LAT ed., Chipping Away at Roe v Wade: "reproductive choice fading fast"

[DeepModem Mom]

EDITORIAL
Chipping Away at Roe vs. Wade

November 28, 2004

With no hearings or debate, the Republican majority this month grafted the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act onto the $388-billion appropriations bill, approved last week. Although the name implies it protects women who are seeking abortions from discrimination, the reverse is true. The act legalizes discrimination, allowing any physician, hospital or health insurer to refuse to perform or pay for abortions and even to tell pregnant women that the option exists. That new right will extend, in practice, to employers, who get to pick which health plans a company will offer.

The amendment is only one brick in a wall, part of a deliberate strategy to shut off access to abortion services, clothe fertilized eggs with the legal rights of a child and discourage, even humiliate, pregnant women who cannot or do not want to raise a child. The obvious aim is to shrink the landmark abortion-rights decision Roe vs. Wade to the point where there is no need for judges to formally overturn it....

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(The editorial discusses the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, "drafted specifically to grant a fertilized egg legal rights," and the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, affecting late-stage abortions, which "most often result from fears for the woman's health or fetal anomalies.")

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The gag order Bush imposed through executive order on his third day in office remains in effect, withholding U.S. aid from foreign health clinics if a worker in such places as India or Africa even mentions the abortion option. The spending-bill amendment allows health corporations to slap that same gag order on U.S. doctors and nurses. Physicians who oppose abortion already are not compelled by law to perform one. But now a hospital chief who opposes abortion could silence every doctor and nurse in his or her employ. In rural communities with few hospitals and health-plan choices, the measure could effectively end legal abortions. And that's the point.

The act overrides laws in California and other states explicitly guaranteeing the right to choose. States insisting that hospitals with a no-abortion policy offer that service to women covered by Med-Cal risk losing millions in federal Medicaid dollars.

With dozens more bills in the congressional hopper, with titles such as the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act or the Post-Abortion Depression Research and Care Act, reproductive choice is fading fast.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-abortion28nov28,0,470622,print.story

[still_one]

1. Frankly, all the woman in this country knew what the stakes were

and they blew it

There are more women then there are men, and there is no excuse that * won

[The Zanti Regent]

2. The group that will ALWAYS have access to abortion, no matter what...

...mistresses of Nazi Republican members of Congress!

[cali]

3. The incredible shrinking of Roe v Wade

has already resulted in a "right" that is available to fewer and fewer women. It's a smart tactic on the part of the right, akin to shrinking the government to a size that enables it to fit down the drain. By the time Roe is overturned, there won't be much of it left. But it doesn't stop there. The real goal of the religious right is far more extensive; enacting into law, and inserting into the Constitution, full rights, from the moment of conception, for the fetus. And the moment you go there, you go to criminalization, not just of abortion, but birth control that prevents a fertilized egg from implantation. It's difficult to know how many of their goals the religious right will attain, before the American people rise up and smack them down.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. The Supreme Court case, "Webster", was the origin of all the erosion of

"Roe". This case allowed states to "regulate" abortions in order to "protect" this right. (Sounds like 1984 doublespeak.)

It started with legitimizing a statute that demanded abortions could only be performed in hospitals as opposed to clinics and/or doctors' offices. But the general principle was the right to abortion was still recognized, but the right could be appropriately limited and restricted. The right to access abortion services can be limited by the state, such as a waiting time between request and procedure, parental notification, signing acknowledgement of fetal distress during the procedure, etc. The effect is the same as if a ban is imposed upon that right.