Supreme Court Upholds the Politicians’ Attack on Women

Apr 30, 2007

The U.S. Supreme Court voted April 18 to uphold a federal law banning a particular abortion procedure.

This law is truly appalling, and in more ways than one. It’s an outright attack on women’s ability to control what happens to them, starting with the most important issue–whether or not to have a child. And it’s only the latest attack. It’s also another stepping-stone right-wing fanatics have taken in the attempt to outlaw abortion rights altogether.

Those people who attack and try to overturn women’s rights to decide for themselves talk about “saving lives.”

What hogwash!

Saving lives? The procedure Congress outlawed, intact dilation and extraction, which opponents wrongly call “partial birth abortion,” is only performed in medically dangerous pregnancies, to try to save the lives of pregnant women. By outlawing the procedure, Congress and the Court are sentencing thousands of women a year to death.

Saving lives? Abortion foes admit this is only a step towards trying to outlaw ALL kinds of abortions. They want to return women to the days before Roe v. Wade–when 350,000 women a year arrived in hospital emergency rooms as the result of botched illegal abortions, and from 1,000 to 5,000 women died each year from them.

Saving lives? A section of these same reactionaries is carrying out an open campaign of terror against anyone who provides abortion services for women. Since 1977, over 4,200 acts of violence have been carried out against abortion providers, leading to seven murders since 1993 and seventeen attempted murders since 1991.

Pretending to speak for “life” is nothing but a cynical ploy by religious zealots who are ready to leave a trail of dead female bodies in their wake.

And the Supreme Court and Congress–Democrats and Republicans alike–are leading the charge.