Throughout history in the United States of America, women have had to overcome many obstacles in order to gain the human rights that should not have to be fought for but should be a birth right. Some of the most important of these rights are focused around sexual health and reproduction. The feminist legislation of reproductive rights has been a huge ally in making sure that women all over the United States have the choice to receive safe and legal abortions. In 2011 there have been several bills voted on in states such as Ohio and Mississippi that have created a “war on women” a term coined by a writer for the New York Times. These bills would make it practically impossible for a woman to have a safe and legal abortion if she needed to which would cause a horrible rise in crime and deaths of women in “back ally” abortions. In Ohio, the “Heartbeat Bill” would make it so that women can’t have an abortion when the fetus has a heartbeat; which is 6 weeks in most cases. That is a time that women rarely realize that they are pregnant. This bill does not take into account the safety of the woman or any sort of exceptions to the 6 week rule such as rape, incest or the woman’s ability to even birth a child and whether or not that could put her life at risk. In Mississippi, the “Personhood Amendment” (which was thankfully voted down by the Mississippi voters), would have declared that “life” begins at fertilization; therefore completely overturning Roe v. Wade. How is it that after women have come so far in the ways of reproductive rights that in 2011 these huge downfalls in the journey of reproductive health rights have occurred? Exploring the history of the feminist legislation is going to help explain this question. Looking at the history and current affairs of the controversy of pro-choice vs. pro-life, how religion and the religious right play a role in the pro-life bullet points and an intersectional view of how women of color were and are affected by the reproductive health debates in the United States.
The history behind the pro-life/pro-choice movements has been dramatic and ongoing. Abortion was illegal in the United States and re-legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, a decision to protect the health of the woman making it possible to attain a safe and legal abortion. History has shown that “if abortion is outlawed, women don’t seek services less frequently; they just survive them less often” (58 Christina Page). In the 1920s, the abortion rate is about the same as today where one in five ended in illegal abortion (58 Page). Being pregnant when you want to be is a really wonderful thing but “being pregnant when you have been raped or coerced into sex or are unready or unable to care for a child is one of the worst and most dangerous experiences a woman can have” (97 Anne Firth Murray). The media creates a mind-set that the only people who seek abortion are pro-choice women, but that really is not the case. “40 percent of women who have abortions in the United States are Evangelical Christian or Catholic… the majority of women in the United States (61 percent) having abortions are already moms” (58-59 Page). This is important to the exploration of the pro-life vs. pro-choice relationship because the hypocrisy of the Catholic woman who most likely calls herself pro-life and has an abortion is overwhelming. Not being able to put yourself in the woman’s shoes who needs the abortion because of the plethora of reasons she could have is something that would seem like as soon as you do you see clearly, but clearly this is not the case. In 1993 a law went into effect that makes it so that a pregnant Mississippi teenager is required written consent of both parents to have an abortion (60 Page). With the pro-life movement there really isn’t any distinction between the earliest abortion and the latest but with pro-choicers, “pregnancy takes place along a kind of ladder” (62 Page). The Mifeprex pill allows a woman to terminate a pregnancy without surgical intervention as early as four weeks and it was not until 2000 when it was successfully allowed in the United States. Due to the pro-life movement keeping it out of the country for years, doctors weren’t able to research the other possible uses of this medication such as treatment of “breast cancer, Cushing’s syndrome, endometriosis, glaucoma, meningiomas, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, uterine fibroids, brain tumors, and even bipolar depression” (63 Page). Pro-life groups such as “Concerned Women for America” are against this form of abortion because they claim that it is “unsafe.” Safety concerns have become a way for the pro-lifers to push their agenda on the people of America. “Of more than 350,000 American women who have used this drug since 2000, less than 1 percent have had a complication. The likelihood of death resulting from a medication abortion is .00085 percent… compare this risk to dying during childbirth, which is 1 in 2,500” (64 Page). Access to safe and legal abortion is extremely important because “more than a quarter of pregnancies worldwide, about 50 million annually, end in abortion” (97 Firth). With such a high number, it shows that this is a common procedure that needs to be done safely to protect the reproductive health of the woman. An incorrectly performed procedure could lead to sterility or death. Only 5 women in the United States have died from the Mifeprex medication and the FDA investigated this only to conclude that “a causal relationship between the drug and these deaths could not be established” (64 Page).
The religious agenda comes out when “the pro-life movement argues, ‘Just say no to sex until marriage.’ (This ignores the fact that many abortions, just like un-wanted pregnancies, happen to married women too – nearly 1 in 5 women having an abortion in the United States is married)” (65 Page). The Christian bible, for example, doesn’t actually ever condemn abortion the closest interpretation of how it would is in Exodus 21:22, “which speaks of accidental abortion. This imposes a financial penalty on a man who caused a woman to miscarry ‘in the course of a brawl’ (NEB). The issue here is the father’s right to progeny” (35 Daniel C. Maguire). In the early Catholic teaching on contraception and abortion were “thought to be associated with sorcery and witchcraft” (34 Maguire). In the year 1230 abortion and contraception were both treated as forms of homicide (34 Maguire). There is a view held by Saint Thomas Aquinas that an early abortion is not considered killing a person because an early fetus would not have the “status of person, nor would killing it fit the category of murder” (37 Maguire). One of the many reasons as well that the Catholic faith spoke out against abortion early on is because it was, until the 20th century, extremely dangerous for a woman to have one. “A pro-choice position coexists alongside a no choice position in Catholic history” (38 Maguire) and it does not claim that forbidding all contraception and abortion is infallible. Pro-life activists currently like to uphold a “sanctity of life” argument as the late comedian George Carlin would proclaim. This “sanctity of life” argument is used to instill a feeling of guilt within Americans that if someone is pro-choice then they do not care about how important life is. The Christian right tries to use religion and politics, two things that really should not be mixing due to separation of church and state, to push their agenda on the American people. They use scare tactics like graphic, bloody abortion pictures to picket places like Planned Parenthood and other pro-choice, pro-woman organizations. It is an extremely invasive often emotionally traumatizing experience regardless of the reasoning but it is the woman’s right to her own body and that should not be something that should try to be controlled by the government or a religious institution. The scare-tactics are a terrorist approach to controlling a woman’s body. Some right-wing politicians actually make up statistics to make these groups sound like evil baby-killers. Senator Jon Kyl, republican of Arizona, gave a speech including that 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions. The truth is that Planned Parenthood only does about 3 percent of abortion-related procedures. This was during the debate to de-fund Planned Parenthood, one of the many anti-woman, anti-poor and racist debates that have been brought up in 2011. Planned Parenthood is extremely affordable which makes it a really great place for underprivileged people to go to for health care services. The anti-choice/pro-life movement has been extremely against groups like Planned Parenthood because they perform abortions and provide affordable contraception. Openly talking about the correct way to use birth control is often seen by pro-lifers as encouraging sex for unmarried, often younger people. Yet, if people know how to use contraception correctly then accidental pregnancies would be fewer which would in turn probably result in fewer abortions due to accidental pregnancy. It seems a little contradictory to their argument.
How women of color are and were affected by the reproductive rights health debates is an important factor to consider regarding how far women have come and the current politics surrounding the debate. Kathie Sarachild of Redstockings claims that “some Black Nationalists charge that the white power structure not only favors abortion law repeal, but is actually pushing it as a means of eliminating the black population, as well as all poor people” (55 Jennifer Nelson). This may seem extreme, but is it really? After looking at the entire history of the United States with race relations this is not completely out of the realm of possibilities. The Third World Women’s Workshop made a statement that included, “We will also fight the racist laws which have been proposed in some states, which stipulate that welfare mothers must be sterilized after they have had a certain number of children” (55 Nelson). Pro-choice is not just about being able to choose to have an abortion; it is also about the right to choose to have a child; it is reproductive freedom. Someone revoking your right to have a child seems just as horrible as revoking your right to a safe and legal abortion because it is removing the control you have over your own body as a woman. The Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA) acknowledge that “through forced sterilization or the denial of adequate welfare benefits – are directly related to policies that compel women to have children, on the view that this is their primary human function” (56 Nelson). Somehow throughout the 1960s and early 1970s the argument on black women controlling their own reproduction got lost in the Black Nationalist movement with men’s voices taking over. Black women do not get credit very often for the work they have done with reproductive rights, even the white feminists have not acknowledged them. “In listening to black women, one discovers that they offered a more complicated view of reproductive control than did either Black Nationalists or white women’s liberationists” (56 Nelson). The black women who were working on this movement disagreed with the claim that the use of abortion by black women “spelled genocide for the race” (56 Nelson). The black women fought for a wider range in the pro-choice agenda, wanting to include things that have been experienced by women of color such as forced, involuntary sterilization. The feminist white women during the 1960s and 70s did not include a reproductive rights agenda “that synthesized anti-poverty politics, welfare rights, and access to reproductive and basic health care if they wanted to include women of color in their movement” (57 Nelson). During the beginning of the feminist movement it is not often noted that for a rebellion against the patriarchical society, it was extremely narrow-minded and extremely focused on the needs of white, middle-class women and had nothing to do with women of color or women affected by poverty. It was almost an inadvertent form of racism from these white feminists. Perhaps it was intentional, either way it is not acknowledging an entire group of women who also strive for equality and reproductive freedom. Due to an intersectional movement in the past couple of decades this “accidental” racism is fading but it is also another thing that cannot be ignored during this “war on women” where all women, all people, need to fight for the human rights that allow women the freedom to their own bodies and minds.
The history of feminist legislation of reproduction and sexual health spans far with two extreme sides debating against one another. From everything that has happened and will happen the American pro-choice people in this country need to pay attention and not let the rights of women be slowly stripped away. This means women and men of all socio-economic statuses, race, gender and sexual orientation need to get out and voice their opinions to fight against what has been happening to women in 2011. This really has become a “war on women” and we have come so far there is just no way should women of this country have to suffer such a huge backlash in reproductive rights and health care.
Works Cited
Baer, Judith A. Historical and Multicultural Encyclopedia of Women's Reproductive Rights in the United States. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002. Print.
Macguire, Daniel C. Sacred Choices: The Right to Contraception and Abortion in Ten World Religions. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. Print.
Murray, Anne Firth. From Outrage to Courage. Monroe: Common Courage Press, 2008. Print.
Nelson, Jennifer. Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Print.
Page, Christina. How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex. New York: Basic Books, 2006. Print.
Rose, Melody. Safe, Legal, and Unavailable? Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2007. Print.
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