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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Roe v. Wade History Lessons Presented in Iowa

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Friday, July 15, 2011   

DES MOINES, Iowa – Many women of child-bearing age in Iowa weren't even born when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Roe v. Wade decision. Today, a group of young Iowans gets a history lesson from someone who was there.

Planned Parenthood Young Leaders is a group of 20- and 30-year-olds who consider themselves the next generation of family planning advocates. They are hosting a session that deals with an era in which abortions, and even some contraceptives, were illegal. Among the panelists is Barbara Shlaes, a former teacher who was active in the women's rights movement in the 1970s. She vividly remembers what she calls "the dark days for women," and points out that, for today's younger generation, reproductive rights have always existed.

"It's my feeling that the young women of today don't know what it was like in the days before 'Roe.' It was ugly."

Before the landmark 1973 decision, women sometimes terminated their own pregnancies with anything they could find, from wire to knitting needles, says Shlaes.

"And some women committed suicide. Oh, it was just awful, just terrible; and I see us trying to go back to that now."

Shlaes refers to movements to erase Roe vs. Wade as "an affront to women." During the most recent session of the Iowa Legislature, Republican lawmakers attempted to change the language of state law. In the end, however, the state rules were left mostly intact.



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The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this week about the popular abortion pill Mifepristone and will weigh in on whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was correct in how it can be dosed and prescribed. (Ascannio/Adobe Stock)

Health and Wellness

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