Today is 36th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade: What are you doing about it?
And I mean that in terms of whether you support or oppose the results of Roe.
You can read the decision itself here or read a nice breakdown at About.com.
For the record, I support the constitutional rights recognized in the U.S. Supreme Court decision which made a woman’s medical decision regarding her reproductive rights legal and I am against the erosion of those rights.
I do, however, support efforts to curtail unwanted pregnancy through means that do not impinge on a girl or woman’s reproductive rights. I absolutely support laws such as this one, just passed in Ohio, that provide assistance to girls and women who carry children to term but choose to give up permanent custody through adoption:
Now comes word that Guv Ted has signed Sub. HB 7, the Adoption Reform Act. The new law allows birth mothers to receive up to $3,000 from adoptive parents for living expenses incurred during the pregnancy and 60 days post-birth.
Great idea and it costs taxpayers nothing. Providing practical incentives for young women to continue their pregnancies is the way to go.
Sponsor of this bill, outgoing state Rep. Tom Brinkman of the 34th district, is one of those aforementioned pro-life legislators. In 2005, he proposed banning nearly all abortions in Ohio and was met with a snearing, hissing overflow crowd in the Statehouse Atrium.
Other good readings on what’s happening around the country today related to this anniversary:
Planned Parenthood’s Commemorating 36 Years of Roe v. Wade
On Roe v. Wade’s Anniversary, Obama to Begin Mopping Up Bush’s Misogynistic Mess
Join a live-blog from 3-4pm today about Roe that will be hosted by former President of the national Planned Parenthood organization, Gloria Feldt, and current President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Sarah Stoesz.
You can read two recent posts by Feldt about the importance and impact of reproductive rights here:
Beyond Roe: Toward Human Rights for Women
Trading in Barefoor and Pregnant for Economic and Reproductive Justice
I don’t monitor anti-choice efforts, but here is the National Right to Life website and here is a link to information for today’s March for Life.
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26 Responses to “Today is 36th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade: What are you doing about it?”
Roe v. Wade is illegitimate judicial activism. Abortion is correctly the subject and object of state and where proper, local laws.
Abortion isn't going away as a political issue any time soon, and may become revived depending on the scope and nature of expansion of federal health care to more of the population, and to related issues such as New York's seeking to require insurers to provide coverage to “children” as old age 29, not 19. “Medicare for All” will of course make the issue unavoidable. Many on the Right are opposed to taxpayer-paid abortions, and certainly there is no absolute “right” to these under any and all conceivable circumstances. The militant crusaders on the Left, on the other hand, risk a backlash if they go beyond what appeals to those of us who are reasonable.
NOTE: The correct nomenclature has _never_ been “choice” and “choose,” but of course “abortion” and “abort” or “have an abortion.”
Everything you wrote I treat as your opinion – I have no interest in arguing or debating you out of it. I disagree with it and that's obvious from what I posted.
What I will vehemently disagree with is your assertion about what the “correct nomenclature” is – according to whom?
DFS abortion is always a choice. We aren't the Chinese or Indians who abort excess female babies, the seriously physically or mentally impaired, or those who can't provide a significant dowry.
[...] No real need to recap the events of today, as we all know what happened. Also, there is no reason to run down what is being said and done, as there is always something going on each year here or there, or someone opining this way or that way. [...]
Considering you use the term “anti-choice”, it's pretty clear what side your are on. This is very biased journalism and coined by those in the “pro-choice” (and note I did not use the term pro-abortion, even thought I find this term more appropriate than anti-choice to the debate at hand) movement. People see “abortion” as negative and “choice” as positive and those in the “pro-choice” movement use this term “anti-choice” as a propaganda tool to marginalize people who have a legitimate belief that abortion is wrong. “Anti-abortion” is the correct term to describe those who oppose the legality of this procedure. If you are truly interested in finding common ground, like I think you are trying to do in this post, you should correct your article accordingly else consider yourself part of the propaganda
I proudly volunteered with Clinic Defense in the late 80s & early 90s after witnessing the religious terrorism of Operation “Rescue” in action. I also proudly voted for Barack Obama for President.
Roe is the law of the land, and all those who do not favor access to abortion for those in need of it, feel free to not get one.
From personal experience, I'm old enough to remember what it was like for a woman to deal with an unwanted pregnancy before Roe, and I will never allow this country to return to those times.
“…all those who do not favor access to abortion for those in need of it, feel free to not get one”
So if a dictator of a country decides to mass murder millions of innocent civilians because it is more convenient for the dictator to have those people dead than alive, and we think that's wrong, you're saying we're ok to stand by and watch… as long as we don't participate in it
Wally – I state up front in the post that I'm pro-choice – there was no trying to slant that at all – I apologize if for some reason you thought otherwise.
While we're on the subject of semantics, please remember that anti-choice folks regularly blog about Obama as a murderer who approves of infanticide. And they also routinely without blinking call doctors who perform legal medical procedures “abortionists.” So – there's wordplay all around.
I actually think that calling pro-life proponents anti-choice is more accurate, because from my perspective, that's what they oppose – my legal, constitutional reproductive right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, within certain other very specific guidelines defined by law.
Remember what WC Fields said: It's not what they call you, it's what you answer to. (see here: http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_jun2004/Fields_G…)
Thanks Christoofar. I've met others who feel similarly. Progress is a great thing, but it's also scary when we start to lose the people who remember why we wanted progress in the first place.
By the way, Wally – you might be interested to know that a man smashed his SUV through the front of a Planned Parenthood office today in St. Paul. I'm thinking that he's not caring too much about what words he uses or I use. Here's more:
http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/38140…
Not at all. But what does that have to do with this discussion/topic here today?
Extremists will always do terrible things and resort to thuggery, terrorism, etc to make their statement. It's sad on an individual level but ultimately distracts from the larger debate. These actions represent the choices of a few individuals and not of a larger movement. I'm not really sure what the relevance is to the topic of abortion legality.
So would you answer to the term “anti-life”?
IF you are of the belief that abortion is the taking of a life, how, as you claimed, could one provide their objection by merely not participating? I'm sure else that is not your conclusion, but others see the issue from a different prospective and if you take that prospective, my aforementioned analogy is akin to what you are telling them to do.
Wally – you wrote, “These actions represent the choices of a few individuals and not of a larger movement” – that statement is used every single time one of these instances occurs. Maybe you want to provide some back up that this guy was or is an extremist. If however you are saying that you view that action as extremist, that's different.
My belief about abortion is irrelevant to the constitutional protections afforded reproductive rights of women. There's always been moral ambiguity in our society, within each of us as well as between us when looking at different issues.
Roe is the law of the land and I support it.
Of course these actions are extremist and i have no idea who this guy is or what his motivation is for him to do what he did. I think that fact that you keep discussing this point is also an attempt at marginalization of the pro-life movement.
I support of the rule of law in this country but Roe is bad law. Unfortunately, the “constitutional protections” that you claim support abortion's legality don't really exist. But the propaganda machine of the pro-choice movement has lead far to many to believe that they do. The purpose of the court was to interpret law, not make it.. This is a controversial issue and Roe robbed it from the hands of elected officials and ultimately the people of the US to decide for themselves. It placed this issue in the hands of 9 people who have no accountability to anyone. It politicized the Supreme Court in a way that still poisons politics to this day. Roe may have been a victory for the pro-choice movement but it was an ill-gotten gain and our political process has been a victim. Most people in the abortion debate fail to see this point.
Wally:
1. “the fact that I keep discussing this point”? I placed it as an update and you labeled it extreme. I followed up your labeling. I would call that “keep discussing.”
2. You assert, “the “constitutional protections” that you claim support abortion's legality don't really exist.” I went to law school, passed the bar – lay it on me – why don't they really exist? Are you against most of what the Warren Court did due to beliefs that it was an activist court? Are you a four corners person like Scalia? You're bandying about a lot of conclusions, but you aren't providing the back up. I'm not going anywhere.
Jill, we make all kinds of choices every day. I have explained this numerous times before. “Choice” used instead of “abortion” is nothing other than an evasive euphemism. Why there is such evasion is the real question nobody wants to answer, even though it's not as big a deal as many may fear.
“I support of the rule of law in this country but Roe is bad law. Unfortunately, the “constitutional protections” that you claim support abortion's legality don't really exist.”
Facts like that have never been accepted or respected by the Left (selected for deliberate defiance, which is a separate subject, but which need not be addressed here). You are correct — it is bad law. The core (literally — think “heart”) of Roe v. Wade is, in fact, an outstanding, if not the best as well as best-known (to the honest and intelligent) example of judicial arrogation of legislative power. (Reynolds v. Sims is a competitor. I'm surprised Warren didn't order the U.S. Senate reorganized or even abolished in association with that ruling.) The core of Roe v. Wade is not only the invention out of thin air of the abortion right that was found to exist, but the trimester rule — pure invention out of thin air by the Court.
As I've said to too many who are unable or unwilling to learn or face the truth — defenders of judicial activism and legislation by fiat by courts deserve to have judges revise the clear meaning of, or choose (word properly selected and used here) to substitute their, the judge's, desires and thoughts and wishes, for what is clearly written and intended in the defenders' deceased parents' wills.
“DFS abortion is always a choice. We aren't the Chinese or Indians who abort excess female babies, the seriously physically or mentally impaired, or those who can't provide a significant dowry.”
All those acts are similar choices, Rudi, if you understand what you wrote.
I'm not anti-abortion in the way those are who are consistently and honorably against both abortion and euthanasia on anti-killing grounds. For me there happens to be a convenient point of agreement (which isn't required, so “agitant” leftists still need to GROW UP in addition to needing to learn to be honest and direct) where there ought to be absolute opposition, namely viability (or lacking that, legal as well as moral convergence where, for example, separate legal charges are filed in the case of loss of a woman's fetus due to the acts of another, something the lefties are too often incapable of grasping or revealingly unwilling to face; why the discomfort?), beyond which there is no question what is happening. The only question is what and how do we define what is happening between conception and viability. Blind militance among the extremists on the left in the latter case simply leave better people like me filled with contempt.
“Everything you wrote I treat as your opinion “
It is a fact that Roe v. Wade was illegitimate judicial activism. Opinion would lie in the realm of how I view the worst defenders of such activism (similar to the most loony who demand federal gun control of all kinds, though it's obviously prohibited absolutely until the Constitution is amended to eliminate the prohibition _and_ grants the power explicitly to Congress — not the Supreme Court — to regulate the issue). Assuming the federal government even has been granted the power to regulate abortion or other similar personal conduct (the burden of proof is fully upon those who say there is a legitimate federal role here, and something explicit or incontrovertible has to be easily and openly demonstrated), show us all where in the U.S. Code the laws were that the Warren Court would properly be fulfilling a role of clarifying or explicating, if you deny it was inventing “law” [sic] out of thin air and imposing its whims, existed, when it issued the trimester rule. Also show us exactly where in the Constitution abortion is found if it is legitimate for the Court to strike down state or local abortion laws. There is no “privacy” and “penumbras” are nothing but ether.
DLS – how is it “a fact that Roe v Wade was illegitimate judicial activism” – that is the craziest thing I've ever heard. They did it – there's nothing illegitimate about it.
How do you describe acts by Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for starters? Got some words about illegitimate actions for them?
Honestly – you are trying to bolster what is your opinion by asserting it is fact when, in fact, these issues are 100% debatable. That's why they continue to be issues. If they were settled fact, we'd move on to something else.
Oy.
Jill. . .this has been interesting to read this article and follow the comments. . . just my ponderings. . .looking from my own off centered lens. . .
For a woman i can see how Choice is the more apt term. . .and for the male i can see where abortion is the preferred term. . .The varying lens of this discussion go back much further than Roe vs. Wade. Perhaps back to the time before the institution of marriage. . .. A time in the evolutionary development of the species, woman came forth with the first choice. . . After slowly figuring out the cause of pregnancy and bringing forth an offspring with an unusually large head women evolved into a “no” in order to insure her life. . . Child birth often resulted in the loss of life to the human mother. The female human unlike the biologically positioning of other animals, she was physically able to claim a choice and to regulate when and if she would become pregnant. . .
Leonard Shlain's book Time, Sex, and Power postulates, woman's choice to regulate her reproductive rights was a predominate cause of Patriarchal domination, that brought in marriage as restriction to woman's biological upper hand in choice. Strict judicial codes seized the power of woman's choice by placing a woman's body and sexual rights in the hands of the masculine to shore up his own insecurity concerning mortality and to insure his material possessions actually would be handled to his biological off springs
. . . Jill i am sure you already had this info. . . I found Leonard Shlain's book Time, Sex, and Power a fascinating read because it shed so much light on this ancient quagmire over choice of reproductive rights. . .Does it belong to the Church and State or does it belong to the the only one that really can authentically render choice?. . .Abortion vs. Choice, it seems to me the scrabble over language goes back thousands of years, long before Roe vs. Wade, i believe. . . .
Jill i can see you, 10,000 years ago taking a stance and having even back then, a strong rightful evolutionary Choice in order to insure survival.. . . I would like to read something on evolutionary biology that would project the current issues of Choice and Anti-abortion. . .I do not know if their are any sources on that, but could see that also leading to patches of thin ice in the modern debate. . .
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