Reproductive rights of young women attacked

In the continuing assault on women’s right to abortion, the majority male and millionaire Senate voted 65 to 34 on July 25 for a bill ironically named “Child Custody Protection Act” that makes it a federal crime to help a young woman obtain an abortion by crossing state lines to avoid parental notification laws.

Last year the House passed a similar measure carrying the penalty of a year in jail and a fine. President George Bush has said he will sign the bill once both houses agree on the final wording.

Is this law necessary? Those who support it claim it’s needed to defend parental rights. But in reality, there are a number of important reasons why a young woman would go to another state for an abortion and not want her parents to find out! Incest, rape, fear of punishment for getting pregnant and fear of being forced to carry an accidental pregnancy to term are obvious reasons.

It’s extremely unlikely, as the bill’s hypocritical cheerleaders claim, that a young woman would be forced to have an out-of-state abortion against her will. At the same time it’s a travesty of justice to punish a grandmother, neighbor, minister or scout leader who seeks to help a young woman caught in a desperate personal crisis. The compassion and loving kindness motivating such action should be commended, not criminalized.

That contradiction only exposes the bill’s real purpose: to further limit, stigmatize and punish a young woman who wants an abortion and to make it virtually impossible for her to avoid a pregnancy she doesn’t want. The bill will force a young woman to carry an unintended pregnancy to term, thereby exposing her to parental retaliation and totally denying her reproductive rights.

Who will be hurt the most by this bill? Poor young women of color, particularly those living in rural areas, who already have the fewest opportunities in the capitalist U.S. That makes this bill not only sexist and anti-youth but racist and anti-poor as well.

Some Senators who opposed the bill attached an amendment to create new grants for sex education and counseling to prevent pregnancies, but that amendment was defeated by a strict party-line vote of 51 to 48. That action exposes the lawmakers’ anti-sex, anti-youth bias—and their callous disregard for young women’s right to express their sexuality while controlling their reproductive capacity.

Young women in the 26 states that have parental notification laws will not be protected by the bill. Rather they will be punished and their reproductive rights denied. The bill should be renamed the “Forced Pregnancy Act” or the “Disem pow ering Young Women Act.”

Passage of this bill is yet another in a long list of reasons why those who support women’s rights need to fight to defend them.