A Quick Sigh of Relief, Now Let's Get to Work Rebuilding Reproductive Rights

The election of Barack Obama heralds at long last a season of promise and opportunity: the chance to improve the lives of millions of Americans and people throughout the world by ending the Bush administration's horrific war on women and making reproductive health a priority for U.S. law and policy. Yet earlier this fall, I said that no matter who won in November, those of us on the front lines of the fight for reproductive rights and health care would have our work cut out for us.

Clearly we have reason to rejoice the recent sound defeat of two state ballot initiatives designed as attacks on Roe v. Wade and the California initiative mandating parental notification. These outcomes send an unambiguous message to our elected officials that our government should not interfere with personal and private decisions about our health and families. There is no doubt that backers of the South Dakota abortion ban and Colorado's "personhood" amendment had their sights on the U.S. Supreme Court and overturning Roe. The stakes were high not only for women and families in these states, but for women throughout the country.

Fortunately, the voters in South Dakota, Colorado and California have made it clear that they put the health, safety and privacy of the women in their states first, above abortion politics. Proponents of both of these measures would be wise to follow the electorate's wishes and put these issues to rest.

But even with these victories, and even with this election, individual state legislatures remain dangerous arenas in which we struggle to preserve every woman's rights to choose whether or not she will bear children, and to have the broadest access to contraception, abortion, health information and pregnancy care. Every year, our opponents introduce more than 600 anti-choice measures in the states. Just last month in Oklahoma, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed suit immediately to block a law that would force a woman to listen to a doctor describe an ultrasound image of her fetus. And, in a bizarre Alice through the Looking Glass twist, the same law would prevent a woman from suing if her doctor intentionally withholds other information about the fetus, such as severe abnormalities. Fortunately, we won an order temporarily blocking the law while we prepare for trial.

We know that this coming January will be equally bad or even worse as our opponents rush to take advantage of the Bush administration's dangerous judicial legacy: the current Supreme Court and President Bush's judicial appointees, which make up more than one-third of sitting federal judges and the most conservative in modern history.

We have suffered under the yoke of an administration that has suppressed science to the detriment of health and has done damage to constitutional and human rights values. Federal court decisions have undermined the protections established by Roe v. Wade, funding for basic reproductive health care is inadequate and maternal mortality rates among women of color remain shamefully high. At the U.N., the United States has undermined protection for reproductive rights and health, and restrictions that the U.S. places on foreign assistance hamper rather than promote progress. All this flies in the face of the United States' historical role as a world leader in championing equality and human rights and of supporting access to essential reproductive health care around the world.

In sharp contrast to the erosion of protection for reproductive rights in U.S. law, the global trend within United Nations', regional and national jurisprudence has been towards recognition of reproductive rights as human rights. Recent decisions by the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the European Court of Human Rights have found that denying women abortions in certain circumstances violated human rights guarantees. In addition, in the last twenty years, 16 countries have liberalized their abortion laws. At a time when the world is moving towards greater recognition and protection of these rights, the United States should also be advancing and not retreating.

Our new administration must take quick and decisive action to create a policy climate guided by science and not ideology, starting with striking funding for abstinence-only sex education and the appointment federal agency directors -- beginning with the FDA -- who respect scientific data. President-elect Obama must appoint federal judges committed to constitutional rights and the objective review of evidence. The U.S. must once again support reproductive rights at the U.N. and in U.S. foreign assistance programs by repealing the Global Gag Rule and restoring funding to the United Nations Population Fund. And we must ensure that our nation is represented around the world by people who respect women's human rights.

Now that a pro-choice administration is about to move into the White House, it may be tempting to think that we no longer have to "worry" about women's reproductive rights. But we must resist that temptation and instead pledge to seize this moment to make sure that this most fundamental and enduring principle is enshrined in law: At the heart of a free society is our ability to form the personal beliefs and make the intimate decisions that chart our destinies and define who we are.

Comments

[maryhaze]

until every single person who is anti-choice has adopted a kid already born & in the "system" it's not their business what any woman does with her own body. of course, the child probably will a different race & might have severe medical problems, but it's a life. right?????

[redkim]

You are correct; it isn't anyone's business what a woman does with her own body; except of course, if she attempts to sell one of her body parts; then it's the government's business. Those who espouse the "a woman can do whatever she wants with her own body" seem to forget that, NO, she cannot.

And the argument that it's better to have an abortion than to have a child suffer is just downright creepy. It's also nothing more than ideology because the women who go to abortion clinics are not the ones saying "I can do whatever I want to my body" or "It's better that I'm doing this because the kid will suffer."

No, what many of them are really asking is "What other alternatives do I have? I don't really want to do this, but I see no other way."

The NARAL-inspired ideology espoused by the pro-legalized abortion proponents won't help these women. The only thing it does is keep some people in influential positions. Without legalized abortion, they have no jobs.

So while some are screaming "Adopt or shut up!" pro-lifers are the one's offering women real alternatives and giving many of these women hope and long lasting support by working in the trenches with them.

[StructuredRamblings]

It's called personal responsibility. If you find yourself pregnant you have a responsibility to that life you created. Anything less weakens us as human beings.

[littlebuddylouie]

Anything that transpires in the context of a confidential patient, doctor relationship that you will never know anything about has no effect on you whatsoever as a human being.

[redkim]

Agreed. Abortion is one of the gravest symptoms of mans inhumanity to man. As to the phrase "potential person": I understand that people use that phrase because of how the Constitution(?) defines person, but my argument is this: do we really want a government or judicial authority to decide who is and who is not a person? This has been done in the past to disastrous results.

Once we start defining who is and who is not a person we, to borrow from Structured­Ramblings, become weakened as human beings.

This is why the phrase "reproductive rights" is so insidious: it makes us believe that women are being "empowered" when in fact humanity is being weakened.

[sixfour27]

BLAH BLAH BLAH

[RadicalConservative]

If you don't want a baby, don't get pregnant. Then abortion won't matter.

[MichaelJOConnell]

I have been anti-abortion in the past, but can no longer justify that position based upon my shock at the lengths that the religious right will go to deny basic human rights (not just abortion) . I also now see reproductive control as part of the broader war to create a theocracy of the American democracy. This I cannot stand.

Speaking of abortion and the sanctity of life, again looking at the broader picture, our Christian, pro-life President Bush was willing to kill, maim and destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqies and yet the religious right nary said a word. Since I must take the whole package when I vote for a president, I chose the candidate that demonstrates respect for the living, even if this tact allows the termination of the pre-lives of the unborn.

A person alive is always far more important than a potential person.

[redkim]

I await the day when Roe v. Wade is overturned. Then we will really see what it is the American people want. Abortion is an abomination and should never be championed. It has nothing to do with so-called "Reproductive Rights." The only "reproductive right" that is an inherent right is the one where the state cannot tell a woman she cannot become pregnant nor can they force her to become pregnant. That's it.

I am very much for the choice of women to become pregnant or not. I am also very clearly against abortion and it should be made illegal. So, when Roe is overturned, I will join the pro-lifers in my state to make abortion illegal in NY. A losing battle, I know, but one worth the risk.

This being said, I applaud and welcome any measure that will help any woman who is facing pregnancy keep her baby, whether it is a law against firing women because they have taken time off for pregnancy or any discrimination against women because they are child-bearers. I would be willing to work with ANY pro-legalized abortion person on these matters.

[athena1146]

this election has shown that the christian coalition has lost it's hold on american politics..­..let's work to keep it that way.

[boulddenwyldde]

The religious right is not going to end its attacks on Roe v. Wade just because they get outvoted. And in the long run, that decision will fall -- because of its own internal logic.

At its heart, Roe is a personal rights case, finding that it is outside the government's scope to regulate a woman's private medical decisions, and also finding, incidentally, that the fetus doesn't accrue any rights that the government can consider until it is possible for that child to survive on its own outside the womb -- about two thirds of the way through pregnancy.

Even if you believe that this is good law -- and I do -- you have a problem, because whereas our social discourse and political dispute has been trapped in amber since 1973, medical science has been marching on. It is now possible to save premature babies who would have died in earlier years, and it is not out of the question to foresee a "Brave New World" of babies cultured from insemination to birth in test tubes.

I'm all in favor of a woman's reproductive rights, and sexual freedom, but we are going to have to find another principle to base it on in the future, because Roe ultimately will expire.

[deeppeace]

Brava. We must never let down our guard. "Pro-life" = anti-choice.

[rroy]

I have lived on this fascinating planet for a long time and once in a while I sit and ponder the long long list of scientitic accomplishments and discoveries that have occurred in my life span.The few of them I can comprehend simply astound me at their sizes complexities and impact.To cite just a few;we can control vehicles we have sent to outer space,we have created new disciplines such as Molecular Biology,we can solve equations in a digital billionth of a second,and on and on!
Yet no one has ever come up with a discovery of or physical identity of something called a"soul".Th­e same being said for the vague impression of some etheral wonder that is supposed to occur when a male sperm penetrates a female egg,and is somehow defined as "conception"or "the beginning of life"
Yet millions and millions,even billions of humans are brought onto this earth to live in misery ,filth,and squalor because of dogmas that have yet to establish any viability and ,most likely,never will.