COMMENTARY | Proposed ballot measure would reverse progress on reproductive freedom
In 1916, Portland helped draw widespread attention to the reproductive rights movement when Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was arrested for distributing pamphlets about birth control. Yes, birth control.
Sanger had founded the American Birth Control League after watching her mother endure 18 pregnancies in 22 years before dying at the age of 49. So she embarked on a cross-country lecture tour to promote a publication titled “Family Limitation.” But when she arrived in Portland, she learned that the ultra-conservative City Council had declared the pamphlet “obscene.”
Sanger was arrested alongside Dr. Marie Equi, a Portland abortion provider who was active in the radical labor movement and the women’s suffrage movement. They spent the night in jail, and the uproar they created right here in Oregon led to thousands of requests for the pamphlet. Leaflets were distributed on the streets of Portland with messages like: “Poverty and large families go hand in hand,” “Poor women are denied what the rich possess,” and “Shall 5 men legislate in secret against 10,000 women?”
Sanger later wrote about how the pamphlet was simply making complex medical information accessible to everyday readers: “Knowledge, if it’s hidden away in the narrow confines of the medical profession, is moral; but as soon as it is distributed among the working people, the same book becomes obscene. It is the same decision that has been handed down from the days of witchcraft. It is disappointing that in this 20th century, in the day of electricity and modern scientific triumphs, the judicial mind is in the same groove.”
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Sanger’s high-profile arrest, and this month marks the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling declaring that the U.S. Constitution protects every woman’s right to make her own personal medical decisions about abortion. These milestones give us a moment to reflect on how far we’ve come since then, while acknowledging how much work remains.
It’s important to celebrate the fact that Oregon remains the leading state for reproductive freedom and – as of this month – the easiest place in the nation to access birth control. We’re also one of only 13 states that require sexual health education to be medically accurate.
At the same time, right-wing politicians in other states have enacted 288 restrictions on safe, legal abortion since the 2010 election. The consequences have already been devastating: Women are traveling hundreds of miles, crossing state lines and waiting weeks to get an abortion, if they can get one at all. In Texas, researchers estimate that up to 240,000 women have tried to end a pregnancy on their own without medical assistance.
Most people thought we were well past the days of women taking matters into their own hands, but laws that make it impossible to access abortion are taking us backward. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear the biggest abortion case in decades, weighing whether the Texas clinic shutdown law is constitutional. If the court upholds it, women would essentially return to a time before abortion was legal. This was a grim time when as many as 1.2 million illegal, back-alley abortions were performed every year, resulting in the deaths of up to 5,000 women annually.
This cannot be what it means to be a woman living in 21st-century America.
For far too long, this country has penalized low-income women seeking abortion, forcing those who are already struggling to make ends meet to pay the most in order to access safe, legal care. Let’s be clear: A woman’s right to make personal medical decisions about abortion shouldn’t depend on where she lives, how much money she makes or how she’s insured.
Yet here in Oregon, extremists have introduced a 2016 ballot measure that would amend the Oregon Constitution to eliminate abortion access for low-income women. At the federal level, the Hyde Amendment has restricted public funding for abortion since 1976.
When policymakers deny women insurance coverage for abortion, they are either forced to carry the pregnancy to term or pay for care out of their own pockets. Consequently, cutting off access to or placing strict limitations on abortion can have profoundly harmful effects on public health, particularly for those who already face significant barriers to receiving high-quality care, such as low-income women, immigrant women, young women and women of color.
In the United States, 6 in 10 women who access abortion already have a child. And when a woman is living paycheck to paycheck, denying coverage for an abortion can push her deeper into poverty.
For 100 years, Planned Parenthood has been fighting for women to decide for themselves when and whether to become a parent. And that means abortion should be safe and legal for everyone – not only for those who can afford it. At the 2016 ballot box and beyond, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon will continue to keep moving our country forward, not backward.
Mary Nolan is the executive director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon.
