Next Wednesday, Jan. 22, marks the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized a woman’s right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. As a woman born almost seven years after the decision and who went to high school during the Clinton presidency, I always assumed the right to chose was a given.
The month after I entered high school in 1994, some conservative governor from Texas told The Dallas Morning News, “I will do everything in my power to restrict abortions.” Little did I know that the court that gave women the right to choose in 1973 would hand over the presidency in 2000 to some conservative son of a former President to use the highest position in the U.S. to carry his anti-choice pledge out.
Just because Roe hasn’t been overturned by another Supreme Court case doesn’t mean our right to choose isn’t being slowly but surely picked away within individual states and at the lower court levels. While our President comes across as dim-witted on television by sputtering made up “bushisms,” his administration has made well-planned attacks at reproductive rights.
On his first day in office, Jan. 22, 2001 (coincidentally the 28th anniversary of Roe), Bush made his first act in office by reviving the Reagan-era global gag rule also called the “Mexico City policy.” This rule prevents non-governmental organizations in countries that receive U.S. international family planning assistance from using their own money – not that supplied by the U.S. – to provide abortion services, counseling, referrals, or to lobby to change abortion laws. Not only is he dictating women’s choices in America, but also as part of his foreign policy.
In October 2001, Bush announced that he supported “abstinence-only” education, which teaches that sex outside marriage is dangerous and not the accepted cultural norm. “Abstinence-only” sexual education also withholds information about contraception, including condoms. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the government’s annual support for these unproven and dangerous programs is up to $135 million.
On the judicial side, Bush has spent a lot of time nominating anti-choice judges to important lower circuit Court of Appeals posts. Many states have policies that women under the age of 18 have to have parental consent in order to have an abortion. Does it make sense in a perfect society that a young woman would consult her parents on this decision? Of course. But is President Bush going to help the girl deal with her parents’ reaction, which may not be sane? Of course not. Couldn’t this have been prevented if she was taught about birth control?
Abolitionist Wendall Phillips warned that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” referring to the bane of slavery. As a woman born two generations after the feminists who fought for what I think of as “women’s rights,” I can say that I’ve been far from vigilant. Like many disgruntled Americans, I’ve clamped my eyes and shaken my head upon hearing Bush’s policies concerning women. In looking away, women have forgotten to stand watch over the enemy.
Scanning the document “George W. Bush’s War on Women: A Chronology” at www.saveroe.com, I realized that it’s only a matter of time before we pay the price for resting on our laurels. Do we young women really want to be a part of the generation that took what women before us did for granted and let our rights be taken away?
I certainly don’t. I would be ashamed to tell my children that my friends and I had better things to do, like watch The Bachelorette, while President Bush stacked the Supreme Court, made teachers lie to teenagers, and then blamed young women for not knowing better. So, on this 30th anniversary of Roe, I ask other young women to begin educating themselves about what’s going on before like many things in life, it’s already passed us by.
-Kat Martin is a senior
political science major.
