Ladies’ Liberty
Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, was recently sponsored by the ILR Alumni Affairs and Development to talk on campus about what she believes it means to be pro-choice. The main point of her lecture was that “freedom of choice is more than a right, it is right,” and Saporta attempted to illustrate this with examples of women who needed abortions for health or financial reasons. Rather than desiring that abortion be safe, legal, and rare, Mrs. Saporta’s talk indicated that it should be safe, legal, and widely accessible.
Saporta highlighted the cases where women have needed abortions for health or finance reasons. In terms of health reasons, she cited both physical and emotional health issues—a woman who needed chemotherapy and a woman who had been raped. She also decried the murder of Dr. George Tiller and seven other abortion providers. The struggles of women should not be dismissed, nor should the violence that led to eight murders be condoned. But neither should the deaths of millions of babies by way of abortion or infanticide be taken lightly.
Many conservatives are willing to allow abortion in cases of rape, incest, or safety of the mother. It is unlikely that the legalization of abortion will ever be reversed, for institutions, once placed, usually are not. However, not every abortion is caused by rape, incest, or danger to the mother. This is evident not only in the United States, but in many countries—most notably in China.
This year, China underwent a transition in leadership, and women now make up about twenty-five percent of the political leadership. The figure is not too alarming, because the United States has an even lower percentage of women in government leadership positions, but NBC reported a growing concern about China’s “missing girls.” Because of the country’s one child policy, many couples decided their only child had to be a boy.
Though for many years it was illegal in China to learn a baby’s gender before birth, many did so anyway, and if the unborn was female, an abortion may be performed. Even worse, if an ultrasound was not done to determine the child’s sex, baby girls were killed shortly after birth. The male to female ratio, now around 6 to 5, is expected to cause a “huge societal issue.” Around a third of women in one village in China admitted to having abortions for sex selection.
There is an argument that abortion has helped women in emergency situations, and it is true that for many women, having reproductive control (not just abortions, but less-controversial forms of birth control as well) has allowed them to sit at the tables of government leadership. But there are mothers who are leaders in government, including the “Mom Communists” in China. Many women who marry and have children choose to focus on raising their kids, and it can be difficult, though certainly not impossible, for mothers to be politicians. But when the use of methods of reproductive control becomes too extreme, it does not allow women to sit at the tables of leadership: it prevents them from doing so, as the millions of baby girls killed by abortion or infanticide might tell you if they could.
Katie Johnson is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at kij5@cornell.edu.