When a leaked draft of an upcoming US Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade was posted by Politico on Monday night – a nearly 100-page document that would, when finalized (likely this June), place the availability and legality of women's reproductive rights at the whim of the 50 individual states – all hell broke loose, to put it mildly.
My partner Laura, a wise woman – though as she admits on this particular topic, hardly prescient – has known for several decades that Roe has been irrelevant for millions of American women. She wrote 17 years ago, when 80% of US women live in a county with no abortion provider: "In a very real sense, Roe is already history and has been for a long time." (The recently-leaked draft, when finalized, will be merely the headstone on the grave.)
Also: "[O]f course we should be outraged at the Republicans passing these laws, but if you're not equally outraged at the Democrats, you have a lot to answer for."
The Democrats have never strengthened and defended Roe as seriously and as steadily as its opponents have wanted to destroy it. The Democrats ignored the threats for decades, even as those threats multiplied, infecting the country like a cancer. They did not denounce the violence as loudly as it should have been denounced, and they refused to publicly (and accurately) describe these extremists as domestic terrorists. Oh, but now I read that the Democrats are angry! Now they are going to do something!! Are you fucking kidding me?
Are they really domestic terrorists? Journalist and author Jill Filipovic states:
Since Roe was handed down 49 years ago, "pro-lifers" in the US have committed:
-11 murders
-26 attempted murders
-4 kidnappings
-42 bombings
-667 bomb threats
-100 butyric acid attacks
-189 arsons
-663 Anthrax/bioterrorism threats
-25,000+ acts of phone harassment or hate mail
Laura wrote (in 2019): "Democrats and most liberal Americans sat idly by while anti-abortion-rights forces took over one state legislature after the next, setting up obstacle after obstacle designed to prevent access to safe, legal abortion, thereby limiting the human rights of great swaths of American women."
(And P.S.: Joe Biden has been fighting against women's human rights for at least 55 years.)
And yet, as Data Progress reports: "There is not a single state where support for a federal ban on abortion has more than 30% support among the public."
A political party does not ignore a persistent and growing problem for 40 years by accident. The Democrats are equally complicit in the dissolution of Roe as the Republicans. That is a simple fact.
One of the many Trump memes out there says: "Once you realize he's working for Russia, not America, everything he does makes sense." Well, once you realize the Democrats and Republicans are working together, for the same team, everything they do (or do not do) makes sense." Their inability to fight back, their incompetence and tepid response when they do raise objections, their inability to put out a consistent message. The Democrats are not stupid. Some of the party's leaders have been in office for decades and you don't win that many consecutive elections by being a clueless idiot. Once you accept that they don't stand up for themselves (or for you) because they don't want to fight back, that they are part of the US's one-party state, all their actions suddenly become logical.
Time after time, polls will show that a clear majority of US voters are in favour of Liberal Policy X, but the Democrats shy away from supporting that policy, often actually undermining the policy, even though aligning themselves with it would be an obvious winning issue for them. This happens regularly, like clockwork. Why? I've witnessed it for 35 years. Why are the Democrats consistently allergic to election-winning issues that a vast majority of their voters support?
In May 2017, the Washington Post had this headline: "Pelosi: Democratic Should Not Be Forced To Toe Party Line On Abortion".
Pelosi . . . noted that the debate over abortion no longer boils down to whether a candidate is for or against the basic right to the procedure, but rather over whether and what types of limits should be imposed.
As a result, "within the Democrats . . . It's how far are you willing to go on the issue – but let's not spend too much time" on the subject.
"It's kind of fading as an issue," she said. "It really is."
Pelosi is stating that the apparently radical concept of women being fully autonomous, having control over the use of her own body, of possessing the most basic of human rights, is not something a Democratic Party candidate needs to believe in because "it's kind of fading as an issue". The current House Speaker said this. In 20-fucking-17. Pelosi's dismissive attitude towards "the cornerstone of women's equality" should make your blood boil. But it should not surprise you. (Because once you realize . . .)
Jennifer Wright tweeted in 2019:
You can't take organs from a corpse without the deceased's written permission, even if it will save lives. When you outlaw abortion, you're allowing women less bodily autonomy than the dead.
Three years ago, Laura wrote: "American women in all states technically had the right to obtain an abortion, just as African Americans technically had the right to vote in 1957 Mississippi. Rights without access are meaningless. How does the right to abortion become meaningless?"
In July 2010, she explained how:
Having been involved in the pro-choice movement since 1981, I have followed the ongoing erosion of reproductive rights, almost all of it on the state level. While most federal lawmakers, the media and the public focused myopically on Roe v Wade, the right to abortion became a mere technicality, as the majority of US women lost access to abortion.
Anti-choice laws were passed in dozens of US states during the Reagan-Bush era. The trend barely slowed down during the Clinton years, then picked up renewed steam through the second Bush era. In other words, anti-choice legislation has been piling up in US state law – non-stop – for the past 30 years.
Three separate United States Supreme Court decisions have allowed most of these laws to stand: Webster (1989), Akron (1990) and Casey (1992). These decisions ruled as Constitutional laws requiring fetal viability tests, parental notification, mandatory waiting periods, and other obstacles designed to prevent women from exercising their human right to control our own bodies. The decisions opened the floodgates for anti-choice legislation, and left pro-choice advocates with few options except to battle each law, one at a time.
From the early 1980s until today, the anti-choice movement in the United States – quintessentially focused, organized, and well-fed by both the Catholic Church and the evangelical churches – has succeeded in passing hundreds of laws that restrict women's rights to control our own bodies. They didn't require the camouflage of tea-party protesters or racist anti-immigration fervor to get the job done. The media was always elsewhere. Whether it was O.J. or Tiger Woods, Janet Jackson's breast or Lady Gaga's genitals, or just the latest missing blond child, mainstream media has never lacked excuses to not report the news.
Even people who should know better, don't. When I was part of the Haven Coalition in New York City, most people I knew who were not pro-choice activists – educated, intelligent, engaged people – were shocked to learn that women in neighbouring states were forced to travel to New York City for abortions. Because after all, Roe has not been overturned, right?
For some details on abortion access in the US that pre-dates the tea-partiers, see my essays, For Millions of American Women, Roe Is Already History from 2005, and in "either margaret wente needs a fact-checker or the entire united states is a backwater" from 2008. Of course, since I wrote those, things have only gotten worse.
There are outrages on the federal level, too. The most visible was the Stupak Amendment, an extension of the Hyde Amendment, which has been in effect since 1976. These laws have successfully restricted a woman's right to abortion based on income. In between, there are things like repeated attempts to criminalize helping a young woman travel to another state to obtain an abortion. . . .David Rosen's story at CounterPunch does give an excellent overview of the types of anti-abortion laws that are now being passed all over the US [though if you read her full post, she has issues with (and is baffled by) portions of Rosen's article].
The most common category is insurance restrictions. Between the Stupak Amendment, the Hyde Amendment and specific state laws, most insurance coverage will be prohibited from including abortion in almost all states.
An increasing number of states are passing laws mandating waiting periods and sonograms. Many states are mandating that abortion providers engage in coercive tactics like detailed descriptions of fetuses. Missouri is requiring providers to offer anesthesia for the fetus.
Oklahoma stands at the forefront of the recent onslaught of anti-woman, anti-choice legislation. That state now requires pre-procedure ultrasound with mandatory viewing of images and hearing of a detailed description of the fetus, and a long series of obstacles that providers must clear before performing procedures. Another Oklahoma law prohibits patients from suing doctors who do not reveal fetal abnormalities during pregnancy. (Mary Alice Carr, with the National Institute for Reproductive Health, asks, "Oklahoma, what have you done?")
And there is always a slew of bills that are floated and not passed. Women in Iowa, for example, have been able to receive counseling and prescriptions for non-surgical abortions through videolink. Legislation has been introduced to restrict this.
For the most updated information on abortion rights both in the US and worldwide, always turn to the Guttmacher Institute. Their research is impeccable and their website is updated frequently.
* * * *
Despite what I may be overlooking or forgetting, the erosion of reproductive rights in the United States is not new. It is a continuation of a 30-year trend.
While it is technically true that a woman from Oklahoma can travel to New York City for an abortion, that technical right won't provide the Oklahoma woman who is burdened with an unwanted pregnancy with information, transportation, child care, time off from her job and the funds to make the trip and pay for the procedure. For American women - as for women around the globe – geography is destiny.
That 2005 post included this:
Money. For a few years after the Roe decision, Medicaid paid for abortions; anyone could get an abortion regardless of her age or ability to pay. Only four years later, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which banned payment for abortions unless the woman's life was endangered. (In 1993, after much struggle, those exceptions were broadened to include cases of rape and incest.)
In most states, Medicaid rarely covers abortion. Yet the cost of a first-trimester abortion can be more than a family on public assistance receives in a month. In our Wal-Mart economy, many working women can't afford a procedure.
Low-income women and girls delay termination as they try to scrape together the money they need. These delays often force them to have second-trimester procedures, which are more complicated medically, more risky - and much more expensive. It is not uncommon for women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term because they cannot afford a simple medical procedure.
Laws. Then there are the other obstacles. With the Webster (1989) and Casey (1992) decisions, the Supreme Court upheld states' rights to restrict access to abortion in myriad ways. Women must jump through hoops and over hurdles before they can terminate a pregnancy. These laws run the gamut of idiocy, from 48-hour waiting periods, to parental consent and notification for minors, to mandatory "counseling," which often involves coercion.
These laws assume women are incompetent, irresponsible, and unable to make their own decisions. They also expose the anti-choice "abortion is murder" argument for the smokescreen that it is. If abortion was murder, these types of laws would be anathema to the anti-choice crowd: what good is delaying murder? However, if one's goal is to control women and punish them for having sex and getting pregnant, then these laws make perfect sense.
But wait, there's more.
Availability. In addition to the financial and legal obstacles, there is one last, often insurmountable obstacle: availability.
Because of anti-choice terrorism and political action, thousands of doctors have stopped providing abortions and thousands of towns have stopped leasing space to abortion providers. Right now, nearly 80% of American women live in a county with no abortion provider. Obtaining an abortion often means traveling long distances, which in turn means finding child care and transportation, and even more funds. Imagine if the state also has a mandatory waiting period, so the entire trip has to be made twice. A baby should not be born because a woman could not afford the price of a bus ticket or had no one to watch her children.
When Roe is overturned, I will mourn. But in a very real sense, Roe is already history and has been for a long time. Without access, legal abortion is meaningless.
Today is the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. . . .March 2006:
I can't imagine there are many of these anniversaries left. The reproductive rights community is fully prepared for a post-Roe country. That will surely be a dark day: a victory for religious interests over personal freedom, a mighty leap backwards for women's equality, a deepening of the overall backwards movement of the country.
But in a very real sense, it won't be a leap at all, but a continuation of a steady regression. Women with resources will be able to obtain abortions. Women without will find a way around it, or they won't. In other words, it will be just like it is right now, only more so.
Yesterday the Governor of South Dakota signed into law a ban on all abortions, except when medically necessary to save a woman's life. Planned Parenthood of South Dakota – the state's only abortion provider, staffed with doctors from Minnesota – plans to challenge the law.
For now, the current abortion laws of South Dakota will stand. Because, of course, this law has little to do with South Dakota. This constitutionality of this law will be resolved in the United States Supreme Court, most likely with the overturning of Roe v Wade. . . .
The wonder of it, for me, is that so many liberal Americans are still talking about "if" Roe will be overturned. Baby, that train has left the station. U.S. reproductive rights groups all have maps on their walls giving a glimpse of the future: the slave states, the free states, the barely-legal states.
The battle will be to keep as many states free as possible – and to prevent laws restricting a woman's right to travel to obtain an abortion, or criminalizing people who help them.
Can you imagine a class of adult American citizens forbidden to cross a state border? Can you imagine Greyhound being required to report pregnant riders? Pregnant women forced to show their reason for travel? Can you imagine committing a criminal offense by "harboring" a pregnant woman in your home?
I can imagine all these things, and more. Having lived on the front lines of this struggle, the horrors of battle are very vivid to me.
The new South Dakota law begins the culmination of a process that was set in motion in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected. Through Webster (1989), through Casey (1992), Roe has hung on, each time getting smaller, and weaker, becoming more symbol than reality.
Now, the end has begun.
Many Americans still don't realize how close the US is criminalizing abortion entirely. Not just overturning Roe v Wade, so that abortion will be legal in some states and illegal in most. Criminalizing abortion altogether.
And I don't know what, if anything, the new Democrat-controlled Congress can or will do about this.
This column by NOW President Kim Gandy explains. . . .This may just be the scariest of all the many scary steps backward that the US is taking.
Right now there are no American women who were of reproductive age prior to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Yet reproductive rights in the US have never been more threatened. 2011 marked the passage of the most state-level restrictive abortion laws ever. 2012 saw the second-highest.
More than half of all US women of reproductive age (15–44) now live in a state that is hostile to abortion rights. Ten years ago, it was fewer than one-third.
The Guttmacher Institute has produced a series of infographics to illustrate the state of reproductive rights in the US. They are encouraging allies to share them widely.
What happens to women who want abortions and can't obtain one? We're finally getting some actual data to answer that question. Annalee Newitz at io9 reports.Public health researchers with the UC San Francisco group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) used data from 956 women who sought abortions at 30 different abortion clinics around the U.S. 182 of them were turned away. The researchers, led by Diana Greene Foster, followed and did intensive interviews with these women, who ran the gamut of abortion experiences. Some obtained abortions easily, for some it was a struggle to get them, and some were denied abortions because their pregnancies had lasted a few days beyond the gestational limits of their local clinics. Two weeks ago, the research group presented what they'd learned after two years of the planned five-year, longitudinal "Turnaway Study" at the recent American Public Health Association conference in San Francisco.It's an excellent article about the study's preliminary findings. You can read more at The Turnaway Study website, along with their plans for further research.
Here's the short version of what they discovered, from a post they made on the Global Turnaway Study Facebook page:
We have found that there are no mental health consequences of abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. There are other interesting findings: even later abortion is safer than childbirth and women who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term are three times more likely than women who receive an abortion to be below the poverty level two years later.
Right-thinking Americans and Canadians are reeling at extreme anti-abortion laws sweeping through at least a dozen states: Alabama, Missouri, and Georgia, are the worst offenders, but Ohio, North Dakota, Kentucky, Mississippi, Iowa, and others are not far behind. Most of these laws are blatantly unconstitutional, and are designed to force SCOTUS to overturn with Roe v. Wade.
These latest lethal weapons are the logical progression of the War on Women that's been going on for at least 30 years. Democrats and most liberal Americans sat idly by while anti-abortion-rights forces took over one state legislature after the next, setting up obstacle after obstacle designed to prevent access to safe, legal abortion, thereby limiting the human rights of great swaths of American women.
While all anyone could talk about was Roe v. Wade, that poorly-written law became irrelevant for millions of women. American women in all states technically had the right to obtain an abortion, just as African Americans technically had the right to vote in 1957 Mississippi. Rights without access are meaningless.
How does the right to abortion become meaningless?
Parental consent, parental notification, spousal notification, mandatory counseling, mandatory waiting periods, prohibitions against funding, prohibitions against private insurance coverage, mandatory multiple visits, mandatory hospital stays, gestational limits, practitioner refusals, disinformation about medical consequences – all this has been going on, all over the country. In 2005 I wrote that Roe was meaningless, and it's not like I was prescient.
Of course we should be outraged by the laws recently passed in Alabama and elsewhere, but we shouldn't be at all surprised, and surely not shocked.
And of course we should be outraged at the Republicans passing these laws, but if you're not equally outraged at the Democrats, you have a lot to answer for.
One of the very best things I've seen written about this is by Rebecca Traister, writing in The Cut: "Our Fury Over Abortion Was Dismissed for Decades As Hysterical".I have been thinking, like so many people this week, about rage. Who I'm mad at, what that anger's good for, how what makes me maddest is the way the madness has long gone unrespected, even by those who have relied on it for their gains.There is actually some good news on this front, as the anger over Trump spurred activism in the US. Traister:
For as long as I have been a cogent adult, and actually before that, I have watched people devote their lives, their furious energies, to fighting against the steady, merciless, punitive erosion of reproductive rights. And I have watched as politicians – not just on the right, but members of my own party – and the writers and pundits who cover them, treat reproductive rights and justice advocates as if they were fantasists enacting dystopian fiction.
This week, the most aggressive abortion bans since Roe v. Wade swept through states, explicitly designed to challenge and ultimately reverse Roe at the Supreme Court level. With them has come the dawning of a broad realization – a clear, bright, detailed vision of what's at stake, and what's ahead. (If not, yet, full comprehension of the harm that has already been done).
As it comes into view, I am of course livid at the Republican Party that has been working toward this for decades. These right-wing ghouls – who fulminate idiotically about how women could still be allowed to get abortions before they know they are pregnant (Alabama's Clyde Chambliss) or try to legislate the medically impossible removal of ectopic pregnancy and reimplantation into the uterus (Ohio's John Becker) – are the stuff of unimaginably gothic horror. Ever since Roe was decided in 1973, conservatives have been laboring to roll back abortion access, with absolutely zero knowledge of or interest in how reproduction works. And all the while, those who have been trying to sound the alarm have been shooed off as silly hysterics.
Which is why I am almost as mad at many on the left, theoretically on the side of reproductive rights and justice, who have refused, somehow, to see this coming or act aggressively to forestall it. I have no small amount of rage stored for those in the Democratic Party who have relied on the engaged fury of voters committed to reproductive autonomy to elect them, at the same time that they have treated the efforts of activists trying to stave off this future as inconvenient irritants.
This includes, of course, the Democrats (notably Joe Biden) who long supported the Hyde Amendment, the legislative rider that has barred the use of federal insurance programs from paying for abortion, making reproductive health care inaccessible to poor women since 1976. During health-care reform, Barack Obama referred to Hyde as a "tradition" and questions of abortion access as "a distraction." I've spent my life listening to Democrats call abortion a niche issue – and worse, one that is somehow repellent to voters, even though support for Roe is in fact among the most broadly popular positions of the Democratic Party; seven in ten Americans want abortion to remain legal, even in conservative states.
You can try to tell these Democrats this – lots of people have been trying to tell them for a while now – but it won't matter; they will only explain to you (a furious person) that they (calm, wise, knowledgeable about politics) understand that we need a big tent and can't have a litmus test and please be reasonable: we shouldn't shut anyone out because of a difference on one issue. (That one issue that we shouldn't shut people out because of is always abortion). Every single time Democrats come up with a new strategy to win purple and red areas, it is the same strategy: hey, let's jettison abortion! (If you object to this, you will be told you are standing in the way of the greater progressive project).And at the end of 2018, the Guttmacher Institute reported that 2018 was the first year since at least 2000 in which the number of state policies enacted to expand or protect abortion rights and access, and contraceptive access, outnumbered the number of state restrictions. Why? Because growing realization of what was at stake – and resulting anger and activism, pressure applied to state legislatures – led representatives to act.If this extreme anti-woman movement disgusts and offends you, if you understand that abortion rights are human rights, if you understand that women's freedom, dignity, and personhood are at stake, please get involved. You are very late to the fight – but not too late.
For my money, I'd leave lobbying to the organizations with the resources to do it best, such as NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood. Donate to those groups, of course. But I believe it's more important (or at least equally important) to help individual women exercise their constitutional rights and their human rights. To do that, the National Network of Abortion Funds (N-NAF) is the place to start. Join. Give. Organize.
All of these posts (and more!) can be found at wmtc, under the reproductive rights tag.
1 comment:
Thanks -- for the post and the links.
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