Earlier this week, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on a case out of Missouri about the right of pregnant women who are incarcerated to be transported to secure an abortion.  Here’s some background on the case, via Rachel Roth at RH Reality Check:

The case arose when a young woman beginning a four-year sentence in Missouri was told she could not have an abortion. This represented a change in policy for the prison; in the past, women who could come up with the money were taken to a clinic for abortion care. Then in 2005, with a new anti-choice governor in office, the prison administration and the Department of Corrections reversed course, adopting a policy that categorically denies women access to abortion.

After weeks of being rebuffed by prison officials, “Jane Roe” wrote to the ACLU and eventually sued the prison. The court’s decision in her favor was straightforward, because the Supreme Court has been very clear that while states can enact policies to make getting an abortion more difficult, they cannot ban abortion altogether, as the Missouri prison had done. The Supreme Court has also made it clear that people do not automatically lose all of their constitutional rights when they cross the prison threshold. Jails and prisons must have a legitimate, prison-related reason for restricting such rights, and forcing women to bear children does not further any legitimate goal related to prison administration or crime control. Calling the decision an offense to its values, the Missouri government has asked the court of appeals to reinstate its unconstitutional policy.

It’s a funny thing when a state argues that a woman should lose her constitutionally protected right to abortion when she is incarcerated. While it’s true that people who are in jail in the U.S. do lose many rights that are ancillary to liberty, they retain the rights guaranteed them by the Constitution. This is clear in the realms of the First Amendment and the Eighth Amendment, for example (though the Supreme Court yesterday declined t0 hear a case about the censorship of outgoing inmate mail). While there are sometimes legit penological considerations that allow the government to restrict a constitutional right more than might be possible for the general public, that logic doesn’t fly here:  the state prison system regularly transports women over three hours away for a cosmetology exam.  This case is not about making the prison system run more smoothly; it’s about picking on the most vulnerable women in society in an attempt to further restrict the abortion rights of all.  Let’s hope the Eighth Circuit upholds the lower court’s decision and reminds the states that people who are incarcerated retain all of the constitutional rights they had before entering prison, including those related to their reproductive health.

Last year, reproductive justice activists at Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) were informed that the school (which is Jesuit) would not fund internships at abortion rights advocacy organizations…after those students had already helped raise money to fund students’ summer placements. LSRJ flew into action, organizing protests and petitions. And their work paid off last week when the GULC administration reversed its policy.

From Georgetown Law student and LSRJ chapter head Rachel Spitzer:

On September 7, Dean Alexander Aleinikoff of Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) announced a new funding program guaranteeing summer stipends for all students who wish to participate in summer public interest internships, regardless of the issues on which their internships focus. This new program came in direct response to outcry across the campus last spring when GULC administrators refused to fund internships focused on reproductive rights. Student leaders, including the leadership of the Georgetown chapter of Law Students for Choice, worked with the administration for months, and were elated when the new program was announced. “This tremendous victory shows what we can accomplish when we work together with alumni, supportive student organizations, and faculty, and refuse to accept anything less than equal treatment,” said Joy Welan, president of LSFC at Georgetown in 2006-2007 [ed. note: and current LSRJ board member]. The new program is a major improvement because reproductive justice internships will get funded. In addition, the policy of guaranteed funding reduces barriers for all students who want to pursue public interest internships. The efforts of Georgetown LSFC and other supporters of educational freedom and reproductive rights have made it possible for future students to pursue public interest internships without subject-based discrimination.

The proof is in the pudding: on-campus advocacy can get things done. And fast.

There are over 1.1 billion Catholics in the world. The lion’s share of those are in South and Central America, where religious observance is high, abortion is often illegal, and rates of birth control use are low. And the Pope isn’t to happy about that. The New York Times reported the other day that the Pope, in a visit to Vienna, called on politicians to help reverse declining birthrates there and in other European countries:

Benedict stressed demographics as he repeated, in a strong multifront attack, the Vatican’s long-held opposition to abortion.

“I appeal, then, to political leaders not to allow children to be considered as a form of illness,” he said in his native German to a gathering of diplomats. “I say this out of concern for humanity. But that is only one side of this disturbing problem.

“The other is the need to do everything possible to make European countries once again open to welcoming children,” he added, in this nation with a low birthrate. “Encourage young married couples to establish new families and to become mothers and fathers! You will not only assist them, but you will benefit society as a whole.”

He further said that children should not “be considered a form of illness.” We can all recognize that birthrates in Europe are declining. Italy’s birthrate is at an all-time low. And religious observance is on the wane in countries that have long been among the most staunchly Catholic in the world. The Pope is right to say that Catholicism “profoundly shaped the [European] continent.”

But what makes me uncomfortable is what he said next: that Europe’s embracing of legalized abortion and rejection of Catholic teachings regarding birth control could threaten the continent’s existence, leaving a world where Catholicism predominates not in traditionally white European countries but in Latin American countries that are devout in the way Europe used to be.

While praying in the shadows of Vienna’s holocaust memorial, the Pope called out abortion as the threat to European humanity. Might that have been a good moment to talk instead about the horrors of genocide, and perhaps to bring up Rwanda or Darfur? Or to highlight the importance of universal healthcare in healing the ill and ensuring a society that respects its citizens? Seems to me like a real missed opportunity.

(h/t Sheila)

It’s now well established that abstinence only “education” programs don’t work. They don’t prevent or delay sex among teens. They don’t help teens prevent STDs or unintended pregnancy. And they’re misogynist and homophobic (take, for example, the program called “Sex is for Fags,” an abstinence program for boys. Ok, that one’s a joke but it’s not far from the truth). While there were hopes when the Democrats came to power in 2006 that abstinence only funding would wane, the Dems are now dithering.

Luckily, Amanda Marcotte, in her new gig at RH Reality Check, reminds us today why abstinence only programs undermine reproductive justice and hurt men’s and women’s sexual health. She reminds us about the real lessons of abstinence only “education.” They include:

•  implicitly encouraging “anything but” sex, yet without the proper education on disease prevention
• that the third of American women who have had abortions are degenerates and failures
• People — but really, women — can “use up” all of their capability to connect emotionally if they have sex before marriage, thus making happy relationships later in life impossible.
• All those stereotypes you’ve heard about what women and men want and need in relationships are true.

The research of SIECUS and Advocates for Youth back this up. At NYU last year, we hosted an event complete with mock Ab-Only class (run by SIECUS’s Maxwell Ciardullo). People — even those in the know about reproductive justice — were shocked at what kids are learning in school.  We should all be in the know, so we can fight against the continued funding of these destructive programs.