Marianne Mollmann is Advocacy Director for the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.
In French they have a saying: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." (It means something like: "The more things change, the more it's all the same.")
This is the feeling I have as I travel with Verónica Cruz - my Mexican colleague who helps rape victims get access to legal abortion - from New York over Washington D.C., Ottawa and Toronto to Chicago. Women everywhere - and in particular poor, uneducated, young, or non-white women - are ignored and abused. The justice and health service providers charged with helping them, instead insult and mistreat them.
Rewire editor Scott Swenson and associate editor Tyler LePard went to the Supreme Court on November 8 and talked with demonstrators from both sides about the late term abortion cases before the Court.
And think about adding your comments! What do you make of this video? The footage mostly shows comments from anti-choice protesters, including an extended interview with Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition. The ambiguity in these arguments is fascinating.
Reading through the transcripts of the oral arguments heard by the Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood on Wednesday, I couldn't shake the sneaking sensation of absurdity. Who knew Justice Kennedy was so knowledgeable about preeclampsia? As Scott rightfully points out, Wednesday's discourse left me wishing that the U.S. government were as intent on drawing a "bright line" between medical expertise and ideology-fueled congressional "findings" as it is on the one between abortion and infanticide.
Meanwhile, here in Nicaragua, where the National Assembly voted to ban therapeutic abortion (abortion to save a woman's life) on October 26, we're beginning to see what happens when politicians play doctor. Nicaraguan lame duck president Enrique Bolaños has yet to approve the ban on therapeutic abortion, but the medical community has already begun to panic - and, I'm sorry to report, women have already begun to die.
Governments have been legislating (controlling) peoples' sex lives for hundreds of years. Take for example sodomy laws, which broadly referred to any form of non-procreative sex, but more recently, have only referred to anal sex between two men. In the U.S., sodomy laws date all the way back to the 1600's. It wasn't until 2003 that the Supreme Court invalidated all state same-sex (as well as some heterosexual) sodomy laws, finally making it legal for two consenting adult males to engage in sex in privacy (see Lawrence et. al. v. Texas). This was a huge victory for same-sex couples in the U.S and a welcome precedent for the protection of private sexual behavior for all people. Lately though, I have begun to fear for that protection and have become fully aware that my sexual rights are at risk.
The problem today isn't so much the existing laws restricting sexual behavior, like the one in Maryland that makes it illegal to have oral sex or the one in Massachusetts that makes adultery illegal, because they are mostly unenforceable. Rather, I am afraid of the ones that more subtly attempt to tell people who they can and can't have sex with/be intimate with/love, for example same-sex marriage bans.
On November 8, Planned Parenthood Federation of America senior staff attorney, Eve Gartner, stood before the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and presented oral arguments in our crucial case Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In her arguments, Eve urged the court to sustain the essential principle that no abortion restriction can endanger a woman’s health or risk a woman’s life. When she finished, she recorded a podcast on the steps of the Supreme Court to share her reactions and thoughts with you.
“Now, if Congress is right, there will be no such case, so it’s no problem. But if Congress is wrong, then the doctor will be able to perform the procedure and Congress couldn’t object.”
With those words, Justice Breyer made clear the hypocrisy of Congressional and Judicial attempts to intervene in private medical decisions of pregnant women. On the one hand, anti-choice advocates in and out of Congress suggest there is never a need for doctors to perform late term abortions to preserve the health of the mother. On the other hand, they want to prevent the supposedlyunnecessaryprocedure. Yet more evidence that social conservative ideology, not medical judgment, has manipulated Congress and the Judiciary to score political points.
On top of that, as Linda Greenhouse wrote in her lead in the New York Times, "the proceedings seemed more like a medical school seminar than an appellate argument." An indication, perhaps, that when it comes to the health and life of a pregnant woman, medicine, not ideology and politics, is the proper profession to be making those consultations and decisions.
Recently, people were stunned when they learned that the new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) guidelines for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs encouraged grantees to target unmarried adults up to the age of 29.
With the government's own center of health statistics documenting that over 95% of adults in their late 20's have already had sex, public disbelief quickly turned to outright disdain for a government program that seemed to be so drastically - and willfully - out of touch with reality.
As participants in the effort to draw attention to this "29-year-old-virgin campaign", my colleagues and I were surprised to discover that conservative talk radio hosts were among the more outraged audiences. They were all over this story and eager to discuss how the campaign violated core conservative values by promoting big government, wasteful spending, and intrusion into personal choice. Oh, and I shouldn't leave out the "just plain nuts" reaction either.
Clusters of umbrellas gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday's rainy DC morning. Advocates from both sides of a controversial issue waited in line to hear the oral arguments in the two cases challenging the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003. On one side of the steps, people from the National Organization of Women marched in support of women's right to late-term abortions. In the middle of the crowd, the supporters of the ban held a press conference. The usual slogans, rhetoric, and graphic signs were in play as everyone waited for the case to begin.
Spirits were high on both sides, despite the huge losses suffered by conservatives in yesterday's elections. Rev. Patrick Mahoney, from Christian Defense Coalition, held a press conference at 9 a.m., which raised a loud ruckus. Decrying the results of the election and blaming Republicans for failing the far-right, he confirmed his community's commitment to conservative principles and values, not to a political party. (I know they won't be supportive of the Democratic Party anytime soon, so where does that leave them?) Rev. Mahoney expressed disappointment in South Dakota, but rallied hope for other states to ban abortion in the future and declared, "Roe v. Wade is crumbling."
As a progressive political wave washed across the country yesterday, reproductive justice advocates experienced three major victories. Voters in South Dakota, California, and Oregon rejected ballot measures that would have restricted abortion in their states.
The most publicized ballot measure - the one that would have banned abortion (except to save a woman's life) in South Dakota - was defeated. Sara Stoesz, President of the Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund, announced this victory:
Yesterday, tens of thousands of people across the state of South Dakota came together to overturn the most far-reaching abortion ban in many decades. Our coalition of men and women, faith leaders, business professionals and healthcare professionals sent a strong message to their legislators -- don't use our state to push an extremist agenda.
CBS News Senior Vice President, Standards and Special Projects Linda Mason, in an email to CBS staff:
"We thought that 'partial birth' is a color phrase for people who are anti-abortion rights," said Mason. "This is a procedure usually done after 20 weeks. Therefore, 'late term' is appropriate. Now, some colleagues have come back to me and questioned this because the name of the law before the Supreme Court is the 'Partial-Birth Abortion.' When people refer to the case, they should call it by the correct name. But a CBS reporter should call the procedure a 'late term abortion.'"
