Trump's Abortion Policy Isn't About Morality It's Coercion

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Amid all the presidential scandals of the past week, it was easy to miss that the Trump administration vastly expanded the anti-abortion policy known as the "global gag rule." But it's big news, with significant consequences.

The global gag rule prohibits any U.S. foreign aid from going to organizations that provide, advocate for or even discuss safe abortion services. Under previous Republican administrations, the rule applied to approximately $600 million in funds for family planning. Under Trump's expansion, the rule puts $8.8 billion for a range of programs addressing health issues like maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, malaria and Ebola in jeopardy.

This expanded gag rule is an economic attack aimed at preventing the poorest women in the world from obtaining or even learning about safe abortion services, which will inevitably result in increased mortality from unsafe abortion as well as collateral damage to poor people in need of other life-saving health services. It is a significant escalation in the broader campaign by U.S. abortion opponents to use economic coercion to stop women from obtaining safe abortions at home and abroad – a strategy abortion opponents have embraced because, after losing the legal battle decades ago, they have utterly failed to convince women that ending a pregnancy is immoral.

Though abortion opponents like to pretend the Supreme Court made up the right to abortion out of thin air, Roe v. Wade was in fact the inevitable result of the Court's gradual recognition that the Constitution applies to women, which means women also enjoy the fundamental rights to bodily integrity and personal autonomy that the Court had long recognized are protected by the Bill of Rights. Numerous lower and state courts had already ruled that the Constitution did not allow the government to force a person to carry a pregnancy to term against her will. Those decisions are in keeping with other rulings – and most people's intuition – that one's body and one's decisions about family are sacred. The government can't, for example, control how many children you have by forcing you to be sterilized. Nor can it invade your body by compelling you to donate an organ – or even just blood – to save a born person's life.     

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/trumps-abortion-policy-isnt-about-morality-its-coercion-w483259?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=052317_10

[mhw]

1. Excellent article.

"Roe v. Wade was in fact the inevitable result of the Court's gradual recognition that the Constitution applies to women, which means women also enjoy the fundamental rights to bodily integrity and personal autonomy that the Court had long recognized are protected by the Bill of Rights.

Numerous lower and state courts had already ruled that the Constitution did not allow the government to force a person to carry a pregnancy to term against her will.

Those decisions are in keeping with other rulings – and most people's intuition – that one's body and one's decisions about family are sacred."
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Unfortunate that this even had to be demanded it be wriiten into law.

"Women's Rights are Human Rights" ~ hrc 1993 Bejing

[niyad]

2. come on, it isn't like women are important, or even human or anything.

[mhw]

3. And that is exactly what they believe.

They long for the days of the 1800's.

[Panich52]

4. Posting DU link on WomensIssues & ProChoice