access to abortion is important because otherwise you end up with states like mississippi which has only one clinic for the whole state that provides only 1st trimester abortions. minors are required to bring both parents to the clinic and parents have to have IDs. the nearest planned parenthood is in baton rouge, or alabama, i think. and of course then you have states like north dakota that's defining fertilized eggs as persons.

access to abortion is also important because men have full reproductive rights, and unless women have abortion rights, they don't have full reproductive rights.

hope that kinda helped!

it's very simple to me: either give women the opportunity to have a legal and safe abortion, or we're going to go get it elsewhere. making abortion illegal is not going to stop women from getting abortions; all it will do is cause more women and girls to die due to complications from back-alley abortions.

what it boils down to to me is: it's my body, my choice. no man can tell me what to do with my body or how to deal with what's growing inside of it. i will objectively consider limiting abortion opportunities the day that i see a male-bodied individual give birth to a baby conceived through rape, incest, or any other unwanted circumstance through his penis.

my question to "pro-life" individuals: if you are so strongly advocating the right to life, then why are you sacrificing the thousands and thousands of lives of women who choose unsafe abortion methods by taking away the means to public healthcare?

i'll step off my soap-box now.

I will advise you not to wholly concentrate on the inherient need for abortion. I think all of your classmates, as your respondants here have done, will get sucked into the arugment for abortion and miss the fact that its also a class on activism. Do not neglect the basis for abortions, but press home activism. You will stand out. (this advise is given independent of detailed assignment and knowlege of the prof.)

Because really.... you can espouse abortion all you want, but if your not willing to raise funds, write letters to elected officals, rock a T-shirt (help me out here commuinuty) you will be looking at one hand full of wishes and one hand full of, well, you know.

Maybe I can help by telling you the story of an abortion that could have been more humane.

My sister needed an abortion a couple years ago. She was 18 and became pregnant a couple weeks prior to high school graduation. It was absolutely the right choice for her. She lived with our mom about 40 miles outside of Philadelphia in a community that has rural, conservative, religious roots even if it has rapidly expanded over the last 25 years. The nearest place she could get an abortion was an hour's drive. They required a counseling session a week prior to the procedure. It was a process to say the least.

On the day of her abortion, my mom and I drove up with her. A woman wearing a neon orange vest rushed up to the car and asked us if we wanted her to escort us into the building. My mom and I surrounded my sister and held her hand as we walked to the building. A line of elderly men wearing straw hats sitting in fold-up chairs saw us and stood to begin their assault. Fortunately they were confused about who to direct the attack on because either my sister and/or I could have been there for the services. I don't remember what was said, but I felt their hatred and it took all I had not to explode in anger. The escort helped make it clear there were two sides to this fight.

The protesters must have known the schedule or needed a nap, because by lunchtime they were nowhere to be found. This clinic forced everyone to show up at 9am (or 8am? Whatever it was, we had to wake up ungodly early to make it there on time). Obviously not everyone can be seen at the same time, so we had to wait around for hours. My sister wasn't called in until close to 2.

On the ride home the anesthesia nausea combined with motion sickness got the best of her, and we had to pull over for her to puke several times. It made me angry that we had to travel so far and put her through so much for this. I can only imagine how difficult it would have been for someone with fewer means and a less supportive family.

One final remark: The clinic had a strict policy that the patient may only be accompanied by one person. Luckily they didn't make either my mom or I wait outside (with the protesters!!), but I also found that to be unacceptable. The waiting room was at capacity, so from a logistical standpoint I understood but it didn't make me happy.

I moved to Wyoming from the west coast, so there were a number of different things I had to adjust to. One of the things that amazed me is that there are no abortion clinics in Wyoming, that I know of. The closest one is the Planned Parenthood in Ft. Collins, CO, which is only about an hour drive from Laramie, but from other parts of the state it's obviously significantly further. As far as I can tell, this is not a legal or cultural thing, but a matter of population density. But I wonder how a high school kid with unsupportive parents, or an unemployed woman, or anyone with no means of transportation would handle this. It makes access to abortion in Wyoming a matter of privilege.