Op-Ed
The Forgotten Victory
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Kind of a Big Deal
November 14, 2006 - 1:00amThere’s a lot for leftists to celebrate these days. This election saw the Republicans lose control of both the House and the Senate. Then, just a day after the elections, Donald Rumsfeld abruptly resigned. We are finally witnessing the end of the Republican Era.
However, in the wake of the Republican defeat, a few leftist victories were overshadowed. These were the victories won not by politicians, but by real people concerned about their rights.
In Oregon and California, voters defeated parental notification laws for young people who seek abortions. This is a triumph against a restriction on choice that traditionally leads to unsafe abortion attempts by desperate teens.
Perhaps the biggest victory came in South Dakota, where voters defeated a Draconian anti-abortion bill that had been approved by both the South Dakota legislature and its Governor.
South Dakota’s abortion ban was the most restrictive abortion bill in decades. It would have allowed abortions only to save a pregnant woman’s life, with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. Even if an abortion was necessary to save the woman’s life, doctors would have been required to try to save both the mother and the fetus. The bill stated matter-of-factly that “life begins at conception,” despite the fact that this continues to be a hotly debated topic among medical professionals. Finally, the bill criminalized doctors who continued to provide women with the right to choose. Doctors who defied the law would face up to 5 years in prison.
The severity of the law is not the only exceptional part of the South Dakota story. Also significant is how pro-choice activists defeated the measure. After being signed into law by the government, the measures were supposed to go into effect on July 1st. However, in only nine and a half weeks, abortion rights activists collected 38,000 signatures, more than twice the amount necessary in order to get the referendum on the ballot and allow the people of South Dakota to decide.
This is a huge victory for those who fight for women’s rights. How was it accomplished in a state that is so staunchly conservative?
The answer certainly cannot be found in the Democratic Party. As it went through the legislature, South Dakota Democrats helped both to sponsor and to pass the bill. Of the 18 Democrats in the Senate, 5 members voted unapologetically for the ban. Instead of feeling shameful for their betrayal of women’s rights, South Dakota Democrats were proud of helping to pass the bill. State Senator Paul Symens, a life-long Democrat, even complained that the Democratic Party didn’t get enough media coverage for its support of the ban.
Politicians in South Dakota aren’t the only ones who are forgetting that the Democratic Party is supposed to be the party of choice. On the 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Senator Hillary Clinton, who continues to be portrayed as a defender of women’s rights, told a shocked crowd of pro-choice supporters that, “abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice for many, many women.” The fact that these are thought to be the words of a womaan who will fight for choice shows just how much ground the pro-choice movement has lost in the past 30 years.
For years, Democratic politicians have been backing away from their support of abortion rights. They no longer fight for legal abortion on demand, but instead for “reproductive rights,” better sex education, and wider availability of contraceptives. No doubt, sex education and contraceptives are important steps in the fight for women’s rights, but they do not replace the need for women to have ultimate control over decisions about their own bodies.
The Democratic Party refused to put out a call for a national march to defend the right to choose after the South Dakota bill was signed into law. Liberal pro-choice organizations like NARAL, NOW and Planned Parenthood reluctantly followed their lead. This meant that millions of women and men, furious at the curtailing of their rights, were prevented from coming together and demanding change.
The real reason the bill was defeated was the grassroots activists who built up a movement against the bill. Activists like the tireless women and men who went door-to-door collecting signatures that prevented the bill from being enacted months ago. Activists like Cecilia Fire Thunder, president of the Oglala Sioux on Pine Ridge Reservation, who declared abortions to be legal and available on the reservation, which is sovereign territory.
The activists in South Dakota have showed us the way forward. However, the pro-choice movement still has battles ahead of it. Every state in the U.S. has some restrictions on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, despite the fact that the American Psychological Association has declared that abortion has no “lasting or significant health risks.” These restrictions include mandatory counseling, parental notification and waiting periods before obtaining an abortion. Restrictions on abortion funding prevent many women from obtaining an abortion, affecting those on Medicaid, federal employees, military personnel, Peace Corps volunteers and women in prison.
Even if a woman successfully navigates the system, she must find an abortion provider, which is no easy task. 87 percent of counties in the U.S. have no abortion provider. South Dakota, along with North Dakota and Mississippi, have only one abortion clinic that serves the entire state.
Obviously, the fight for a woman’s right to choose is far from over. In the years since Roe v. Wade, the hard-won rights of the women’s movement have been slowly chipped away. Obviously, we cannot depend on the Democratic Party to protect these rights for us. Instead, we must follow the lead of the activists of South Dakota, by continuing to build grassroots movements that are willing to fight for real change, including the right to free and legal abortion on demand and without apologies.
Laura Taylor is a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She can be contacted at lat34@cornell.edu. Kind of a Big Deal appears Tuesdays.
say what
“abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice for many, many women.”
I'd say even the most staunch pro-lifers have to agree with this comment. How can that represent lost ground in your cause? It's, err, true.