CHOICE/LESS – Rewire News Group

CHOICE/LESS is back with The Backstory, a four-part miniseries on historical injustices in reproductive and sexual health care advancement.

Today, many people might be appalled to hear of a medical study being conducted on unwitting participants, but the concept of informed consent as we understand it today wasn’t always a standard practice in health care. The first episode of CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory explores what went wrong during the early contraceptive pill trial in Puerto Rico.

On Wednesday, May 31, CHOICE/LESS is back with a four part miniseries. CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory unravels historical instances of health care injustices, and the medical advancements they helped make possible.

Adoption is often painted as the the more ethical alternative to abortion. But both adoption and abortion are reproductive choices that are deeply personal and aren't made lightly. Placing moral superiority on one choice over another is bad for all people involved, as it erases their lived experiences and unique narratives. And society can't make adoption better if it can be taboo to speak about it honestly.

Today's storyteller, Angelique Saavedra, knows this all to well. She's a birth mother herself, and she tells her story so that other birth mothers know they don't have to be invisible. Their experience matters.

Dominick Evans is a filmmaker and activist currently living in Ohio. He has a progressive, neuromuscular disability called spinal muscular atrophy, and needs the help of a wheelchair and other people to complete most physical tasks. He's also transgender. These intersecting identities have made it difficult for him to access the most basic and necessary reproductive health care — even in the emergency room.

Dr. Nicola Moore travels across the country to provide abortions at clinics where laws have made it nearly impossible to find providers in those areas. She has faced harassment and intimidation, but anti-choice threats haven't stopped her from helping to make abortion accessible.

Fourteen years ago, Cherisse Scott was a singer finishing a national tour. The career she'd worked so hard for all her life was about to blossom. Then an unplanned pregnancy and a trip to what she thought was an abortion clinic changed all of that.

Today, she's a nationally recognized reproductive justice activist. She's taken on anti-choice billboards and works with faith groups to bring comprehensive sex education to Tennessee schools in place of the currently mandated abstinence-focused programs. Listen to her story on this episode of CHOICE/LESS.

Tasha Fierce is a feminist writer and student of sociology. She's always been pro-choice, and when she chose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy she says she felt no shame — until she came face-to-face with anti-choice protesters outside the clinic.

The previous two episodes of CHOICE/LESS featured stories of people denied care at Catholic hospitals because the hospitals claimed their treatment would violate the church's ethical and religious directives.

Evan and Mindy's stories are not particularly uncommon. One in six hospital beds in the United States are controlled by the Catholic Church, and that number is growing. For many Americans, Catholic hospitals are their only reasonable options for care, and because many Catholic hospitals don't have religious-sounding names, patients may not even know they're at a religiously affiliated institution.

So when do the church's rights trump the patient's rights? In this episode of CHOICE/LESS, Rewire's Vice President of Law and the Courts, Jessica Mason Pieklo, helps answer that by discussing religious imposition laws and how they apply to health care.

Learn more: https://rewire.news/legislative-tracker/law-topic/religious-imposition-laws/

Mindy Swank grew up staunchly pro-life in a conservative Baptist family in Illinois. Then at age 24, already a wife and mother, Mindy developed life-threatening complications during a pregnancy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just her church and family that felt she should risk death rather than terminate her pregnancy – the Catholic hospital she was being treated at seemed to share that same sentiment.

Evan Minton is a transgender man, and the day before his hysterectomy was scheduled, his doctor called him with bad news: the surgery was cancelled. Dignity Health was a Catholic hospital, and claimed that Evan’s hysterectomy would conflict with the church's ethical and religious directives. But Evan chose his name for a reason; one of its meanings is fierce warrior, and he was ready to fight.