New Front in the Abortion Debate
We cannot return to a time without choice

San Francisco Chronicle
March 30, 2004

Last week, the U.S. Senate passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which, for the very first time, will put into federal law the concept that life begins at conception. Though I offered an alternative that would have had the same effect in criminal law without addressing this profound and deeply divisive question, anti-abortion advocates defeated the measure.

This bill, which President Bush has said he would sign, will clearly create a definition of life in federal law that will be used legally to further chip away at a woman's constitutional right to choose. Under the bill, if a pregnant woman is assaulted or killed on federal property, even if she is only pregnant by as little as three days, the perpetrator can be charged with two separate crimes, one against the woman and one against the fertilized egg -- thereby giving legal rights to the fertilized egg. Opponents claimed that the law is only about criminals who attack pregnant women, not about abortion. If that were so, they could have voted for the alternative, instead of striking another blow against the women they claim to be protecting.

In another attack last year, Congress passed and President Bush signed a law to forbid late-term abortions, without a health exception, making abortion a crime for the first time since Roe vs. Wade. This week, challenges to this law are being heard in federal courts in San Francisco, New York and Nebraska. Judges must decide if the law should be upheld, setting the stage for an eventual decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down, in 2000, a similar Nebraska law by a vote of 5 to 4.

We are now heading down a dangerous path. Women's reproductive health has not been in such danger since the days before the Supreme Court guaranteed a woman's right to choose in 1973 with Roe vs. Wade.

The situation is snowballing. Federal laws, along with more than 350 anti- choice measures enacted by states over the past decade, are setting legal precedents that anti-abortion supporters will use to challenge Roe vs. Wade. It is entirely possible that the landmark decision could be overturned.

The Bush administration has been systematically chipping away at women's reproductive rights since the day George W. Bush took office, when he reinstated the global gag rule, which prevents U.S. foreign aid from funding any overseas clinic that performs or counsels women on abortion. In addition, this administration has:

-- announced at international conferences that the United States believes that life begins at conception;

-- canceled the U.S. contribution to the United Nations' family planning program;

-- nominated judicial candidates who oppose a woman's right to choose to lifetime appointments on the federal bench; and

-- promoted abstinence-only sex education for students both here and abroad, though its success at reducing the rates of pregnancy and transmission of sexually transmitted diseases has been questioned.

The most disturbing part of these attacks is that they have gone largely unnoticed by the average Americans whom they will ultimately affect. It has been easy to take the right to choose for granted. For many women, it is all they have ever known, because the option has always been available. I remember a time, however, when an estimated 1.2 million women each year (according to Planned Parenthood) resorted to illegal, back-alley abortions despite the possibility of infection and death.

We cannot look to the future without first examining the past. If these attacks continue, however, the past will become the future.

Who knows where it will stop? We are on a slippery slope that is heading toward granting fetuses greater rights than the mothers who carry them. It may not be long before common forms of contraception, in-vitro fertilization and stem-cell research are banned in the name of the unborn. Will we end up monitoring every pregnant woman?

The U.S. Supreme Court appears to be only one vote away from reversing Roe vs. Wade and taking the decision to have an abortion away from a woman and her doctor and placing it in the hands of the federal government and politicians.

This November, women and men across America will choose the next president. This is not to be taken lightly. With the presidency, comes the power to nominate the next justices to the Supreme Court. With vacancies on the court expected soon, this power has the potential to change the course of the nation with the selection of a nominee to the court. And it is not just the Supreme Court. The president also nominates judges to the federal bench, where most cases are determined.

Women's lives and health are clearly in danger. These attacks have gone largely unnoticed and unchallenged by the public. It is time that we challenge the anti-choice movement and their unabashed efforts to take away the fundamental right that a woman has to decide when and whether to become a mother.

Thousands of women will travel from across the nation to Washington on April 25 to stand up for their rights in the March for Women's Lives. This demonstration comes at a time when women's rights have never been in such peril. We cannot go back to a time without choice.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has been a longtime advocate for reproductive rights.