Ideology Should Not Play a Role in Reproductive Rights

ATLANTA -- Pro-choice activists braced for weeklong demonstrations in mid-July that were supposed to celebrate street actions staged here by the anti-choice group Operation Rescue 20 years ago.

Amanda Atwell, an intern with SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW! (formerly Georgians for Choice), kept in touch with the police about where protests were being organized by the Dallas-based Operation Save America, an offshoot group of Operation Rescue. A small group of other activists made pro-choice posters in a church basement in case counter demonstrations were called.

In the end, however, there wasn't much of a stir. About 120 protesters showed up, many wearing red T-shirts with slogans like "Abortion Is Murder," "Homosexuality Is a Sin," "Islam Is a Lie," "Feminism Is Rebellion." But their downtown rally didn't even disturb the meditative mood of the chess-playing regulars nearby.

Rev. Flip Benham of Texas, a key organizer of the demonstrations, held a press conference but no media showed up.

But the fizzle doesn't mean Atwell has no reason to be fired up about the status of reproductive justice in Atlanta, the city at the commercial and progressive heart of the South.

Atwell, a 22-year-old senior at Georgia State University, got sex education in a junior-high abstinence-only-until-marriage program in nearby Smyrna. "They were definitely trying to use scare tactics," she said. "They said that condoms couldn't be trusted because they had microscopic holes that were too big to prevent against HIV. My dad assured me it wasn't true."

Abstinence Class in 27 States

Georgia is among 27 states that continue to use abstinence-only programs, for which the federal government allocated $176 million in fiscal 2008, despite a congressionally mandated scientific review that found them ineffective in delaying sex. Georgia does permit its more than 180 school boards to choose "abstinence-plus" education, which may describe contraception.

Information is not the sole issue. Money is also a prime concern for Atwell, who is among the 22 percent of Georgia women of reproductive age -- and 18 percent nationally -- lacking health insurance.

At 17, she got a prescription for birth control pills, but at $42 per pack could only afford them for one month. When she began living with a boyfriend in college, she heard that the local Planned Parenthood had discounted pills and went there.

But that solution isn't available to every woman in the state.

Publicly funded family planning clinics in Georgia provide contraceptive care to 200,000 women, including 56,000 teens, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization in New York. But that helps less than half of the 490,000 women who need the services, Guttmacher estimates.

In its most recent analysis, the Guttmacher Institute found that 92 percent of Georgia counties had no abortion provider in 2005, compared to 87 percent of counties in the United States. Nearby Mississippi has only one abortion clinic.

In 1999 Georgia adopted one of the earliest and best laws on equitable insurance coverage for contraceptive drugs and devices. Twenty-six other states now have similar contraceptive equity laws.

D-Grades for Reproductive Rights

But as of January 2008, the Washington-based abortion rights lobby NARAL Pro-Choice America marked Georgia with "D" on its state report card. The nation as a whole earned a D-minus.

"What's really changed in the past 10 years is the political landscape," said Nancy Boothe, executive director of the Atlanta Feminist Women's Health Center.

Since 2000 the state's political leadership has shifted to the right. The governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the house are all Republicans endorsed by Georgia Right to Life. Majorities in both houses of the state legislature are anti-choice, as are both Republican U.S. senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson.