To the Editor:
The Senate health care bill provisions on abortion are no compromise; they are an attack on a fundamental right that nearly all Americans hold dear—the right to plan their families.
It has become common to portray contraceptive use as conscientious, and abortion as reckless. But there is no such divide. In reality, the average woman spends five of her sexually active, fertile years pregnant, postpartum or trying to conceive, and 30 of those years trying to avoid conception.
The near-universal consensus is that women have the right to prevent unplanned pregnancy. But without available and affordable abortion coverage, family planning becomes a cruel game of roulette. If your antibiotics interfered with your low-estrogen birth control pill—you lose. If your doctor didn’t resize your diaphragm after you gave birth—you lose. If love for your mate overcame your intention to use a condom—you lose. If you gave in to pressure to have sex, or worse, you were raped—you lose.
Small wonder that one in three women in the United States has an abortion during her lifetime. Making millions of American women losers has no place in health care reform.
Jennifer K. Brown
Brooklyn, Dec. 21, 2009
The writer is former legal director of Legal Momentum, a national women’s rights organization.
Note from KBJ: Some of us are concerned about the other losers. You know, the ones who had no choice.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 