The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 69/No. 19           May 16, 2005  
 
 
U.S. Congress passes bill restricting right to choose
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BY ARRIN HAWKINS  
The U.S. Congress voted April 27 to pass the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, a further step in Washington’s nearly three-decade-long bipartisan effort to chip away at a woman’s right to choose. The law would make it a federal crime for anyone other than a parent to assist a woman under 18 in crossing states lines to have an abortion, and to avoid intrusive parental consent laws. Thirty-three states currently have laws requiring parental notification and/or consent for minors seeking abortions. The new bill requires doctors to notify a young woman’s parents when seeking an abortion in another state. The bill would impose a hefty fine of $100,000 and one year in jail for doctors and accompanying adults, including other family members, who violate the law. The bill also imposes a 24-hour waiting period on young women who seek an abortion in another state, purportedly to allow doctors to verify state abortion laws. Such waiting periods are required for all women seeking to terminate a pregnancy in 27 U.S. states.

A woman seeking an exemption from this law would have to sign a written statement saying that she was sexually abused by a parent, and provide a corroborating police report.

Other measures have been passed in recent years aimed at eroding a woman’s basic right to choose abortion. In December, the misnamed Abortion Non-Discrimination Act was signed into law, a measure that cuts off federal funds to states that enforce laws requiring clinics and hospitals to inform women about abortion and reproductive services. Last year, Congress passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which for the first time gives legal status to the fetus in criminal cases. In 2003, Washington banned the late-term abortion procedure medically known as “intact dilation and extraction”—the first time an abortion procedure has been outlawed since the decriminalization of abortion in 1973.

In addition, a number of state governments have passed laws requiring mandatory waiting periods, placed bans on public funding to clinics that provide abortions, and prohibited insurance plans from covering abortion procedures.

As a result of this steady pressure, access to abortion in the United States has been in decline over the past 25 years. In 1982, the number of hospitals that provide abortions in the United States stood at 1,405. By 1996, that number had dropped to 703.

Today 86 percent of all counties in the United States have no health facilities or doctors that provide abortions. This figure rises to 95 percent in rural counties. In addition, one-fourth of all women who get abortions have to travel at least 50 miles to get one.

In approving the measure, 54 Democrats joined 216 Republicans. Democratic congressman William Clay of Missouri, who has claimed to be a supporter of abortion rights and voted against a similar law in the past, voted for the measure this time. He shrugged it off saying, “This bill simply says that a parent has a right to know if their child is having surgery.”

Clay’s flip-flop mirrors a trend in the Democratic Party toward stating more openly their long-practiced opposition to a woman’s right to choose. New York senator Hillary Clinton, for example, has taken the lead on this, stating in a speech given in New York January 24 that “abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many women” and steps should be taken instead to “reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies” and involve parents in “the critical role they can play in encouraging their children to abstain from sexual activity.”  
 
 
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