All Our Lives

Joining over 40 other organizations concerned about maternal and child health and welfare, All Our Lives has signed onto an amicus curiae or “friend of the court” brief in the case of Hope Elisabeth Ankrom v. State of Alabama, documenting the many evidence-based reasons why the State of Alabama should not criminalize substance using pregnant women.

One reason is that women will feel pressure to have abortions because substance abuse treatment is so difficult for them to access during pregnancy and they fear prosecution. Yet this criminalization is pushed in the name of establishing rights for unborn children! Punishing women and driving up the abortion rate doesn’t accomplish that in the real world.

We signed onto the brief after reaching out to National Advocates for Pregnant Women, in response to an RH Reality Check article by their attorneys Lynn Paltrow and Emma Ketteringham, Now It’s Clear: Pro-Life Means Pro-Imprisonment.

It doesn’t have to. And it won’t, if we can at all help it!

Thanks especially to Emma Ketteringham for her help.

There’s a scenario that’s gotten way past tiresome. (Example: here.)

To wit: Right-wing prolifer invokes early feminism. S/he produces problematic quotations in an utterly sloppy and yet oddly selective way to give the impression that early feminists did not simply oppose abortion; they were all exemplars of today’s misogynist “traditional family values.”

Prochoice critics rightfully point out the sloppiness and selectivity–thereby leaving their own impression that only an unscholarly, idiotic, deceptive person would argue that early feminists opposed abortion. Especially for any reasons that could matter today.

What *does* the historical record say?

Early feminists left plenty of solid material in their own words that expressed opposition to abortion–as prenatal lifetaking that resulted from the denial of women’s right to family planning and other substantive alternatives. Very often as part of a serious critique of “traditional family values”! For reasons that in many ways still apply today.

I have carefully researched and published on this material for over two decades and this is my well substantiated conclusion.

But who cares what *I* think, right? I’m just a family-destroying fake prolifer/antichoice woman-hating liar, right?

All Our Lives Joins Amicus Brief in Alabama Substance Abuse Cases

What Did Early Feminists Think?