Legal safe abortion more likely in 1650 than in 2013

If recent legislation passed in Arkansas and North Dakota is allowed to stand, it will be harder for women to get an abortion in those states than it was in New England in 1650. Legislators in Little Rock and Bismarck have passed new restrictions that ban abortions according to when a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Federal judges have blocked the new restrictions until legal challenges to their constitutionality are settled. But the six-week deadline contrasts starkly with early American abortion law, where the procedure was legal until “quickening”—the first time a mother feels the baby kick, which can happen anywhere from 14 weeks to 26 weeks into pregnancy.

Abortion was not just legal—it was a safe, condoned, and practiced procedure in colonial America and common enough to appear in the legal and medical records of the period. Official abortion laws did not appear on the books in the United States until 1821, and abortion before quickening did not become illegal until the 1860s. If a woman living in New England in the 17th or 18th centuries wanted an abortion, no legal, social, or religious force would have stopped her.
That, however, is not the way the anti-abortion movement likes to paint the history of abortion in the United States.

Anti-abortion organizations such as the National Right to Life spin a narrative in which legal abortion is a historical anomaly and an unnatural consequence of modern America’s loose moral standards. On the National Right to Life’s website, for example, a page titled “Abortion History Timeline” describes “a few rogue doctors and midwives” performing abortions in early America, only “as far back as the 1850s.” In reality, trusted midwives and medical practitioners performed abortions from the beginning of American colonial life and throughout world history. Fox News also falsifies American abortion history on its website. On a page titled “Fast Facts: History of U.S. Abortion Laws,” it claims that abortion in the American colonies “was ruled a misdemeanor if performed prior to quickening.”

Other anti-abortion groups such as the Family Research Council claim that abortion could not have had “foundation in the text of the Constitution”—overlooking the fact that when the Constitution was written, abortion was legal until quickening. Americans United for Life makes the same mistake on its website, misconstruing a quote from Thomas Jefferson—“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government”—as being anti-abortion. Americans United for Life also describes itself on its website as working to “restore a culture of life.” Of course, when the founding fathers met in a sweltering hall in Pennsylvania to declare independence, such a culture was not even a twinkle in their eyes.
Puritans, sex, and legal abortion
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Watch where you grab that burger or taco

The American fast-food industry fosters remarkable inequality: One fast-food CEO is paid around $11 million per year, while the average cook earns about $9 per hour for an annual salary of $18,720—that is, if an employee can even secure full-time work. Employee hours are cut, sometimes without notice, so that employers can avoid paying workers during periods when sales are low. These hard-working employees are often forced to work off the clock or are paid via debit cards that charge a fee for transactions. In these instances, employers’ profits are shamelessly put far and above the rights of workers.

Profits are so important to these companies that employees are prevented from accessing basic human needs. Papa John’s millionaire Founder, Chairman, and CEO John Schnatter openly vowed to cut all workers’ hours to avoid having to provide insurance to full-time workers, as required under the Affordable Care Act.

McDonald’s also demonstrated a total disregard for employees’ basic needs when it published a sample budget that ostensibly illustrated how workers can get by on their abysmally low wages. The original sample budgeted $20 per month for health care and $0 for heat bills. The budget also included wages from a second job, actually highlighting the fact that one low-wage salary is not enough to support a family.

June 2013 marked the 75th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the legislation that originally introduced the minimum wage. But since the minimum wage has not been indexed to inflation, its buying power has actually decreased over time, while costs for families have increased. This means that an employee today who makes the minimum wage can afford less than the previous generation of low-paid workers could afford. Labor policies have thus far failed to stop the dehumanizing exploitation and inadequate pay of these service workers.

With the wages they actually receive, workers can barely afford the food they serve, let alone provide for their families.
Sarah P. Miller

Gishwheeing

Arting all yesterday, arting today, but must take break for food, groceries, materials, possible haircuts.

trying to find a place in twin cities that could do custom shirts by tomorrow, any suggestions?

Thanks y'all!