On the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

(Flickr/afagen)

Today is the 38th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. Some may not have realized at the time, but the years following that decision saw the safest and most accessible abortion America would ever see. Today, we have the Hyde amendment, which leaves millions of poor women with limited choices; state laws that continue to chip away at access; and now, Congress has proposed a law that seeks to further limit funding for abortion.

In many ways women are more equal and free than they were in those days following the Roe decision. But when it comes to access to abortion, in many ways, women are still embroiled in a political battle for their rights.

Before Roe v. Wade -- And After

Over the very long break (sorry about the sudden dropoff in blog posts), I got a chance to finally finish a very good book that provides some key context to the abortion debate, Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court's Ruling by Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel. Because I am one of those young feminists who has lived my entire life after the Roe v. Wade ruling, I have been interested in how the debate was framed before the historic case.

The book is largely a collection of reprints of speeches, pamphlets, laws, testimonies, and other information that was produced in the early 1960s and '70s. The nature of the book doesn't allow for much of a comprehensive narrative like many other modern nonfiction books, but the information contained in this collection is fascinating, no matter the side of the abortion debate on which you sit.

There were many things that surprised me in this book, including that the phrase "abortion on demand," something that has largely been used by the anti-choice movement to talk about how women are using abortion for selfish reasons, was originally used by activists pushing for the repeal of abortion bans. This was largely because some states had passed laws that allowed abortion to be legal for medical reasons and medical reasons only. This meant that a woman had to convince a doctor that a pregnancy was a threat to her mental or physical health. Such laws were obviously objectionable because the power to decide to perform an abortion fell on the doctor or other medical professionals and not on the women themselves.

The book also includes several of the amici curiae briefs filed for both sides arguing before the Supreme Court on Roe v. Wade. One brief was filed by three groups jointly: New Women Lawyers, Women's Health an d Abortion Project, Inc., and the National Abortion Action Coalition. This brief argued not just that abortion laws violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (which puts the modern day protests against the Fourteenth Amendment in a new context in terms of abortion laws), but also argued that abortion laws violate the Eighth Amendment, which protects against "cruel and unusual punishment."

Forcing a woman to bear a child against her will is indeed a form of punishment, a result of society's ambivalent attitude towards female sexuality. The existence of the sexual "double standard" has created the social response that when a woman becomes pregnant accidentally, she must be "punished" for her transgression, particularly if she is single. This punishment falls solely on women: she must face the physical burdens of and emotional strains of an unwanted pregnancy, the degrading experience of having an illegal abortion "often in filthy motel rooms at the mercy of quacks who are charging exorbitant fees," and if unable to get an abortion, the responsibilities and trauma involved in raising an unwanted child. The man equally responsible for the pregnancy faces no such punishment ...

The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects all persons against the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishment." Amici contend that the expanding constitutional concern, as expressed by this Court, with practices which "offend the dignity of man," are contrary to "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" and punishment "disproportionate to the offense committed" as violate of the Eighth Amendment necessitates a finding that laws restricting abortion are unconstitutional ....

Now, of course, we know that much of the argument in the Supreme Court's majority opinion that overturned abortion bans based on privacy afforded under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (although Ruth Bader Ginsburg generally still argues in favor of equal protection on gender-related cases). But the book is instructive in noting the varying paths the Court might have taken. Unsurprisingly, the briefs on the other side of the issue argue in favor of right to life for the unborn, an argument they still use today.

Perhaps, though, what I found most remarkable about Before Roe v. Wade is something that seems all too familiar today. Back before Roe, there were two major problems: First that states had inconsistent abortion laws. Some banned it all together; others had far more liberal policies. The patchwork of access to abortion in the states is one that's strongly replicated today. Some states, like Oklahoma and Nebraska, are passing laws regularly to infringe on abortion access, eventually hoping to challenge Roe eventually in the Supreme Court.

The second idea that activists fought for was the notion that poor women had unequal access to abortion. Rich women, the activists argued, could afford to travel to other states or countries where abortion laws were more liberal. Indeed, the book includes a detailed pamphlet from the Society for Humane Abortion that detailed exactly how to fly to Japan to obtain an abortion -- from how much cab fare you might need to which flights were non-stop to and from Hawaii daily -- something that few poor women could afford. But thanks to the Hyde Amendment, a restriction on using federal money for abortion, poor women still have unequal access to abortion since it isn't covered by Medicaid. This notion of unequal access is something that my colleague Jessica Arons and her co-author Madina Agénor detailed in their recent piece for the Center for American Progress.

The arguments from the pre-Roe world still have echoes today. In some ways, passages of Before Roe v. Wade sound uncomfortably familiar.

Blog for Choice: Depression Edition

Today is the 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It's also Blog for Choice Day, sponsored by NARAL Pro-choice America. Pro-choice bloggers and activists write about what choice means to them and go about making resolutions for the coming year; in many ways, it's a kind of New Year's for the pro-choice movement. But I've been putting off writing my post this year -- not because of a change in my convictions, but because I'm feeling more and more depressed about the outlook for reproductive choice and justice in America.

The thing that people tend to gloss over on a day like today, when pro-choice activists are resolving to fight (and anti-choice activists march through the streets with photos of fetuses) is that we already live in a country where it's pretty difficult to get an abortion. Thanks to the Hyde amendment, which has been around almost as long as Roe v. Wade, women cannot use federal government funds to pay for an abortion. And though an early-term abortion is relatively inexpensive -- a few hundred dollars -- for the poorest of the poor, this is often an insurmountable price when the entire cost of an abortion is more than they have to live on. The Hyde amendment, as my colleagues Larry Korb and Jessica Arons wrote, also ensures that women in the military, who risk their lives for the rights of Americans, have terrible reproductive health care and virtually no access to abortion when deployed to war.

Furthermore, late this last year, as the health care debate seemed close to closing (and now seems as if it may be stalled forever), Representatives Bart Stupak and Joe Pitts decided to introduce the most restrictive abortion legislation in a generation, that would eventually eliminate private insurance coverage of abortions. In some ways, though I was angered by the amendment, it seemed fitting that finally, middle-class women whose abortions are covered by their employer-sponsored insurance, would face some level of financial difficulty in obtaining an abortion (even if it is largely a matter of convenience). Don't get me wrong, from a pro-choice perspective, the Stupak-Pitts and Nelson amendments are unacceptable in health care reform. But. I think they are a strong reminder of exactly how bad things are from a pro-choice perspective in this country. We're fighting for a status quo that's already bad.

I don't even think I need to mention that one of the few doctors who was willing to actually perform abortions was murdered in cold blood and his shooter actually had the nerve to plead manslaughter. Although I guess the silver lining is the judge knew to call such a plea bullshit.

The thing that we always forget about the abortion debate is that this is an issue that is fundamentally about class. Women with a certain amount of money and privilege will always have access to abortion -- even if it were to be made outright illegal in this country. But disadvantaged women have it much, much harder. Women's abortion rights have been drastically rolled back over the years. As a writer at RH Reality Check, I wrote regularly about the various ways states were trying to rollback the right to abortion: introducing waiting periods, TRAP laws, ultrasound requirements, personhood amendments, and more. Even on television and in TV shows, it has become taboo to discuss abortion.

I hate to sound so pessimistic, but I honestly think pro-choicers lost more of this battle than we like to believe. Here's hoping that the coming year in reproductive rights will prove me wrong.

More Roe v. Wade Stuff

I have a piece over at Campus Progress today about how the pro-choice movement needs to really commit to reaching out to communities they traditionally haven't. Such reaches will only strengthen the cause.

[T]he reproductive rights movement is incomplete. Many people believe the movement, with its obsessive discussion of choice, Supreme Court justices, and slogans like “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries,” seems to be speaking past some key groups that could—and should—be its strong allies. These groups—people of color, young people, and straight men—all tend to think of feminism as we know it as something purely under the domain of white, relatively privileged women. If the movement hopes to achieve broad victories during the Obama administration, it must better engage these constituencies. If it doesn’t, it will have wasted this once-in-a-generation opportunity to truly make an impact on as many people’s reproductive lives as possible.

I also went down to the Supreme Court today and took some pictures of the rather small rally of anti-choice activists that were gathered there. One thing I noticed was that the group was mostly white, and seemed to be either of the boomer generation or high school kids. There were few Millenials to be found. For more, you should see Annika Carlson's 2006 piece on how the anti-choice movement relies on indoctrination of young people through "hip" culture. The problem is that the movement ends up ultimately being based on a lack of substance.

Blog for Choice Day: Pro-Choice Hope for a New Administration

Today is the 36th anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. It is a very important day to both pro-choice and anti-abortion activists, but most of America is preoccupied with the release of the Oscar nominations. But despite the public's inattention to the subject of abortion access, it is one of the foundations of freedom in our country today. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg laid out in her dissent of the court's decision in Gonzalez v. Carhart, a case that confirmed the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Ban as constitutional, women must have control over her reproduction to have full and equal access to citizenship.

The list of tasks for this new administration is long, but today is a day for many pro-choice activists like myself to ask the administration to make choices about women. My list is long as well, mostly because women's health has been under attack for the last eight years.

1. Rescind what is known as the "global gag rule." This regulation, one of Bush's first acts in office, withholds funds from any group that also provides abortion services or includes abortion as an option for women seeking family planning, even if the U.S. funds aren't used for abortion itself. This has caused massive budget cuts in organizations like Planned Parenthood International. When clinics like these shut down, women in third world countries often have no where else to turn to for family planning or other medical care.

2. Repeal the Hyde amendment. This is a domestic law that forbids federal funds from getting used on abortion services. Although many may not want "their" tax dollars used for abortions, abortions, like other kinds of health care to poor people, are extremely difficult to fund privately and repealing this amendment would do more to increase access to family planning to poor women than almost any other action.

3. Fully fund Title X. Family planning funds have remained roughly stagnant since the beginning of the Bush administration. Just to get the funds to where they were, adjusted for inflation, in 2000, the Obama administration must allocate more than $700 million (the previous administration allocated $300 million), and even that number doesn't do enough to hire translators or bilingual staff at family planning clinics, increase the service to women who might require more attention, or allow family planning clinics to open in states where there may be so few.

4. Restore U.S. funding to the UNFPA. As Michelle Goldberg outlines in her forthcoming book, antichoice activists used false allegations of UNFPA officials using coercive abortion practices in China to de-fund the United Nations Population Fund. By restoring funding to the organization, it would show the world that the United States is willing to become a leader on family planning again.

5. End funding to abstinence-only programs in the United States. Such programs have been proven, through study after study, to be ineffective at reducing teen pregnancy or delaying age of sexual initiation. Our young people deserve the information they need to use condoms and other contraception when they do decide to become sexually active.

6. Begin looking at ways to increase access to abortion and family planning services, rather than just stopping the losses. Many women today, especially women in southern states where abortion is unpopular, have a serious lack of access to abortion and family planning clinics. The most recent study shows that more than 87 percent of counties in the United States don't have an abortion clinic and Mississippi and South Dakota only have one in the entire state.

7. Include women's reproductive health care in any future reforms to the health care system overall. Women use health care very differently than men. Women visit doctors more often and spend more on prescriptions because of birth control and other contraception. Pregnant women often aren't covered under individual insurance plans, and even if they are, they pay more for marginal care. Women need to be fully included in future health care reforms.

8. Make reproductive health something that everyone cares about. There is often an urge to allow reproductive health groups to be the ones to care and talk about access issues, but reproductive health and family planning affects everyone. By leaving the burden on certain groups to talk about these issues, they often become ignored or marginalized in public discourse. They are considered less important or serious than other issues like foreign policy or the economy when reproductive health and rights is intricately linked with these issues.

9. Become a world leader on reproductive health and rights. Women around the world suffer from the inequalities of their societies, are subjected to rape as a weapon and are forced into child marriages or genital cutting before they can make the decisions for themselves. By becoming a world leader on addressing these issues, we can show the world that we are a humanitarian nation once again.

10. Develop new methods of contraception. There are many available options of contraception today, but they're not enough. Many hormonal contraceptions make people sick. We need to develop new ways for people to access contraception -- and yes, this includes men.

UPDATE: This list is by no means definitive. I ask you to leave your requests to the new administration in comments.

To Choose or Not to Choose

Today over at Campus Progress, we have a pretty creepy video of pro-lifers on the Mall yesterday. It's part of our whole Roe v. Wade package. Enjoy.

I was also at the NARAL happy hour at Bourbon last night which had great crab cakes and, interestingly enough, Sin City playing on the wall.

Blog for Choice

On the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, I can't help but remember talking with my sister and mother about abortion when I was still fairly young. My mother taught me that even if not everyone agrees with abortion, it should always be available for women who need it. The thing that's starting to scare me is that abortion is surely under attack in America by a highly organized grassroots coalition of pro-lifers. Today, they're marching on the mall, as they do every year. What access to abortion is really starting to represent is a class divide, much like access to higher education, access to medical care, and financial security.

Abortion will always be available for (white) upper class women who need or want it. They can fly to Europe, drive to Canada, or take a quick weekend to Mexico City. Other women -- poor mothers and women of color may not always be so lucky. If the pro-life movement succeeds in criminalizing abortion, it will be the worst off that will pay the price.

If Roe is overturned, there is little any of us can do about it. The decision will likely be made by five men, the way the "partial birth" abortion ban was decided. What we've created is a world where the powerful are very powerful and the powerless cannot make their own decisions. After all, access to abortion isn't just about women or "unborn children," it is about social justice.

Cross-posted at campusprogress.org/blog.