by Ona Tzinger
HARTFORD, Conn.—Emboldened by their gains in November’s midterm elections, conservative legislators across the country are working to systematically chip away at abortion rights at the local and state levels.
They are seeking to introduce bills that would redefine fetal viability to a nearly unprecedented 20 weeks, require women considering abortion to view an ultrasound of the fetus and to seek counseling about their decision, limit insurance coverage of abortion and other reproductive procedures, and alter tax laws in order to penalize businesses that provide abortion coverage.
According to a recent NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) report, in 15 states both the legislature and the governor are explicitly anti-abortion. A recent New York Times article explained that in 2010 over 30 laws to restrict abortion were adopted in nine states. A Nebraska law bans abortions after 20 weeks, excluding cases where the woman’s life is immediately threatened. Similar measures are underway in other states, including Iowa, Indiana, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma.
This ban and other legislation aimed at reversing the gains of Roe v. Wade, are based on the uncorroborated claim that fetuses can feel pain at this point in the pregnancy. Oklahoma enacted a requirement last year that women undergoing an abortion watch the entire procedure on an ultra-sound screen and listen to a technician explaining the procedure in meticulous detail as it is performed. This outrageous requirement is rife with sexist discrimination and would never be compulsory for any other procedure such as leg or heart surgery.
The push within the anti-abortion movement to stress fetal “personhood”—or the idea that a fetus is a full human deserving of rights even at the expense of the pregnant woman’s rights—is not a new strategy. Since the introduction of reproductive technologies such as ultra-sound in reproductive care, anti-choicers have used fetal imagery on billboards and in movies to humanize the fetus and even grant it superhuman status while diminishing the personhood of the pregnant woman. It is important to note that anti-choice ideology not only privileges the fetus over the woman but also positions women seeking abortions as unfeeling, selfish, and irresponsible.
Anti-choicers argue that a fetus belongs to all of society and thus an individual woman should not have the right to determine one “innocent” life (even though it is growing within her body and she must sacrifice to produce, and later raise and pay for this life). However, if society at large is indeed responsible for protecting the growing fetus, why are pregnant women the only ones whose behavior comes under social and legal scrutiny? Why are other entities that are potentially threatening to a pregnancy, such as private industry, let off the hook? Why are there no laws that ban companies from producing waste that is toxic to a growing fetus?
Moreover, anti-choicers argue for defending the life of innocent “unborn children” but have nothing to say about the lack of social and economic resources that propel many women to resort to abortion in the first place. Perhaps they fail to recognize that defending fetal rights are fruitless if there are no resources in place to defend children’s rights.
It is notable but unsurprising that the attacks outlined above are being waged under Obama’s allegedly pro-choice administration, which recently passed a health-care bill that renewed the Hyde Amendment—banning the use of federal monies for abortion. This bill nearly ensures that low-income women, who are disproportionately women of color, are denied the legal right to abortions when they can’t afford private insurance.
Here in Connecticut, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives during the week of Jan. 17 that would effectively eliminate insurance coverage for abortion and penalize businesses that seek insurance policies that cover abortion and other reproductive care.
In response to these mounting attacks, on Jan. 21, Socialist Action Connecticut hosted a forum both to commemorate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade—the Jan. 22, 1973, landmark Supreme Court decision that reversed all state laws blocking legal abortion in the United States—and to underscore the urgency of continuing the struggle for full reproductive freedom. The featured speakers included women’s rights activist and Socialist Action member Aubrey Arpie, and a long-time women’s and labor rights activist and PhD candidate from the University of Connecticut, Bayla Ostrach.
Arpie opened the forum with a talk on the history of abortion criminalization and re-legalization in the U.S.
She explained that “women around the world have engaged in pregnancy termination for thousands of years, and for most of this time they were performed safely and legally,” and further that “when the U.S. Constitution was adopted, first trimester abortions were legal and common.”
She explained that at that time reproductive and gynecological care was dominated by women and midwives (which seems quite logical). However, as medicine developed as a professional career that required university training, only relatively wealthy men could afford this type of schooling and thus came to dominate the field. The newly trained male doctors felt threatened by midwives and other lay healers, and so they worked with state legislators to effectively criminalize abortion and eradicate any competition.
Aside from ensuring that women were erased from reproductive care, abortion laws were also developed in many states because racist policy-makers felt the threat of high fertility rates among new immigrants and feared that the white population would diminish.
Forum organizers made a point to acknowledge that the battle for reproductive freedom is not singular or universal. Women of color within the U.S. have a unique history of reproductive oppression that includes coerced sterilization, forced birth control, and social conditions that make it hard for them to raise children. Arpie noted that reproductive freedom not only means the right not to have children—through open access to birth control and abortion—but also the freedom to have children and to parent them without fear of economic deprivation.
All of these abuses stem from the potent combination of racism and sexism fostered by the ruling class. As Arpie noted, “It is in the interest of the ruling class to ensure that oppressed nationalities and groups remain in the minority and to continuously deny them rights in order to divide the working class to prevent people from fighting together for working class interests.”
Aubrey Arpie concluded that full reproductive freedom and full rights for women generally cannot be realized within a capitalist system because such injustices “[are] symptomatic of capitalism.” She noted that anti-choice laws have been made to control women and their bodies and that these laws in conjunction with the lack of social services and sufficient resources ensure that women are confined to the domestic sphere and forced to provide free labor as they raise the next generation of wage slaves. In this way capitalism ensures the perpetuation of a sexist and exploitative system.
An applied medical anthropologist by training, Bayla Ostrach spoke about her work in abortion clinics for over 10 years and her research on social and economic barriers to abortion access among low-income women in Oregon.
She provided on on-the-ground evidence of the logistical barriers that low-income women face in seeking abortions—although abortion is purportedly legal on the federal level. Her findings indicate that obstacles preventing women from easily accessing abortions include cost of the procedure, difficulties in Medicaid applications, lack of social support—and occasionally, fear of abortion protesters.
She recounted several stories of women who waited weeks and even months to learn if they qualified for Medicaid, despite the Department of Human Services’ policy that patients seeking abortion coverage must hear back from the department in no more than 24 hours. Sometimes it was too late for women to have the procedure legally by the time they learned that they qualified for Medicaid.
Based on the logistical barriers to abortion access outlined in Ostrach’s research, and the mounting legal attacks that we are seeing across the country, it is clear that attempts to undo Roe v. Wade and women’s rights generally are on the rise and must be met with resistance.
As Aubrey Arpie noted: “We’re made to beg for reforms, as if that has gotten us any closer to the freedom to choose than we were hundreds of years ago. Throughout U.S. history women have been given rights, and then have had them taken right back. All the while a woman has never been given the full choice over what to do with her body. And it won’t be given to us; we have to take it. We must refuse to be silent and apologetic about abortion. We must educate ourselves and challenge the system and demand the impossible.”
It is imperative that women speak out about their experiences with abortion and reproductive abuse in order to de-stigmatize abortion and expose the sexist oppression they suffer. Socialist Action argues for building a mass movement that unites women of all ethnicities, and men, to fight for women’s rights. At the same time we must struggle to replace the capitalist system, which engenders women’s oppression.
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