Why Walk For Choice?

Why Walk for Choice?

Walk for Choice will be an international demonstration of outrage over the GOP’s recent attacks on people’s rights to abortion and basic medical care.

The “Protect Life Act” (HR3) in Congress seeks to limit federally funded abortions. In the past, abortions were only paid for by the federal government in cases of rape and incest, or if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life. This act essentially changes the definition of rape by adding the word ‘forcible.’ This means if you were on a date, or drugged, or drinking, or married and your spouse rapes you, or are of ‘limited mental capacity’, and you get pregnant as a result and can’t afford your abortion, you’re out of luck.

HR3 also seeks to free health care providers from penalty if they refuse to abort a pregnancy, even if it means the mother dies.

Recently in South Dakota a bill has been introduced that would legalize the murder of abortion providers “while resisting an attempt to harm” that person’s unborn child or the unborn child of that person’s spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman’s father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.

In the House of Representatives, we also have H.R.217 and H.R.358 which propose to cut all federal funding to organizations under Title X, such as Planned Parenthood, because they provide abortion services. Nevermind that Planned Parenthood’s federal funding does not go to abortion services, but rather vital medical services such as pap smears, STD testing, pregnancy testing, contraceptive, and more. If Planned Parenthood loses federal funding, centers will have to be shut down and people who can’t afford these services will have to go without.

Indiana Planned Parenthood is facing similar attack, with Republican representatives proposing to prohibit all state contracts and grants toward Planned Parenthood, again, because they provide abortions.

Get out in the street and show your outrage at this gross intrusion upon the rights of human beings everywhere.