A new challenge to women’s reproductive rights could soon be heard by the Supreme Court, according to an insightful report posted by Linda Greenhouse September 4 on the New York Times Opinionator. The Court may decide whether or not to hear the case (Cline v Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice) by this fall, and its current make-up is unlikely to come down on the reproductive justice. It’s a scary scenario.
Scary because the case is going to be billed as “protecting women” while no one with a brain can fail to see it for what it is: a new attempt to make abortion virtually impossible for women in the U.S. A little sleight-of-hand interpretation of an old FDA ruling will translate to ending the use of RU-486. Greenhouse explains it better, but that’s the gist of it: medical abortion will cease to be available if anti-abortion forces win this case. State regulations continue to limit access, clinics continue to close; you don’t have to do much math to realize that reproductive rights are disappearing across the U.S.
We’ve been here before:
On one side is a woman. On another side is pregnancy tissue which is, in Greenhouse’s apt description, the size of a pencil eraser. Some of us believe the woman should have the right to choose what happens to that tissue within her body. Others of us believe it is already a life which must be protected at all costs and the woman be damned. Unfortunately, if access to safe abortion is again denied, women will again be damned. Damned to dangerous attempts to end unwanted pregnancies, or to “forced birth.” That “forced birth” phrase was used by a woman attending a recent reading of Perilous Times, who added, “We used to call that slavery.”
Whatever you call it, that tiny bit of pregnancy tissue is the real focus of Cline v Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice, not the drug which can be used to cause its removal. The anti-abortion forces who value that bit of tissue over the woman carrying it have absolutely no concern for the woman. What they do have are political clout, irrational zeal, unscientific arguments, religious fervor and a Supreme Court likely to lean their way.
It’s a case to watch.