The Partial Birth Abortion Ban – Effects on Women’s Rights, Up Close & Personal

by Sarah Nelson

The Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, signed into law by President Bush in 2003, is the judicial equivalent of declaring open hunting season on access to safe and legal abortion services. While the public perceives that the Court legitimized a ban on rare abortion method, the fact is that we don’t yet know what the law’s far-reaching effects may be on access to specific procedures -- or to abortion generally -- since we don't know how individual clinicians will respond to it.

What is of immediate concern is the fact that the Partial Birth Abortion Ban is the first decision that establishes a State interest that overrides a woman's health. By upholding an abortion ban that does not include an exception for the woman’s health, the Supreme Court gave states the green light to impose restrictions -- even when those restrictions might prevent a woman from having the procedure that is best for her health (i.e., one that preserves her future fertility and is least likely to cause her harm). The Court’s majority based its opinion on a narrow, reactionary view of women’s role in society; the decision essentially stated that the law is needed to protect women from making a decision they may later regret because it runs counter to women's essential maternal nature.

The Court’s action signifies a blatant disregard for a woman’s constitutional right to privacy, and to safe and legal reproductive services – including abortion. This decision will encourage anti-choice activists and politicians to attempt many more infringements upon abortion rights as means not only to set up road blocks for women currently seeking abortion, but also to create grounds for continued challenges to Roe v. Wade. If anti-choice activists succeed in their efforts to have Roe v. Wade struck down, then individual states will set their own abortion access policies and several already have laws in place that will outlaw abortion in case Roe is overturned.

The trepidation I feel as a result of the Court’s decision has caused me to reflect upon my past, and what reproductive freedom has meant to my own story. I became pregnant at the age of fourteen, a victim of statutory rape. At that age, I did not understand the huge responsibility and hardships that come with being a mother, nor could I comprehend the health risks that carrying a pregnancy to term at such a young age entails. I am fortunate that I had my parents to turn to. They decided that my bearing a child at such a young age would be a detriment to my emotional and physical well-being; they also feared for my ability to have any sort of educational or career success if I had to care for a child at that point in my life. My parents believed I was too young, too much a child myself, to have a child of my own. I had an abortion.

Despite what the conservative right would have us believe, a woman who seeks abortion is not a cold-blooded murderer. Nor, by any means, is the notion of abortion as an empowering experience or a positive exercise of women’s rights an accurate description for many women. I found that my feelings after my own abortion fell somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. I experienced profound relief at the end of my pregnancy; a deep guilt for the action I took; happiness to be a normal, carefree teenager again; and sadness at the loss of the pregnancy. At the time, I considered all of these emotions to be conflicting. Now I know that I was experiencing what is an overwhelming reality for a huge number of women: that abortion can be both a loss and a gain at the same time.

The Partial Birth Abortion Ban is part of a pattern of increasing governmental restrictions -- such as forced parental consent laws and blocked funding for abortion services – that attempt to limit women’s ability to seek safe and legal abortions. The federal ban on late term procedures imposes yet another restriction that affects a fundamental aspect of women’s health and ability to decide, with their loved ones and doctors, what is the best treatment for themselves. The anti-choice movement, with the support of politicians and the courts, is successfully chipping away at our right to choose.

When I think of the recent Supreme Court decision, and the threat it represents to a woman’s right to access safe abortion services I feel a fierce anger. I see myself at fourteen, pregnant and scared. I see the anxiety in my parents’ faces as they struggled to do the right thing for me. I think of my possible future, as a fourteen-year-old mother, my child a product of rape. What kind of parent would I have been? When I think of the Supreme Court decision, and what it bodes for women’s rights, I count my accomplishments since my fourteenth year: high school graduation, my first full-time job, working to put myself through community college, gaining an AA degree, going on to obtain my BA, my current internship at NWHN, and my plans for graduate school. I think of all the hours of activism and advocacy work I have donated to my community. I think of my first interactions within the feminist movement during my early twenties. I consider the products of all of my artistic labors. I think of the maturity I have gained over the years, not in a sudden crash of labor and parenthood, but slowly, at my own pace.

The work of earlier feminist activists made it possible for me to access safe abortion services. How grateful I am to them. But now our right to control our lives, to good health, and safe abortion services are being threatened again. Abortion rights hang in a precarious balance; anti-choice Supreme Court justices – bolstered with new conservative members -- have sent the women of the United States a message that our right to choose is not safe, that women’s health is not valued.

I want to encourage women to think of my experience, and to reconsider the stories of the past. We cannot forget stories like mine, when safe, legal access made a resoundingly positive difference in a woman’s life. And, we cannot forget the stories that came before, of women receiving abortions in apartments, motel rooms, in the back seats of cars. We cannot forget the quiet shame, confusion or fear that accompanied successful illegal abortions. And, we cannot close our eyes to the haunting image of a dead mother, sister, aunt, daughter, friend, or lover abandoned on a motel room floor. All of our stories are compelling reasons to keep abortion legal and safe. The Supreme Court has sent us a message. How will we respond?

Sarah Nelson is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz where she received a BA in Politics. Sarah was an NWHN intern in the Spring of 2007. In the near future, she will be applying to graduate degree programs in public health. Sarah plans to devote her life to women’s health advocacy.