By Becci Robbins
Communications Director, SC Progressive Network
SC legislators meet Jan. 28 to discuss a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound, be given “certain written materials” and wait 24 hours before obtaining an abortion, a move opponents say poses a prohibitive burden for many poor and working women.
What’s wrong with this picture? I’ll tell you: these gents are debating what goes on in my uterus. Some of them have been doing this for years. Hard to believe, but they somehow feel entitled to making decisions about the most intimate details of my health and welfare. As a grown woman, I find their presumption insulting.
Seriously. Imagine a group of women discussing how long men should wait before being allowed to have a vasectomy, or whether they should be given Viagra, and under what circumstances. Now stop laughing and imagine that these women had the power to make these choices for men.
Fat chance.
Meanwhile, the annual legislative slug-fest over who controls women’s lives unfolds yet again. It’s an old and ugly fight. As a self-described feminist since I knew there was a word for it, I am exhausted by the endless, looping debate. I hate to admit it, but as I age and the concept of unwanted pregnancy moves from a practical consideration to a theoretical construct, so has my passion to debate it.
Maybe I’m just plain tired of the whole circus. Like most Americans, I’m finding it’s so much easier to ignore that which doesn’t affect me directly. Sadly, that leaves the floor to lobbyists, legislators greased by the same entities who pay the lobbyists, and a scary gang of evangelicals with a proclivity for using The Word rather than their own words to make a point.
Some of the latter showed up at the hearing yesterday. Several were from a Charleston clinic that provides “girls,” as they were referred to, with information designed to dissuade them from seeking an abortion. One said the 24-hour waiting period would give the message “They better think twice before having an abortion.”
Anne Rainville said, “I’m here because I fear God.”
Columbia’s anti-choice stalwart Steve LeFemine showed up without the giant posters of bloody fetuses he usually travels with, thank God, but he did have Bible in hand, and he read from it during his testimony before the panel. Ironically, he was there to oppose the bill, as he said he has grown disillusioned with the “incremental approach” to dismantling “the murder of pre-birth human beings.”
At least he has the honesty to say what we all know to be true: this bill, like the 500 anti-choice measures passed since 1995, are crafted to chip away at women’s right to choose. They will keep pushing until the bar is set so impossibly high that only the well-connected and well-off can afford to make the most serious choices about their lives and families.
Sitting through the hearing yesterday was maddening. Spare me, please, the hand-wringing, the name calling, the Scripture readings, the self-righteousness. Just stop. Here’s the deal: women and their doctors should determine their medical care, and women and their religious advisers should determine their spiritual guidance.
Period.
I take some comfort knowing that a committed coalition of women’s advocates, many of them members of the SC Progressive Network (SC Coalition for Healthy Families, Planned Parenthood, and local and state NOW chapters) are working hard against stiff odds. And we have a few legislative allies willing to challenge the status quo. Rep. James Smith (D-Richland), for instance, asked the panel yesterday for a waiting period (clever!) before making a decision on the matter to allow him time to hear from some of his constituents.
Rep. Greg Delleney, the bill’s sponsor and chairman of the subcommittee, killed the idea, and asked that H3245 be sent on to the full committee.
It was.
And so the sausage is made.