Cross-posted at StoriesinAmerica
Even Bush, the man whose family used to support Planned Parenthood, says the South Dakota law, which will require a girl who is raped by her father to have the baby, believes the it goes too far:
Bush is “pro-life with three exceptions,” McClellan said.
Those exceptions are rape, incest or when a woman’s life is endangered. The South Dakota bill only allows abortion in the last case.
“The president believes we ought to be working to build a culture of life in America and we have taken practical, commonsense steps to help reduce the number of abortions in America,” McClellan said.
Ah yes, building a culture of life with cluster bombs.
Back to South Dakota. Here’s a story about Mrs. X, a woman who never thought she’d ever have an abortion, until she found out her baby had Down syndrome. Her doctor said the baby didn’t have a chance at long-term survival and would “never leave the hospital.”
“We spent a lot of time crying and praying. We asked ourselves if it was fair to bring a child into the world only to have him live a short life filled with discomfort and pain. Would it also be fair to our firstborn for us to be in the hospital continuously? These are the questions we struggled with and we asked God to guide us.”
The couple decided on an abortion, but they were not ready for what lay ahead.
“I guess we thought that it would be different if you were having an abortion for medical reasons. We thought that the procedure would be performed in a hospital, but it wasn’t. We were sent to the same abortion office in Amherst that everyone else goes to, the one with the protesters outside,” said Mrs. X.
One protester, in particular, drew the ire of Mrs. X and her husband.
“They make them stand out by the road, so you have to drive by them like it’s some sort of perp walk. They were all holding signs and reciting prayers. One old woman had a sign that said ‘Your baby is healthy, don’t kill it.’ I wanted to jump out of the car and scream at her, ‘No, my baby is not healthy. How dare you suppose such a thing? How dare you judge me?'”
The experience has changed Mrs. X’s opinion about the anti-choice, anti-women crowd:
“They paint it as all so simple, so black-and-white. They want a woman to have her baby, no matter the circumstances. Then what? Who will adopt those unwanted babies? Have you ever looked at those adoption ads in the newspaper? ‘Couple seeks healthy, white newborn.’ What about the unhealthy babies? What about the non-white babies? Who will care for them? I never hear that answer presented.”
Mrs. X also has a message for the South Dakota Legislature and, in the near future, the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
“Unless a person has had to lie on that table and feel what it’s like to have an abortion, they shouldn’t have a say as to what another woman can or cannot do with her body. There is a reason it is called pro-choice. It’s because no one is pro-abortion. You can’t go through what I did and ever want to have to live through it again.”
She continued, “But a woman needs to have a choice, and have it be her and her partner’s choice alone, as to what is best in their situation. I pray to God that none of the women holding up those signs in front of abortion clinics are ever put into the position that I was. But if they are, I also pray that they’ll still have the right to decide for themselves what they should do.”
If the South Dakota law is upheld, women like Mrs. X will be forced to find an abortion provider in another state, but poor women who can’t afford to travel and take time off from work will be forced into back alleys.
I have spoken out here before about how I volunteered as an escort for women in the 1980’s. I volunteered at the Southern Tier’s Women’s Center in Binghamton, NY. I am pleased to note that they are still open and still engaging in the fight to keep abortion safe and legal.
When I first started, there were no laws preventing the anti-choicers from crowding the front doors of the clinic. Randall Terry was leading the anti-choicers. It was our job to form a semi-circle that the patient would literally have to penetrate to enter the clinic. They would have to fight their way (and of course we would try and help them) through a wall of anti-choicers to reach our boundaries and then force themselves through our tight boundary to enter the clinic. All throughout this ordeal, chants of “murderer” and “baby killer” surrounded the woman. They had large graphic pictures of babies in garbage cans. Grossly distorted images that were meant to cause shock and horror.
My job was to engage the woman as soon as she got out of her car. The anti-choicers would blockade the clinic’s parking lot forcing the women to park in a lot for a supermarket above the clinic. I would go up there and scope out people who looked like they were trying to get to the clinic and approach them. If I was lucky, I could get 30 seconds with them before the anti-choicers would surround them. 30 seconds to calm their fears and assure them safe passage. 30 seconds to alert them to what was going to happen. 30 seconds before the pro-birth contingent surrounded them in a tight circle and screamed at them that they were murderers and they were killing their baby and that the blood would be on their hands forever and they would burn in hell, complete with pictures of dead, mutilated bodies of fully developed babies were shoved in their face. What could I say in 30 seconds that would give them the courage to come with me and endure this abuse for the walk to the clinic doors?
The vast majority of these women were very scared, very confused, and very vulnerable. Most told me they did not know what they were going to do, but they just wanted to know what their options were. Over and over again, I told them that they had options and that the clinic would be honest with them about those options. I told them that inside the clinic, they would be given the time, the advice and the quiet to help them make the decision.
One of the things that I absolutely hated about the anti-choicers was they never, not once, never offered these women an option to abortion. They never offered literature for a home for young women, adoption options, health care for pregnant women, or anything that would give these women hope or help. As a member of a pro-choice college group, I routinely handed out information on choices other than abortion, but I never saw the anti-choice contingent doing the same. WHen confronted about it, they would say they had the info, but not on hand. Fucking hypocrites.
But, it broke my heart. The pain and the fear and the trauma that these women had to go through was heartbreaking. The anti-choicers were so cruel to these women. Not only with their vicious verbal assault, but I also had to block physical assaults.
New York finally passed a law that forbid anti-choicer’s from blocking access to clinics and we thought we had won. Escorts were no longer needed and I went on my merry way thinking the battle was over and we had won.
In all the years that have followed, I would read about one town or one state that would pass some weird law, but I honestly believed that the US would never go back to wire hangers. I was wrong. I was so wrong. We have gone back.
One clinic in all of South Dakota. By making little gains and by continual pressure, the anti-choicers have won in the long run. In 1980 the vast majority of women supported choice. That majority has declined each year. Today, just over 50% support choice and many of those do not really care if abortion is declared illegal. Once we had a million people in D.C. marching for choice, now we would be lucky to get a few hundred thousand.