Sen. Gayle Goldin, Sponsor of RI bill S2163 known as the RI Reproductive Health Care Act, will introduce the stories of Irish women who recently succeeded in legalizing abortions in their country, using, in their own words, their “most powerful tools” – their own stories of illegal abortion and its consequences.
Local feminist, Dr. Jodi L. Glass, a long-time advocate of women’s rights in this state, will tell both her own story and that of her mother to underscore the devastating experience of seeking and having a back-alley abortion.
Rhode Island reproductive rights advocate and former head of Planned Parenthood of RI, Mary Ann Sorrentino will show how these stories give life to the nightmare Rhode Island women, their daughters and granddaughters will surely face if the state and the nation repeal current laws which keep safe, legal, abortion services available. Those laws were passed after millions of American women and the men who love them labored for generations to make Roe the national law only 45 years ago. The price of that victory was centuries of hard work, abuse, ridicule and even murder of advocates, and the maiming and deaths of all the women who could not be saved before such legislation was finally passed.
Jordan Hevenor of The Woman Project will summarize how the quest for women’s equality in health care and elsewhere goes forward with vigor, as so many younger women work tirelessly as the mantle is passed to the generations following pioneers.
RI must follow the inspiring global example of the people of Ireland and most other countries who refuse to be enslaved by government, church leaders, and the male-dominated establishment currently being challenged, and resisted, here in this state and around the world.