Gov’t wages war on young women and children
By
Minnie Bruce Pratt
Published May 4, 2005 5:17 PM
Right-wing forces in the United States
continue their ferocious assault on women’s reproductive rights.
The
House of Representatives passed a bill on April 27 that would make it a federal
crime for any adult to accompany a young girl across state lines to seek an
abortion without her parents’ consent. The Senate will consider a similar
bill later this year.
This law follows on the heels of passage of the
“Born-Alive Infants Pro tection Act,” signed into law by President
George W. Bush in August 2004. The law requires “resuscitation” of
aborted fetuses showing certain physical signs, no matter how early the
abortion. The bill is another effort by the National Right-to-Life Committee to
legally re-name the fetus as a “person” as a way to limit abortions.
(Catholic Herald)
Parental notification laws have also been part of the
reactionary campaign. The result has been serious limitation on access to
abortion for the many girls who are victims of incest and rape within their
families, or who fear rejection and punishment by their parents for acts of
sexual autonomy.
Because of the decades-long attack by reactionary
forces, some states, like Ala ska, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Nebra ska, Utah and
Wyoming, no longer have abortion clinics. Other states, like Louisiana, have
only a few clinics to serve a huge geographical area.
This most recent
bill that tightens parental notification would make a felon out of an
18-year-old woman from Idaho who accompanied a frightened 17-year-old under-age
friend forced to travel to Colorado, Montana or Washington State to find a
clinic. In fact, any adult person over 18 would be a potential felon if they
drove, rode on a bus or train, flew or walked with that young woman so she could
bypass punitive parents and have a friend with her as she got her
abortion.
Supporters of the right-wing legislation characterize it as
“pro-family.” These forces rejected an amendment of the bill that
would allow grandparents or clergy members to accompany young women. (New York
Times, April 28)
A state agency in Florida showed the hypocrisy of the
parental consent position on April 30 when it rejected the request of a
13-year-old girl for an abortion. This decision directly contradicted a Florida
state law that specifically does not require a minor to obtain parental consent
for an abortion.
The young woman, who is three months pregnant and a ward
of the state, was told by the Department of Children and Families that she was
“too young to choose.” The American Civil Liberties Union is
mounting a campaign against the ruling. (BBC)
The governor of Florida is
President Bush’s brother, Jeb Bush.
Racist war on
children
The rising right-wing campaign against young women showed its
racist face in another brutal attack in Florida in late April.
Schoolteachers called police on a 5-year-old African American girl who
became upset and agitated in her math class. A video camera that was turned on
in the room at the time captured three cops wrestling the child and handcuffing
her while she cried out for her mother. (BBC)
In New York City, racist
attacks against young girls and boys have taken the form of testing new drugs on
HIV-positive children who are in group homes, many run by the Catholic Church
under the aegis of the city’s Administration for Children’s Services
(ACS). Ninety-nine percent of these 23,000 children are African American or
Latin@. (BBC)
A 2004 BBC program, “Guinea Pig Kids,” exposed
the abuse. The ACS enrolled the children, without their relatives’ or
guardians’ consent, into HIV treatments that were experimental and
sickeningly toxic. One skilled pediatric nurse, Jacklyn Hoerger, who saw the
horrifying effects of the drug trials, took the children in her care off the
medication. For this action she was accused in court of being a “child
abuser.”
A community group that includes Millions for Reparations,
the December 12th Movement, the Circulo Bolivariano and the Harlem Tenants
Council has organized under the slogan of “No More Tuskegee
Experiments” to fight the government’s abuse of children. For more
information, contact: [email protected].
The first strike of
this current war on women and children of color was the passage of the infamous
Hyde Amendment in 1976, which banned federal funding of abortions through
Medicaid. The war’s first victim was Rosie Jimenez. A Chicana resident of
Texas, a college student, factory worker and mother, Jimenez died in early 1977
of a back-alley abortion.
The current reactionary attack on women is an
extension of that racist, sexist war on poor women—and demands a fighting
response.
The attacks challenge the women’s movement to return to
the grassroots organizing done by groups like the “Janes” of
Chicago, who for many years before the passage of Roe v. Wade ran an underground
abortion provider service for women of all nationalities who needed their
care.
These attacks that focus on children of color, especially young
women, challenge the larger women’s movement to a special effort to
incorporate the needs of children, particularly children of oppressed
nationalities, into its current fight for reproductive rights.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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