Indeed, no more surgical abortions would be a great thing. It would. I know that statement might rub some folks the wrong way (I worked as an intern for a pro-choice group in MA) but I think even Eleanor Smeal would agree that it would be pretty damned cool for women to have real options that would allow us to not rely on a surgical procedure to terminate a pregnancy.
But how do you reach that goal? Well we could have medical abortions. Thanks to the tireless efforts of women's rights and reproductive health groups, we do have this option in mifepristone, formerly known as RU486.
Ideally and ultimately, we could try to create an environment where women's health and lives are legitimately and sincerely valued. It is conceivable that if the public demanded more funding for reproductive health research and reproductive health education, increased availability of affordable birthcontrol, safer and more reliable forms of contraception, subsidized day care and flextime for working parents, there would be fewer unwanted pregnancies thus less need for pregnancy termination.
These sound like reasonable public health and policy approaches to the problem of unwanted pregnancies and family planning which reasonable people could agree on, right? So why is it that "abortion opponents", so called "pro-lifers", are not out there rallying for day care subsidies or increased government funding of reproductive health related research? Why is it that instead of pursuing any one of a number of humanitarian options, they resort to denying women access to any reliable means available for regulating how and when reproduction occurs?
My conclusion is that these people hate women. It's that simple. What else could explain the new wave of anti-woman abortion ban bills that is breaking in state legislatures all over the US? The law that was signed today by South Dakota governor Rounds bans abortion in nearly all circumstances, not even making an exception for pregancy as a result of rape, incest, or when the mother's health is at risk. These people HATE women.
I want to call on anyone who reads this blog and who cares about this issue to start paying extremely close attention to your state politics. If Roe V Wade is overturned, your state legislature is free to pass laws outlawing or limiting access to abortion. What is going on in your state legislature? In mine, there is a bill on the table to guarantee that all hospitals will make emergency contraception available to any woman they treat for sexual assault. (You can view the text of this bill here. If you are interested in this bill and want to track its progress, go here.) A recent article in the Hartford Courant shows the bill does not have strong support from the non-elected governor of CT. Pay attention to your state government. Too often we do not, allowing the media to focus so much attention on federal politics that the local and state ones are completely overlooked. The following states have currently proposed legislation that would ban abortion: Mississippi, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
These recent state level laws, if passed, will bring the issue before the Supreme Court in a way that risks the entirety of the protections afforded by Roe V Wade. Previous state based challenges to Roe have limited access to abortions (through limits on funding, gag rules on medical providers, and "free speech" protection for those who systematically intimidate patients and providers). If one of the new and exceptionally exclusive state laws comes before Bush's stacked Supreme Court and if the court finds in favor of the state, the result could very well be to remove all of the federal protections for abortion as given under Roe V Wade. This is unacceptable. There will still be a need for pregnancy termination, but in the case of many states, no legal way to obtain one.
Further, according to the Feminist Majority Foundation, overturning Roe could have implications for access to birthcontrol as well, since abortion access won in Roe was an extension of the previously established "right of privacy" for reproductive decisions of married and unmarried people (specifically, the prior cases were about contraceptive use). It is not hard to see how this could happen. Across the US, pharmacists, who really should know better and who have apparently no problem selling an inhaler to a smoker (who can conveniently buy their cigarettes 40 paces away at the front counter), have made recent news for refusing to fill EC and birthcontrol prescriptions. The pharmacists do not fill EC and other forms of birthcontrol because, they believe, hormonal forms of contraception are forms of abortion. If that claim gains validity and if federal Roe protections are gone, it is not at all a long stretch to get to criminalizing most forms of birthcontrol.
I wish this were hysteria. I want to be proven wrong, I want the Supreme Court to uphold women's rights to making their own medical decisions. I don't want the US right wing to become a US based christian version of the Taliban.
As a side note, I am listening to the state legislative public health committee hearing about the emergency contraception bill CT SB445. It's live on CT-N. An administrator from St. Francis hospital starts off talking about religious freedom. He says "The medications we are talking about here are hormones that can have two different effects depending on when they are administered in a woman's cycle. These medications can serve as a contraception...can suppress ovulation in a woman who is not already ovulating. In these cases the catholic hospitals can and will provide the medication for that purpose. If the woman is ovulating, the only purpose of that medication is to prevent the implantation of that egg . The bill would not just require administration of medication for contraceptive purpose but require administration of that medication for the purpose of an abortion..."
A woman speaks, starting by saying that she was carjacked, robbed, beaten, and gang raped by 4 men and left for dead on September 26, 2003. She starts off with a firm voice, strong and clear. Her voice shakes when she talks, not about the attack, but about the hospital. She says making a woman go somewhere else to get the full dose of emergency contraception "...is just another cruel thing to do to victims."
Bill O'Brien, CT Right to Life Committee goes next. He says the state law, if it is passed, should be struck down as a violation to the right of religious freedom. He says "some of our sons and daughters are fighting and dying for religious freedom overseas right now". He says we have kicked god out of the schools, we now want to kick god out of medicine. He says "I find it interesting that rape is being used in this bill," "In Roe V Wade, Roe, now knowns as ____ said she was raped and later recanted...That lie was used as a wedge to justify legalized abortion." "It has been argued that a woman who has been raped will be inconvenienced by going to a catholic hospital." "This is not just a catholic issue...freedom of religion is in our federal and state constitutions, it's time to stand up for our constitutions."
Freedom of religion as guaranteed in the US Bill of Rights, does not mean freedom to impose your religious beliefs on others. Blocking emergency contraception to rape victims is imposing your religious beliefs on others in one of the most horrible ways imaginable. Since George Bush came to office, members and organizations of religious right in this country have promoted their intolerance of others, their hatred of others, and their denial of others' basic human rights as a federally protected right. How can this be? If you assert that the rights of a cluster of cells are more important than the rights of a fully functioning, demonstrably viable individual, then you are asserting women are second class citizens not worthy of fully human status.
I wish this were just hysteria.
