E-Mail This Article to a Friend Our bodies, our politics (continued)

The ACLU, along with the National Abortion Federation and various doctors, filed suit against the US Department of Justice, charging that 1) the law’s fluid procedural definitions could include legal abortions in the second trimester; and 2) the ban makes no exception for a woman’s health — the same shortcoming that caused the Supreme Court to strike down a similar state ban in Nebraska in 2000. "States have been passing restrictions for years now," says Louise Melling, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. "Now what we have is the federal government also entering the business of restricting abortions."

The "partial-birth" abortion ban is not the only way the government is meddling in private decisions. Susan Yanow, of Cambridge’s Abortion Access Project, points to another: mandated waiting times, which create an intense burden because they force women — including working women who might have difficulty getting time off from work and teenagers who need to find time away from school — to travel to a clinic twice. "Let’s be real," she says. "Nobody calls a clinic and schedules an abortion if they haven’t thought about it."

"This administration has done so much damage," says NOW action vice-president Olga Vives. "They’re such liars.... People don’t get what’s going on behind the scenes." Vives is referring to the fact that while abortions remain legal in this country, they are increasingly unattainable for all but those women who live in metropolitan areas and have money. As of 2000, the last year for which statistics are available, 87 percent of US counties had no abortion providers, and 25 percent of women seeking abortions had to travel more than 50 miles to obtain one, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Making matters more difficult, Congress bars women from using Medicaid funds for an abortion. According to Planned Parenthood, most abortions (which can range in cost from $150 to almost $2000) are paid for out-of-pocket. Many states also restrict financial assistance for family planning and contraception. According to the institute, almost half the women who had abortions after 16 weeks said that one reason for their delay was the difficulty they had making arrangements, either financially or logistically.

So, with abortion access already severely limited, pro-choice activists were understandably alarmed when Congress passed (by one vote in the Senate) the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. The act, proposed in the name of Laci Peterson, who was murdered in December 2003 when she was eight months pregnant, gives fetuses a legal status they never had before. By bestowing personhood on fetuses, the law establishes a precedent that pro-choice advocates worry could be used to help overturn Roe v. Wade, which noted that "the law has been reluctant to endorse any theory that life, as we recognize it, begins before live birth or to accord legal rights to the unborn." "[A]dopting one theory of life," the court said, does not permit the state to "override the rights of the pregnant woman."

Indeed, the act undermines the "fundamental premise that underlies Roe," says Louise Melling, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, because it does choose a single theory of life and accordingly makes a "fetus a person." Pro-choice groups worry that if another abortion case reaches the Supreme Court, the fact that it is now a federal crime to harm an "unborn child," regardless of its stage of development, will provide anti-choice activists with the legal foundation to challenge Roe.

IN NOVEMBER, the nation will elect a president — and pro-choice activists say that women’s right to abortion could be diminished even more dramatically if that president is George W. Bush. If the current administration continues, "we will continue to see these legislative attempts, initiatives, to restrict abortions and reproductive rights in every possible way," warns the Abortion Access Project’s Yanow. "This is an administration where ideology has triumphed over science."

Bush, it’s now clear, is bent on appointing pro-life judges. He has already nominated openly anti-choice justices to appellate courts all over the country. In addition to Pryor and Pickering, he selected Michael McConnell (confirmed by the Senate to the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in 2002), who "has represented himself as a ‘pro-life leader ... and scholar’ seeking ‘legal reform’ — including a constitutional amendment that would overturn Roe v. Wade, which he believes is a ‘gross misinterpretation of the Constitution,’" according to NARAL. In total, the president has nominated 49 justices to federal appeals courts, none of whom has gone on record as supporting the Roe decision and 14 of whom have staunch anti-choice records. Bush cites Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia — two of the court’s strongest Roe opponents — as model justices.

And that’s where the real concern arises among pro-choice activists. "If Bush is elected to a second term, it’s no secret that if there was the opportunity to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat, he would fill it with an anti-choice judge and overturn Roe," Yanow says.

There is constant speculation about when a Supreme Court vacancy will open up. Much of the chatter surrounds the four justices regarded as most likely to retire: Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who turns 80 this year; John Paul Stevens, who is 84; Sandra Day O’Connor, who is 74 and has been treated for breast cancer; and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is 71 and was treated for colon cancer five years ago. The court is closely split on abortion rights, as shown by the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (which affirmed the principles of Roe v. Wade by prohibiting abortion restrictions that place an "undue burden" on a woman). If Rehnquist, who dissented from the majority in Roe, is the first to step down, the court’s balance won’t shift. But if any of the other three do, it most likely will. Then, one Supreme Court case dealing with abortion rights could be all it takes to overturn Roe.

Despite all this, abortion still isn’t at the top of many people’s political-issue lists. A report released in February by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that while more than half (58 percent) of those surveyed were in favor of keeping abortion legal, only 19 percent of that group said they would vote against a candidate who disagreed with them. Of the 37 percent who opposed abortion, 15 percent said the same thing. In other words, the issue doesn’t have remarkable power as a wedge issue. It holds less sway than gay marriage and more than gun control as a priority issue, the report noted.

Several activists speculate that women, especially younger women who grew up with Roe v. Wade firmly in place, have enjoyed a false sense of complacency that is being shattered only now. At the Redline meet-up, for instance, 24-year-old Zakia Dilday, of Dorchester, said that until recently, she thought of abortion rights as "a given." Today, as she realizes that might not be the case, she is angry and funneling her energy into hyping the march. "People need to hear a buzz about the march," she says. "The more people ... hear people talking about the threat to women, the more active participants we will gain."

NARAL spokeswoman Evelyn Becker agrees that one major goal this weekend will be to ring the alarm bell, galvanize pro-choicers, and start an eight-month push leading up to what they hope will be Bush’s ouster in November.

So, on Sunday, as close to a million people walk the protest route near the White House, they will be seeking to prevent further erosion of reproductive rights engineered by anti-choice advocates. As NOW’s Vives says, "They are really intent on reversing so many of the gains we’ve had since the 1960s." And for one day, she hopes, the crowd, "massive, diverse, and very loud," won’t let them.

Deirdre Fulton can be reached at deirdre_fulton@yahoo.com