A woman's right to choose

January 22nd marked the 43rd anniversary of a landmark decision for women’s rights. On this day over four decades ago, one of the most significant Supreme Court cases in American history, Roe v. Wade, came to a close. Citing as its basis a woman’s right to privacy, it overturned legislation that had historically outlawed abortions except in cases in which the mother’s life was in immediate danger. Many hoped and believed that this legalization would end the days of back-alley, coat-hanger abortions and instead make this safe medical procedure (safer than carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth, in fact) accessible to women who wanted or needed one. It validated the recognition that women deserve the right to make decisions about their own bodies and lives.

While Roe v. Wade’s decision still holds today, state efforts to erode this progress for women’s rights remain fervent. Between 2011 and 2014, lawmakers put 231 new restrictions in place to make it harder for women to seek safe abortion services. In 2014, 27 states were considered hostile to abortion rights according to the Guttmacher Institute, meaning they have four or more restrictions on abortion access in place. Examples of these include increasing the wait time to receive the procedure, banning telemedicine abortions, requiring providers to distribute false information about particular methods of abortion, and more.

Now, couple these intensifying laws with many Republicans’ fiery determination to defeat the Affordable Care Act, which mandates insurance coverage of health services such as birth control, STD testing and breastfeeding support, among others. And add onto that the fact that for every one abortion provider in the U.S. there are over four crisis pregnancy centers—organizations with no medical credentials, often operated by religious groups, that attempt to convince women not to undergo an abortion.

Women’s capacities for decision-making about their well-being and lives have become mere political fodder. 2016 GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson most notably illustrated the disregard for the people behind the policies when he said, “There is no war on women! There may be a war on what’s inside of women.” This statement makes little logical sense. Dr. Carson’s sentiment is clear: women do not deserve to be treated as autonomous, free-thinking beings with the right to make their own decisions. And Carson isn’t alone. Marco Rubio, a leading candidate for the GOP nomination, believes abortion should be banned even in the case of rape or incest. Now, 43 years after Roe, it feels as though we are moving backwards, despite the fact that 50 percent of Americans identify themselves as pro-choice.

Perhaps it is because of this shift in thinking that anti-choicers are reacting in subversive and violent ways. One example is the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group who made the videos accusing Planned Parenthood of profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. CMP is now being sued by several different organizations for violating confidentiality agreements, creating false identities and fraud, and their leader, David Daleiden, is being indicted. Another example is the so-called “pro-life” shooter who murdered three people including a police officer at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, claiming as justification for the slaughter that he is “a warrior for the babies.”

Many of the regulations pursued by anti-abortion advocates unconvincingly claim to be motivated by medical ethics. Regulations that force women to endure a convoluted “cooling off” period before having the procedure make it difficult for working women to have the procedure, as they often are forced to take two days or more off from work to wait for the procedure. At an extreme, Texas has passed legislation requiring ultrasounds that may actually harm both mother and child, a hypocritically dubious piece of legislation that seems more an attempt to personify the fetus than establish sound medical practice.

We are privileged to have grown up in an age when abortion is safe and legal in the United States. We do not truly realize how devastating it would be if abortion rights were rolled back to the days before Roe v. Wade. While for many the idea that abortion could ever be criminalized seems ludicrous, a woman’s agency over her body is still being threatened by escalating restrictions, misinformation and increasingly radical anti-choice factions. Forty-three years after Roe v. Wade’s pivotal victory for women's rights, we must still fight to retain the rights to our own bodies. Abortion may have its detractors, but women have been fighting to gain the right to their bodies for generations and will continue to do so. We are where we are because of a long history of strong, influential pro-choice activists.

If we want women to be able to participate as equal citizens in our society, we need to give them the autonomy to chart the outcome of their own lives. To borrow language from Roe, we cannot and should not intrude into “matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” We can return to the days before Roe, where women died instead of bearing unwanted children. We can become a country like Paraguay, where the government recently forced an 11-year-old rape victim to give birth. Or, we can protect a woman’s right to choose. That shouldn’t be a hard decision.