“Why aren’t you writing about the Patriot Act?” a reader
asked recently.
We could fill this newspaper every week with worries and protests
about the Patriot Act… and the environment… and Iraq…
and now Iran….
(I learned long ago to watch for the little hints that
Bush-Cheney and company toss out in their speeches. Was Condi Rice alerting us
recently that we’re starting to work on regime change in Iran?
Sure she was. We’re preparing to foment rebellion, funding “democracy
movements.” The problem is, as Connie Bruck spelled out in a recent New Yorker article, we can’t decide
which “democracy movement” will bring about the change we want. We know far too
little about what’s going on in Iran
to make an intelligent decision. That didn’t stop us in Iraq,
though, and it won’t stop us now. Forward, to a democratic world!)
And… let’s see: what else to worry about? How about abortion
rights? Opponents have been whittling them away, bit by bit, for years. Now, South
Dakota has decided to go for broke, outlawing nearly
all abortions in that state, in the hopes that a challenge will reach the
Supreme Court.
It’s not certain that there are five votes on the Supreme
Court to overturn Roe; it’s hard to
predict what Justice Kennedy will do. But if the president gets one more
vacancy to fill, overturning Roe seems a certainty. About all we can do about
it is pray that Justice Stevens, rumored to be considering retiring, will
outlast Bush. (And that the Democrats will get their act together and return us
to two-party government.)
Opposition to
abortion rights is based on complicated things, to be sure: deeply held
religious beliefs, attitudes toward sex, attitudes toward women.
But let’s be clear:
• Unintended pregnancies do happen. They happen when women
are raped. They happen when women forget to take proper precautions, or when
their birth-control method fails (and nothing except abstinence or surgery is
failsafe). Unintended pregnancies happen when women rely on their husband or
lover to use a condom and he either does not, or it fails. Or when women think
they’re in a “safe” time of the month. Or they are young and naïve and
trusting.
• Outlawing abortion will not change people’s sexual
behavior.
• Outlawing abortion will not end abortion. It will simply
return us to the days before Roe,
when desperate women took desperate measures, seeking abortions from illegal,
often incompetent providers. It is not a myth that women suffered great damage
from those abortions. It is not a myth that some women died from those
abortions.
(“In 1969,” says a Planned Parenthood report, “one year
before New YorkState
legalized abortion, complications from abortions accounted for 23 percent of
all pregnancy-related admissions to municipal hospitals in New
York City.”)
Outlawing abortion will harm women. This is not an issue
forced on America
by feminist extremists, as some opponents try to label it. It is not an
anti-family issue. It is a women’s health issue, a life issue.
Opponents to abortion rights have stayed focused since Roe, giving money and energy to their
cause, writing letters, getting involved in politics. Many abortion-rights
supporters have been complacent, and we are seeing the result.
We have nearly three more years with George Bush in the
White House, but there are important Congressional elections this year.
Abortion rights should be high on the list of concerns raised with the
candidates. More important, abortion-rights supporters must wake up to the
threat to Roe and start acting with
the energy, commitment, and staying power that abortion opponents have hadfor years.
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2006.
