California Must Be Ever Vigilant to Keep Choice Available to All Women

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Maya Harris
Executive Director
ACLU of Northern California

Roe v. Wade turned 35 this year. With this anniversary, we mark over three decades of reproductive freedom and progress towards women’s equality. The ability to control whether and when to have children is critical to women’s ability to participate in the social, economic and political life of the country. Access to contraception and abortion have allowed so many women to make important life decisions. But we still have a long way to go in achieving freedom and fairness.

[Watch video featuring interviews with ACLU staff on the importance of Roe v. Wade]

First, the good news. America’s classrooms, boardrooms and legislatures have been transformed since Roe. Women currently make up 57 percent of college students - up from 42 percent in 1970 - and are obtaining advanced degrees in record numbers. In the mid 1970s, women made up only 16 percent of medical school graduates; today they constitute nearly 50 percent. Women holding science and engineering doctoral degrees have more than quadrupled since the late 1960s. In 1973, there were 15 women in Congress and only three women had ever held the office of state governor. Today, 92 women sit in Congress (including the first ever Madame Speaker) and 26 women have served as governors. And the ranks of women CEOs in Fortune 500 companies have grown from one in 1973 to 12 in 2007.

Now for the sobering reality. The most vulnerable women in American society have suffered disproportionately from assaults on reproductive freedom and correspondingly have not enjoyed equal opportunity with more privileged women. Government policies throughout the United States create barriers to abortion for teenagers, poor women, women of color, and women living in rural areas. They lack the access to health care and counseling that would accord them meaningful reproductive freedom (both the ability to end unintended pregnancies and obtain quality prenatal care). Without control over childbearing, these women cannot share in equal educational and employment opportunities.

California has not been immune from attacks on vulnerable women’s reproductive rights. The Legislature eliminated Medi-Cal funding for abortion 12 years in a row and passed a law requiring teenagers to obtain parental or court consent for abortion. These draconian measures never took effect only because of court orders and ultimately, decisions from the California Supreme Court protecting the privacy rights of poor women and young women under our state Constitution.