USA: states vote to ban women’s choice

Submitted by Anon on 11 March, 2006 - 1:59

By cathy nugent

On 24 February South Dakota federal lawmakers voted to ban all abortion except when the life of a woman is at stake. In doing so they deliberately began a battle which will probably go all the way to the Supreme Court and may end in abortion being made illegal across large parts of America.

South Dakota’s state legislature was followed by that of Mississippi state, which has also voted for an abortion ban, but with exceptions to be made for women who have been raped and for victims of incest.

The South Dakota law would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion, punishable by a £2,850 fine and a five year prison sentence.

South Dakota is of course part of America’s bible belt — which now incorporates a large part of America. Its Governor Mike Rounds is a card-carrying member of the religious right. Clearly he and many others like him have been encouraged by the election and re-election of Bush. They think now is the right time for an all out assault on a woman’s right to choose.

Certainly Rounds is up and ready for the challenge. He has claimed that opponents of abortion are offering money to help the state pay legal bills for the anticipated court challenge. An anonymous donor has pledged $1 million to defend the ban, and the legislature has set up a special account to accept donations for legal fees.

If South Dakota succeeds it will have a devastating effect on the lives of millions of American women, especially poor and working-class women who cannot now and never will be able to afford travel for abortions. There were 1.3 million abortions in the United States in 2002 — 88 percent of which occurred in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The reactionary and Christian-fundamentalist climate in many US states has already, bit by bit, limited access to abretion. The Bush administration has attacked access too. The most important Bush-sponsored act has been the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Ban. The emotive language (partial birth) is not scientific, but does refers to a medical procedure used in a tiny number of late abortions. Irrelevant to Bush et al that this procedure is safer than others. It is a back-door way of limiting late abortions. This law has been challenged in the courts.

Abortion may be legal in South Dakota, but there is only one abortion clinic in the 400 mile-wide state. Only 800 abortions are performed a year. Abortions are performed at the single clinic only eight days a month. Many women travel out of the state (not a short journey) to obtain an abortion. In many other states the situation is similar.

The right to legal abortion has been very vulnerable in America for some time, and particularly so since the rise of the militant anti-abortion movement in the 80s. Anti-abortion terrorists have killed and threatened the lives of doctors and other health workers involved in providing abortions.

The right to abortion is only guaranteed by a 1973 Supreme Court ruling. In the famous Roe v Wade case, the court ruled that most laws against abortion violated a constitutional right to privacy. And the ruling overturned all state laws which had at that time outlawed or restricted abortion.

Anti-abortionists have also been emboldened by the appointment of two new justices to the Supreme Court have a history of opposition to women’s rights.

Will the Supreme Court justices vote to overturn the South Dakota law? Pro-choice campaigners think they won’t. But the pro-choice movement is considering a choice of strategies: to file a lawsuit against the state law and wait for the matter to reach the Supreme Court, or to gather signatures to put a referendum on the South Dakota ballot in the November elections.

The second strategy would involve a much more active campaign. If the vile, anti-woman, backward looking political cretins are going to be challenged, that is an active campaign that will be needed.

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