Abstract

Take Back Our Rights

The Bush Administration may be mired in confusion and at cross-purposes on many fronts--Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy, education--but its assault on women's reproductive freedom has been a marvel of purpose and planning. We've had the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and health coverage of poor pregnant women morphing into health coverage for the fetus under the Children's Health Insurance Program. Poor women around the world have been denied reproductive healthcare through Bush's reinstatement of the" gag rule" and his refusal to release $34 million pledged by Congress to the United Nations Population Fund (the latter decision was based on the bogus claim--disproved by Bush's own fact-finding commission--that UNFPA supports forced abortion in China). Antichoice politics have also corrupted science: Bush put the kibosh on stem-cell research and has packed crucial expert panels with right-wing ideologues and evangelicals of dubious professional qualifications, of whom Dr. David Hager, who advises women that Christian prayer helps PMS, is only the most notorious. On April 25, some 1,300 progressive and feminist organizations--Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, NOW, the Feminist Majority, the Black Women's Health Imperative, the ACLU, the NAACP and the Coalition of Labor Union Women among them--will spearhead a massive March for Women's Lives in Washington.