Report from Mary Lou Greenberg, 11/8/06
The Supreme Court heard two cases on Nov. 8 that have serious implications for the lives of women and for society overall. And on the sidewalk outside, two very different futures were palpable.
Inside, lawyers representing abortion providers argued against a reactionary law passed by Congress and signed by Bush in 2003 that would ban the safest and most commonly used abortion procedures for women in the second-trimester of pregnancy.
The ban supposedly outlaws a procedure called intact D & E that anti-choice reactionaries and Congress call “partial-birth abortion” – in reality, the name was invented to play on people’s emotions, and the law is written in such a way that it would ban a number of procedures. The law itself is filled with lies about abortion and women’s health needs.
Outside, the lies were being preached by some of the most notorious figures in the anti-abortion movement. I have seen these fascist patriarchs in action outside women’s clinics across the country where they lead their thugs to blockade the doors and assault women and staff with vicious lies about fetuses being the same as born babies and try to impose a heavy burden of guilt on women who are seeking abortions.
There was a long line of people waiting to get into the court, many of whom were anti-choice. Young theocrats-in-training held up anti-abortion signs, and some had tape with the word “life” pasted across their mouths. Bible-waving preachers were talking about love while advocating a hateful future of forced childbearing for women – no birth control, no abortion. We stepped right into the middle of this with World Can’t Wait signs and a big metal coat hanger with the words, “We won’t go back to illegal abortions. Drive Out the Bush Regime!” (Before abortion became legal with the 1973 Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision, women used coat hangers and other instruments on themselves to try to get rid of unwanted pregnancies – often resulting in grave injuries and even death.)
We positioned ourselves in front of their speakers and began to talk to the media and others gathered around, exposing the theocratic agenda of the anti-abortion leaders and talking about the necessity for women themselves to have the right to make their own reproductive decisions. Some 40-50 women and men organized by the National Organization for Women and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice chanted and marched on another part of the sidewalk nearby.
Many people waiting to get into the Court listened, took World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime flyers, and engaged in conversation. A group of students from D.C.’s American University joined us, and one, a student of constitutional law, challenged the antis on past legal decisions and the separation of church and state that the country was founded on. Students from the University of Pennsylvania who had traveled to DC from Philadelphia told us how their high schools had promoted abstinance only, and that many young women had gotten pregnant because they didn’t know about birth control. One year they didn’t even have a cheerleading squad because almost all of the cheerleaders had become pregnant.
Dr. LeRoy Carhart, the abortion provider who is one of those challenging the Federal Ban came outside the Court after the cases were heard and said that what is at stake is the “health and welfare of women and families throughout the U.S.”
Six years ago the Court heard an almost identical case also involving Dr. Carhart – and ruled at that time the abortion ban was unconstitutional. The only thing that has changed is the composition of the Court, now with Roberts and Alito, both of whom have stated their opposition to Roe. These are dangerous times for women – and for everyone – and only the most determined resistance from the people themselves has a chance of bringing the horrors to a halt. The Court will probably not announce its decision until spring, and the kinds of political actions that are taken between now and then, and especially building the movement to drive out the Bush regime, can be decisive.
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(For more on the abortion case, see The New Supreme Court Turns on Abortion.)