Abortion Rights Groups Say Legal Fights Loom
NEW YORK - The 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade — the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave women the right to abortion — is being observed this week amid concerns over threats to erode or eliminate a woman’s reproductive rights.
Republicans on the campaign trail have almost universally condemned Roe v. Wade and President George w. Bush this week voiced support for abortion opponents attending a Washington ‘right to life’ protest and rally, inviting about 200 of them for coffee and doughnuts at the White House.
Protests by anti- and pro-abortion activists took place this week across the country marking the high court ruling. Politicians used the occasion to rally their supporters. Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, called Roe v. Wade ‘a great American tragedy that has led to the loss of millions of innocent lives.’
Members of the Democratic Party, including the leading contenders for the presidential nomination, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, spoke out strongly in favour of women’s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
‘We have a huge fight (to preserve a woman’s right to choose),’ said Rhonda Copelon, a law professor and director of the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic of the City University of New York School of Law, ‘but I think this is the time to fight it.’
‘In the last 35 years, anti-choice groups have grown more vicious, lashing out against the landmark Supreme Court decision as part of their ongoing campaign to eviscerate it,’ says Kim Gandy, president of the National Organisation of Women (NOW).
‘We have endured more than three decades of challenges and roadblocks from a well-funded opposition, and our rights are more tenuous than ever — so now, more than ever, we have to fight to keep Roe alive,’ said Gandy.
Legislation limiting woman’s rights has met with some success. In 2006, South Dakota lawmakers made it a felony for doctors to perform any abortion except to save the life of a pregnant woman, but the law was reversed by voters later that year.
Last April, the Supreme Court upheld an abortion procedure ban without any exception to protect the woman’s health.
‘The Court’s majority opinion leaves women out of this equation and allows the state’s supposed interest in ‘promoting fetal life’ to trump women’s rights to control the direction of our lives,’ noted Annie Tummino of the activist group Women’s Liberation Birth Control Project. ‘Two Justices, Thomas and Scalia, even went so far as to say that ‘the Court’s abortion jurisprudence, including Casey and Roe, has no basis in the Constitution’.’
‘What’s more, doctors who choose to uphold our rights can now be prosecuted,’ she said.
In Missouri, a proposed ballot measure, if adopted, would ban abortion in almost all circumstances and could spur a legal challenge before the Supreme Court.
Between four and eight ballot measures imposing new restrictions on abortion rights could face voters in upcoming state polls.
A new report by the Guttmacher Institute, a NYC-based research organisation studying reproductive health, has found that medically-induced abortions are dropping to historic lows. In 2005, they found, the abortion rate dipped to 19.4 per 1,000 women, its lowest level since 1974.
Many factors could explain this, says Rachel Jones, an author of the report, and ‘we just aren’t able to get at the reasons behind the decline.’
While traditional abortion providers are fewer in number, there has been a rise in the number of new clinics that offer only ‘early medication abortion services,’ or RU486, a medication that terminates a pregnancy in the first trimester by blocking the effects of progesterone.
Since the drug was introduced in the United States in September 2000, more than 840,000 women have taken it, and the Guttmacher study estimates that it is now used in 14 percent of all abortions, up from 6 percent in 2001.
Clinics that offer only RU486 — not surgical abortions — are growing in popularity. Also showing an increase is the use of a ‘morning after’ contraceptive pill, known as Plan B, available for women 18 and older.
About 150,000 of the 1.2 million abortions in the United States in 2006 were done with medication, the Guttmacher Institute has estimated.
‘Mifepristone (RU-486) is clearly starting to become an important part of the abortion provision in the United States,’ said Lawrence Finer, who studies the drug at Guttmacher. ‘I think we’ll continue to see increases.’
Of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year, half are 25 or older. Only about 17 percent are teens. About 60 percent have given birth to at least one child prior to getting an abortion.
A disproportionately-high number of women having abortions are African American or Latino. New figures from the Centres for Disease Control show they account for 35 percent of the abortions.
Meanwhile, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc. has announced plans to spend 10 million dollars in a major effort to elect pro-abortion-rights candidates to Congress and the White House in November.
‘We’ve seen in this presidential election, unfortunately, in the Republican primaries a real rush to the far edges … folks really trying to move us in a direction antithetical to where the American people are,’ said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood’s political arm.
The campaign would wait for the results of the presidential primary elections before deciding which states get its most intense efforts, she said.
© 2008 Inter Press Service
Banning abortions won’t stop them. It will only force women into backroom solutions. I remember before it was legal how many of my friends went the backstreet route. Also in Boston the Clergy COuncil used to fly women to places where they could have safe abortions, which meant if you had money you could get a safe abortion, if you didn’t, you took your chances.
I grow so weary of this topic which should never be decided by anyone women within the context of women’s health care.
Why I will never vote for an anti-choice candidate:
Pro-choice means that no woman or doctor should be punished for providing full-range health care to a woman. Women’s healthcare is a private matter between a woman and her doctor. That should be the end of the story. Regrettably it is not.
An anti-choice president believes s/he has the right to know the contents of a woman’s uterus. Where else in our private lives will that person of power and their following interfere?
If they have their way, anti-choice factions would also do away with some birth control pills, the ones that work by not allowing the implantation of a fertilized egg. These same radical factions will also work to eliminate IUDs (same reason as the pill), Plan B, etc. Those who would remove the choices from a woman’s medical options are rarely if ever heard demanding that men use condoms, thus sharing in the responsibility to eliminate unwanted pregnancies.
These same people will exert influence on a president’s decision about federal funding for family planning in this nation and worldwide. Just look at what happened to worldwide family planning under THIS administration! A major means to peace (and this is not news) is education of ALL women. So long as women are repressed with lack of education, inability to control their fertility, and the resultant cycle of poverty – they have no voice, and the voices of women must be heard in this world that has become so dangerous in recent years.
A recent Time magazine quoted Ghulam Hazrat Tanha, director of education in Afghanistan’s Herat province: “Education is the factory that turns animals into human beings. If women are educated, that means their children will be too. If the people of the world want to solve the hard problems in Afghanistan–kidnapping, beheadings, crime and even al-Qaeda–they should invest in [our] education.” Kofi Annan once said that the “empowerment of women is the advancement of humankind.”
People – we must start seeing beyond the stretch of our hands to the larger world view. I will never vote for an anti-choice candidate. I believe that to do so is not just harmful to women, it ultimately stands in the way of world peace.
In most countries of the world abortion is considered a personal matter, and governments do not interfere with the people’s rights.
The reason it has become such a big issue in the US is that the government wants to deflect your attention from important social issues and its own actions, such as blowing your tax money on wars. Please, you are the citizens of a supposedly industrialized modern nation. You are supposedly more educated and well informed. What went wrong with your brains? Don’t allow the government to throw non-issues at you and distract you. Please.
We could best avoid a lot of abortions by making Plan B, the emergency after-the-fact contraceptive, available everywhere to every age group on open store shelves (not “behind the counter” subject to pharmacy discretion, or other hurdles.) And avoiding, but not prohibiting, abortions is what we ought to strive for.
Believe it nor not, a 21-year-old female law student is leading a charge to get state constitutions amended to make a fertilized egg be a “person” with rights, meaning even that Plan B would be subject to being called murder, pharmacists dispensing it accessories to murder, etc., depending on how far carried.
One of these cases is going to end at the U.S. Supreme Court before the four conservative Catholics (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito) who will do their best to coerce their spiritual brother, Kennedy, the fifth Catholic to go along with them and overturn Roe outright–probably by upholding some far more restrictive state thing. Unrestricted Roe rights are most likely already on the way out, even with the Court we have—absolutely on the way out with the addition of one more Justice by a Republican president. Even Giuliani has promised evangelicals that he, too, will give them what they want on judicial picks.
Women would be well advised not to campaign on abortion rights in 2008—but rather campaign on the fifty other liberal-interest issues that also would bring them a president who would not add another anti-Roe judge.
Abortion need not be the “billboard” issue, due to the risk of unintended backlash—but abortion WILL be decided in the 2008 election (if it isn’t already.)
I think that if you oppose abortion, fine. Don’t have an abortion. If you want to prevent others from having them, figure out a way for you to transfer the fetus you want to save to your own uterus. If you don’t have a uterus, figure out a way for you to have one and carry the fetus yourself if you want to prevent others from carrying the unborn.
This whole abortion issue is all about sex and power. When men want to control woman they do things like> Not allowing them to drive in Saudi Arabia, or femal genital mutilations in most of these muslim countries. In the us it is abortion and birth control pills. This and others are nothing but a way to control woman, anytime a woman speak up against this patriarchy society men feel that their power is a threat and therefore must control it. I for one dod not want any children and for the most part I have made it to the age of 45 without worrying about it for one I live in California where woman have more rights probably than any other state. Ca kept abortion legal even in times when the rest of the country did not. But if there is any indication maybe most of these woman will start to think twice and redefine what this all mean and either fight or decide maybe to seek sterilization, anything to get these fools off of their backs.
I am 71, old enough to remember when abortion was supposed to be illegal. It never was.
Those that did not believe in abortion did not have one. Other than that, the rich did as they pleased. The middle class budgeted for a safe abortion. The never thought of themselves as breaking any law. Nor did any policeman show up to arrest them. The people that suffered were the poor who could not afford safe, illegal abortions and had to settle for dangerous alternatives.
It’s unenforceable. It’s like prohibition. People who wanted to drink found a way to do so.
The problem is that the law will hurt people who are already hurting. The religious right will pat themselves on the back for having forced this great sin underground and out of their sight.
Religious people are working hard every day to take away your rights.
Patriarchal misogynists should not be forced to have an abortion if they don’t want one. Their mothers are another thing.
Abortion rights were gained by mass proactive struggle at the grassroots, that is, by women and men organizing huge public and militant demonstrations. Had it not been for this historic struggle, women would not have gained the right to choose. But today it appears that NGOs have forgotten that it was mass struggle, not court decisions, that won the right to choose. Instead, NGOs, despite their earnest goals, call on people only to lobby their congressperson and give money to the cause, and nothing other than impromptu ‘lobbying days’ seem ever to be proposed. Rather than promote and facilitate mass democratic action, the NGOs simply seek to grow themselves - they will never be able to defeat the counter-attack on our rights by these hopelessly bureaucratic means! May the recent uptick in demonstrations and marches in Washington be a harbinger of a return to the militant organizing tactics that achieved women’s right to choose and will presage a long-overdue realization on the part of NGOs that militant democratic grassroots organizing on a national and international solidarity basis is the strongest means we have and must use to defend these rights.
Ghostie
I oppose abortion as a form of birth control, but I wouldn’t make it illegal. It is impractical and doesn’t solve the problem that must be addressed. Sexual practice must be changed to PREVENT disease and unwanted pregnancy. Pills swallowed the next day are of no use in controlling aids, herpes and dozens of other diseases.
Education, training in responsible sex practices and disease prevention are necessary. Northern European nations have fewer abortions than countries where it is illegal and only abstinence is allowed in sex education.
No one would suggest overnight body shops to pound out dents was a big improvement in traffic safety. Instead we use education, public service messages, licenses, regulation, safety equipment and other practices that work to improve safety.
Teenage pregnancy is most common amongst the very religious. Baptists are number one. Figure it out.
Well, lizard born, raised Southern Baptist in the North, now God is what she is, never got pregnant until I was in my 20’s. Know many Baptists from up North and down South, show me the statisical study. I am in my 50’s now and it has more to do with education or I should say lack thereof.
The country is too divided on this issue and it’s going to end up in the States where each state can decide it’s position. I personally am against abortion because I hold life to be a superior value. I do make it a practice not to judge those who do choose abortion.
Call it “Schadenfreude” if you like, but I can hardly wait for the day when a female Secretary to some US right wing religious or political guru gets her pictures published (in www.truthout.org or even THIS site?), after she’s been on tour on a very discreet visit to London. She’s pictured “doing” the usual tourist sites…Westminster Abbey…the Tower of London…Madame Tussaud’s.
Oh, and I almost forgot…a private “family planning” clinic in Harley Street!
So, let ‘em reverse Roe v. Wade if they dare - and just see the nauseating hypocrisy of it all come out!
This is one more front in the war against the poor. If Roe is reversed, poor women will die from back-alley abortions. Poor christians will continue to vote against their economic and privacy interests in order to elect “pro-life” candidates. Those same candidates reject free health care for poor children.
This all works to the benefit of the prison industrial complex, the poverty-pimp bureaucracies, and the mercenary military. Does the two-party status quo offer any hope for change? I think not.
I have yet to hear anyone here mention the real reason that abortion is a big political issue in this country! It has become one since religion got heavily into politics trying to impose it’s belief’s upon American’s. Because the pro-life movement is make up mostly of conservative Christian’s. Most of it started with Ronald Reagan when he invited the religious nuts into his party and gave them free reign to impose there belief’s. I remember it well! Because that was when I started looking for another party to vote for. And have voted Democratic ever since.
When people start realizing that religion is the biggest opposition to birth control of all forms. They are working feverishly to turn this country into something similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan. We will have made a giant leap forward. Most religions are trying to run this country and setting us back into the dark ages with their ignorance. It’s time to start putting religion back where it belongs in the church pew instead of in the center of politics. It’s time if you believe in abortion rights to let these people know they have a right to their belief’s. But, they don’t have a right to impose those belief’s upon a country that doesn’t agree with them! It all boils down to people learning to respect other people’s belief’s! It is clear that the pro-life movement isn’t interested in what anyone else belief’s. Just in imposing their belief’s upon everyone around them. When religions bottom line starts hurting that’s when they will snap to attention and start doing things differently.
Political conservatives in the United States cannot govern; they know nothing about economics; they destroy everything they touch-but they are going to stick those big noses of theirs in a woman’s crotch, and tell her how she should live her life.
Some people never learn. More than anything else-I wish the republican party would remove its collective nose from my crotch. What I do with my body, is my business-not theirs.
greatbear215, to the contrary, Repugs can govern and know economics very well. And too many Dims enable them to go forward with their agenda of greed and exploitation. The Green Party includes feminism as one of its ten key values. It’s time to build the alternative, isn’t it?
The “abortion debate” is completly pointless. Make abortions or all types including the mornign after pill available to all women of all ages and races without needing permission from anybody even if under 18.
The choice of whether to have an abortion or not is strictly up to the pregnant woman and her only, not her family, her partner and espaccially not the “pro life” extremists
Bush an Huckabee, concerned about the loss of millions of lives?
What a fucking joke!
The need for abortions is a SYMPTOM of what’s wrong with our society, not a solution. When men and women stop using each other without feeling or for self-gratification, when the government stops treating the poor like human waste, and when the religions of the world stop instilling fear instead of instilling the love intended by most of their founders, then no baby will be unwanted. While I refuse to criminalize abortion, thus making women who seek them criminals, I feel strongly we must look to removing the problems women face in this society when they become pregnant, planned or unplanned. In the 35 years since Roe vs. Wade, very little has been done in that effort.
Contraceptives, and instructions on how to use them, should be available to anyone, of any age, no questions asked.
People are always going to be engaged in the pleasures of the flesh. It is one of the most driving instincts, that mother nature has provided, and it comes to the fore at an early age.
It is unrealistic to believe that it can be curtailed.
Also it is strongly rumored, and i happen to believe it, that bush himself had a partner that got pregnant, and that he was directly involved in seeing that she had it aborted. She was paid handsomely to keep her mouth shut.
To most politicians, the question of abortion, is nothing more than a political football, to use for their own gain.