planned parenthood

"We're seeing the political southernization of the whole country. There's a surge of conservatism, targeting a wide variety of communities," says Paris Hatcher, interim director of Georgia-based SPARK Reproductive Justice Now. As we see the anti-abortion tactics started in the south hitting the northeast--a billboard sprang up in New York City recently targeting black women, and though it was quickly taken down, states around the country are fighting antichoice legislation and attempts to defund reproductive healthcare. Paris joins Laura in studio to discuss her reproductive justice work in Atlanta and how the rest of the country can learn from the work women of color are doing on state and local levels. Distributed by Tubemogul.

"This is a national plan of action designed to take women back to a time when we had second class status as persons," Lynn Paltrow says of the ongoing attempts by conservatives around the country to shut down abortion rights by any way they can think of: fetal personhood, banning taxpayer funding, defunding Planned Parenthood, and making it "justifiable homicide" to kill an abortion provider.The outrage against these bills is gaining ground, though, and Lynn notes that when people wake up to the assaults on their rights, they fight back. She joins Laura in studio to discuss."There is only one state employee I'd like to see laid off, and that's Scott Walker," says Milwaukee's Ellen Bravo, who helped lead a successful campaign in Wisconsin for family leave that is now being attacked by Governor Walker's administration. As thousands of Wisconsinites gather in the capitol and Democratic state senators flee the state to avoid a vote on Walker's bill to bust the public employees' unions, Ellen points out the ongoing struggles of workers for basic rights.Ellen joins us via Skype along with Ev Liebman, who helped organize a 35,000-person rally in New Jersey against similar attacks by that state's governor, Chris Christie.Finally, Lara Logan, CBS's chief foreign affairs correspondent, was sexually assaulted in Egypt while covering the revolution--and the response has been staggering. And not in a good way. Laura has some thoughts.

At last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, the tea party ruled. "Saving freedom" was the theme of the conference, and the tea party mojo -- screeds against imagined socialist policies and the supposed tyranny of liberalism -- effortlessly overran old school small government conservatism to solidify the tea party's position as the movement's reigning force. ... But there is one piece of the old conservative coalition that is still trying to find its way in the tea party upheaval: the anti-abortion movement ... The tea party movement claims to want complete freedom from government intervention. To hitch their wagon to the tea party express, anti-abortion activists are claiming that it?s fetuses, not women, who deserve that freedom. Listen to Sarah Posner's full comment.

On December 2, 2009, activists from NARAL Pro-Choice New York, Planned Parenthood, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health headed to Washington, D.C., for a day of lobbying against the Stupak amendment to the health care bill, which drastically sets back women's access to safe and legal abortion.