#rhcari

Hey y’all, I don’t often promote specific causes on here but this time it’s important and close to my heart. A colleague of mine has started a citizen campaign to support pro-choice legislation in my home state of Rhode Island, and I’ve been helping out with some of the planning and coordinating.

The legislation is called the Reproductive Health Care Act (RHCA) and will be introduced in early 2018.

A similar bill was introduced for the 2017 session, but Rhode Island’s legislature declined to bring the bill to a vote. The bill text is currently being rewritten in collaboration with local pro-choice advocates, who are committed to getting it passed in 2018.

As part of our campaign to support this cause, we want to publish a HUGE ad in the state’s largest daily newspaper on the day before Thanksgiving, with a list of all the state legislators who are endorsed by the anti-choice group Rhode Island Right to Life or haven’t received an endorsement from Planned Parenthood.

You can check out the full ad here.

We have FOUR DAYS before the funding deadline, and we need $2,600 to run this ad letting Rhode Islanders know which of their representatives can’t be trusted to support the right to choose guaranteed for all American citizens in Roe v. Wade.

All of your money goes directly toward funding the cost of the ad. If you’re able to contribute even a dollar, it would go a long way towards winning this important fight, for Rhode Island and for the rights of women and other uterus-havers everywhere.

If you’re not able to contribute, that’s okay too! If you can give this post a reblog and a signal boost so it can reach as many folks as possible, that’s also a huge help! It means a lot to me for you to even take the time to read this post!

But why is the RHCA even necessary?

It’s necessary because, currently, Rhode Island has no official state law guaranteeing safe and legal access to abortion.

The Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 legalized abortion throughout the United States, but Rhode Island never codified the decision into its own state laws. In other words, if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned at the federal level, access to abortion isn’t legally guaranteed for Rhode Islanders at the state level.

In addition, several harmful laws and regulations related to abortion still remain on Rhode Island’s books from before Roe v. Wade, in some cases requiring consent from a parent or partner before seeking an abortion, or penalizing physicians who perform an abortion without such consent.

The 2018 RHCA will eliminate the state’s archaic and harmful abortion laws and ensure that the guarantee of Roe v. Wade is officially codified in state law to protect the right to choose regardless of what happens on the federal level.

I’ve gotten to speak with some of the advocates helping to draft the new language. Thanks in part to my feedback, the 2018 RHCA will include gender-inclusive language, using the term “individual” instead of “woman” to explicitly extend abortion rights in Rhode Island to include transgender and gender non-conforming individuals as well as women of all ages and identities.

If you can contribute to our campaign, it would mean a great deal to me, both as a member of the Committee to Pass RHCA in RI and as a uterus-having person who’s gone through a miscarriage. I know how personal and traumatic the termination of a pregnancy can be, whether by choice or not.

Every pregnant person is entitled to make this difficult and deeply personal decision for themselves. Please help us make sure that Rhode Islanders will always have the right to choose.