Abortion
Abortion
Abortion
Against
Notwithstanding all this, we continue to maintain strict anti-abortion laws on the books of at
least four fifths of our states, denying freedom of choice to women and physicians and
compelling the “unwilling to bear the unwanted.
Lack of equal access to safe and dignified health services for women experiencing undesired
pregnancy is discriminatory because it only violates the rights of women. It goes against
Articles 1 and 12 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW).
The State’s failure to guarantee the equal exercise of reproductive rights violates women’s
rights to life, health, physical, mental and moral integrity, autonomy, intimacy, dignity and the
right to freedom from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. According to the UN Special
Rapporteur on the right to health, Anand Grover, “the enactment or enforcement of laws that
penalize abortion may constitute a violation of the State’s obligation to respect, protect and
fulfill the right to health”.
The extremely high number of abortions indicates that criminalization has little or no effect
on a woman’s decision to have one. Likewise, if what we’re seeking is to protect the fetus,
criminalization has never been effective in this regard. Protection can be achieved through
public policy that is also consistent with women’s rights, such as comprehensive health
services that include pre-abortion counseling.
One of the most common arguments levied against a woman’s right to choose is the idea that
abortion is “murder,” and the killing of an innocent fetus is the most heinous sin a woman can
partake in. This view is supposedly grounded in a deep reverence for human life. However,
the origin of this belief is less humanistic than its current proponents would like to believe.
The crusade against women’s bodily autonomy was invented, perpetuated, and executed by
male doctors in the mid-nineteenth century in a bid for financial gain and the domination of a
market over which, at the time, they had no control.
Agree
Since abortion methods have become safe, laws against abortion make sense only for
punitive and deterrent purposes, or to protect fetal life over that of women’s lives. While
some prosecutions for unsafe abortions that cause injury or death still take place, far more
often existing laws are being used against those having and providing safe abortions outside
the law today. Ironically, it is restrictive abortion laws—leftovers from another age—that are
responsible for the deaths and millions of injuries to women who cannot afford to pay for a
safe illegal abortion.
“As a matter of fact, no one knows what the laws which permit abortion to save the life of the
mother mean.” (From 1969)
For several years, we have heard warnings about the population crisis. Indeed, so concerned
are we that there now are voices in the land calling for “compulsory sterilization” and
“compulsory birth control,” for the withholding of public support for illegitimate children in
excess of a certain number, for conditioning welfare monies or parole or whatever on coerced
sterilization, and so on. Yet little is done to make sterilization easily available on a voluntary
basis, particularly to the poor and underprivileged. Despite the lack of legal strictures
against it, it is often withheld by doctors and hospitals from those who need it and want it
most. At the same time, there begins to appear on the part of some an alarming readiness to
subordinate rights of freedom of choice in the area of human reproduction to governmental
coercion.
Decent laws and policies can be sabotaged and access to abortion can be restricted without
amending the law itself, but instead through policies pressuring women to have more
children, public denunciation of abortion by political and religious leaders, or restricting
access to services. Bureaucratic obstacles may be placed in women’s paths, such as
requiring unnecessary medical tests, counselling even if women feel no need for it, having to
get one or more doctors’ signatures, having to wait between making an appointment and
having an abortion, or having to obtain consent from a partner, parent(s) or guardian, or even
a judge.
Moreover, in the past decade, feminist groups have set up safe abortion information hotlines
in at least 20 countries, and health professionals are providing information and access to
abortion pills via telemedicine, including Women Help Women, Women on Web, safe2choose,
the Tabbot Foundation in Australia, and TelAbortion in the United States.3
One of the most common arguments levied against a woman’s right to choose is the idea that
abortion is “murder,” and the killing of an innocent fetus is the most heinous sin a woman can
partake in. This view is supposedly grounded in a deep reverence for human life. However,
the origin of this belief is less humanistic than its current proponents would like to believe.
The crusade against women’s bodily autonomy was invented, perpetuated, and executed by
male doctors in the mid-nineteenth century in a bid for financial gain and the domination of a
market over which, at the time, they had no control.