|
happy roe v. wade
2003-01-22 @ 12:56 p.m.
today is the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. which means that thiry years ago today the u.s. supreme court ruled that women have the legal right to abortion in this country. so i'm re-posting my little Roe piece, titled "i was a post-Roe baby." I am part of the post-Roe generation. Born in 1976, three years after the U.S. Supreme court ruled in Roe v. Wade that women are guaranteed the right to abortion, I've never lived in a time when a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy has been illegal. For myself, my friends and for many other post-Roe women, the ability to decide when and whether to raise a child is inherently ours. We expect it. As I became active in the feminist movement, I found that although abortion is legal in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, actually obtaining one can be an entirely different story. Though legal, abortion services are not always accessible, whether due to legislative or economic restrictions, or because of threats from the anti-abortion rights activists. Numerous counties have no abortion provider. Countless women can't afford an abortion, either because they have no health insurance or because their insurance doesn't cover the procedure. In states with parental notification laws, girls under 18 either have to get the ok from their parents or from a judge. Please. Even at 26 I wouldn't want to go to a judge to say "hey - I need an abortion," let alone at 16. We post-Roe women and girls are often charged with taking our right to terminate a pregnancy for granted. Yeah, I think we do. But it's in the same way that we take the air we breathe for granted. With all the attacks on reproductive rights by George W. Bush, Congress and state legislatures, many supporters of this right are fired up. But a large number of us haven't gotten the message that we are under attack, that our rights are under siege. After I ranted on about this recently, one of my best friends said "Roe v. Wade would never be overturned." She's half right and half wrong on this, but by far not alone in her thinking. I think that anti-abortion thugs know that overturning Roe outright would result in huge social upheaval and rioting in the streets. Instead, they heckle clinics around the country and pass law after law restricting access to abortion. Roe v. Wade could remain technically intact, even if abortion services are so freakin' restricted that you can't even get one. A lot of good that would do us. And another thing. Do the old guys in power really think that women will stop having abortions if they are illegal again? Do they think that women and girls will stop having sex if there are restrictions on birth control? Maybe they didn't get that memo. We're not going to stop having sex. And we won't let anyone take away our right to abortion and birth control. Step aside, old guys in power. If not, look forward to us booting you out of office. As post-Roe kids, we have our activist foremothers to thank for paving the path toward reproductive freedom. And for being examples of how to stand up and fight for all the rights they won for us and taught us that we deserve. From here on, we're going to protect what we've got and we're going to keep fighting for more.
<< - >>
|