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N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , DECEMBER 2003
INVASION OF OUR BODIES
BY CLAUDIA HARPER
“I will not give to a woman an
instrument to procure abortion. ”
-HIPPOCRATES
THIS DRAWING BY NANCY O’HANIAN (FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES) DEPICTS THE ABORTION DEBATE
AS TWO HANDS TUGGING AT A RAG DOLL — SUGGESTING THAT THE DEBATE IS ABOUT AN “ UNBORN
CHILD" RATHER THAN ABOUTA WOMAN’S RIGHTS.
A NEW CIVIL WAR?
Probably unconscious of the ramifications of his words,
a man who claimed leadership of the anti-abortion crusades at
abortion clinics, once compared political decisions that transfer
the right of abortion from women to the state to the Dred Scott
decision of 1857. He said rulings to gut but preserve the façade
of the 1973 abortion law (Roe vs. Wade) are analogous to Dred
Scott, which was a major factor that precipitated the Civil War.
Scott, a slave, sued the U.S. Supreme Court for his
freedom. Slave owners and their political and judicial cronies
insisted the Court reject Scott's claim of citizenship because he
was a slave (which meant he was hardly human). Abolitionists
attempted to convince the Court that all persons were human
beings and entitled to citizenship and freedom.
Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that the original
intent of the Constitution favored only the freedom and citizen
ship of white males. The general consensus among the Found
ing Fathers and long afterward, he said, was that Negroes were
“so far inferior that they had no rights that a white man was
bound to respect."
The net effect of the Dred Scott decision was to make
the issue of slavery too explosive for political or judicial settle
ment. It was later termed a “monumental indiscretion" and a
“public calamity." Justice Felix Frankfurter once remarked that
Supreme Court justices never mentioned Dred Scott after the
Civil War, any more, he said, than a family whose son had been
hanged mentioned ropes or scaffolds.
The abortion rights issue in the United States follows
the same unfortunate premise, as evidenced by the recent
“partial birth abortion ban" championed by the Bush admini
stration and its Congressional zealots. Women are not regarded
as equal citizens. They do not have the right to make elemental
choices about abortion.
The hypocrisy is that women have had to make these
decisions for thousands of years.Women have been responsible
for birth control or forced to be the instruments of euthanasia in
regards to unwanted children in the vacuum left by irresponsible
men. Abortion at least allows a woman to dispose of an unwant
ed child before it is born. For some reason men who abdicate
the responsibility for birth control yet believe they should control
a woman's options, which has less to do with concern for the
unborn fetus than it does retaining supremacy over women.
Woman are not allowed to be free and equal citizens. For that
matter, 140 years after emancipation, neither are black people
who wish to be known as Afro/Americans in recognition of their
long presence in this hemisphere.
Humanity is crowding itself off its home planet. Abortion
is a survival mechanism that attempts (consciously or sublimin-
ally) to alleviate the ever increasing ravage of the earth and the
specter of incessant poverty and starvation by an over abundant
species that seldom practices successful birth control. In the bad
old days children were abandoned or slaughtered when a popu
lation overran its resources. Abortion and particularly the French
abortion pill RU486 (still banned in the U.S.) is a more prefer
able option than an AIDS or ebola epidemic in stabilizing popu
lation growth.
Yet, as with slavery, abortion causes furious arguments
and is such an emotional issue that a civil war of sorts is in the
process of erupting. Like the infamous three-fifths compromise
that allowed that much but no more consideration of being
human beings to slaves, the Bush administration and its allies
on the religious right have declared that women are “so far
inferior that they have no rights a... man (is) bound to respect.”
On November 5, our President signed into law “partial
birth abortion" ban legislation. George Bush seems willing to
invade our bedrooms, our medical records and our library
studies. And now he is willing to invade our very bodies.
This is the first time a medically safe procedure has
been declared illegal. The bill forbids an abortion generally
performed in the second or third trimester. This law prohibits
doctors from committing an “overt act" designed to terminate
a partially delivered fetus, regardless of the health and safety
of the woman's health or the risk of impairment to the child.
This is yet another infringement on our privacy. Abortion
is a privacy issue. Medical privacy is a basic American freedom.
Until now we Americans have enjoyed aocess to the privacy
of our doctors’ and attorneys’ counsel. The Bush administration
strives to limit that access.
The White House would also limit our access to inform
ation about reproductive health.
Since taking office, Bush has attacked birth control edu
cation, sex education in the schools and family planning, as well
as the abortion “guaranteed" us by Roe vs. Wade for the past 30
years. Even with the recommendation by the Surgeon General
for comprehensive, medically accurate sex education, Bush
responded with a $33 million program for an abstinence-only
program. This is a battle most of us never expected to have to
fight again.
This recent legislation will jettison our mothers, sisters
and daughters right back into the seamy, dangerous, pre-1970s
world of illegal, unsupervised and often deadly homemade
contrivances, unmonitored drugs and back-alley deaths.
At a time when advertisements for drugs that enhance
sexual performance and pleasure for men inundate the Internet
and television, women in the armed forces are denied the
prophylactics issued every World War 2 soldier and forbidden
to have an abortion — even at their own expense.
The Bush administration ignores the reality of unwanted
pregnancy: curtailed education, diseased and malnourished and
drug-addicted births, flooded county facilities and services,
harshly under-funded programs for educating disadvantaged
children whose chances in life are ruinously limited, and young,
single mothers who can only turn to the desperate measures of
abuse, abandonment or worse.
The kind of “morality" that allows the above scenario
also ignores support for Head Start, adequate federal funding
for schools and universal child health insurance.
Because of these reasons, challenges to this new law
have already begun in federal courts in Nebraska, California
and New York.
As Americans, we have a responsibility to safeguard
the rights of women, families and unborn children to planned,
prosperous and healthy lives. As voters, we must be vigilant and
mindful of the infringements on our rights and the quality of the
lives of all people
Claudia Harper lives in Astoria. She is a poet and hosts
a weekly public affairs program on KMUN-FM on Wednesday
mornings, “Talk of Our Towns.”
-M ICHAEL McCUSKER
WOMEN WILL HAVE TO SAVE THE WORLD
BY MARLENE NADLE
President George Bush may not face much opposition
in Congress to tiis plan for perpetual preemptive war, but he
better watch out for the women
Angry over the swagger of violence coming out of the
White House, disgusted by the bring-'em-on itch for a fight as
the solution to political problems, women around the globe are
organizing in new ways.
These gender activists are all on the Internet, in the
streets, packed into rooms forming more groups and pushing
resolutions through the United Nations. Some are setting up an
Occupation Watch Center in Baghdad, and others are building
a transnational movement. They even have their first martyr
in Rachel Corrie, the young American who was killed trying to
stop an Israeli bulldozer from destroying Palestinian homes
The surge of women's activism is happening now partly
as a response to 9/11. That event accelerated the growth of
new groups like England's ‘Global Women’s Strike’ and Central
Asia’s 'Worldwide Sisterhood Against Terrorism & War’.
Explaining her own reaction to that trauma and the
macho strut of both Osama bin Laden and George Bush, 'Code
Pink’ founder Medea Benjamin says, "I had feelings and fears
I never had in all my years of organizing. The male aggressive
voice was so very dominant. We needed to strengthen the
voices opposed to that Mobilizing women was one way to do
it." Her reaction to violent solutions is shared by Indian writer
Arundhati Roy who calls bin Laden Bush's “dark doppleganger."
The new organizing is more than an attack on person
alities. As Jasmina Tesanovic, a member of ‘Women in Black’
in Serbia, says, "My enemy is no longer a bad hero, or a politi
cian, or a person in power, but the culture that makes such
primitive people possible and empowers them " The organizing
is part of a culture war to end the love of military glory, power,
dominance and hierarchy taught as part of male traditions.
New Profile’, a women’s group in Israel, demands a complete
réévaluation of its country’s “military consciousness."
To counter a male habit of imposing power and domin
ance in postwar periods, women diplomats and nongovernment
organizations pressured the United Nations to pass Resolution
1325, calling for women’s full participation in nation building.
Now, Iraqi women are organizing to stop Bush from running
their country as a Boy's Club. They are being supported and
advised by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM),
the 'Network of Kosovo Women’, ‘Women to Women Inter
national’, Peace Women', and a deluge of visiting groups
This international alliance is aiding Iraqi women’s own
efforts to protest violent rapes, honor killings and the rise of
fanatics. “We fear the threat of fundamentalist religious move
ments which an occupying army inspires," the 'Iraq Women’s
League’ said in a recent statement.
The activists count on women in postwar and prewar
situations to argue for political solutions to macho face-offs.
They encourage them to use their social training in settling
issues with words, cooperation, and even empathy for enemies.
There are no illusions about ovaries making all women
good and peaceful. Instead, Ann Snitow of the 'Network of
East-West Women' urges women to acknowledge their past
complicity with men’s wars Few expect Bush National Security
Advisor Condolezza Rice to give up her allegiance to traditional
male stomp-and-rule values. But men who share their alternate
vision are welcome in the movement
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The women may be waging a culture war, but that does
not mean they can’t do down-and-dirty politics. In an incident
that is an early warning about the 2004 elections, a group of
women greeted a fundraising George W. Bush in Los Angeles
recently with a 40-foot pink rejection slip that read: “You’re
Fired!"
Most significant is the change in young women who
haven't been voting In a recent article in a weekly magazine
on youth voting, 23 year old Chantel Azadeh said, “The last
two years have done a number on a lot of people's minds This
election I plan on getting involved. I think it’s crucial that we get
Bush out of the White House." An MTV survey showed only
41% of the young are planning to vote for Bush.
The President’s ominous mutterings about nuclear
weapons in Iran and North Korea are enough to keep gender
activism going. Ditto the economic attack on women’s domestic
needs in America and in countries that are its once and future
allies Niki Adams of London’s 'Global Women’s Strike' is
helping to organize a demand for a Women’s Budget in 24
countries where her group has members, including the United
States.
“Our slogan is Invest in caring not in killing’," she says
Even Madonna has joined the post-9/11 resistance with her
new music video “American Life" which satirizes the military
superhero Driven by dread, the women activists will continue
to multiply They are haunted by nightmare images of where
the punch and counterpunch of superpower and terrorist,
occupier and occupied, will lead
“This is a desperate moment in our history," says play
wright Karen Malpede, who only half-jokingly adds, “I guess
women will have to save the world "
Marlene Nadle is a journalist and Associate o f the
Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at the New School
for Social Research in New York She wrote this article for
Pacific News Service
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