There's no question that the anti-choice takeover of state capitols has emboldened zealots to aggressively push through as many abortion restrictions as possible. It seems like every day there's news about the hundreds of bills percolating in state legislatures across the country. Bill sponsors keep upping the ante with proposals that significantly intrude on a woman's personal medical decision to have an abortion or severely limit her ability to get one. And for many pro-choice supporters, the future for abortion rights seems bleak.
Media pundits are stoking the anxiety by painting pro-choice litigators as gun shy. Slate's Dahlia Lithwick recently wrote a piece suggesting that the pro-choice movement won't challenge the new abortion restrictions for fear of losing in the Supreme Court. She writes that the Court's 2007 decision to uphold the so-called "partial birth" abortion act has "frightened those who are pro-abortion rights into being grateful for what they have." She then asks, "Do supporters of reproductive freedom really want to cede all this actual legislative ground for concern over a judicial hypothetical?" Rachel Maddow also aired a segment that delivered a similar message, concluding that so many of the anti-abortion bills that are blatantly unconstitutional have gone unchallenged because the pro-choice movement has "apparently so far made the calculated decision to let it slide" in order to protect Roe v. Wade from being overturned.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We filed a host of new lawsuits last year and will do so again before the state legislative year is up. And the robust fight being waged happens long before we get to court. Throughout the sessions, the Center for Reproductive Rights and fellow advocates work tirelessly to beat back bills as soon as they are introduced, so many never see the light of day. Just this month, the Georgia legislature adjourned without passing a single piece of anti-choice legislation, despite the fact that several extreme measures were proposed and considered. While Georgia's adjournment was an important milestone, many other legislatures remain in session. Bills are still being introduced, debated, and amended. We are fighting hard so that we don't have to go to court. But go to court we will when necessary.
While the number of anti-choice bills we are tracking this year is similar in number to past years -- about 600 -- they are some of the most extreme that we've seen in decades and are passing at a faster rate than in the past. These bills support the anti-choice movement's dual strategies: incrementally restricting women's access to abortion until it's virtually unavailable, and passing laws that flatly violate Roe v. Wade in hopes that a challenge to such a law will get to the Supreme Court, allowing the justices to rethink and overturn that historic 1973 decision.
So we're now in the midst of preparing lawsuits to challenge this new wave of unconstitutional abortion restrictions that may pass and take effect later in the year. Our track record for success is strong. Even in recent years, state and federal courts have declared many abortion restrictions unconstitutional and blocked their enforcement. For example, Slate's Lithwick specifically mentions the emergence of a new trend in ultrasound bills, which require women to view the sonogram image and listen to a verbal description of the image before getting an abortion. While several states are considering these ultrasound bills, only one state has enacted such a measure -- Oklahoma. And the Center for Reproductive Rights challenged that law immediately and got a state court to temporarily block it pending a final determination in the case.
Like any other movement, we make strategic decisions about when, and with what tools to fight for fairness and equality. We don't jump just because the anti-choice zealots say jump. We won't be baited into a lawsuit. If a state passes a law that impairs women's access to abortion services, and that fails to meet constitutional standards, it will be challenged -- when the circumstances and timing are right. To the extent that states have unconstitutional, and unchallenged, abortion laws on their books, it is because those strategic criteria have not yet been met. That has nothing to do with giving up the fight. It has everything to do with ensuring that we devote our resources to the strategies and goals that best serve women's health and rights in the long run.
Richard Elliott Friedman and Shawna Dolansky: Getting the Bible Right on Abortion
What if the soul goes to heaven or gets a chance to be born in a baby who is wanted?
What if forcing a soul to be born where it isn't wanted or where there are physical problems (e.g. drug or alcohol abuse in mother) means that a child could live a life of misery instead of getting a chance to be born in a better situation?
If we don't have definitive answers to these questions how can we say that not having an abortion is always better than having one?
And if you are using your religious beliefs to answer these questions do you have a right to insist that everyone else live their lives and make intimate, life changing personal choices based on your beliefs?
If you want others to live according to your religious beliefs is it because your care about babies or is is because you are worried about your own soul?
“What constitutes a good reason? Since a human fetus has intrinsic and infinite human value, the only good reason for an abortion would be the violation or deprivation of or the threat to the woman’s right to choose what will or will not happen to her body. Social, educational, financial, and personal considerations alone do not outweigh the value of the life that is in the fetus. These considerations by themselves may properly lead to the decision to place the baby for adoption after its birth, but not to end its existence in utero.
“The woman’s right to choose what will or will not happen to her body is obviously violated by rape or incest. When conception results in such a case, the woman has the moral as well as the legal right to an abortion because the condition of pregnancy is the result of someone else’s irresponsibility, not hers. She does not have to take responsibility for it. To force her by law to carry the fetus to term would be a further violation of her right. She also has the right to refuse an abortion. This would give her the right to the fetus and also the responsibility for it. She could later relinquish this right and this responsibility through the process of placing the baby for adoption after it is born. Whichever way is a responsible choice.â€
From the talk :
Weightier Matters By Elder Dallin H. Oaks
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
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Of the few people I know who has had an abortion (or contemplated one, that did not involve a medical need) got pregnant while using some form of birth control. All but one, were married and had other children as well. No BC is 100%. When and how many children a woman has should be up to her (and applicable family), not the general public.
The pro-abortion rights folks invariably retreat to the their rape/incest/life-threatening pregnancy meme, but the vast majority of abortions in the U.S. are simply "birth control after the fact." Everyone knows this.
They will keep bleating on in emotional, hysterical, bigoted, judgmental and factually challenged terms no matter what.
How wrong is it? Some of you say it's equivalent to murder. And yet a significant portion of people who oppose abortion will make allowances for in the case of rape or incest or threat to the mother's health. Clearly, to those people, abortion isn't quite equivalent to murder--we all agree that it's ridiculous to say that you can legally murder a non-fetus (i.e. a child, I shouldn't have to say "born child," that should be redundant) as long as you can prove its father is a rapist and its presence in the world presents a hurtful emotional disturbance to the child's mother.
And yet more than half of the American public holds this view.
I hear people saying, "Abortion is wrong. Abortion is murder." Well, murder is defined as "unlawful killing," so technically abortion isn't murder, but I understand: they're saying that abortion SHOULD BE murder. It should be outlawed. Presumably if it is outlawed then there would be criminal penalties for seeking or getting an abortion, then.
So I ask: what's the appropriate penalty? How many years in prison? I have asked this many times and gotten few coherent responses, aside from "the death penalty." Against abortion? Please share your opinion on this subject, the world needs to know.
Guess you aren't old enough to remember the fight for Women's Rights in the 70's-80's, huh? You have no idea how hard it was to claim equality, to insist on being a whole person, not an extension of our fathers or husbnds. Thanks to we oldsters, you are able to hold down a job wiithout risk of being fired because some man wants your job. You can also get credit on your own, buy a car or home on your own, divorce when you wish. You get to make your own medical decisions without asking permission from your father, husband first.
You can run for office on your own, can be President if you wish and are elected....
You are NOT prevented from "climbing the career ladder" just because you are female.
I think you may want to hit the books again. You apparently missed all that "Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Voter's Rights" thingie...
It was we oldster, YOUR mothers and grandmothers who have put you where you are today....and who have handed to you the rights to your own person, your own body, without asking permission first.
It was hard won. And, if you lose it, it will be your own fault.
I understand that some clinics give you a card, whereby if you get four abortions, the fifth is free.
Scary, isn't it? That we who have one get to decide what we wish to do with it.
PS. The Hyde Amendment has to be renewed EVERY YEAR.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics
http://home.earthlink.net/~davidlperry/abortion.htm
If you feel abortion is just wrong, don't have one..
So if I feel rape is wrong, I shouldn't object to it - as long as I'm not personally being raped?
Does that make sense to you?
It shouldn't - any more than your statement makes sense.
Should I not object to slavery - unless I'm enslaved?
Let's start calling the debate what it really is. It's not about babies and it's not pro life. It's about wanting to turn the United States of America into a CONservative christian nation by any means possible. It's a debate about religion.
This idea that abortion is murder is, rather like the burka, a dogma created in order to control women.
Personally I believe it's time that women made their stance outside the Capitol in a literal version of the metaphorical chains that the republicans want to put us in.