Attacks on Abortion Rights
In the past few months in the United States, there has been a systematic and organized attack on women’s access to abortion. This kind of attack is not new, but it is becoming more and more pointed.
One state just passed legislation that makes all abortion illegal and could sentence a doctor who performs an abortion to ninety-nine years in jail. The legislation is not yet enforceable, since a federal law called “Roe versus Wade” protects a woman’s right to abortion throughout the country. The state legislation was passed specifically to challenge the federal law and, with our more conservative Supreme Court, possibly overturn it.
This is another concerted attack on us as women and our rights over our own bodies. As RCers, we need to discharge on it and what the effects of it could be. We need to dedicate some of our sessions to our feelings about abortion. Some of us have had abortions; some have chosen not to. Either way, we have feelings to discharge. If we don’t discharge them, we’ll be pulled to remain on the sidelines and hope that someone else will fight on our behalf. The pull to remain silent in the face of oppression must be contradicted.
I had an illegal abortion in 1969—without anesthesia, without a medical facility—and it was one of the scariest experiences of my life.
We know that making abortion illegal does not stop abortions from occurring; it only makes them more dangerous. In fact, many statistics show that having access to legal abortions and good birth control reduces the incidence of abortions.
Please write to the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women about how you are working on this issue in the wide world. And please join me in working on it in sessions, including on whatever gets in your way of finding your voice in opposition to this attack on us as women.
Freeport, Maine, USA
Thank you so much, Beth, for your message.
An abortion-free society should be a society free of patriarchy and all forms of sexual oppression, spousal sexual abuse, and men denying pregnancy. It should be a society that promotes women’s liberation—including their rights to inheritance and land ownership, to employment and equal pay, and to their bodies and reproduction.
But that society has not yet been achieved. At the same time, women are blamed and made to take responsibility for being oppressed. Take an honest look at the reasons that women opt for abortion. Look around our society and see how women and young girls go through abortion because of sexism. They also risk infections, barrenness, and death when they can’t get proper information about it or access to a good health care facility. Unsafe abortion caused the deaths of two teenagers I knew when I was young.
Stigmatizing women for their decision to have an abortion is oppressive. I have been having sessions on this and working with international women’s movements to end the abortion stigma.
It’s important for women to support each other and take advantage of the wonderful tool of RC that the International Re-evaluation Counseling Community provides for building a healthier and happier world for us all. And since abortion involves a life, sessions are very important before making a decision about it.
Lagos, Nigeria
Reprinted from the RC e-mail
discussion list for leaders of women