Why Safe & Legal Abortion Matters to You

(why access to abortion matters to everyone)

by Pam Green, © 2016


 
Why does continued legality , safety, and practical availability of abortion matter to everyone ? Even to people who believe they would never ever under any circumstances need to utilize this themselves ? Even to you , the die-hard Anti-Choicer.
Let me count the ways. Because making abortion illegal, unsafe, or just plain difficult would affect everyone's interests adversely.
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Why Safe &Legal Abortion Matters to You

(why access to abortion (& contraception) matter to everyone)

by Pam Green, © 2016

Perhaps you think that continued legality, safety, and practical availablity of abortion doesn't matter to you personally, either because you would never need one or would never get one under any conceivable circumstances (because you are opposed to abortion under all possible circumstances or almost all possible circumstances).. Perhaps you also think it doesn't matter to anyone you love or care about, or perhaps you just really don't care about their welfare and autonomy more than you care about abolishing abortion.. Perhaps you also don't care about the effects on society generally and don't care about the fate of any unwanted child after it exits the unwilling mother's womb.


Well , you are WRONG and I am going to tell you why.

Reasons why you might not think it matters

Because you personally are not at any risk of pregnancy.


Because there is absolutely no circumstance that would cause you to want or accept having an abortion

Because there's no one else you care about


Why you must and should care

Because you do care about the effects on society or on your own tax bill

Because the Anti-Abortion crowd also wants to reduce or eliminate contraception.

Because without the ability to control our reproductive potential , women will be right back to second class status, second class education, second class jobs, etc.

because Society has already invested in the pregnant girl or woman

If you don't care about your own welfare, please DO respect the rights of others to determine for themselves and follow their own beliefs.

The pregnant girl or woman is a REAL PERSON. She is already born. That's a more advanced and more truely human state in every way (especially cognitive and socially interactive) than is a fetus, even a third trimester fetus.. Thus she has RIGHTS that are at least EQUAL to those of the fetus. (in my view her rights are far far superior to those of the fetus, but this article addresses readers who don't agree.)

Now I hear screams from the Anti-Choice crowd that "the fetus is innocent". Well in most cases the pregnant woman is also innocent. Anyone who is raped is totally an innocent victim. Those subjected to incest are innocent victims . Those who have had an originally wanted pregnancy turn into a the disaster of a disasterously damaged fetus or into a threat to the woman's own life or health are innocent victims. Those who used contraception but had their method fail are innocent. Those who believed a man who said he was sterile are foolish but innocent. So at most the "innocence arguement" would leave the woman who failed to use contraception as "non-innocent" or "guilty" and so ineligible for the remedy of choosing to abort. The equally "guilty" man (who did not use any contraception, although condoms are readily available and the method is easy to understand and use) is not punished in the same degree, too often not punished at all..

And , by the way, if the fetus is "innocent" (and I agree that it is, regardless of how it was conceived), why should it be acceptable to punish it with any serious life-enjoyment impairing health condition ? Why punish it with a parent who resents it or abuses or abandons it ? Why condemnn it to institutional rearing in "the system" ?

Act on your own beliefs when it comes to choosing for yourself. But don't impose your choice on anyone else !

Keep abortion legal and safe !!!!!!!

And for ideas on how to make the need for abortion rare, thus completing Bill Clinton's trilogy of "legal , safe , and rare", "rare" meaning "rarely needed", see my article You Say that You Dislike Abortion

A better and more relevant quote comes from that other Clinton : "Women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights."


 


 

addtionally :
if the government can over-rule a woman's choice to abort, it can also over-rule her choice to give birth

if government can prohibit or limit or not fund abortion, it can equally mandate (require) or encourage abortion or fund abortion but discourage or NOT fund pregnancy care and childbirth

In the aftermath of Roe v Wade, a number of cases reached the U S Supreme Court concerning whether it violated the Constitution if a state government or the federal government chose to provide funding for pregnancy care and childbirth care but did not provide funding for abortion. Those cases decided that (a) this was not discrimination based on sex , thus the law needed only to have a "rational basis" and (b) that it was "rational" for a government to decide to show preference for increased births , thus higher population growth, rather than abortion.

Now in 2017, oreventually, governments may well realize that increased population size is NOT desirable, indeed that reduced size would be desirable, and therefore "rationally" choose to provide funding for abortion (and also contraception) but not provide any funding for childbirrth and possibly also not for pregnnancy care.

As I write this , summer of 2017, Congress is debating how to "repeal and replace" (destroy) the Affordable Care Act. One of the key changes is to reduce federal support of Medicaid, reducing money available to the states to provide this care for their poorest citizens. It would be totally rational fiscally for a state to decide that spending on pregnancy prevention and termination is hugely less costly, thus a better bargain for spending their limited funds, than is pregnancy continuation care, childbirth care, and neonatal ICU and possibly lifetime care for any infants born with prroblems.

(note : employer discrimination which disadvantaged pregnancy was also upheld by the Supreme Court until passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act ammending Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. note also that what Congress giveith, a later Congress can take away, and then the issues would go back to the courts)


some relevant Supreme Court decisions :

Because this may be more of a short course in Constitutional Law than most readers will want, I'm going to put this into a separate page. If you are interested, go to caselaw Material added July 2017


 


 

Related topics :


 


 
site author Pam Green copyright 2003
created 12/15/2016 revised 12/25/2016, 7/04/2017
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