#roe43

57% of people under 30 surveyed think #Roe was about the death penalty, desegregation, the environment, or couldn’t say

68 percent of respondents who identified as Republicans knew what Roe was about, versus 57 percent of Democrats.

For the 74 percent who wanted to see Roe overturned, abortion was a “crucial issue” or “one of many crucial issues,” but among those who support a woman’s right to choose, that number was 31 percent.

62 percent of Americans ages 18-29, people who for the most part don’t yet have children, said the right to abortion is “not that important” (compared to 53 percent of adults overall).

This week marks the 43rd year since the passage of Roe v Wade which, in legalizing abortion, extended several previously withheld constitutional rights, having to do with privacy, autonomy and due process, to women. It took time and involved endless constitutional interpretations. In theory, our bodies, we get to decide what happens in and to them. In practice, not so much. The right to abortion, like other “women’s issues,” remains one that is constantly under attack and considered negotiable.

Denying women safe and legal access to abortion is a human rights violation, even in the United States which likes to pretend that human rights violations only happen in other countries. The legal right to abortion, however, is treated like some kind of perk, something to be negotiated, a matter of opinion, subject to the eternal intervention of men. We thoughtlessly elect careless and ignorant people, many of whom demonstrate that they know virtually nothing about science, physiology, economics or their relationship to women’s rights and lives. Most of them are people for whom control of reproduction can be reduced to a 12,000-year old technology, $.50 micro-thin shealth.

How, it seems reasonable as many men suggest, could the problem of reproduction be so critical to women’s entire lives? How could anyone think that things as banal as birth control and safe abortion be considered “Very Important Transformative Technologies,” globally?

Our laws and “morality” continue to reflect, or seek to reproduce, a reality in which reproduction takes place and is managed outside of a body, the way reproduction is experienced by men. For women, the experience cannot be separated, yet, from our bodies. That fetuses are not part of men’s bodies doesn’t make them less part of women’s. That’s the bitterest pill, the one no one wants to swallow because of all its implications.

Boys and men never have to talk about their “reproductive rights” because the norm, plain old “rights,” is male. “Rights” are only qualified by “reproductive” when we’re talking about women – because what we have is thought of as “different,” and requires “fixing,” as opposed to normative to what it means to be human. This is evident, materially, for example, in the way that abortion and health as they pertains to women’s reproductive organs are isolated in “clinics” outside of “regular” care and in specialized practices that are considered “extra” and somehow mysterious.

What every boy and man should know is that the rights of the women they know, who look like they are functioning as equals in schools and work, have never been as inalienable and fundamental as their own. A woman’s right to abortion, to decide if and when and how, to reproduce is a fundamental human right specific to being a human female.

On the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are reminded of what life was like for women before safe and legal abortion — and what could again become a reality for many women across the country. Under Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the Constitution protects everyone’s right to make their own personal medical decisions about abortion. Yet politicians in Congress, state legislatures, and the GOP campaign trail have made it clear that they will stop at nothing to end access to safe, legal abortion.

At the beginning of 2016, we find that Roe v. Wade is at risk in three big ways:

1. The next big Supreme Court case on abortion: If the Court rules the wrong way, this case would leave abortion legal in name only for many women by allowing politicians across the country to enact severe, Texas-style restrictions on safe, legal abortion.

2. The 2016 election: There is so much at stake in 2016 — a woman’s fundamental right to abortion has never been more clearly on the ballot. Never have we heard such extreme and dangerous rhetoric from our lawmakers. In fact, every single Republican presidential candidate has vowed to ban abortion.

3. Attacks in the states: If the hundreds of unfair restrictions on access to safe, legal abortion are maintained and more are allowed to pass, abortion could become virtually inaccessible for many, particularly low-income people who live in rural areas.

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