Live No on Prop 85 in Dolores Park!

BACORR strongly urges a resounding
NO vote on Proposition 85!

This Parental Notification law is last year's Prop. 73 revisited, paid for by the same wealthy people who are again using minor safety as a smokescreen for attacking abortion rights.

Proposition 85 would require young women under 18 to tell a parent before they seek an abortion, or go to court and ask a judge for a waiver. Prop. 85 also would criminalize doctors who fail to report a teen having an abortion without proof of parental notification or the judicial bypass, no matter what the circumstances. It attempts to legislate family communication, assuming that all families are happy, healthy and non-abusive. This is completely out of touch with reality for many teens.

The people most affected by Prop. 85 can’t even vote on the law, despite its possible life-changing, and even life-threatening, impact. What will happen to a girl who cannot safely turn to her parents if she becomes pregnant? What about the undue burden on a teenager made to navigate a complex and possibly geographically remote juvenile court system to seek a judge’s waiver? Because a person is under 18 does not mean she should be forced to relinquish her right to control her own body, and to have no voice in making a decision which could leave her forced to bear an unwanted child in poverty, alone and un-empowered.

Through relentless attacks on state and federal law, the religious rightwing and their government backers are slowly succeeding in their efforts to chip away at all people’s reproductive freedoms, as well as other rights of self-determination. When legal access to safe abortions is removed or limited, access is not taken away from all equally.

Women who are educated, mobile, and well-to-do can simply get an abortion somewhere that has access or pay a private doctor. Those worst impacted historically by abortion restrictions are the most vulnerable and in need of ever-shrinking access: youth from abusive homes, women living in poverty or without legal immigrant status, and women in rural areas where abortion services are already non-existent. Prop. 85 is a dangerous initiative that forces young women to carry a burden equally with older, wealthier women, while denying them the same rights.

What is needed instead of anti-choice legislation is better sex education, free healthcare, and ready availability of safe contraceptives. The religious right is not only fighting to prevent sex education from reaching teens who need it, but also contraception, which in addition to reducing the likelihood of unintended pregnancies, also reduces the risk of AIDS and STDs.

All the money the far right has spent fighting against women’s rights would be better used in empowering women and girls. California voters defeated the “Parental Notification Initiative” in 2005. For the sake of young women’s health and lives, and to take a stand against the ongoing onslaught on hard-won reproductive rights, we must turn out to the polls and stop Prop. 85 on November 8, 2006. Vote No on Proposition 85!

The Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights is a multi-issue coalition composed of individuals and groups who see reproductive choice and justice as an integral part of a larger struggle for the liberation and self-determination of all people. Get involved and fight back with BACORR – for more information, email BACORR at bacorrinfo [at] riseup.net, call 415-864-1278, or visit http://www.bacorr.org.

If anyone has one please post it- before the election would be great!

Hello. I'm looking for some relatively high resolution photos of anti war and other protests in San Francisco during the 1970s. Photos in Dolores Park would be a bonus. We're producing a piece for our website about Peter Bratt, director of the new indie film La Mission. In our interview with him, he talks about all the protests that took place in San Francisco, and the Mission District in particular, in the 1970's.

Thanks and regards,
Joanne Elgart Jennings
Producer, PBS NewsHour
jelgart [at] newshour.org