Michael Cipriano’s article “Constitution ignored in pro-choice argument” is a timely one as the April 25 March for Women’s Lives is just around the corner. I am going to D.C. to march with my two sisters. Contrary to Cipriano’s beliefs that the decisions of this administration are a perceived threat to women and not an actual one, the anti-choice extremists have already affected our own lives and the lives of millions of women world-wide.
President Bush has done more to undermine our reproductive lives than any president since 1973. His administration is comprised of a surgeon general who won’t prescribe hormonal birth control to unmarried women, an attorney general who ignores Planned Parenthood’s repeated requests to investigate the bomb threats that their clinics constantly face (maybe because he is making them). When President Bush cuts federal funding for comprehensive sex education he is taking a stance against young women having the tools to understand their reproductive health and prevent unplanned pregnancies.
You make some useful points in reference to the historic Roe v. Wade decision. I agree that framing the Roe v. Wade argument under the rubric of privacy is problematic. It should have been written with the recognition that without a woman’s right to control her reproductive heath, all other rights become mute. If a woman doesn’t control her reproductive life she has no control over her life.
To answer the rhetorical question you pose at the end of your article (“I only ask that those who blindly follow a pro-choice stance consider this: If the majority of the population in any given state was in favor of banning abortion, and the state legislature chose to act in response to those beliefs by making it law, shouldn’t that law be considered legitimate?”) I would say, absolutely, but only if those same people who decide to ban abortions can decide when, at what age, single or married, and where, in which states, and under what conditions you can have sex, Mr. Cipriano.
The right to choose is about sex and not being forced to have it on anyone else’s terms. It’s about privilege and education, about who has access to sex education and reproductive health care and who doesn’t. If the majority of people living in my state don’t believe in abortion, are you claiming that the majority of people in my state have the right to involve themselves in my decisions about motherhood? This also implies that the majority of people in my state have a right to be involved in the decisions that I make about when and under what conditions and with what birth control I can have sex.
The right to choose is about freedom, about a woman’s right to control her own life. These choices to which we have grown so accustomed have not always been ours to make. It was not that long ago when our fathers’ decided if we could go to school, who we could marry and when. Our husbands decided when we had sex and therefore how many children we had. Men no longer have the right to decide when women can and cannot have sex. When that decision is taken away we call it rape. What do we call it when women are forced to give birth? I would argue that it is impossible for a woman to “blindly follow a pro-choice stance.” Women can be unaware of the constitutional details surrounding the Roe v. Wade case, but no woman is blind to the fact that sex and pregnancy change the course of a woman’s life, and she should be in control of these changes.
Megan Gavin mgavin@bu.edu 617-797-4785 UNI ’01 GRS ’04
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