The Turning Tide on Women’s Rights & Abortion - Blog of Author Stephen Singular and Joyce Jacques Singular

The Turning Tide on Women’s Rights & Abortion

If you were the kind of person who believed in conspiracies, you might see the outlines of one in what follows. On May 31, 2009, the radical Kansas anti-abortionist Scott Roeder walked into Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita and gunned down George Tiller in the foyer, just as the Sunday service was about to start. Dr. Tiller was America’s best-known and most-hated abortion provider (my book about his assassination and the unfolding civil war in our country, The Wichita Divide, will be published in two months). In the immediate aftermath of the murder, anti-abortion groups, politicians, and individuals rushed forward, as they always do in these circumstances, and decried this violent act. No one wanted to say that by killing Dr. Tiller, Roeder had eliminated abortion not just in Wichita and Kansas, but had removed this option for the thousands of women who’d come to his clinic from other states seeking his advice and care. Roeder had effectively lowered the number of abortions in one swath of the country. Other people, who are rarely described as “radical,” were about to intensify their own strategies for accomplishing the same goal -- from coast to coast.

In 2010, state legislatures introduced more than 600 measures to limit access to abortion and 34 of them passed. The 2010 election saw 45 new anti-abortionists win seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Twenty-nine governors are now strongly anti-abortion, eight more than before the mid-term election. Fifteen states currently have both anti-abortion legislatures and governors, up five from last year. Many of the newly-victorious politicians support laws that require doctors to read material to their abortion patients about fetal development, to show them ultrasound images, and to impose mandatory waiting periods. According to Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pennsylvania), the House is “more pro-life than it’s ever been.”

The new Congress promised to work on improving the economy, so naturally they’re doing this by targeting abortion and trying to undermine the Obama Administration’s health care reform legislation. Under the umbrella of saving money, the Republican majority in the House is considering the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” which would abolish tax breaks for private employers who provide health coverage offering abortion services. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-New Jersey), would disallow tax credits encouraging small businesses to provide insurance for their workers to buy policies that cover abortions. Many, if not a majority, of employer-sponsored insurance plans do just this. People with their own policies who have enough expenses to claim an income tax deduction could not deduct either the premiums for policies that cover abortion or the cost of an abortion. These restraints go far beyond current law opposing federal money for abortions. The Smith bill would provide federal financing of abortions in cases of “forcible” rape, but not statutory or coerced rape or incest involving those who are not minors. Smith’s office has not yet defined what “forcible rape” actually means.

Another new bill, the “Protect Life Act” sponsored by Rep. Pitts, would prohibit Americans receiving insurance through the new state exchanges from purchasing abortion coverage, even with their own money. And it would allow hospitals to refuse women abortions, even in emergencies, if such care would offend the conscience of the health care providers. The obvious irony is that so many of these politicians have run or positioned themselves as Small Government Conservatives. But when it comes to abortion, they’re all in favor of expanding the feds’ role in the most private area of individual lives.

The above are just a couple of the fronts in the emerging battle. Under current Supreme Court precedent, the government doesn’t bar abortions prior to the point of “viability”: around 22 to 26 weeks after conception. Last year, Nebraska enacted a law directly challenging this standard and the state now bans abortions 20 weeks after conception. The statute includes a very narrow exception for preserving a woman’s physical health or life, but not for severe fetal anomalies. Similar laws are now pending in other states. The end game in all this new legislation, the pro-choice side feels, is to provide the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ammunition to challenge or overturn Roe v. Wade.

For years Dr. LeRoy Carhart traveled to Wichita each month to assist Dr. Tiller at his clinic. Following Tiller’s death, Carhart expanded his own abortion practice in Nebraska, but after last year’s passage of a more restrictive law in the Cornhusker state, Dr. Carhart resettled on the East Coast. Kansas is considering passing a similar law, even though its one abortion doctor is now deceased. With tightening laws and rising sentiment against pro-choice, 87% of American counties have no abortion provider. Because of this and other factors, Planned Parenthood and its hundreds of health centers have played an increasingly significant role in aiding millions of pregnant women, poor and otherwise. The organization offers 1.85 million low-income women family-planning counseling and screening for sexually-transmitted diseases, diabetes, and a variety of cancers; no other group offers this comprehensive care to women on a national level. Planned Parenthood does not receive taxpayer money for abortions, but does fund its own abortion services, so it too has come under attack.

“What is more fiscally responsible,” U.S. Representative Mike Pence of Indiana recently asked his colleagues, “than denying any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America?”

Rep. Pence has 154 co-sponsors for a bill to prevent the federal government from funding not just Planned Parenthood, but every clinic that provide abortions. Using a more guerilla-like approach, something called “Live Action” has been running a sting operation on Planned Parenthood clinics in six states, trying to connect the staff to child prostitution.

In response to the new proposed legislation, Democrats are trying to fight back, but on the defensive in this new environment.

“We are sending a clear message to House Republicans that their agenda on women’s health is extreme,” said Senator Barbara Boxer of California. “It breaks faith with a decades-long bipartisan compromise, and it risks the health and lives of women. It also punishes women and businesses with a tax hike if they wish to keep or buy insurance that covers a full range of reproductive health care.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has called the latest round of anti-abortion activities the biggest assault women’s rights “in our lifetime.”

Dr. Tiller’s murder seems to have unleashed an entirely new wave of energy for the anti-abortion movement to change laws, shut down woman’s health services, and restrict or prevent abortions. Nothing has been the same since Roeder took the physician’s life.