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Still Struggling for the Right To Choose
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More in Forward ForumNext week marks the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision. In the ongoing struggle to keep abortion safe and legal in the United States, there is no rest for the weary.
It was only a generation ago when as many as 10,000 women died each year from illegal abortions. Many thousands more suffered permanent injury, and countless others were forced to bear children against their will.
Not only did Roe affirm women’s constitutional right to control their bodies, but it underscored that women are entitled to freedom of conscience to act in accordance with their own religious and moral beliefs, rather than a state-imposed doctrine. Those 35 years have been marked by legal and legislative setbacks and open hostility from three presidents, but Roe has survived. Despite the ideological onslaught against it, a majority of Americans still favor the substance of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision.
Next week also marks the beginning of the new session of Congress, providing an appropriate moment to take stock and set new priorities that will build on this important constitutional milestone and reverse some of the setbacks Roe has suffered along the way.
First and foremost, the Senate must refrain from confirming any more judges hand-picked by the Bush administration for their anti-abortion views and far right-wing credentials. Far too many of these jurists are now sitting in lifetime seats on the federal bench, including the Supreme Court, confirmed by a Senate that gave the executive branch free sway to impose its ideology on the federal bench. Not only do these nominees pose a threat to a woman’s constitutional right to decide whether and when to have children, but the Supreme Court has already reversed earlier court decisions protecting a woman’s right to choose.
Second, we need safeguards when it comes to a woman’s ability to exercise her right to make decisions about her reproductive health. Young women and men deserve comprehensive, fact-based sexuality education free of ideological bias and pseudoscience. Women of childbearing age deserve access to safe, effective and affordable birth control. And these same women must have access to abortion services that respect their autonomy as moral decision-makers, regardless of income or place of residence.
There are several strong, proactive bills pending in Congress that would go a long way toward putting up those safeguards. They include the Prevention First Act, which would increase funding for Title X, the federal government’s leading program providing family planning to low-income and poor women; the Responsible Education About Life Act, which would create the first dedicated federal funding for medically accurate, comprehensive sexuality education; and the Freedom of Choice Act, which would codify the 1973 Roe decision, barring states or the federal government from interfering with a woman’s right to choose to decide whether and when to have children.
We must make clear to our representatives in Washington that these bills are of the highest importance. But that is not all. We must also impress upon Congress the need to undo a number of egregious laws and policies.
Congress should repeal the Hyde amendment, which since 1976 has prevented federal funds from paying for abortions, as well as the so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which outlaws particular abortion procedures without regard to the threat to a woman’s health. Congress should also restore the ability of drug companies to supply discounted birth control pills to colleges and some low-income community health centers, as they had been able to do for nearly 20 years until the practice was inadvertently banned in the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act. And Congress should do away with the “global gag rule” barring nongovernmental organizations abroad that receive federal funds from performing abortions or even talking about abortion as an option.
There is truly no rest for the weary when it comes to the right of women to determine their own destiny regarding reproductive rights. After 35 years, the rights protected by the Roe decision hang by a thread.
Today, a woman’s ability to exercise her rights under Roe depends on how much money she has and where she lives. Those who value this constitutional right must champion an agenda that works to achieve universal access to reproductive health and protects the basic right to reproductive choices.
Phyllis Snyder is president of the National Council of Jewish Women.
Comments
Sad and embarrasing for Jews, who love chai, "To Life" prefer killing babies and spew euphemisms, while asserting theoretical abstract "rights" to the comission of 40 million murders since Roe. Sad for so much sophistry and spin. Israel and Jews cannot permit the murder of future citizens.We need every one. How much stronger would we be with the humans alive and working for Israel and our people.Truly Jewish women support life.
Well said Dr Herb!
Women are capable of controlling their "rights" to reproduction by any means short of killing their babies, such as keeping their pants on, saying "no" to boys, using contraception, abstenence, etc. All are socially sanctioned and available.Murdering your child is unacceptable and will never be socially sanctioned, no matter what some court decides. Thankfully, that message is percolating throught the culture and the numbers of abortions has dramatically dropped in recent years. Certainly, abortion as a method of birth control is now anathema. "Safe, available, and rare" is the correct policy for the few cases of rape, incest, or life of the mother. "Health of the mother" has become a well-exposed sham. Doctors who perform abortions, especially late term murders, like the infamous "Tiller, the Baby Killer" in Kansas, should be severely santioned.
It is not the place of governments, or ideological or religious fanatics, to dictate to us how to conduct our lives. Abortions are not "anathema," but a legitimate way for women to end a pregnancy, notwithstanding the screeching of know-it-all moralists and self-appointed civilization-savers. It is really very simple: if you don't want to have an abortion, then don't have one, and leave others the hell alone. Who died and left the moralists in charge anyway? They should mind their own f'ing business and refrain from sticking their noses into the affairs of others. Of course we have the right to determine whether to preserve human life. After all, most people don't give a rat's a$$ about "god's" opinion, even if such a creature should exist. But the religious always try to arrogate to themselves the "moral authority" to determine these matters as if they were better people than everyone else, which they are decidedly not.
Things are harder on religious fanatics and moralists these days since the demise of religion as a power. It was much easier to "severly sanction" people for what some consider moral crimes in the old days when the religious fanatics ran the show. In the interim we managed to throw off the religious yoke, thank "god" or whatever, and we are no longer compelled to swallow the yammering of reactionaries and religious fantasts of all stripes.
What does Rubin mean when he says abortion doctors "should be severely sanctioned?" Does it mean being burned at the stake or "only" thrown in prison? Contrary to what they may believe in their egocentric myopia, the self-appointed moralists are not purer or better than anybody else although they are pleased to think so, nor do the religious lead better lives, although that seems to be their default position. Their opinions are merely one among many in society, not deserving of a gram's greater weight. As to the idea that "god" ordained something ("Gott mit uns"), that and 90 cents will buy you a cup of coffee somewhere, in some cheap place ...
Dear Harry,
I see your opinion. What part of the argument do you deny? The right to killing anyone is by no means sanctioned. The murder of your wife in the privacy of your bedroom would still be severely sanctioned.
Loss of licensure of the abortionist would be a rational punishment for a third trimester murder, the first time. The next would mean prison. You should witness an abortion to see what you are talking about, and see what I've seen.
This argument has nothing to do with religion or dogma. It has everything to do with survival.Its hard to have a civilization if the young get killed off. Only the old and weak remain.
How is killing my wife equal to the expulsion of a blastula, or perhaps a gastrula? It is no more than the excision of a neoplasm, even though in the case of abortion the cells would have had the *potential* to develop into a human. The last time I looked, killing people was still against the law, while terminating a pregnancy is decidedly not.
An embryo is not the property of the government, nor of religious subgroups, but exclusively of the person bearing it within her body. To dictate to women what to do with their own bodies and lives is an arrogant intrusion into their personal liberty and autonomy, something which governments are always eager trying to take away. The impulse to dictate should be vigorously resisted by all means, including making abortion available to anyone who seeks it. Just because an organized group has the guns and the ability to coerce, according to the ideas of the most recent group to capture political power, does not confer upon it the right to interfere in decisions affecting a woman and her own body other than the right conferred by superior force. Was it better when women and girls bled to death from coat hanger abortions in back-alleys, although "public morality" from the perpective of the religious reactionaries was preserved? As long as there will be abortions, everybody is better served by openness and hygiene rather than the activities of dirty, furtive butchers.
I deny the right of the government to interfere in matters pertaining to an individual and his/her body. Should the government be able to force me to lose weight? Should it have the authority to force me to submit to surgery to prolong my human life? (just don't expect it to pay for it, though.) Should the government be justified in preventing me from getting a tattoo for fear that it may become infected? There is no room for the the government in my body, and not in the bodies of women. Just as the abortion enemies consider the procedure an impermissible act of self-determination, in the same manner I consider the proscription of abortion an impermissible intrusion by force into women's most intimate and personal decisions. Why, is there nothing that is exempt from the government's claims to ownership? Are we then so wholly possessed by the authorities that there is no area in life left for self-determination? I deny the right of authority to interfere in decision regarding my body, and this applies, mutatis mutandis, to women, the other half of the population.
As for fears of civilization collapsing due to a shortage of new births, there are more than 6 billion people on the earth who consume its resources like two-legged locusts. There is little chance that humanity will extinguish itself by abortion, but even if it did, there are thousands of other life forms on earth that will thrive and prosper. Even without humans, "the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals," life will go on.
No man is so blind as one who will not see.
You were once a blastocyst, as was I, as was every other human. The Hippocratic Oath and the Talmud both forbid abortion, as they forbid human sacrifice of our children,not for reasons of dogma or faith, but for the very practical reasons of survival of our civilization.
Europe is depopulating itself with a birth rate far under the rate needed to maintain itself, and if not improved will be "judenrein" of Judeo-Christian Europeans by 2050. Moslems will control Europe. Moslems will control Israel unless the Jewish population grows. WAKE UP!!! Many civilizations have vanished from history when their populations shrunk for one reason or another.
Whatever you think in the abstract, your attitude has practical consequences.
Sir, I am not thinking in the abstract. Rather, I feel as if I were on the last rampart against an aggressive, intrusive government that wants to control not only what I think and say, but every last cell in my body. My consent to be governed has definite limits, and one of them is the conviction that I am the owner of my body, inalienably. I am a free man, at least as free as I can be, and my body is not owned like that of a slave. They were bred or aborted at the will of the master, their owner. Well, I have no owner, and neither do I wish for one so if there is any breeding or aborting to be done I will do it myself without feeling the need to seek prior approval from authority. This is an inalienable freedom shared by all, women and men, ever since the U.S. repudiated slavery.
Surely it is disputable whether termninating a pregnancy is a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, but even if it were then I suggest that perhaps the Oath is not cognizant of current realities. Perhaps the hoary, venerable Oath could stand an update, if it is even conceivable that something so ancient and revered should not be the last word on its subject. As for references to the Talmud, I don't think it cuts any ice with the secular Jews, let alone the non-Jewish population. Besides, any person feeling constrained by Talmudic injunctions is perfectly free to conduct a life in a manner consonant with his/her beliefs. I reserve the right do to likewise.
Mr. Fisher-
The bottom line is that legalized abortion cheapens our committment to preserving life and countervenes authentic Jewish values. As an observant Jew I will urgently pray for you to come out of the bondage of your self described secularism into the light and freedom of a purpose driven life anchored in Hashem and His Torah!
Sephardiman:
Perhaps " *our* committment to preserving life " needs to be more closely examined. Who is "we," Paleface? What about those Jews who support capital punishment and/or abortion on demand? Are they no longer Jews then, by your definition? Beware of falling into the trap that the Christians fall into when they are asked to account for the past cruelties and atrocities of the Church. The answer is frequently "but they weren't *real* Christians, real Christians don't do those things." Are Jews who support abortion not "real" Jews, then? Who exactly decides these things, and who will tell me that I am not a "real" Jew, I who lost entire great family branches to the nazi murderers? The religious Jews don't own Judaism, something that should have been understood by now with the emergence of conservative, reform, havurot, and other branches. Religion is not the only thing characterizing Judaism, which is also an ethnicity. I am a Jewish man, of Jewish ethicity. My default position is sympathy toward other Jews (unless they get too wildly far out and unreasonable, or criminals.) There is nothing that I need to do to be Jewish; it was purely an accident of birth. Just like a black person doesn't have to do anything in particular to be considered black, I don't have to do anything in particular to be Jewish. I don't have to believe in "god," or any other religious things, and *even so* I am a Jew. So, I suppose it comes down to who has the numbers, as usual. I agree to disagree.
Anyway, I thank you for your efforts on my behalf, and good luck to you. Who am I to repudiate good wishes, regardless of their nature? It surely can't hurt any. As Voltaire said as he was on his deathbed and urged by those in attendance to abjure the devil, "is this a good time to make enemies?"
>>Young women and men deserve comprehensive, fact-based sexuality education free of ideological bias and pseudoscience
Then I guess Comprehensive sexuality education programs are out of the question. Believe it or not, some of these CSE programs have used inaccurate information, and therefore, were not fact based.
Also, there is bias in CSE programs - don't kid yourself in thinking that they are bias free.
With all due respects, you don't have the right to "choose" when it comes to preserving human life. The endorsement of Roe vrs Wade by Jewish organizations like the NCJW is nothing short of a Chilul Hashem!