Posted on 03/30/2004 5:30:55 AM PST by qam1
Feminist activists are sending women a wake-up call. But will anyone answer?
On April 25, thousands of people will flood downtown DC to support one common goal: preserving what few reproductive rights women in this country still possess. But to truly succeed, the feminist movement must reach those who have never experienced a pre-Roe existence. Many of those in Gens X and Y do not recognize the massive threat to reproductive rights. Abortion is an abstract concept to them, a procedure that they think they likely will never need, but nonetheless will be readily available if they are wrong.
Will it take a 180-degree turn on abortion rights - a reversal of Roe v. Wade - to change these women's minds?
The complacent may witness the so-called "impossible" soon enough. The right of women to control their own bodies hangs by a 5-4 vote. In other words, Bush needs to appoint as few as one anti-choice justice to overturn decades of progress in reproductive rights. And we're not just taking about abortion, which already has taken hefty hits since Casey and other restrictive cases. Lack of public funding for abortions, mandatory waiting periods and parental notification laws are only the beginning of a potential end for not only access to abortion, but the full spectrum of women's ability to choose when and whether to bear children.
Witness the wide-range effects harming our reproductive rights even with Roe still in tact:
The So-Called "Partial Birth Abortion" Ban Act - One of the most recent blows to reproductive rights was the passing and signing of the "PBA" Ban Act of 2003, a dangerously broad law that is the first to criminalize a medical procedure. Despite the fact that the law also potentially covers many types of second-term abortion procedures, Congress and Bush intended to prohibit the intact dilation and extraction procedure. D&E is often the safest procedure to use to terminate the pregnancy of a deformed fetus.
For more information about the "PBA" Ban Act, see Brian Morreale's article, as well as the December issue of the Jurist.
Mifepristone - The Federal Drug Administration approved mifepristone - otherwise known as RU-486 - in 2000. The drug, when used with misoprostol, provides women with a safe and reliable alternative to surgical abortion in the first trimester.
However, shortly after Bush appointed Tommy Thompson as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Thompson called for a review of the safety of the drug, despite its successful use in France since 1988, the United Kingdom since 1991 and Switzerland since 1992.
In fact, more than 600,000 European women used the drug by the time the FDA approved it in the U.S., according to Planned Parenthood.
More than one million women worldwide now have used the mifepristone/misoprostol combination to end pregnancies. Since 1991, a total of six deaths have been reported in possible connection with the drug, according to Planned Parenthood. By comparison, Viagra is linked to more than 616 deaths.
"Safety" is obviously a smokescreen behind the true motives anti-choice conservatives for opposing the drug.
Plan B "Morning After Pill" - The FDA recently delayed until May the decision to sell the "morning after pill" over the counter, citing a need to research teenage use of the drug. The pill, when used within 72 hours of sexual intercourse, stops implantation of a fertilized egg, thus preventing pregnancy. Acting essentially as a mega dose of birth control pills, it can reduce pregnancy risk by 89 percent. The drug prevented more than 50,000 abortions in 2000, according to Nation's Health. Five states currently allow pharmacists to disperse Plan B without a prescription.
However, in 45 other states, many women are denied access to the pill, as they are unable to obtain a necessary prescription within the limited time frame. This effectively voids the pill's value as an advancement in reproductive choice and cements unwanted pregnancies that women must then either end through abortions or - as religious zealots seeking control over women hope - have children against their will.
Click here for more information about Plan B emergency contraception.
International Family Planning - As his first executive order, Bush reinstated the Global Gag Rule, which bans federal funding to international organizations that advocate or even mention abortion to their patients. "The promises of our Declaration of Independence are not just for the strong, the independent or the healthy. They are for everyone, including unborn children," Bush stated.
Bush rationalized his decision to reinstate the Global Gag Rule by stating that he does not believe federal funds should support abortions. However, the ban actually denies aid to foreign non-governmental organizations that use their own money - not that of the U.S. government - to advocate for or perform legal abortions in their own countries.
The ban mostly affects clinics in third world countries that lack important resources - like food and medicine - to support populations that will only become larger with this ban on family planning in place. The ban prevents women not only from obtaining abortions from these clinics, but also prevents them from obtaining a multitude of other healthcare and reproductive services once clinics that cannot afford to stay open without these critical U.S. government funds close their doors.
On a related note, the United States also has refused to fund the United Nations Population Fund, which provides reproductive services to millions of women so that they may plan and space births, which in turn reduces maternal and infant mortality. The agency has lost approximately $70 million in the past two years because of the U.S. funding blockade, according to Planned Parenthood.
These backlashes are just a few demonstrations of the hostility that women face in a political climate featuring an anti-choice president, anti-choice Congress and anti-choice state legislatures. Granting independent legal status to fetuses instead of enforcing anti-violence laws against the women who carry them, advocating and increasing the budget for abstinence-only education while restricting funding for more effective Title X subsidized family planning, coercing single mothers to marry for welfare benefits while ignoring domestic violence concerns - the list is seemingly endless. Anti-woman conservatives will continue to strip away reproductive rights unless we stop them.
Thus, this column is a call to action. Join women and men across the country to protest the gradual destruction of reproductive choice.
On April 25, WiCkLe students will march together in the largest, most organized pro-choice demonstration ever to hit DC. For the first time in the history of the women's rights movement, six major feminist groups - The Feminist Majority, the Black Women's Health Imperative, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood - have united to bring forth this historic event.
We must make our voices heard, before the conservative anti-choice tide washes away our rights for generations to come.
The usual suspects no doubt.
This sentence is so confusing and confused it is funny. Umn - no lady, if they want to provide funds for this "medical procedure" then they can expect to receive no funds from us.
It is not as if getting rid of Roe v. Wade will completely get rid of abortion anyway, abortion will then become something that the states can decide on, not the federal government (this is a good thing). Maybe, hopefully, this will result in more responsibilities/funding being wrested from the white knuckled grip of the federal bureaucrats, and into the sweaty palms of the state governments.
And yeah, another thing. These womyn act as if the only thing standing between them and an unwanted child is an abortion, and that is blatantly false there are: IUDs, Cervical Caps, Diaphragms, the pill, the patch, and...oh my - abstinence. STFU!
Typical liberal distortion. Taken in a vacuum, this statement is true. If partial-birth abortion was only used to abort brain-dead or virtually dead babies, there wouldn't really be a debate. Only pro-life purists would argue that a woman should not have the right to abort a brain-dead baby.
Of course, the truth of the matter is that partial birth abortion, like most abortions, is mostly used for conevenience of the mother.
This is where the pro-abortion crowd made their mistake. If they would have went to the various state legislatures, and allowed the law makers decide the abortion question, they would have been able to make it legal in liberal states, and the fight against them would have been much weaker.
By having the Supreme Court rule it was a "Consitutional" right, they short circuited the process, resulting in a 30 year battle they will lose in the end.
If the Supreme Court can make something (not in the Consitution) a "right", the Supreme Court can take away that right.
I will go so far as to say that, that one ruling was the beginning of the end for liberals.
BUMP
It's one reason why "Generation X" aka the Baby Bust will always lag behind the numbers of the Baby Boomers. Those smaller birth rates mean less representation in the political arena, less workers to pay more social security taxes, etc.
Eventually abortion (possibly excepting life threatening risk) will be outlawed as unconsitutional denial of LIFE. The states cannot arbitrarily state who is and is not human; it is not a matter of opinion, it is a fact (which some people seem to be in denial of).
Homosexual rights (a sexual fetish) are dangerously close to being declared a constitutionally protected freedom. The right to life of a child in the womb should have even more constitutional protection.
Getting the courts to overturn Roe will be difficult enough. Getting the courts to rule that abortion is unconstitutional is probably never going to happen. A constitutional amendment banning abortion is just as unlikely- there are enough red states out there to prevent such an amendment from passing.
Abortion will end up being decided in the political arena. The people of this country will have to decide for themselves whether or not abortion is acceptable.
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