"Women will continue to be oppressed,
socially and politically,
until we recognize the roles traditionally associated with women
as being among the most important in our society."
--Marianne
Williamson
Letters to Editor, San Francisco Chronicle, 11/03/03
Editor -- I have been following letters to the editor regarding
the responsibility of women for their own brutalization. Carlo
Gardin (Letters, Oct. 31) wrote that women cannot expect to be
able to engage in "social, visual and physical foreplay with
no sexual consequences."
What provocation is sufficient to justify rape? One hundred years
ago it was, "I couldn't help myself, she showed me her ankle."
Fifty years ago it was,
"She asked for it -- she showed me her knee."
The subtext is always that men are helplessly enslaved to their
sex drive, and are no more responsible, once aroused, than a bull
in rut. Their victims are held responsible for lowering the level
of stimulation. This is the rationale for the burqa.
It is insulting to men to excuse a brutal assault by referring
(wink, wink) to their presumed animal nature. They are human beings
with free will, not animals acting on blind instinct. If they
were the latter, we wouldn't allow one on the street without a
keeper, a ring in the nose and a good rope.
LEDORA HALL
San Francisco
Editor -- As a happily married man I have been out of the dating
scene for 15 years, but apparently a lot has changed. Back then
sex was not, as stated in Carlo Gardin's letter, "the natural,
biologically inevitable consequence of flirting."
First off, rape is not sex -- it is assault. Rape is not about
love, or even lust -- it is domination of another person. Rape
is never "natural" or "inevitable."
There are different levels of affection and intimacy a man and
woman can engage in without him turning into some kind of cave
man.
Regardless of how much a woman flirts or "leads you on,"
there is never an excuse for rape.
I MUST BE a masochist for writing this, given the deluge of hate
mail it will unleash. But the ban on "partial-birth abortion,"
which was passed easily by the Senate on Thursday, is a terrible
piece of legislation. It is disingenuous, manipulative and dangerous.
No one will disagree that an intact dilation-and-extraction abortion,
the proper name for the procedure, is gruesome. It entails pulling
the fetus out of the uterus feet first, then puncturing the base
of the skull to collapse the head so it fits through the cervix.
The more common abortion procedure for late-term pregnancies,
besides inducing labor, is called dilation and evacuation. It
requires the doctor to remove the fetus in pieces, partly by suction,
partly by forceps. I am not clear why our representatives in Congress
consider one procedure more horrendous than the other and thus
worthy of a ban. My guess is they do, in fact, consider D&E
just as repugnant as intact D&X.
Therefore, reasonable people can surmise that once Congress bans
intact D&X,
D&E is next on the hit list. And that, ladies and gentlemen,
is what all this is about.
It is not about one particular procedure; if you believe abortion
is murder,
all procedures are inhumane. This is about closing off options
so that, eventually, getting an abortion after the first trimester
will be impossible.
Choosing a late-term abortion is a wrenching decision for any
woman. Maybe the fetus has no brain or its heart has developed
outside its body. Perhaps the mother has contracted an illness
that has irreversibly damaged the fetus. For whatever the reason
the decision is made, the doctor and patient must choose the procedure
most appropriate in her circumstances. In a minority of cases
-- 0.17 percent, according a survey of abortion providers -- the
most appropriate choice is an intact D&X.
Particularly galling are the claims that this bill's primary
concern is "advancing the health interests of women."
The bill's authors claim that intact D&E is "never necessary
to preserve the health of the woman" and "lies outside
the standard of medical care." They know these are lies.
The American College of Gynecology and Obstetrics -- the main
professional association for obstetricians and gynecologists --
says intact D&X is the safest method in certain circumstances
because it reduces the risk of puncturing the uterine wall, as
can happen in D&Es.
The OB/GYN group, therefore, adamantly opposes the ban. Any time
you remove from a doctor's array of options a safe medical procedure
-- as this one is, contrary to claims by the bill's authors --
you weaken the doctor's ability to provide the best care for his
patients.
This bill is motivated not by health concerns but moral ones.
I respect the views of those speak out against abortion. Indeed,
if one believes abortion is murder, that person has not only the
right but the obligation to persuade women that abortion is the
wrong choice.
But morality cannot be the basis for legislation on abortion.
The Supreme Court made that clear 30 years ago in Roe vs. Wade.
Under the law -- if not in society -- abortion is a medical, not
an ethical, issue. As such, Congress has no place interfering
in medical decisions between a patient and her doctor.
For lawmakers who forgot the tenants of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme
Court delivered one just two years ago in Stenberg vs. Carhart,
when it struck down Nebraska's "partial-birth abortion"
ban. It said that "a statute that altogether forbids D&X
creates a significant health risk."
The Senate's bill is, from a reasonable reading of court decisions,
unconstitutional. It is an underhanded swipe at the long-established
right of every woman to choose how and whether to end her pregnancy.
Even among those who oppose abortion, this bill sets a frightening
precedent: It allows the likes of Trent Lott and Tom Delay to
make medical decisions that belong to us and our doctors.
Ban expected to pass; foes intend to challenge such law in
court
Robin Toner, New York Times
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Washington -- The Senate began what is expected to be an emotional,
divisive debate on Monday about legislation that bans certain
procedures critics call partial- birth abortion, used to terminate
second- and third-trimester pregnancies.
The measure, expected to pass later this week, is the first major
test of strength for the anti-abortion movement in the new Republican-controlled
Senate. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who has long sought such a
ban, expressed confidence on Monday that "this is the beginning
of the end, hopefully, of a very long journey for a piece of legislation
we've been debating for more than seven years."
But Santorum and other supporters were clearly nervous about
a series of amendments to be offered in the next few days, including
one that would allow such abortions to protect the health of a
woman. Supporters of the ban said such amendments were intended
to gut the bill and argued that the procedure was never medically
necessary.
Still, they predicted that they had more than 60 votes for the
bill as it now stands. The ban is expected to pass the House this
spring as it did last year, and President Bush has promised to
sign it. President Bill Clinton twice vetoed a similar bill during
his second term.
The Supreme Court could turn out to be the ultimate arbiter on
this issue, for a second time; it ruled in 2000 that several state
bans on such abortions were unconstitutional.
The legislation now in the Senate describes a so-called partial-birth
abortion as one in which the doctor partially delivers a living
fetus until much of its body "is outside the body of the
mother" and then aborts it. Typically, anti-abortion leaders
say, the lower part of the fetus' body is delivered, the head
is punctured and collapsed, and the delivery of a dead fetus is
then completed.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which
opposes the ban, says partial-birth is a "nonmedical term"
for an abortion procedure known as intact dilatation and extraction,
or D&X abortions, which it says is rarely used. But it has
argued that bans on such abortions are "invariably overly
broad or imprecisely drawn" and could also "encroach
on other safe and constitutionally protected medical procedures."
Abortion-rights advocates assert that the measure now advancing
will, in fact, outlaw many abortion procedures typically used
in the fifth or sixth months of pregnancy or even earlier.
Thus, they say they will immediately challenge the law as an
unconstitutional restriction of a woman's right to an abortion
and out of compliance with the court's earlier decision.
"So-called partial birth is a political, not medical, term
coined by anti- choice forces attempting to debate about freedom
of choice with deceptive and inflammatory rhetoric," said
Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., leading the opposition Monday night
on the floor of the Senate, warned that lawmakers were meddling
in the practice of medicine. "We are senators here,"
she said. "We are not doctors."
But the Bush administration reiterated its support for the ban
on Monday in a statement, which read: "Partial-birth abortion
is a late-term abortion procedure that is not accepted by the
medical community. Approximately 30 states have attempted to ban
it. The administration strongly believes that enactment of S.
3 is both morally imperative and constitutionally permissible."
This debate has raged across Congress, the courts and state legislatures
for nearly a decade now, but the two sides still bitterly disagree
about what the legislation would do, how many abortions it would
affect, or even what to call the procedure it seeks to outlaw.
The issue puts supporters of abortion rights on the political
defensive, forcing them to support a woman's right to choose beyond
the first trimester, after the public's backing for legalized
abortion tends to drop. Many lawmakers who ordinarily support
abortion rights have previously broken ranks on this issue, including
Democrats like Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the minority
leader.
In an effort to frame the debate differently -- and more favorably
to their cause -- supporters of abortion rights are expected to
offer amendments that allow lawmakers to go on record in support
of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision recognizing a
constitutional right to abortion, and of more financing for contraception
and family planning.
¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤
All
Eyes on Supreme Court and Abortion
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 21, 2003, Filed at 1:38 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruling
allowing legal abortions turns 30 years this week, an anniversary
heavily shadowed by speculation that a high court retirement could
shift the balance of power in abortion politics.
For abortion rights supporters, the departure
of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor would be most troublesome. For
anti-abortion forces, the wild card could be the exit of Chief
Justice William H. Rehnquist.
The court is split 5-4 in favor of abortion
rights. O'Connor is considered a cautious supporter and the swing
vote to uphold Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case providing for
legal abortions.
Should she retire, President Bush's more
conservative supporters will certainly press for him to pick a
strong anti-abortion nominee.
``It's in the greatest danger it's ever
been in,'' Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal said of the
Roe decision. ``You're one vote away.''
Smeal cited what she called a White House
track record of picking only presumed abortion foes for federal
appeals courts slots and Bush's campaign pledge to choose Supreme
Court nominees in the mold of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence
Thomas. Both have voted to place restrictions on abortion.
Rehnquist is considered a vote to overturn
Roe, or at least to allow its continued erosion. A like-minded
conservative in his place would preserve the status quo, but anti-abortion
activists fear the consequences if Bush picked a more moderate
replacement.
In particular, those opposed to abortion
worry Bush may name a close ally, White House Counsel Alberto
Gonzales.
``For all the pro-life groups Judge Gonzales
is probably a nonstarter as a nominee,'' said Richard Lessner,
spokesman for the Family Research Council. He pointed to Gonzales'
vote while a Texas Supreme Court justice to allow a teenager to
get an abortion without parental consent.
American Life League President Judie Brown
went further.
``It would be absolutely a tragedy if he
were nominated,'' she said.
Others said to be on Bush's short list
are presumed to be more conservative and more likely to side against
abortion rights.
Top candidates may be J. Harvie Wilkinson,
the conservative chief judge of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals, or another federal appeals court judge, Samuel
A. Alito of the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit. Also said to be
on the list is Theodore Olson, a top lawyer on the legal team
that won the Supreme Court case that ended Florida ballot recounts
in the disputed 2000 presidential election and now the administration's
top Supreme Court lawyer.
Neither O'Connor nor Rehnquist has hinted
at retirement this year, but a variety of factors could persuade
either to leave, lawyers and activists on both sides of the abortion
debate said.
O'Connor is 72 and has served 21 years.
Rehnquist is 78 and has just passed his 31st anniversary on the
court. He missed all the December arguments at the court after
undergoing knee surgery following a fall.
O'Connor and Rehnquist were named to the
court by Republican presidents -- Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon,
respectively -- and both are savvy students of national politics.
Each would want a Republican to pick his or her successor, and
might feel more free to leave now that Republicans regained control
of the Senate in November.
Each would also know that Senate confirmation
for a Supreme Court justice would be difficult if not impossible
in the din of the presidential race in 2004.
Abortion will be among the central issues
of debate during what is sure to be a very partisan Senate confirmation
process, both sides agreed.
``I think any vacancy with the prospect
of a Bush nominee jeopardizes Roe v. Wade,'' said Nan Aron, president
of the pro-abortion rights Alliance for Justice. Her organization
was prominent in the nomination battles over Robert Bork and Clarence
Thomas, and is girding for a new fight.
Should O'Connor retire, Bush would be under
some pressure to nominate another woman, and the White House has
vetted conservative women judges who might fill that role.
Should Rehnquist go first, Bush might name
O'Connor to succeed him. If Bush then named Gonzales to fill O'Connor's
current slot, he would have an attractive political two-fer, Smeal
and other court watchers said.
Senators might have a hard time voting
against the first woman chief justice and the first Hispanic on
the court, and the combination might also quiet some of the loudest
outside critics.
Meanwhile, Roe's longevity will be marked
this week by those who herald it and those who revile it. There
is no current Supreme Court case that could overturn the ruling,
but both sides say that day may be close.
With Republicans in control of both houses
of Congress, legislation limiting or banning abortion has a good
chance of passing.
Anti-abortion activists say Congress will
probably move quickly to ban certain late-term abortions that
opponents call ``partial-birth'' abortions. A legal challenge
to the ban could come to the Supreme Court within a year or two.
The challenge could also come from the states. Abortion rights
supporters counted 34 state laws limiting abortion last year.
A majority of Americans support abortion
rights, but that support is highest when a woman's life or health
is in danger or there is evidence that the baby will be physically
or mentally impaired.
"BONNIE SWAIN," now age 61, got pregnant in her
second year of college.
She came home, told her parents, who begged
their family physician to perform an illegal abortion. He agreed.
Five years later, she married and had two sons.
Today, she is the proud grandmother of
six grandchildren and says she has never regretted what she did.
That's not the kind of story the anti-abortion
movement wants you to hear. Nor do they want us to remember how
many children's lives were ruined when women bore babies they
couldn't take care of or how many women died as the result of
botched abortions.
We forget what life was like before 1973,
when one Supreme Court decision -- Roe vs. Wade -- suddenly made
abortion legal. Women lived with the constant fear of pregnancy.
All it took was a single mistake, the failure of a condom or a
diaphragm, an inadequate monitoring of the ovulation cycle, and
life was irrevocably changed.
Some women hastily married, leaving behind
the dream of an education. Other women, including those who were
married, sought to keep those dreams alive by having an abortion.
"Iris Manning," a college student
in the 1960s, went through a horrible ordeal. Estranged from her
parents, she raised enough money to pay a "back alley"
abortionist. After she handed over the money, the "doctor"
told her to strip and lie down on a dirty kitchen table. A friend
held her hand. Without anesthesia, she screamed in pain as a leering
sadist shoved a rubber hose inside her womb. A decade later, she
married, raised a daughter and son, and now has three grandchildren.
She, too, had no regrets, but has never forgotten the desperation,
the humiliation or the pain.
She was, in fact, one of the lucky ones.
In the 1960s, advocates of abortion reform estimated that 1 million
American women had illegal abortions annually and they attributed
some 5,000 deaths directly to illegal abortions. The most common
kind of illegal abortion was self-induced. All too often, an infection
spread, the woman began to bleed profusely, landed in an emergency
room, and found herself interrogated by hospital personnel shortly
before she died.
To prevent such deaths, an underground
network made up of abortion reformers, 1,000 ministers and rabbis,
and feminist activists began helping frightened young women find
competent and courageous doctors willing to perform illegal abortions.
In San Francisco, Patricia McGinnis, a
longtime advocate of legal abortion, founded one of those groups,
the Society for Humane Abortion. "Phyllis Sanders" became
pregnant in 1968, her second year in graduate school at UC Berkeley.
A friend took her to a SHA clandestine meeting. McGinnis, who
had referred thousands of women for abortions, asked each woman
to write an evaluation of the medical treatment she's received.
As a result, she had a long list of competent doctors. That night,
she gave Sanders the name of the doctor who performed abortions
on the girlfriends of the chief of police in Mexico City. Sanders
received competent medical treatment, returned to her studies,
became a professor, married and raised three children.
None of the women I've interviewed is willing
to use her real name. Some never told their parents, who are still
alive. They also don't want to admit they committed a crime. Still
others fear the "lunatic fringe" of the anti- abortion
movement who have murdered abortion providers.
Thirty years after the Supreme Court gave
women the right to choose whether and when to bear children, that
choice is in serious jeopardy. When abortion was a crime, many
women died. Now is the perfect time for us to recall those deaths
when we hear that abortion is about destroying life.
On the 30th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade,
abortion rights are under furious assault. Wednesday will mark
three contentious decades since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
the constitutional right of privacy protects a woman's right to
terminate her pregnancy.
Roe vs. Wade galvanized conservatives,
who immediately vowed to overturn it. They are still trying.
Some of the assaults on Roe are head on.
Consider the legislative proposal Georgia Assembly members are
designating with the honorific House Bill 1 for 2003. Prefiled
last month, Georgia's HB 1 defines abortion as an execution, requiring
any woman seeking an abortion to appear in court to obtain a death
warrant. The court would appoint a guardian for the fetus and
a jury trial would be held within 30 days to weigh the rights
of the fetus against the "rights of the person seeking to
have the execution performed."
The Georgia bill is a patently unconstitutional
stunt, as long as Roe remains in force. And the decision has withstood
30 years of attacks. A woman's right to choose whether to carry
a pregnancy to term still stands, even if it may sometimes be
hemmed in by notification, parental consent, mandated counseling
or waiting period requirements -- the topics which have provided
the battleground for abortion foes over the years.
Congress' hostility to abortion has been
reflected in measures to deny federal funding of abortions to
poor women.
Despite surviving three decades of attacks,
slim majorities have characterized the Supreme Court opinions
on abortion in the wake of Roe vs. Wade. Not surprisingly, much
of the coming abortion fight will focus on candidates for the
federal bench, reaching a crescendo if, as likely, President Bush
has a chance to make his own Supreme Court appointments.
But the real news on Roe's 30th anniversary
is the peril women's reproductive rights face, even without a
wholesale reversal of Roe. Today's threat to reproductive freedom
comes not from blunderbuss, head-on assaults like Georgia's HB
1, but from a more cleverly orchestrated host of stealth attacks.
The fate of women's reproductive rights
in the Bush administration conjures up the image of Gulliver among
the Lilliputians. With Roe too venerable to slay, given the current
make-up of the Supreme Court, the Bush administration seeks instead
to incapacitate. The entanglements come in the guise of gag orders,
executive directives, regulatory restrictions, judicial nominations,
political appointments to scientific advisory boards and linguistic
and definitional shenanigans. Viewed as a whole, they pose the
most serious threat to reproductive freedom in decades.
The attempt to redefine the fetus as a
person is the hallmark of a number of these covert attacks. Efforts
to undermine abortion rights by redefining the fetus as a person
are nothing new. For a decade after the 1973 Roe decision, attempts
were made in Congress to pass a "human life amendment,"
establishing personhood from the moment of conception. (The Supreme
Court had ruled in Roe that it did not need to answer the philosophical
question of when life begins to determine that the fetus did not
qualify as a person under the 14th Amendment.)
The bills were defeated. As congressional
critic Barney Frank, D-Mass., memorably observed, the efforts
underscored how the Reagan administration's concern for human
life began with conception and ended with birth.
Today's fetal personhood initiatives are,
if anything, even more disingenuous. They come wrapped up in benign,
sometimes even laudable, packages -- efforts to extend health
care, to protect research subjects and to avenge victims of violent
crime. In each of these areas, Bush administration measures are
aimed less at achieving their stated aims than to advance ideological
views of when life begins.
It may seem like so much wordplay to redefine
fetuses, embryos, zygotes (fertilized eggs) -- anything short
of the glint in your father's eye -- as persons. But sometimes
wordplay is what the abortion debate is all about. Words have
meanings. Definitions drive policy, even in an administration
preferring the approach to words favored by Humpty Dumpty ("When
I choose a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither
more nor less.")
In November, the Bush administration implemented
a federal regulation allowing states to redefine fetuses as unborn
children, making them eligible for benefits in the State Children's
Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a program for low-income children
from birth to age 19 that is a shared responsibility of the federal
government and the states. Under the new regulations, eligibility
begins at conception.
This regulatory change of definition is
remarkable; no previous federal law or regulation had conferred
rights or benefits on fetuses as individuals. In announcing the
change, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson told
reporters, "This is not an abortion debate. How anybody can
now turn this into a pro-choice or pro-life argument, I can't
understand."
Secretary Thompson's puzzlement is difficult
to square with the HHS news release heralding the new regulation.
Written in the argot of abortion opponents, the release says the
regulatory change provides coverage for "unborn children"
and, at one point, "babies."
The regulation's provocative redefinition
is a legal novelty item and a superfluous one at that. Clearly,
prenatal care could be extended to pregnant women without this
redefinition and the inevitable complications it brings.
The complications of recognizing the fetus
as an independent insured person are worth considering. Is the
patient the woman or the fetus? What if the woman needs treatment,
such as cancer chemotherapy, that stands a chance of harming her
fetus? Could a guardian for the fetus try to stop the treatment?
Although CHIP benefits may now be extended
to zygotes, it makes little practical sense to call a fertilized
egg a person for the purposes of receiving federal benefits. A
zygote does not have a Social Security number. A zygote will not
be counted by census takers or earn its mother an exemption on
her income taxes.
One can only begin to imagine the ways
in which redefining the fetus as a person might challenge the
legal system.
One pregnant woman asserted her right to
drive in the high-occupancy vehicle lane during rush hour, reasoning
she should be allowed to count her fetus as the necessary additional
passenger. It would be hard to make this stuff up.
The Alice in Wonderland approach is also
evident in the administration's efforts to protect human medical
research subjects. Last fall, the Bush administration allowed
a Clinton-era advisory board to expire, replacing it with a revamped
HHS group, the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research
Protections. The new committee is charged with giving advice on
a broad range of issues about the use of human subjects in medical
research, "with a particular emphasis on . . . pregnant women,
embryos and fetuses."
Arthur Lawrence, HHS deputy assistant secretary
for health policy, explained that "embryos" was added
to the research charter because of the threat medical research
may pose to developing fetuses. And, "some people use the
same word (fetus and embryo) interchangeably," he explained
to Rick Weiss of the Washington Post.
Stated thus, this definitional expansion
seems an innocuous sop to the president's conservative base. But
if the view that embryos deserve to be treated the same as full-fledged
human persons were truly upheld, it would render unethical any
medical experiment not promising a direct benefit to the embryo
itself. This would stop many kinds of medical research in its
tracks, not to mention derailing promising stem cell research
and the work of infertility clinics.
On Jan. 3, HHS officials announced a roster
of appointments to the new advisory committee. Appointee Jonathan
Moreno, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University
of Virginia and a former member of a government advisory committee
on radiation experiments, declined the honor (his replacement
was named last Monday).
As Professor Moreno explained in an e-mail,
"I think (the charter) is part of a long-term strategy to
build as much regulatory language around embryos and fetuses as
possible, then cite it in some future challenge to Roe. These
people have a lot of patience and tenacity."
Another initiative in sheep's clothing
is the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. Passed by a vote of 252-172
in the House in April, it has the lofty goal of enhancing punishment
for violence to a pregnant woman that results in a miscarriage,
over and above any sanction for harming the woman herself.
Two dozen states have legislation recognizing
the fetus in varying stages of development as a separate person
and crime victim.
As proposed, the federal bill potentially
undermines the right to have an abortion by granting rights to
the fetus separate from and possibly equal to those of the woman.
Although the bill contains exceptions for women who choose to
have an abortion, the inherent illogic shines through.
As Heather Boonstra of the Alan Guttmacher
Institute, a reproductive health think tank, writes, "The
bill's framers know that the law cannot simultaneously hold that
the fetus is truly a 'person' and subject to being aborted. The
Unborn Victims of Violence Act is a clear break from American
legal and constitutional tradition designed to set up a conceptual
collision course with abortion rights."
The collision course is coming into focus
as a true picture emerges of the anti-sex, anti-science Bush administration.
The picture is a frightening mosaic of policy initiatives. Beyond
the fetal personhood measures are the efforts to criminalize late-term
abortions, global attacks on family planning, and attempts to
block condom use in the United States and abroad. The success
of these initiatives will be measured by women's deaths resulting
from delays and denial of essential reproductive health services.
Jeff Stryker is a San Francisco writer
specializing in medical ethics. He is working on a book about
sperm banking.
Harriet
Chiang, Chronicle Legal Affairs Writer
Sunday, January 19, 2003
More than a generation after the
U.S. Supreme Court declared abortion a fundamental right of every
woman, the nation's highest court remains at the center of one
of America's most divisive controversies.
In marking the 30th anniversary of Roe
vs. Wade on Wednesday, abortion rights advocates warn that the
1973 landmark ruling rests on precarious legal ground.
Speculation is building that one or more
of the justices on the nine-member court will retire after the
current term, upsetting the delicate majority upholding abortion
rights.
"This is the most hostile political
environment since Roe vs. Wade for women's rights and women's
reproductive rights in particular," said Kate Michelman,
president of NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation.
President Bush, she said, is determined
to use his presidency to end legal abortion. "The greatest
power he will possibly have is with the Supreme Court, "
she said.
Abortion rights proponents say that only
five of the nine justices clearly support Roe vs. Wade. With Republicans
controlling both the White House and Congress, that could easily
change, they say.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 78, and
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 72, are expected to retire soon.
Rehnquist has voted to overturn abortion rights, but O'Connor
has been a key swing vote to keep Roe vs. Wade alive.
Abortion rights advocates also are concerned
about the status of Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, both of whom have voted to uphold abortion rights.
There are no signs that Stevens plans to
retire, but at age 82 he is the oldest member of the court. At
69, Ginsburg's health has been a concern since she underwent chemotherapy
for colon cancer a few years ago.
For their part, abortion foes are guardedly
optimistic that the addition of one or two conservative justices
could be enough to prompt the court to say after 30 years that
the decision was wrong and overturn Roe vs. Wade.
"The court is fairly evenly divided,"
said Jan Carroll, legislative analyst for the California Pro-Life
Council, the state affiliate for the National Right to Life Committee.
With the right appointment to the court and the right case before
it, she said, "the most positive outcome is to say it's not
a constitutional right."
But legal scholars are skeptical that Roe
vs. Wade is on the brink of being overturned. Some say there are
at least six votes now on the court to uphold the decision.
Moreover, they predict, even if conservative
judges who may not agree with the 1973 decision are appointed
to the court, they are not likely to take the dramatic step of
overturning a law that has been on the books for so long. Some
speculate that even Rehnquist may be reluctant to overturn the
law.
"I think the chief would see it as
harming the court," said Arthur Hellman, a constitutional
law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "I just
don't think any Supreme Court in the foreseeable future is going
to try to turn back the clock," he said.
While the court has stopped short of overturning
Roe vs. Wade over the years, it has allowed states to pass numerous
restrictions, including mandatory waiting period laws and teenage
consent requirements.
"The right has already suffered from
years and years of battering," said Louise Melling, director
of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.
Nonetheless, abortion foes as well as some
proponents see the latest dire predictions as an attempt by abortion
rights advocates to build momentum for a flagging movement.
"I think it's an attempted rallying
point," said David J. Garrow, a legal historian at Emory
University's School of Law in Atlanta and author of "Liberty
and Sexuality," which chronicles the events that led up to
Roe vs. Wade.
"I don't think the sky is falling
or anywhere close to falling," he said.
Speaking for the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops on Pro Life Issues, Kathy Cleaver said, "I do think
the pro-choice movement is having a problem motivating people
and getting people to join." Their side, she added, has never
had that problem.
Abortion rights advocates acknowledge that
there has been an overconfidence -- some say complacency -- among
the American public, which believes that abortion rights are secure.
"It's up to us to convince men and women who care about this
deeply that their confidence is misplaced," said Kim Gandy,
president of NOW.
Legal scholars say the last serious threat
to Roe vs. Wade was in 1992. A divided Supreme Court reaffirmed
in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey a woman's right to terminate a
pregnancy, but it shifted the issue to the states, allowing them
to impose restrictions as long as they do not impose an "undue
burden" on abortion rights.
The only major ruling from the court since
then was in June 2000. In a setback for abortion foes, the court
overturned Nebraska's ban on so-called partial birth abortions,
ruling that it imposed an "undue burden" on a woman's
right to end a pregnancy.
But abortion opponents were encouraged
by the close 5-4 vote, and the fact that Justice Anthony Kennedy,
who had voted in the past to uphold Roe vs. Wade, had switched
sides in the Nebraska case.
Abortion rights proponents warn that what
was once a 6-3 majority in favor of Roe vs. Wade is now hanging
on the thread of a 5-4 vote.
But law professors doubt that Kennedy's
vote with the dissenters in the Nebraska case means that he is
ready to throw out Roe vs. Wade.
In any event, they say it could be years
-- even decades -- before the court considers another abortion
case that goes to the heart of Roe vs. Wade.
Vikram Amar, a constitutional law professor
at UC's Hastings College of the Law and a former law clerk for
the late Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote Roe vs. Wade, noted
that the court waited 25 years after the Bakke decision to take
up another affirmative action case.
"The Supreme Court is an institution
that moves slowly," he said. "A decade here and there
is not that glacial for them."
Carla
Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
Sunday, January 19, 2003
It's been
30 years since a ninth-grade dropout named Norma McCorvey -- married
at 16, pregnant with her third child -- became the unlikely eye
of a storm that would reshape the political landscape of America.
"Choice has never been in
more danger than it is today," says Susan Kennedy, a
former CARAL director and adviser to Davis. "If they
can't overturn Roe vs. Wade, they will gut it."
In the three decades since McCorvey became
"Jane Roe," and the Supreme Court handed down its 5-4
Roe vs. Wade decision guaranteeing women the right to legal abortion,
the hurricane has only intensified.
As the nation prepares this week to mark
the 30th anniversary of the landmark ruling, both Republicans
and Democrats have redrawn battle lines over an issue certain
to play a strategic role in the 2004 presidential election.
On the GOP side, President Bush has declared
today a National Sanctity of Human Life Day.
Three days later, Democrats will counter,
marking Jan. 22 with a first-ever joint appearance by all major
Democratic presidential candidates at a fund- raising dinner for
NARAL Pro-Choice America, the country's leading reproductive rights
advocacy group.
"President Bush has valued politics
over women's health by putting fetal rights at a higher priority
than women's access (to health care)," says Tracy Salkowitz,
executive director of CARAL, the California Abortion and Reproductive
Rights Action League. "He's using this to further divide
the country."
But Randy Thomassen, executive director
of the anti-abortion Campaign for California Families, is equally
as passionate.
"Through life-saving medical advances
and next-generation ultrasound imagery, more people are seeing
the truth -- that it's really a baby in the womb, a living miracle,"
Thomassen said. He says the Roe anniversary marks "the shame
of 30 years of unlimited abortion through all nine months of pregnancy
-- and with blatant disregard for the rights of parents and the
conscience of taxpayers."
The fired-up emotions -- and steely political
resolve -- on both sides underscore the widening political gulf
and the profound political impacts of the case brought before
the Supreme Court in 1973.
In the years since, McCorvey became a Christian
and an advocate for anti- abortion forces -- but the issues she
raised regarding reproductive rights have been woven into the
fabric of political contests from the lowliest town council race
to the presidency itself.
"The issue has become a political
issue, not a personal issue," says attorney Jim Lazarus,
an adviser to CARAL in its drive to raise awareness of the reproductive
rights agenda in coming elections. He notes that it "was
not divisive when (then California Gov.) Ronald Reagan signed
the Therapeutic Abortion Act," a 1967 law that allowed for
legal abortion in California in cases of danger to the health
of the mother, rape or incest.
By 2002, Gov. Gray Davis had signed a host
of bills on reproductive rights, including laws that protected
access to abortion clinics, allowed pharmacists to provide emergency
contraception, and cemented women's rights to abortion in California
regardless of the fate of Roe.
But with the Republican takeover of Congress
last year and a popular Republican president seeking re-election,
pro-choice advocates argue that the stakes have never been higher.
"Choice has never been in more danger
than it is today," says Susan Kennedy, a
former CARAL director and adviser to Davis. "If they can't
overturn Roe vs. Wade, they will gut it."
Cathy Kneer, executive director of Planned
Parenthood Affiliates of California, says Bush administration
moves to establish legal rights of the fetus are particularly
threatening to Roe. "If they have a long-term political strategy
to have the fetus recognized as a distinct human being . . . we
are not protected in California."
Democrats argue that the party's presidential
hopefuls in 2004 should waste no time in pressing the issue.
"I don't see how Democrats can lose
on this issue," says Democratic strategist Garry South. "Opposition
to abortion is as much an underpinning of the Republican base
as is opposition for gun control, and the mania for tax cuts,"
he says. "With an anti-choice Republican in the White House,
and Supreme Court nominations to make, we need to raise the salience
of this issue now."
But GOP strategist Sean Walsh -- who was
the spokesman for pro-choice former GOP Gov. Pete Wilson -- argues
that Democrats are guilty of "gender- baiting" on the
volatile issue.
"Women have nothing to fear from the
White House -- or the Congress. It's a tempest in a teapot. It's
been the law of the land now for 30 years, and I don't expect
that law to change," says Walsh.
"If by some chance it would, it would
revert back to a state's rights issue, and
the law would not change in California. It's a scare tactic being
used by Democrats for fund-raising purposes."
Deputy White House press secretary Ken
Lisaius says the president, with his proclamation this week, was
"very clear" in his mission to unite Americans on the
issue -- not divide them.
"The president believes we need to
welcome a culture into America that respects life and honors life,"
Lisaius said. "He talks about the sanctity of human life
. . . respecting the life and dignity of every human being."
But Elmy Bermejo, who chairs the California
Commission on the Status of Women, says that the anniversary of
Roe reminds both sides that the issue has never been more important.
"Whether you're pro-choice, or anti-abortion,
people and candidates for office can no longer say, 'I'm not going
to talk about it,' " she says. "They're forced to talk
about it . . . because one way or another, they will vote on it."
Activists
marking Roe v. Wade anniversary predict legislative limitations
on abortion rights this year
JANELLE CARTER, Associated Press
Writer
Sunday, January 19, 2003
Anti-abortion
activists marking this week's 30th anniversary of the Supreme
Court's Roe v. Wade decision say they have their first chance
in years to put a dent in abortion rights now that Republicans
control the House, Senate and the White House.
"We will pass the first significant
pro-life legislation actually limiting abortions in 30 years,"
said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. and a leading abortion foe. He
predicted Congress will move quickly to pass a measure banning
a late-term abortion procedure called partial birth abortion by
opponents.
Congress passed a measure twice, in 1996
and 1997, banning the procedure, in which the fetus is partially
delivered before its skull is punctured. President Clinton vetoed
it each time. The House passed the measure again last year, but
the then-Democratic-controlled Senate never took up the measure.
"We will pass a partial birth abortion
ban," Brownback said. "That's going to hearten people.
It's been a long fight. We're finally turning some of the battle."
President Bush has said he would sign the
bill, one of several abortion-related measures Republicans will
push this legislative session. Their optimism is expected to be
apparent Wednesday when thousands of marchers converge on Washington
to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision three
decades ago legalizing abortion.
"I think we'll hear a great deal of
hyperbole about Roe being at risk from the abortion side. I hope
they're right," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. "From
our side, we're going to assert even more, with compassion but
with earnestness, that the Holocaust of the unborn has to stop."
But Douglas Johnson, legislative director
for the National Right to Life Committee, said passing anti-abortion
bills will continue to be difficult in the 100-member Senate,
where 60 votes are needed to overcome parliamentary tactics for
blocking action on most bills. The Senate has 51 Republicans,
48 Democrats and one independent.
"This is not a Senate that's going
to be approving sweeping legislation to challenge Roe," Johnson
said. "It is a Congress now in which we have a chance for
a fair debate on these sorts of reforms that are supported by
most Americans."
Abortion-rights supporters, who also have
a series of events planned for the anniversary, acknowledge that
the advantage in Congress has switched to abortion foes. "The
Republicans are controlling every branch of government, and we
have now entered the anti-choice trifecta," said Rep. Carolyn
Maloney, D-N.Y.
Maloney and others pointed to a series
of actions Bush has taken administratively, including an executive
order that bars U.S. aid to international groups that support
abortion and withholding $34 million from international family
planning programs overseas.
The administration announced last year
it would begin classifying developing fetuses as unborn children
as a way of extending prenatal care to low-income pregnant women.
Abortion rights activists denounced the move as a backdoor way
of undercutting their rights. And two weeks ago Bush declared
Sunday as National Sanctity of Human Life Day.
"This administration and the anti-choice
members of Congress are weaving a pernicious web of anti-choice
attacks," said Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America.
--------------------------------------
On the Net:
National Right to Life Committee: www.nrlc.org
Planned Parenthood Federation of America:
www.ppfa.org
Do you know
the metaphor about the frog in a kettle of water? If you try to
put a frog into boiling water, he'll jump out. But if you turn
up the heat while he's in the cool water, he will boil to death
-- unaware that his environment is gradually becoming deadly.
That metaphor, which I learned about by
watching "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,"
a superb pro-choice educational film by local filmmakers Xandra
Castleton, Tiffany Shlain and Maya Draisin, unfortunately applies
to women of this generation who take their sexual freedoms for
granted.
From Marilyn Monroe to the four tartlets
of "Sex and the City," modern women have had the luxury
of being able to decide for themselves their sexual modus operandi
(whom to do it with and how to do it) without interference from
anything but their own consciences.
We women of the 1960s, particularly, sailed
through the sexual revolution without the fear of AIDS that put
Gen Xers on notice that there is sometimes a price to pay for
a lack of sexual responsibility.
But in general, those lucky enough to have
been born in the United States in recent decades have enjoyed
unparalleled sexual freedom -- especially compared with the dark
days of back-alley abortions. Now signs are popping up that we
need to stop taking these freedoms for granted.
In other words, ladies, the water is starting
to simmer. A number of developments in Washington -- done quietly
under the radar -- warrant our attention.
The latest: the Bush administration's choice
of an anti-choice, Bible- thumping conservative to chair the Food
and Drug Administration's important Reproductive Health Drugs
Advisory Committee. Consider the metaphor of the fox in the henhouse:
This one could be gliding quietly in through the back door.
Dr. W. David Hager, whom Time magazine
has labeled a "scantily credentialed" candidate for
the post, is an OB/GYN whose writings include the book "As
Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now" and
another book emphasizing the "restorative power of Jesus
Christ in one's life." He has been known to recommend Scripture
readings and prayers for headaches and premenstrual syndrome.
He has refused to prescribe birth control for unmarried women.
And he has extremely strong ties to the
Christian Medical Association and to the anti-choice group Focus
on the Family. He carried the cross for the medical group when
it lobbied the FDA to revoke its approval of mifepristone, the
drug used for safe, early abortions.
It is assumed that if Hager secures the
chairman's post on this important committee, one of his main goals
would be to overturn the use of mifepristone and halt studies
of the drug's impact on many medical conditions that affect women:
breast cancer, uterine cancer, uterine fibroid tumors, psychotic
depression and bipolar depression.
Unfortunately, this is not an appointment
that is up for public debate. Across the country, organizations
like Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women
have raised their voices to make sure the Bush administration
hears the complaint that church and state are separated for a
reason.
There have been other backdoor dealings
in Washington that evidence the turning of the tide against women.
The Bush administration also quietly denied the $34 million in
funding approved by both houses of Congress for the U.N. Fund
for Population Activities -- a fund that provides family planning
services and fights HIV and female genital mutilation in impoverished
countries throughout the world.
That relatively paltry $34 million, says
Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, director of UNFPA, would have helped prevent
2 million unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 induced abortions, 4,700
maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths.
The Bush administration claims we can't
afford that. What we can, apparently, afford, is $135 million
to preach abstinence as sex education in this country. Good luck
with that one, Dubya. Perhaps you should check with your daughters
on how well the "just say no" technique works.
And all year, anti-choice lawmakers have
been pushing through bills in various states that allow their
Departments of Motor Vehicles to sell license plate holders that
read: "Choose life." Money collected from the sale of
those holders fund anti-choice groups. So far, 13 states are considering
this legislation, while the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy
fights it in court.
I suspect this was just the kind of thing
the Founding Fathers were interested in preventing when they separated
church and state hundreds of years ago. Funding religious beliefs
through our license plate holders? Who'da thunk it?
But it's happening. And those of us who
care would be wise to stay informed.
Oh the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away
~Paul Simon~
What happens
around a dinner table when a family gathers at early evening?
What does a holiday meal mean? What feelings stay with a child
forever when
he or she is tucked into a sweet bed and read a bedtime story?
The answer to
all the above is "More than you know."
Human development is an invisible unfolding
of energies and feelings that
cannot be charted or boxed or reduced to formulas. It is sacred
ground, the
Goddess's territory. It has been trampled on and must be replanted.
Thefabric
of our lives has been rent and must be rewoven. We must re-create
the
experience of home. This is a feminine function in both men and
women. It
does not have to be a woman who takes care of the home; a man
can do the
jobas well. But we must all recognize how important it is that
the work get
done. "Out in the world" is not inherently a more important
place for someone
to be than inside the home. Inside the home, we become the people
we
are outside.
Too many people in our culture, rich and
poor alike, do not have family or
friends to come home to at night, do not have a home environment
that is
gentle, do not have someone who cares where they are or cares
how they are
feeling. We are falling apart inside, and that is why we are falling
apart
outside.
One of my favorite things in life is having
picnics on my bed. Not
necessarily picnics with food, but picnics with fun and talk and
feelings
and friends. I have a king-size bed, which I find requisite for
family life.
And by family, I don't mean just my daughter and me. I mean a
group
experience of love and support.
Four people are on my bed as I write this.
There's me, propped up on pillows
with my laptop computer; Norma, sixty-five, who has worked with
me since
I started lecturing years ago; my daughter, two; Lisa, twenty-two,
a student
in fashion design who is helping me take care of her this weekend.
Norma and
Lisa are reading out loud from a giant copy of The Three Little
Pigs.
We have just spent half an hour discussing
whether or not we should be more
forceful in getting the baby off her bottle. My mother thinks
she's too old
to still suck on a bottle, but then again that's from the woman
who brought
up at least one oral compulsive that I know of. A friend of mine,
who is a
teacher and knows about these things, told me to calm down. "Are
you worried that she's going to walk up the aisle with a bottle
in her mouth?" On another day, my sister, Jane, had suggested
that we have abottle-throwing-away ceremony, where my daughter
would acknowledge thatshe's a big girl now, and we would ritualistically
throw away all thebottles. I think she's too young for that. I
decide to leave her alone andlet her drop it when she drops it.
I ask her if she would like to take abath with Mommy, and she
responds, "Maybe." I've never heard her use thatword
before, much less express such ambivalence about bathing with
her mother.
I keep thinking that this scene is like
a three-dimensional Mary Cassatt.
What I love most about it is the communion of women and particularly
our
generational span. I'm sitting here thinking this is a beautiful,
beautiful life I
have, when I make the ridiculous decision to pick up the Los Angeles
Times.
So this is what happened yesterday: A four-year-old
black boy was sleeping
in his bed when bullets started ripping through the walls from
the apartment
next door. Walls in tenement houses are as thin as paper. We have
no way of
knowing, of course, whether little Germaine had moments of terror
before the
bullets hit him, whether he sat up, whether he cried out. That's
something
neither we nor his mother will ever know. All we know is that
bullets
penetrated the wall, and in a matter of minutes this baby lay
dead.
How does his mother live with this? How
do I live with this? How do any
of us live with this? I am in grief, confusion, despair, frustration,
and total
outrage. I blame drug dealers, Mafia bosses, bigoted politicians,
gun
manufacturers, NRA lobbyists, and Hollywood types who've pushed
violence
down our throats like syrup laced with strychnine for the last
thirty years.
And what I want to know is this: Why was that beautiful little
white girl
who fell down a well in Texas a few years ago so much more important
than
Germaine Johnson from East L.A.? Why is his life not more valuable
to us?
And why does Kuwait matter to us more than our own children?
What are we going to do about this? Simply
work individually, within our own
families, with our own children, to spread peace and love as deeply
as we
can? I'm not sure we can afford to be too slow about this. As
Dante wrote in
the Inferno, "The hottest place in hell is reserved for those
who, in times
of crisis, preferred to remain neutral." But what is the
most empowered, the
most spiritually perfect position to take? I don't know, but I
utter a
prayer.
I ask God for help. Let this darkness be
cast away from earth. Show us how
to make miracles happen. Deliver these children. Deliver us all.
Do for us,
God, what we can't do for ourselves. Heal our minds of violent
thoughts,
that violence might disappear from earth. Help us recover. Help
us rise. We
open our hearts to receive your guidance. We're ready to change.
Amen.
I pick up my daughter and hold her in my
arms. Thank you, God, for letting
her be born into so much love and abundance. Let every baby be
blessed and
protected, not just my own, but every one. There are so many babies
in this
world who are sick, and no one cares for them; who are dirty,
and no one
changes their diapers; who are hungry, and no one feeds them.
Shame on us
all for doing so little. And God help us all, on the day when
the shit
finally hits the fan.
Children remind us of what's important.
They help return us to a too-often
lost perspective, where we stand in relation to generations before
and after
us. A woman I once met, herself a mother of four, told me that
having
children "gives us all the things we pray for, like respect
and patience and
understanding." I was impressed by the nature of her prayers.
We don't have to give birth to children
to know we're the mothers of the
world. We are the wombs of the generations that follow, not only
physically
but emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. Our bodies
are the space
that prepares and sustains our children's physical life, and our
personalities the space that prepares and sustains their emotional
life. For
better or for worse, within our being they form into who they
are. We are
all mothers to all children. Every woman everywhere, whether she
works in an
advertising agency, politics, or the entertainment industry; whether
she
teaches, sells, waits on tables, answers phones, or just wakes
up in the
morning, is part of our motherhood. We cannot protect our children
from the
collective mass of female vibrations, nor should we want to. The
world is
meant to be a safe and nurturing environment for children. The
fact that it
isn't is a sacred call to action for every conscious woman. In
this way, we
will heal our children and the children still living physically
within us.
ABORTION CAN BE an overwhelming loss. That
doesn't mean it shouldn't
be legal---I think it should---but that still doesn't mean it's
not a terrible
emotional pain. We have never come to terms with the fact that
for the first
time in our social history millions of women turned away their
children. And
we did do that. There is no pretending that we didn't. There are
certain
times when we think maybe we shouldn't have, times when we wish
with anguish that we hadn't, and times when we have seen, and
still see, no other way of proceeding. However we see it, guilt
is not helpful. It is not part of God's vision. No one is guilty,
but lots of us are sad.
Don't get waylaid by politics or swayed
by false re
