Women's groups are incensed –
incensed! Patriarchal Supreme
Court Justices are after our
rights! If we don't have the
right to puncture unborn
children's skulls moments from
birth, women cannot live freely.
But
what does the Supreme Court's
shifting gears to uphold a
national ban on the partial
birth abortion procedure really
bode for women? Is it really a
slippery slope back to the bad
old days? Most women leaders
purporting to represent women
have an opinion, believe you me.
A
few hours after learning of the
decision, Senator Diane
Feinstein took to the Senate
Floor to rally America's
abortion activists: "If I were a
young woman today, I would be
incredibly concerned that this
era is drawing to a close. The
threat to reproductive freedom
is no longer theoretical.. All
those who care about protecting
a woman's right to privacy
should take notice and make
their voices heard."
In
her dissent, Justice Ginsburg,
attacked Justice Kennedy's
expressed doubts that the
procedure placed a difficult
moral burden upon women. She
said of his comments, "this way
of thinking reflects ancient
notions about women's place in
the family and under the
Constitution – ideas that have
long since been discredited."
Planned Parenthood president
Cecile Richards called Wednesday
"a dark day for women's health
and safety."
National Organization of Women
President Kim Gandy rallied her
troops: "We must elect a
Congress that will repeal this
ban and a president who will
sign the repeal. November 2008
can't come soon enough."
Presidential Candidate Hillary
Clinton vehemently denounced the
Supreme Court's decision and its
conservative majority, saying:
"This decision marks a dramatic
departure from four decades of
Supreme Court rulings that
upheld a woman's right to choose
and recognized the importance of
women's health...It is precisely
this erosion of our
constitutional rights that I
warned against when I opposed
the nominations of Chief Justice
Roberts and Justice Alito."
And
yet Americans are overwhelmingly
supportive of the ban – so are
all Americans out to get women?
Polls showing women's support of
the ban would suggest that the
majority of women are
endangering their own rights.
Here's the problem: if women's
rights are undermined by
outlawing a procedure that
allows us to choose to mutilate
and suction out the brains of a
baby, mid-birth, then women's
rights deserve to be trashed. I
would suggest that there is more
to women's rights than this. We
need go no further than women's
rights trailblazer Elizabeth
Cady Stanton to dismiss the idea
that women's rights and abortion
rights are synonymous. "When we
consider that women are treated
as property, it is degrading to
women that we should treat our
children as property to be
disposed of as we see fit," she
wrote in a letter to her friend
Julia Ward Howe.
And
Susan B. Anthony's newspaper
The Revolution reinforces
Justice Kennedy's assertion
about the burden an abortion
could have. Her editorial
warned, "No matter what the
motive, love of ease, or a
desire to save from suffering
the unborn innocent, the woman
is awfully guilty who commits
the deed. It will burden her
conscience in life, it will
burden her soul in death..."
Further, if denying the choice
of this particular procedure is
a threat to every choice to
abort as our current women
leaders claim, then their
position cannot be maintained in
legislatures. These women are
indeed on the wrong side of
history – or herstory. Not
because of some "ancient"
notions of the subjugation of
women returning inexplicably to
haunt modern women. As if! No,
it is because women have
intelligence and consciences and
are capable of making informed,
moral decisions to pass laws
that provide the protections of
unborn children they support.
All the while, they can
safeguard their own legitimate
human rights.
The
old guard's only hope is in the
dictatorship of the Supreme
Court. That is because
Americans, and women in
particular, do not agree that
the "right" to abortion is
absolute. As a group, they are
grappling with which
restrictions they support, not
whether they support any. Since
the so-called right to abort is
not absolute, then perhaps it is
time the democratic process and
the majority of American women
who support some restrictions on
the procedure be allowed to pass
laws in which they believe.
It
is past time that women as a
"movement" use power for noble
and life-giving purposes –
rather than for mounting legal
arguments to safeguard such a
hideous procedure. There is
enough suffering and violence in
the world.
Honestly, it is past time to
throw out this old guard of
so-called "women's leaders," and
it is time to elect women to
public office who truly
represent women on this issue.
With Ms. Gandy, I could not
agree more on one point.
November 2008 cannot come soon
enough.
Marjorie Dannenfelser is
President of the Susan B.
Anthony List.
