* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
I jumped out of my ergonomic chair, as I was doing the final read on Saturday’s Cheers and Jeers column. I had an outburst in front of the editorial team.
Usually, Friday afternoons at Women’s eNews, are pretty quiet. I have the fun and pain being the last in line to edit the Saturday column Cheers and Jeers column posted on the Women’s eNews site and sent to our 60,000 subscribers. I have been doing this for more than ten years now, and often it becomes routine, catching a missing comma here and rewriting a headline there.
But that that moment, something snapped in me as I read the following:
- Indiana state Rep. Eric Turner argued March 31 that there should be no loopholes in the state's abortions laws for victims of rape or incest, because then "someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they've been raped or there's incest," according to a report by Talking Points Memo.
- A federal bill, with no co-sponsors so far, also benefits organizations that counsel women against having an abortion by providing $5 million in federal funds for the purchase of sonogram machines at crisis pregnancy centers, Mother Jones reported March 28 in a blog post by Kate Sheppard. For information about pregnancy crisis centers, read these Women's eNews articles: 1 , 2.
- Last week, South Dakota also became the first state to require women seeking an abortion to visit anti-abortion counseling centers, reported The Christian Science Monitor. South Dakota may end up paying Planned Parenthood if this goes to court, like previous lawsuits in which the state has paid the group $625,000, reported the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., March 28.
This was all too much. My arms outstretched, I expressed my exasperation.
Why are these publicly elected officials spending so much time on abortion alone? Why not maternal health? The U.S. has the highest maternal death rates in the developed world.
What if the pregnant woman’s daddy is also daddy of the fetus? What do they say to them? Too bad. Bad stuff happens?
The other editorial staff looked surprised. The editorial intern said it had been this way her whole life.
Embarrassed, I sat down and continued my work.
Yes, it had been this way for at least a decade. I had testified before New York City council earlier in the year not as an advocate but as an editor of a news organization that had covered the crisis pregnancy centers for nearly ten years and throughout the decade the Women’s eNews reporters had consistently found that the centers were run by anti-abortion advocates with strong ties to religious organizations. Women did not receive prenatal care there, or unbiased advice, but instead were way-laid with efforts persuade them to not have an abortion.
No, it was not the news about the centers that caused the outburst. It was being hit with a viewpoint that was among the most disrespectful of women I had read: An entire gender being painted as people who would lie about being raped so they could obtain a legal medical procedure that should be available to them even if they were not a crime victim. And second, a realization that the legislator from Indiana may reflect the underlying attitudes of the sponsors of flurry of initiatives under-cutting women’s health, including the attacks on Planned Parenthood.
I was left to wonder why these publicly elected officials believe that they will be re-elected by making statements such as these and proposing ever more restrictive laws? Is the women’s vote irrelevant to them or do sufficient numbers of women voters support the reduction of health care available to others? And where are the female and male legislators ready to jump out of their chairs too and condemn such statements and stop the cascading legal restrictions?
