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Life and Liberty
for Women
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| What Life and Liberty for Women
Will Do |
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| I believe in and respect my sister
abortion rights organizations. It is imperative
for current abortion rights organizations to continue
to work through the legislative and electoral process,
beating back and staving off restrictions on women's
right to access safe and legal abortion as best
they can. They have to do what they can to protect
Roe from a fatal blow by the religious right anti-abortion
extremists. Let me make clear that I have no intention
of duplicating the electoral or legislative work
that NARAL and Planned Parenthood do. They do that
vital work with an expertise I could never duplicate.
In fact, I will continue to support their work with
my dollars and my volunteer time. |
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| However, I hold no illusions about
the skepticism of my own abortion rights movement
in my "radical" approach, my message, forthrightness,
or the language I will use about abortion rights.
I have already experienced such in varying degrees.
But that is okay. |
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| I view the current abortion rights
organization's response to me as predictable, especially
in a time when Roe vs. Wade is under such siege
both at the federal and state level and their resources
are stretched to the maximum. I'll |
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| be tolerated and someday, I am sure,
I'll be welcomed into the fold, because my gut tells
me that I am right - absolutely right about what
I am doing. |
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| If Life and Liberty
for Women is successful, current abortion
rights organizations will be able to expand their
base of support without giving away the right to
life and liberty of either a woman or fetus, without
placing any woman's health and life at risk, and
without giving one inch of ground to anti-abortion
extremists. |
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| In addition, should Life
and Liberty for Women find success, then
we can move toward a victory never before seen -
poor women, of all races, having the same access
to abortion and contraceptive services as their
more well off sisters. Ricki Solinger, in Abortion
Wars, A Half Century of Struggle, 1950-2000, 1998,
said "The task before us is to revitalize a vast
feminist movement so that women's determination
can be exercised in a climate that honors the relationship
between reproductive autonomy and citizenship rights
for each and every female." |
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| That's when we'll know we've truly
succeeded. |
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So how exactly will Life
and Liberty for Women accomplish their mission?
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| Life and Liberty
for Women must utilize frank, progressive,
and aggressive messages. Those messages will inform
and promote an understanding by women and men about
the history of abortion rights and the current status
and threats by anti-abortion extremists against
the right and access to safe and legal abortion.
Those messages will promote an understanding by
women and men of the consequences of illegal abortion
to women's health and life, the morality and correctness
of balancing of life and liberty of a woman and
fetus. Those messages will also promote an understanding
by women and men of the necessity of comprehensive
age-appropriate sex education, contraceptive availability,
and the necessity of taking personal responsibility
when deciding to be sexually active. |
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| Life and Liberty
for Women must also educate and challenge
men to become more responsible in the sex act, more
responsible in pregnancy and disease prevention.
Over and |
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| over again I hear men and women both
saying that women who don't want to be pregnant
should simply say no and abstain. And they express
no sympathy for a woman who engages in a sex act,
particularly outside of marriage, for just the pleasure
of sexual gratification itself, without contraceptive
forethought. Yet, these same individuals do not
hold men to the same standard of accountability
and that's wrong, unfair, and immoral. |
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| It's a fact that when used consistently
and correctly, condoms are 98% effective in the
prevention of pregnancy. So if every man, married
or not, engaging in a sex act in which he didn't
want to become a father as a result, correctly used
a condom, just think about how many less unintended
pregnancies would be occurring. Men must be held
accountable for their engagement in each and every
sex act in which they do not correctly us a condom!
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The fact is all women, of any
socioeconomic class and any
race are good moral beings who make good moral decisions.
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| Life and Liberty
for Women must confront and challenge the
shame the anti-abortion movement has left women
feeling about legal abortion and their right to
life and liberty. We must challenge the anti-abortion
extremist position that fetuses have a right to
life and liberty over a woman from conception to
birth. No exceptions. Ever. |
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| Life and Liberty
for Women must also challenge the rhetoric
from the religious right extremists that says that
women are not good moral beings making good moral
decisions when they decide to terminate an unintended
pregnancy consistent with their right to do so,
clearly outlined in Roe vs. Wade. |
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| The fact is, potential life is entitled
to quality of life. The fact is, it's not immoral
or wrong for |
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| any woman to decide that she cannot
provide for her child the quality of life her child
deserves. |
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| It also isn't wrong or immoral for
a woman to determine that she cannot give up her
child for adoption. |
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| And finally, it isn't wrong or immoral
for a woman to determine that terminating her pregnancy
is right, moral, and consistent with her own set
of values and her conscience. |
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| Finally, Life and
Liberty for Women must promote women and
men's understanding that it is essential, right
and moral for public policy to stand front and center
and fulfill its obligation and responsibility. |
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Public policy must honor every
woman's right
to make her own reproductive decisions
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| Public policy must not make any judgements
about the morality of abortion because the determination
of when life begins is not a function of public
policy. Public policy must honor every woman's right
to make her own reproductive decisions, make her
own judgement about when life begins, in alignment
with her own set of religious and moral values.
Public policy does so by seeing to the legality,
safety, and accessibility to all three options to
an unintended pregnancy: parenting, adoption, and
abortion. |
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| A strong mass media and community
presence with progressive messages declaring, without
shame, with great pride, the morality of legal abortion
and contraceptive availability and use and the immorality
of illegal abortion, is a must if Roe vs. Wade is
to survive. Such a strategy, I believe, will move
a majority of the public back to a strong belief
and commitment to keeping abortion safe and legal,
today, tomorrow, and forever. |
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Peggy E. Loonan
Founder and Executive Director,
Life and Liberty for Women |
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I am determined and dedicated to the restoration
of women's belief, pride, and support for their right to life
and liberty, their right to safe and legal abortion.
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| References |
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| 1. Abortion Wars - A Half Century
of Struggle, 1950-2000 edited by Ricki Solinger,
Regents of the University of California, University
of California Press, 1998. |
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| 2. Abortion - The Clash of Absolutes,
Laurence H. Tribe. W.W. Norton and Company, New
York, 1990. |
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| 3. From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom:
Transforming a Movement, edited by Marlene Gerber
Fried, South End Press , Boston, MA, 1990 |
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| 4. Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy
and Race before Roe vs. Wade, Ricki Solinger, New
York: Routledge, 1992 |
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| 5. The Republican War Against Women,
Tanya Melich, Bantam Books 1996,1998. |
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