Thanks to a supporter for contributing this graphic. It shows that countries where laws authorize the widest access to abortions are also countries with the lowest rate of abortions:

Silence equals death.

California AIDS activists taught the world the power of plain and direct talk about gender bias and sexuality to save lives.

The ability to control whether and when to have a child are key to the physical, social and economic health of women and families, and access to legal, safe and affordable birth control and abortion are essential to guarantee that ability.

Currently, a barrage of extreme and punitive laws restricting these rights are streaming out of state legislatures and the House of Representatives.  These shockingly offensive departures from the American mainstream demand bolder leadership by our elected officials, and concerted organizing by pro-rights advocates that engages and mobilizes the majority of the American public who are appalled by these assaults but will otherwise remain stunned into silence.   Polling and politics as usual are not turning the tide.

Draconian restrictions on facilities that provide abortions in Texas have <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/us/citing-new-texas-rules-abortion-provider-is-shutting-last-clinics-in-2-regions.html?_r=0” target=”_hplink”>reduced their number from 44 in 2011 to 24 today.</a> The number is expected to drop to 6 by September. Reports are already surfacing from Texas of women returning to desperate — and deadly — measures</a> of self-abortions, like coat hangers and bleach.

Part of the problem is that the health consequences of the attacks are graphically real but have been surgically isolated to the most vulnerable in our society, by income, race and education. Unintended pregnancies and unplanned births <a href=”http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/FB-Unintended-Pregnancy-US.html” target=”_hplink”>are 5 to 6 times higher among women</a> with incomes under 200 percent of the federal poverty level, and also higher for women of color and those without a high school degree.

<p>The odious Hyde Amendment, a congressional measure, prohibits federal funding for abortions. 35 states choose not to supplement Medicaid with state funds for abortions.</p> But its insidious effects extend to California. Although we use public funds to pay for abortions, and a range of family planning services, California’s rate of unintended pregnancy is among the highest in the nation, on par with Mississippi and New York.

We must fund abortions.  But we can’t just can’t just slip the money under the table. We need to inform and empower women and men to claim our rights to determine our futures.  That includes understanding both our biology and the language we need to stick up for ourselves. The reality is that gender bias has repercussions for all of us, and that procreation involves both sexes.

In case we needed further motivation, opponents are now using the club of funding sources to threaten coverage for everyone.  This year the House passed HR 7, that would prohibit private health insurance plans that get a drop of federal funds from covering abortions; this includes virtually all employers who get a tax break if they contribute to the cost of employees’ health insurance.

In California two Jesuit universities unilaterally cancelled coverage for abortions in 2013  for their faculty.

The Supreme Court will hear cases on March 25 that could authorize your boss to cut off covering your birth control.

Some are genuflecting to the strategic wisdom of keeping a low public profile on the subject. They  claim they can’t campaign on abortion and birth control in 2014 because it’s an election year. But 2015 will be the run-up to the presidential election. And then 2016 — well, you know.

In other words: Chances are 100 percent that if political leaders refrain from taking action on this issue in 2014, we are doomed to live in the present for the foreseeable future.

The fact is, voters have demonstrated solid support at the state and local levels for access to legal, affordable reproductive health care services.

• Florida voters defeated a state ballot initiative to prohibit public funding for abortions.
• Mississippi voters defeated a statewide initiative to declare a fertilized egg a person, with 80 percent of black make voters leading the opposition vote.
• Voters in Albuquerque defeated a proposal to outlaw most late-term abortions.
• Otherwise vulnerable Democrats won in 2012 against challengers who revealed their Mad Hatter theories about rape and incest.
• Virginia voters chose a machine Democrat as governor, defeating state attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, an originator of rules forcing women to get — and pay for — invasive ultrasounds before proceeding with an abortion they’ve already decided to have.

We have the chance to do a solid: unite all of us to defend both the funding for reproductive health care, and the rights of all of us to enjoy it if we choose.</p><p>    We can also prevent poor women from being forced by politicians who hate them to bear children they decide they don’t want and can’t afford, and then subjected to the further indignity of suffering cuts in their food stamps. Or worse, to die from self-induced abortions.</p>

Leaders. muster up your moxie and campaign on women’s rights and human rights.  Opposing the Hyde Amendment would be a good start. We’ll support you.  Chances are good, we’ll all win.

[Published in San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 2014

San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution opposing  “anti-abortion banners” on January 28, 2014.  Click here for a short video of public testimony on the resolution, and a statement by lead sponsor Supervisor David Campos.  Other sponsors were Supervisors Chiu, Cohen, Weiner, Mar, Yee, Farrell, and Kim.

The Trust Women/Silver Ribbon Campaign presented petitions with hundreds of sharply worded comments from San Francisco and nationwide, who expressed outrage that the City posted banners with the false statement that “abortion hurts women.”

Elizabeth Creely:  Stating that a medical procedure is “hurtful” or damaging is wrong. There is plenty of evidence that a lack of medical care is what hurts women.

Dr. Ellen Shaffer, Director, Trust Women/Silver Ribbon Campaign. This debate is both about reproductive rights and justice – and also about the ability of forces with an entirely different political and economic agenda to tie up our political system in knots, so that virtually nothing is accomplished. We are trying to figure out how to deal with an annual march by outsiders who don’t represent San Francisco’s views or values, their efforts to use our rules to post banners saying “Abortion hurts women,” and how we represent our own views in public.

Joe Brenner, Men Who Trust Women: I’ll read an excerpt from a joint statement from Dr. Harvey Cohen, Stanford Professor of Pediatrics, Peter Coyote, actor and writer, father to a grown daughter, grandfather to her young girl, political activist, and ordained Zen Priest, Steve Heilig, healthcare ethicist, and Stephen Keese, realtor in Palo Alto, all members of Men Who Trust Women.

“Abortion is safe. Access to legal abortion services is essential. Access to legal and affordable family planning health care services including abortion has been critical for expanding economic, educational and professional success and emotional satisfaction for women, the men and children in their lives and for communities as a whole. Denied abortion care can perpetuate poverty.

“San Francisco must preach what the City practices. Public pronouncements matter. By approving these banners for prominent display on public property on Market Street, the City has contributed to undermining women’s personal and private medical decisions, and undermining public health.

Cheryl Traverse:  I can’t think of five issues that are more not neutral than abortion in the United States of America right now.  It is hugely not neutral.

Professor Susan Englander: The display gives a false imprimatur of the City’s approval.. I believe that action on this issue should have been more immediate and decisive; these banners should never have seen the light of day.

Hene Kelly:  The truth is that abortion did hurt women.  The truth is that as I was growing up as a young girl, I lost one of my best friends.  She was raped.  She had nowhere to turn.  Her parents wouldn’t help her; nobody did.  She went and got an illegal abortion, and died from the infection.  I became a teacher.  I had a student who was raped, and got pregnant.  She didn’t know where to turn.  She went to Planned Parenthood.  She got an abortion.  Now’s she’s a social worker, working with young women.  She was saved by that abortion.

Justine Marcus:  Low income and women of color, who are disproportionately affected in terms of access to medical education, in terms of domestic violence, rape, abuse, and also who have escalating rates of teen pregnancy, are especially vulnerable to this kind of public health misinformation.

Supervisor David Campos:  I think it really is important for us to send a very clear message about how we in San Francisco do trust women and we respect their right to decide for themselves what to do with their bodies.  This is not about free speech, this is about misinformation that has been put out by fringe groups that have no backing for the claim that somehow abortion hurts women.  I think that the medical evidence and scientific evidence on this point is very clear. We need to carefully look at the policies and procedures that got us to this point, to make sure that there isn’t misinformation that is put out.

I especially was touched by the comment that these kinds of tactics are especially negative when it comes to the disproportionate impact on poor women, and I have seen that myself because of the work that we have done with Planned Parenthood in my District, where anti-choice extremists have come out to target poor, working class, middle income women, as they are trying to access reproductive rights.  I also hope that the City is proactive, not only in using whatever proceeds are coming in to educate women, but also in putting out the correct information about the safety of abortion as a procedure.  I think that if we allow these kinds of groups to put up this kind of misinformation, that we should also have our own information presented and that we make it clear by posting similar banners that clearly say that we trust women.

I think that what is happening is really sad, and it certainly does not reflect the values of San Francisco.

Ellen Shaffer, Director and Co-Founder, Silver Ribbon Campaign to Trust Women
Remarks
Celebration of the 41st Anniversary of Roe v Wade
American Association of University Women – Los Altos/Mountain View Chapter; and the
Silver Ribbon Campaign to Trust Women
Los Altos, CA Jan. 22, 2014

We’ve accomplished so much since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion on Jan. 22, 1973!  We’ve won competence and independence, and kept our sense of humor. There have been tremendous changes in our professional, educational and personal opportunities. Women have entered professions that were virtually closed to us, including medicine, journalism, science and the law.  We’re catching up as engineers and members of Congress, though much progress remains ahead. We’ve continued to have children, and to build families and communities.

We still earn only 70 cents to the dollar earned by men.

We need support for employment, including child care, and paid family leave.

And we need to preserve and expand access to legal, affordable abortions and to birth control, as a fundamental human right.

The Trust Women/Silver Campaign aims to build visibility for this important agenda.

To link it to our trust in science.

To build unity and momentum in our movement.

We face several threats this year.  And we have some encouraging signs, including the Women’s Health Protection Act, and a pending resolution at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

First, the assaults.  There has been a rash of measures enacted at the state and federal levels that are intended to reverse our progress, and specifically our access to abortion and contraception. As many of us have heard, states adopted more such restrictions in 2011-13 than in the previous decade.  The House of Representatives introduced the “right to let women die” bill,  that would authorize hospitals to withhold lifesaving abortion care, even if it meant the mother would die.  So far a slim majority in the Senate has kept these bills from becoming law.

At the state level, we’ve seen an explosion of “TRAP” laws, Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.  As Dahlia Lithwack noted in Slate (11/13/13), “The anti-choice strategy has been to close as many clinics as possible and to sideline as many providers as possible by crafting … regulations that force women to view ultrasounds, listen to inaccurate medical scripts, and find time to undergo multiple appointments; that force doctors to attempt to obtain ever-elusive hospital admitting privileges, and that force clinics to widen hallways and rejigger broom closets” to meet standards intended for hospital surgery suites.  The requirement for MD licensing is a deliberate obstruction. Where abortions are under fire, some doctors who perform them may not reside in the area.  If they do practice locally, there have been campaigns to deny them hospital admitting privileges for that very reason. In the rare case of an emergency during or after an abortion, the woman would be admitted to a hospital, but often under another doctor’s care.

In California, it’s been impossible to pass restrictive legislation or ballot measures at the state level, and in most local areas, so the opposition acts as picadors, generating misinformation and promoting ignorance.  Flouting – and obscuring – state law, several Catholic universities have attempted to cancel covering abortions through the insurance provided to faculty and staff.

What is particularly galling about these campaigns is the occasional pretense that this assault is actually good for us, and motivated by a tender concern for the wellbeing of women and children.

In San Francisco, anti-abortion rights groups are this week displaying banners claiming that “Abortion hurts women.”

During a debate over the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act,” or HR 7, an anti-abortion bill currently advancing in Congress, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) suggested that Republicans support restricting access to abortion because it will ultimately benefit the economy if women have more children.  Goodlatte noted that carrying pregnancies to term “very much promotes job creation.” [Dara Culp, Think Progress, Jan. 15, 2014]

This has been going on for awhile.  And til now, women and our representatives have been somewhat stunned.
A new bill, the Women’s Health Protection Act, is starting to turn this around.

Again, Dahlia Lithwick: “The bill is an effort to reaffirm Roe and Casey by pre-empting state efforts to enact measures like heartbeat bills, fetal pain legislation, and regulations that result in clinic closures, added expenses, and unnecessary delays.  It’s worth being perfectly clear that the bill will likely never pass the GOP-controlled House. But what’s important is that it represents Democrats—including male Democrats—taking a strong, long-overdue stand against state efforts to simply nullify Roe v. Wade with legislation that assumes Roe has already been overruled.

“The purpose of the new bill is to force states to prove that the dozens of measures ostensibly aimed at protecting women’s health actually do that. It would no longer be enough to simply assert that anything the state deems necessary to promote a woman’s health, does so. The law forces states to either find a meaningful connection between the regulations and a woman’s health, or openly admit they just want to end abortion.”

Not only that.  We expect to have legislation imminently that will challenge the Hyde Amendment, the notoriously destructive provision that prevents federal funding for abortions.  Low-income women are vastly more likely to experience an unintended pregnancy compared with women earning 200% or more over the federal poverty level – in fact, they’re 5 times more likely.  The Hyde Amendment has been both ideologically and directly responsible for this divide since it was first adopted in 1976, and never challenged.

This is a key year for us to become informed, to join together, to show that we Trust Women to make our own decisions about our health and our bodies.  We know that we all benefit when women can safely and effectively decide whether and when to have children, and to experience the social and economic support we all require to assure that we raise our families in safe and thriving communities.

Right now, Trust Women has three immediate opportunities for you to collaborate:
Sign the TWSR petition (http://www.coalitionpetitions.org/lies_about_abortion_hurt_women) asking San Francisco City officials to take down the false and misleading banners stating “Abortion Hurts Women.”  It points out:

Campaigns to defund and stigmatize abortion, and impose repressive views about sexuality, disempower and subordinate women and girls, and prevent them from choosing and using the vital reproductive health care services they think best. In addition to legislation, tactics include violence against abortion providers, and harassment of patients at health centers. These actions hurt women and girls.

Next Tues., Jan 28, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution condemning the anti-abortion banners.  On Feb. 4, they’ll present an additional resolution supporting the Women’s Health Protection Act.  We’d welcome your visit up to see us in San Francisco.
A new development this year is the emergence of a solidarity group, Men Who Trust Women.  I’d like to invite Joe Brenner, Director of Men Who Trust Women, to say a few words.

And once again, thanks so much to the American Association of University Women for creating and maintaining this wonderful annual celebration of Roe v Wade, and for inviting the Silver Ribbon Campaign to Trust Women to enjoy this great day with you.

Statement by Joe Brenner, Director, MWTW:

I’m proud to be here with you today for the commemoration and celebration of the 41^st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and women’s rights to make personal health decisions, including access to safe and legal abortion. 

It’s great to see everyone here, including the men. 

We know that the majority of people, women AND men, in the United States support reproductive choice. 

The minority of mostly pale male extremists in Congress and in state legislatures across the country who oppose women and reproductive choice do not represent the majority of the American people.  We should show them the door.

It’s time for the many men in the nation to stand up for their beliefs and be visible and vocal to trust, respect, and support women and women’s right to make decisions about their health, including access to contraception, and safe and legal abortion.  A new national network, called Men Who Trust Women, is aiming to do just that.  Tell your friends, your partners, your families. Our website is “menwhotrustwomen.org.”

While reproductive rights are women’s rights, they are also human rights.  An injury to women is an injury to us all.  So let’s celebrate, commemorate, and strengthen the rights enshrined in the historic Roe v. Wade decision today.  Thank you. 

Introduced at SF Board of Supervisors on Jan. 14, 2014:

BoS resolution 1-14-13 opposing the anti-abortion banners on market street, urging the dedication of banner proceeds to the Department of Public Health for a campaign advancing accurate and scientifically verifiable education about women’s reproductive health, and requesting the review of banner regulations to assess whether the banners were issued in violation of City law.

ABC News Reports – Carolyn Tyler reports comments by Dr. Ellen Shaffer and SF Supervisor David Campos.

Click here to express your views

Quotes from signers of the TWSR petition:

See more responses here: https://oursilverribbon.org/wp-content/uploads/petition-abortion-rts-1-9-14-public.pdf