The women of my generation and younger--the Gen X'ers and below if you will--have by and large reaped the benefits of Roe v. Wade without ever having to fight for it. And this makes me angry. Not because I want each generation to have to fight the same battles over and over again, but because there are so many women of my age who have no idea how threatened those rights are. Do these statements sound familiar?
"Roe will never be overturned."
"The majority of Americans favor reproductive rights, so nothing drastic is going to happen."
"I will still be able to get the services I need."
On the face of it, all of these statements may indeed be true, but that doesn't mean anything to a woman trying to exercise that choice. In my home state of Montana, an area as large as Germany, there are currently four abortion providers. In the state's second-largest city and my hometown, Great Falls, there is no abortion provider. The trip from a remote rural area to one of the state's abortion clinics could take as much as a day.
And Montana is better off than some other states. Even with Roe standing, a poor woman in Mississippi or South Dakota has almost no chance of exercising any real choice about her pregnancy. Those states are seen as blueprints for the anti-choice movement. Both states have only one clinic to serve the entire state, and in South Dakota, courageous doctors must be flown in for one day a week. Local physicians faced too much harrassment to continue performing the legal procedure.
And yet women of my generation sit idly by, not realizing or perhaps caring that their rights are hanging in the balance. Today it's abortion--a service that not every woman will need in her lifetime--but tomorrow it's birth control. Think I'm exaggerating? Eleven states are already considering "conscience clause" laws to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill oral contraceptives and emergency contraceptive prescriptions, and four states already have such laws on the books. And forget about the costs associated with prescription birth control. Very few states have managed to pass insurance equity laws, meaning that basic women's health care costs hundreds of dollars more per year than a man's.
I always come back to this: If a woman cannot control her fertility, she cannot control any other aspect of her life. Just three generations ago, my great-grandmother bore 11 children and was pregnant a total of 19 times. How much control do you think she had over that number? I'm not saying that we're going to wake up tomorrow and find ourselves forced to have 11 children, but I am saying that we need to recognize what's going on in the United States today. And on the other side of it, I will remind the anti-choice movement that any government that can force you to have a child can just as easily decide some women may *not* have children. Choice goes both ways.
I'm glad to see the overwhelming participation in the Blog for Choice weekend. I hope it signifies a shift in my generation and among all women.