Category: Abortion

Mexico’s Guanajuato Bans Abortion for Rape Cases

Just a few weeks after National Action Party (PAN) candidate Vincente Fox stunned Mexican politics by unseating the PRI party in presidential elections, PAN legislators in the state of Guanajuato raised long-standing concerns about the party by voting to ban abortion in the cases of rape. PAN has a history of being closely allied with the Roman Catholic Church and of being very socially conservative.

In a statement issued by the PAN legislators, they said, “As legislators, we have to consider not only the damage and pain of a woman who has been raped, but the greater evil that would occur with the death of an innocent minor.”

In most of Mexico’s 31 states, abortion is legal in instances of rape or when the mother’s life is in danger, but in some states it is outlawed and punishable by up to five years in jail for the mother and 10 years in jail for the doctor who performs the abortion.

This April a controversy errupted in the state of Baja California when a 14-year old who had been raped was refused an abortion at a hospital. When the mother and daughter went to complaint to the state’s attorney general, he took the mother and daughter to a Roman Catholic priest who tried to talk the girl and mother out of having an abortion.

Source:

Mexican northern state bans abortion in rape cases.

Why Are Men More Likely than Women to Support Abortion Rights?

Chris Weinkopf, in an article (Leaving No Child Behind)originally written for the Los Angeles Daily News and reprinted at FrontpageMag.Com, thinks George W. Bush is making a mistake by not emphasizing abortion as a campaign issue. Bush might be afraid of alienating the women’s vote, Wienkopf posits, but that calculus might be erroneous. Weinkopf writes:

They can begin by realizing that, contrary to popular mythology, women are more likely than men to agree with them on the abortion issue. A July 23 ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that while 56 percent of men favor some degree of legalized abortion, that number drops to 50 percent for women.

That’s probably because women, many of whom have experienced the miracle of a child growing and developing within them, can more readily recognize that child’s humanity. Men not only lack that biological connection, but often think of abortion as an insurance policy against the unintended consequences of casual sex.. After the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973, many men decided that their offspring — now the woman’s choice — were no longer their responsibility. A sharp increase in the numbers of single mothers and deadbeat dads followed.

Weinkopf doesn’t give the margin of error for the study, so the difference could be just a statistical fluke, but even if that’s the case it is surprising that about half of women say they don’t favor some degree of legalized abortion, especially since most feminists have made abortion rights a lynchpin of their fight for women’s rights.

Weinkopf’s explanation of the difference in attitudes is, unfortunatley, jsut a rehashing of stereotypes that today are promoted by tboth traditionalist anti-feminists as well as mainstream and radical feminists. I suspect a lot of feminists would find Weinkopf’s description of women somewhat pandering, but he is solidly in the mainstream of contemporary feminist thought when he ascribes to women a wholly different thought process than men. The real explanation, I suspect, is far simpler.

First, the abortion rights movement has really hurt itself with an ineffective response to the “partial birth” abortion issue. To their credit, anti-abortion foes have done a very good job of transforming the issue of abortion away from women’s rights and more toward a debate over when personhood begins. Surprisingly many feminists and abortion supporters don’t seem to have a clue how to handle abortion once it becomes an issue of personhood rather than an issue of women’s rights.

Second, by being so closely identified as a feminist issue for so long, the abortion rights movement is carrying a lot of the baggage of the feminist movement. This is similar to the problem with another worthy cause — the movement to abolish capital punishment which is also bogged down largely by the poor choices made by organizations and individuals within that movement.

The abortion rights movement would likely have more success if it were grounded in a general theory of individual rights that was consistently applied, but most feminists and feminist organizations are notoriously picky about women’s choice — it usually begins and ends with abortion. Many of the feminist who run around shouting “pro-choice, pro-choice” whither and disappear whenever women start wanting to make choices that the feminists disagree with (such as write books that Andrea Dworkin or Catharine MacKinnon don’t like).

Instead although they have won many battles, the abortion rights movement is on the verge of losing the war with an extremely high likelihood that the next president of the United States will be solidly anti-abortion and likely end up with a solidly anti-abortion Supreme Court within a decade.

If feminists can’t even convince more than half of women to support abortion rights, they’re in a world of hurt.

OTC the Pill Already

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering reclassifying a number of prescription drugs and turning them into drugs that would be available over the counter. Among the drugs under consideration for OTC status is the birth control pill. Such a move is long over due.

There is already some precedent for making this move. In some states pills that induce abortion can already be dispensed by pharmacists which makes them effectively over the counter drugs. Why not make the Pill, which hundreds of millions of women have safely taken, available without a prescription as well? Why shouldn’t a woman be able to walk into a drug store and buy birth control pills without going to see a doctor first?

The main argument against making the Pill available over-the-counter are the tired old paternalist arguments about protecting patients from themselves. Although the Pill is a relatively safe drug, a small percentage of women will have side effects and need to consult a physician to find the best drug for them. But this problem is no more egregious than the side effects that other OTC drugs have — after all aspirin is a potential killer when taken by certain people, yet it’s been available over-the-counter literally since it was first widely available.

It’s very important to have the convenience of popping down to a drug store for an aspirin or ibuprofen pain killer, and the same sort of freedom and convenience should be extended to birth control drugs.

Ironically while only one major anti-abortion group, the American Life League, has weighed in decrying the move to make birth control easily available without a prescription, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights League and Planned Parenthood are both oddly ambivalent about the whole issue. Salon quotes NARAL attorney Elizabeth Arndorfer as saying, “Using emergency contraception is a one-time thing that many recent studies have shown to be effective. But there are contraindications for some women using the birth control pill longer term. It may be better for a doctor to keep an eye it.”

So women are intelligent and capable of making the choice for themselves whether or not to have an abortion, but they are too irresponsible to seek out information on the birth control pill and decide for themselves whether or not to take it.

Women are not simply moral patients, they are moral actors. Women are more than capable of deciding for themselves whether or not to take a drug such as the Pill. The FDA should approve the Pill for over the counter sales as soon as possible.

Sources:

The silence of the Pill. Leah Kohlenberg, Salon.Com, July 10, 2000.

No prescription for the pill?. CNN, June 29, 2000.

FDA’s Patronizes Women with RU486 Restrictions

A couple months ago, I wrote about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration dragging its feet in approving the abortion pill RU-486 (|FDA vs. Women’s Health, Again|.) When he was running for president and needed women’s votes, Bill Clinton promised swift approval of RU-486 if he were elected. Of course once in office, Clinton forgot about his promise and, if anything, the Clinton FDA approach to RU-486 was far worse than the Reagan administration approach (at least the Reagan administration was frank enough to admit its ideological opposition to RU-486).

Now word comes from on high that the FDA is finally ready to approve RU-486. Unfortunately it is going to attach a set of unprecedented conditions that may make illegally smuggling the drug into the U.S. more viable than getting the drug via prescription.

First, the FDA wants all physicians who prescribe RU-486 to be part of a national registry of abortion pill providers. What genius at FDA thought this would be a good idea? Is it possible they’ve been so busy finding excuses not to approve the drug that they’ve missed the wave of anti-abortion violence directed against clinics and doctors over the past 20 years? The creation of a national registry is an open invitation for violent anti-abortion extremists.

Second, the FDA wants to limit the doctors who can prescribe RU-486 to just those doctors who are also qualified to perform surgical abortions. In addition the doctors would be required to hold admitting privileges to a hospital within one hour’s drive of their office. According to the FDA, the justification for this rule is that if RU-486 should not cause an abortion, the woman’s physician will be able to perform a surgical abortion. This is downright bizarre. My wife has chronic back pain and went to her physician for a pain killing prescription. Under the FDA’s logic, however, only a physician qualified to do back surgery should be allowed to write prescriptions for back pain. Women are clearly resourceful enough in this day and age to find a physician to perform a surgical abortion if RU-486 fails.

Finally, the FDA unbelievably wants to create some sort of system to track women who take RU-486, which it says is necessary to track any possible side effects from the drug.

The reality is that, again, the FDA seems more likely to be interested in presidential politics, not wanting to inject the RU-486 issue as an issue in the upcoming election. This is a drug that has been used safely and successfully in Europe for decades now — the requirements to limit and track who can prescribe the pill are completely unwarranted, as is the tracking of patients, considering the drug’s track record in Europe. As Dr. Michael Creinin of the University of Pittsburgh told CNN, “The FDA is creating a whole new standard with these restrictions” (FDA approval of abortion pill linked to stringent conditions).

The FDA should stop its shameful delaying tactics and approve RU-486 with all possible haste. Leave it to the Clinton administration to play politics with women’s health and reproductive choices.

Hating the Pill

A couple weeks ago marked the 40th anniversary of the birth control pill — and in those 40 years it rivals (and probably beats) the computer as the single most important technological innovation of the last four decades. I was born well after the introduction of the Pill, and to me cheap, reliable contraceptives seem as natural and commonplace as long distance phone calls or routine air travel, which were revolutionary in their own right.

The funny thing about the Pill, though, is that ideologues throughout the political spectrum tend to hate it. The conservative version of the Pill is pretty straightforward — the Pill severed the link between sex and procreation and caused massive, largely negative, social upheaval. Writing for Frontpage.Com, for example, Chris Weinkopf (A Bitter Pill) laments that,

By effectively thwarting women’s reproductive systems, the Pill and the revolution it enabled granted sexual partners the confidence that one-night stands would not become lifetime obligations. Not surprisingly, women now complain that most men think of them as little more than sexual objects, and are unwilling to “commit.”

…by completely divorcing sex from the possibility of procreation, the Pill degraded the marital act from an expression of unconditional love, rooted in an openness to new life, to an exercise in physical and emotional gratification. This devaluation has no doubt contributed to the national rise in adultery — which experts estimates now affects at least half of all marriages — and the national divorce rate, which has more than doubled since 1960.

Weinkopf also blames the Pill for contributing to the problem of many children growing up fatherless, and complains that not only has the Pill not made a dent in the abortion rate, but that the Pill in fact is abortion. Some oral contraceptives work by inhibiting the ability of fertilized eggs from implanting on the wall of the uterus — and Weinkopf and others think interfering even with a fertilized egg at all is tantamount to murder (even though fertilized eggs often fail to implant due to any number of reasons without the Pill). Weinkopf posits some sort of active effort by “feminists [who have] succeeded for four decades in concealing from the American public … that it can cause abortions.” Perhaps there are some women who don’t know how the Pill works, though they could just read the package insert that comes with every prescription, but more likely even people concerned about the ethics of abortion don’t necessarily consider a handful of un-implanted cells to be a person.

Don’t think it’s just conservatives, though, who dislike the Pill. Radical feminists such as Mary Daly argue that the Pill is literally a poison designed by male scientists to benefit the patriarchy and make it easier to control women. In fact there is a strain of radical feminism that sees pretty much all scientific research into reproduction as a patriarchal attempt to further seize control of women.

One of the things Daly and others cite is the debate over whether or not the Pill contributes to an increased risk of some form of cancers and other side effects. While most of these risks are overblown by a media interested in hyping tales of disaster, no technology is risk free (witness the small number of men who have died because they ignored the warnings accompanying Viagra, which also causes a number of well-documented problems in certain men).

The fear of lawsuits, however, is one of the reasons that there have been so few new contraceptive drugs in the intervening years. In fact, one of the few new products that was put on the market — Norplant — immediately became the subject of a large number of lawsuits which have yet to be resolved.

It is not surprising that the Pill should have so many detractors — the Pill increased the amount of freedom that women and men had in sexual matters. As in any other area of life, freedom carries with it a great deal of responsibility and inevitably some people act irresponsibly. Yes, to some extent people have chosen to trivialize their marriage vows (though others have left bad marriages for good reasons) and too many men don’t take their responsibilities seriously.

On the other hand, the Pill also allows married couples to easily defer having children until they are older, wiser and better off financially. It allows people from turning one reckless night into a lifelong mistake.

Weinkopf, and I imagine many conservatives, finds it hard to believe Gloria Feldt’s claim that “the Pill has enabled women to take charge of … their lives,” but his real problem is that he doesn’t approve of how women (and men) have freely chosen to live their lives in the post-Pill era. In this view, he’s not all that different from the radical feminists.

Elders just as intolerant of women’s rights as groups, people she criticizes

By Elisabeth Carnell

When former U.S. Surgeon General
Jocelyn Elders visited Western Michigan University last week, she demonstrated
that so-called liberals could be just as bigoted, intolerant and misinformed
about the choices women make as any right wing Pat Buchanan-wannabe.

Elders demonstrated the problem
with current pro-choice politics – abortion rights advocates believe in
choice for women only as long as women go along with a prescribed political
platform. Some women choose, for example, to be pro-life. Not all women
agree with the position that abortion is always morally defensible.

Yet Elders, despite her pro-choice
rhetoric, believes dissent from her abortion position cannot be tolerated.
She told her audience at WMU that anyone wanting to be an obstetrician-gynecologist
should be trained to perform abortions and, “those who choose not
to perform abortions should not be OB/GYNs.”

Is this what women struggled
for in this nation for more than 250 years? To have the former surgeon
general argue to exclude women from a profession if they don’t toe the
ideological line on abortion?

Do we really need to reduce
women’s health care choices by excluding pro-life individuals from being
OB/GYNs?

Elders accuses Congress of
being too busy with “vaginal politics” to consider real health
care reform, but she is also guilty of using gender as a political smokescreen
to advance ideas harmful to women.

Elders also engages in the
radical feminist fetish for false statistical measures.

Many women’s activists apparently
don’t believe problems like domestic violence are serious or stark enough
in themselves so they insist on exaggerating their extent.

So Elders makes the ludicrous
claim that 30 percent of emergency room visits by women are the result
of domestic violence ­ five times the reported level. While emergency
room statistics do clearly underestimate the level of domestic violence
incidents they see, Elders loses all credibility with her absurdly large
figure.

The problem with using this
and other inflated figures thrown around about domestic violence, aside
from being intellectually dishonest, is the danger that when people learn
the figures are exaggerated they may discount the true severity and extent
of domestic violence.

Similarly Elders perpetuates
the myth that women make only 75 percent of what men make, leaving people
to draw the conclusion that sexual discrimination explains the difference.

In fact when educational level,
years of experience and type of work are held constant, women make almost
as much as men. For example, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
demonstrates that of people aged 27-33 who have never had children, women’s
earnings are almost 98 percent of men’s.

Elders’ sleight of hand is
like comparing a male engineer with a decade of on the job experience
to a female high school dropout staring her first job.

Yes, a pronounced difference
in income is likely to exist between the two, but blaming that difference
on sexual discrimination is absurd.

The irony of such statistics
is that women have made incredible economic gains in large part due to
the pressure and attention feminists gave sexual discrimination in the
1960s. Today women outnumber men in graduate schools, and the percentage
of women in the labor force has increased from 26 percent in 1940 to 59
percent in 1995.

Rather than take credit for
the improvement and perhaps engage in a well-deserved round of self-congratulation,
the most vocal elements of the mainstream feminists movements must pretend
women’s positions in the economy have gotten dramatically worse. Those
who disagree with this analysis are relegated to being part of a backlash
which exists largely in the imaginations of a few prominent feminist authors.

Elders is an excellent example
of this doom and gloom feminism. In her term as surgeon general and her
public appearances since her forced resignation, Elders comes across as
a mirror image of the paternalistic right-wing forces she rails against.

Like them she has little use
for the choices women actually make for themselves. Instead she prefers
to substitute her own revealed truth about how society should be ordered,
accompanied with an irrational faith in big government to accomplish her
goals.

It would be nice if people
like Elders would actually listen to and trust the women they claim to
represent rather than constantly talking past them.