Lily Rosenthal

Lily Rosenthal is a 8th grader at LREI. For her Social Justice topic she has chosen to study Reproductive Rights and Access to Abortion. She wanted to work on this topic because it affects women all over the world and recently has been a more prominent issue.

Tour of Planned Parenthood

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On Monday, February 13, we walked over to the Planned Parenthood near us. Walking over to the facility, we could not even tell what it was. It looked almost like a school or office. There was secrecy in both parts of the building that had been added after more protesters started coming around. Walking around the facility, it was bare and unwelcoming and looked like it lacked funding. We saw operating rooms and learned about how the procedure is done. We then walked over to the post-op room and saw chairs lined up with little to no privacy. At the end of the tour, we got to learn about how patients have to prepare and the protocol they have to follow when getting an abortion. It was a really interesting and eye-opening experience that helped a lot with our project.

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Interview with Linda Greenhouse; Opinion Writer for NY Times

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On January 31st, we interviewed Linda Greenhouse. Linda Greenhouse is an opinion writer for the New York Times. She has done a lot of work around this topic and has also written a book with some other writers titled “Before Roe v. Wade.” She talked to us about the history of Roe v. Wade and how it has impacted the U.S. over time. Linda also talked about the future and whether the war over abortion even has one. Linda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covered the United States Supreme Court for nearly three decades for The New York Times. I learned a lot about the history of Roe v. Wade and how, even though a lot has changed, not that much has.

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Interview with Journalist in Texas

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On Thursday, February 9th, we interviewed Tara Haelle, a journalist in Texas. Before she was a journalist, she was a teacher in a high school with the highest percentage of teen pregnancies. She went on to tell us that most of the girls she worked with had never taken a health class. One experience she told us about was when she had to teach a pregnant student what a uterus was. This shows how important Heath class is and how lucky we are to have it.

She also talked about how, since abortion is illegal in Texas, women are getting pills shipped to them from India. These pills are not approved and could be dangerous. Pregnant women will also try ways to make themselves have a miscarriage just because they don’t have access to an abortion. She talked about one of her old students who was living in a not-very-stable family and was living on the streets. At the time, her only source of income was doing sex work. When she found out she was pregnant, she was doing a lot of drugs and was in no way fit to keep and raise a baby. She ended up miscarrying, and for her, that was great news. People who she knew were trying to find ways to get her abortion pills and help her find access, but there was no way of doing it. This again goes to show how lucky people in New York are to have access to abortion.

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Interview with Jane Kaufman

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On Friday January 20th, we interviewed Jane Kaufman, an abortion provider in NYC. She has worked there since November 2014 and loves what she does. Jane talked to us about who she works with and the people that she has provided abortions for. In the state of New York, minors are not required to take an adult with them to get an abortion, although most she worked with did come with one. She has performed abortions on women as young as eleven years old and as old as fifty. One patient even came with a friend from Texas where abortion is now illegal.

Jane is demonstrating activism by performing a service that isn’t legal everywhere nor accessible to all. By working on a sliding scale she is also helping make abortion available to those who can’t afford it. This also reminds me that activism can happen behind the scenes; it’s not always something one can see.

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