Expand the pro-choice dialogue

By Dinushika Mohottige
Christian Science Monitor
Friday, Dec. 2, 2005


President Bush's Supreme Court nomination of conservative Samuel Alito has reignited discussions over whether a woman's legal right to choose an abortion is under a serious threat.

The pro-choice movement continues to face the challenges of rallying reproductive rights supporters and defining and defending the term "choice." But has it really stopped to consider how "choice" applies to the options and resources available to low-income and minority women?

The pro-choice movement has long established its cause as defending a woman's right to choose. Yet for many women, that choice is nonexistent. The cost of raising a child in the United States today is nearly $200,000. With an egregious lack of affordable healthcare, housing, and educational opportunities, many poor women of color may simply opt out of bringing a child into the world.

The numbers bear this out: Minority women are more likely to live in poverty than other women in their states and in the nation as a whole, according to 2001 US Census figures. Further, women having abortions have become increasingly likely to be poor, nonwhite, and unmarried, and already have one or more children; two-thirds say they cannot afford to have a child, half say they do not want to be a single parent, according to a 2005 Alan Guttmacher Institute report.



http://csmonitor.com/2005/1202/p09s01-coop.html

1) Universal DAYcare
2) Access to birth control
3) Dropping restrictions on gay adoption

I've been trying to frame the choice debate like this for quite some time, but not much response here on the DU.

conservatives will continue to try and to some extent they will succeed in dismantling roe a little bit at a time.

conservatives will also try and they will succeed in denying benefits and opportunity to minorities and working poor.

they will succeed on the second front because of horrendous hole they've dug with the debt and the deficit.

if we can revisit the equal rights amendment -- and begin to reopen womens health clinics -- we can on the public health front begin to reach the poor -- perhaps more effectively than we have done in the past.

as far as the authors concern re:eugenics -- i think that's what something like the equal rights amendment is for.

If a woman doesn't have control over her own body, she has no privacy and she has no freedom. Why these right wing whack jobs, who spew over and over again that the government can't be trusted, trust the government to monitor the most private decision in a woman's life, is beyond me.

Of course, they really just hate women and just want to control us and reduce us to property, just like it was in biblical times.