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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Pro-choice activists are mobilizing for Washington with new urgency: As more than a dozen states aim to outlaw reproductive rights, a nationwide abortion ban could be next.
Apr 21, 2004 | When an expected 1 million women descend on Washington this Sunday for the March for Women's Lives, it will be hard for the Bush administration not to hear their rallying cry in support of reproductive rights. For some pro-choice leaders who will be there, the message to be delivered en masse will be charged with vivid personal experience and decades of dedication to the issue.
"I had an illegal abortion when I was 15," says Renee Chelian, executive director of Northland Family Planning Center, which runs three abortion clinics in Detroit. "Now I'm 53 years old, and I've been working for legal abortion my entire adult life. I would like to work on other issues, maybe help battered women and children, but I'm still fighting the same battle I was in 1974."
Michigan is one of the many states where reproductive rights have been perpetually under siege since the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in 1973. "The right-wing extremists have lost none of their momentum," says Chelian, who has seen the ebb and flow of reproductive battles for 30 years. "In fact, it has picked up since George Bush has been in office."
It is in these states where the battle is intensifying, not only to put limits such as parental consent on abortion, and to inhibit family planning -- even preventing women from getting emergency contraception and the birth control pill -- but ultimately to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Indeed, the April 25 march on Washington, supported by a range of reproductive-rights groups from across the country, is propelled by a new urgency: Conservative politicians in more than a dozen states have been pushing radical anti-abortion legislation that, if it were to pass, would almost certainly thrust the issue before the Supreme Court once again. With vacancy on the top bench imminent, and with George W. Bush potentially deciding who fills the seat (or seats) if he wins reelection, that's a chilling prospect for advocates of reproductive rights.
Just last month, South Dakota came within one vote of enacting a sweeping anti-abortion law that would have outlawed the procedure entirely at any stage of pregnancy with the only exception being that of saving the woman's life. Republican Gov. Mike Rounds and many South Dakota legislators boasted that the law could become the nation's first direct challenge to Roe vs. Wade should George W. Bush get reelected and have the opportunity to appoint several anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court. The apparent strategy is to enact an unconstitutional law in order to draw a court challenge that would make its way up to the Supreme Court -- just as Bush's appointees are joining other conservatives on the bench.
While the bill in South Dakota failed this time, it had passed both houses of the state Legislature. Despite supporting the bill, Gov. Rounds sent it back to the general assembly with a few technical changes. It came within a hairbreadth of passing a second time, even though it was such an extreme measure that the anti-abortion advocacy organization National Right to Life didn't support it, stating that it was "the right bill at the wrong time." Not only would it have banned the procedure, but it would have imposed a prison sentence of up to 15 years. Because the vote was so close, that probably won't be the last time the South Dakota Legislature takes up the measure.
"We've been a testing ground for the most radical things they can dream up," says Thelma Underberg, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice South Dakota. "I checked the names of the people who testified [at the bill's hearing]. Very few people who testified were from South Dakota. It was well orchestrated by the Thomas More Law Center of Michigan, which was started by that fellow that owned Domino's Pizza," says Underberg, referring to Tom Monaghan, a conservative who has been a major funding source for anti-abortion and anti-gay activism. "They came in and got a legislator who was willing to carry the legislation."
South Dakota isn't the only state that has attempted to ban abortion outright. A bill in the Georgia Legislature would "provide that any person seeking to have an abortion ... shall first file a petition in the Superior Court." The bill also stipulates that the woman must have a jury trial, and that the court shall balance the rights of the fetus against the rights of the person seeking to have an abortion, and finally that "no abortion shall take place unless ordered by the court."
