Reproductive rights under further attack

In Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the lives of women and their reproductive capacity are controlled by a totalitarian, theocratic and male-dominated state. In the Republic of Gilead, women are not allowed to read or be educated, and they are classified by their subordinate role to men and procreation. Handmaids are fertile women who have been rehabilitated after breaking strict social and gender laws. Their function in society is to be impregnated and bear children for wives, the spouses of the ruling male commanders. Lesbian, gay, bi and trans people and women of color are among the very lowest social castes.

While Atwood’s dystopian future is the fruit of the author’s imagination, has the ruling class here already begun implementing a terrifying version of Gilead when it comes to women’s reproductive capacities and roles in class society?

On June 27, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 2005 district court injunction, ordering South Dakota to start enforcing its “informed consent” law. This benign-sounding law is anything but. It will force physicians to issue a state-mandated written statement to women seeking abortions that the procedure will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.” It states a woman has an “existing relationship with that unborn human being and that the relationship enjoys protection” under the law and that abortion will terminate such a relationship. It requires the statement to include unproven “facts” that abortion causes depression and suicide among women.

Sarah Stoesz, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, called the court’s opinion “unprecedented in scope and unmatched in its intrusion on First Amendment rights.” She stated further, “Planned Parenthood challenged the 2005 law because it violated the constitutional rights of doctors and patients by forcing doctors to give ideologically charged, nonscientific and inaccurate messages to their patients.” (Star Tribune, July 1)

South Dakota already has some of the most restrictive laws on abortion in the country, as well as a low rate of abortion among pregnant women. There is but one clinic providing abortions in the entire state.

The same forces behind the “informed consent” law were the ones who passed a law in 2006 outlawing all abortions in the state. That draconian legislation was overturned by a vote of the people in November of that year. Now, another measure will appear on this year’s ballot that will criminalize all abortions except in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or which may endanger a woman’s health. The rules regarding these exceptions will be difficult for women to comply with and require extreme intrusion by the state.

Another blow to First Amendment rights was dealt by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California on July 2. The court gave the go-ahead for an anti-choice group to drive a truck with giant photos of supposed aborted fetuses around the streets near middle and high schools. A panel of “liberal” judges ruled that the First Amendment protects such activity: “The government cannot silence messages simply because they cause discomfort, fear or even anger.”

The court did not mention the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld a decision by a high school principal in Alaska to punish a student who unfurled a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner outside a school. One wonders if this appellate court would also uphold the right of anti-war and anti-imperialist organizations to drive around schools with photos of torture victims from Abu Ghraib or the U.S. detention camps at Guantánamo.

These appellate court decisions regarding abortion come on the heels of the April 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed certain types of abortion procedures. That ruling was universally condemned by women’s rights and reproductive rights activists for its demeaning and paternalistic ideas concerning women and women’s role in society. The ruling, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, was a highly reactionary political document that adopted and embraced the language of anti-choice rhetoric and unproven, unscientific notions regarding women and abortion. It gave the green light for rulings like those of the recent appellate courts. And it will further endanger the right of women to choose abortion that was codified in the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

The right-wing anti-woman agenda seeks to outlaw all abortions as well as contraception for women. If it succeeds, forced pregnancies and unsafe illegal abortions will take their toll on women’s and children’s lives. Will the future for women be the one envisioned in Atwood’s Republic of Gilead? Or will women fight back to demand full reproductive rights, freedom and justice and an equal role in capitalist society? Better yet, why not overturn this rotten system altogether?