Utah is not a state known for its legislative sanity.  This, after all, is a state that recently made headlines for proposing to honor gun manufacturers on Martin Luther King Day and for considering the elimination of 12th grade to cut back on education spending.

Well, it just got a whole lot worse. 

Utah just became the first state in the U.S. to criminalize miscarriage and punish women for having or seeking an illegal abortion.  Utah's "Criminal Miscarriage" law:

• expands the definition of illegal abortion to include miscarriages
• removes immunity protections for women who have or seek illegal abortions
• treats women as presumptive criminals and leaves them open to criminal prosecution

More...

Editors Note: Kate Michelman is pro-choice activist and former president of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).

Amidst all the deserved attention being paid to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti, health care reform, the Senate election in Massachusetts, there is another deserving issue that goes largely unnoticed unless it is in crises-- except for one day a year.  Rather than bemoan the lack of attention or the reasons for it, I want to use the occasion of this anniversary of Roe v. Wade to remind all of us of the importance of this issue to every woman, indeed every American.

It has been a journey of more than 40 years since I sat in a hospital conference room, interrogated by men who held my fate, my family, and my choice in their hands.  After all these years, I can still feel the humiliation, the shame, and the anger as though those doctors were sitting in front of me now, demanding to know whether I was capable of dressing my children in the morning and being intimate with my husband at night.  This indignity was in the service of deciding whether I met the criteria for a diagnosis as " unfit for childbearing" necessary for permission to have an abortion in a hospital rather than a back alley.  Roe v. Wade changed all that by recognizing a woman's constitutional right to make decisions in matters of pregnancy, childbearing and abortion in privacy, safety and with dignity.  It saved women from the shame and degradation of illegal abortion and its humiliating consequences. And Roe was an important milestone for women in their long and difficult journey to full equality, dignity and economic security.

I have travelled a great distance since those wrenching days in 1969, and so has America.   The choice denied me, that the review board and the government had the power to make, has now been recognized as every woman's constitutional right.  The majority of Americans believe it should remain so.

Sadly, those who would take women back to the days of the interrogation room, the back alley, or the prospect of forced childbearing, a possibility so unfathomable for most people, so distant that we are reluctant to believe it possible, have made progress over the years.  Throughout the nation, millions of women face increasing obstacles to effective education about their sexual health and access to reproductive health care.  Abortion remains stigmatized and marginalized, women who decide to have an abortion are considered irresponsible, doctors who perform them are demonized, harassed and even murdered as in the tragic case of the death of Dr. Tiller in Kansas this past year.  Comprehensive sex education nationwide is a long way from becoming a reality inspite of overwhelming evidence of its positive impact on the lives and health of young people.  Family planning and contraceptive care remain a target of the right wing at the state and local levels.
 
We witnessed a generational shift with the election of President Obama.  We had reason to be elated.  Democrats took control of the both the House and Senate.  We thought finally we could stop the assault of the Bush years..  There has been progress.  Abstinence only education funding has been curbed and the government now is focused on comprehensive sex education.  But health care reform proved once again that we must never take our rights and liberties for granted, that we must be actively vigilant and that elections are not an end in themselves but rather a means to an end.  The willingness of National Democratic leaders to secure passage of health reform by prohibiting abortion coverage under private insurance plans represents a significant setback for women.  It must be a wake-up call to the advocacy community generally, and the women's rights community in particular, that political power without accountability will always fail us.  It must remain our mission to continually set the course, to define the values and to demand that our political friends stand up for what is right.

On this anniversary of Roe, in the context of the extraordinary election of President Obama, America stands at the brink; but we have not yet crossed it.  Our freedom belongs to us; it is our right, and it is our responsibility to protect it; and we have the power to do so.  Decades ago when Roe was not yet imagined and abortion was in so many places illegal, a small but passionate movement of Americans decided to transform the world.  They did.  Today the movement they have bequeathed to the next generation of pro-choice activists is large and powerful and vast; the freedom they left us remains in jeopardy; and to save it, we need only activate, with a sense of personal responsibility and dire urgency, the movement they built.

The younger generation bear an even bigger responsibility and face an even greater danger than my generation did--the possible loss of the entire right.  Young people today do have the choice that Roe made possible...that we all need to be mindful of the risk to women's basic right to privacy the other side would gladly rescind...evidenced by the obstacles that women, particularly poor women, must tackle when faced with the most important and often difficult decision of their lives -lack of facilities and trained doctors, the need to travel many miles to obtain care...imagine oneself in the situation I was in 40 years ago today and the ramifications for women if this right is overturned.  We have a tendency in these times of intense media hype over sensationalized events to overlook or take for granted precious but vulnerable constitutional rights such as the this one.  We must not.  This can be the cause of the next generation.
 
It's been said that all the great civil rights battles have been fought and won.  But for the rights that matter most, the fight never ends.  There has not been a single day since l973 when this right has been secure, nor has there been a single day when it's been more endangered than now.  And the danger isn't the far right.  They've been around forever, and when we're paying attention, we beat them every time.  The most insidious danger is the apathy and inattentiveness of the mainstream/middle.  In our history, we always turn to the young in such moments.

If we fight hard and lose, that will be a tragedy.  But if we lose because we didn't fight, that will be a crime - and our guilt will far exceed that of the religious right.  We depend on the new generation to know this and act.

On the 37th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade NARAL asked bloggers to blog for choice, as usual, I'm running a little late.

On my campus it’s pretty hard to get people to talk about choice. A friend of mine, who runs our Pro-Choice organization can hardly get a couple of people out of a campus full of largely progressive women to come to the meeting. I think for a lot of women, like me, who are white, cisgender, and come from upper-middle class families, the question can become a little moot. Right now, I basically have the choice:  if I need an abortion, I can afford one. It’s not often when my choice gets truly challenged in the debate about abortion.

Instead, measures against abortion continually restrict access to low-income communities. When Bush expanded the “conscience clause” late in his administration, to allow health-care workers to refuse to provide services based on moral objections, it was a horrible restriction on many women’s access to abortion, depending on where they live. The Hyde amendment, (and expansions like Stupak-which-was-the-Pitts) that bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, severely limits the access of low-income women whose health care comes from Medicaid. Other nongovernmental efforts like “Crisis Pregnancy Centers”, which do not provide abortions, and often mislead, bully, and straight out lie to women about their rights and the facts of abortion, end up targeting women who are uneducated about sex and reproduction, and don’t have other options.

In the regulation of women’s bodies by the government, it’s my privilege that keeps me afloat. For those of us who the privilege to choose where we live, have private insurance, and have a thorough and honest education about sex and reproduction, these limits on abortion often don’t apply. So isn’t it time that, especially when the face of the pro-choice movement is white upper-class women, that we stop talking about choice, and start talking about rights? All of these limitations on abortion, do not take away a generic women’s “choice”, but instead specific women’s rights.

In Beggars and Choosers, Rickie Solinger outlines the problem with “choice”:

In theory, choice refers to individual preference and wants to protect all women from reproductive coercion. In practice, though, choice has two faces. The contemporary language of choice promises dignity and reproductive autonomy to women with resources. For women without, the language of choice is a taunt and a threat. When the language of choice is applied to the question of poor women and motherhood, it begins to sound a lot like the language of eugenics: women who cannot afford to make choices are not fit to be mothers. The mutable quality of choice reminds us that sex and reproduction- motherhood- provide a rich site for controlling women, based on their race and class “value”.

Solinger uses the language of choice to unpack the inequalities in reproduction in America, but usually this language serves to hide these structures. When we assess reproductive rights in terms of our choices, it presents all women on an even playing field and allows us to misconstrue equal opportunity with equality. NARAL asks that we post this image, in promotion of blog for choice. Lets take it to mean trust all women with the choice of motherhood. Let’s fight for access in every community in America, so that all women really can truly exercise their reproductive rights.

Original here

(The following is part of our weeklong Roe v. Wade Blog-a-thon)

Over a year ago, I had a great boyfriend,"Bob".  He was sweet and kind and loving.  It had been such a great change from my previous boyfriend who was a complete jerk.  I fell really fast for Bob and he fell really fast for me.   We were having sex and using condoms.  We are human and were not as consistant as we should have been.  I became pregnant. 

Let me tell you about me.  I am not a girl who has ever wanted children even when I was little.  I dont want kids and it was not in my plans.  Even Bob said he didn't kids.  Well I become pregnant and it was unplanned.  I told him and we talked about what to do.  He was "pro-choice".  He had money to pay for an abortion, but he really didn't want to.  We "decided" to keep the baby without any talk of adoption or abortion.  That was not to be discussed again.  He was far away from me during this time (as a contractor in Iraq).   So he went back over seas.  I became very depressed and I thought that my entire life was over.  I talked to some adoption agencies, but he was unwilling to give up parental rights. I decided I couldnt be with him anymore, because of the hell he was putting me through. I thought I would look into abortion and how much it would be and if I could work something out. 

More...

(The following is part of our weeklong Roe v. Wade Blog-a-thon)

The following is a debate that was sparked due to my facebook status on January 22, 2009.  As you can see, it created some controversy!  For the privacy of those involved, I'm changing the names of the people who commented and am deleting the pictures.

I'm apologize in advance for the swearing...there's quite a bit of it in here as people's emotions and tempers were running high.  If you are offended by that, I'd suggest you don't read this!

More...

When you got pregnant, all those years ago, I remember your saying that you and your husband had used both a condom and diaphragm with contraceptive jelly.  And you were really careful.  But you got pregnant anyway!  You had tried so hard not to get pregnant but you were so fertile! 

You decided to have the baby because you already had one and were thinking of having another, anyway.  Which was great because it was your decision to make, and you made it.

Now you tell me that doctors said you would probably never have another baby and the baby was a miracle.  That God helped you when you and your husband really wanted that baby and were trying so hard to have another baby!  Because babies are God's gift to women.

I call bullshit. 

I call reconstruction of the truth.

More...

To help bring some closure to the Roe v. Wade Blog-a-thon, I've commissioned a piece of art.

(The following is part of our weeklong Roe v. Wade Blog-a-thon)

This week's celebration of Roe vs. Wade (1973) is much more than about the right to choose...

This contentiously debated decision continues to unite and divide advocates around the nation. The existence of Roe vs. Wade and the Hyde Amendment forces human rights and feminist activists to define their agenda, strategies and targets in ways that reflect how women from all walks of life benefit or do not benefit from these historic policies.

Last Thursday, on a particularly frigid and sunny day, advocates from all over Chicago joined at the Federal Plaza to rally and proclaim, "My body, My choice". This gathering consisted of direct service providers, staffers and volunteers for the Chicago Abortion Fund, feminists, children, and passerbys in solidarity with our cause. This multi-faceted gathering of support proves that collectively we can make a difference but, separately we almost deliberately fracture our efforts.

More...

(The following is part of our weekong Roe v. Wade Blog-a-thon)

I had two abortions.  Yes I did.  I've never said it out loud to anyone.  I go between being thankful and sad at the same time.  Thankful to the women and men who fought for my right to choose abortion as the option that was best for me and sad for the girl I was, that had to make such a difficult choice, alone.  Sad also because I haven't been able to say out loud that I had an abortion. 

I had an abortion - once at 16.
I had an abortion - once at 26.

Now at 33, married, with a 9 month old son, I am even more strongly convinced that I made the right choice - as hard as it was and and as hard as it continues to be - I am a stronger, better, mother, and woman now.  I know that I quite possibly made decisions that will no doubt affect me personally for years to come.  But even more important - I made decisions that will affect my son for all of his life.  I am thankful to that 16 year old girl.  I am thankful that Roe stands firm.

(The following is part of our weekong Roe v. Wade Blog-a-thon)

“We are women whose ultimate goal is the liberation of women in society. One important way we are working toward that goal is by helping any woman who wants an abortion to get one as safely and cheaply as possible under existing conditions...” – Abortion Counseling Service of Women’s Liberation (JANE) Pamphlet, 1969

Existing conditions in 1969 meant that abortion was illegal, under almost all circumstances, as was providing information about it. Desperate women were forced to extreme measures to end unwanted pregnancies and in the years before legalization it’s estimated that more than five thousand women died from botched “back alley” abortions every year.

At 22, I’m part of a second generation of women that’s never lived this reality. By 1969, New York was a year away from legalization and a case in Texas was working it’s way up the pipe, pushed along by a determined young lawyer named Sarah Weddington. She argued her first case, given the name Roe v. Wade, to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1973 – and changed the history and future of American women forever.

That’s ‘sheroism’ – and we owe a debt of gratitude to Weddington, and to the Redstockings of New York City, who organized the first abortion speak-out, and to George  Michaels, who effectively ended his political career when he changed his vote from ‘No’ to ‘Yes’ to allow New York State to legalize abortion, and to all the nameless activists who protested, wrote, and lobbied for the rights we now enjoy.

More...