! We won’t go back! Join the Texas Abortion Rights Freedom Ride. Be a part of the fight to stop the attacks on women. Contribute in big and small ways.

Abortion on demand and Without Apology!

Forced motherhood = female enslavement

(AKA: Your Cards Are Showing)

By now, just about everything about the importance of the buffer zone that can be said, has been said. We need that zone to protect patients, clinic workers and escorts. I'm not going to rehash that. And if there is one thing this ruling has shown, it is that anti-choicers don't care about the health and safety of anyone who has actually been born.

I'd like to think that we already knew that, but sadly, anti-choicers have a great charade going in which they pretend that they care about women. They talk about how they are looking out for our safety while passing laws that restrict our freedom. I am talking, of course, about what the pro-choice movement has dubbed Targeted Restrictions of Abortion Providers, or TRAP laws. These laws are pushed by conservatives under the guise of worrying about our care. They make demands upon abortion providers that are wholly unnecessary, knowing that it will force many clinics to close and then claiming that it's just a happy coincidence. And if pro-choicers point out that grass growing near a clinic in South Carolina or 43 inch wide doorways in Missouri have nothing to do with protecting patients, well, anti-choicers just use that as fodder for their abortion mill myths.