What is the Silver Ribbon/Trust Women Campaign and what you are hoping to accomplish with it?
a. Bring awareness to the public and the policymakers about the 80% of the country that believe we should TRUST WOMEN with personal health decisions and reproductive rights.
b. Wake up the public about the attacks on reproductive rights, in Congress and statehouses
c. Get people to TAKE ACTION – and tell others.
d. To bring reproductive health/justice/ rights supporters together under 1 public symbol to work together.
A recent Huffington Post article by Ellen Shaffer (Co-Director of the Center for Policy Analysis, which sponsors the Silver Ribbon campaign) notes that even the best birth control could fail 1 time in 100, half of pregnancies are unintended, and at least a 1/3 of US women have an abortion during their lifetime. Could you tell us a little bit about the work the Campaign has done to make reproductive services like this available to women?
Fighting cuts to family planning e.g. title X funding. Planned parenthood funding
Supporting healthcare reform
Defining birth control as preventive care
Supporting Walks for Choice
What are some of the biggest threats to reproductive health rights both legally, politically and socially?
This “war on women.” This attack on reproductive rights on that national and state level
states are passing more and more ridiculous laws to make abortion unavailable by increasing costs and wait times and making it so that the providers will quit
e.g. justifiable homicide, treating an abortion clinic like a full service surgery center, etc. etc.
Can you tell us over the last 10 to 15 years who has been the most impacted on hostilities towards reproductive care?
Women of color, women in the middle and lower classes of income.
The proportion of abortion patients who were poor increased by almost 60%—from 27% in 2000 to 42% in 2008, according to Guttmacher.
What are some of the initiatives and projects you are involved in that we can support after tonight to continue in making sure our rights are protected?
Please wear a silver ribbon and talk about it with everyone that asks about it.
Email your friends, facebook, twitter.
Make sure that your friends with conservative representatives (in other states in more rural CA) speak up and stand up and be counted
Follow us on facebook. follow us on twitter.
Twibbon up!