On Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court expanded the list of constitutional rights to include the right to have an abortion.
Thirty nine years later, every Republican presidential candidate is working to reverse the outcome of Roe v. Wade.
Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul have all signed a Personhood USA pledge declaring that life begins at conception and, therefore, that abortion is wrong even in cases of rape or incest. Each candidate’s economic platform proposes to eliminate Title X family planning programs, like Planned Parenthood.
Furthermore, if elected, these men would block federal FDA approval for almost any new contraceptive, terminate insurance coverage for existing contraception and appoint Supreme Court justices who support the overturning of Roe v. Wade, among other things.
This year, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed several consequential bills restricting reproductive rights. If America’s next president is a Republican, these bills will likely become laws.
State legislatures are also taking action against reproductive rights, but they are doing so at a much more rapid pace.
According to Kate Sheppard, political staff reporter for Mother Jones’ Washington bureau, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is close to unraveling the state’s progressive and comprehensive sex education program, the Healthy Youth Act, which teaches students “‘the health benefits, side effects and proper use of contraceptives and barrier methods’ in discussion of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.” In place of the Healthy Youth Act, Walker hopes to institute an abstinence-only sex education program.
Simply put, this plan will explode in our faces. Teenagers will remain sexually active but with fewer resources and diminished knowledge.
“A study released in 2009 by the state’s Division of Public Health found that 45 percent of Wisconsin’s teenagers said they were sexually active,” says Sheppard, “but nearly 40 percent of them said that they had not used a condom the last time they had sex.”
Similarly, a government study from this year interviewed 5,000 teenage mothers from 19 different states who had unintended pregnancies. About a third who didn’t use birth control said the reason was they didn’t believe they could become pregnant.
“This report underscores how much misperception, ambivalence and magical thinking put teens at risk for unintended pregnancy,” said Bill Albert, a spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Parts of Republicans’ agenda may be admirable (reducing unwanted pregnancies, for example), but numbers all across the board show that their methods result in failure. Rates of teenage pregnancy remain high in poor, urban areas, and rates of STI contractions are currently at epidemic levels.
The numbers also reveal that the bargaining of reproductive rights doesn’t just affect women: It affects everyone.
Amelia Zurcher, director of Marquette’s women’s and gender studies program, says that from a disease standpoint, “boys need (comprehensive sex education) just as much as girls do.”
Similarly, anti-choice laws silence not only every woman, but the “partner, family, doctor or religious faith” who may wish to aid in her decision, said Sheppard.
Abortion and birth control have been pegged as “women’s issues,” but that’s just one more thing we’ve gotten wrong when it comes to reproductive rights. The GOP wants to rescind our constitutional rights by controlling the choices we make about sex and our bodies. That hurts every American in a number of ways.
Fortunately, this isn’t the guaranteed fate of our country. President Barack Obama, who will run for re-election, said Sunday that he remains committed to defending reproductive rights.
“As we remember this historic anniversary (of Roe v. Wade),” the President said, “we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”
It deserves to be known that these efforts benefit every man and woman who loves those daughters, too.