Posted on: Monday, January 27, 2003
EDITORIAL
Roe vs. Wade hangs on by a thread
The war against Iraq isn't the only crusade being waged by the Bush administration. Thirty years after the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling, a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion is under assault on numerous fronts.
With the help of Attorney General John Ashcroft and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, President Bush is mounting an arsenal of restrictions and intimidation ploys that are effectively eroding reproductive choice.
Abortion has become a taboo word in the healthcare profession. Why, health providers who receive federal family planning dollars are even banned from uttering the word. That tone was underscored at the U.N. family planning conference in Bangkok last month, where the U.S. delegation again became fixated on censoring any language that was deemed to advance abortion, angering conferees who sought to keep the focus on raising the legal and economic status of women.
Bush even withheld $34 million to the United Nations Population Fund. Sure, it helped Bush prove his anti-abortion credentials to his ultra-conservative supporters, but the loss of American support for the fund, which supports family planning and maternal health programs in more than 140 countries, will inevitably cost lives.
Meanwhile here in the United States, the federal government is pushing abstinence-only sex education in the schools as a substitute for comprehensive sex education. Don't they realize that comprehensive sex education that discusses contraception and other health issues has helped dramatically reduce the rate of abortions?
And as low-income pregnant women scramble for decent healthcare, there's a proposal for health insurance to be extended to embryos. Also, we can expect the Bush administration to campaign hard against late-term abortions and to push laws to stop minors from crossing state lines to avoid parental consent laws. And under this administration's watch, there will undoubtedly be more anti-abortion judges appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If this campaign continues, we could arrive at a day in the not-too-distant future when hospitals and clinics are frightened away from performing abortions for fear of losing federal funding, and women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies must go back underground.
Lest we forget, abortion is legal in Hawai'i. Let's not cave in to the scare tactics, because the last time we checked, Roe v. Wade had not been overturned.
