This is mainly a GQ fact based question so I’m going to try it here as I’m primarily looking for legal answers as to what the current non-PBA landscape is for American women re abortion rights. If it gets into a GD scrum would a mod please move?
As a single, 45 year white male I have to admit this topic has been off my radar screen for awhile now, except for the occasional news item about the partial birth abortion issue, as I kinda-sorta assumed that an American women could pretty much (with some PBA restrictions) get a legal abortion if she wanted one.
In this context I was quite surprised by the huge abortion rights march that happened in DC last week. It was one of the biggest marches on DC I ever heard of (maybe the largest ever according to some) per the Washington Post link below. The late trimester partial birth abortion issue has been in the news, but the participants in this march seem to have more fundamental concerns that their basic abortion rights overall were being threatened.
Forgive my cluelessness on this topic, but I’d really like to know, as the march participants seemed to feel huge restrictions were just around the corner, what are the fundamental non-PBA legal abortion rights for American women at this point?
I suspect the biggest concern for folks who identify as pro choice, is that President Bush (especially if elected to a second term) would appoint justices to the SCOTUS (or lower courts) that would a different stand on some of the related abortion issues…and not just overturning Roe straight out.
Some pro choice folks do not favor any “restrictions” related to abortion (parental or spousal notification, waiting period, patient education… etc) and so may be protesting those as well.
As scr4 says, the unborn victims of violence act is of particular concern. This is a big step towards classifying a fetus as a human being; although the act has supposedly been worded to prevent this, abortion rights activists are concerned that it could be used to prosecute a doctor who conducts an abortion.
This march also made a very strong effort to involve women of color and different nationalities, so topics like affordable birth control and health care were also a priority. For people of other nationalities (and those Americans who care), the Global Gag Rule is a big issue. Essentially, any overseas group that deals with family planning issues cannot receive US taxpayer funds if they “promote” abortion in any way: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/gag/ .
A number of states (Virginia is one, off the top of my head) have also tightened up on things like parental notification if a minor wants an abortion; enforcing a waiting period before a woman can get an abortion, etc.
I don’t know as much about this as a probably should, but I think another problem is that the “Partial Birth Abortion Ban” bans by name a medical procedure that doesn’t exist under that name; the general belief is that what doctors know as an “intact D and E” is what the ban was designed to ban, but as worded, since it doesn’t say so, it could apply to a wide variety of procedures, and there’s a concern that many doctors and medical centers won’t be in a hurry to line up and find out the hard way.
Meanwhile, on the more overtly political front, the primary proponents and supporters of this bill have not been saying “Oh gee, we’re not trying to ban all abortions, we just wanted to outlaw this one icky procedure” – instead, they’ve been pretty open about wanting to ban them all and will take every inch they can get that moves the country in that direction. Small wonder, therefore, that abortion-rights supporters consider the current political atmosphere to be a dangerous one.