Protecting
the right to choose
By Kate Michelman
May 1, 2006
The Seattle Times
FOR those who thought that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was a landmark
moment from which there was no turning back, think again.
South Dakota lawmakers have stepped forward to turn the clock
backwards. They have passed a ban on nearly all abortions,
criminalizing women and their doctors alike. Mississippi is next in
line, with Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky all
considering similar action.
There is undoubtedly a radical right-directed wind blowing across our
nation and what many of us have long feared is beginning to happen —
conservatives are institutionalizing their extremist agenda,
restricting the rights of women and placing women's lives at risk.
After more than three decades of plotting and planning, the opponents
of reproductive rights are poised for the fulfillment of their
ideological objective — the evisceration of a woman's right to privacy
and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
But not so fast.
The same was true in 1989.
Republicans held the Senate and the White House. In reviewing Webster
v. Reproductive Health Services, the Supreme Court had the opportunity
to overturn Roe v. Wade. It looked as if the court was prepared to roll
back privacy rights nationwide. Measures criminalizing abortion were
being considered in Louisiana and Utah. The right predicted the tide
had turned.
But none of that came to pass, and what had seemed a watershed moment
for abortion opponents turned into a key rallying point for the
pro-choice community.
Now, the situation today is perhaps even grimmer. Conservatives control
the White House and all of Congress; they have just appointed two
clearly anti-choice justices in John Roberts and Samuel Alito; and the
Supreme Court has agreed to review a 2003 federal ban on so-called
"partial birth" abortion.
If this ban were upheld, it would result in a chill across the whole
practice of reproductive medicine. The standard is so broad that
doctors will find it difficult to know what is legal and what is not.
It would ban a range of abortion methods used as early as 12-15 weeks
of pregnancy; and it offers no exception for the life or health of the
woman, or in the case of severe birth defects. In short, it would
fundamentally undermine a woman's right to privacy without requiring
the court to overturn Roe.
The similarities to 1989 — down to the surname of the president — are
quite striking.
Then, pro-choice Americans feared that a woman's right to privacy was
about to be taken away. And we reacted.
We must do so again.
We need to make clear what a world without Roe would look like.
Consider El Salvador, where abortion is completely banned and fully
criminalized.
Women, their friends and their doctors have been sentenced to prison
terms of up to 30 years. Doctors and nurses are forced to abandon
long-held principles of medical confidentiality to report "suspicious"
patients to a new women's crime unit.
The state uses active law enforcement, including forensic vagina
inspectors, to locate, prosecute and imprison women. And all the while,
abortions are not eliminated, only the safe, affordable ones.
Americans do not believe such measures improve the lives of children or
women. And ours is not a nation prepared to roll back Roe, criminalize
abortion and imprison women and their doctors.
In 1989, the pro-choice movement went back to its roots, into the
streets, and onto the airwaves. We spoke strongly, clearly and
confidently. And we asked — "Who Decides?" — and made it one of the
central questions of the day.
We must do that again. We must become a movement again. It's time to
reassert our presence — and give voice to a new generation of
pro-choice women. It's time to put abortion into a larger context that
rings true now — and translates back into electoral politics in a way
politicians cannot ignore.
I believe that the larger context concerns the economic and social
position of women. Too often, the choices women thought they had earned
the right to make are blocked, whether they desire to stay home,
support themselves and their families with a living wage, or choose for
themselves the number and spacing of their children.
It is time for a re-ignited public movement to hold our leaders
accountable — to insist that politicians, like citizens, find the
ability to speak in comfortable, forthright voices about the principles
that make them pro-family, pro-values and pro-choice.
I fear that we are in for a rude awakening from the Supreme Court. But
fear alone will not recharge this movement. To be successful, we
ultimately must act from hope for what women's rights, roles and
opportunities in our society can be.