Two recent events have made me return to my favorite TV show of all time, Friday Night Lights, a well-written and riveting drama about football and small-town life in West Texas. First, I recently saw Connie Britton, aka Tami Taylor outside a restaurant in Beachwood Canyon, Los Angeles. I got so excited I stalled my… Read more →
Category: Reproductive Justice
Sweeping Changes, Deadly Setbacks: Abortion Policy in 20th-Century Latin America
This post is dedicated to Clayton Fagner Alves Dias, soldado da PM N. 96008. On February 20, 2015, a nineteen-year-old young woman was arrested outside the city of São Paulo, Brazil for an alleged illegal abortion. The girl had gone to a private hospital to seek medical care. The physician who treated her suspected an… Read more →
Archiving Abortion: Sharing One Story At A Time
“I feel like nobody should have to experience anything in life without sharing it. I feel like through our experiences it teaches us a lesson and I feel like we owe it to the world to share it.” That was Nikki’s response when I asked her the question I ask everyone who shares their story with… Read more →
Agency and Abortion in Brazil
Two women’s deaths resulting from clandestine abortions recently shocked the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In August 2014, 27-year-old Jandira dos Santos Cruz died during an illegal abortion procedure. Her body was later found burned and dismembered to avoid identification. The following month in the nearby city of Niterói, 32-year-old Elizangela Barbosa died from… Read more →
The Burdens of Conscience: Thoughts on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby
In the late 1960s, two men refused to fulfill their military service obligations. One was a humanist and the other a Catholic, and both viewed Vietnam as an unjust war. However, they admitted they did not view all wars as unconscionable. This presented a problem because the Selective Service required men to certify that they… Read more →
If the IUD is an Abortifacient, Then So is Chemotherapy and Lunch Meat
When I criticized Hobby Lobby for its attempts to evade the Obamacare contraceptive mandate, a friend of mine thoughtfully replied, “Lara, I don’t think the Hobby Lobby case has anything to do with the daily birth control pill — it is only dealing with not wanting to cover drugs and medical devices that actually “end”… Read more →
Sterilization is Not the Solution
This is the second in a two-part series responding to a recent report by The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) that is helping to bring to light the sterilization of at least 148 female inmates in California prisons between 2006 and 2010 without proper approval and against informed consent best practices. To get the most… Read more →