Tag Archives: health

One Hospital in This City Gave Vulnerable Women an Option. Now It’s Gone.

by MercedeDennis Posted on February 3, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

If a pregnant woman in the Greater Cincinnati area receives the diagnosis of a fetal abnormality such as Tay-Sachs disease or anencephaly—in which a major part of the fetus’ brain does not develop—she is no longer able to terminate the pregnancy in a local hospital.

The Christ Hospital in Mount Auburn was the last hospital in the city of more than 2 million to provide this service, but two months ago it enacted a new policy that prohibits physicians from performing abortions in fetal anomaly cases. The hospital will now only terminate pregnancies “in situations deemed to be a threat to the life of the mother,” the new policy reads.

“The cases are highly emotional and tragic,” Danielle Craig, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio, told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Under these circumstances, for many patients, an overnight stay in a hospital is better than an outpatient procedure, and women should have that option.”

Comprehensive fetal testing, like ultrasounds of the heart and anatomical sonograms, are typically performed at around 20 weeks’ gestation and can reveal a host of disorders, from genetic problems to fetal development gone awry. Late mid-term abortions are less common than first-trimester abortions, so this option is likely taken by women who are facing some kind of severe fetal birth defect.

For women in Cincinnati who decide to terminate their pregnancies after receiving this diagnosis, the only other option to get an abortion would be at the local Planned Parenthood affiliate. But if the abnormality comes with certain health risks that may complicate the procedure and endanger the life of the mother, the case would have to be referred back to a hospital outside the Greater Cincinnati area, according to Craig.

According to the Ohio Department of Health’s annual report, only 84 of more than 21,000 abortions were performed in hospitals in 2014—merely 0.4 percent of all abortions statewide. Christ Hospital reported performing a total of 59 such abortions in the past five and a half years.

Ohio has several abortion restrictions in place, including requiring counseling with information to discourage abortions, a 24-hour waiting period between counseling and abortion, and the right for all medical professional and institutions to refuse to provide an abortion.

Bans on abortion because of fetal abnormalities are not common in the United States. Only North Dakota has a statewide ban. Arizona, Minnesota, and Oklahoma require counseling if a hospital abortion is sought because of a lethal fetal abnormality. And in some cases, as with the Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, a single hospital enacts the policy.

During the 2012 presidential race, candidate Rick Santorum declared that 90 percent of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted, but no comprehensive data exists on how many women choose to abort after a fetal abnormality is detected. In early 2013, Americans United for Life put forth draft model legislation that aimed to end “discrimination based on genetic abnormalities,” as AUL president and CEO Charmaine Yoest put it. The North Dakota ban was a result—Indiana and Missouri also picked it up, but the measures ultimately failed.

The Zika virus—a virus transmitted by both mosquitos and sexual encounters that may be linked to microcephaly—has focused attention on the issue of pregnancy termination in cases of fetal abnormalities. Women in El Salvador, Brazil, Honduras, and Colombia, where the virus is spreading, have been urged to avoid pregnancy. While the North American climate is inhospitable to the mosquito population that is responsible for the spread closer to the equator, the potential reach of the virus does include a small sliver of the southern United States, according to a map by the World Health Organization.

Should the virus spread in the United States, women who live where fetal abnormality abortions are prohibited may still have an option. In the 1960s, when the rubella pandemic hit, the virus caused birth defects such as blindness and deafness. Although abortion was illegal in the decade before Roe v. Wade, “therapeutic abortions“—meaning doctors verified that the procedure was medically necessary—were allowed.

The specifics of the Zika virus are still being determined by scientists and medical professionals, but if the connection between the virus and microcephaly is confirmed, it could have a powerful impact on reproductive policy in Latin America and the United States.

Taken from: 

One Hospital in This City Gave Vulnerable Women an Option. Now It’s Gone.

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on One Hospital in This City Gave Vulnerable Women an Option. Now It’s Gone.

Dot Earth Blog: As W.H.O. Declares Zika a Global Health Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

by Myrna Posted on February 1, 2016

Areas stricken in Zika virus outbreak were once free of the mosquito that carries this and other dangerous diseases. View post:  Dot Earth Blog: As W.H.O. Declares Zika a Global Health Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies ; ; ;

See the original post – 

Dot Earth Blog: As W.H.O. Declares Zika a Global Health Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, Oster, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dot Earth Blog: As W.H.O. Declares Zika a Global Health Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

Is "Fragrance" Making Us Sick?

by StacyBagshaw6 Posted on February 1, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

For Joyce Miller, a 57-year-old professor of library science in upstate New York, one sniff of scented laundry detergent can trigger an asthma attack. “I feel like someone is standing on my chest,” she says. “It’s almost like a choking feeling—pressure and choking. And then the coughing starts.”

Miller is just one of countless Americans who are sensitive to “fragrance,” a cryptic category of ingredients manufacturers add to products from cleaning supplies to toiletries. This generic term encompasses thousands of combinations of chemicals that give consumer goods their odors, but the identity of those chemicals is rarely disclosed.

For decades, fragrance makers have insisted on treating their recipes as trade secrets, even as complaints about negative health effects have proliferated. A 2009 study, for example, concluded that nearly one-third of Americans were irritated by the smell of scented products on others, and 19 percent experienced headaches or breathing difficulties when exposed to air fresheners or deodorizers.

Continue Reading »

Continue reading: 

Is "Fragrance" Making Us Sick?

Posted in Anchor, Aroma, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is "Fragrance" Making Us Sick?

Dot Earth Blog: As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as ‘Emergency,’ a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

by Myrna Posted on February 1, 2016

Areas stricken in Zika virus outbreak were once free of the mosquito that carries this and other dangerous diseases. Link:   Dot Earth Blog: As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as ‘Emergency,’ a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies ; ; ;

Read More: 

Dot Earth Blog: As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as ‘Emergency,’ a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

Posted in eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, Oster, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dot Earth Blog: As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as ‘Emergency,’ a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

by Myrna Posted on February 1, 2016

Areas stricken in Zika virus outbreak were once free of the mosquito that carries this and other dangerous diseases. Excerpt from:  As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies ; ; ;

Link – 

As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

Posted in alternative energy, cannabis, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, growing marijuana, horticulture, LAI, Monterey, ONA, Oster, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on As W.H.O. Weighs Zika as Global Emergency, a Look at the World’s Failed Mosquito Policies

What Flint’s Dirty Water and Detroit’s Angry Teachers Have in Common

by TawnyaSherwood Posted on January 28, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Michigan is having a rough year, to put it mildly. Flint is reeling from the news that its water supply was contaminated with lead for 17 months. In Detroit, teacher “sick-outs” have been shutting down schools; 88 of the city’s 104 schools were closed on January 21. These two seemingly unrelated episodes are joined by a common policy: Both Detroit’s school system and Flint’s water system have been under the control of emergency managers, unelected officials who are empowered to make sweeping decisions and override local policies in the name of balancing budgets.

What’s an emergency manager? Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was elected in 2010 on a platform of fiscal austerity. Snyder, the former head of Gateway computers and a darling of the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, promised to run the state like a company, complete with “outcomes” and “deliverables.” In 2011, he introduced a signature piece of legislation, Public Act 4, which expanded the state’s authority to take over financially troubled cities and school districts. Similar laws exist in about 20 states, but Michigan’s is the most expansive: Emergency managers picked by the governor have the power to renegotiate or cancel city contracts, unilaterally draft policy, privatize public services, sell off city property, and even fire elected officials.

Since 2011, 17 municipalities or school districts in Michigan have been assigned emergency managers. The majority of them are in poor, predominantly African-American communities that have been hit hard by depressed economies and shrinking populations. Some EMs have worked with communities to generate local buy-in, but their outsider status, lack of accountability, and propensity for cutting public services to save money have generated harsh criticism. As Michael Steinberg, the legal director for the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said a recent statement, “Flint is Exhibit A for what happens when a state suspends democracy and installs unaccountable bean counters to run a city.”

So what does this have to do with Flint? Flint was one of the the first cities to be assigned an emergency manager, in 2011; it would have four EMs in as many years. In 2013, its city council voted to build a pipeline to Lake Huron that would free the city of its dependence on Detroit’s water system by 2017. Ed Kurtz, the then-emergency manager, signed off on the plan, and the question became where Flint would source its water in the intervening years. According to a recent Daily Beast investigation, Kurtz rejected the idea of using Flint River water based on conversations with Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality. Longtime Flint residents were also skeptical of the idea: General Motors, which calls Flint home, had used the river as a dumping ground for years.

Yet in 2014, under emergency manager Darnell Earley, the city switched water sources to the Flint River. It remains unclear what led authorities to believe that Flint River water was safe to drink; Earley maintains the decision was supported in a vote by the city council, though there is no record of such a vote. Howard Croft, the former director of public works for Flint, told the ACLU that the decision was financial, had been reviewed by state authorities, and went “all the way to the governor’s office.”

In March of 2015, after months of residents reporting unusual health symptoms and foul-smelling, tainted water coming from their taps, the Flint City Council voted to “do all things necessary” to switch back to Detroit’s water system. Then-acting emergency manager Jerry Ambrose nixed the vote, calling it “incomprehensible.”

And what about Detroit? For the past few weeks, Detroit teachers have been protesting with coordinated sick days that have caused dozens of temporary school closures. The sick-outs, the teachers say, are in response to disgraceful school conditions, from black mold and dead rodents in classrooms to class sizes of more than 40 students.

The Detroit Public School system has been under the authority of an emergency manager since 2009, when the beleaguered system of roughly 100,000 students was mired in debt. Today, after six years under four emergency managers, the number of students has shrunk by about 50 percent while the system’s debt has ballooned to $515 million. It risks going bankrupt by April. Over the past five years, every public school employee has taken a 10 percent wage cut.

“Emergency management is not working,” Ivy Bailey, the president of Detroit Federation of Teachers, told CNN. “If the goal was to destroy DPS, emergency management has done an excellent job.”

Governor Snyder’s latest pick for DPS emergency manager was Darnell Earley, the same official who oversaw Flint’s transition to corrosive river water. On January 21, the day 88 schools were shut down, the school system filed a restraining order against the protesting teachers meant to stop them from calling in sick. The motion was denied. On January 23, Earley posted new rules requiring teachers to submit a written report to him if they learn about their fellow employees organizing a strike. “Failure to immediately comply with this order may be grounds for discipline up to and including termination,” the rules read. Earley’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

What’s next for Michigan’s emergency managers?

There are currently no Michigan cities with emergency managers, though three school districts still them. But they remain unpopular with many Michiganders. Democratic legislators say they will introduce a bill to repeal the EM law. Voters already overturned the EM law in a November 2012 referendum, but a month later, the Republican-led state legislature passed a nearly identical law attached to an appropriations bill that is immune to voter referendum.

“Appointing an emergency manager is the last thing I ever want to do,” wrote Snyder in a 2012 blog post entitled “Why Michigan Needs Its Emergency Manager Law,” written just before the voter referendum. “But if worse comes to worse, the state has a responsibility to protect the health, welfare and safety of its citizens. We can’t stand by and watch schools fail, water shut off, or police protection disappear.”

Link: 

What Flint’s Dirty Water and Detroit’s Angry Teachers Have in Common

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, Free Press, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What Flint’s Dirty Water and Detroit’s Angry Teachers Have in Common

Meet 5 Everyday Heroes of Flint’s Water Crisis

by CyrusZkeafejh Posted on January 27, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Long before Flint’s water crisis made national headlines, there were plenty of people raising hell about the tainted water or working to lessen its burden in this impoverished, majority-black city of nearly 100,000 people.

Also read:
1. Meet the mom who helped expose Flint’s toxic water nightmare
2. A toxic timeline of Flint’s water fiasco

The saga began in April 2014, when the city’s water source was switched from Detroit’s water system (whose source is Lake Huron) to the Flint River. For more than a year, government officials assured residents their water was safe, despite evidence to the contrary. After more than a year, state leaders finally conceded that the city had a serious public health crisis, and in October 2015 Gov. Rick Snyder announced that Flint would go back to using Detroit’s water.

Now, as Flint residents fret about potential long-term effects of lead—especially on the thousands of young children exposed—accusations are flying over who knew what, and when. But let’s not forget the heroes of Flint, those who donated time and money and muscle to assist others—not to mention the residents, researchers, and even one “rogue” EPA employee who helped bring the crisis to the world’s attention. Here are five notables.

William Archie/Detroit Free Press/ZUMA

The mom: In the summer of 2014, LeeAnne Walters, a stay-at-home mother of four, saw firsthand the effects of the state’s decision to switch water sources, as her toddlers developed weird rashes and family members’ hair fell out. Over the next few months, she joined a cavalcade of Flint residents complaining to city leaders of foul-smelling brown tap water and health effects ranging from hair loss to vision and memory problems. Lots of people protested, but Walters also raised hell with the Environmental Protection Agency, leading health researchers to investigate further. “Without her, we would be nowhere,” says Mona Hanna-Attisha, a local doctor (see below). To read more about Walters’ personal battle, click here.

Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com/AP

The pastor: Though he was hardly the only church leader offering aid in the middle of Flint’s man-made disaster, Pastor Bobby Jackson has been distributing clean water to locals since September 2014. Jackson, who runs an independent homeless shelter called Mission of Hope, stores donated bottled water at five sites in his Flint hometown, and his volunteers estimate they distribute to at least 200 families daily. “We’re looking at maybe a couple of years before we drink tap water again,” Jackson told ThinkProgress. “We want to make sure that we can do the best we can until help arrives.”

Screenshot: ABC News

The EPA guy: In February 2015, Miguel Del Toral, a manager for the EPA’s Midwest water division, received a call from LeeAnne Walters (see above). Scouring city documents, Walters noticed the city wasn’t treating its water with standard corrosion control chemicals used to prevent old pipes from leaching lead into the water. Del Toral confirmed her suspicions and relayed his concerns to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. The next month, he visited Walters’ house to collect samples. In a June memo later leaked to the American Civil Liberties Union, Del Toral warned his bosses that the Flint River water had not been properly treated, and he called the lack of corrosion controls “a major concern.” (EPA division chief Susan Hedman, who dismissed Del Toral’s report as premature, would later resign.) But it wasn’t until after much bureaucratic wrangling that the state admitted it had made a mistake. “I never imagined that this would happen in the first place,” Del Toral told ABC News.

HashtagFlint/YouTube

The prof: Last spring, Marc Edwards, a professor of environmental engineering at Virginia Tech University and a former MacArthur Foundation genius grant recipient, also got a call from Walters, courtesy of the EPA’s Del Toral. More than a decade earlier, Edwards had helped uncover lead in Washington, DC, drinking water and corroded pipes in its sewer system. But after testing Walters’ water, Edwards was “shocked” to discover lead levels more than twice what the EPA qualified as hazardous waste. Accompanied by a team of student researchers, Edwards traveled to Flint and conducted more tests, shelling out $150,000 of his own money. His results, released in September, were key: He determined that Flint’s tap water was 19 times more corrosive than Detroit’s—Flint’s original source—and estimated that one in six Flint households had lead exposure levels higher than the threshold required for the EPA to take official action.

Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press/ZUMA

The doctor: Last August, after hearing rumors of lead contamination in the water, Mona Hanna-Attisha, head of the pediatric residency program at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, began looking at the blood lead levels of children in Flint before and after the city switched its supply from Detroit’s water system to the Flint River. As a control, she looked at children who lived elsewhere in Genesee County. It turned out the rate of elevated lead concentrations in the blood of Flint kids under five years old had doubled—and in some areas, tripled—since the switchover. When Hanna-Attisha released her findings, state officials dismissed the results as “unfortunate,” and that was tough to take—”How can you not second-guess yourself?” she told the New York Times. But within a month, the state changed its tune. Gov. Snyder has since praised her efforts.

This article is from:

Meet 5 Everyday Heroes of Flint’s Water Crisis

Posted in Anchor, FF, Free Press, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Meet 5 Everyday Heroes of Flint’s Water Crisis

Best Non-Toxic Ways to Freshen the Air In Your Car

by BFSMireya457 Posted on January 25, 2016

The air inside a car can get pretty stinky. Bags of food waste. Spilled coffee and other drinks. Dirty gym clothes. Especially in the winter, when you keep the windows closed, the car just doesn’t get a chance to air out.

If you’re tempted to get one of those air freshener trees that dangle from your visor, don’t. Chances are they’ve been doused with phthalates, chemicals that can cause hormonal abnormalities, birth defects and reproductive problems, says the Natural Resources Defense Council in its report on the hidden hazards of air fresheners. They may also contain terpene, a volatile organic compound that can react with naturally occurring ozone to create formaldehyde, reports PreventDisease.com. Headaches, nausea and depression may ensue.

Instead, here are smart and safe ways to freshen the air in your car:

* Clean it out. Duh! Look under the seats, on the floor and between the seat cushions for old food, dirty clothes and anything else that might be stinking up the place.

* Wash it out. Upholstery and floor mats may need to be professionally cleaned; at the least, scrub them down with hot soapy water if milk, juice and other wet food have penetrated the fabric.

* Keep a trash bag in the car and empty it. Empty the bag when you fill up for gas or run to the grocery store. There are always trash cans you can use to easily dispose of your waste.

* Use non-toxic cleansers when wiping out the inside of your car. If you take your car to the car wash, don’t let the crew there wipe out your car interior with their industrial-grade cleanser; they’ll in all likelihood contain phthalates, synthetic fragrances and other chemicals that could make you sick or at the least, give you a headache. Make up a solution of hot soapy water using fragrance-free, plant-based soap. Use that to wash down your dashboard, steering wheel and other non-cloth surfaces in the car.

* Keep the windows open a crack when you’re driving. As long as it’s not raining or snowing, open the windows slightly to keep fresh air circulating when you’re inside.

* Use baking soda to absorb residual odors. You may already have an open box of baking soda in your refrigerator to absorb smells there. You can do something similar in your car. Upcycle a plastic food container, like a small margarine tub, to contain the baking soda. Punch holes in the top of the lid so air can get inside, but keep the lid on so the baking soda doesn’t spill. Put the tub underneath the passenger seat or below the back windshield so it is out of the way.

* Don’t spray perfume or commercial air freshener. The last thing you want is for minute chemical particles to be floating around in your car, where they’d be incredibly easy to inhale. Remove the source of the smell, clean your vehicle and crack the windows open to stay healthy.

Related
Car Washing the Eco-Friendly Way
Natural Stain Removal for Your Car

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

This article is from:  

Best Non-Toxic Ways to Freshen the Air In Your Car

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Best Non-Toxic Ways to Freshen the Air In Your Car

Which is More Important: Organic or Non-GMO?

by ChanceHailes Posted on January 22, 2016

While shopping at your local grocery store, youve no doubt come across the labels non-GMO and organic. Many health-conscious people try to avoid genetically modified ingredients, and they also tend to prefer organic goods to conventional ones. However, the two designations are not at all the same. As you make purchasing decisions about natural foods, its important to know the differences between these two labels so that you can determine which products are the best choice for you and your family.

Whats the difference between non-GMO and organic?

Foods that are labelled as non-GMO dont contain any genetically modified ingredients, but they arent necessarily organic. The opposite is true of USDA-certified organic foodsthese items are required by law not to contain any genetically modified ingredients, as well as to be raised orgrown without the use of synthetic pesticides.

Which is more expensive, and why?

Some retailers and food industry professionals have wondered how non-GMO and USDA-certified organic foods impact each others sales. Though many natural-minded consumers prefer non-GMO and organic foods, theyre likely to choose the former over the latter when faced with both options. The reason? Non-GMO foods dont also have to be certified organic, so they are usually less expensive.

“The non-GMO label threatens the USDA Organic label,” director of The Scoular Company Greg Lickteig told Organic Connections Magazine. “Given two products on the grocery store shelf, one being non-GMO and the other organic, the non-GMO product will most certainly be less expensive.”

Are there any major health differences?

The Mayo Clinic notes that while there arent any nutritional differences between organic and conventional foods, there are major differences in pesticide levels and instances of food additives.

On the GMO side of things, many food activists have demanded better research on the long-term consequences of genetic modificationbut there havent been any proven health risks noted yet.

Your personal beliefs about the environment, sustainable agriculture and pesticide risk should guide your decision to buy non-GMO or organic goods. If youre interested in avoiding genetically modified crops and reducing your pesticide exposure, those are good reasons to look for the USDA Organic and non-GMO labels on your food. Just remember that by purchasing non-GMO products, you’re not necessarily getting a certified organic good. If you buy something that’s USDA-certified organic, you can rest assured your food doesn’t contain any genetically modified ingredients.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Source:

Which is More Important: Organic or Non-GMO?

Posted in alo, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, oven, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Which is More Important: Organic or Non-GMO?

100 Women All Over the Country Just Shared Their Abortion Stories

by NeilMcgehee Posted on January 20, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Tuesday, 100 women of all ages from around the country participated in a six-hour livestream to tell personal abortion stories and provide a voice for women advocating reproductive rights. The live stream was hosted by the 1 in 3 campaign, a movement aimed at reducing the stigma around abortion. The organization’s name comes from the fact that 1 in 3 women have had or will have an abortion at some point in their lives.

Former Texas Sen. Wendy Davis and Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards were among the women of all different backgrounds and ethnicities who spoke about the difficulty of making the decision, their access to care, and their feelings about their choice.

This is the second time 1 in 3 has hosted such an event. But Tuesday’s live stream comes at a time when reproductive rights activists have been under fire in continued attacks against Planned Parenthood and its centers around the country following the release of deceptively edited and widely discredited videos that appeared to depict the organization selling fetal tissue—a practice that is illegal.

The live stream also focused on Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, an important abortion case that will be decided by the Supreme Court this year. For more on the monumental case, check out our explainer here.

More: 

100 Women All Over the Country Just Shared Their Abortion Stories

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, green energy, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 100 Women All Over the Country Just Shared Their Abortion Stories