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Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn - March 15 2004
US laws unravelling reproductive rights
of women
I'm told the fastest way to ruin a columnist's career is to write
about abortion. Just the mention of it brings out the letter writers
and an entire column on the subject can overwhelm the editor's desk
with furious mail. So be it.
Last November the United States signed into law a rule banning
a procedure known by supporters as partial birth abortion. Coined
by the National Right to Life Committee, the term is as spurious
as it is emotive.
Despite this, it's been adopted by an unquestioning mainstream
media and has led to an uninformed public somehow believing that
by supporting the legislation they are saving thousands of babies,
on the verge of viable birth, from being killed.
In reality, Dilation and Extraction was a rare procedure, used
in the case of a fatally impaired foetus or to save maternal life.
Elective abortion after healthy foetus viability was already illegal,
and no one had a problem with that. After all, when was the last
time you heard of a woman aborting a healthy foetus at eight months?
Or a doctor willing to do such a thing.
Doctors across America say the legislation, with its deliberately
ambiguous language concerning gestational age, and no provision
for maternal health, leaves ample room for the government to interfere
with sound medical judgment, and could be interpreted as criminalising
all abortions.
Put simply, if the child you're carrying threatens your life, the
child's right to life trumps yours. Women in America no longer have
the right to choose not to bear a genetically damaged or severely
retarded child if the diagnosis is made in the second or third trimester.
But the machine to unravel reproductive rights in the US doesn't
stop there.
Late last month the House of Representatives adopted the so-called
Unborn Victims of Violence Act. Under the guise of protecting pregnant
women from violence, a situation already covered in law, the new
legislation covers bodily injury to a child in utero, during the
commission of a crime.
The American Civil Liberties Union describes the bill as a thinly
veiled attempt to create foetal rights and further erode women's
reproductive rights.
If the legislation is passed to the next stage, it will be the
first time a foetus at any stage of development is recognised as
an independent "victim" of a crime, with legal rights distinct from
the woman.
And then there's the new Teen Endangerment Act. This would make
it a federal crime for anyone other than a parent - including a
grandmother, aunt or older sister - to transport a minor across
state lines for an abortion unless the young woman has already met
the obligations of her state's parental involvement law.
According to the civil liberties union, a third of teenagers who
do not tell their parents about a pregnancy have already been the
victims of family violence and abuse.
In essence, this Act will separate young women from help and support
in desperate times, will give parents ultimate rights over their
teenage daughters, and turn legitimate help into criminal acts.
Take a wider view and look at Asia, where unsafe abortion accounts
for 12 per cent of all pregnancy-related deaths. According to the
World Health Organisation, that's 38,000 deaths each year. Worldwide,
78,000 women die annually from complications related to unsafe abortions.
But that hasn't stopped President George W. Bush enacting a policy
known as the global gag rule. One of his first acts in office, the
rule, also known as the Mexico City policy, prohibits any organisation
receiving funds from the US Agency for International Development,
or other private funds, to provide abortions or even inform their
patients about abortion.
Combine all these things with the stacking of the US federal judiciary
and other key political positions with anti-choice proponents.
Combine them with the increasing attacks on doctors providing abortion.
One commentator said recently that a termination was the only medical
procedure where the risk of dying was greater for the doctor than
the patient.
And, finally, combine all these with the battle to ban emergency
contraception, which, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute,
prevents 51,000 abortions a year, and it's not hard to envisage
a time when every ovum and spermatozoa will be defined as "pre-born",
a time when contraception will be banned and women will once again
be little more than wombs, their rights as citizens sustained only
so long as they quietly grow future humans.
New Zealand is not America and for now our right to choose is intact.
But given the deceptive ways in which reproductive rights are being
steadily eroded in the US, we can't sit back, confident in the gains
our older sisters and mothers made to ensure our freedoms.
Today, the old war cries of feminism sound dated. Cries like "Our
bodies, ourselves" seem little more than quaint slogans from a battle
fought, won and almost forgotten.
But get ready to dust them off, because here we go again.
ENDS
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 2004
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Barbara Sumner
Burstyn.
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