I was glad to read Michelle E. Brown's column informing your readers about Sarah Palin's anti-woman, anti-choice position, even in cases of rape. The agenda of the anti-abortion forces has nothing to do with "protecting life" – it is about controlling the lives of women and reinforcing patriarchal social relations.
Brown portrays Hillary Clinton as a champion for choice and women's rights. Clinton has consistently voted to keep abortion legal. But she has called abortion a "sad, even tragic choice" that should be "rare" and proposed a national goal of zero abortions as an ideal.
This kind of rhetoric reinforces the belief that there is something immoral when a woman decides that she does not want to be forced to bear a child and chooses to end her pregnancy. The right of every woman to control her own reproduction is essential to her ability to plan her own future and play a full role in engaging in all realms of life. The real tragedy lies in the lives of women who are compelled to have children that they do not want or cannot care for, and the deaths and disfigurements that are the results of illegal abortions.
Women's access to safe, legal abortions are already too rare. More than half of the U.S. hospitals that provided abortions in 1982 stopped by 2000. 87 percent of counties in this country do not have any abortion access, and several states only have one abortion clinic.
This has been the result of pro-life activists pouring resources into and confining our activity to support for politicians. More restrictions on abortion rights were put into effect during Bill Clinton's eight years than the 12 years of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr. Obama has already begun to concede ground to the anti-abortion forces, stating that "as long as there is such a medical exception in place, I think we can prohibit late-term abortions", adding that "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother."
We need a movement that shifts the terms that have been set, and takes the political offensive by more thoroughly relying on ourselves, with new forms of expression. We need to wage an uncompromising, unapologetic struggle for abortion rights and the full equality of women.
{ITAL Chris Breight
Hamtramck}
