Women fight to keep abortion legal, accessible

Jan. 22 marks the 35th anniversary of the legalization of the right to abortion in the United States. The Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 ruling in the case of Roe v. Wade finally guaranteed women the right to obtain safe, legal abortions in every state in hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices.

It was meant to be the end of unsafe procedures, self-abortions, secrecy, abortion mills, back alleys and fear, an end to injuries, infections and lifelong health problems. No longer would 5,000 women a year die from botched procedures.

This writer had many women friends who went through the anxiety, fear and difficulty of obtaining abortions prior to 1973. Two situations come to mind: a co-worker who had been raped and then received a botched abortion, only to have to struggle for medical care at a hospital, and a California university student who had to wear a blindfold and ride in a car with strangers across state lines to get to an abortion mill.

With legalization, there was no longer a need for the underground networks that had courageously defied the state and helped women obtain abortions. It meant that doctors—like the heroic Dr. Kenneth Edelin—nurses, midwives and other health care providers could aid women needing abortions without having to fear criminal harassment and prosecutions, either of their patients or themselves.

For the 1.3 million women a year who had abortions, and for their sisters, daughters and friends who would seek the procedure in the future, Roe v. Wade was a huge step forward for women’s rights and health.

Though the Supreme Court was the vehicle, this right came as a result of years of hard-fought struggle by a mass movement of women and their supporters who marched and rallied around the country. The nine justices, many of whom were conservatives, were forced to grant this important right.

Hyde Amendment was racist and anti-poor

But the ultraright, anti-choice forces immediately went on the offensive and began a campaign of violence against clinics. They got help from the capitalist political establishment. With utter contempt for low-income women, Congress passed the racist, anti-poor Hyde Amendment in 1977. It was a liberal, President Jimmy Carter, who signed it. The Hyde Amendment banned the use of Medicaid funds for abortions. Medicaid had covered 300,000 abortions annually. This was a stunning blow to poor women, especially the young, single mothers and many from African-American and Latin@ communities.

Rosie Jimenez, a single mother, was the first to die as a result of the Hyde Amendment that same year when she desperately sought an unsafe abortion.

The National Black Women’s Health Project, in a coalition with labor and civil rights groups, campaigned to gain some exceptions to the Hyde Amendment, but the law’s overall impact has hit millions of poor women hard; most states do not fund abortions.

Since then, the right to choose has been under siege by reactionaries on all sides who have been scheming to overturn Roe v. Wade—from the halls of state legislatures up to the Supreme Court, which in 2007 ruled for a federal abortion ban on certain procedures and threatens to undermine them all.

Pro-choice organizations anticipate that if the right wing succeeds in overturning Roe v. Wade, the majority of states will impose abortion bans, especially in the South, and that women will have to resort once again to desperate measures, risking their health and well-being.

Today, hundreds of local laws curtail and put obstacles in the way of access to safe abortions, while sex education and contraceptive information are also limited. A shocking 88 percent of all counties and 97 percent of rural counties have no abortion providers. Few medical schools are training doctors to perform abortions.

Many women who cannot get safe abortions where they live must raise funds to travel to other states. Often they must have later-term, costlier procedures. Because of these obstacles, some women, once again, are resorting to secret, unsafe abortions or self-abortions.

There have been dangerous government prosecutions of young Latina@ immigrants for exercising their right to choose. In 2004, Gabriela Flores, a 22-year-old farmworker and mother of three who could not afford another child, was jailed in South Carolina for four months for taking an abortifacient [abortion inducing] drug. And she is not the only one.

But the history of this movement is also filled with courage and determination by committed pro-choice activists, women’s and health care organizations. Heroic clinic workers, doctors, nurses and midwives have faced down reactionary attacks, keeping their clinics open and operating despite harassment, defacement and even arson. Bombed clinics, as in Birmingham, Ala., have been rebuilt with community support. There are doctors who, despite threats, harassment and stalking, travel to provide needed reproductive health services.

The pressure of pro-choice and women’s healthcare advocates gained the legalization of medical abortion drug RU 486 as well as Plan B, the emergency contraceptive.

There have been victories, large and small, and many outpourings and protests in support of reproductive rights. The March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C., in April 2004 was historic: more than 1 million women and their supporters participated. Two years later, grassroots organizing set back an abortion ban in South Dakota. Dedicated women’s rights activists kept clinics open in Jackson, Miss., and Birmingham, Ala., when reactionary forces tried to shut them down. And pro-choice activists fight daily state-by-state to maintain reproductive rights.

In this election year, it is important to remember what it took to win the victory encompassed in the Roe v. Wade decision. It was not due to politicians or candidates or judges, but a mass movement. Now that the majority of people support the right to choose, due to the hard work of the reproductive justice movement, it is reflected in the pro-choice positions of most liberal candidates and progressive legislation.

The reactionary right wing in the capitalist U.S. continually tries to roll back, if not wipe out, rights and gains made by people’s struggles. Right-wing candidates make misogynist assaults on reproductive rights to divert attention from the Iraq war and the deteriorating economy.

In most other industrialized countries, reproductive rights are seen as medical issues and guaranteed within the health care system.

The mass struggle is now needed to push back the right wing and to maintain and expand reproductive rights for all, especially youth, low-income women and women of color, those who face the brunt of the right-wing attacks and budget cuts.

Women need a comprehensive, government-funded health care system that covers pre-and post-natal care, contraceptives and abortions. Maternal mortality has been increasing in many poor and oppressed communities due to lack of medical care and coverage.

Today, many organizations are pushing for all aspects of reproductive rights—for sex education, family planning programs, access to contraceptives and abortions, health care, medical insurance and social programs so that women who choose to can have and raise healthy children. Some 60 groups are now pushing to overturn the Hyde Amendment, under the slogan of “Hyde—30 years is enough!”