Human rights for women lie at the heart of abortion debate
Last week, Ireland voted resoundingly to reform its strict abortion laws by a two-to-one margin, paving the way for the removal of the constitution’s all but blanket ban on terminations. In the US, however, abortion remains a polarising subject, as Dr Che
ABORTION remains one of the most controversial political and social issues in the United States. While on the surface the debate is about anti-abortion law, what lays just beneath the surface is a larger narrative about access to healthcare and reproductive rights for women.
Pro-life advocates in the states are currently encouraging the Trump Administration to cut taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, a large, national non-profit organisation that provides health care services to families, including referrals to doctors who perform abortions.
Some states are also taking legislative action against abortion.
Earlier this month, Gov Kim Reynolds of Iowa signed into law a ban on abortions when a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
The law effectively bans most abortions in the state, making it the strictest abortion ban in the country, and many people see this ban as a first step toward making abortion in the states illegal again.
In response, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa have filed a lawsuit against Iowa’s new abortion law.
Last October was also the 50th anniversary in Britain of the Abortion Act.
While one reasonably might think that after 50 years abortion would be accepted across the political spectrum, that is not the case.
More and more citizens are advocating for the abortion law to be abolished altogether.
There is also the issue that the law is administered under the Criminal Code and based on legislation targeted at criminal behaviour.
In addition, still today, two doctors must sign off on approval for an abortion and demonstrate that having the child would do damage to the woman’s health.
In America and Britain we are seeing progress on protection against sexual harassment and assault, and the #MeToo movement has led to justice and accountability for many guilty men.
On the other hand, women having a choice about their own bodies continues to sharply divide people politically, not to mention access to life saving preventative checkups and treatment.
President Trump now is proposing to cut $260m in annual funding for women’s health programs like Planned Parenthood and other reproductive-health organisations that even mention abortion as a family-planning method.
While federal funding can’t technically go to abortions, women’s health organisations have worked around that provision since the 1970s by formally referring patients to physicians who perform abortions, often located within the same clinic.
The Trump Administration is now one of the most anti-abortion administrations since the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
President Trump has recently reinstated the “global gag rule,” which prevents US funding support for overseas reproductive health organisations that offer abortion related services.
He has also signed a bill that allows states to cutoff funding from organisations like Planned Parenthood that provide abortion-related services.
And he has suggested that federal funding should continue to go only to those women’s health organisation that no longer perform abortions.
All of this federal government activity falls under the banner of a “pro-life” agenda, but behind the anti-abortion rhetoric stands the unanswered issue of how to provide for the basic reproductive health care needs of women, and especially low-income women of colour who may not be able to afford a privatelyfunded abortion medical procedure.
Before the passage of the Roe v Wade decision in 1973 by the US Supreme Court that legalised abortion, it is estimated that up to 8,000 American women were dying per year of illegal abortions.
If we decide to make abortion illegal again, we will only return to a society in which women are forced underground in order to have a choice, putting their lives at high risk in the process.
Cutting funding from women’s health care clinics and organisations like Planned Parenthood also means cutting access to preventative checkups like pap smears and mammograms.
For many lower-income women in the states, Planned Parenthood is their only access to preventative reproductive health.
Budget cuts will negatively affect their access to all of these services, not just abortions.
Suzanna de Baca, the president of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, said at a news conference recently that Iowa will not go back in time by taking away the right of women to choose.
She’s not alone in her fight against the ban in Iowa, or the growing national anti-abortion rhetoric.
Meanwhile, pro-life advocates are seeing this as an opportunity to take on Roe v Wade, in hopes of overturning the national legal basis for abortion.
And in Britain as well as in America, the implications of the current political debates goes far beyond the constitutional and legal basis for abortion.
Working class women, as well as women of colour, will lose access to and resources for healthcare beyond birth control, including preventative breast cancer and ovarian cancer check-ups.
At stake is the the basic issue of human rights for women and gender equality.