Crowd rallies for abortion rights

Speaker calls for education, birth control, not restrictions

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/BENJAMIN KRAIN --1/24/14--
Attendees participate in a Reproductive Justice Rally at the State Capitol on Saturday. The Arkansas Coalition for Reproductive Justice organized the event to advocate for the right to have children or not have children and the right to raise the children in safe and healthy environments
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/BENJAMIN KRAIN --1/24/14-- Attendees participate in a Reproductive Justice Rally at the State Capitol on Saturday. The Arkansas Coalition for Reproductive Justice organized the event to advocate for the right to have children or not have children and the right to raise the children in safe and healthy environments

Comprehensive sex education and access to effective contraception -- not restrictions to abortion access -- should be implemented to reduce Arkansas' rate of unplanned pregnancy and subsequent abortions, a University of Arkansas professor and abortion-rights activist told a crowd of a few hundred Saturday at the state Capitol.

Saturday's rally, hosted by the Arkansas Coalition for Reproductive Justice, was held days after an anti-abortion march during the week recognized as the 42nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

Dr. Kristen Jozkowski, a UA professor and fellow at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, told the crowd that Arkansas has a "frightening" teen pregnancy rate that outpaces most of the rest of the country.

Jozkowski noted that teen mothers complete their high school educations less than half of the time and complete a college education before age 30 at a rate of only 1 percent.

"So we can see reproductive health is a social, economic issue," she said.

The Arkansas Department of Health reports that most teen mothers used some form of birth control but that less than a quarter used "the most effective types of birth control."

"Making abortion illegal is not the answer," Jozkowski said. "Although this seems simple, [politicians] want to make it complicated."

Rose Mimms, executive director of anti-abortion group Arkansas Right to Life, said Friday that she didn't believe in activists' claims that abortion access is just or that abortion is a safe procedure.

"Women suffer from abortion," she said. "The other side doesn't want to admit it. They know it's a hard decision, yet they stand beside the claim that it's a good decision. It's not safe; look at Kermit Gosnell."

Gosnell is a former Pennsylvania physician who was convicted of murder in 2013 for killing three babies born alive during abortion procedures.

Several speakers Saturday warned the audience that abortion access and birth-control access are facing more challenges now.

Additionally, said Bettina Brownstein, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, abortion-rights activists shouldn't depend on the U.S. court system to save their cause.

Brownstein is one of the attorneys suing the state after the Legislature passed a measure in 2013 banning abortions after 12 weeks. The case is in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals after a lower court ruled the law unconstitutional.

Bills before the state Legislature already this year -- sponsored by Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain Home, and Rep. Julie Mayberry, R-Hensley -- would ban the use of telemedicine during abortion procedures. Irvin told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that she's heard accounts of severe complications with chemical abortions and that the procedure "needs to be done in the presence of a physician."

"Since when did legislators get medical degrees to make these decisions?" Jozkowski said Saturday. "They didn't."

On Thursday, the U.S. House postponed a vote on a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy because of concerns from female Republicans. That same day, the House, including Arkansas' four Republican representatives, approved instead a bill prohibiting the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortions.

Furonda Brasfield, a law student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Bowen Law School, said the U.S. Supreme Court sided with corporations and not women last year when it ruled that Hobby Lobby could deny birth-control coverage for employees in its health plan.

"We must call, email and visit with our legislators to make sure women's right are protected," said Brasfield, who was a former contestant on America's Next Top Model. "And when that doesn't work, we rally, because that's what democracy looks like."

Metro on 01/25/2015

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