Poster of the Week

Abortion Rights: It's about Women

by mcjoan - Sun Feb 27th, 2005 at 18:54:04 PST Hi. Remember me? I'm a woman. A grown-up woman. I function in daily life with an astonishing degree of autonomy. I manage my household. I pay my bills. I pay my student loans after having put myself through graduate school. I'm a boss. I make decisions affecting the work lives of a dozen or so people on a daily basis. Hell, I can even operate a motor vehicle. I am a fully realized, fully functioning, fully capable human being. I contribute to society, to the economy, and to the lives of my friends and family. I also happen to be capable of growing another human being inside my body. Ah, that's where the trouble starts, isn't it? See, it seems when the subject of that potential life form brewing in my body comes up, that autonomy, that individuality, and self-determination seems to get lost in the public eye. Suddenly, that most private possession--my body, my womb--becomes the ground for public debate. A debate that we're in danger of losing, even within our own party judging by discussion that occurs on this site with alarming regularity. We're losing that debate in large part because we've allowed the discussion to be reframed so that the individual woman and her rights are no longer at the center. What's more, this focus on the fetus has extended far beyond the debate on abortion to become a much larger societal issue. By way of example, here's a question for you. How many women were murdered in the United States this past week? Go ahead and try Googling it. Good luck finding that statistic. But we all know about the story from Texas of the woman who was seven-months pregnant, killed by the would-be father. That story was all over the news this week. Is the murder of that woman, Lisa Underwood, and her son, Jayden more tragic than the murder of the five or six or dozen other women and children who were killed this week? Enough so that we don't even know how many died? Enough so that we don't know any of their names? We know Lisa's name because she was killed while pregnant. And her murderer can be prosecuted for a federal crime, because we now have a federal law that makes it a federal crime to kill or harm a fetus or embryo at any stage after implantation in the womb, giving separate legal status to a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus, even if the woman does not know she is pregnant. Around the country, state prosecutors have relied on a host of criminal laws already on the books to attack prenatal substance abuse. Women across the nation have been arrested and charged with a wide range of crimes, including possession of a controlled substance, delivering drugs to a minor (through the umbilical cord), corruption of a minor, and child abuse and neglect. These are examples of the concerted effort by the far-right to grant equal legal standing, equal rights, equal protections to the unborn. Even to the fertilized egg. And because no one wants to be labelled anti-baby, we've let it happen. We've let them reframe the debate to give the fetus equal standing with the woman whose body it is a part of. I say none of this to suggest that I am anti-child, just as I would hope those inclined to flame me would not like to be called anti-woman. We don't need to continue to put the woman in opposition to the fetus as the far-right would have us do. I say this so that no one forgets what really is a stake in this debate. The most fundamental right of me, my sisters, my friends--all of us citizens of the United States--for self-determination.