A lot of things have been caught up in the conservative wave
roiling Congress and the presidential campaign right now, but two of the most
serious are women’s health care and medical research. Both are threatened by
the attacks on abortion rights and Planned Parenthood.
Abortion is a difficult, emotionally charged issue, and the
anti-abortion movement has intimidated many people into silence. It’s hard to speak
out for something that opponents insist is infanticide. And so facts and
medical science get shoved to the side.
The facts are that a woman is not simply a childbearing
apparatus, not all pregnancies are wanted or will be successful, and abortion
is a vital women’s medical and family-planning procedure.
Women for whom an unintended pregnancy will change career or
education plans; women who don’t have the financial ability or the emotional
strength to care for another baby; women who have been raped; women who have been
told that their fetus is severely damaged; women for whom pregnancy and
childbirth would be dangerous; women who learn that their baby, carried to full
term, will die soon after birth: women who are considering an abortion don’t
need lectures. They need the advice and counseling of medical professionals.
And they need proper, legal, medical care.
Most women seeking an abortion are already mothers – 61
percent, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Thirty
percent already have at least two children. These women know what pregnancy and
childbearing are.
And women are not naïve. We have an intimate knowledge of
our reproductive system. We spend 40 or more years experiencing a messy,
inconvenient, sometimes embarrassing, often painful reminder of how our reproductive
system works. We worry about it: about unplanned pregnancy, about unsuccessful
pregnancy, about ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, cervical cancer.
But facts, personal stories, and conservatives’ concern
about government intrusion into people’s lives have done nothing to soften the
commitment of those in the anti-abortion movement. And so the movement’s
success has grown, with state after state passing laws that restrict women’s
access to abortion.
“So far this year states have enacted 51 new abortion
restrictions,” says a
July report from the Guttmacher Institute. Eleven
states ban abortion after 20 weeks. A Kansas law, now being challenged, bans
abortion after 14 weeks. Twenty-five states have laws mandating unnecessary
staffing requirements or expensive physical changes at clinics, which has
reduced the number of abortion providers.
And now, thanks to conservatives’ abhorrence of Planned
Parenthood, the attack has encompassed fetal tissue research. Fetal tissue has
been invaluable in medical research. It was fetal tissue that was used in the
development of the first polio vaccine. It is being used for research into
birth defects, cancer, brain development, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease,
and many other diseases and disorders, notes the National Institutes of Health.
But state legislators in Wisconsin and Ohio want to ban
research using the tissue, a Politico
article reported earlier this month, and several other states already limit
scientists’ access to it.
Women’s bodies are marvelous things, critical partners in
the creation of human life. But this is a partnership in which women bear the
largest responsibility. We can’t create life by ourselves, but once the process
is set in motion, it’s all up to us.
And that is a burden that only women bear. If we value life,
as people on both sides of the issue do, surely we value the vulnerable vessel
that harbors and nourishes and encourages life as it is beginning, and we
should provide health care to protect it. And surely we value the research that
can lead to medical progress for all of us.
But given the growing strength of the conservatives in
Congress and the growing hostility among the Republican presidential
candidates, there’s little chance that the attacks – on women’s health, on
Planned Parenthood, on vital medical research – will ease off.
These are troubling, scary times.
This article appears in Oct 14-20, 2015.
Women should have a right to abort what they do not want in their own bodies; for whatever reason but there should be some restrictions; such as how far along in the pregnancy a woman is carrying the fetus. If that length of time is mutually agreed upon by the majority in society and made into law, then the onus is upon the woman to abort within that time limit.
Secondly, Planned Parenthood should get out of the fetus for research business because of the corruption and insensitive actions of some fetus traders. Planned Parenthood should be supported by government for all the good that organization does for women but not should not support the fetus for research; let private corporations conduct that research.
In both cases, there needs to be a political compromise, for the benefit of women; it can’t be all one sided.
ALL women who seek an abortion are already mothers. Abortion does not change the fact that a reproduction has occurred- that a new individual human organism has been called into existence. Abortion kills that human being.
Pro-choice discussion today, including what is presented here by MAT, has several, glaring faults. Most significant is, that it is rare, if ever, that the abortion supporter addresses the Pro-Life claim that abortion is equivalent to infanticide. If they are not the same, then explain how. Try to do this without ad hominem attacks on the Pro-life community.
If you cannot adequately explain this, you may begin to understand why nearly all of the situations that “need” the answer of abortion, must be seen as they truly are- circumstances that affect two people. This does not diminish the significance of the issues addressed by MAT- it is only to say that the solution to these problems cannot be found in killing one of the two people involved.
If my use of “person” here troubles you, please explain how a human being is ever not a person.
The recent scandal involving Planned Parenthood highlights the personhood of the unborn. The organs involved in trafficking are not the mother’s organs. They belong to another person. We do not have the right to do whatever we want with another person’s body. History has taught us, that we do not own other human beings- we do not have the right to kill someone else and use their body, even for ‘life saving’ medical research. This is what is scary and troubling about our time.
Yes, the profound reality of being a woman, is that we are the carriers of new people- this should give us pause before engaging in the action that causes new life to be created.
I’m confused. If someone was drunk and killed a pregnant woman and her baby, the driver would be charged with 2 counts of manslaughter. How can that be if this isn’t a person yet?
You’re right Johnny: they should only be charged with one count of manslaughter.
If a drunk driver injured you in an accident and you lost your genitals, should they be charged with 7 counts of manslaughter for the seven children you had planned to father?
@Mark – Your analogy does not work. A fetus resides within a woman’s body but is not a body part of the woman.
A body part is defined by the common genetic code it shares with the rest of its body; the unborn’s genetic code differs from his or her mother’s because he (or she) has his own body- with its own body parts. This is why an unborn child’s heart stop’s beating, but the mother’s doesn’t. Or how an unborn child can have male genitalia (because he is a boy), while a woman can never grow male genitalia herself.
An unborn child is not a hypothetical, future child. They are alive and will continue to live, thrive and grow unless something kills them.
If a fetus is an “unborn child” does that make me a “pre-death corpse”?
@lily
‘ Fetus’ just means ‘little one’ or ‘little child’ in Latin- it is not inherently derogatory. Calling a ‘fetus’ a ‘fetus’ describes the stage of development of a person- just as ‘newborn’, ‘baby’, ‘toddler’, ‘adolescent’,’ teen,’ ‘adult’… does . A corpse refers to the body of a dead human being. A deceased fetus leaves a corpse just as a deceased adult does.
Don Sherman, voice of reason. I do disagree regarding research with fetal tissue.
Research will sadly lack if fetal tissue was not available. Fetal tissue has helped create break-throughs in some heinous diseases. But if people rather fetal tissue be thrown away or buried where it does none any good, so be it, and as for you who suffer from diseases cures could have been found for, well remember you might have been helped or healed, were it not for narrow minds.
@gini yes, darn those pesky narrow minds who have a problem with the poisoning and dismembering of unborn children and the selling of their bodies. Ends do not justify the means- would you agree it would be wrong to kill a newborn and use their body parts to heal someone else? How is killing a fetus and using their body any different? Research and medical advancements must be guided by ethics.
What about the rights of the woman who is still in the womb?
Politicians love having it both ways because they get more votes. However, this is not a slippery slope. Either you support women’s medical rights or you don’t.
I’ve driven by Planned Parenthood and I’ve seen those people with the signs. They point their signs at me. What did I do? I can’t help feeling a little like the bad guy for not being on their side. Then the rational part of my brain takes over again. Now I’m wondering if there isn’t more to the story. Why are these people really here? Don’t they have anything better to do?
“I want to see pro-lifers with crowbars at funerals opening caskets yelling ‘Get out! She’s not going! We’re pro-life people! There will be no death on this planet!’
Then I’d be really impressed by their mission.” –Bill Hicks, Comedian