In the Roe v. Wade
Decision of January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court declared the right to
an abortion is a fundamental liberty that the state must have a very
strong interest to limit. The Court ruled that the woman’s liberty
right (right to control whether or not she is pregnant) is stronger
than the state’s interest in the fetus’ life up until a certain
point in the pregnancy. That point is the “point of viability” -
when the fetus could survive on its own outside of the womb.
Even though Roe
established women’s constitutional right to privacy for an
abortion, conservative lawmakers argue it should be overturned. If
Roe is limited or overturned, state officials could seek to enforce
it. In other states, where courts have blocked or limited a pre-Roe
ban based on the decision, officials could file court actions asking
courts to activate the ban if Roe fell. Then, states will have the
tools necessary to make abortion almost or entirely inaccessible for
tens of millions of Americans.
However, there is much
more at stake in Roe than a woman's right to have an abortion. What's
in the balance is much more far reaching. Politicians should not be
making decisions on behalf of women regarding their bodies. Women are
not vessels, or incubators, or an undifferentiated natural resource.
Women are human beings whose human rights matter.
Very personal, medical
ethics decisions like a woman's choice to abort should be between a
woman and her doctor. Individuals who are most marginalized in our
society would be harmed if that choice is taken away. Healthcare
should be available to all, and abortion care is healthcare. We also
cannot forget that women are not the only people who get abortions;
transgender and non-binary Americans are also impacted by these
restrictions.
Laurie Penny of The New
Republic (2019) addresses anti-abortion measures taken in Ohio
that she considers a frontal assault on women’s right to choose.
Penny explains …
“Right now in Ohio,
there is an a 11-year-old child who was abducted, raped, and made
pregnant. It’s easy to see, by any sane moral measure, how a regime
that forces a child to carry this pregnancy to full term and give
birth is monstrous, heartless, and immoral. And it’s just as clear
that a state that threatens to kill that child unless she bears that
pregnancy to full term and gives birth is morally equivalent to the
rapist – taking away that little girl’s agency, declaring that
her pain is unimportant, that she has no right to decide who has
access to her body.
“But the crucial
connective point, the point that gets shunted to the side in the
culture-war rhetoric of abortion outrage, is this: It is equally
monstrous to inflict the same punishment on a woman in her thirties
who doesn’t want to be a mother just because the condom broke on a
Tinder hookup. She, too, deserves bodily autonomy. She should not
have to beg for it just because some religious extremists and
Viagra-addled Republican lawmakers are frightened of women who fuck
freely and without remorse. Seen in this light, forced-birth
extremism is the logical extension of rape culture.”
(LAURIE
PENNY. “Women’s Bodies Is All About Conservative Male Power.”
The New
Republic. May 17, 2019.)
Freda Levenson, legal
director for the ACLU of Ohio, said, “Women in Ohio (and across the
nation) have the constitutional right to make this deeply personal
decision about their own bodies without interference from the state."
And, let's go way back …
even before Roe v. Wade, there was an important precedent for the
decision. In the 1965 case Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court
struck down a Connecticut law that limited birth control access. It
was one of a set of important decisions that enshrined privacy rights
into constitutional law and extended those rights to sex and
reproduction. The Court held that the Bill of Rights and the Due
Process clause of the 14th Amendment implicitly created a “zone of
privacy.”
Lawyer and writer Jill
Filipovic revealed …
“Connecticut’s ban
of contraceptive use (1965), the Court said, violated the privacy
rights of a marital relationship. That same theory was extended to
contraceptive use by non-married people, and with Roe, the court
ruled that the fundamental right to privacy encompassed a woman’s
right to decide, along with her family and her doctor, whether or not
to continue a pregnancy.”
(Jill
Filipovic. “America Will Lose More Than Abortion Rights If Roe v.
Wade Is Overturned.” Time. June 28, 2018.)
Carliss Chatman, assistant
professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law,
ponders other concerns that occur if Roe is overturned:
“If a fetus and
expectant mother are two legal people, they separately have access to
all rights and privileges. Correct?
"If a fetus is a
person at 6 weeks pregnant, is that when the child support starts? Is
that also when you can't deport the mother because she's carrying a
US citizen?
“Can I insure a 6
week fetus and collect if I miscarry? Just figuring if we're going
here we should go all in."
(Carliss
Chatman. “What's behind the absurd gamble on women's rights and
health.” CNN. May 14, 2019.)
What direct risks are at
stake? The freedom to obtain an abortion is essential to women’s
economic success at every level. Consider the social risks. According
to the Guttmacher Institute, women who lack this fundamental human
right are at greater risk of poverty, abuse and poor health.
“The decision whether
or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her
well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself.
When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated
as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”
-- Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsberg
There are women who become
pregnant from rape and incest, women who are told they won't survive
the birth of their children, women whose children won't survive
birth, women whose children die before even exiting the womb, women
who cannot financially afford a child, and women who just don't want
children. So many circumstances can lead to a woman's decision to
abort.
What is the most crucial
reason for Roe v. Wade? It's a simple fact that women have the right
to choose. Under Roe, women who disagree with principles of abortion
will never have to get an abortion that they don't want. However,
their viewpoint on the topic – whether it be based on religion,
culture, or a path of morality – does not constitute their right to
tell other women what to do with their bodies.
“If men
could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
– Gloria
Steinem
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