LESA MARTIN
“ABORTION is legal because
of Roe v. Wade. It’s here to stay.” ---Anonymous and much too prevailing.
In 1973, the US Supreme
Court ruled that the 14th Amendment right to privacy extends to a
woman’s decision to have an abortion. Since then, politicians have tried to
limit abortion with laws like parental consent, spousal notification, barred
“partial-birth” abortion, required waiting periods before getting abortions, required
vaginal ultrasound with monitor facing the woman along with doctor’s verbal
description, and laws barring government funds of abortions. . . .
Chip, chip chip. So, how are
we doing now in 2012?
Let’s begin by comparing
these two photos:
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| 2003 Then President Bush signs legislation banning so-called “partial-birth” abortions Reuters/Kevin Lamarque |
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| 2012 House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on religious liberty and the birth control |
Both photos are prototypical
scenes of men making decisions about women’s
health care rights. Decisions that
can send women and doctors to jail. These laws can ultimately send women to
back alley abortion hideouts---remember those?
Now, let’s look at some recent flurries targeting
women’s health rights:
The "Religious Freedom
Restoration Act of 2012", introduced by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), would
allow any company or institution to refuse coverage of contraceptives based on
religious beliefs. The employee’s
religious beliefs do not matter.
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) is further
pushing to amend the Affordable Care Act to allow any employer to exclude any
health service coverage, no matter how critical or basic, by claiming that it
violates their religious or moral convictions. Again, the employee’s covictions
do not count.
House Republicans voted recently
to strip federal funding solely from Planned Parenthood in a bill introduced by
Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) who hopes Roe v. Wade is soon be reversed. By starving
PP and therefore the health services that PP provides to so many women, such as
contraceptives, HIV tests, cancer screenings, STD tests, breast exams that are
now critically threatened, Mike Pence and the GOP attempt to thoroughly crush
Planned Parenthood (even though PP does not spend federal money on abortion
services).
The House passed an act to
further prevent taxpayer money from funding abortions that allows hospitals to
deny even emergency abortions to women who have been raped if the rape is not
proved to be physically fought off:
for example, if the victim was drugged or verbally threatened and then raped,
or if the victim was a minor impregnated by an adult.
House Republicans also
passed the “Protect Life Act”, known by women’s health advocates as the “Let
Women Die” bill. Under this act, hospitals that receive federal funds can
reject any woman in need of an abortion procedure, even if the abortion is
necessary to save her life.
Some states are pushing
bills to force women who try to obtain an abortion
to first have a transvaginal
ultrasound of the fetus (what do you
call it when someone tries to force something into a woman’s vagina against her
will?). Further, doctors in Texas and Kentucky are required by the new law to
verbally describe the image to the patient if she won’t look at it.
So, from Bush’s gag rule
(which Obama over-turned) that forbade doctors (whose international foundations
received US$) to even mention abortion as an option, now we have GOP
politicians requiring doctors to use
explicit language describing the fetus to women who are required to have their vaginas probed.
In Ohio, Republicans are
trying to pass a bill to ban abortions when a heartbeat is detectable with no
exception for rape or incest. This
could ban abortions possibly as early as 6-7 weeks into pregnancy (many women
don’t even know that they are pregnant at this stage).
In Virginia, a bill passed
defining personhood as started at
conception and "provides that unborn children at every stage of
development enjoy all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other
persons, citizens, and residents of the Commonwealth." This opens the floodgates to now also
ban contraceptives and stem cell research.
The House Committee on the
Judiciary recently conducted a legislative mark up of the Susan B. Anthony and
Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act. This bill could criminalize doctors who provide abortion
services and would provide legal recourse for the family members of a woman who
decides to have an abortion.
Now let’s hear what people are saying in defense of
this War Against Women:
“The idea that the church
can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is
absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.” ---Rick
Santorum, Republican presidential candidate for 2012
"I don't believe in an
America where the separation of church and state are absolute," ---Rick
Santorum, who old 'This Week' host George
Stephanopoulos
Referring to the
contraceptive debate:
“The fact that the White
House thinks this is about contraception is the whole problem. This is about
freedom of religion.” ---Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell whose sense of freedom does not include
women’s health choices
“Many of the Christian faith
have said, well, that’s OK; contraception is OK. It’s not OK. It’s a license to
do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to
be.”---Rick Santorum who thinks he knows
how things are supposed to be for all women
“[Mr. Obama had carried out
the worst] attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious
tolerance [in the history of the country]”. ---Mitt Romney, Republican
presidential candidate
“We are still afraid that we
are being called upon to subsidize something we find morally illicit.…What
right does a federal bureau have to define the who, what, where and how of
religious practice?”---Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York who has no problem with his religion
defining the who, what, where and how of all women
Addressing the Federal
defunding of Planned Parenthood:
"Nobody is saying
Planned Parenthood can't be the leading advocate of abortion on demand, but why
do I have to pay for it?"
“What’s clear to me, if you
follow the money, you can actually take the funding supports out of abortion.”---Rep.
Mike Pence (R-Ind.) who single-mindedly
hopes to destroy PP which could then lead to the banning of all abortion.
Regarding the banning of abortion even in cases of rape:
“Well, you can make the
argument that if she [the rape victim] doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her
child, that that, too, could ruin her life.…And so to embrace her and to love
her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time… I believe
and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the
sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human
life, and accept what God has given to you.”---Rick Santorum, presidential
candidate for 2012
Regarding the required invasive transvaginal
ultrasound and the required verbal description of fetus by doctor:
Referring to placing the
screen before the patient and requiring doctors to point out the physical
features of the fetus and saying that it does women a favor--- “When someone is
already under a great deal of stress, the burden should not be on the person to
ask,” she says. “The responsibility should be on the provider to tell, or in
this case, display.”---Mary Spaulding Balch, director of state legislation for
National Right to Life
Now, let’s hear what people who advocate healthcare
rights for women say:
Regarding the recent
hearings on contraception coverage:
“Where are the women? It’s
outrageous that the Republicans would not allow a single individual
representing the tens of millions of women who want and need insurance coverage
for basic preventive health care services, including family planning.”---Rep.
Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) before walking out on the hearing
Regarding Sen. Roy Blunt’s
amendment to allow any employer or insurance plan to deny coverage based on
religious or moral reasons:
“…a health plan could refuse
to cover mental health care on the grounds that the plan believes that
psychiatric problems should be treated with prayer.”---Igor Volsky, of
ThinkProgress
"Sen. Blunt’s proposal
would render the notion of health insurance meaningless, and give businesses
and corporations effective veto power over their employee’s health care
decisions," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood
About the Federal defunding
of Planned Parenthood:
“I’m concerned that some of
these restrictions on reproductive health are going to whip through Congress
and people aren’t going to see it coming.”--- Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), co-chairwoman
of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus
“This is about preventing
low-income women from getting basic health services…. But it seems that the
radical right-wingers behind this witch hunt care more about controlling
women's bodies than they do about keeping those women healthy or even saving
their lives….
It's hard to believe that,
in the year 2012, elected officials care more about a political agenda than
saving women's lives.” Shelley Berkley, senatorial candidate.
"There is a vendetta
against Planned Parenthood. …Planned Parenthood has a right to operate. Planned
Parenthood has a right to provide family planning services. Planned parenthood
has a right to perform abortions. Last time you checked, abortions were legal
in this country." Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA)
Regarding recent changes to abortion
laws:
“There are no other
situations where the legislature injects itself into the examining room and
dictates how physicians practice,” said Dr. Scott Spear, medical director for
Planned Parenthood in central Texas and the Austin region.
[Requiring vaginal probes] “It
feels like old-school punishment of women for sexual impropriety, and I think
that’s why people are responding so viscerally.”---Tracy Weitz, sociologist and
expert on abortion care, UCSF
[Requiring ultrasound
probes] “For a long time it was about shaming women and now it’s about
humiliating women.”--- Elizabeth Nash,
state issues manager with the Guttmacher Institute
“This is only the latest in
a slew of thinly veiled attempts to erode and reverse fundamental reproductive
rights of women, while further stigmatizing those women who seek out this care.…Republicans
are advancing extreme legislation that is dangerous to women’s health,
disrespects the judgment of American women, and is nothing less than the most
comprehensive and radical assault on women’s health. This is yet another blow in the war on women...”
"These actions …would
severely hurt women's rights and insert the government in private decisions
about abortion and are nothing short of an all-out war on women…Republicans are
seeking to impose an ideological agenda on the country."--- Rep. Barbara
Lee (D-Calif.)
Referring to Santorum’s view
that rape victims should not have abortions:
“The problem with Santorum’s
sense of humanity is that it doesn’t seem to extend to the victim.…Robbing a
woman [if pregnant from rape] of the choice to decide what to do with such
“horribly created” consequences only contributes to the victim’s trauma. What’s
more, Santorum’s argument forces a woman in these circumstances to share his
religious beliefs and “accept what God has given to [her.] ….the fundamental
point is that that should be her choice — not the government’s, and certainly
not Santorum’s”. ---By Tanya Somanader of ThinkProgress
So it’s chip, chip chip. Rights are only protected as much as
they are intelligently, legally, vigilantly, continuously guarded. If Rick
Santorum thinks a raped woman carries a “gift” in her violated womb, he has the
right to that belief. But he has no right to make that same rape victim carry
out the pregnancy against her own will. Not yet, anyway.
Chip, chip chip…
References:
New York Times/The Caucus by
Katherine Q. Seelye
New York Times/Ultrasound: A
Pawn in the Abortion Wars by Erik Eckholm
The Nation/2012: Year of the
Woman? By Katrina vanden Heuvel
THINKPROGRESS HEALTH/ GOP
Ups The Ante, Introduces Legislation To Allow Any Employer To Deny Any
Preventive Health Service by Igor Volsky
The Nation/The Conservative
War on Women’s Sexuality by Ben Adler
HUFFPOST/Politics/Rick
Santorum’s Birth Control Views Challenged By Women’s Groups by Anna Staver
New York Times/Obama Shift
on Providing Contraception Splits Critics by Laurie Goodstein
The Woman Behind the Politic World Section:
Lesa Martin, after retiring from a career of professional ballet and graduating from UCLA, has sparked a wonderful career as a multi-media artist. She has shown her work in the SF Momma Rental Gallery, and has many ambitious plans concerning enticing new paintings people are itching to see! Multi-faceted Mrs. Martin is also deeply engaged with politics, nose buried in the New York Times daily. Here, she brings us a real, accessible woman's perspective on politics. Enjoy!
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