ABORTION RIGHTS:

The Critical Issue for the Women's Movement

The following article is excerpted from an article by Janet Gallagher that appeared in WIN Magazine, March 8, 1979.

Women have always used (or sought to use) aboŕ tion to end an unwanted pregnancy just as they have always used some form or another of birth control in an effort to forestall it.

..

Before the 19th century, no laws existed prohibiting an abortion done in the first few months of pregnancy. Between 1860 and 1880, at least 40 states and territories enacted criminal penalties for abortion. Among the reasons urged were protection of maternal health; Victorian concerns with morality and the role of women; the need to establish the dominance of "regular" doctors (invariably male) as legitimate practitioners of healing at the expense of "irregulars"(frequently women); and fears of a diminishing birth rate among WASPS in the face of a growing immigrant population. Last, and least emphasized, was concern for the fetus.

The Bottom Line

It's hard sometimes for people to understand why so many women regal abortion as the bottom line feminist issue and why we fight the anti-choice people so fiercely over a question that some find paralyzingly complicated. Abortion is not, for us, just an issue of women's health or even of women's right to privacy or to religious liberty. The right to decide whether and when to bear a child is absolutely basic to a woman's control of her body, her sexuality, her life choices.

Campaigns to restrict birth control or abortion have frequently been efforts to ensure the containment of women's sexuality within marriage. They have, on occasion, also reflected women's attempts to force men to take responsibility for the consequences of their sexual relationships. Indeed, this is the rationale put forward today by the socalled left wing of the Right to Life movement. But involuntary motherhood precludes self-determination. Within the economic realities of our society, it almost invariably forces women into economic dependence on husbands, relatives, or welfare,

Abortion is an absolutely necessary supplement to the unreliable and unsafe contraceptive technology presently available. The drive to eliminate abortion is inevitably linked, no matter how it may be justified, to a set of beliefs that regard pregnancy as a punishment for sexual behavior. It reflects and reinforces the patriarchal attitude that procreation is the only excuse and motherhood the only redemption for women's sexuality.

Forced pregnancy is an absolute violation of a woman's personhood. Feminist author Ellen Willis has written, "Pregnancy involves a uniquely intimate relationship; the pregnant woman is required to nurture another organism with her own body....For the woman who must bear a child against her will, pregnancy is a nine-month rape, a barbaric form of involuntary servitude."

Contraception

The assumption that unwanted pregnancies happen only because women are "careless" about birth control is simply not true. Contraceptive information and devices are not always easily obtainable. For a lot of women, there are family, religious, legal, or social obstacles to seeking out birth control information and devices.

All of the currently available methods of contraception have some rate of failure. Even the Pill's actual use effectiveness is only 90-95%. Women using the Pill subject themselves to enormously heightened risks of cancer and blood clots. IUD complications can include perforation of the uterus,

pelvic inflammatory disease, and heavy menstrual bleeding.

The safest contraceptive choice for women--the diaphragm, the condom and foam-involve the greatest risk of pregnancy and require the availability of abortion as a secondary contraceptive. The less dangerous methods are all basically controlled by the user rather than by authority figures like doctors or family planners. Those methods require that women

You've Been found GUILTY OF PREGNANCY, YOU'RE SENTENCED TO USE MPRISONMENT IN UNHAPPY MARRIAGE, OR DEATH BY COAT HANGER,

ABORTION LAWS

County Volce/LNS

acknowledge to themselves and to their partners that they intend to have sex, and they also require a certain acceptance of their own bodies and demand a

tion, While the cases did not overturn the 1973 decisions that had recognized women's constitutional right to abortion, anti-choice forces viewed them as opening the door to legislative and administrative efforts to cut off funding and drastically limit the availability of abortion services. The issue has surfaced in an astoundingly diverse number of contexts.

One Missouri case, Poelker v. Doe, authorized public hospitals to refuse to perform abortions. This decision simply legitimized what had already been an intense problem for women in many parts of the country, especially in rural areas, where no clinics existed. The technical legal right to choose to end a pregnancy has very little relevance when there is no medical facility nearby, especially for the poor and others less able to travel long distances to seek assistance.

It was the second set of decisions, however, that set off the greatest furor and has had the most serious impact. In Maher v. Roe and Beal v. Doe, the Court declared that the states were not required to pay for poor women's "elective" abortions under Medicaid, Congress had already tried to cut off abortion services to poor women by amending the Labor and Health, Education and Welfare Departments' budgets with a rider that forbade all abortions except in pregnancies that actually endangered the life of the woman. Enforcement of arch-conservative Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde's budget rider, which had been halted temporarily by order of a Federal Court in Brooklyn, went into effect in August of 1977. By then, however, the term of the budget and its restrictive rider had almost expired, and a new Labor-HLW budget was being debated.

A Conference Committee composed of 18 congressmen and senators was chosen to hammer out the terms under which poor women would be "allowed" to terminate an unintended and unwanted pregnan-

"The drive to eliminate aboṛtion is inevitably linked.....to a set of beliefs that regard pregnancy as a punishment for sexual behavior. It reflects and reinforces the patriarchal attitude that procreation is the only excuse and motherhood the only redemption for women's sexuality."

set of attitudes about one's sexuality and one's body that have all too rarely been nurtured or even tolerated in women by this society,

The Legal Legislative and Constitutional Battle

In June 1977, the Supreme Court announced three decisions that rekindled the fierce and emotional public struggle over a woman's right to choose abor-

cy. The stalemate between the more "liberal" Senate and the vindictively rigid House positions continued for five months and totally stymied approval of the budget of the two federal departments which provide for society's most basic social and welfare needs. The final "liberalized" version allowed Medicaid funding (continued on page 10)

WHO WANTS CON CON?

The following states have passed calls for a Constitutional Convention to outlaw abortion:

Indiana Louisiana

Massachusetts

Rhode Island

Utah Kentucky Pennsylvania

Missouri Arkansas

New Jersey South Dakota Delaware Nebraska Mississippi

Thirty-four states must pass calls in order for Congress to convene a Convention. Fourteen have done so to date, although the calls vary widely in wording. Americans for a Constitutional Convention (ACC), headed by Dan Buckley, is the chief strategy organization for the Con Con drive.

The National Right to Life Committee, Inc. passed a resolution urging its affiliates to work for the Constitutional Convention at its July, 1978 Convention, thus unifying the "Right to Life" efforts behind this strategy. Dr. Mildred Jefferson lost her bid for a fourth term as president< he group, due largely to her opposition to the Con Con.

There are no rules or regulations that would govern a Constitutional Convention should one be convened. Remember, the greatest threat of these Constitutional Convention calls is the pressure they present for the U.S. Congress to initiate the so-called "Human Life Amendment" prohibiting abortion.

NARAL Newsletter March, 1979

May, 1979/What She Wants/Page 7