12-11-19 – The Politics Of Abortion

Hey Fam,

While the erosion of access to abortion has been focused on the South, Dani McClain, a contributing writer and fellow at the Nation Institute has turned her attention to the Midwest, specifically her home state of Ohio, where a ban on abortion after six weeks passed in April and a ban on abortion after 20 weeks has been in effect since 2017.

This fall, two Cincinnati Planned Parenthood clinics were forced to close as a result of the Trump administration’s gag rule. Crisis pregnancy centers—which offer neither birth control nor accurate information on abortion—remain the only well-funded resources for pregnant and parenting families.
Reproductive justice groups however, have been finding ways to bring new activists to the fight. Their key focus is the state’s mortality rate for infants born to black women, which is one of the worst in the country: Black babies in Ohio die before their first birthday at two to three times the rate of white babies. We’ll talk about the efforts to mobilize around issues of black maternal health, abortion access, and mass incarceration.

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