Why Roe isn’t enough

Check out this piece at RH Reality Check today. Emily asked two questions of reproductive rights and justice advocates about the Roe anniversary. The first, what does Roe mean to you and the people you work with, and the second, is Roe enough?

Here are my answers:

For the women we work with, many of whom come from countries in Latin America where abortion is still criminalized, Roe has the potential to have a huge impact on their lives. Roe has the potential to make reproductive health services just like any other healthcare need a woman has, it has the potential to make a usually clandestine procedure safe and accessible. Unfortunately for them, the Roe decision has been weakened and diluted by subsequent legislation. The Hyde Amendment, in particular, has seriously stunted the potential of Roe. Because of these laws, we have a long way to go for low-income and immigrant women to really feel the full affects of this historic Supreme Court decision.

Roe isn’t enough because privacy is not enough. That narrow legal framework has only barely protected our legal right to access the procedure. It says nothing about access, about funding, about autonomy and barriers. It says nothing about justice. It has not addressed those who based on moral and religious convictions try to limit the health care women can receive. It has not addressed those who want women’s bodies to be manipulated in service of a religious agenda and who want the fetus’s rights to be placed about those of the mother. We need a lot more than a shaky legal framework to stand on if we want to achieve reproductive justice.

Read other advocates comments here.

Update: Univision agrees to run condom ads!

Good news! Univision responded to our protests from last week and has decided to run the ads! Thanks to any readers who took action.

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and Catholics for Choice are happy to share the wonderful news that Univision has decided to run our Condoms4Life radio ads. We emailed all of you last week, urging you to take action and ask the President and COO of Univision Radio to run these important advertisements. The Spanish-language ads, which you can listen to here and here, talk about the importance of condom use within communities of faith. We are thrilled that Univision has agreed to play the ads which will air over the holidays on Univision stations in New York City.

When Univision Radio refused to run our ads on three of their NYC stations, we asked you all to get involved. You took action in impressive numbers, sending emails to Gary Stone with the message that this kind of censorship was unacceptable and that these messages are key to keeping our community safe. We want to thank all of you for taking action, especially those who passed the message along to their friends and family. A number of blogs also posted about this issue, further spreading the action.

Gary listened to you! We have the activism of the Latino community and our allies to thank for this win and Univision to thank for doing the right thing. We want to recognize Univision for listening to the resounding message you all sent last week-that the message Good Catholics Use Condoms deserved to be heard. NLIRH and Catholics for Choice will share a message of appreciation to Univision on behalf of all of us for listening to our concerns.

Thanks again for all your hard work and support. To keep up to date on this campaign, you can visit www.condoms4life.org or www.latinainstitute.org.

In solidarity,

The staff of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and Catholics for Choice

Cross posted at feministing

Univision refuses to run condom radio ads

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (full disclosure: that’s my day job) and Catholics for Choice recently ran two Spanish language radio ads in NYC, scheduled in conjunction with World AIDS Day.

You can listen to the two ads here and here, but here is a summary:

The radio ads appeal to people of faith with one of the 60-second spots noting that: “I’m Catholic and there is nothing more important to me than protecting family and love. That’s why I talked to my grandson about condoms.”

The first ad features a grandmother speaking about her grandson, a gay man, who hears that Catholics are not supposed to use condoms. She tells her grandson, “I took care of you because I love you and if you love that man, you’ll take care of him, too.”

The second ad features a couple and models language that couples can use when discussing the importance of love, faith and condom use in their relationship. The ad concludes, “We are Catholics and people of faith and we know sex is sacred and that we need to take care of each other. And this means using a condom every time we have sex.”

Pretty tame right? Well not according to Univision. They refused to run the ads on three of their radio stations in NYC, despite the fact that these organizations were willing to pay for them. To add insult to injury, Univision recently received an Cable Positive award for their work on HIV prevention with the Kaiser Family Foundation. Apparently HIV prevention is cool, but talking about condoms is a no go? Or maybe it was the queer theme of the first ad that caused the rejection.

If you want to send an email to the President and COO of Univision Radio telling him he should run the ads, go here.

Cross-posted at Feministing and Nuestra Vida, Nuestra Voz