Has TV Ever Gotten Abortion Right?
Melinda Beck In 1981, eight years after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion and just a year before her breakout role as pregnant Stacy in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jennifer Jason Leigh played another apparently knocked-up high schooler, this time in a CBS after-school special called I Think I’m Having a Baby. Leigh is Laurie,…
Planned Parenthood Rejects Federal Funding Over Trump Administration’s “Unethical” Gag Rule
Pro-choice activists and legislators in New York protest the Title X “gag rule” in February. Spencer Platt/Getty Planned Parenthood announced Monday that it will withdraw from Title X, the federal family planning program through which the organization receives about $60 million annually, rather than adhere to the Trump administration’s new rule that restricts grantees from…
When Your Rapist Demands Custody
Before her son began school last year, Tiffany Gordon showed his father’s mugshot to school administrators. “If you see this guy, you have to call the police,” she told them. Ten years earlier, when Tiffany was 12, a young man she knew invited her, her sister, and a friend on a late-night car ride. “I…
The Supreme Court Just Stuck up for Abortion Rights in Alabama
Patrick Semansky/AP Photo The US Supreme Court has decided not to review an Alabama law from 2016 that would have banned the most common method of second-trimester abortion. By not taking up the case, a ruling from a lower court blocking the law will stand, a big victory for abortion providers in Alabama. Alabama proposed criminalizing…
Ayanna Pressley Wants to Ditch an Old Anti-Abortion Law. House Democrats Aren’t Listening.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley speaks to demonstrators outside of the Supreme Court on May 21, 2019.Stefani Reynolds/AP Images The Democratic majority in the US House appears likely to pass a spending bill which will include the Hyde Amendment, a measure that blocks federal funds from being spent on abortions, despite clear opposition from the the party’s base and…
“Beyond My Pay Grade”: When Pete Buttigieg Had a Chance to Stand Firm on Abortion Rights, He Dodged
Mother Jones illustration; Getty; Zuma Mayor Pete Buttigieg was keeping a low profile. It was last spring, and he was in the middle of deliberating what he would later call “one of the hardest decisions” he’s had to make during his tenure in South Bend, Indiana. An abortion clinic—which was hoping to offer service to…