Protecting a
Woman’s
Right to
Choose
By
Governor James E. McGreevey
Op-Ed
Article in the Trenton Times, April 24, 2004
This
Sunday, America will bear witness to an historic march on Washington, as
hundreds of thousands of women from all across this nation join together
as one voice to protect reproductive freedom.
The March for Women’s Lives will bring together every race,
every age, every religion to stand up for choice, access to health care,
family planning, and the rights guaranteed by the Supreme Court in 1973
to all women.
Many of us
remember the days before Roe v. Wade, when women did not have the right
to choose. When only the
wealthy, by virtue of their economic status, could determine their own
destiny, could plan their own family, and could terminate a pregnancy
safely. But even in those
cases, some of those women had to "prove" they would commit
suicide if the pregnancy was not terminated, and suffer the indignity of
being diagnosed by a psychiatrist as "legally insane."
For those
without means, the choice was really no choice at all.
Women could literally risk their lives by terminating their
pregnancies with unsafe, unlicensed individuals whose methods could
leave them sterile, if they survived at all.
Or they could bring a child into the world that they were not
emotionally or financially ready to raise.
The result was too many women’s lives lost, and too many
children born into poverty and suffering.
It seemed
for many years that those days were over.
Two generations of women have now been able to exercise their
most fundamental right to decide whether or not to have a child.
But as the horror and injustice of the days before Roe v. Wade
fade into the memory of history, the right to choose is now once again
under serious attack in Washington.
We are
faced in 21st century America with a President and an
Attorney General who, instead of being committed to upholding the law
and protecting this basic right, have made a commitment to the extreme
right wing of their party, to take it away.
Under that discriminatory commitment, the Bush Administration is
waging an unprecedented attack on women’s rights.
From the courthouse, to our hospital rooms, to the halls of
Congress, they are systematically reducing access to family planning in
the U.S. and in developing nations, building a platform of judges to
outlaw abortion, replacing science with right-wing ideology, and
limiting free speech.
President
Bush has nominated 47 individuals to the Court of Appeals, and not a
single one of them support Roe v. Wade.
In his domestic FY 2005 budget, Bush freezes funding for family
planning while providing support for “abstinence-only” education
initiatives. Six times now,
the President has frozen funding to world-wide health organizations that
provide family planning services, including the World Health
Organization and other services dedicated to the prevention of AIDS.
President Bush has tried to limit access to family planning for
federal employees, by stripping them of insurance coverage for
contraceptives. And in a
direct frontal assault on the constitutional protections of Roe vs.
Wade, under Bush’s leadership, on July 24, 2002, the House passed a
law banning abortion.
President
Bush appointed a vehement anti-choice politician, as his Attorney
General. John Ashcroft
opposes choice, even in the case or rape or incest and, as a
senator, sponsored a constitutional amendment to outlaw all abortions.
As the highest law-enforcement officer in the nation, he is the
leader Americans are supposed to trust to uphold the laws that protect a
woman’s access to clinics. Instead,
to defend his anti-Choice agenda, Attorney General Ashcroft is now
demanding that doctors and hospitals turn over private medical
information to the Department of Justice.
In
anticipation of this historic march, this week, Vice President Dick
Cheney reaffirmed the Bush Administration’s staunch opposition to
abortion.
In contrast
my Administration firmly believes that we should not only do everything
possible to protect a woman’s right to choose, but should make the
investments necessary to ensure women had access to family planning.
Which is why, I am particularly proud that even in tough economic
times, over the past three years, this Administration has invested over
$12 million in family planning services.
Thousands
of the women who will be in Washington on Sunday will be from New
Jersey, and as a state we salute them for representing our state’s
proud tradition of respecting individual freedoms; of protecting the
right of privacy, and of social activism.
From time
to time in our nation’s history, individuals who believe in the
promise of our nation’s freedoms and the power of a single voice to
overcome have joined together to make a difference. The women who
march on Sunday should be proud to be a part of history.
|
