What the next 50 years of reproductive rights activism can learn from the last 50
By Felicia Kornbluh,
The Washington Post
| 01. 20. 2023
In June 1973, the Southern Poverty Law Center began publicizing a case it was pursuing in defense of two Black children from Alabama, Minnie Lee and Mary Alice Relf. The Relf sisters, 14 and 12 years old, had been sterilized on the recommendation of a nurse employed by the federal government. The girls’ mother, who reportedly could not read or write, signed consent forms for the sterilization of her two young daughters with an “X” and said later that she thought she was authorizing a form of reversible birth control, not a permanent removal of her daughters’ reproductive capacity. Relf v. Weinberger burst onto the scene just six months after Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun published his opinion for the majority in Roe v. Wade on Jan. 22, 1973, 50 years ago this week. This was a time of celebration for most feminists, and justly so: Their movement, working ardently at the grass roots and uniting across many lines of difference, had persuaded the nation’s highest court to recognize people’s need to make autonomous choices about whether to end...
Related Articles
By Eric Schmidt, TIME | 04.16.2024
Imagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics and treat previously incurable genetic diseases. Meat is lab-grown; enhanced nutrient grains are climate-resistant. This is what the future could...
By Harold Brubaker, The Philadelphia Inquirer | 04.04.2024
Acompany started by University of Pennsylvania scientist Jim Wilson has received FDA approval to test a form of gene editing in infants for the first time in the United States, the company said Thursday.
The Plymouth Meeting company, iECURE, is...
By Carey Gillan, UnSpun | 03.18.2024
A Mexican standoff with the United States turned into a Mexican smack-down this month with the release of Mexico’s formal rebuttal to US efforts to overturn limits Mexico has ordered on the use of genetically modified (GM) corn and the...
By Billy Perrigo, TIME | 03.11.2024
The U.S. government must move “quickly and decisively” to avert substantial national security risks stemming from artificial intelligence (AI) which could, in the worst case, cause an “extinction-level threat to the human species,” says a report commissioned by the U.S...