Roe v Wade: An Anniversary and the Aftermath
By Jake Picker
January 27, 2015 at 6:09 am
This January provides an opportunity for Americans to celebrate and reflect on the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, which confirmed that the constitutional right to privacy includes a woman’s right to abortion. As a young woman, I am grateful for this right, I celebrate it, but I am also deeply frustrated by the constant political attacks on my right to make private, personal medical decisions. Despite the fact that the majority of Americans support a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion, this right is in jeopardy. Women deserve better and it’s up to my generation to put an end to the slow march back to the dark days of dangerous and illegal back-alley abortions. I’d like to push back by replacing misinformation about abortion with some facts.
Access to safe and legal abortion is a critical part of women’s health care. One in three American women have had an abortion. Despite what you may hear from abortion opponents, research shows that abortion is one of the safest medical procedures in the U.S. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that abortion has over a 99 percent safety record. Contrary to what opponents claim, safe abortions do not impact a woman’s ability to get pregnant in the future, prevent a woman from carrying future pregnancies to term, cause breast cancer nor negatively influence women’s emotional wellbeing.
One would think politicians would rely on science, research and facts as the foundation for public policy, but this false information is often used to support onerous laws intended to diminish and even eliminate access to safe and legal abortion. Targeted restrictions and regulations are designed to shut down trusted providers, increase the cost of abortion and threaten women’s health and safety. Just ask the women of west Texas, where unnecessary state regulations recently forced the closure of dozens of abortion providers. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Texas women now have to travel 600 miles to access safe and legal abortion in their state. How on earth does that make abortion safer for women?
Millions of women, many of whom we call “mom,” “grandmother,” “sister” or “friend” have needed or will someday need a trusted provider and the right to make to their own personal decision about whether or not to become a parent. It’s worth repeating — one in three American women have had an abortion. Regardless of personal, religious or political convictions, it’s important that abortion stays safe, legal and accessible for a woman to consider if and when she needs it.
I urge everyone, especially policymakers, to acknowledge scientific research when debating and making decisions on an issue that affects millions of women’s lives. I am grateful that safe and legal abortion remains accessible to the women of California and I’m committed to fight to ensure that it remains legal for generations to come.
Jake Picker is not willing to give control of her body to some politician who can’t even read a medical report.
It is wrong to describe any sort of abortion procedure as “safe” in any sense of the word insofar as it involves the killing of an unborn child. To this extent, it could not matter less whether abortion results in breast cancer, or whether it results in later difficulty in conceiving, etc. What matters is that abortion involves the intentional killing of an unborn child and, because of this, such a thing ought not be permitted by law. Notice the irony here too: in the name of “women’s rights,” how many women have been slaughtered by abortion? Far from exalting… Read more »
Women have been slaughtered by abortion? That’s a very vague statement that makes little to no sense. And apparently, billions of women have died because of it. Uh huh. Got anything to back up that statistic, buddy?
I’m not agreeing with his moronic statement but he’s talking about the unborn “children” who were female.
Right. According to various sources, between 1.3 to 1.7 billion abortion procedures have been carried out worldwide since the late 1900’s (i.e. since, say, the 1970’s). Plausibly, then, the lives of some 1 billion women have been extinguished in the name of “women’s rights.” That is the irony. And, though one needn’t be an embryologist or biologist to know this (and contrary to j’s remarkably uninformed suggestion), since the moment of conception there comes into existence a complete human organism. Immediate examples of complete human organisms are: Carlos Flores, J, Dylan Aleshire, and Jake Picker. Clearly it would be impermissible… Read more »
I don’t see anything inherently wrong with dismembering Carlos Flores, although I don’t think that is the most appropriate way to win an argument.
Until I see an actual link to a specific (and credible) article/website, I will not be convinced of these numbers of yours.
And the idea of a embryo being a human is a philosophical issue; it’s not set in stone.
Finally, human? Me? What gave you that idea? You haven’t seen my tail! Mwahahaha!
Dylan, according to the Guttmacher Institute (a pro-choice organization), an average of 40 million abortions are carried out each year. (See: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html) Given that abortions have been legal since at least the 1960’s, it stands to reason that some billion or so abortions have been carried out worldwide since that time. But isn’t the killing of one female child enough to demonstrate the irony in abortion being dubbed a “women’s right” movement? Further, you write: “And the idea of a embryo being a human is a philosophical issue; it’s not set in stone.” That’s simply false. As a biological fact,… Read more »
Human yes. Person no.
What do you mean by person? That is, what are the criteria for personhood and why should we accept these criteria?
I generally consider anyone over the age of 25 to be a person.
Do you even joke, bro?