Defining ‘Pro-Choice’ When So Many Falsely Claim to Be

As we commemorate the 26th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade on Friday, we are delighted that California now has a pro-choice governor and a pro-choice majority in both the state Assembly and the state Senate. But what does it mean to be pro-choice one year before the millennium?

Nowhere was the confusion more dramatically played out than in the 1998 election for the 35th Assembly District in Ventura County. One candidate claimed to be pro-choice yet signed on to a party platform that called for the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that affirmed the right for women to choose safe, legal abortion services.

The Ventura County Reproductive Rights Network (VCRRN) would like to offer an explanation of what it means to be pro-choice, whether for a legislator or for us, the voting public.

To be pro-choice is to accept the validity of Roe vs. Wade. That decision ended an era in which all abortions were illegal, when hospitals’ wards were crowded with women who had tried to end their own pregnancies or who were victims of botched abortions by untrained practitioners. If you don’t agree with the decision, you are not pro-choice.

But Roe alone has been likened to a movie set, a facade with nothing behind it, if there is no access to abortion. Women need to be able to decide whether and when to have children, regardless of their age, geographic location or income.

A woman should be guaranteed access to abortion regardless of where she lives. Currently there are no abortion providers in 84% of the counties in the United States. Women serving in the U.S. military overseas cannot obtain an abortion at a military facility, even if they pay for the procedure with their own money.

Restrictions on abortion based on age play to parents’ legitimate protective instincts. Although all the organizations in the VCRRN agree that parent / teen communication should be encouraged, we also recognize that not every family is a model family. Government intrusion into families by mandating parental consent will not lead to more communication, but to unsafe, illegal abortions and teen fatalities.

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Income status should not interfere with a woman’s right to abortion. Every year, state and federal legislatures add amendments to public funding bills covering health care services for low-income women and families. These amendments would pay for prenatal care but would deny coverage for abortion. Political decisions that prevent access to abortion for impoverished women are not pro-choice.

Being pro-choice is more than supporting abortion rights. It also means the right to education and information that empowers individuals to make informed, un-coerced decisions about sexuality and reproduction. It includes supporting the availability of family planning services, including emergency contraception, when other contraceptive methods fail. It includes access to nonsurgical methods of abortion such as mifeprestone (RU-486), widely used in Europe but still unavailable to American women.

Those of us who are pro-choice embrace these positions. Being pro-choice means we respect the right of every individual to make these personal, complex and private decisions for themselves.