Abortion in history: a reader

Criminalizing a medical procedure will cost thousands of women their lives

The Supreme Court’s draft opinion calls the Roe v. Wade decision protecting women’s privacy rights “egregiously wrong from the start.” In fact, the 100-year-history of anti-abortion laws in this country (from roughly the post-Civil War era to 1973) were the product of a Victorian-era anti-woman’s rights movement cloaked in religious garb, just as the current wave of anti-abortion laws has its roots in an anti-feminist backlash fanned by clergy and their followers who are seeking to impose their religious views on the broader society.

For background on the above statements, here are a few articles I’ve been reading this morning:

Abortion in American History by Kathy Pollitt in The Atlantic (1997)

Scarlet Letters: Getting the History of Abortion and Conception Right by the Center for American Progress (2013)

And for a quick look at ancient history and biblical attitudes toward abortion, see Historical Attitudes Toward Abortion by the BBC

According to this morning’s papers, the anti-abortion minority in this country (more than 60% of Americans wants to see women’s reproductive rights preserved) now wants a federal law banning all abortions in every state after six weeks of pregnancy. That would be a direct attack on states seeking to become sanctuaries where women’s reproductive rights will be protected.

I doubt such a proposal would survive a Democratic Party-led filibuster. However, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who will become majority leader should Republicans capture the Senate this fall, could waive that rule to pass a sweeping anti-abortion law. Don’t forget he eliminated the rule when approving Trump picks for the Supreme Court, who are on the cusp of repealing a woman’s right to choose.

A federal law abrogating a state’s right to protect women would no doubt wind up before the Supreme Court. But in a mockery of everything the conservative majority claims to believe in, the Roberts-led court has proven time and again that it is willing to legislate from the bench to achieve its political goals and cater to its political base.

If and when that comes to pass, we will have fully entered America’s post-democracy era. Such a ruling would directly violate the U.S. Constitution’s first amendment, which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Every religion, including my own, has factions who see the right to abortion and a woman’s right to reproductive autonomy as flowing from their religious beliefs. And, for millions of non-believers, those rights flow from their ethical constructs, which in other contexts (like pacifism) have the same rights of conscience as organized religion.

Yet a minority of religious fanatics, drawing on their own beliefs, are seeking a federal ban on a medical procedure that has been widely accepted throughout human history. Not only that, they would turn the professionals who perform the service as well as the women who seek it into criminals.

Banning abortion will return the U.S. to the era when thousands of women lost their lives to back-alley abortionists. No society that allows that to happen by requiring everyone follow a minority religious belief can be called, in any meaningful sense of the word, free.