The True Purpose Behind the ‘Women-Protective’ Abortion Bills

by Gretchen Borchelt, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

My colleague Jill Morrison has used common sense (and a little bit of snark) to point out why bills preventing women from being coerced into abortion and studying effects of abortion on women are biased and/or unnecessary. But there’s one aspect of these bills that she didn’t focus on much: sexism.

These bills are not really about protecting women when they are considering abortion. Instead, the bills remain firmly rooted in denying women autonomy and fostering gender stereotypes.

Don’t believe me? The anti-choice movement has been very clear about it. Let’s review the evidence.

Anti-coercion bills are based on the belief that women are not capable of making decisions about abortion. According to the anti-choice movement, women would never make the decision to abort unless someone was forcing them. Why? Because it violates women’s natural role as mothers. Check out what the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion says:

It is so far outside the normal conduct of a mother to implicate herself in the killing of her own child. Either the abortion provider must deceive the mother into thinking the unborn child does not yet exist, and thereby induce her consent without being informed, or the abortion provider must encourage her to defy her very nature as a mother to protect her child.

The bills studying the effect of abortion on women come from a similarly sexist place. They are based on the belief that because a woman seeking an abortion acts against her proper role as mother, she must suffer for it. Again, don’t take my word for it. Here is what the Task Force report says:

The Task Force finds that it is simply unrealistic to expect that a pregnant mother is capable of being involved in the termination of the life of her own child without risk of suffering significant psychological trauma and distress. To do so is beyond the normal, natural, and healthy capability of a woman whose natural instincts are to protect and nurture her child.

In other words (and to paraphrase Jack Balkin), women are either crazy for deciding to get an abortion or will go crazy if they have one. (For a more formal legal analysis of these bills, see Professor Reva Siegel’s work.)

I hope this makes it obvious that these bills are not simply neutral responses to challenges women face when considering abortion. Rather, they are insidious attempts to force women into motherhood.

We expect to see many more anti-coercion and study task force bills when state legislatures reconvene in January 2008. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s paternalistic decision in Gonzales v. Carhart left the door wide open for these efforts.

We must recognize these bills for what they are and expose the true purpose behind them.