Individual freedom is the ability to make reproductive choices while not experiencing gender inequality, violence, coercion or discrimination regardless of socio-economics. Several laws and amendments affect the way a woman receives and utilizes her personal health care. Civil rights advocates see federal laws regulating, limiting or denying education and services for family planning infringing on fundamental human rights, while religious conservatives advocate that reproductive services and abortion should not be considered a human right at all.
Roe Vs. Wade
This historic 1973 Supreme Court ruling giving women full rights concerning her reproductive health was won by a due process clause under the Ninth Amendment as “The Right to Privacy” sparking a continuing debate between pro-choice and pro-life advocates concerning the time-line and viability of the fetus.
The Hyde Amendment
Abortion is a contentious and politically fueled topic. Constitutional advocates believe this amendment “Exceeds the permissible boundaries of legislative delegation.” Republican congressman, Bill Hyde, wrote this as a rider to the annual appropriations bill by The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), prohibiting federal funding for abortion with the exception of rape, incest or if medically needed.
The Hyde/Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment (Labor/HHS/ED)
The United States House of Representatives passed this bill as an expansion to the original Hyde Amendment extending protection to physicians and health care centers that don’t want to refer, cover or pay for abortion based on their own personal or religious beliefs, by prohibiting the use of federal funds to agencies and programs in state and local governments.
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003
This controversial ban is aimed at the way abortions are performed rather than the denial of the abortion itself. Pro-choice supporter’s stress the ban needs to be defined more clearly because it excludes a stipulation for women in lieu of an emergency. This is the first criminal abortion law that three different U.S. District courts declared unconstitutional. Physicians who practice late-term abortion are penalized with fines, penalties or imprisonment. Late-term abortion offenders are defined as someone “That kills the partially delivered fetus.”
The Health Care Denial Rule
The Bush Administration developed this regulation that restricts reproductive services including counseling, birth control and abortion to federally funded health clinics who mainly service low-income women. The American Civil Liberties Union argues that this rule “Fails to carefully balance protection for individual religious liberty and patient’s access to reproductive health care.” As of 2009 President Obama is currently re-evaluating this rule.
Global Gag Rule
Constitutional advocates call it “A gag rule” because they believe it suppresses free speech on abortion topics. The rule refuses the use of federal funds overseas for family planning services to health care providers operating with their own funds to administer reproductive rights; including legal abortion, related care, contraceptives and HIV-AIDS treatment. Originally titled the “Mexico City Policy”, it was created in 1984 by the Reagan Administration to lower global abortion rates. Former President Bill Clinton stopped this policy in 1993. In 2001 George W. Bush issued a presidential memorandum reinstating the Global Gag Rule. In January 23, 2009 President Barack Obama issued another executive order to overturn the policy by order of full legislative appeal.
- reproductive rights
- federal funding
- abortion laws
- sex education
- birth control
