With abortion demonstrators gathering in Washington, D.C. last Wednesday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and President Bush posturing to step-up his anti-choice agenda, a woman's right to choose is becoming increasingly threatened. It is imperative that women and all liberal lawmakers be aware of the GOP's assault on choice and not allow the potential war with Iraq or Bush's political clout to shackle them. Given the chance, Bush will use his "axis of evil" to turn our eyes not only from this country's troubled economy but from the threat to women's autonomy as well. Women's rights would be harmed for generations.In a telephone address to anti-choice demonstrators, Bush promised to sign a bill that would ban so-called partial-birth abortion. "You and I share a commitment to building a culture of life in America, and we're making progress," he said.

Anti-choice activists, in the tradition of their brethren within the religious right, are playing a clever game of semantics: Who would claim to oppose a "culture of life"? The phrase is ambiguous, and no one is about to stand up against something that sounds so idyllic. It's like a politician saying he or she supports "family values" -- after all, who doesn't like families? Bills with innocuous names -- the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, for example -- in reality are dangerous attempts to further hinder women's control over their bodies, and their lives.

Take the second bill as an example. Sponsored by Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act passed the House last year and was introduced in the Senate earlier this month. The measure effectively grants personhood to and makes it a crime to harm an embryo or fetus, although the bill does stipulate that a woman cannot be prosecuted for hurting her own fetus nor can a health worker be prosecuted for injuries incurred to a fetus during a medical procedure on either a woman or her fetus. However, because this bill defines "unborn child" as a "child in utero," it sets dangerous precedent for other legislation as well as for potentially-oppressive judicial interpretation of federal law. In addition, the term "unborn" divorces the fetus from the woman on whose body the fetus depends, harking back to an archaic ideology that treated women as vessels for childbearing.

Bush and the GOP consistently frame their cause as one akin to basic, human rights (those of a so-called unborn child) ,but in doing so they sidestep the rights of the women whose bodies under their watch would become merely vessels of human reproduction. "You all are gathered today on the National Mall, which is not far from the monument to Thomas Jefferson who, as you all know, is author of our Declaration of Independence," Bush said to a crowd by telephone Wednesday. "The March for Life upholds the self-evident truth of that Declaration -- that all are created equal, given the unalienable rights of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness." His careful statement, while a nod to the religious right, is noncommittal enough to avoid upsetting the public, 80 percent of whom support abortion with some or no restriction, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. The Institute been studying abortion trends since the passage of Roe v. Wade, and its reports are cited by both sides of the abortion debate.

Bush may not realize the two-fold irony of his perversion of the Declaration of Independence. However unwittingly, Bush is correct that abortion is linked to "unalienable rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness"; without access to contraception, education and abortion, women are denied all three. In the spirit of the anti-choice cause, a movement that effectively treats women as unwitting vessels of reproduction, Bush misquoted the Declaration of Independence, which actually states that "all men are created equal"; by omitting the gendered bias of the document, Bush too ignored women's sometimes second-class status in this country. This omission effectively denies choice as an issue of women's rights.

And, the irony of Bush's statement is not one of gender alone; it also rests in his tenuous grasp of racial and socio-economic issues. The Declaration of Independence did not even assert the rights of all men; rather, in the context of its time and place, it upheld merely the equality of all white, property-owning men. The President's implied parody between the present-day anti-choice movement and the civil rights movement of our parents' generation convolutes the relationship between race, socio-economic class and abortion. Bush is not only making a false analogy; he is harming the demographic groups whose struggles he is using as a crutch for his cause.

Women living below the poverty level undergo 27 percent of abortions, while those living at less than two times the poverty level comprise another 31 percent, according to a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Black women have abortions at nearly four times the rate of white women, while Asian American/Pacific Islander women and Latinas have abortions at the 2.5 that rate. The abortion rate is declining, including among teens; however, women who already have one child, who are racial or ethnic minorities or who are in a low-income bracket are having more abortions, according to the study. These figures indicate that, even though the choice movement is mostly white and middle-to-upper class, those who most need to be advocating choice are women of color or of low income.

Following the approval of the so-called abortion pill, RU-486, in a 2001 column I took the still-common position that the greatest threat to abortion is restricted access, not an overturn of Roe v. Wade. Bush's increasing support of measures that would further limit women's right to choose as well as his consistent nomination of anti-choice federal circuit judges indicate that the threat is quickly mounting. And, while even some pro-choice leaders say an overturn wouldn't be easy, that doesn't mean that women shouldn't perceive both Bush and the largely-anti-choice GOP as a threat to the landmark Supreme Court case. A law in Louisana even prohibits all abortions, and would go into effect immediately following an overturn of Roe v. Wade.

The same anti-choice lawmakers and groups are continuing to take even baby steps to make abortion less accessible. In 2000, nearly one quarter of all women who received abortions traveled more than 50 miles, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. And, due to heavy restriction, RU-486 accounted for only 6 percent of abortions in the first half of 2001, even though it is a nonsurgical method and in theory should be a more accessible method than surgical abortion for women in rural areas. The drug, also known as Mifepristone, could have brought much-needed access to these women, but was subject to intense regulation due to fears that it may be unsafe, even though women in some European countries have relied on it for more than a decade.

Bush set the tone of his administration on the first day of his presidency when he reinstated the Global Gag Rule, which denies federal funds to non-government agencies that in any way finance abortion procedures, advocacy or even counseling. He has advocated abstinence-only education, and even signed such a bill into law when he was governor of Texas. It should be no surprise then that, while rates of sexually transmitted infections decline nationally, reported cases of gonorrhea and chlamydia are soaring in Texas, where abstinence-only education has been the law since 1995. Texas' teen pregnancy rate is fifth in the nation (Massachussets' is 33rd), according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

It is undeniable that women's fate and quality of life are unalterably linked to our ability to control our own bodies -- to keep ourselves free of disease, to prevent unwanted pregnancy, to terminate pregnancy when it is unplanned and to have the education to make these consciously. Therefore, legislation, judicial appointments and executive orders that compromise choice must be recognized foremost as attempts to deprive women of their potential, no matter how eloquently they are disguised. When women are denied basic choices, our society regresses decades -- even centuries -- to an era when women were valued only as bearers of children.

-- Michaela May '03 submits a column to the Justice.