Who decides: women or the government?

Carolyn Rummel

Who decides? Women or the government? That's the question. Who 
gets to make the choice for a woman whether she has a child or 
not? Should we allow politicians to decide these most private 
matters and, in the process, to slowly but surely strip us of our 
freedoms?

These are the questions at issue in three courtrooms across the 
US where reproductive rights activists and physicians are arguing 
against the first federal ban on a safe abortion procedure since 
a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy was protected by Roe v 
Wade more than three decades ago.

So-called partial-birth abortion, used infrequently, is actually 
the safest procedure available for women in the second trimester. 
The ban is just one aspect of the Bush administration's efforts 
to turn back the clock on women's reproductive rights. It lacks 
any exception for a woman's health, which in and of itself makes 
it unconstitutional.

In the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, US Supreme Court Justice Harry 
Blackmun said, "We therefore conclude that the right of personal 
privacy includes the abortion decision." George W Bush and his 
cronies have created what NARAL Pro-Choice America calls "the 
most hostile political environment to women's reproductive 
liberty since Justice Blackmun wrote these words." And they're 
just getting started.

Add to the partial birth law the Unborn Victims of Violence Act 
(UVVA), the Child Custody Protection Act, the Abortion Non-
Discrimination Act, (what spin doctors came up with those 
names?), and two separate measures aimed at the FDA-approved 
drug, RU 486.

Then there's Attorney General John Ashcroft's declaration that 
"individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that 
their histories will remain completely confidential." Was that a 
chill that just went up your spine?

On March 25, the Senate passed the UVVA, the first federal 
legislation giving legal rights to a foetus or embryo.

"This legislation is another underhanded attempt to roll back 
women's rights", National Organization for Women President Kim 
Gandy said in a statement. "Giving a foetus at any stage of 
development the same legal rights as the pregnant woman will 
undermine the right to abortion as guaranteed under Roe v Wade."

Under UVVA, authorities in Salt Lake City, Utah, charged 28-year-
old Melissa Ann Rowland with the murder of one of her twins, who 
was stillborn. Rowland, who has a history of mental illness, was 
advised by doctors to have a Caesarean section, but she refused, 
having experienced the invasive procedure in two prior 
deliveries.

She did eventually have the C-section, but is being prosecuted 
because she didn't have it early enough — on the theory that the 
stillborn twin might have survived if she had delivered earlier. 
One day after the operation, she was jailed on endangerment 
charges because drugs were reported to be in the system of the 
surviving twin.

"Our legal system recognises every person's right to bodily 
integrity and the right to make your own medical decisions ... 
yet Utah is prosecuting a woman for murder because she delayed 
having a Caesarean section! Where will the prenatal police be 
stationed?" Gandy asked. "Will women be prosecuted for taking 
their own life-saving medications because those drugs might harm 
the foetus? Where will it stop?"

Laura W Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union 
Washington Legislative Office, said, "Supporters argue that this 
would deter violence against pregnant women, but we know that 
they are not serious because the Senate rejected an amendment 
that would have bolstered programs to do just that."

Anti-choice lawmakers even admit the deception. Republican 
Senator Orrin Hatch has stated, "They say it undermines abortion 
rights. It does. But that's irrelevant." To whom?

President Bush has already used his power to chip away at women's 
right to choose and right to privacy. If he is re-elected, he 
will almost certainly get to nominate one or more anti-choice 
justices to the Supreme Court, enough to overturn Roe v. Wade.

As NARAL Pro-Choice America warns, "Every woman will feel the 
consequences of Election 2004." If every woman feels it, every 
family will feel it.

"Don't let the right wing send us back to the days when countless 
women died from illegal abortions," NARAL declares. That's good 
advice.

The March for Women's Lives, on April 25 in Washington, DC, will 
be one of the most important events in the history of women's 
rights. You can't afford not to be there.

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Carolyn Rummel can be reached at crummel@pww.org

People's Weekly World, Communist Party USA