Here’s where we go with right-wing policies on reproductive rights.

We’re already seeing results ….

Jen (not her real name) is administrator of a women’s health clinic in the South that provides abortions. She has noted with alarm the recent rise in illegal abortion in her community. For some of the women she sees—after their initial attempts at abortion fail—whether Roe v. Wade is technically still the law of the land is beside the point. The combination of the procedure’s cost, the numerous regulations that her state imposes and the stigma surrounding abortion is leading a growing number of women to choose self-abortion or an untrained practitioner over legal abortion.
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Our local hospital tells me they see 12-20 patients per year, who have already self-induced or had illegal abortions. Some make it, some don’t. They are underage or poor women mostly, and a few daughters of pro-life families…

So – you want to reduce abortions? Allow sex education, family planning, and birth control. If you are against those things, then it doesn’t seem to me that abortion is really the issue.

… the very policies that could reduce unwanted pregnancies—and thus abortions, legal and otherwise—are resisted at every turn by right-wing extremists and their allies in the Bush White House. Funds for family planning services are cut back while millions of dollars of federal funding are spent on “abstinence only” sex education. Emergency Contraception (EC), a higher-than-normal dose of regular birth control pills that can prevent a pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, sexual assault or birth control failure, is denied over-the-counter status by the FDA, even though the agency’s own panel of experts voted overwhelmingly to make EC available without a prescription. Researchers estimate that EC prevented some 51,000 abortions in 2000—the last year for which such data is available—and OTC status would make this option far more accessible.

The latest front in the abortion war is the pharmacy. There are increasing incidents of anti-abortion pharmacists who are refusing to dispense both EC and regular birth control pills.

It’s about controlling women. Do you really think so little of women’s own decision-making ability? No-one makes that kind of decision lightly – it is fraught with ethical dilemnas and every situation is different.

There are some who deeply regret having terminated a pregnancy. There are those who carry heavy costs for not doing so. Each story is different, and when you hear the stories you really come to understand that there are too many different kinds of situations to impose rules. These are rights of privacy and even for freedom of religion.

This kind of decision is to be made by a woman. She needs to look at the reality of her situation, consult with her doctor, examine her religious beliefs, and -if she is one of the fortunate ones- talk at length about the issues with her sexual partner. Ideally, personal, religious, and medical views should all be taken into her consideration.

Fundamentally, no-one else has the right to impose their decision on a woman’s life and body. No-one should be forced to carry any more than they should be forced to abort. It’s not anyone’s decision but hers.

No-one is happy about ending a pregnancy. I have never voluntarily terminated a pregnancy, but I’ve also never been in the position to have had to consider doing so. I have lost two pregnancies, the first one of which nearly killed me. I deeply mourned their loss. And it is partly for that very reason that I support a woman’s right to plan for her reproductive life.

Want to reduce abortions? Address the reasons that women have abortions. Make sure they know how to make decisions about their sexual lives, reduce the psychopathology of domination and rape, reduce poverty, increase education. These are all things that the right _opposes_. So while you’re being manipulated for your votes, realize that you are also selling out the future of your daughters. Under these polities, their lives will be worse. I think that’s a much more insidious form of abortion.

(Tip of the hat to Ann at Is America Burning – welcome to my blogroll!)