Illinois action blog

Friday, September 21, 2007

Thanks Ani!

Ani DiFranco has posted about our health clinic in her myspace blog. For any readers who are coming from there, click here to see how you can get involved and help us open our health center in Aurora.

She's also allowing us to table at her concert Saturday at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago. If you're going to the concert, stop by our table there. We'll have materials and different ways that you can help us.

If you're in the Aurora area on Tuesday evening, come to our pro-choice rally at Aurora City Hall!

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5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ill be at the concert and will TOTALLY stop by to see what I can do to help!!

September 21, 2007 at 6:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ill be at the concert and I will TOTALLY stop by! We will make a difference

September 21, 2007 at 6:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ani, what would today's women's movement be without you!!! Thank you so much for your dedication. To all of the women and men fighting for access to basic health services for the women of Aurora - THANK YOU for your dedication and support. I'm shocked that this is 2007 and that the United States courts are impeding on our rights. So many of my friends have benefited from PP's services - from pap tests to family planning to understanding infertility treatment options. My best friend would not have been able to have her 3 kids without Planned Parenthood's support when she was without health insurance for 5 years as she and her husband started their now successful business. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

September 21, 2007 at 10:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you Ani, and everyone who is supporting planned parenthood. I am in washington state and unable to go and show my support in person.

I am so grateful for all the health care I have received from planned parenthood. I do not have health insurance and do not know what I would do if it was not for the amazing people of this organization.

Much Love, Rachelle Burt, whidbey island, Wa

September 22, 2007 at 10:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think we need to do more than just tell people "if you happen to be in the area, stop by." We need to call people OUT to this important rally! (And why isn't the rally in big and bold on auroraplannedparenthood.org?)

From a statement on the need to fight for this clinic:

Those who support a woman's right to abortion need to raise an enormous hue and cry over this.
The idea that we will prevail by simply sitting quietly and letting this be worked out in the courts, hoping not to “make waves” or “offend anyone” is a dangerous illusion that will only lead to us losing more and more ground. Let's not be naïve about the anti-abortion movement: they are not going to stop at banning abortion, which would be terrible enough. They have a nightmare agenda for women and society: a return to openly patriarchal values, and a return to the traditional order of things where a woman’s role is to be under the thumb of her husband and the producer of his children, where women are openly the property of men to be controlled by their husbands.

Would abortion have ever been legalized without the women's movement in the first place, without women and men marching and fighting in the streets to demand that women get this basic right? Women's right to abortion is under attack from the highest levels of the land – where President Bush is an open supporter of the anti-abortion movement – and in the courts: just this year, the Supreme Court banned a needed late-term abortion procedure, and laws in several states allow pharmacists to refuse women their birth control. This battle over women's lives and futures needs to get taken up broadly throughout society, in all kinds of venues and arenas. We have to go on the political, ideological and practical offensive against the whole package of biblical-literalist and traditional values And, as part of this, we need to be out in the streets – if the only ones out in the streets were the anti-abortion activists, it would be intolerable.

We can't be held back from protest by the fear of “offending” someone: first of all, it is the anti-abortion forces, sweeping in and denying women their basic rights, who are the ones being offensive! We cannot cede the moral battle to anti-abortion lunatics. They do not have the moral high ground. Women are not incubators, fetuses are not babies, and abortion is not murder. There is nothing immoral about ending a pregnancy – but the program of denying women the right to abortion (and the basic health care of birth control, STD testing and treatment) is in service of an ugly morality indeed: one that cuts women off from acting in the larger society, contributing all they can to that, and living full lives as productive human beings in every sphere and independent from men. This is the traditional biblical morality that says wives must "submit yourself unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church" (Ephesians 5:22-23. These people want to return society to a place where THAT standard sets the law of the land. That would be a horror for women and a terrible thing for society as a whole.

A clinic offering fully legal and much-needed services should not have to encounter controversy or opposition – but the controversy is here ... We need to stand up and defend this clinic, we need to be out in the streets demanding it be allowed to open now, and we need to win this struggle – the stakes are very, very high.

September 24, 2007 at 12:18 AM  

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