ABORTION
Whether or not we individually support a woman’s right to choose, let’s please at least be kind to one another. Exercise grace.
1787 believes the decision of abortion should be left to the individuals personally involved before the end of the first trimester (typically considered weeks 1 – 15).
Exceptions to this include: To prevent the death of the mother; to preserve the health of the mother; when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest; and where the embryo or fetus has lethal anomalies incompatible with life.
Although, in medicine, “fetal viability” is the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb (typically considered weeks 23 – 24), we believe this is way too far in a pregnancy to terminate. Opponents of this view argue that women may not realize they are even pregnant before the second trimester, but the facts don’t support this. Around 90 percent of all abortions generally occur within the first 12 weeks of gestation.
This conversation must begin here: 1787 fights to empower women by ensuring them fair and equitable economic opportunities. It is impossible to separate economics from this issue. Women of color and women with family incomes less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level have higher rates of abortion than do White women and those with higher incomes. (read the report here)
A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study revealed that: 86 percent of women who have abortions are unmarried, 75 percent are poor or low-income, 72 percent are under age thirty, and 61 percent are women of color.
The American Journal of Public Health puts it this way: “Structural factors, including economic disadvantage, neighborhood characteristics, lack of access to family planning, and mistrust in the medical system underlie these findings. Research and policy that recognizes the importance of all aspects of women’s reproductive health — including pregnancy prevention, abortion care, pregnancy services, and economic supports — are essential to meeting the reproductive health care needs of low-SES (socioeconomic status) women and women of color. This work must recognize that, although disparities are associated with differences in individual-level factors, these factors are constrained and produced by larger structural inequities, including racism and poverty, and by a legacy of coercive reproductive health policies.” (read the report here)
1787 supports protecting and improving health and social services for women. Being against abortion and, at the same time, being against organizations that provide health and social services for women — including contraception access — is absurd.
This is just common sense. If those against abortion truly want less abortions, then they need to support greater access to contraception. This concept should not be hard to understand. Forty-five percent (45%) of all pregnancies are unintended/unplanned. Of those, roughly 40 percent result in abortion. (read the report here)
Although Planned Parenthood, for example, does offer patient-funded abortion services (the Hyde Amendment already prohibits federal dollars being used to provide abortions, see more on this below), over 95 percent of their services involve family planning, health and sex education, and other life-saving services. If organizations like Planned Parenthood are successfully defunded — by, for example, making the organization ineligible for any federal grants or preventing Medicaid patients from receiving care from them — the devastating results would disproportionally affect low-income areas and communities with limited health care options.
1787 supports providing appropriate sex education to teenagers. Often the same people who are adamantly against abortion are, at the same time, opposed to sex education in schools. This is yet another thing that makes zero sense. There is tremendous power in prevention and education. Unfortunately the Trump administration disagreed. Donald Trump ended grants, in some cases two full years early, that were funded to find the best ways to administer teen pregnancy prevention programs. Some of these programs were successful, some weren't, but that was the entire point of the grants...to evaluate what works best. We must get these programs back, because pregnancy prevention programs helped lower the rate at which American teenagers had babies by almost 50 percent between 2007 and 2015.
1787 supports women having access to the safe and effective abortion and miscarriage drug mifepristone.
1787 supports the Hyde Amendment, the long-standing ban on the federal funding of most abortions. Exceptions to this include: To prevent the death of the mother; to preserve the health of the mother; when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest; and where the embryo or fetus has lethal anomalies incompatible with life.
Pursuant to the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people), 1787 supports the rights of states to adopt restrictions on abortion rights and access — but only in accordance with federal law.