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New Abortion Laws
What’s Going On?
know more about
them. If a state chooses
to require that a
woman seeking an
abortion give informed
consent, she will be
shown graphic pic
tures of fetuses,
dramatizations of ac
tual abortions and re
quired to wait 24-72
hours before having
the procedure.
Pro-choicers ar
gue that the dramati
zations use fetuses,
older than 24 weeks.
* Ohio v. Akron
Center for Reproduc
tive Health - (Paren
tal Consent) A state
may require minors to
Non-white abortions are double
the number of white abortions.
White
Non-white
PO
o
bo
b min
Under 20 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40/older
Source: The Alan Guttmacher Institute
Abortion percentage by age.
by Tayari A. Jones
It is now 16 years Roe v. Wade, the
historic decision which legalized a woman’s
right to have an abortion. This ruling was
based upon the right of privacy founded in the
Constitution. This right of privacy protects
the woman from interference by the law if she
chooses to have an abortion during the early
portion of her pregnancy. However, the court
decided that the state could regulate decisions
concerning the pregnancy, after the fetus had
developed enough to survive outside the
woman’s body.
That was in 1973. In 1989, the U.S. Su
preme Court made a landmark decision which
drove a crack into the very foundation of Roe.
On April 26, Missouri Attorney General Wil
liam L. Webster went before the Supreme
Court to argue the constitutionality of a cer
tain Missouri law. This law declares that
“human life begins at conception”, requires
that fetuses over 20 weeks old be tested for
“viability”, prohibits abortions in public fa
cilities; and bars public employees from “en
couraging” a woman to have an abortion.
Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has
deemed this law to be constitutional, it has not
overturned Roe. Instead, it has decided to
allow each state to make its own abortion
laws.
This decision has major implications.
Legally, the court's decision simply upheld
Missouri statutes and therefore, that state will
follow the aforementioned rules. With the
Webster decision, the court cut back on a right
it had granted.
How this decision affects each individ
ual depends largely upon the state residence.
Some proposed laws and their possible impli
cations.
* Webster v. Reproductive Services -
(Fetal VialbilityTesting) If a fetus is viable, it
is able to live outside of its mother’s body. A
state may choose to require a doctor to per
form a viablity test before performing the
abortion. If the fetus is found to be viable, the
doctor is prohibited from perfoming the abor
tion. The test for viablity increases the aver
age price of an abortion from $220 to $750
depending on the type of test.
Pro-choice advocates argue that this is an
anti-abortionist ploy to make abortions hard
to get. They say this because most doctors
agree that a fetus is not viable before 24
weeks, and 99% of women have abortions
before the 21 st week. Anti-abortionists argue
that this law insures that viable babies are not
aborted.
* Webster Decision - (Tough Limits on
Public Funding) With the Webster decision,
states have the right to limit public funding for
abortions which will ultimately send women
who can afford it to private doctors.
* Thornburgh v. American College of
Obstetricians & Gynecologists - (Informed
Consent) Anti-abortionists support the theory
that fewer women will have abortions if they
have their parents’ con
sent before receiving an abortion.
Pro-choice advocates feel that this deci
sion would force young women to turn to
“back alley” methods of enduring a preg
nancy rather than telling their parents. Anti
abortionists feel that this law would discour
age those who are not absolutely sure about
their abortion decision.
* Turnock v. Ragsdale - If passed, it will
require private abortion clinics to meet stan
dards similiar to those mandated for operating
rooms in hospitals. Pro-choice advocates
question this because abortions only require
local anesthetic and a small amount of equip
ment. Anti-abortionists say they are helping
women to protect themselves from unsafe and
unsanitary health conditions.
These are examples of the turmoil caused
when the Supreme Court cuts back on a right
it has granted. One cannot wonder what will
be next.
African-American Women to Suffer from New Laws
Number of abortions
in our community
complicates issues.
by Jocelyn R. Coleman
The abortion cases before the U.S. Su
preme Court now could bring about many re
strictive laws that would make legal abortions
almost unobtainable and very expensive. It is
predicted that African-American women
would be the hardest hit along with the poor,
teenagers and otherwise disadvantaged.
Non-white women have more than twice
the number of abortions attributed to white
women. African-American women have the
highest rate of pregnancy in the Western
world and make up a disproportionate num
ber of the poor women in America. If Roe v.
Wade is curtailed, the only legal and govern
ment-funded reproductive service left will be
complete sterilization. These issues make the
abortion debate more complicated for Afri
can-American women.
On September 13, 1989, a coalition of
African-American women spoke to congress
about abortion and implemented a campaign
to inform others about their reproductive
rights. Supporters included: Jewell Jackson-
McCabe, president of the National Coalition
of 100 Black Women; Mayor Carrie Saxon
Perry of Hartford, Connecticut; Faye Wattle-
ton President of Planned Parenthood; former
Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm; and Pat
Tyson of the Religious Coalition for Abortion
Rights.
Byllye Avery, president of the National
Black Women’s Health Project (NBWHP),
another supporter, stated that “historically,
our bodies have been used as a battleground
for the United States to fight its racist, sexist
and classist war. ...As slaves we were forced
to breed for slave masters; in our more recent
history, we’ve been subjected to unnecessary
hysterectomies and sterilizations without our
permission. Many of us on low incomes have
already loss our right to decide whether or not
to have an abortion. Our country has confused
its priorities and African-American women
must speak out.”
The Webster decision has brought the is
sue of viability into the forefront. The debate
concerns whether a fetus can live and survive
at 20 weeks. Even though medical and scien
tific experts say that the earliest fetal survival
age is 24 weeks, the Court backed a 1986 Mis
souri law that requires expensive viability
testing on 20 week-old fetuses. As far as the
advanced technology needed to support fe
tuses under 24 weeks, Dr. K.N. Siva Subrama-
nian, director of the division of neonatology
at Georgetown University Medical Center
was quoted as saying that it “is not even in
sight at this point.”
The ultrasonography raises the price of
an abortion about $250. Amniocentesis, an
other testing procedure, costs sbout $450
more. Since some doctors conclude that a
aminocentesis is useless until the 28th week,
the delay could triple the cost even before the
abortion is actually performed.
The option of out-of-state abortions is
also closed to many African-American and
poor women because of travel expenses and
lost wages. Janet McCallum, director of Ad
ministration Services at the Feminist Women’s
Health Center in Atlanta, says that “certainly
in Atlanta there are a lot of women of color
who use Grady Hospital. If Grady were not
able to provide that service, there would be a
lot of women trying unsafe methods. It would
also limit access of doctors to low-income
women by taking a training facility away
from Emory and Morehouse School of Medi
cine that would delete people who can per
form abortions."
Loretta Ross, national program director
of the NBWHP, feels that statistics do not tell
the whole story. “I think that the teenage
pregnancy rate between black women and
white women is the same. It’s just that white
<15
women can afford to get
abortions...and so many of our kids
end up having the baby so that they
can keep the man.”
Since the 1986 Missouri law
declares that “human life begins at
conception” many complicated cases
have been brought up. Some include
a pending case concerning whether
or not a fetus carried by a female
inmate is wrongfully imprisoned and
the case of a 20 year-old man claim
ing that he was actually 21 at the
time of his drunk driving arrest, since
life begins at conception."
” This means that more and more
black women are going to be impris
oned for what is legally defined as
fetal abuse,” says Ross. “One
woman’s doctor didn’t want her to
fly while pregnant and he got a court
order.” Ross says, that this law, “will
affect the women who can least afford expen
sive lawyers. What if you fell down and had a
miscarriage...does that become accidental
homicide?”
According to McCallum, the greatest
danger in Georgia is parental consent. “It is an
attempt to limit access to abortion to young
women. There are some young women who
cannot tell their parents. The Webster deci
sion gave the states a lot more power. It is very
important right now to tell legislators that you
are a pro-choice voter.”
Turnock and Ragsdale, a case to be heard
by the Supreme Court, requires clinics to
have the same standards as hospital operation
rooms. If the court upholds this Illinois law,
the abortion clinics in the affected state will
start to disappear if they don’t have the funds
to meet hospital regulations. The clinics that
do stay in business would probably raise the
price of abortions. The clinics that charge the
least may be forced out of business. Since pri
vate facilities are not readily available,the
teenagers and the poor would be affected the
most.
Most of the women having abortions
are under 24.
Source; National Abortion Federation
Even with all of the issues specifically af
fecting African-American women, our pres
ence in the pro-choice movement is sparse.
In a Boston Globe article, Wattleton of
said that noninvolvement is a “reflection of a
larger condition of minorities in this country
in general. The people who get involved in
causes tend not to be the poor people. The
driving force of mass movements has always
tended to be middle class."
In response to the low number of Afri
can-Americans in the forefront, Ross says
“we have not been full participants in the pro-
choice movement and they are making the
decisions for us. Their racism alienates Black
women. They often want us as tokens, but not
in full leadership.”
Wattleton believes that African-Ameri
cans should become more active and states
that it will not happen until “Blacks are freed
to become more involved in these kinds of is
sues. The disparity that you see in people
becoming activists is a creature of class and
economics.”