Are abortion rights in the U.S. soon to be a thing of the past? Some of the pro-choice movement’s biggest legal brains hashed out that question before a standing room only crowd at Yale Law School.
The Thursday night forum was titled, “What remains of Roe v Wade? Reproductive Justice after the Federal Abortion Ban.”
People fighting for the same goal often embrace different tactics to achieve their ends, said Yale law prof Reva Siegel (pictured). Thus, anti-abortion forces split into two camps: absolutists (“Abortion is murder — period”) and incrementalists (“Let’s chip away at Roe v. Wade until it crumbles”). Those in the latter camp scored a major victory in the Supreme Court last spring. The pro-choice speakers and audience at the forum (some of whom are pictured) gathered to discuss the way forward.
The April Gonzales v. Carhart decision ruled that outlawing a certain second-trimester abortion procedure (medically called “intact dilation and extraction,” labeled “partial birth abortion” by anti-abortion activists) is not unconstitutional. It thus upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act passed by Congress years earlier, which had been slapped down by three separate federal district court rulings because it did not contain an exception to allow abortion to protect the pregnant woman’s health.
Siegel explained how the incrementalist anti-abortion movement used the language of feminism against choice: “Women should be protected from harm to them, and they should be protected from coercion, so, the argument goes, they need to be protected from abortion. This was the language of PTSD, and coercion and trauma and feminism all jumbled up with this claim.”
She listed several examples of incrementalist chipping-away at abortion rights, such as mandatory dialogues, waiting periods, parental notice provisions. “What’s powerful about this form of argument,” she said, “is that in fact it’s tapping on norms that everyone in this room shares — we’re not looking for women to be coerced into doing something they don’t want; we don’t want things for women that are harmful to them.” Click here to hear more.
Siegel said the purpose of the Abortion Ban Act was “to pick at the question of abortion at an uncomfortable spot, and to teach through education, to get into detailed public conversation about abortion practice — a teaching process that would ultimately produce unease among persons who conceived of themselves as supportive, basically, of the right to choose.”
She said, “The debate between absolutists and incrementalists is ongoing.” Click here for more on how one anti-abortion group excoriated those who took credit for the Supreme Court victory.
Eve Gartner (pictured) is an attorney for Planned Parenthood who argued the companion case to the Carhart case at the Supreme Court. She said the Carhart decision was a radical departure from Court precedence, because, among other things, it’s the first time a restriction on abortion was ruled Constitutional despite the lack of a health exception (i.e., abortion in the second trimester has been legal to protect the health of the woman).
Gartner laid out a fairly dismal scenario going forward, but stopped short of total despair. She said she doesn’t believe that Justice Anthony Kennedy — who was the pivotal vote in the case and who laid out an argument that women must be protected from the regret that could follow an abortion- — would vote to overturn Roe v Wade completely. “He’s not going to turn his back on it completely. He just has a very, very cramped and restrictive view of what the abortion right is. And so, I think it’s not hopeless. I think public education is a key part of where we go from here, and politics is a key part of where we go from here. I think that over time, the Court’s rulings on abortion have tended to mimic public opinion about certain restrictions.”
The last speaker was Sondra Goldschein from the ACLU (pictured). She said in the past decade “over a thousand bills have been introduced across the country that have tried to place obstacles before women trying to access abortion, contraception, sex education.” Thirty-five states have laws requiring minors to get permission from their parents or a court to access abortion; Medicaid in 32 states only cover abortion if it’s the result of rape or incest or a woman’s life is at risk; 31 states have passed laws that mirror the federal ban; seven states have passed laws that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion will be immediately banned. Click here to hear about more legal hurdles.
Goldschein ended by inviting the law students in the room to get involved, or, in the case of members of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, which co-sponsored the forum, to continue to work on the issue.
The Supreme Court has changed and will continue to change, as it reflects the view of many Americans towards abortion. It was the partial birth abortion that finally revealed the consequences of Roe vs Wade to the American public.
As far as harm to women, without a doubt, there is harm to women. No matter what abortion counselors, nurses, and doctors tell women, the fact of the matter is they can never conceal the truth from them that an abortion is a taking of human life, theirs and their child's.
It is outrageous that children, minors, can procur an abortion without informing their parents. Even on the most simplistic basis of parental consent for medical procedures, minors must not be left to make these decisions with strangers.
These so called Reproductive Justice advocates have simply lost touch with reality, blinded by their hubris. And so crumbles Roe v Wade.