Compulsory Motherhood Isn’t Protection

Having a child, be it the first or the 10th, is the most profound source of change in a woman’s life. On that point, everyone agrees. But once a woman is already pregnant, should she be able to choose whether to undergo those changes? Or does the government’s interest in potential life outweigh her right to choose her most intimate bonds and her life plans?

The emotional bonds of motherhood are as tight as personal bonds can ever be. A mother is expected to sacrifice her own needs and desires for those of her child. For better or for worse, the mother-child bond is more consuming for the woman than the marriage bond. When the woman’s commitment of time, physical energy, emotional nurturance and sheer devotion isn’t there, the child suffers.

Hundreds of thousands of women will march on Washington today to support keeping that bond a matter of personal choice.

The right to end a pregnancy is very fragile. It is as fragile as a matter of votes on the U.S. Supreme Court because the majority of justices have indicated their willingness to overturn the Roe vs. Wade decision. That was the 1973 case in which seven of the nine justices then sitting found a constitutional right of privacy “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

The right to end a pregnancy is even more fragile as a matter of practical realities. The current right is only a woman’s right to decide if she wants an abortion. There is no corresponding obligation on the part of anyone--a physician, a hospital or a state Medicaid program--to help her physically and financially. The court has said that a state does not have to pay for abortions, even medically necessary ones.

For a poor woman, the right to an abortion is nothing more than the right to freedom of thought. Even if she is 15 years old, on public assistance and her pregnancy is the result of a gang rape, some states say she has no right to carry out her decision.

Ever since Roe vs. Wade, states have been chipping away at a woman’s right to end a pregnancy. They have tried to take the decision away from women by requiring consent of spouses or, in the case of minors, of parents. (The court balked on the spousal consent rule, but allows parental consent requirements). They have imposed all kinds of requirements on abortions to make them more cumbersome and expensive. Those include rules that abortions must be approved by at least two doctors, that they must be performed in a hospital and that physicians must use expensive (and risky) medical procedures to determine fetal viability.

For the most part, the Supreme Court has struck down these requirements, but only by a bare majority.

The court in January agreed to hear an appeal by the state of Missouri, which is seeking to uphold its highly restrictive anti-abortion law. The law declares that a fetus is a person from the moment of conception. It forbids the use of public facilities, public employees or public funds to perform abortions or even to “encourage and counsel” abortions. Under that law, a doctor working in a public hospital could not give advice about abortions to any patient, even if the doctor thought the abortion were vital to the woman’s life or health.

Most of those who will join the march in Washington are probably as strongly in favor of government protection for vulnerable and helpless infants as those who oppose abortion. But they understand that compulsory motherhood is no protection.

Of course, no government can compel motherly devotion. But more important, a government that knowingly sets its minimum-wage rate and its public-assistance payments so low that many full-time workers and mothers have to live way below the poverty line belies its claims of interest in protecting potential life. So does a government that leaves 37 million of its citizens without health insurance. So does a government that cannot see its way to ensuring the availability of day care, or parental leaves to care for newborns and sick children, or salaries that would attract and keep teachers dedicated to helping children grow. So does a government that tolerates discrimination, thus preventing racial minorities, women, gays and people with disabilities from reaching their full potential.

Sponsored by the National Organization for Women, the march is a demand to replace compulsory motherhood with genuine policies of economic security and equal opportunity. Those should be society’s means of protecting both potential humans and human potential.