Will Women Ever Be Free To Choose?
June 3, 2010 1 Comment
In America, anti-abortion advocates must be celebrating in the streets.
Eleven states have passed laws this year restricting abortion and 370 state bills are under consideration.
I think it’s time we finally accept that women will never be completely free to choose and there will always be an ongoing battle over rights to abortion.
Also, for the first time since polling started in 1975, there are slightly more pro-life (51%) than pro-choice (42%) Americans.
Although Roe vs. Wade is a ”Supreme Court decision that guarantees a woman’s right to an abortion”, the majority of the abortion rules are at state level.
What this means is that all those pro-life people who get into politics are able to introduce and pass laws restricting and regulating abortion.
Some of these restrictions are:
- banning abortion from being covered by insurance
- women being forced to tell doctors why they are having an abortion
- ban on abortion over 20 weeks because the fetus feels pain (this is scientifically controversial)
- ban on late-term/partial-birth abortion
- requiring counselling before abortion
- requiring a woman to have an ultrasound and listen to detailed description of the fetus
- protecting doctors who do not reveal fetal abnormalities to parents during pregnancy
- charging the mother if she does anything that knowingly causes miscarriage
There has been a reduction in abortions since 1990 in America. Some of it may be due to these restrictions, some of it may be due to other factors like less unwanted pregnancies.
In countries like Italy, where there is a negative population growth, the government has tried to entice some women to keep their babies by paying low-income families $300 per month for 13 months. Theoretically, this is similar to the baby bonus that a lot of welfare states offer families. But to have it stop at 13 months is just not practical.
What needs to be done is to look at the system as a whole and not single out abortion. Sexual health and reproductive education should be absolutely essential to any person’s education. But, of course, even with the best of intentions there can be mistakes and failures in contraception.
President Obama is known to be pro-choice and is coming in on the back of an incredibly conservative government (remember the forced abstinence classes in schools?).
Hopefully, with the changes he has already made, including approving funding for abortion overseas, supporting the Freedom of Choice Act, and restricting job safety for medical professionals who refuse to help with abortion procedures, this means that the pendulum will start to swing back in favour of the pro-choice side.
Until that happens, all we can do is keep our fingers crossed and keep fighting for the right of every woman to choose when and how she wants to have children.
Also read:
Fetal Abnormalities? Now Doctors Can Legally Hide This From You
Tiller Killer Gets 50 Years In Jail
What about the rights of the children? Don’t they have a right to choose which they would prefer… the ability to choose the opportunity of a life that everyone of us who are alive had? You nor I would be here if we weren’t given our right… =/