Protecting the right to choose

FOR those who thought that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was a landmark moment from which there was no turning back, think again.

South Dakota lawmakers have stepped forward to turn the clock backwards. They have passed a ban on nearly all abortions, criminalizing women and their doctors alike. Mississippi is next in line, with Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky all considering similar action.

There is undoubtedly a radical right-directed wind blowing across our nation and what many of us have long feared is beginning to happen — conservatives are institutionalizing their extremist agenda, restricting the rights of women and placing women's lives at risk.

After more than three decades of plotting and planning, the opponents of reproductive rights are poised for the fulfillment of their ideological objective — the evisceration of a woman's right to privacy and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

But not so fast.

The same was true in 1989.

Republicans held the Senate and the White House. In reviewing Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade. It looked as if the court was prepared to roll back privacy rights nationwide. Measures criminalizing abortion were being considered in Louisiana and Utah. The right predicted the tide had turned.

But none of that came to pass, and what had seemed a watershed moment for abortion opponents turned into a key rallying point for the pro-choice community.

Now, the situation today is perhaps even grimmer. Conservatives control the White House and all of Congress; they have just appointed two clearly anti-choice justices in John Roberts and Samuel Alito; and the Supreme Court has agreed to review a 2003 federal ban on so-called "partial birth" abortion.

If this ban were upheld, it would result in a chill across the whole practice of reproductive medicine. The standard is so broad that doctors will find it difficult to know what is legal and what is not. It would ban a range of abortion methods used as early as 12-15 weeks of pregnancy; and it offers no exception for the life or health of the woman, or in the case of severe birth defects. In short, it would fundamentally undermine a woman's right to privacy without requiring the court to overturn Roe.

The similarities to 1989 — down to the surname of the president — are quite striking.

Then, pro-choice Americans feared that a woman's right to privacy was about to be taken away. And we reacted.

We must do so again.

We need to make clear what a world without Roe would look like. Consider El Salvador, where abortion is completely banned and fully criminalized.

Women, their friends and their doctors have been sentenced to prison terms of up to 30 years. Doctors and nurses are forced to abandon long-held principles of medical confidentiality to report "suspicious" patients to a new women's crime unit.

The state uses active law enforcement, including forensic vagina inspectors, to locate, prosecute and imprison women. And all the while, abortions are not eliminated, only the safe, affordable ones.

Americans do not believe such measures improve the lives of children or women. And ours is not a nation prepared to roll back Roe, criminalize abortion and imprison women and their doctors.

In 1989, the pro-choice movement went back to its roots, into the streets, and onto the airwaves. We spoke strongly, clearly and confidently. And we asked — "Who Decides?" — and made it one of the central questions of the day.

We must do that again. We must become a movement again. It's time to reassert our presence — and give voice to a new generation of pro-choice women. It's time to put abortion into a larger context that rings true now — and translates back into electoral politics in a way politicians cannot ignore.

I believe that the larger context concerns the economic and social position of women. Too often, the choices women thought they had earned the right to make are blocked, whether they desire to stay home, support themselves and their families with a living wage, or choose for themselves the number and spacing of their children.

It is time for a re-ignited public movement to hold our leaders accountable — to insist that politicians, like citizens, find the ability to speak in comfortable, forthright voices about the principles that make them pro-family, pro-values and pro-choice.

I fear that we are in for a rude awakening from the Supreme Court. But fear alone will not recharge this movement. To be successful, we ultimately must act from hope for what women's rights, roles and opportunities in our society can be.