It was 39 years ago today the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that a woman has a legal right to choose, constitutionally protected under the 14th Amendment. Four decades later, generations of young women have come of age under the protection of Roe, securing their health and safety in the most personal decision of their lives, and upholding the dignity of their personal freedom. But four decades later, the issue of woman's right to choose has also become a rallying cry for ideologues, bringing attack after attack against this right and against women's access to full reproductive health care. So 39 years later as we mark Roe's extraordinary impact, we must recognize that a women's legal right to choose is now in as great of jeopardy as it has ever been.
As a fourth generation Coloradoan, I have been extraordinarily proud to lead the fight in Congress to protect that critical right, guided by a mission rooted in my strong Western values of personal freedom and common sense. I have been fighting this battle since my earliest days of public service, and I now recognize it is one I must likely fight the rest of my career.
Colorado women had long been proud that our state was one of the first states to decriminalize abortion back in 1967. But when I began my first term in the Colorado State House of Representatives in 1993, it had been a quarter-century since we had passed any pro-choice legislation in the state. Attacks against a woman's legal right to choose were already all too commonplace and as an elected representative, I wanted to do something to reaffirm our state's commitment to reproductive rights. And so I began my fight for legislation that came to be known as the "Bubble Bill."
In Colorado and across the country, women attempting to enter reproductive health care clinics were frequently being attacked or assaulted by protestors around the clinics. They were hit, verbally assaulted, accosted, or spat on, representing a significant infringement upon their fundamental right to choose. I wanted to pass a common-sense solution to protect those women while at the same time recognizing the First Amendment rights of the protestors.
Along with my friend and colleague Mike Feeley, a Colorado State Senator, I settled on what I thought was a seemingly non-controversial solution: a "bubble" keeping protestors from getting closer than eight feet from anyone walking into a clinic. To me, this was a common-sense compromise - eight feet was still more than close enough to be heard, but far enough away that women could avoid being assaulted. Nonetheless, the reaction from the religious right was swift, negative, and almost killed the bill. I persevered, however, and Colorado became one of the first states to adopt this buffer zone around women's health clinics. It went on to withstand challenge after challenge, including one brought to the United States Supreme Court.
The Bubble Bill was my first experience with how willing the religious right was to subjugate common sense and personal freedom to their ideological agenda, but it was far from my last. Nearly two decades later, that ideological agenda now dominates much of the legislation considered by a U.S. House of Representatives currently controlled by a very vocal right wing.
In the first year of the 112th Congress the U.S. House did not once consider comprehensive jobs legislation, but we still managed to vote seven different times to restrict a woman's access to a full range of reproductive health care. We voted to defund family planning services and raise taxes on women who purchase comprehensive insurance coverage. We voted to restrict federal funding from going to comprehensive medical training programs. We even voted to allow hospitals to deny life-saving care to women if it involved performing an abortion.
These votes threaten the health of women all across America and I will continue to stand up against these attacks. I fight to protect a woman's right to choose largely grounded in my Western values of personal freedom and common sense. But as today's anniversary approached, I wanted to hear from others about why defending that right was important to them. So on Friday I turned to Facebook and asked my followers for their stories, and the answers were astounding.
Sarah told me how she will never have the same experiences as another woman - so it certainly isn't her place to judge what is the right choice for that individual. Jen said it was an issue of keeping the government out of her day-to-day life. Stephanie mentioned the inevitability of women needing to exercise their right to choose - and the documented health risks of criminal abortions. Jess cited the liberalized abortion laws in Western Europe as proof that increased access to reproductive health care and sex education is the most effective way to reduce abortions. Michael mentioned his personal story about supporting a family member's decision, and what that meant for him and his family.
If you have a moment, I encourage you to visit my Facebook page and read these stories for yourself. Everyone has their own story, and for all these reasons today we must not just celebrate the impact of Roe, but also commit to keep fighting to protect it - because the right to choose means nothing without the means or ability to exercise that right. By raising awareness and fighting to preserve access to comprehensive reproductive health care, we can ensure that abortions are safe, legal, and above all, rare. For me, it's just common sense.
Follow Rep. Diana DeGette on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@RepDianaDeGett
You were not put into office to champion this single cause.
I wish you would actually reprsent your constituants, who are much more varied in thier concerns than Roe.
If all you can do is champion this cause, you should do the right thing and step down from office, it is NOT why you were elected...
The sad thing is, if R VS W is overturned, that WILL NOT stop abortion. It will merely make it more dangerous and deadly, as it will then be performed by non-medicaly trained "back alley" abortionists... sort of like it was back BEFORE R VS W.
Which is something to think about if you have a young daughter.
But what we have seen recently is a Court that seems to act as a political body and which has negated decisions carved in stone before it. The Citizens United case changed over 100 years of settled law which raises the question (that is still unasked) "what is the value of settled law?". The only power the Court ever had was its example of obedience to stare decisis, which is simply its own self enforced respect for the law. With the Citizens United change, and an expected change in Roe, we have a demonstration of meaninglessness of the law.
This opens the door for future Presidents and Attorney Generals to ignore the Courts decisions on the grounds that law has become the shifting sands of partisan corruption. The Court has no enforcement arm of its own and depends on the respect with which it is held for all of its power. A change in Roe will mean not the end of abortion rights but the end of respect for its decisions and the functional end of the Supreme Court itself.
They were not activists. They were not partisan. It was not a controversial decision.
1) Did you know that a *doctor* was part of the case? He'd been fined twice for performing abortions and wanted the Supremes to keep him from being fined again.
2) Did you know that the penalty for performing a medical abortion in Texas was ...a $2,000.00 fine? No jail time.
3) Did you know that the woman who got the abortion in Texas could not be charged with anything? The doctor only and any middlemen that got her in touch with the doctor could be fined. And that if she didn't abort surgically nothing happened at all?
4) Did you know that the law being challenged dated from a time before antiseptics and germ theory? When women who aborted surgically were dieing from infection because surgeons didn't even know they needed to *wash their hands* before cutting yet? That it was initially passed **to protect women from surgeons**, not to protect fetus's from women?
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RvW was not about abortion. It was about SAFE abortion. Roe had the legal right to abort already. She was just barred from using the safest method in her home state due to an antiquated law that made sense at the time but not anymore.
The idea that the court was acting radically then is a fantasy concocted to justify trying to unsettle the law.
Women/girls have always found ways to have abortions regardless of the laws in this country. Poor and lower middle class women and children have resorted to back alley doctors, using knitting needles or coat hangers almost always with disastrous and tragic results. Wealthy and upper middle class women and girls went to more advanced countries for legal, medically safe abortions.
A perfect example is the Sherry Finkbine case where she had the means to fly to Sweden to have an abortion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherri_Finkbine
If Roe v. Wade is reversed women and children of parents with means will simply leave the country to have their abortions. Women and girls without means will resort to using dangerous, self-help methods of abortion.
So It's interesting then that when it comes to slaughtering defenseless humans who haven't even had a chance to come into the world, and who came into existence through no fault of their own, many of the same people will scream that we need to protect the "fundamental right" to continue the slaughter. Fundamentalist indeed.
When we've got a system where kids aren't being abused, and social services is strong and working, then lets revisit this debate. At this point in time, our system can't cope with the unwanted children it has, so banning abortion and adding more unwanted children jeopardizes those existing children.
What's next? "Oh, our system can't cope with the number of elderly it has to subsidize, so if we eliminate a few, we will improve the quality of the rest down the line."
One short step at a time, right? Just a few hundred (million) deaths until we have a utopia!
What if someone were born with a vestigial tail (and many babies are, regularly). Are they then not human by virtue of their deformity? What "non-essential" body parts make you non-human? Maybe you should be in charge of drawing that line. You seem to have an excellent handle on it.
The logical conclusion of defending a citizen against a serial killer is that eventually we'll be protecting individual skin cells by law! It's only logical!
I would think that cutting a fetus into pieces, corroding it with acidic chemicals, and shoving a metal spike into the back of the neck of a 2/3 born human would be considered abuse.
Why don't you hand me (us) a reference so we can look up those ancient progressive obviously legally weighty Jewish laws? Isn't every human technically developing tissue? If *you* are developing tissue, then by your "logical" conclusion, doesn't that imply that you are not worthy of protection?
It truly does fascinate me how you consider *me* cynical and foolish. I would think that saying "well, they're all just lumps of tissue that are going to be burdens on society" is the ultimate cynicism.
The world is still suffering the sickening effects of the holocausts of the twentieth century that occurred decades ago. This one makes all of those put together seem infinitesimal by comparison. And *this* one targets *children*.
I applaud women standing up for themselves against these fundamentalist hypocrites floating the issues again and again for political gain.
Government should never be allowed to police anything except for interstate commerce and issues affecting national security. Regulating should protract and effect safety and integrity.
We are SO far removed from a functional government.
Occupy.
It's called collateral damage.
Of course - it means nothing to you - since it's not blowing your front door off its hinges.
When we fight wars we are not supposed to kill innocent people. - Yet we do KILL innocent people, through 'friendly fire" and mistakes. So should wars not be fought, to protect "innocent life.?"
When we fight wars we are not supposed to kill innocent people. - We have executed innocent people through history, including the capital punishment history in the USA. So, we should not have capital punishment, to protect "innocent life."
Who will speak for the unborn people? - The doctors, families and those responsible for the unborm. Your rights END where our bodies begin. You are against abortion, don't have one.
So when the Doctors, families and those responsible speak, and it is kill the inborn, that OK? How is that morally different that your statement about killing innocent people??
Vagina Police?