Jane Fonda: After Roe V. Wade, nonprofit work is ‘much more important’

Jane Fonda says the work of the Georgia-based nonprofit she founded to prevent teen pregnancies has come a long way since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion. It’s much more important,” he says. America.

The activist and Oscar-winner has been an outspoken critic of the court’s decision, which he previously called “unconscionable.”

The post-Roe world will be “tougher for girls” because they have to have babies, but efforts to combat teenage pregnancy must also focus on teenage boys. No, said Fonda, who was in Atlanta for a fundraiser on Thursday. Georgia to celebrate her 27th anniversary of her Campaign for Adolescent Power and Potential.

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“Boys should learn that you don’t have to impregnate a girl to be a man, that being a real man means respecting your body and that of your partner, and taking care of yourself. We need to make it understandable,’ Fonda told The Associated Press. It teaches you how to avoid getting pregnant, how to say no, how to have agency in your body, etc. Things are more important than ever.”

Fonda, 84, founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995, when she lived in Atlanta and Georgia had the highest teenage birth rate in the United States.

In 2012, the organization changed its name and expanded its mission beyond teenage pregnancy prevention to include nutrition and physical activity. According to the group, its programs now reach more than 60,000 young people each year.

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“We need to educate people about how the body works so they know how to protect themselves,” said Fonda. “We want young people to have a productive future, to work for it, to reach for it, to get into trouble as teenagers, to have babies as teenagers. You have to help them to be able to procreate, and being very young makes that future much more difficult to reach.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. fertility rate for 15- to 19-year-olds in 2020 is down 8% from the previous year and 75% from its peak in 1991.

Fonda served as chair of GCAPP until moving from Atlanta to Los Angeles in 2010.