Roe v. Wade anniversary
March to defend women's right to choose
By Sue Davis
Thirty-one years after the Supreme Court
affirmed women's right to have an abortion if they so choose,
that right is under serious assault in courts and legislatures
all over the country. The good news is that more than 570
groups are mobilizing for a fight-back march and rally on April
25.
Called by the Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro-Choice America,
the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood
Federation of America, the march is being co-sponsored by the
Black Women's Health Imperative, Center for Reproductive Rights
and hundreds of other groups representing women, people of
color, labor, lesbian/gay/bi/trans, civil rights, campus and
religious constituencies, as well as health clinics and service
providers.
Emboldened by passage of the ban on "partial birth"
abortions last October, anti-choice forces in Congress have
introduced the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act" which would
make it a crime to damage a fetus or cause a miscarriage. The
bill defines the fetus, not the woman, as the victim of
violence. The pregnant woman is not mentioned in the bill; nor
are there penalties for harm inflicted on the woman.
This bill would not in any way protect women's right to have
children. Its limited wording exposes the bill's real purpose:
to assert that fetuses, from the moment of conception, have the
full rights of an adult person. If the courts were to accept
this definition of "fetal personhood," that would totally
negate women's right to abortion.
A Florida appeals court ruled against "fetal personhood" on
Jan. 10 when it decided that the state could not appoint a
guardian for the fetus of a mentally disabled rape victim. The
case created controversy last spring when Gov. Jeb Bush, who is
as adamantly anti-choice as his brother, supported an Orlando
woman who sought to become the fetus's guardian.
"When you set up a guardian for a fetus, you're creating a
situation with the mother and the fetus having competing legal
rights," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American
Civil Liberties Union of Florida, who argued the case before
the appeals panel. "There was no masking that this was a
crusade to change the law, to limit the rights of women and
bring to the Supreme Court something that would overturn or
alter Roe v. Wade." (New York Times, Jan. 11)
The same tactic is being tried in California in response to
the murder of Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant when
she was killed. Her husband is being charged with two counts of
murder: one for her death and one for the fetus's.
This anti-abortion strategy, however, is not limited to the
United States. A case that would grant an unborn fetus the same
rights as a person is currently before the European Court of
Human Rights.
But that isn't the only strategy right-wing zealots are
trying to use to stop women's right to control their own
bodies. Opponents of reproductive rights in states like Kansas
are targeting adolescents' access to abortion and contraceptive
services and pumping millions of dollars into abstinence-only
education programs at the expense of comprehensive sex
education.
Building a movement to defend women's rights is sorely
needed to counter all such right-wing attacks. The April 25
demonstration in Washington, D.C., billed as the "March for
Women's Lives," projects a broad agenda, including women's
reproductive health, justice and freedom as well as family
planning and the right to have children.
As the organizers noted in a recent press release, "We will
not allow women's lives to be lost or ruined by unjust laws and
insensitive regulations promulgated by those who put women
last."
Reprinted from the Jan. 22, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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