Erin Hansbrough ,
Struggle for choice
demands attention
Well, here we stand at the beginning of
1996. The “Year of the Woman,” (what
;ver it was) seems to have been forgotten
>y most people, especially by the United
States government. We are currently work
ngin an environment that most pro-choice
idvocates might call frustrating.
We also must take time, however, to
;el ebrate what we have accompl ished. And
;oday, the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade
decision, seems like a perfect opportunity.
What exactly are we really celebrating?
It is more than the right to a basic medical
procedure. It is about women receiving the
status that they deserve as human beings,
by the Supreme
Court to allow Medicaid funds to pay
for abortions in the case of rape or
incest. This was a law that had been
passed some time ago for the entire
nation, but one that Nebraska had
been stubborn about following.
On the national level, a bill has
been introduced to eliminate the fund
ing for Title X, a program that pro
vides health care and contraceptive
services specifically to low-income
women. In addition, a bill recently
passed in the Senate would ban the use
of the D and E (dilation and extraction)
procedure. The D and E is one of the g^
safest medical procedures available to j|
women who require late-term abortions.
This procedure is rarely used outside of **
cases when the mother ’ s life is in danger M
who are able to make intel
ligent, well-informed deci
sions about their health and
Iheir futures.
But it seems that we are
far from being able to let
down our guard and relax;
for every inch of progress
that we make, an inch is
taken away somewhere else.
This was proven by the bud
get hearing last August, in
which Planned
Parenthood’s funding for
education in public schools
was beine considered for
“ft seems that the
days of back-alley
abortions and
uncertified doctors
are not as far
behind us as we
would like to
think. ”
or roe ieius nas severe ue
formities that would not
allow it to live past the m
birthing process. The bill
is awaiting a veto from
President Clinton. ^
It is often assumed that
pro-choice is in the major- ^
ity. And while this may be
true, it is often hard to take M
comfort in mere numbers. ^
Manypeople whocall them
selves pro-choice only ex- |
tend their beliefs as far as
cases that deal with rape,
incest or endangerment of
removal from thebudget. Luckily, the fund
ing was kept in place.
What kind of sense does it make for
abortion to be illegal, and on top of that,
keep people in the dark about their sexual
ity, causing more pregnancies to occur? It
seems that the days of back-alley abortions
and uncertified doctors are not as far be
hind as some would like to think.
Just as making abortionlegal was a long «
and difficult battle, so is keeping it legal.
For instance, the gag rule (a law that
would forbid state-funded doctors and cli
nicians to distributeany advice or informa
tion regarding abortion) has been passed,
retracted and is now being considered for
a vote once again.
Also, Nebraska was re
cently man
dated
the mother s life. This sends a dangerous 4|
message to women: that we must be vic
tims of sexual violence and/or at risk of
death before we have the right to decide
what we are allowed to do with our bodies.
Looking back, there has been a lot of
time and hard work involved in the pro
choice movement that deserves to be cel
ebrated. But we can’t afford to forget the
our victories, measures archieing taken to ’
take away our reproductive freedom. The
status of women’s medical rights will de
pend on our education, motivation and
bravery.
Hopefully, in the future, we will have
more to celebrate.
Ilansbrough is the president of UNL Students
for Choice.
!
Sara Schllfe
Legal abortions,
false ‘promises’
In 1973, our nation was force-fed a
judicial edict—Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs.
Bolton — that was supposed to settle the
contentious debate over abortion. And yet,
23 years later, the debate continues to roar
across America. Perhaps it’s time to evalu
ate what kind of impact 23 years of abor
tion-on-demand, during all nine months of
pregnancy, has had on our nation and on
women in particular.
When abortion was legalized, the abor
tion advocates guaranteed that women’s
lives would greatly improve. For example,
injustices women face today.
In the realm of women’s health, there
are also many unfulfilled promises. Legal
abortion was said to be safer and better for
women’s health, yet Planned Parenthood’s
own figures show 95 percent of abortions
are performed for reasons other than health.
And, more importantly, the vast major
ity of abortions occur in centers largely
unregulated by federal health standards;
Abortion providers oppose laws that would
require abortion centers to follow the same
laws as other medical facilities.
Robert P. Casey, the ex-governor of
Pennsylvania, put into words the essence
of the pro-life movement in America today
when he said: “The fundamental question
posed by abortion is this: Once a child has
been conceived, what is the proper re
snonse of a eood society—of America at
abortion advocates claimed
that the poverty of women
would decrease because
women could continue their
educations without the bur
den of caring for a child; and
child abuse would decrease
because every child would be
wanted. They promised that
legal abortion would be the
savior of women, and that it
would cure all the social, eco
nomic and health-related
problems women were fac
ing. However, 23 years of
legal abortion has proved
their “promises” to be noth
ing more than a cruel hoax.
“Legalized
abortionwithout
question, has
impeded true
ivomen’s rights by
acting as a cheap
substitute for real
solutions to the
injustices women
face today. ”
her best? If pregnancy pre
sents a challenge, do we, as
a society, rise to that chal
1 enge by di spensing with the
child? And when a preg
nancy comes at a difficult;
time, what is the worthier
response? Do we surround
the mother and child with
protection and love, or do
we hold out to her the cold
comfort of a trip to an abor
tionist?”
The pro-life movement has
listened to the cries of
women who have had abor
tions, and we understand that
these women don’t freely
ioaay, women ana cnuaren comprise
the largest and fastest-growing poverty
group in the United States. In addition,
child abuse, spousal abuse, sexual abuse,
exploitation and harassment, and a whole
host of other social ills have increased
dramatical ly since the 1 egalization of abor
tion.
Feminists for Life, a pro-life women’s
organization, summarized the effects of
legal abortion this way: “How can women
ever lose second-class status as long as
they are seen as requiring surgery in order
to avoid it? Medical technology is offered
as a solution to achieve equality, but the
premise is wrong... It’s an insult to women
to say women must change their biology in
order to fit into society.”
Legalized abortion, without question,
has impeded true women’s rights by act
ing as a cheap substitute for
real solutions to
t
choose abortion but feel it is their only
choice. The pro-life community believes
the proper response to pregnant women is
to embrace BOTH the mother and the child.
This means reducing the barriers to
parenting and adoption and making those
options more attainable for women.
The abortion industry’s response to
pregnancy has been to ensure readily avail -
able abortion on demand. For women to be
able to choose parenting and adoption,
their options shouldn’t just be presented
—they should be made equally attainable.
Schlife is the president of UNL Students for
Life.
After Big Mac and ‘pinko commie,
I^WVV V|i|Wi «Ml ll %j surely we can shape Russia better
Fired Poyner
Yesterday marked the 72nd
anniversary of the death of Vladimir
Lenin. CNN devoted a whole fifteen
seconds to one of the most influen
tial leaders of this century.
I say influential not only because
he was — and remains today for
some countries — the driving force
behind Marxism, but also because
America’s identity as a nation has
been greatly defined by our past
relations with the now-defunct
Soviet Union, of which Lenin was
no small part.
We have relatives from World
War II who can remember when the
“Containment was at o?ie time an American
watchword, referred to in the same breath as the
invocation ‘pinko commie.
Russians were a nation besieged,
and America pledged to provide aid.
The opening of a two-front war helped
stop the spread of Nazi fascism
throughout Europe. We helped bury
their dead alongside our own.
As a nation, we remember the
Berlin airlift, the rise of the Iron
Curtain and the Korean War, events
which seemed to change our
relations with the Soviets forever.
At the height of the Cold War,
our nation will recall, Nikita
Kruschev banged his shoe on a
United Nations table. And fear
accompanied the news that the
Cubans were constructing a nuclear
missile base seventy miles from
Florida.
Containment was at one time an
American watchword, referred to in
the same breath as the invocation
“pinko commie.”
Stalin may have taken the mantle
of control and rivaled Hitler as a
dictator, but the ghost of Lenin .
smiled through it all. Lenin started
the whole communist ball rolling.
Think about it for a minute. So
much of how we view the world has
been influenced in some way by the
Soviet Union, past and present.
Jimmy Carter boycotted the 1980
Olympics over Russian troops in
Afghanistan. Today, Russian troops
in Chechnya compete with U.S.
foreign market investors for
attention.
They gave us Barishnikov (sort
of) while we gave them McDonalds.
From Tolstoy to Kandinsky, from
the space race to the arms race, to
the Black Sea and the Bering Sea
and the North Sea, our cultural,
political, and historical exchanges
with the Soviets have had an
indelible effect on us as a people
and a society.
At one point in America, people
believed that a communist con
spiracy was under way to subvert
our form of government and turn us
all into anti-capitalist, hammer-and
sickle toting, repressed clones. Sen.
Joe McCarthy headed this witch
hunt, ruining the lives of many
people in the process of feeding off
the growing national hysteria of the
time. (McCarthy was rivaled only by
Nixon in his abuse of political power.
Nixon, incidentally, also exploited the
communist ideology for his own ends.)
The funny thing is, the notion of
the communist infiltration worked,
only not the way everyone believed
it would.
Our nation invested so much
identity into fighting the Soviet
Union for so long, on all fronts, that
now with them gone, we are having
to reassess and reinvent many of the
old convictions forged previously,
when we had no choice but to share.
Bastions of communism still
exist. Cuba, North Korea, and
mainland China all have outstanding
IOU’s to the USSR that will now
never be cashed in full. It remains to
be seen if they will follow a similar
fate as the parent country.
The time may have arrived for
the United States and what is left of
the Soviet empire in Europe to again
become close allies. As a nation, we
have many interests in helping
Russia maintain stability, not the
least of which are strategic and
economic by definition. The old
Soviet Union is gone forever; this
gives us the opportunity to shape a
new one.
Lenin envisioned a world run as a
socialist body. He never dreamed
that 79 years after the birth of his
dream, we would be struggling to
envision a future world devoid of
the Soviet Union.
Poyuer Is a graduate student In museum
studies and a Dally Nebraskan columnist
