Vol. 77/No. 14 April 15, 2013
“Opposition to these bills is paramount because we need to let our legislators know that it is not OK for them to impede our rights and privacy,” Jen Hoy of Stand Up for Women North Dakota said in a phone interview from Fargo. “They do not belong in our bedrooms or our doctor’s offices.”
“Abortion is STILL legal in the state of North Dakota — despite the signing of some bills today by the Governor,” read a declaration posted March 26 at the top of the website for the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, the one facility in the state that performs abortions.
One of the new laws outlaws abortions after six weeks, when fetal heartbeats can be detected using an intrusive vaginal ultrasound. Doctors who perform abortions in violation of the new law could face felony charges and up to five years in prison.
Three weeks earlier the Arkansas Legislature adopted a bill to ban abortions after 12 weeks, when fetal heartbeat can be detected using abdominal ultrasound. The legislators balked at requiring women seeking abortions to undergo the more invasive vaginal procedure.
Governor Dalrymple told the press that the North Dakota law was a direct challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion. The decision made abortion lawful until a fetus is considered “viable,” that is, capable of living outside the womb, usually considered to be at 22 to 24 weeks of a pregnancy.
The second bill signed by the North Dakota governor requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The bill is an attempt to shut down the Red River clinic, whose doctors are based out of state.
A similar law adopted last year in Mississippi targets the one abortion clinic in that state. The clinic could lose its license at a state Department of Health hearing April 18 because its doctors have been unable to obtain the required paperwork.
The third bill bans abortions based on genetic abnormalities, like Down syndrome, or to select the sex. Like a law adopted in Arizona in 2011 that banned abortions based on gender or race, such laws press women to publicly reveal their reasons for seeking a medical procedure, a private decision.
The North Dakota Legislature also approved holding a statewide referendum in 2014, seeking approval to amend the state constitution to assert that “right to life” begins at conception, outlawing virtually all abortions.
Similar “personhood” laws were recently rejected in referendums in both Mississippi and Colorado.
Support among working people for abortion rights has remained a majority view for decades. “Seven in 10 Americans believe Roe v. Wade should stand,” the Wall Street Journal reported Jan. 22.
Relentless assault on abortion rights
Almost from the day after Roe V. Wade, opponents of abortion rights have chipped away at women’s access to abortion.In 1976, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which cut off Medicaid funding for abortions. Recently the amendment was extended to cover Obamacare.
Over the past two years, some 135 state laws restricting the right to abortion have been adopted.
As of March 21, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 32 states and the District of Columbia prohibit use of any state Medicaid funds for abortion; 17 states require so-called counseling laws, which force women to be “informed” about alternatives; 26 states have waiting periods; 38 states have either parental notification or consent requirements for minors, or both; and 43 state laws defend the right of hospitals and other medical facilities to refuse to allow abortions to be performed on their premises.
Ten states have passed bills banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, less than the period legalized by the Supreme Court, claiming that a fetus can feel pain then.
Abortion providers face other legal attacks, including growing requirements for expensive and unnecessary physical plant features, such as hospital-width hallways.
As a result, there are no facilities that provide abortions in 87 percent of the nation’s counties. Outside metropolitan areas, that figure jumps to 97 percent.
While this has little effect on wealthy women, who have the resources to travel wherever necessary, it has a big effect on working-class and rural women.