Watson is a third-year business administration student who is
currently taking classes at UCLA extension.
By Anthea Watson
I have watched with growing alarm the early days of the new Bush
administration and its attack on family planning. George W. Bush
has made it clear that he will use his presidential powers to
undermine reproductive rights. His campaign claims to reside in the
middle of the political spectrum seem ridiculous now.
He demonstrated this first with his nomination of John Ashcroft
for attorney general, and his nomination of Wisconsin Gov. Tommy
Thompson as the head of the Department of Health and Human
Services. Again Bush confirmed his anti-abortion stance with his
executive order that would end funding to international family
planning organizations. Promises of bi-partisanship appear empty as
a genuine war on women’s equality, socially, economically and
politically, is declared in Washington.
John Ashcroft has been an outspoken opponent of reproductive
rights starting in 1979 when he, as the attorney general of
Missouri, defended a Missouri regulation that prohibited poor women
from obtaining public funds to pay for abortions medically
necessary to preserve their health. This was true until last year
when Ashcroft co-sponsored a resolution calling for an amendment to
the U.S. Constitution to ban abortion even in cases of rape or
incest. The amendment also would have outlawed several of the most
common contraceptive methods.(www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/22/bc.abortionpolitics.ap/index.html).
Ashcroft has demonstrated numerous times that he is willing to
use his power in office to deny women reproductive rights. As
attorney general, he will be responsible for enforcing abortion
laws and protecting abortion clinics. He will be setting priorities
for the entire Department of Justice.
As with every department, the Department of Justice has a
limited budget. Not all the federal laws can be given equal
priority. President Bush and his Republican cohorts are asking us
to believe that this man, a very religious man, who thinks abortion
is morally wrong, will use his office to protect a woman’s
right to choose when and where she will have a baby. This
ain’t gonna happen folks. The political views of the attorney
general will be reflected in the decisions of how U.S. attorneys
and FBI agents spend their time.
Tommy Thompson is also an anti-abortion activist. As the head of
the Department of Health and Human Services, Thompson will have
more control over the day to day reproductive rights of women than
the position of attorney general. In addition to controlling
federally sponsored reproduction education, Thompson will oversee
the FDA, the agency in charge of approving new drugs, including
RU-486.
As governor of Wisconsin, Thompson approved bills restricting a
woman’s right to an abortion and to family planning services,
including a 24-hour mandatory waiting period for women seeking
abortions, a parental consent law, and a ban on certain abortion
procedures that was eventually reversed by the U.S. Supreme
Court.
It’s not only these men that scare me, but also the men
they will appoint to the lower echelons of the departments they
will head. It is there with the undersecretaries that the real
decisions about funding, enforcement and studies will be made. Both
these men bring to their positions extremely radical views. They
are likely to appoint to positions beneath them men with similar
views. These men will be in charge of our rights in the future and
their decisions regarding that future can’t help but be
tainted by their fanatical thinking.
These two nominations in and of themselves would not be a cause
to cry war on women; however, Bush declared this war with his first
action in office, 28 years to the day after the U.S. Supreme
Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. Bush signed a memorandum that
would cut off aid to international family planning groups that
provide support for abortions.
Federal funding for abortion and abortion-related activities has
been illegal since 1973 with the passage of the Helms Amendment to
the International Assistance Act, but this order goes further by
taking funds away from educational programs in some of the most
underfunded areas in the world.
The family planning clinics were using their own privately
raised funds to lobby their own governments regarding abortion
legislation; now these clinics won’t have U.S. money for
family planning. Family planning means giving out condoms and other
contraceptives, parenting classes, postnatal counseling and help
with breast-feeding. Women all over the world need these services
to maintain their precarious hold on the economic, social and
political positions they have as well as hopefully to improve their
positions.
Having the right to choose when and where she will have a baby,
a woman is given more economic and social freedom. She can take
educational and financial opportunities offered. No family planning
means a higher death rate for women from botched abortions, more
domestic violence when women deny their husbands and boyfriends sex
because of fear of getting pregnant, more sickness and more poverty
for women. A war on family planning is tantamount to a war on
women.
Bush’s recent actions should serve as a wake-up call to
anyone who thought Bush wouldn’t be a threat to a
woman’s right to choose. Please, get educated, get active and
make it known how you feel. Campus groups such as the Feminist
Majority Leadership Association exist to actively protect a
woman’s choice.
Write your legislators asking them to vote against legislation
limiting a woman’s access to family planning of all kinds.
Fight the minority in this country who will hold women back from
the equality they deserve.