Jane Crow

In spite of the majority American support for Roe v. Wade, today at it's 40th anniversary, there are ever more legislative efforts to deny women reproductive free choice.

Bill Moyers and his guests, Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas and Lynn Paltrow talked about why this is so and the consequences of this attack on women.  Paltrow has referred to this era as "the new Jane Crow," where women have lost legal rights, and in effect, personhood.  We have long seen doctors and women harassed, threatened and even murdered by radical enraged antiabortionists.  And as state legislatures continue to attempt to criminalize abortion, we are now facing increasing instances where women's legal rights are denied.  In some instances attorneys have been appointed for a fetus rather than the pregnant woman.  Women risk arrest for miscarriages suspected of being abortions.  The horror stories Paltrow tells leave us wondering how long before we are once again in the back alleys.

The why combines the simple and the complicated.  The legislators are predominantly white males; in an increasingly majority-minority country where there are fewer births of white babies than minority, abortion threatens to further decrease the white population.

And as long as women can be forced to have children they are unable to care for, they will be unable to grow as a powerful voice for change in our society.

Lica Colwell in Statehouse Reports, describes South Carolina's crisis in teen pregnancy.  The future for pregnant teens is grim, more so for their children.  Yet our legislators continue to fight for antiabortion bills rather than education, to reject federal Medicaid funding while increasing penalties for misdemeanor convictions, oppose a worker's right to a living wage.  In other words, a world in which teens see little reason to care for themselves, and ever fewer choices.

And these children, and their children, will be unlikely to learn to make informed decisions, and will be unlikely to vote for their best interests, if at all.

And isn't that just the way it has always worked out for those white men writing those antiabortion bills?