photo: Arkansastimes
Just this past week PBS ran a three hour documentary on the women's liberation movement. It is a stunning documentary on how the role of women changed in the early seventies and the driving forces behind that change.
The movement then cut across race, religion and gender lines. It was an astounding achievement. Most women today have very little knowledge on those times, nor can they imagine what it was like, before the passage of the Equal Rights Act, for a woman to find work in a man's world.
What people do not realize however, is that at the core of the movement was one of the most secret and damning realities of the time: back alley abortions abortion.
One of the facts that are often dismissed, is how the legislation that secured abortion 'rights' came not from a single isolated incident driven by a single person intent at fighting for her right to terminate a pregnancy, but from a well orchestrated and widely supported movement that ultimately brought the case to the Supreme Court.
But herein lies the greatest problem with the right to abortion. It does not stem from a law passed unanimously with well defined characteristics, and what's worse not approved by suffrage nationwide. In effect at that time, the case was more about the denial of rights of the mother to have a say in the destiny of the unborn foetus, than a true and straightforward attempt at legalizing abortion and rendering it safe in a well defined, standalone, unimpugnable law.
Since then, however, the tide has been reversed by an increasingly polarized and politicized effort to turn back the clock, and in effect to return women to having to resort to dangerous abortions in secret in those states where it will be forbidden.
Unlike other countries where abortion is legal because it was adopted as a law passed by national suffrage, the case that underpins the so called right of abortion is just that: one case. It is easily challenged and even more easily ignored.
State have increasingly mounted challenges and passed legislations that completely bypass Roe vs. Wade, and have gone so far as to criminalize abortion both for the mother and for the doctors and operators who effect them. In one case, the State mandated impossibly complicated and stringent building and safety codes for the existing abortion clinics, in effect forcing them to shut down temporarily or permanently.
But at the core of this change, is a concern driven by political power, masquerading as moral standing, hiding under religious cover. Also, it is almost entirely a male driven effort.
What is even more worrisome, aside from a return to secret and back alley abortion, is that there isn't a true vocal and physical opposition from the women themselves as their reproductive rights are slowly eroded.
But there is more at stake here than just politics. If politicians are left to tamper with important legislation that can be damaging or lethal to women, what else could be coming down the pike? If the only justification for striking down legislation that protects civil and human rights is a higher morality, what else could then be banned next?
And if women do not defend their position now, when? Is the right to divorce next? The contraceptive programs are already under attack, prompting dismay in European countries who see the effort to ban contraceptive on the part of some American legislators as a return to the darkest of Ages. Not to mention that such efforts would not only explode in their face when the number of sexually transmitted diseases skyrockets, but it will also reveal the flagrant hypocrisy of the measure, when the same people who want to erase reproductive rights off the map must deal with the burden of higher teen pregnancies and the additional assistance such people would require. Given the vitriol that has been escaping some politician's mouth lately on the burden of the people who rely on government assistance, the so called 47%, the policies of these extreme political forces ring hollow and false.
But let's return to Arkansas for a minute. Arkansas is probably one of the most conservative states in the Union, and what goes in other states or locales often does not go in Arkansas.
Just this week the Arkansas legislature, in defiance of it's democratic governor's ban on the legislation, have approved the strictest anti-abortion law in the land. In Arkansas, no abortions can be performed after the 12th week of pregnancy. Unless the law is challenged and the challenge won, since it unconstitutionally ignores Roe vs. Wade, it will be a reality very soon.
If that sound ludicrous, it is. An attempt at undermining abortion on religious and moral grounds, would make the cutoff point of 12 weeks hypocritical.
The Arkansas ACLU has already vowed to challenge the law, which sailed in both houses of the Arkansas legislature.
But there needs to more action, from the people, and not just from right's advocates or other action groups. There has to be a new energy, one that decides that the law cannot be overturned or ignored because of political gains or other partisan efforts, whether it is abortion or anything else.
That we have a country divided is obvious. But one thing should be paramount. And that is that one party or the other should not, and should not be able to, enact legislation that runs counter to the safety and health of women.
Source: The Arkansastimes.com 3.7.13
CNN/ 3.7.13
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