Jane Fonda says the work of the Georgia-based nonprofit organization she founded to prevent teenage pregnancies has become “far more important” in the months since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion it guaranteed to women in the United States.
The activist and Oscar winner has been an outspoken critic of the court’s decision, previously calling it “unconscionable.”
While a post-Roe world will be harder on girls because they are the ones who would have to carry a baby, the work to fight teen pregnancy must also focus on adolescent boys, said Fonda, who was in Atlanta for a fundraiser Thursday to celebrate the 27th anniversary of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential.
“We have to help our boys understand that they don’t have to get a girl pregnant to be men, that being a real man means taking care of yourself, respecting your body and the body of your partner,” Fonda told The Associated Press. “Things are much, much harder for boys and girls now and, so, teaching them skills around their reproductive health, how to stay healthy, how to stay pregnancy-free, how to say no, how to have agency over their body, these things are more important than ever.”
Fonda, 84, founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995 when she lived in Atlanta and when Georgia had the highest teenage birth rate in the United States.
