Chipping Away At Roe v Wade

In 1973 The Supreme Court issued one of it's most controversial & far reaching rulings.  In this landmark decision the Court struck down state laws that banned abortions. Freedom over reproductive choice became the law of the land. From that day forward a woman's right to choose has slowly but surely been chipped away.  City by city, county by county, state by state those opposed to Roe v Wade have launched a grass roots battle to reverse the long standing Court ruling.

This freedom of choice has been around longer then Boy About Town has so I have always known a United States in which a female of lawful age can exercise her constitutional right to ended her pregnancy with a legal, safe & clean abortion.  I have had many friends who have exercised this right to terminate & never looked back.  I have also had friends who have regretted the decision whether it be within days of the abortion or years down the road. My favorite group of people is those who have had abortions themselves but, for whatever reason, feel that the same freedom should not be afforded to other women.

During 2013 alone more then 300 abortion restrictive measures were introduced in state legislative sessions throughout America. These have included everything from banning abortion after the 1st trimester, requiring parental notification and this one is a real fun one folks.....making women view photos of fetuses.  How any health care "professional" could force a young, scared woman to stare at photos of a pinhead size fetus and then try to browbeat them into changing their minds during an already painful & scary time is beyond me.  But that is just what some of our fearless leaders on both the state level as well as the federal have attempted, and in some cases succeed, to do.

The Men Deciding A Woman's Furtue

States such as Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina & Texas (come on folks we all knew Texas would be on this list) have taken steps to undo what the Court did 40 years ago.  But what concerns me is why the tide seems to be turning away from this watershed moment in the women's right movement and returning all of us, and it truly is all of us, to the dark ages.  Is it, as some people think, that the anti-choice or pro-life forces have at last focused their energy and resources on their mission?  Is it that we as people have decided that abortion is not for us, although still fight sex education in schools, condoms being given out to teens and the morning after pill is a whole can of worms that gets people foaming at the mouth? Or is it, as Boy About Town believes, that we have forgotten where we came from.  People don't recall that women died at the hands of "dirty doctors" in back alley abortions that were not fit for animals.  People forgot that full term babies were thrown away at a rate that can still not be charted.  When you see rich, middle age white men in Washington D.C. making laws that directly effect poor, black girls in Detroit you have to ask yourself....how did we get here?!

Stay Fabulous

Boy About Town!