By Audrey

Knowledge is power right?  Well, then what happens when an automated tool that is supposedly there to help you find your way is misguiding you? It appears Siri, the new automated iphone assistant is doing just that.  According to RH Reality Check and ThinkProgress.org, Siri doesn’t understand questions like, “I am pregnant and don’t want to be.  Where can I get an abortion?” and instead directs people to crisis pregnancy centers that were established by known anti-choice activists.  Even questions about birth control and emergency contraception befuddle this supposed wireless wiz who can easily locate the nearest liquor store for you or tell you how to hide a body!  Yes, hide a body! @Amadi brilliantly illustrates the problem with Siri and it's even local for my fellow Pennsylvanians. Check out the coverage on the Daily Beast, too.

So what do we do about this?  Sign this petition to get Apple to fix this immediately! 

By Alyssa

An estimated one out of every three women will have an abortion by the age of 45 – and, yes, some of these women are Pennsylvania women.  But the alarming amount of hype these procedures elicit on a regular basis must mean they aren’t safe, right?

Wrong.  In 2009, 37,284 abortions were performed in Pennsylvania.  Of these, there were 47 complications – that’s a complication rate of 0.1%.

Contrast this with the complication rate associated with having cataract surgery, which is about five times as likely to cause serious complications, or the rate of complications which arise from having a colonoscopy in an ambulatory surgical facility or hospital, which ranged from 2.4% to 3.4%.  That makes colonoscopies 24 to 34 times riskier than abortion procedures.

In fact, rates reported by the Guttmacher Institute put the overall rate of complication of pregnancies at seven deaths for every 100,000 live births, while abortions in the United States are less than one death per 100,000 procedures.  Depending on the health and circumstances of the woman, this could also make having an abortion much safer than carrying the pregnancy to term.

When looking at the rate of safety of abortion procedures, the recent government pushes towards over-regulation of abortion clinics are completely unfounded.  Regulation is one thing; making it nearly impossible for abortion clinics to operate is unacceptable. 

Halloween’s over, and I’ve certainly had enough with the state legislature disguising underhanded attempts at taking away women’s reproductive rights as “increasing safety.”  The mask’s off, PA, and what lies underneath is far scarier: dangerous bills such as SB 732 and SB 3 that could force safe abortion providers to close and bring back the dangers of the back-alley.

By Nate

Defending the right to choose an abortion is imperative for men and women.  Because I’m a guy, I’ll never have to make the choice about whether to have an abortion.  But I stand with the women in my life and support their right to choose because I want to live in a society that treats its members equally and assures everyone autonomy over their own bodies.

I was shocked when I read this article about how underrepresented women are in the Pennsylvania legislature.  Only 17 percent of Pennsylvania’s legislators are women, and that means Pennsylvania has a lower proportion of female legislators than 41 other states.  So when Pennsylvania’s legislature is making decisions to restrict access to abortion, it’s mostly men who are making that decision.  In other words, a small group of people, mostly men, are deciding what another group of people, who are all women, can do with their bodies.  

 I don’t want Pennsylvania to be a society where legislators take away deeply personal rights from people who aren’t even fairly represented in the government.*  To me, that doesn’t seem like equality, and it doesn’t seem like democracy. 

 *I also don’t want Pennsylvania to be a state where legislators drive people to dangerous pseudo-doctors because the legislators have made safe care too expensive or even illegal.  But that’s a post for another day.

By Audrey

Our rights, as women, are under complete and total attack across the nation.

You know what’s going on in Pennsylvania: ambulatory surgical facility regulations (SB 732), ban on abortion in the state exchange (SB 3), requirement that women view an ultrasound and wait 24 hours between an ultrasound and having an abortion (HB 1077), and the list goes on….

Well, we aren’t the only state facing these potentially devastating attacks…  

In Mississippi, voters will decide today whether or not an abortion procedure, even in the case of rape, is a criminal act.  The personhood initiative, Ballot Measure 26, will give a fertilized egg the status of a legal person.

In Kansas, health care providers are fighting recently revised regulations that would force abortion providers to comply with onerous requirements similar to Pennsylvania’s Senate Bill 732.  Similar legislation, also known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider (TRAP) bills, have been enacted or are in the process of being enacted in other states including Virginia and Texas. 

In other states, including Pennsylvania, there are a multitude of attacks including: bills that require women to review an ultrasound prior to having an abortion and others that would ban insurance coverage of abortion in the state health exchange beyond the 2-check system established by the Affordable Care Act.  These are just a few of the other outrageous attacks.

The Catholic bishops have always opposed birth control - nothing new, right?  Well, now they are writing to Dept of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius daily to urge her to repeal the decision to include birth control as preventive services with no co-pay under health care reform. 

And Pennsylvania’s Congressman Joe Pitts is spearheading a national effort to severely restrict a women’s ability to access abortion services even in cases where the women’s life is in jeopardy.  House Resolution 358, the “Let Women Die” bill, revives the Stupak amendment by forcing states to drop abortion coverage in the state exchange; codifies the Weldon amendment which gives hospitals, health care facilities, and insurance plans the right to refuse to provide, pay for coverage, or refer a patient for an abortion; and even goes as far to allow employees to refuse to even process paperwork related to an abortion procedure.  It removes patient protections that require emergency rooms to provide abortion care in lifesaving circumstances. 

Again, our bodies and our ability to decide what’s best for our health care are being attacked at every level.  This is why I’ve just simply had enough!