Abortion and Women's Rights

Five men at the Supreme Court have ruled that the Federal Government may ban a form of late-term abortion even where the woman’s health is in danger. Two of these men were appointed by George W. Bush and one of them by his father. They are all Catholics. The President, who is responsible for a war in Iraq which has killed over 3000 young, healthy, grown Americans—one hundred times more people than were killed by an insane gunman at Virginia Tech University-- issued a statement approving of the ruling.

The debate over abortion is not basically about the life of unborn infants. It is not about when life begins or whether abortion is an act of murder. It is not really about rape, or incest, or the dangers of illegal abortions. It is a conflict about the very forces of nature and the social order. That is why it is so fierce. Human beings are struggling at the demarcation where human culture departs from natural law.

Nature has declared that the female sex will bear children, and, because of that, women have been saddled with responsibility for nurturing the young. Women have for ages tended to the home and children while men have been free to walk away or go compete for the things the world has to offer. But human culture has declared that biology and anatomy are not destiny and that it is the mind of humankind, not the body, that determines status.

The struggle over abortion today is part of the struggle of women everywhere for sexual freedom and the right to participate fully in the society which humanity has created. As long as women could be kept pregnant, as long as they could not choose against pregnancy, they could be kept in an isolated and inferior position. Women believe that the right to control your own body is the most basic right. If pregnancy means that governments can control your body, that is more than an invasion of privacy; it is slavery.

Men have always attempted to exercise a sexual domination over women. Such domination can be observed in less civilized societies such as those in Africa and the Middle East. You can measure the extent to which a country has become civilized by the freedom of its women. In the Islamic view, female sexuality is thought of as being so powerful that it constitutes a real danger to society. Muslim nations generally forbid abortion.

Today’s Moslems try fiercely to prevent their women from doing anything that might attract the sexual attention of other men. In Afghanistan under the Taliban, as in today’s Saudi Arabia, women were required to wear the burkha, a tent-like garment that covers them from head to foot. Women were not allowed even to look at someone other than their immediate male relatives and were forbidden to hold jobs or attend school. Ritual sexual mutilation of females is still common in rural areas of the Middle East.

The history of tyrannical nations is one that includes the banning abortion. Although the liberal Weimar Republic in Germany loosened the laws against abortion between the two world wars, when the Nazis came to power they promptly enacted strict anti-abortion laws. After the Nazis overran France, the collaborationist Vichy government enacted harsh anti-abortion laws along with other laws aimed at limiting the freedom of women.

Although there are people who sincerely believe that abortion is the taking of human life, many of the most fanatic right-to-lifers, such as Randall Terry, violently oppose any kind of women’s rights or sexual freedom. These people not only oppose abortion but also birth control and laws against sexual discrimination. Randall Terry said: “We are facing a crisis of righteous, courageous, physically oriented, male leadership....God established patriarchy when he established the world.”

Some people claim that a soul is infused into the zygote at the moment of conception. Such persons have an honest concern for the lives of unborn infants. They believe that the embryo is a living human being. That, however, is a purely religious belief that cannot be proven by scientific means. In a nation governed by separation of church and state, we must not impose one church’s belief upon everybody.

For many anti-abortionists the real issue is not the life of the embryo. The real issue is keeping women from assuming their rights to equality and sexual freedom. Men have always had sexual freedom protected by a double standard. The real giveaway is the language used by right-to-lifers. They extol “family values” and call their organizations by terms such as “Focus on the Family.” In other words, it is not the sanctity of life that disturbs them. It is the change in family relationships. They do not want a world where the mother is a banker and the father stays at home taking care of the children.

Well, they are too late. Women in America already have sexual freedom. Women are already filling the halls of power and are going to continue to grow in power. The abortion debate is going to dissolve with the growth of pharmaceutical methods of terminating pregnancy. And I’m sorry to have to tell this to you men, but many of you are going to have to accept the fact that your wives make more money than you and that you are going to have to start taking care of the children.