North West Abortion

Concerning privacy laws, most people don’t know the voting habits of their own state’s legislature, let alone that of other states. In the north western United States, voters usually sympathize with the Republican Party, with the exception of Washington and Oregon. A lot of these states are trying to limit the reproductive rights of women; it all just depends of the magnitude of their efforts to take away liberties.
Some of the most common rights infringements are mandatory parental consent forms for minors to receive abortions. This law may at first seem logical. The relationship between a parent and child can be very important in sensitive situations, but many times the pressure of forced parental involvement can emotionally, or in some extreme cases, physically damage a minor. If a minor were to seek an abortion against her parent’s wishes, she would have to go though court hearings and possible emancipation. This completely eliminates the woman’s right to dictate her own body. This is terrible for a number of obvious reasons, but especially considering the current administration’s blind-eye “abstinence only!” view on ignoring sexual education.
Another act that many North Western states are uniting under is The Unborn Child Pain Awareness. This example, which is followed by states such as Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota, is one like Washington’s HB 2532 which requires woman to read and sign off that they understand government information about pain relief possibilities for the fetus that will be aborted. There are a plethora of problems here. First of which is the decision that fetus’ and embryo’s can feel pain,
thus they must be considered living, which would require us to make the bold claim that we know when life begins, scientifically. Second, it makes the woman read government, anti-choice biased material that attempt make the woman feel too guilty to exercise her right.
Currently, there are some states that are ready to start banning any type of abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned in the Supreme Court. Nancy Northup, president of The Center for Reproductive Rights, has put states into three categories according to their risk level of taking away a woman’s reproductive right to choose if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned. North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Utah and Wisconsin are at high risk, which within the 12 months after an overturn, the state will ban abortion. This is especially scary considering that the Bush administration is going to be filling the new justice position with someone who could very well be anti-choice (Samuel Alito seems to be exactly that)..
The states themselves are trying some sneaky to take away a woman’s reproductive rights. South Dakota, for example, has recently passed a bill that makes it harder for women to go through with the abortion. The law states that doctors must tell the women while she is having her consultation that, “You are terminating the life of a while separate unique living human being”. This is unjust on several fronts. First, it
is stating that the fetus is alive and a human being, which is simply not true by many people’s standards and scientifically ambiguous at best. And statistically most people feel that a fetus isn’t a living human until after birth. Second, implies that not only is the woman in the wrong for even considering the abortion, she will be a murderer. This is both deceitful and unjust to women and doctors – not to mention all of the children that are born to mothers that have been guilted into having a child they do not want or cannot provide for and raise properly.
South Dakota’s HB 1191 is another drastic step taken by the legislature to limit reproductive rights. Although it doesn’t blatantly take away a woman’s right to choose, it could be setting the stage for future restrictions of liberties. The legislature has decided that, “the life of a human being begins when the ovum is fertilized by the male sperm” (HB 1191). In this South Dakota has decided that life starts at conception. This belief is not held by the majority of scientists or doctors and it is not up to South Dakota to make the claim that they know when life begins. Many people, religions and groups believe that life beings when a baby is born, others believe life starts at conception, or at various other points in the pregnancy such as heart beat, or when brain activity is apparent. So, South Dakota’s claim is an unfounded way to sway people’s opinions on the start of life, therefore setting the stage for limitations of abortion and other reproductive rights. If an unborn fetus is considered alive by law declaring that the doctors performing the abortions are murderers is the next step. Section 5 of the same bill states, “the legislature finds that a pregnant mother, together with the unborn human child, each possess a natural and unalienable right to life under the South Dakota Bill of Rights” (HB 1191). This section is literally saying that the unborn fetus has a right to life. It says nothing giving the woman a right to choose what is best for her life and body.
The North Western states are laying the groundwork to take away a woman’s right to choose and making an unborn fetus’s rights supersede the rights of a woman to decide what is right for her body. With the potential for a Roe v. Wade overturn and the possibility of a new anti-choice justice, anyone with a social conscience that is concerned about rights needs to be especially vigilant.