On this 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade I abandoned my original research into the origin of male-to-female courtesies that some of us find unnecessary, baffling, and silly. Lord Chesterfield, an influential 18th century Brit, found them necessary because they were " . . . the only protection women had against a man's superior strength." In other words, without social restraints the bigger guy would walk all over the littler ones (women).
Feminisms is a series of weekly feminist diaries. My fellow feminists and I decided to start our own for several purposes: we wanted a place to chat with each other, we felt it was important to both share our own stories and learn from others’, and we hoped to introduce to the community a better understanding of what feminism is about.
Needless to say, we expect disagreements to arise. We have all had different experiences in life, so while we share the same labels, we don’t necessarily share the same definitions. Hopefully, we can all be patient and civil with each other, and remember that, ultimately, we’re all on the same side.
Now that’s covered, on to modern threats to women’s autonomy. The Roe v. Wade decision didn’t actually say that all abortions would be legal—it affirmed that a woman’s decision about her body was private and therefore legislating what she could do with it was unconstitutional. Roe v. Wade followed a series of SCOTU rulings on privacy: parents couldn’t be forced to enroll their children in public school, forced sterilization of felons was unconstitutional, laws against interracial marriage were unconstitutional, the prohibition of contraception in marriage (a Connecticut statute) was unconstitutional, and the prohibition of contraception outside of marriage was unconstitutional. All these decisions were based on privacy rights.
For almost 34 years this decision was enough to allow women to have abortions if they needed and wanted them, and made preventing them from doing so, illegal. For me, a teenager and early 20-something in the 1960s, the difference was dramatic. Until then women my age and older suffered and sometimes died in amateur operations performed in non-medical, secret locations. Young women in my part of the country often went to Ciudad Juarez, where sometimes trying to go on with their lives meant their lives ended. Years before that, Margaret Sanger began her life of making contraception available (legal or not) to all women after seeing the Saturday morning queues of poor women at the doors of illegal, but tolerated, abortionists.
In 1972, one year before Roe v. Wade, I was faced with a decision. Do I continue a pregnancy with a Dalkon Shield in my uterus, or remove it--and my fetus? With full knowledge of the damage that IUD could cause me or the fetus, I could well have decided to abort—that is (as the doctor put it) "take out the IUD and the fetus comes out too." The doctor didn’t tell me that the IUD could imbed in the fetus or pierce my uterus. We could both have died. We were unbelievably blessed that neither of those possibilities became true, although the pregnancy was difficult and finished with another doctor in attendance.
If I had known all the facts (and already having a 3-year-old and a 6-month-old), I probably would have chosen abortion. Perhaps that is why the first doctor withheld information I needed, and denied me the chance to decide my own fate. Definitely, I would have been able to complete my education and work successfully years sooner than I did. My life would have been so different; easier, but poorer in ways I wouldn’t even have known. I can’t imagine life without my son. This decision is so personal, so difficult, and so private.
That, of course, was the basis for the Supreme Court’s decision. After Roe v. Wade, deciding to have an abortion has not been any easier, and is very private, but it is safe. Women finish educations, achieve career goals, choose whom they are going to marry. We often take those achievements for granted. They are precious and threatened rights that we have to actively protect. There have always been and are forces trying to deny women control of their own bodies.
In South Dakota, we know, a bill outlawing abortion passed the legislature; activists qualified a popular referendum that overturned the law. This kind of action is going to be needed again. Anti-choice groups are preparing an attempt to return women to the time and situation that essentially legislated them to the home and to childbearing. The growing movement in conservative Protestant and Roman Catholic groups goes much farther than even that; they have declared all contraception, outside and inside of marriage, to be either abortifacient or promoting licentiousness. In other words, they truly oppose any sexual intimacy, even in marriage, not intended for procreation.
The religious right is busy with this, and the U.S. government has already been able to force unwanted pregnancies upon women in other countries by withholding funds for United Nations reproductive health programs in Africa and Latin America. The countries of Nicaragua, Chile, and El Salvador, responding both to the strong political influence of the Roman Catholic Church and an undercurrent of machismo, now deny all women abortions. These laws do not take into account the health of the mother (she is sacrificed for the fetus), her age, the role of rape or incest in the pregnancy—there is no medical or humanitarian reason accepted whatsoever. A sixty percent increase in women’s deaths by non-professional abortions is predicted.
Maybe this isn’t so far away from the other diary I had been thinking about. Without the protection of law, women are vulnerable. Their life choices become terribly narrow, and their futures determined by husbands, rapists, legislators of a particularly misogynistic and unchristian outlook, and amateur abortionists. Because sometimes a person needs very badly to not carry a fetus to term.
The following websites have loads of information on these topics. I would have written loads more, but I have a horrible cold and cough, I’m leaving Florida tomorrow to go back to California, and the websites say it all much better than I can.
Roe v. Wade:
http://www.publicsquare.net/...
What Lord Chesterfield said, and why:
http://www.answers.com/...
The Nicaraguan vote outlawing abortion, and many other related topics: outlawsinghttp://www.madre.org/articles/lac/nicaraguaabortionalert.11.9.06.html
United Nations Population Fund:
http://www.unfpa.org/...