Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Is it time to upgrade Choice to a Right?
Abortion rights activists are considering retiring the "choice" language. FINALLY!! It's hard to justify elevating a "choice" as equal with a "child" as the anti-abortion folks are so well aware. In South Dakota, activists are seeking to put the issue of abortion rights which the legislature has effectively taken away directly to the public. And they are finding that women view access to abortion as a fundamental right.
BUT, what should the new phrase be? It's hard to find one word that encompasses this issue. One of the things that reproductive rights activists need to keep in mind is that for people who find legallized abortion a hard moral pill to swallow, even while acknowledging that a woman should have dominion over her own body, is that women have always had, and will always have, abortions. The question is: will they have safe, medical, legal abortions, or self-induced or back-alley abortions? THIS is the issue that needs to be before the public again--as it was in the '70s--we can't go back to the coat hanger. Girls and women die.
Abortion rights activists are considering retiring the "choice" language. FINALLY!! It's hard to justify elevating a "choice" as equal with a "child" as the anti-abortion folks are so well aware. In South Dakota, activists are seeking to put the issue of abortion rights which the legislature has effectively taken away directly to the public. And they are finding that women view access to abortion as a fundamental right.
BUT, what should the new phrase be? It's hard to find one word that encompasses this issue. One of the things that reproductive rights activists need to keep in mind is that for people who find legallized abortion a hard moral pill to swallow, even while acknowledging that a woman should have dominion over her own body, is that women have always had, and will always have, abortions. The question is: will they have safe, medical, legal abortions, or self-induced or back-alley abortions? THIS is the issue that needs to be before the public again--as it was in the '70s--we can't go back to the coat hanger. Girls and women die.
