Andrei Kuznetsov
19th November 2003, 20:42
Dangerous New Law Targets Women's Rights:
The Hoax and Hype of the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act"
Revolutionary Worker #1220, November 23, 2003, posted at rwor.org (http://rwor.org/)
On November 5, the President of the United States signed a new law making it a federal crime to perform some specific abortion procedures. This "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003" (PBABA) is the first direct federal criminalization imposed on abortion since 1973--when the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade legalized abortion.
This new PBABA law threatens women's doctors with prison for performing safe, well-known medical procedures that have been needed to protect women's well-being, lives and health.
Attorney General John Ashcroft immediately ordered his agents in the Justice Department to prepare to investigate and prosecute women's doctors for performing these abortions. Doctors charged with violating the PBABA face up to two years in prison.
Federal police are back in the business of tracking women's reproductive choices and punishing doctors who carry them out.
And note well: This police work was assigned to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. This means that the federal police now officially embrace the fundamentalist fiction that fetuses are legally "persons" whose so-called "civil rights" supposedly have to be police-protected-- from the choices of women and their doctors!
The October vote for this bill was 64 to 34 in the Senate, and 281 to 142 in the House. Significant numbers of Democrats voted with the extreme right (including leading Democratic senators like Daschle, Leahy, and Byrd). Democratic presidential contenders Senators John Kerry and John Edwards avoided the vote altogether. And even those liberals who opposed this bill did not filibuster to stop it.
The heights of the U.S. government-- the Congress, the White House and the federal police apparatus-- now officially promote the poisonous myth that fetuses are a persecuted group and women's doctors should be treated as criminal "baby-killers."
This is a crucial moment in the fight for women's liberation.
more of this article @ http://rwor.org/a/1220/partialbirth.htm
The Hoax and Hype of the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act"
Revolutionary Worker #1220, November 23, 2003, posted at rwor.org (http://rwor.org/)
On November 5, the President of the United States signed a new law making it a federal crime to perform some specific abortion procedures. This "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003" (PBABA) is the first direct federal criminalization imposed on abortion since 1973--when the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade legalized abortion.
This new PBABA law threatens women's doctors with prison for performing safe, well-known medical procedures that have been needed to protect women's well-being, lives and health.
Attorney General John Ashcroft immediately ordered his agents in the Justice Department to prepare to investigate and prosecute women's doctors for performing these abortions. Doctors charged with violating the PBABA face up to two years in prison.
Federal police are back in the business of tracking women's reproductive choices and punishing doctors who carry them out.
And note well: This police work was assigned to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. This means that the federal police now officially embrace the fundamentalist fiction that fetuses are legally "persons" whose so-called "civil rights" supposedly have to be police-protected-- from the choices of women and their doctors!
The October vote for this bill was 64 to 34 in the Senate, and 281 to 142 in the House. Significant numbers of Democrats voted with the extreme right (including leading Democratic senators like Daschle, Leahy, and Byrd). Democratic presidential contenders Senators John Kerry and John Edwards avoided the vote altogether. And even those liberals who opposed this bill did not filibuster to stop it.
The heights of the U.S. government-- the Congress, the White House and the federal police apparatus-- now officially promote the poisonous myth that fetuses are a persecuted group and women's doctors should be treated as criminal "baby-killers."
This is a crucial moment in the fight for women's liberation.
more of this article @ http://rwor.org/a/1220/partialbirth.htm