When our mothers and grandmothers were growing up, things were different. College women who got pregnant quit school. Middle class families who couldn't afford birth control or another child just bit the bullet and fed their kids a little less. Tens of thousands of women got dangerous back-alley, illegal abortions every year. In the 1950s and 1960s, an estimated 160 to 260 women died from illegal abortions, while thousands more were seriously injured. But on Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a Texas law prohibiting most abortions in Roe v. Wade, and the Constitution's fundamental right to privacy was extended to a woman's decision to choose abortion. With this historic ruling, the United States became a little safer for women.
In the past thirty years since Roe v. Wade, state legislatures have attempted to put costly, bureaucratic restrictions on a woman's right to choose, only to see those reproductive health barriers challenged in state and federal courts. Most of these restrictions have been targeted at young or low-income women. Currently, 43 states have laws that force young women to get their parents' permission before they can get an abortion, even in the horrible cases where the girl is impregnated by her own father. Also, 28 states have established limitations on public funding for abortion services, allowing the expense only in cases of rape, incest or life-endangerment. On a federal level, the Hyde Amendment denies Medicaid funding to low-income women for most abortions.
These barriers on a woman's right to choose often make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where their fate is debated by three virulently anti-choice justices (William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas), three strongly pro-choice justices (Steven Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens) and the three moderate justices who hold the swing votes in many of these cases (Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter). In every instance, Justice Scalia, who is speaking in Johnson Chapel at Amherst College on Feb. 10, has voted in opposition to a women's right to choose.
Justice Scalia, who was nominated by President Reagan in 1986, has stated that if given the chance he would "explicitly" overrule Roe v. Wade (Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 1989). He has consistently voted to uphold state bans on public funding for abortions. He has voted against the constitutionality of measures that were designed to protect abortion clinics from anti-choice violence. He supports extreme restrictions on a minor's right to choose including mandatory parental notice requirements without judicial bypass provisions. When in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the U.S. Supreme Court approved states' use of abortion restrictions including parental consent, anti-abortion counseling and a waiting period, but stopped short of allowing states to deny a woman an abortion without her husband's consent, Scalia dissented. Scalia supports a reversal of Casey because according to him, it didn't go far enough in preventing women from getting abortions.
If given the chance, President Bush would nominate many more Antonin Scalias as federal and Supreme Court Justices. This is currently the longest interval between Supreme Court vacancies in 178 years. If Bush is elected to another term as president of the United States this November, it is highly likely that he will have the opportunity to replace one of the soon-to-retire Supreme Court justices with a conservative, anti-choice justice. Two of the three most significant reproductive rights cases to make it to the Supreme Court in the last decade were decided by a razor-thin margin of support, a vote of 5-4. One more right-wing justice could tip the balance and lead to the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the loss of a woman's right to choose.
It is for all of these reasons that one million men, women and children will gather in Washington, D.C. on April 25, 2004 for the March for Women's Lives. The key national organizers of the event are The Black Women's Health Imperative, Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro-Choice America, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Amherst College is sending two buses of students to the march and we want you to join us. Email afa@amherst.edu for more information.
We are at turning point in the history of women's reproductive rights. Four more years of President Bush will push us back in history towards our mother's fears, our grandmother's nightmares and a lack of control over our reproductive systems. This is the year to vote, march and write. If we don't use our voice, we will lose our choice.