Between Scylla and Charybdis: Reproductive Freedom after 9-11
By Carl Pope, Executive Director, The Sierra Club
| 11. 09. 2001
Keynote Address: National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League Annual Convention
It has been twenty five years since I addressed an audience on the
topic of abortion rights. The last time was two years after Roe v.
Wade, and I was at a seminar in Washington on how to deal with the
anti-choice movement which was then growing rapidly. I felt, and said,
that our conversation seemed to assume that we were fighting a political
campaign, which would have an end, and that I feared we were instead
beginning an enduring struggle. I immediately felt horrible - as the
only man in the room I was the wrong messenger for that message.
So I was honored when I was asked to speak here today, but more than
ordinarily anxious about addressing an audience. This was a topic
on which I had let others do the speaking for a quarter of a century.
After September 11, however, this, like so many things, changed.
Two weeks after the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked,
I attended the dinner of CARAL.
The program included a marvelous jazz singer. She had changed her...
Related Articles
By Grace Won, KQED [with CGS' Katie Hasson] | 12.02.2025
In the U.S., it’s illegal to edit genes in human embryos with the intention of creating a genetically engineered baby. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Bay Area startups are focused on just that. It wouldn’t be the first...
Several recent Biopolitical Times posts (1, 2, 3, 4) have called attention to the alarmingly rapid commercialization of “designer baby” technologies: polygenic embryo screening (especially its use to purportedly screen for traits like intelligence), in vitro gametogenesis (lab-made eggs and sperm), and heritable genome editing (also termed embryo editing or reproductive gene editing). Those three, together with artificial wombs, have been dubbed the “Gattaca stack” by Brian Armstrong, CEO of the cryptocurrency company...
Alice Wong, founder of the Disability Visibility Project, MacArthur Genius, liberationist, storyteller, writer, and friend of CGS, died on November 14. Alice shone a bright light on pervasive ableism in our society. She articulated how people with disabilities are limited not by an inability to do things but by systemic segregation and discrimination, the de-prioritization of accessibility, and the devaluation of their lives.
We at CGS learned so much from Alice about disability justice, which goes beyond rights...
By Lucy Tu, The Guardian | 11.05.2025
Beth Schafer lay in a hospital bed, bracing for the birth of her son. The first contractions rippled through her body before she felt remotely ready. She knew, with a mother’s pit-of-the-stomach intuition, that her baby was not ready either...