Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
1
Hyde Affirmative
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
Hyde Amendment Aff
Abortion 1AC – Women’s Rights/Racism ...........................3
Abortion 1AC – Modular Advantages ............................... 16
Abortion 1AC – Critical ..................................................... 25
Topicality – Social Services ............................................... 35
Topicality – Persons Living in Poverty (1/2) ..................... 36
Topicality – Persons Living in Poverty (2/2) ..................... 37
Inherency – Hyde Amendment Now (1/2) ......................... 38
Inherency – Hyde Amendment Now (2/2) ......................... 39
Population Control – I/L: Abortion (1/4) ........................... 40
Population Control – I/L: Abortion (2/4) ........................... 41
Population Control – I/L: Abortion (3/4) ........................... 42
Population Control – I/L: Abortion (4/4) ........................... 43
Population Control – Impact (1/4) ..................................... 44
Population Control – Impact (2/4) ..................................... 45
Population Control – Impact (3/4) ..................................... 46
Population Control – Impact (4/4) ..................................... 47
Population Control – US Key (1/3).................................... 48
Population Control – US Key (2/3).................................... 49
Population Control – US Key (3/3).................................... 50
Population Control – A2: Simon (1/4) ............................... 51
Population Control – A2: Simon (2/4) ............................... 52
Population Control – A2: Simon (3/4) ............................... 53
Population Control – A2: Simon (4/4) ............................... 54
Population Control – A2: Underpopulation Worse (1/2) ... 55
Population Control – A2: Underpopulation Worse (2/2) ... 56
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Racist.................................. 57
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (1/7) ...................... 58
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (2/7) ...................... 59
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (3/7) ...................... 60
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (4/7) ...................... 61
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (5/7) ...................... 62
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (6/7) ...................... 63
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (7/7) ...................... 64
Racism/Classism – Plan Solves ......................................... 65
Racism/Classism – Impact: Racism (1/2) .......................... 66
Racism/Classism – Impact: Racism (2/2) .......................... 67
Racism/Classism – Impact: Classism (1/2) ........................ 68
Racism/Classism – Impact: Classism (2/2) ........................ 69
Racism/Classism -- A2: Abortion Racist ........................... 70
Racism/Classism – A2: Pro-Life Criticism ........................ 71
Unwanted – Abortion Decreases Crime (1/2) .................... 72
Unwanted – Abortion Decreases Crime (2/2) .................... 73
Unwanted – Impact: Poor Unfortunate Souls (1/3) ............ 74
Unwanted – Impact: Poor Unfortunate Souls (2/3) ............ 75
Unwanted – Impact: Poor Unfortunate Souls (3/3) ............ 76
Patriarchy – Inherency (1/2) .............................................. 77
Patriarchy – Inherency (2/2) .............................................. 78
Patriarchy -- I/L: Hyde Amendment (1/4).......................... 79
Patriarchy – I/L: Hyde Amendment (2/4) .......................... 80
Patriarchy – I/L: Hyde Amendment (3/4) .......................... 81
Patriarchy – I/L: Hyde Amendment (4/4) .......................... 82
Patriarchy -- Plan Solves (1/4) ........................................... 83
Patriarchy – Plan Solves (2/4) ........................................... 84
Patriarchy – Plan Solves (3/4) ........................................... 85
Patriarchy – Plan Solves (4/4) ........................................... 86
Patriarchy – Impact: Try or Die......................................... 87
Patriarchy – Impact: Womyn............................................. 88
Patriarchy – Impact: War (1/6) .......................................... 89
Patriarchy – Impact: War (2/6) .......................................... 90
Patriarchy – Impact: War (3/6) .......................................... 91
Patriarchy – Impact: War (4/6) .......................................... 92
Patriarchy – Impact: War (5/6) .......................................... 93
Patriarchy – Impact: War (6/6) .......................................... 94
Biopower – I/L: Anti-Abortion ......................................... 95
Biopower – I/L: Hyde Amendment ................................... 96
Biopower – I/L: Conventional Views of Womyn.............. 97
Biopower – Impact: Reduces People (1/2) ........................ 98
Biopower – Impact: Reduces People (2/2) ........................ 99
Biopower – Impact: Violence/War .................................. 100
Biopower – Impact: Extinction ....................................... 101
Biopower -- Discouse Shapes Identity ............................ 102
Humyn Rights – I/L: Hyde Amendment ......................... 103
Humyn Rights – Global Leadership (1/3) ....................... 104
Humyn Rights – Global Leadership (2/3) ....................... 105
Humyn Rights – Global Leadership (3/3) ....................... 106
Humyn Rights – I/L: Reproductive Freedom .................. 107
Humyn Rights – I/L: Reproductive Freedom .................. 108
Humyn Rights – I/L: Reproductive Freedom .................. 109
Humyn Rights – Plan Solves (1/3) .................................. 110
Humyn Rights – Plan Solves (2/3) .................................. 111
Humyn Rights – Plan Solves (3/3) .................................. 112
Humyn Rights – Impact: Reduces Womyn (1/2) ............ 113
Humyn Rights – Impact: Reduces Womyn (2/2) ............ 114
Humyn Rights – Impact: Womyn’s Rights (1/7) ............. 115
Humyn Rights – Impact: Womyn’s Rights (2/7) ............. 116
Humyn Rights – Impact: Womyn’s Rights (3/7) ............. 117
Humyn Rights – Impact: Womyn’s Rights (4/7) ............. 118
Humyn Rights – Impact: Womyn’s Rights (5/7) ............. 119
Humyn Rights – Impact: Womyn’s Rights (6/7) ............. 120
Humyn Rights – Impact: Womyn’s Rights (7/7) ............. 121
Humyn Rights – Impact: Freedom (1/2) .......................... 122
Humyn Rights – Impact: Freedom (2/2) .......................... 123
Humyn Rights – Impact: Reproductive Freedom (1/6) ... 124
Humyn Rights – Impact: Reproductive Freedom (2/6) ... 125
Humyn Rights – Impact : Reproductive Freedom (3/6) .. 126
Humyn Rights – Impact: Reproductive Freedom (4/6) ... 127
Humyn Rights – Impact: Reproductive Freedom (5/6) ... 128
Humyn Rights – Impact: Reproductive Freedom (6/6) ... 129
Humyn Rights – Impacts Outweigh (1/2)........................ 130
Humyn Rights – Impacts Outweigh (2/2)........................ 131
Heteronormativity – I/L: Abortion (1/3) ......................... 132
Heteronormativity – I/L: Abortion (2/3) ......................... 133
Heteronormativity – I/L: Abortion (3/3) ......................... 134
Heteronormativity -- Plan Solves (1/2) ........................... 135
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
Heteronormativity – Plan Solves (2/2) ............................. 136
Heteronormativity – Impact (1/4) .................................... 137
Heteronormativity – Impact (2/4) .................................... 138
Heteronormativity – Impact (3/4) .................................... 139
Heteronormativity – Impact (4/4) .................................... 140
Abortion Good – Laundry List......................................... 141
Abortion Good – Spending (1/2) ..................................... 142
Abortoin Good – Spending (2/2) ..................................... 143
Abortion Good – Utilitarianism ....................................... 144
Abortion Good – Mother > Fetus ..................................... 145
Abortion Good – Mother> Fetus ...................................... 146
Abortion Good – Mother> Fetus ...................................... 147
Abortion Good -- Impact: Morality/Choice (1/3) ........... 148
Abortion Good – Impact: Morality/Choice (2/3) ............. 149
Abortion Good -- Impact: Morality/Choice (3/3) ........... 150
A2: Abortion Bad -- Abortion Inevitable (1/4) ................ 151
A2: Abortion Bad – Abortion Inevitable (2/4) ................. 152
A2: Abortion Bad – Abortion Inevitable (3/4) ................. 153
A2: Abortion Bad – Abortion Inevitable (4/4) ................. 154
A2: Abortion Bad – Murder (1/4) .................................... 155
A2: Abortion Bad – Murder (2/4) .................................... 156
A2: Abortion Bad – Murder (3/4) .................................... 157
A2: Abortion Bad – Murder (4/4) .................................... 158
A2: Abortion Bad – Religion (1/5) .................................. 159
A2: Abortion Bad – Religion (2/5) .................................. 160
A2: Abortion Bad – Religion (3/5) .................................. 161
A2: Abortion Bad – Religion (4/5) .................................. 162
A2: Abortion Bad – Religion (5/5) .................................. 163
A2: Abortion Bad – Trauma (1/4).................................... 164
A2: Abortion Bad – Trauma (2/4).................................... 165
A2: Abortion Bad – Trauma (3/4).................................... 166
A2: Abortion Bad – Trauma (4/4).................................... 167
A2: Abortion Bad – Womyn’s Health (1/2) ..................... 168
A2: Abortion Bad – Womyn’s Health (2/2) ..................... 169
A2: Abortion Bad – Cloning ............................................ 170
A2: Abortion Bad – Stem Cell Research (1/2) ................. 171
A2: Abortion Bad – Stem Cell Research (2/2) ................. 172
A2: Abortion Bad – Haters (1/2)...................................... 173
A2: Abortion Bad – Haters (2/2)...................................... 174
A2: Abortion Bad – Stigma (1/2) ..................................... 175
A2: Abortion Bad – Stigma (2/2) ..................................... 176
A2: Abortion Bad – Eugenics .......................................... 177
Plan Solves – General (1/2) ............................................. 178
Plan Solves – General (2/2) ............................................. 179
Plan Solves – Questioning ............................................... 180
Plan Solves – Societal Violence....................................... 181
A2: States CP – Hyde Amendment is a Symbol (1/2) ..... 182
A2: States CP – Hyde Amendment is a Symbol (2/2) ..... 183
A2: States CP – Fed Key (1/3) ......................................... 184
A2: States CP – Fed Key (2/3) ......................................... 185
A2: States CP – Fed Key (3/3) ......................................... 186
A2: States CP – Fed Key (Prisons) .................................. 187
A2: States CP – Perm Do Both ........................................ 188
A2: States CP – General (1/6) .......................................... 189
2
Hyde Affirmative
A2: States CP – General (2/6) ......................................... 190
A2: States CP – General (3/6) ......................................... 191
A2: States CP – General (4/6) ......................................... 192
A2: States CP – General (5/6) ......................................... 193
A2: States CP – General (6/6) ......................................... 194
A2: States CP – Budget Deficits (1/2) ............................. 195
A2: States CP – Budget Deficits (2/2) ............................. 196
A2: States CP – California DA (1/6) ............................... 197
A2: States CP – California DA (2/6) ............................... 198
A2: States CP – California DA (3/6) ............................... 199
A2: States CP – California DA (4/6) ............................... 200
A2: States CP – California DA (5/6) ............................... 201
A2: States CP – California DA (6/6) ............................... 202
A2: States CP – Illinois (1/3)........................................... 203
A2: States CP – Illinois (2/3)........................................... 204
A2: States CP – Illinois (3/3)........................................... 205
A2: States CP – Arizona .................................................. 206
A2: Contraceptives CP .................................................... 207
A2: Private Donor CP ...................................................... 208
A2: Courts CP—Abortion/Women’s Rights ................... 209
A2: Courts CP – Abortion/ Women’s Rights .................. 210
A2: Courts CP – General Solvency ................................. 211
A2: Courts CP – General Solvency ................................. 212
A2: Courts CP – General Solvency ................................. 213
A2: Courts CP – General Solvency ................................. 214
A2: Courts CP – Movements DA .................................... 216
A2: Courts CP – Separation of Powers DA (1/2) ............ 217
A2: Courts CP -- Separation of Powers DA (2/2) .......... 218
A2: Capitalism K ............................................................. 219
War Reps (1/3) ................................................................ 220
War Reps (2/3) ................................................................ 221
War Reps (3/3) ................................................................ 222
War Reps -- Links: War as an Event (1/3) ...................... 223
War Reps – Links: War as an Event (2/3) ....................... 224
War Reps – Links: War as an Event (3/3) ....................... 225
War Reps – Link/Impact – Legitimize the State (1/2) ..... 226
War Reps – Link/Impact – Legitimize the State (2/2) ..... 227
War Reps – Impact: Externalizing Violence ................... 228
War Reps – Viewing War as Ongoing Solves ................. 229
War Reps – A2: Permutation (1/2) .................................. 230
War Reps – A2: Permutation (2/2) .................................. 231
A2: Realism Inevitable .................................................... 232
Representations First ....................................................... 233
A2: War Reps (1/4) ......................................................... 234
A2: War Reps (2/4) ......................................................... 235
A2: War Reps (3/4) ......................................................... 236
A2: War Reps (4/4) ......................................................... 237
Representations Not Key (1/2) ........................................ 238
Representations Not Key (2/2) ........................................ 239
A2: Politics Das (1/3) ...................................................... 240
A2: Politics Das (2/3) ...................................................... 241
A2: Politics Das (3/3) ...................................................... 242
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
3
Hyde Affirmative
Abortion 1AC – Women’s Rights/Racism
Contention One: Inherency
The Hyde Amendment denies women living in poverty access to an abortion.
NWLC, Advancement Center for Women, 2007
(National Women’s Law Center, October 2007,
http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/Public%20Funding%20factsheet%2010%2007.pdf, 06-29-09, NG)
In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion for all women, including poor women. Poor women were able to access
abortions funded by Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that provides low-income individuals with basic
healthcare services. Just three years after Roe, however, Congress passed a prohibition on the use of federal
funds for abortion services in Medicaid. The prohibition – known as the Hyde Amendment – became
effective in 1977 and has been reauthorized every year by Congress.1 Although the language has changed over
the years, the Hyde Amendment currently prohibits states from using federal Medicaid funds for abortions
unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or the woman’s life is in danger.2 Before the Hyde
Amendment, Medicaid paid for one-third of all abortions in the U.S.; today it pays for less than 1 percent
of all abortions.3 In fiscal year 2001, the most recent year for which statistics are available, only 81 abortions
were paid for by both federal and state Medicaid under the narrow exceptions.4 Every state but one covers the
abortions permitted by the Hyde Amendment.5 Only 17 states go beyond the restrictions of the Hyde
Amendment and use their own funds to cover medically necessary abortions for Medicaid beneficiaries.6 This
means that the vast majority of poor women in the U.S. are denied the right to abortion because of their
inability to pay.
Exceptions to the Hyde Amendment fail. Most poor women are forced to continue
unwanted pregnancies
Poggi, Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, 05
(Stephanie, The American Progress Organization, April 28,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2005/04/b615981.html) PMK
What rights do poor women and girls have in the United States when they want to end a pregnancy that is
the result of rape or incest? Very few. Despite laws protecting the right to assistance in these
circumstances, poor women and girls who have been raped are routinely refused funding for abortion
under Medicaid, the government program that is the primary source of health care for those with the
fewest resources. Like other poor women seeking abortion, they are often unable to get the care they
need. The history of withholding abortion funding from poor and vulnerable women began in 1976, just
three years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion. That year, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment,
which prohibited federal Medicaid funding for abortion unless a woman's life was in immediate danger.
In 1993, an exception was added to permit coverage if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest.
More than 30 state Medicaid programs have followed the federal model and only permit funding for poor
women in the case of life endangerment, rape, or incest. There are 17 states that currently use their own
funds to cover abortion in most cases. So, what happens today when a woman or girl who has been
sexually assaulted seeks Medicaid funding for abortion in one of the many states that pay only in the case
of rape/incest or life endangerment? The reality is that she is almost always denied coverage for the
abortion. At least 9,100 abortions each year are attributed to pregnancies that occur because of forced
sexual intercourse, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute.[1] Yet, the vast majority of states that
only cover abortion under the narrow exceptions report zero payments in any given year. In fiscal year
2001, the most recent year for which we have statistics, the number of abortions paid for by both federal
and state Medicaid under the narrow exceptions totaled 81. This figure includes payments in cases of
rape/incest, as well as in cases of life endangerment.[2] Denied funding by Medicaid in most states, poor
women who have nowhere else to turn seek help from the National Network of Abortion Funds. This
organization of 104 grassroots groups in 42 states and the District of Columbia helps 20,000 poor women
and girls to pay for abortion each year, including many who have been raped but are unable to obtain
Medicaid coverage. Member funds share similar stories of women and girls who have been refused
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Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
4
Hyde Affirmative
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assistance from Medicaid, often after fulfilling laborious reporting requirements in the aftermath of a
traumatic assault. In some cases, state Medicaid officials simply assert that they never cover abortion,
either because they do not understand the rape/incest exception or because they do not believe in assisting
women and girls with abortion under any circumstances. In other cases, the burdensome paperwork
requirements on the part of the woman needing assistance, the police, and doctors ensure that payment is
never made – or will never come in time for the woman to obtain an abortion. In still other cases, the
reimbursement from the state to abortion providers is so low that clinics no longer choose to go through
the complicated and rarely successful process of seeking coverage. The truth is that there is no real
Medicaid exception for poor women and girls who have been raped or victimized by incest. They join
other groups of vulnerable women whose rights are not protected, but instead, are severely abridged by
bans on abortion funding. By definition, the Hyde Amendment burdens some of the most disadvantaged
women in our society – those who depend on the government for health care. Given racial inequalities in
the United States and the resulting racial distribution of poverty, women of color disproportionately
depend on such coverage. This makes the issue of abortion funding a matter of racial justice, as well as
economic justice and women's rights. Young women, who often have few resources of their own, are also
hard hit by funding bans. A policy report released this month from the National Network of Abortion
Funds, entitled Abortion Funding: A Matter of Justice, illustrates the devastating costs to women of bans
on Medicaid funding by looking at case studies of abortion funds and the hardships faced by the women
they assist. Women who come to abortion funds are usually already mothers and may be unable to care
for another child. They have suffered from rape and battery at rates that are even higher than those of the
general population, and they are also more likely to be living with a serious illness. Because it can take so
long for poor women to find the money for an abortion, they tend to have later and thus more costly
abortions. Often, women pay for abortions with money that was supposed to pay for rent, food, or
utilities. And many times, women are unable to get the abortion at all. As many as one in three poor
women who would have an abortion if the procedure were covered by Medicaid are forced to continue
the pregnancy.[3] While the Network helps thousands of women and girls every year, the organization
can never fill the gap created by the denial of Medicaid funding. As a country, we need to replace harmful
policies that target the most vulnerable women with just, compassionate ones that give poor women the
resources they need to obtain abortions and also provide support for poor mothers to have and raise their
children with dignity.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
5
Hyde Affirmative
The Hyde Amendment represents a major symbolic victory for anti-abortion forces at the
federal level.
Chamberlain and Hardisty, Founder and President Emerita of Political Research
Associates and Ph.D. from Northwestern University, 2008
(Pam and Jean, Reproducing Patriarchy: Reproductive Rights Under Siege,
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v14n1/ReproPatriarch-09.html) PMK
The anti-abortion movement was losing ground in public opinion as well. Approval of abortion rights grew
substantially in the decade between the mid-60s to the mid-70s and then leveled off without significant
overall change in either direction.20 Although pro-life advocates enlisted their own pollster (Richard
Wirthlin who worked for Reagan as his adman and strategist at the White House) and elaborately distorted
polling results,21 they could not increase their hard core support. Six to eight percent of respondents, a very
small percentage of the US public, wanted to prohibit abortion under almost all circumstances. Hard core
pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, who believed in a woman's right to an abortion under almost all
circumstances, hovered at about 32 percent. The remainder of Americans, about 60 percent, were willing to
support abortion with some restrictions. After Roe and through most of the 1980s, anti-choice activity could
not really budge these figures, and by 1990 support for the "pro-life" movement began to decline.22 Despite
this appearance of failure, the anti-abortion movement has seriously eroded the reproductive rights of
US women. One of the most significant losses resulted from the 1977 Hyde Amendment, which cut off
federal Medicaid funding for abortions, leaving poor women relying on Medicaid with no health
insurance for the procedure. In order to receive abortion coverage, such women needed to live in states
that fully fund Medicaid abortions with state money. Sixteen states currently use their own money to pay for
all or most medically necessary abortions. This number has fluctuated over the years due both to state level
court orders and to voluntary policy change. The Hyde Amendment, and its many incarnations, was the
most visible of a series of successful anti-abortion initiatives in Congress. Despite prolonged debate over
its constitutionality, it ultimately represented a major victory for anti-abortion forces.23 It is a painful
reminder for poor women and their allies of the powerful impact that pro-life activity has unleashed
at the federal level. Restrictive anti-abortion laws passed by state legislatures across the country also have
slowly and steadily eroded a woman's right to abortion. One restriction, mandatory counseling for a
pregnant woman seeking abortion, can create emotional trauma or intimidation. Waiting periods in which
women are required to return to an abortion facility after waiting at least one day after their initial
appointment place unfair emotional and financial burdens on rural and other women who must leave work
and travel for treatment. Parental consent for minors, requiring one or both parents' permission or a judge's
decision before an abortion on a minor can take place burdens adolescent women, especially those with
potential violence at home, more than adults. In each case, pro-choice activists have had to mount a legal
challenge to the state law, pursuing it to state Supreme courts and federal courts. The mixed rulings often
resulted in additional loss of abortion access despite substantial pro-choice resources being spent on the
defense of a women's right to choose.
Thus, the plan: The United States federal government should provide Medicaid coverage
for abortion.
Contention Two: Women’s Rights
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
6
Hyde Affirmative
Current abortion policies are shaped by patriarchal power structures, making women's
bodies an arena for power struggles.
Braam and Hessini, experts on sexual and reproductive rights, 04
(Tamara and Leila, “The Power Dynamics Perpetuating Unsafe Abortion in Africa: A Feminist Perspective,”
African Journal of Reproductive Health,” Vol. 8:1, 4-2004, p. 43-51, AEL)
This paper is premised on the belief that African women, like their sisters elsewhere, have the right to life.
It seeks to understand and deconstruct the underlying ideologies and power dynamics that undermine this
right and that serve to sustain abortion as an illegal, unsafe and highly stigmatised procedure in African
countries. Patriarchal ideologies and existing power structures shape policies concerning access to
contraception, abortion and comprehensive sexuality education as well as the ability of women to make
independent sexual and reproductive health choices. A focus on power dynamics helps to understand the
continued marginalisation of abortion by drawing attention to those whose interests are at stake, those who
benefit and those who suffer as a result. Women's bodies, as the personification of society reproducing
itself, represent a critical arena for power struggles. Society has found ways to exert control over
women's bodies through law, customs and traditions, and value systems. Criminalisation of abortion and
consistent denial of women's right to bodily autonomy and decision-making is a means to control
women's wombs, which are truly the forces of reproduction.
Denying women access to an abortion is discrimination and violates equal rights.
Human Rights Watch 05
(“Q&A: Human Rights Law and Access to Abortion” June 15, 2005 http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/06/15/qahuman-rights-law-and-access-abortion#_Right_to_life Accessed 6-28-09 KLM)
Access to legal and safe abortion services is essential to the protection of women's rights to
nondiscrimination and equality. Women are in practice more likely than men to experience personal
hardship as well as social disadvantage as a result of economic, career, and other life changes when they
have children. Where women are compelled to continue unwanted pregnancies, such consequences
forcibly put women at further disadvantage. Abortion is a medical procedure that only women need.
The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has implied that the denial of
medical procedures only women need is a form of discrimination against women. Therefore, restrictive
abortion laws may amount in certain cases to discrimination against women in and of themselves. The
committee has also clarified that states have an obligation not to put barriers in place that prevent
women's access to appropriate health care. As examples of such prohibited barriers, the committee has
explicitly cited laws that criminalize medical procedures only needed by women and that punish women who
undergo these procedures. The U.N. Human Rights Committee has also repeatedly established a clear link
between women's equality and the availability of reproductive health services, including abortion.
Denying women reproductive freedom relegates them to second-class citizenship.
Cook and Dickens, Professors in the Faculty of Law, Medicine, and the Joint Centre for
Bioethics at the University of Toronto, 08
(Rebecca and Bernard, “Human Rights Dynamics of Abortion Law Reform”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25 No.
1, March 13, 2008, http://www.law.utoronto.ca/documents/reprohealth/PUB-HumanRightsDynamics.pdf, accessed
6-29-09, KLM)
Discrimination excludes those who are subjected to it from equality with others who are not, particularly the
perpetrators of discrimination. That is, discrimination is an exercise in superiority. The abortion-related
discrimina- tion that women suffer on grounds of sex and gender, often coupled with discrimination on
grounds of race, ethnicity, and, for instance, age, illustrates the pervasive violation of the right to equality
that creates the subordinate status that many women occupy in their families, communities, wider
societies, and legal systems. The burdens of pregnancy, post-partum recovery, nursing, and care of a
dependent child or children for years, deny a woman other opportunities for applications of her energy, time,
and talents that she may justly forgo only voluntarily. The power that a state claims to conscript women to
give their bodies against their will to deliver children at its legal demand confirms that women are only
lesser or second-class citizens. Since the end of legal feudalism and slavery, men are not forced by law to
render bodily service and sacrifice at the will of social superiors, and military conscription in war almost
invariably allows rights of conscientious objection. Under restrictive criminal laws, women who
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Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
7
Hyde Affirmative
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conscientiously object to involuntary continua- tion of pregnancy by termination become criminals, liable to
forfeit many of the freedoms that remain to them. Women’s lack of equality and bodily integrity under
laws that deny them reproductive self-determination is increasingly perceived as a viola- tion not only of
human equality, but of full citizenship. Citizens in democracies are full participants in making the laws by
which they voluntarily abide, whose will can become law. Restrictive laws on abortion are products of
times, many of which continue, when women lacked or lack the political power of full citizenship to
overcome patriarchal governments. Such governments are often reliant on the support of authoritarian
religious institutions whose leaders exercise spiritual autocracy and command obedience. The governments
and religious institutions that support restric- tive abortion laws include few if any women, and some
deliberately exclude them.
In a patriarchal society, women embody passivity to the male. Abortion rights enable
women to assume autonomous roles against dominance.
Hayler, Assistant Professor of Social Justice, 79
(Barbara, “Abortion”, Chicago Journals, Signs, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter, 1979), pp. 307-323, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
In patriarchal society, the basic female principle is passivity. Con- ception and motherhood are no
exceptions: Woman's role in conception is to receive and to incubate; woman's role in motherhood
is to be selfless and giving, to meet familial needs and demands. Feminist theory has begun to
explore the damage done to women by this denial of self. Mary Daly suggests that enforced passivity
may properly be viewed as a form of gynocide; involving the domestication and deprivation of
female vi- tality and the destruction of women's autonomous wills.70 Abortion makes it possible
for women to resist forced motherhood. The issue of control of reproductive power is central to the
abortion controversy. Many of the authors discussed in this essay have argued that opposition to
abortion is only one aspect of a broader opposition to female autonomy generally. In a patriarchal
society where male identity is largely based on power over women, changes in power relationships
are indeed disturbing. One physician explained the perceived threat in this way: "The pregnant
woman symbolizes proof of male potency and if the male loosens his rule over women and grants
them the right to dispose of that proof when they want to, the men then feel terribly threatened lest
women can, at will, rob them of their potency and mascu- linity."71
The government’s decision to leave poor women to finance their abortions is involuntary
servitude, forcing them to use their bodies solely for childbearing.
Tribe, Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School, 1995
(Laurence H. Tribe, “The Abortion Funding Conundrum: Inalienable Rights, Affirmative Duties, And the Dilemma
of Dependence,” Harvard Law Review, 99 Harv. L. Rev. 330, JM)
In Harris v. McRae the Supreme Court described that decision as one that the Constitution leaves the
government entirely free to make, telling poor women that the Constitution leaves them to fend for
themselves in financing abortions. That holding was rendered especially dubious by the government's
simultaneous decision -- at considerable net public cost to take childbirth for the same poor [*337] women
off the private market by funding the necessary medical care within a comprehensive medical benefits
program. In my view, the most striking thing about governmental choices like the one upheld in McRae - choices that leave some women with no alternative to continuing an unwanted pregnancy through
childbirth -- is that they require those women to make affirmative use of their bodies for childbearing
purposes. Such governmental choices, in fact, require women to sacrifice their liberty, and quite
literally their labor, in order to enable others to survive and grow in circumstances likely to create
lifelong attachments and burdens. Indeed, there seems to me to be a strong parallel between a
woman's right not to remain pregnant and every person's inalienable right not to be enslaved.
Even if we view pre-viable fetuses as persons, a requirement of so intimate and positive a personal sacrifice
is one that our legal system almost never imposes. But women are uniquely vulnerable to its imposition
because they must call upon others to provide assistance if they would choose not to make this sort of
sacrifice. It is not as though, after engaging in sexual intercourse and conceiving [*338] a child, a
woman could simply and safely decline, on her own, to make such a sacrifice the way a man could, for
example, decline to provide a blood transfusion to save the life of a fetus he had voluntarily fathered.
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What are we to say when a government agency, or a set of legal rules, exploits this special vulnerability
of women in such a way as to reinforce their subservience to men, and thus their lack of fully
autonomous and equal roles in social and political life? Is this not precisely what government does
when its rules permit doctors to withhold the requisite medical assistance from poor women, even
though it could require otherwise willing physicians to perform abortions in return for compensation
out of public funds? When this is the thrust of a regime of public law, of the constitutional norms
precluding legally reinforced subordination come into play, leaving government with a duty to justify
the resulting destruction of women's rights.
That form of subjugation should be steadfastly rejected
Richards, Professor of Law, New York University, 96
(David A.J., Cardozo Law Review, November, 1996, 18 Cardozo L. Rev. 767, lexis)
Conclusion If we understand interpretive issues regarding gender and sexual preference against the
background of moral slavery, these issues take on both a new constitutional salience and a new importance.
The evils of sexism and homophobia are forms of the general evil of moral slavery condemned by the
Thirteenth Amendment and related clauses of the other Reconstruction [*842] Amendments. That evil
remains so powerful because our constitutional culture has been, consistent with the paradox of
intolerance, so perversely complicitous with its transmission and reenforcement, ignoring the most
powerful strand of background abolitionist thought that addressed the issues of the evils of slavery,
racism, the subjection of women, and sexism in the most principled terms, "on the platform of human
rights." We have made interpretive choices poorly, ignoring relevant history and traditions and thus
marginalizing the discourse that should have been central to a fair and properly conservative interpretation of
the Reconstruction Amendments in our circumstances.
The ethically radical interpretive consequences of this approach are, in my judgment, part of its appeal as an
interpretation of the strenuous moral demands of the abolitionist vision of the Reconstruction Amendments.
If the condemnation of moral slavery is the best normative reading of the Thirteenth Amendment, then all
forms of such slavery, public and private, are condemned by it, including both sexism and
homophobia; 305 and Congressional enforcement power and existing statutes passed thereunder should be
read accordingly. As I have already suggested, related provisions of the other Reconstruction Amendments
(for example, equal protection) should be interpreted accordingly in support of this rights-based normative
judgment.
As I have already suggested, such interpretation should also extend to the constitutional right to privacy to
encompass both a woman's right to choose an abortion and a homosexual's right to intimate sexual life, as
forms of the basic right of associational liberty; the right may thus be interpreted as protecting one of the
aspects of human dignity in matters of sexual autonomy against an unjustly subjugating sexist
orthodoxy that has historically distorted the proper understanding of privacy values. 306 Indeed, the very
roots of sexism in a distorted understanding of intimate private life may clarify both the importance and
difficulty of establishing this right.
We need to reinvigorate our moral and constitutional imaginations by confronting the background and legacy
of the Reconstruction Amendments more adequately and responsibly. Abolitionist [*843] feminism should
be central to our interpretive understanding both of that background and legacy "on the platform of human
rights." In light of it, we may interpret the persistent sexism and homophobia of the American public
and private culture as a form of moral slavery, the subjugation of a class of persons to a status of servile
dependency or cultural death on illegitimate grounds. Both the power and appeal of such sexism, to
both men and women, rests on a radical injustice that is constitutionally condemned. As the abolitionist
feminists understood so well and remarkably, we will be morally and constitutionally adequate to
challenge such injustice when we understand both its depth and scope. It is as deep as our most
intimate relationships, as children to our parents, as lovers, as spouses in a gendered conception of marriage
that cannot legally encompass the conspicuous moral and human reality of homosexual marriage. 307 It is as
broad as the structures of our collective ethical and religious imaginations still burdened, as they are,
by the unjust gendering of our principles, ideals, and aspirations.
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Women’s rights must take precedence over everything
Bunch, Director, International Council on Human Rights Policy, 1990
Charlotte, Human Rights Quarterly, Women's Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights, Nov
1990, http://www.jstor.org.floyd.lib.umn.edu/stable/pdfplus/762496.pdf?cookieSet=1, Accessed 7-7-09, AMG
The most insidious myth about women's rights is that they are trivial or secondary to the concerns of
life and death. Nothing could be farther from the truth: sexism kills. There is increasing
documentation of the many ways in which being female is life-threatening. The following are a few
examples: -Before birth: Amniocentesis is used for sex selection leading to the abortion of more female
fetuses at rates as high as 99 percent in Bombay, India; in China and India, the two most populous nations,
more males than 488 Vol. 12 Women's Rights as Human Rights females are born even though natural birth
ratios would produce more females.3 -During childhood: The World Health Organization reports that in
many countries, girls are fed less, breast fed for shorter periods of time, taken to doctors less frequently,
and die or are physically and mentally maimed by malnutrition at higher rates than boys.4 -In adulthood:
The denial of women's rights to control their bodies in reproduction threatens women's lives,
especially where this is combined with poverty and poor health services. In Latin America,
complications from illegal abortions are the leading cause of death for women between the ages of fifteen
and thirty-nine.5 Sex discrimination kills women daily. When combined with race, class, and other
forms of oppression, it constitutes a deadly denial of women's right to life and liberty on a large scale
throughout the world. The most pervasive violation of females is violence against women in all its
manifestations, from wife battery, incest, and rape, to dowry deaths,6 genital mutilation, 7 and female
sexual slavery. These abuses occur in every country and are found in the home and in the workplace,
on streets, on campuses, and in prisons and refugee camps. They cross class, race, age, and national
lines; and at the same time, the forms this violence takes often reinforce other oppressions such as
racism, "able-bodyism," and imperialism. Case in point: in order to feed their families, poor women in
brothels around US military bases in places like the Philippines bear the burden of sexual, racial, and
national imperialism in repeated and often brutal violation of their bodies.
The impact is try or die – the unmanageable catastrophes of present-day society are all
consequences of this patriarchal system – war, violence, and environmental destruction are
inevitable absent the plan
Warren and Cady, 96
(Karen Warren and Duane Cady, Professors at Macalester and Hamline, Bringing peace home: feminism, violence,
and nature, 1996, p.12-13, CMM)
Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which
it gives rise, (c) the unmanageability, (d) which results. For example, in the United States, current estimates
are that one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape,
sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-massochistic pornography are examples of behaviors
practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally destructive behaviors,
strip-mining, factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors
maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too, rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay to
“rape the earth,” that it is “man’s God-given right” to have dominion (that is domination) over the earth,
that nature has only instrumental value that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for
“progress.” And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose
dominion on a people or nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors
of nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of the current “unmanageability” of
contemporary life in patriarchal societies, (d) is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal
preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-gender-identified
beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions. Included among these real-life consequences are precisely those
concerns with nuclear proliferation, war, and environmental destruction, and violence towards women,
which many feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only through
observing these dysfunctional behaviors—the symptoms of dysfunctionality—that one can truly see that and
how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a
dysfunctional system, this “unmanageability” can be seen for what it is—as a predictable and thus logical
consequence of patriarchy. The theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are
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predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist
literature. Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that “a militarism and warfare are
continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill
needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed
militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth.” Stated in terms of
the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by Spretnak and other
feminists take on a clearer meaning: Patriarchal conceptual frameworks legitimate impaired thinking
(about women, national and regional conflict, the environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if
continued, will make life on earth difficult, if not impossible It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its
plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in
regional, national, and global contexts.
Contention Three: Social Inequalities
The Hyde Amendment specifically targets low income women.
NOW, 2006
(National Organization for Women, Hyde Amendment: 30 Years of Injustice for Poor Women, 10-9-06
http://www.now.org/issues/abortion/10-09-06hyde.html?printable, Accessed 7-1-09, AMG)
Because it creates a barrier to women's access to abortion services, a right that women with financial means
are able to utilize, the Hyde amendment is unjustly harmful to the health of poor and low-income
women by burdening access to otherwise safe and legal medical procedures. The risk of complication
increases the later an induced abortion is performed, so administrative delays imposed on women decrease
the safety of abortion procedures by forcing women to wait until later in pregnancy to receive necessary
funding. Furthermore, women who cannot pay for abortion services may be forced to choose a selfinduced or illegal, life-threatening abortion. For those low-income women who do not seek such
desperate measures, the amendment effectively forces them to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Since
the amendment's enactment, the Guttmacher Institute has found that 20-35 percent of women eligible
under Medicaid who would choose abortion have carried their pregnancies to term due to lack of
personal financial means and the absence of state funding. The right to reproductive health care
necessitates that women have equal access to all care, including abortion, regardless of their economic
means or the specific circumstances of their pregnancies. Since 12 million women of reproductive age are
covered under Medicaid, the current Hyde Amendment compromises millions of women's right to
abortion access and routinely puts their health and lives at risk. Furthermore, the Amendment
specifically targets women of low economic status, effectively blocking their Constitutional right to
reproductive options and invading their privacy. As a result, the Amendment further politicizes abortion
care, instead of recognizing it as a fundamental component of reproductive and family planning health care.
In order to achieve complete reproductive equality that has been constitutionally guaranteed to all women
for more than three decades, NOW urges that the Hyde Amendment be repealed.
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Getting rid of political barriers isn’t enough—funding is needed to stop accentuating race
and class divisions
Gerber Fried; Professor at Hampshire College, director of the Civil Liberties and Public
Policy Program; 2006
The failure to make abortion funding and access more prominent in the prochoice agenda has
accentuated race and class divisions. The history of compromising the rights of more vulnerable women
has created a political fissure that weakens the movement. It signals to poor women and women of color
that the movement is not prepared to fight for their rights. There are several reasons for this failure. As
mentioned above, the mainstream prochoice movement tried to draw in more conservative voters by creating
a prochoice position that allows support for legal abortion without necessarily supporting public funding. In
addition, the mainstream movement has been primarily concerned with the legal right to abortion,
rather than questions of access. This reflects both the fact that the initial strategy was to change the law
and, since the 1980s, the movement has had to fight a backlash determined to recriminalize abortion. In short,
the legal right to abortion although won, is not secure. This changed under the Clinton administration
where we finally saw a greater focus on access, although even then, not on access for low-income women. In
general, the liberal conception of rights demands that the government dismantle obstacles to exercising rights
but does not call for the government to take affirmative action to create the enabling conditions required for
rights to be exercised—or, as some would say, for rights to be meaningful. There is then a class and race
dimension to the very understanding of what it means to have a right—for women with relative
economic privilege, restrictive laws are the barriers to access, not lack of funding. Thus the language of
choice appeals to those who see themselves as having choices, but does not have much resonance for those
who do not.
Fighting for reproductive justice by repealing the Hyde Amendment would break the cycle
of control that traps indigent women.
Ross, National Coordinator for the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health
Collective, 07
(Loretta J., “Pro Choice is not enough”, http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pro-choice-not-enough, accessed
7/1/09, KLM)
For many activists, especially women of color and poor women, a key development has been an expansion
of the "reproductive rights" movement to a model of "reproductive justice." The concept of reproductive
justice is to empower women to take control of our reproductive desti-nies, which includes the right to
an abortion or birth control, the right to have a child, and the right to parent our children. Women who fight
for reproductive justice know the importance of organizing beyond the pro-choice framework. Poor women
don't always relate to the pro-choice movement because they often have few real choices. Without the
economic ability to afford an abortion, or without the support to parent the children they already have, a
systematic cycle of reproductive oppression continues for all poor women, and especially for women of
color. Reproductive justice focuses on organizing women, girls, and their communities to challenge
structural power inequalities in a comprehensive and transformative process. Instead of focusing on the
means - a divisive debate on abortion and birth control that neglects many of the real-life experiences of
women and girls - the reproductive justice analysis focuses on the ends: better lives for women, healthier
families, and sustainable communities. Working for All Women in 2008 In the upcoming election year, it is
essential for people to refuse to support candidates who don't support women's rights and who become weak
in the face of criticism from anti-abortion opponents. A politician who claims to work on behalf of poor
women and women of color must strongly support our human rights and understand the dilemmas poor
women face when making reproductive choices. One immediate goal of the reproductive justice
movement is to repeal the Hyde Amendment of 1976. The Hyde Amendment declares that no Medicaid
funds - a federal program that provides payment to health care providers for poor and low-income people can be used to pay for abortions, unless the procedure is necessary to save the mother's life, or the pregnancy
is the result of an act of rape or incest. As a result of this law, poor women are forced to spend their food
or rent money to pay for an abortion. If they are unable to raise the funds, they are forced to have a
child for which they are unable to provide. The National Network of Abortion Funds and other
organizations are working collectively to end this legislation that has kept poor and low-income women from
controlling their lives. Women must organize to challenge and confront the oppressive policies affecting our
communities. When a woman enters an abortion clinic she enters with all her problems, whether it is domestic abuse, economic hardship, or confusion about her options.
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Class inequality is the root cause of all the evils in the world, abolishing it our first priority
Spritzler, Research Scientist at Harvard School of Public Health, 2008
(John, Turn the World Upside Down, Class Inequality: Abolish It or Win Nothing, 12-7-08,
http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/2008/12/class-inequality-abolish-it-or-win.html, Accessed 7-2-09, AMG)
Why do we need to make abolishing class inequality our number one priority? It is not simply that class
inequality is unfair, which it certainly is. It is because class inequality is the root of all the other evils in
society that people struggle against. It is the root of crime and corruption. It is the root of governments
being undemocratic even when they are officially democratic. It is the root of human rights being
denied to people, including rights that have nothing directly to do with class inequality. Until the root of
class inequality is eradicated, the evils that grow from that root will always grow back, no matter what.
As long as we tolerate class inequality those at the top will buy or otherwise obtain more than their fair share
of social wealth. Some will possess several mansions while others are homeless. Worse--and this is the key
point--they will live in and enjoy those mansions with full social approval. Likewise some will, with full
social approval, buy a team of personal doctors and enjoy unrestricted use of expensive medical technology
while others have no medical insurance and die waiting to be seen in emergency rooms. In a society that
tolerates class inequality, buying things like this is as easy as buying a slave in a society that tolerates
slavery, or buying a child to molest in a society that tolerates child abuse.
Racism and classism support the system of power that makes nuclear war inevitable.
LaBalme, activist, 2002
(Fen, Activism.net, “Activism: Pease: NVCD: Discrimination,” 2002,
http://www.activism.net/peace/nvcdh/discrimination.shtml, accessed July 2, 2009, GD).
In this action, our struggle is not only against missiles and bombs, but against the system of power they
defend: a system based on domination, on the belief that some people have more value than others, and
therefore have the right to control others, to exploit them so that they can lead better lives than those they
oppress. We say that all people have value. No person, no group, has the right to wield power over the
decisions and resources of others. The structure of our organizations and the processes we use among
ourselves are our best attempt to live our belief in self-determination. Besides working against
discrimination of all kinds among ourselves, we must try to understand how such discrimination
supports the system which produces nuclear weapons. For some people who come to this action, the
overriding issue is the struggle to prevent nuclear destruction. For others, that struggle is not separate from
the struggles against racism, sexism, classism, and the oppression of groups of people because of their
sexual orientation, religion, age, physical (dis)ability, appearance, or life history. Understood this way, it is
clear that nuclear weapons are already killing people, forcing them to lead lives of difficulty and
struggle. Nuclear war has already begun, and it claims its victims disproportionately from native
peoples, the Third World, women, and those who are economically vulnerable because of the history of
oppression. All oppressions are interlocking. We separate racism, classism, etc. in order to discuss
them, not to imply that any form of oppression works in isolation. We know that to work against any one
of these is not just to try to stop something negative, but to build a positive vision. Many in the movement
call this larger goal feminism. Calling our process "feminist process" does not mean that women dominate or
exclude men; on the contrary, it challenges all systems of domination. The term recognizes the historical
importance of the feminist movement in insisting that nonviolence begins at home, in the ways we treat
each other.
Saying class inequality is inevitable is like saying that slavery is inevitable.
Spritzler, Research Scientist at Harvard School of Public Health, 2008
(John, Turn the World Upside Down, Class Inequality: Abolish It or Win Nothing, 12-7-08,
http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/2008/12/class-inequality-abolish-it-or-win.html, Accessed 7-2-09, AMG)
There are those today who insist that it is impossible and even undesirable to abolish class inequality.
Inequality, they say, is what motivates people to work--to "get ahead"-- and without it people wouldn't work
or be creative or become extraordinarily skilled at anything. Without inequality our culture of greatness
would become a culture of mediocrity. Abolishing inequality is a wild and crazy idea, impossible they say.
But those who defend class inequality today are as wrong as those who defended slavery in the past.
The notion that equality means mediocrity and laziness is just wrong. People work hard and excel in
different ways and tackle social problems for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting to have more
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social wealth than others. We could have a modern and wonderful economy in a society based on
equality. As with slavery, far more people want to abolish class inequality than want to keep it. In
health care, for example, the public wants equality. The most recent expression of this longstanding fact
occurred in Massachusetts in the November 2008 election, when the following question was on the ballot in
ten legislative districts
Contention Four: Solvency
Repealing the Hyde Amendment takes the first step in creating true equality in health care.
National Network of Abortion Funds 09
Jan 16, “Plea for End to the Hyde Amendment”, http://cfidc.wordpress.com/2009/01/, accessed 7/5/09, KLM
For more than thirty years, the Hyde Amendment and other funding restrictions have affected the
poorest and most vulnerable of low-income Americans, with a disproportionate impact on women of
color and immigrant women. The Hyde Amendment denies abortion access to the seven million women of
reproductive age who are currently enrolled in Medicaid. These funding restrictions are the most
detrimental of all attacks on safe, legal abortion care, and represent a clear violation of low-income
women’s human rights. In addition, abortion funding restrictions marginalize abortion care and
disregard the fact that it is an integral part of the continuum of women’s reproductive health care. By
striking funding restrictions, President Obama can place abortion back in the context of health care,
thereby setting a new tone and signaling to Congress his commitment to comprehensive women’s
health care. Further, this early commitment will bolster the efforts of our diverse and growing grassroots
advocacy campaign as we continue educating the public and Members of Congress about the urgent need for
a full repeal of these restrictions. There is precedent for a President who supports reproductive freedom
to take this action, and we look forward to working with and supporting President Obama as he takes this
step. 1 Today, more than ever, low-income women in the United States must have access to the resources that
allow them to determine the size and timing of their families. Many of these women are already balancing the
demands of jobs, children, school, diminishing paychecks, and the disproportionate burden of an economic
downturn.
The Hyde Amendment is the main restriction to abortion access. Striking it down would
protect the rights and dignity of indigent womyn in the US.
Northup, President Center for Reproductive Rights, 09
(Nancy, 1-22-09, “On this 2009 anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the Center for
Reproductive Rights calls on President Barack Obama to strike the Hyde Amendment which bans funding for
medically necessary abortion from his proposed budget and support Congressional repeal of these funding
restrictions.”, http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?cat=25, accessed 7/5/09, KLM)
For thirty-six years, women in this country have had the right to obtain safe, legal abortion. But since 1977
when Hyde was first enacted, low-income women have been deprived of that right by anti-choice
politicians intent on doing away with a woman’s access to abortion altogether. The Hyde Amendment
prohibits federal funds from being used to pay for abortion except under extremely limited circumstances. As
a result, a woman who relies on Medicaid cannot get an abortion in most circumstances—even if her health is
jeopardized by her pregnancy—unless she is able to cover the entire cost out-of-pocket. Similar restrictions
have been imposed on women who rely on the health benefits provided to federal employees, military
personnel and their dependents, women served by the Indian Health Service, Peace Corps volunteers,
Medicare enrollees, women in federal prisons, and low-income women in the District of Columbia. These
restrictions patently discriminate against women. Abortion is a health service only used by women, and it
is the only medically necessary service not covered by Medicaid for instance. According to the
Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, as many as 35% of women who are eligible for the
program and seeking an abortion are prevented from making the personal decision about their own lives and
forced to carry their pregnancies to term. On the other hand, virtually all other health services are covered.
Since Medicaid is the primary provider of reproductive healthcare for low-income minority communities,
Hyde also disproportionately affects women of color. Many of these women are already struggling with the
challenges of supporting a family on limited resources and now, the ever-growing burden of the economic
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recession. Under Hyde, a poor woman must often delay obtaining a medically necessary abortion while she
tries to raise the funds. The longer she waits, the more it costs and the greater the risks to her health.
President Barack Obama’s leadership provides a tremendous opportunity for the U.S. government to
stop excluding women’s specific healthcare needs from federal health programs based on political
preferences and join the 17 states across the country that pay for poor women’s medically necessary
abortions. As the California Supreme Court ruled in 1981, “There is no greater power than the power of
the purse. If the government can use it to nullify constitutional rights, by conditioning benefits only
upon the sacrifice of such rights, the Bill of Rights could eventually become a yellowing scrap of paper.
Once the state furnishes medical care to poor women in general, it cannot withdraw part of that care solely
because a woman exercises her constitutional right to choose an abortion.” Roe v. Wade recognized that a
woman’s ability to make reproductive decisions essential to her life and health. On the day commemorating
this landmark case, the Center for Reproductive Rights urges the new president to protect the dignity and
health of all women by striking restrictions on public funding for medically necessary abortions.
Congressional action demonstrates our commitment to reproductive freedom as a human
rights leader
Center for Reproductive Rights, 8
(“Reproductive Rights: Federal Policy Agenda – Advancing What’s Right for Women and the Nation,” Center for
Reproductive Rights, Fall 2008, CMM)
The United States has been a world leader with a long and proud history of championing equality and human
rights. However, we now face a tipping point in the struggle to recognize and protect reproductive rights.
Decades of hard-won progress that improved women’s reproductive heath care and autonomy have been
eroded. These losses are as alarming as they are widespread: state and federal court decisions have
undermined the protections established by Roe v. Wade; funding for basic reproductive health care is
inadequate to serve those in need; and maternal mortality rates among women of color remain
shamefully high. Moreover, restrictions that the United States places on foreign assistance aimed at
improving reproductive health worldwide, based on opposition to abortion and support for ineffective
abstinence programs, hamper progress and place this country out of step with other major donors. These
injustices demand a bold agenda for change, ensuring that women’s reproductive rights are
understood and protected by law- and policy-makers. We can no longer rely on the courts to protect
reproductive rights or to meet internationally recognized standards regarding access to reproductive
health care. It is time for Congress and the President to demonstrate their commitment to women’s
health and self-determination, and to acknowledge this nation’s obligations to respect reproductive
rights as human rights.
The federal government funding is the only way to keep Medicaid alive – state budget cuts
will kill Medicaid programs in the long run.
Families USA, non-profit organization supporting healthcare, 08
(FamiliesUSA.org, 7-2008, http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/state-budget-cuts-2008.pdf, accessed 7-1-2009,
AEL)
The need for federal fiscal relief for states is clear: A number of states have already begun cutting their
Medicaid budgets or are proposing Medicaid cuts in order to fill budget gaps in both the current and the next
fiscal year. The Medicaid cuts discussed in the states listed below will greatly affect the health and wellbeing of thousands of Americans, and unfortunately, it is likely that the worst is yet to come. A few of these
states had proposed even deeper Medicaid cuts, but they were able to find revenue to fill in some of their budget
gaps. There were also a number of states that we did not include in this report that proposed Medicaid cuts that
were never enacted. However, the effects of a recession are generally felt over a number years even after
the economy begins to bounce back. Thus, regardless of whether states have been or will be able to stave
off or minimize proposed cuts this year, they will most certainly be faced with these difficult decisions
again next year—unless the federal government acts to provide relief.
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And, there is a spillover. The election of Obama presents a unique opportunity to present
the US as a leader in reproductive justice policy.
Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, 09
(Nancy, 1-1-09, “How to Restore America's Position as a Leader on Reproductive Rights”,
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/115080/how_to_restore_america's_position_as_a_leader_on_reproducti
ve_rights/ accessed 7-3-09, KLM)
With the election of Barack Obama, women around the world can heave a collective sigh of relief and
look forward to an end to the Bush administration's relentless assault on women's reproductive health
and rights. It's been a very long and destructive eight years. While the rest of the world has been moving
forward in a growing recognition of reproductive rights as human rights, the United States has moved
backwards. In the past two years, the United States Supreme Court -- with two new Bush justices -issued Gonzales v. Carhart , a decision that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called "alarming," which she said
represented antiquated and rejected notions of a woman's place in the family. At the same time, the
Constitutional Court in Colombia said that protecting reproductive rights is a direct path to promoting the
dignity of all human beings. We need to get back on that direct path. Under the leadership of Presidentelect Obama, the United States has the opportunity to again take the world stage as a leader in
promoting women's reproductive health, equality and human rights. Make no mistake, our country's
new vision for reproductive rights and health needs to go further than simply undoing the policies of the
previous administration. The Obama administration must work toward a nation and world in which all
women are free to decide whether and when to have children, where all women have access to quality
reproductive health care, where all women can exercise their choices without coercion or
discrimination, and where all women can participate with full dignity as equal members of society.
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Abortion 1AC – Modular Advantages
Contention One: Inherency
The Hyde Amendment denies women living in poverty access to an abortion.
NWLC, Advancement Center for Women, 2007
(National Women’s Law Center, October 2007,
http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/Public%20Funding%20factsheet%2010%2007.pdf, 06-29-09, NG)
In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion for all women, including poor women. Poor women were able to access
abortions funded by Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that provides low-income individuals with basic
healthcare services. Just three years after Roe, however, Congress passed a prohibition on the use of federal
funds for abortion services in Medicaid. The prohibition – known as the Hyde Amendment – became effective in
1977 and has been reauthorized every year by Congress.1 Although the language has changed over the years, the
Hyde Amendment currently prohibits states from using federal Medicaid funds for abortions unless the
pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or the woman’s life is in danger.2 Before the Hyde Amendment,
Medicaid paid for one-third of all abortions in the U.S.; today it pays for less than 1 percent of all abortions.3
In fiscal year 2001, the most recent year for which statistics are available, only 81 abortions were paid for by both
federal and state Medicaid under the narrow exceptions.4 Every state but one covers the abortions permitted by the
Hyde Amendment.5 Only 17 states go beyond the restrictions of the Hyde Amendment and use their own funds to
cover medically necessary abortions for Medicaid beneficiaries.6 This means that the vast majority of poor
women in the U.S. are denied the right to abortion because of their inability to pay.
The Hyde Amendment represented a major victory for anti-abortion forces at the federal
level.
Chamberlain and Hardisty, Founder and President Emerita of Political Research
Associates and Ph.D. from Northwestern University, 2008
(Pam and Jean, Reproducing Patriarchy: Reproductive Rights Under Siege,
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v14n1/ReproPatriarch-09.html) PMK
The anti-abortion movement was losing ground in public opinion as well. Approval of abortion rights grew
substantially in the decade between the mid-60s to the mid-70s and then leveled off without significant
overall change in either direction.20 Although pro-life advocates enlisted their own pollster (Richard
Wirthlin who worked for Reagan as his adman and strategist at the White House) and elaborately distorted
polling results,21 they could not increase their hard core support. Six to eight percent of respondents, a very
small percentage of the US public, wanted to prohibit abortion under almost all circumstances. Hard core
pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, who believed in a woman's right to an abortion under almost all
circumstances, hovered at about 32 percent. The remainder of Americans, about 60 percent, were willing to
support abortion with some restrictions. After Roe and through most of the 1980s, anti-choice activity could
not really budge these figures, and by 1990 support for the "pro-life" movement began to decline.22 Despite
this appearance of failure, the anti-abortion movement has seriously eroded the reproductive rights of
US women. One of the most significant losses resulted from the 1977 Hyde Amendment, which cut off
federal Medicaid funding for abortions, leaving poor women relying on Medicaid with no health
insurance for the procedure. In order to receive abortion coverage, such women needed to live in states
that fully fund Medicaid abortions with state money. Sixteen states currently use their own money to pay for
all or most medically necessary abortions. This number has fluctuated over the years due both to state level
court orders and to voluntary policy change. The Hyde Amendment, and its many incarnations, was the
most visible of a series of successful anti-abortion initiatives in Congress. Despite prolonged debate over
its constitutionality, it ultimately represented a major victory for anti-abortion forces.23 It is a painful
reminder for poor women and their allies of the powerful impact that pro-life activity has unleashed
at the federal level. Restrictive anti-abortion laws passed by state legislatures across the country also have
slowly and steadily eroded a woman's right to abortion. One restriction, mandatory counseling for a
pregnant woman seeking abortion, can create emotional trauma or intimidation. Waiting periods in which
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women are required to return to an abortion facility after waiting at least one day after their initial
appointment place unfair emotional and financial burdens on rural and other women who must leave work
and travel for treatment. Parental consent for minors, requiring one or both parents' permission or a judge's
decision before an abortion on a minor can take place burdens adolescent women, especially those with
potential violence at home, more than adults. In each case, pro-choice activists have had to mount a legal
challenge to the state law, pursuing it to state Supreme courts and federal courts. The mixed rulings often
resulted in additional loss of abortion access despite substantial pro-choice resources being spent on the
defense of a women's right to choose.
Thus, the plan: The United States federal government should provide Medicaid coverage
for abortion.
Denying women access to an abortion is discrimination and violates equal rights.
Human Rights Watch 05
(“Q&A: Human Rights Law and Access to Abortion” June 15, 2005 http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/06/15/qahuman-rights-law-and-access-abortion#_Right_to_life Accessed 6-28-09 KLM)
Access to legal and safe abortion services is essential to the protection of women's rights to
nondiscrimination and equality. Women are in practice more likely than men to experience personal
hardship as well as social disadvantage as a result of economic, career, and other life changes when they
have children. Where women are compelled to continue unwanted pregnancies, such consequences
forcibly put women at further disadvantage. Abortion is a medical procedure that only women need.
The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has implied that the denial of
medical procedures only women need is a form of discrimination against women. Therefore, restrictive
abortion laws may amount in certain cases to discrimination against women in and of themselves. The
committee has also clarified that states have an obligation not to put barriers in place that prevent
women's access to appropriate health care. As examples of such prohibited barriers, the committee has
explicitly cited laws that criminalize medical procedures only needed by women and that punish women who
undergo these procedures. The U.N. Human Rights Committee has also repeatedly established a clear link
between women's equality and the availability of reproductive health services, including abortion.
In a patriarchal society, women embody passivity to the male. Abortion rights enable
women to assume autonomous roles against dominance.
Hayler, Assistant Professor of Social Justice, 79
(Barbara, “Abortion”, Chicago Journals, Signs, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter, 1979), pp. 307-323, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
In patriarchal society, the basic female principle is passivity. Con- ception and motherhood are no
exceptions: Woman's role in conception is to receive and to incubate; woman's role in motherhood
is to be selfless and giving, to meet familial needs and demands. Feminist theory has begun to
explore the damage done to women by this denial of self. Mary Daly suggests that enforced passivity
may properly be viewed as a form of gynocide; involving the domestication and deprivation of
female vi- tality and the destruction of women's autonomous wills.70 Abortion makes it possible
for women to resist forced motherhood. The issue of control of reproductive power is central to the
abortion controversy. Many of the authors discussed in this essay have argued that opposition to
abortion is only one aspect of a broader opposition to female autonomy generally. In a patriarchal
society where male identity is largely based on power over women, changes in power relationships
are indeed disturbing. One physician explained the perceived threat in this way: "The pregnant
woman symbolizes proof of male potency and if the male loosens his rule over women and grants
them the right to dispose of that proof when they want to, the men then feel terribly threatened lest
women can, at will, rob them of their potency and mascu- linity."71
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The impact is try or die – the unmanageable catastrophes of present-day society are all
consequences of this patriarchal system – war, violence, and environmental destruction are
inevitable absent the plan
Warren and Cady, 96
(Karen Warren and Duane Cady, Professors at Macalester and Hamline, Bringing peace home: feminism, violence,
and nature, 1996, p.12-13, CMM)
Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which
it gives rise, (c) the unmanageability, (d) which results. For example, in the United States, current estimates
are that one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape,
sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-massochistic pornography are examples of behaviors
practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally destructive behaviors,
strip-mining, factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors
maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too, rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay to
“rape the earth,” that it is “man’s God-given right” to have dominion (that is domination) over the earth,
that nature has only instrumental value that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for
“progress.” And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose
dominion on a people or nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors
of nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of the current “unmanageability” of
contemporary life in patriarchal societies, (d) is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal
preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-gender-identified
beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions. Included among these real-life consequences are precisely those
concerns with nuclear proliferation, war, and environmental destruction, and violence towards women,
which many feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only through
observing these dysfunctional behaviors—the symptoms of dysfunctionality—that one can truly see that and
how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a
dysfunctional system, this “unmanageability” can be seen for what it is—as a predictable and thus logical
consequence of patriarchy. The theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are
predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist
literature. Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that “a militarism and warfare are
continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill
needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed
militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth.” Stated in terms of
the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by Spretnak and other
feminists take on a clearer meaning: Patriarchal conceptual frameworks legitimate impaired thinking
(about women, national and regional conflict, the environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if
continued, will make life on earth difficult, if not impossible It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its
plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in
regional, national, and global contexts.
Contention Three: Population Control
Abortion access is a necessary part to solving extreme population rates.
Mumford, DrPH Center for Research on Population and Security, and Kessel, Department
of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Oregon Health Sciences University, 86
SD Mumford and E Kessel, Clinics in Obstetrics Gynaecology, 1986 Mar;13(1):19-31,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3709011, accessed 7/6/09, KLM
No nation desirous of reducing its growth rate to 1% or less can expect to do so without the widespread
use of abortion. This observational study, based on the experience of 116 of the world's largest
countries, supports the contention that abortion is essential to any national population growth control
effort. The principal findings are: Except for a few countries with ageing populations and very high contraceptive prevalence rates, developed countries
will need to maintain abortion rates generally in the range of 201-500 abortions per 1000 live births if they are to maintain growth rates at levels below 1%.
The current rate in the USA is 426 abortions per 1000 live births. Developing countries, on the other hand, are faced with a different and more difficult set
of circumstances that require even greater reliance on abortion. No developing nation wanting to reduce its growth to less than 1% can expect to do so
without the widespread use of abortion, generally at a rate greater than 500 abortions per 1000 live births. Widespread availability of abortion is a necessary
but not sufficient condition to achieve growth rates below 1%. A high contraceptive prevalence is essential as well in order to achieve growth rates below
1%. A high contraceptive prevalence is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve population growth rates below 1%.
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A high rate of
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abortion (generally 201-500 or more abortions per 1000 live births in the developed and greater than 500 abortions per 1000 live births in the
developing countries) is essential to achieve growth rates below 1%. The different and more difficult set of circumstances faced by
developing countries that will necessitate even higher abortion rates than developed countries includes a young population with resultant rapidly growing
numbers of young fertile women, poor contraceptive use-effectiveness, low prevalence of contraception, and poor or non-existent systems for providing
contraceptives.
These data show that high death rates of infants and children can moderate population
growth rates--a most undesirable solution. The data in this report suggest that actual alternatives are
high death rates of infants and children or widespread use of contraception and abortion. African
nations tend to have the very lowest abortion rates and the very highest infant and child death rates.
To avoid a world with deteriorating social, economic and political stability, with the concomitant loss
of personal and national security, we must ensure that safe abortion is made available to all who wish
to use this service. PIP: Population control is an important but neglected social benefit of abortion. To
examine this role, the outhors compared population growth rates and abortion (legal and illegal)
incidence rates for the 116 largest countries in the world. These 116 countries were first ranked by their abortion rates into 4
groups: very high (greater than 500/1000 live births), high (201-500/1000), moderate (50-200/1000) and low (less than 50/1000). Then each of these 4
groups was ranked according to contraceptive prevalence: very high (60% or above), high (40-59%), moderate (15-39%), and low (less than 15%). Within
each of the 16 groups, the countries were then ranked according to their population growth rate. The age distribution and mortality of children under 5 years
of age were also considered for each country. The
data indicate that where abortion and contraceptive prevalence
rates are the highest and populations are the oldest, growth rates tend to be the lowest. As
contraceptive prevalence decreases, the growth rate increases. The younger the population, the greater
the growth rate. Where the abortion rate is very high with only modest use of contraception, a high
growth rate can result. Thus, abortion is necessary but not sufficient to cause low growth rates. With the exception of a few countries with aging
populations and very high contraceptive prevalence rates, developed countries need to maintain abortion rates in the range of 201-500/1000 if they are to
maintain growth rates at levels below 1%. An even greater reliance on abortion--over 500/1000 live births--is required in developing countries to reduce
population growth.
Women’s empowerment reduces birth rates and can solve the population problem
Miller, Reuters and NYT correspondent, 08
Bill Miller, “Book cites population growth as key driver of global warming” 29 may 08
http://www.desmogblog.com/population-growth-cited-as-key-driver-of-global-warming, accessed 7/7/09, KLM
Now, a book by Worldwatch Institute vice-president Robert Engelman argues not only that it gets
harder to curb greenhouse emissions as the global population increases, but also that human growth is
a major factor in greenhouse emissions. Engelman notes, furthermore, that we can’t grow forever, and if
we can't curb carbon emissions in a world of 6.8 billion, it will be impossible when there are 9 billion.
"You really can't talk about the supply and demand imbalance that is sending energy and food prices up
without acknowledging that we are adding 78 million people each year, the equivalent of a new Idaho every
week," says Engleman. In “More: Population, Nature and What Women Want,” Engelman suggests the
surest route to achieving an environmentally sustainable population is to enable women everywhere to
choose when to bear children. A former reporter who worked in population and family-planning
before joining Worldwatch in 2007, Engleman interviewed women in Africa, Asia, and Latin America
over a 25-year period. Weaving their stories with research in history and the social sciences,
Engleman studies sexuality and procreation to illustrate how women’s lives and status have influenced
modern society. His conclusion: The key to limiting population growth is to give control over
procreation to women. Even in countries and societies where large families have always been the norm,
when women take control over family size, birth rates shrink.
Equilibrium Between Population and Environment Key
Population Connection, 2003. (Population Connection: “Population Connection: Statement of
Policy,” 5-3-03,
www.populationconnection.org/site/DocServer/Statement_of_Policy.doc?docID=401, accessed
7-6-09)
Population Connection believes the well-being and even the survival of humanity depend on the
attainment of an equilibrium between population and the environment. Just as the earth and its
resources of land, air and water are limited, so are the demands that can be placed upon them.
Continued population growth is foremost among the factors aggravating deforestation, wildlife
extinction, climate change and other critical environmental and social problems. It also erodes
democratic government, multiplies urban problems, consumes agricultural land, increases volumes of
waste, heightens competition for scarce resources and threatens the aspirations of the poor for a better
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life. The only acceptable solution to the population problem is through expanding educational,
advocacy and service efforts that lower birth rates. Rather than support a larger population at a
poorer level, we believe it is preferable to support a smaller population at adequate standards of living.
Population Connection recognizes the gravity of global overpopulation and encourages citizens in every
nation to work towards slowing population growth. Recognizing the interdependence of the nations of the
earth, we support the development and growth of citizen organizations in other countries dedicated to those
ends. As a U.S. based organization, Population Connection works primarily to educate and motivate
Americans to help meet the global population challenge, and to mobilize this support for the adoption of
policies and programs necessary to slow global population growth. Because the United States is the chief
consumer of the world's resources, slowing its population growth is disproportionately important for
protecting the global environment. Because the United States has a major influence on international
political, economic and military affairs, reshaping its policies is important for the success of
international efforts to slow population growth. In pursuit of these goals, Population Connection
participates in coalitions; influences governmental policies on the international, national, state and local
levels; works extensively with the media; engages in teacher training and public education programs; and
produces educational materials. We conduct research, interpret and apply the research of others, and provide
a population perspective on social and environmental problems. Population Connection recognizes the
significant roles which consumption, lifestyles, and technology play in determining the total impact of human
society on the earth. Together, these factors will determine whether we maintain a habitable planet and
achieve a sustainable society, i.e., one that meets the needs and aspirations of present generations without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. We support efforts to create a sustainable
society, both in the United States and worldwide, which integrate an awareness of the central role population
plays in meeting this objective. Specifically, for the United States, these include efforts to conserve energy
and natural resources and improve efficiency, eliminate our "disposable society" lifestyle, and use the best
possible technology to protect the natural and human environment. Population Connection recognizes that
broad social, economic and political changes may be necessary to slow population growth. We endorse and
actively support methods which are voluntary and which are positive enhancements of human rights and
conditions. Population Connection condemns any use of force or violence. Population Connection condemns
racism in all of its forms. We will not support or tolerate being knowingly associated with organizations
which support or promote the use of force or violence or which espouse racism or racist beliefs. Population
Connection strives to be believable on a complex topic, creative in thinking about the future, concerned for
the welfare of all human beings, and forceful but not strident in the presentation of its views. World
population now exceeds six billion and at current growth rates could exceed nine billion by 2050. The
continued pressures of a growing world population are pushing the world towards global
environmental catastrophe. Population Connection believes that to achieve lasting improvements in the
quality of life for all, the nations of the world must make slowing population growth a top priority. The
United States should assume a leadership role in international efforts to slow population growth and
should set an example by adopting a national population policy that commits the United States to this
goal.
Contention Four: The Unwanted
Using restrictions to force pregnancies on women who want abortions is the same as rape.
Cook and Dickens, Professors in the Faculty of Law, Medicine, and the Joint Centre for
Bioethics at the University of Toronto, 08
(Rebecca and Bernard, “Human Rights Dynamics of Abortion Law Reform”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25 No.
1, March 13, 2008, http://www.law.utoronto.ca/documents/reprohealth/PUB-HumanRightsDynamics.pdf, accessed
6-29-09, KLM)
It is accordingly a human rights infringement when women who have suffered the violation of rape are
compelled to endure pregnancy against their will by the coercion of criminal sanctions. The Platform further condemns
“torture . . . sexual slavery, rape, sexual abuse and forced pregnancy.”27 Forced pregnancy describes both forced initiation of
pregnancy, and forced continuation of pregnancy. The Treaty of Rome constituting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court
similarly recognizes forced pregnancy as a crime against humanity. 28 This was in reaction to preceding evidence, presented before
tribunals addressing humanitarian outrages in conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, of systematic rape as part of “ethnic
cleansing,” when women pregnant by rape were denied abortion due to religious influence. Countries with criminal laws that do not
permit abortion for rape recognized their vulnerability to condemnation for perpetrating forced pregnancy, and joined the Treaty only
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upon the acceptance of Treaty language providing that their legislation does not violate the Treaty. Nevertheless, human rights treaty
monitoring bodies have identified the inconsistency between human rights principles and criminal abortion laws that have no explicit
exception that allows lawful abortion on complaints of rape. Recognition of forced pregnancy, however initiated,
exposes the coercion women suffer to continue pregnancies against their will, by criminal laws and
other means, as a human rights violation. 29 This is analogous to rape and sexual abuse. The Chief
Justice of Canada, in a majority judgment holding Canada’s restrictive criminal abortion law unconstitutional and inoperative,
observed in 1988 that: Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a fetus to term unless
she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference
with a woman’s body and thus a violation of security of the person. 30 This re-conceptualization of
criminal abortion laws as human rights viola- tions when they deny women’s choice shows that
restrictive laws and governmental policies can be as disrespectful of women’s wishes, interests, health,
and bodily integrity as are rapists. Those who support and enforce such laws and policies similarly
enforce their will upon women by their power of domination, in order to advance their own social,
spiritual, or other purposes.
Unwanted children suffer from emotional and intellectual handicaps.
Arthur, Pro-Choice Press editor, 1999
(Joyce, Pro-Choice Action Network, “Legal Abortion: the Sign of a Civilized Society,” October 1999,
http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/civilize.html#unwanted, accessed June 29, 2009, GD).
The anti-choice suffer from what I call the "fetus focus fallacy." They put fetuses ahead of just about
everything else, including women's lives and rights, the alleviation of human suffering, freedom of
conscience and religion, and truth itself. But let's take a look at these "unborn children", the ones who end up
being aborted, but who should, according to anti-abortionists, be forced to live. Unwanted childbearing has
long been linked with adverse consequences to children. Several studies, conducted in countries like the
U.S., Czechoslovakia, and Sweden, have documented the long-term developmental problems suffered
by children whose mothers did not want to bear them. The findings point to various emotional,
educational, and functional disorders that get worse as children become adults. These difficulties
happen even to children born to healthy, adult women who have stable marriages and adequate economic
resources. The problems are compounded for the majority of unwanted children who are born to poor,
unhealthy, unmarried, or teenage mothers. The studies focused on women who tried to get abortions and
were denied them by law or by circumstance. Some used control groups of wanted children and compared
them to groups of unwanted children. The studies found that when compared to wanted children, unwanted
children are more likely to suffer from:
* crippling emotional handicaps * stunted intellectual
and educational development * patterns of anti-social behaviour * troubled home and family life
* abuse or neglect by parents * dissatisfaction and dysfunction in adult life For example, unwanted
children are:
* significantly more likely to have mental handicaps at birth * more likely to dislike
school and perform significantly worse academically * more than twice as likely to have a record of
juvenile delinquency, up to four times more likely to have an adult criminal record, and three times
more likely to be repeat offenders * more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs in youth and early
adulthood * up to six times more likely to receive welfare between ages 16 and 21 * twice as likely
to be less adaptive to frustration and stress, a handicap that continues into adulthood * nearly three
times more likely to describe themselves as unhappy and unable to cope with their problems The
findings of these studies of unwanted children paint a clear and disturbing picture of what happens to
children when abortion and family planning services are restricted. Forced motherhood and a lack of social
support mean that unplanned children too often become victims of life, simply through an accident of birth.
And an unwanted child may become an unwanted adult. A recent study in the United States concluded that
the legalization of abortion there in 1973 may account for half of the 30-40% reduction in crime that
America has experienced since 1991. Legal abortion allows women and men to plan their families and
provide for wanted children adequately. The result is more confident, happier, healthier children, who
will be more likely to lead fulfilling and constructive lives than their unwanted counterparts. Legal
abortion benefits the health and well-being of children in other ways, too. Children are no longer
orphaned when their mothers die from dangerous, illegal abortions, leaving their families without the critical
economic and social contributions of a mother. And safe abortions enable women to bear wanted children
later, instead of never, because of infertility due to botched abortions.
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Contention Five: Social Inequities
Getting rid of political barriers isn’t enough—funding is needed to stop accentuating the
race and class divisions
Gerber Fried; Professor at Hampshire College, director of the Civil Liberties and Public
Policy Program; 2006
The failure to make abortion funding and access more prominent in the prochoice agenda has
accentuated race and class divisions. The history of compromising the rights of more vulnerable women
has created a political fissure that weakens the movement. It signals to poor women and women of color
that the movement is not prepared to fight for their rights. There are several reasons for this failure. As
mentioned above, the mainstream prochoice movement tried to draw in more conservative voters by creating
a prochoice position that allows support for legal abortion without necessarily supporting public funding. In
addition, the mainstream movement has been primarily concerned with the legal right to abortion,
rather than questions of access. This reflects both the fact that the initial strategy was to change the law
and, since the 1980s, the movement has had to fight a backlash determined to recriminalize abortion. In short,
the legal right to abortion although won, is not secure. This changed under the Clinton administration
where we finally saw a greater focus on access, although even then, not on access for low-income women. In
general, the liberal conception of rights demands that the government dismantle obstacles to exercising rights
but does not call for the government to take affirmative action to create the enabling conditions required for
rights to be exercised—or, as some would say, for rights to be meaningful. There is then a class and race
dimension to the very understanding of what it means to have a right—for women with relative
economic privilege, restrictive laws are the barriers to access, not lack of funding. Thus the language of
choice appeals to those who see themselves as having choices, but does not have much resonance for those
who do not.
Fighting for reproductive justice by repealing the Hyde Amendment would break the cycle
of control that traps indigent women.
Ross, National Coordinator for the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health
Collective, 07
(Loretta J., “Pro Choice is not enough”, http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pro-choice-not-enough, accessed
7/1/09, KLM)
For many activists, especially women of color and poor women, a key development has been an expansion
of the "reproductive rights" movement to a model of "reproductive justice." The concept of reproductive
justice is to empower women to take control of our reproductive desti-nies, which includes the right to
an abortion or birth control, the right to have a child, and the right to parent our children. Women who fight
for reproductive justice know the importance of organizing beyond the pro-choice framework. Poor women
don't always relate to the pro-choice movement because they often have few real choices. Without the
economic ability to afford an abortion, or without the support to parent the children they already have, a
systematic cycle of reproductive oppression continues for all poor women, and especially for women of
color. Reproductive justice focuses on organizing women, girls, and their communities to challenge
structural power inequalities in a comprehensive and transformative process. Instead of focusing on the
means - a divisive debate on abortion and birth control that neglects many of the real-life experiences of
women and girls - the reproductive justice analysis focuses on the ends: better lives for women, healthier
families, and sustainable communities. Working for All Women in 2008 In the upcoming election year, it is
essential for people to refuse to support candidates who don't support women's rights and who become weak
in the face of criticism from anti-abortion opponents. A politician who claims to work on behalf of poor
women and women of color must strongly support our human rights and understand the dilemmas poor
women face when making reproductive choices. One immediate goal of the reproductive justice
movement is to repeal the Hyde Amendment of 1976. The Hyde Amendment declares that no Medicaid
funds - a federal program that provides payment to health care providers for poor and low-income people can be used to pay for abortions, unless the procedure is necessary to save the mother's life, or the pregnancy
is the result of an act of rape or incest. As a result of this law, poor women are forced to spend their food
or rent money to pay for an abortion. If they are unable to raise the funds, they are forced to have a
child for which they are unable to provide. The National Network of Abortion Funds and other
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organizations are working collectively to end this legislation that has kept poor and low-income women from
controlling their lives. Women must organize to challenge and confront the oppressive policies affecting our
communities. When a woman enters an abortion clinic she enters with all her problems, whether it is domestic abuse, economic hardship, or confusion about her options. Understanding how a woman's age, race,
immigration status, sexual identify, and class directly affect her options is a key element in
strengthening the pro-choice movement and transforming it into a Reproductive Justice movement.
Racism and classism support the system of power that makes nuclear war inevitable.
LaBalme, activist, 2002
(Fen, Activism.net, “Activism: Pease: NVCD: Discrimination,” 2002,
http://www.activism.net/peace/nvcdh/discrimination.shtml, accessed July 2, 2009, GD).
In this action, our struggle is not only against missiles and bombs, but against the system of power they
defend: a system based on domination, on the belief that some people have more value than others, and
therefore have the right to control others, to exploit them so that they can lead better lives than those they
oppress. We say that all people have value. No person, no group, has the right to wield power over the
decisions and resources of others. The structure of our organizations and the processes we use among
ourselves are our best attempt to live our belief in self-determination. Besides working against
discrimination of all kinds among ourselves, we must try to understand how such discrimination
supports the system which produces nuclear weapons. For some people who come to this action, the
overriding issue is the struggle to prevent nuclear destruction. For others, that struggle is not separate from
the struggles against racism, sexism, classism, and the oppression of groups of people because of their
sexual orientation, religion, age, physical (dis)ability, appearance, or life history. Understood this way, it is
clear that nuclear weapons are already killing people, forcing them to lead lives of difficulty and
struggle. Nuclear war has already begun, and it claims its victims disproportionately from native
peoples, the Third World, women, and those who are economically vulnerable because of the history of
oppression. All oppressions are interlocking. We separate racism, classism, etc. in order to discuss
them, not to imply that any form of oppression works in isolation. We know that to work against any one
of these is not just to try to stop something negative, but to build a positive vision. Many in the movement
call this larger goal feminism. Calling our process "feminist process" does not mean that women dominate or
exclude men; on the contrary, it challenges all systems of domination. The term recognizes the historical
importance of the feminist movement in insisting that nonviolence begins at home, in the ways we treat
each other.
Contention Six: Solvency
Repealing the Hyde Amendment takes the first step in creating true equality in health care.
National Network of Abortion Funds 09
Jan 16, “Plea for End to the Hyde Amendment”, http://cfidc.wordpress.com/2009/01/, accessed 7/5/09, KLM
For more than thirty years, the Hyde Amendment and other funding restrictions have affected the
poorest and most vulnerable of low-income Americans, with a disproportionate impact on women of
color and immigrant women. The Hyde Amendment denies abortion access to the seven million women of
reproductive age who are currently enrolled in Medicaid. These funding restrictions are the most
detrimental of all attacks on safe, legal abortion care, and represent a clear violation of low-income
women’s human rights. In addition, abortion funding restrictions marginalize abortion care and
disregard the fact that it is an integral part of the continuum of women’s reproductive health care. By
striking funding restrictions, President Obama can place abortion back in the context of health care,
thereby setting a new tone and signaling to Congress his commitment to comprehensive women’s
health care. Further, this early commitment will bolster the efforts of our diverse and growing grassroots
advocacy campaign as we continue educating the public and Members of Congress about the urgent need for
a full repeal of these restrictions. There is precedent for a President who supports reproductive freedom
to take this action, and we look forward to working with and supporting President Obama as he takes this
step. 1 Today, more than ever, low-income women in the United States must have access to the resources that
allow them to determine the size and timing of their families. Many of these women are already balancing the
demands of jobs, children, school, diminishing paychecks, and the disproportionate burden of an economic
downturn.
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The federal government funding is the only way to keep Medicaid alive – state budget cuts
will kill Medicaid programs in the long run.
Families USA, non-profit organization supporting healthcare, 08
(FamiliesUSA.org, 7-2008, http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/state-budget-cuts-2008.pdf, accessed 7-1-2009,
AEL)
The need for federal fiscal relief for states is clear: A number of states have already begun cutting their
Medicaid budgets or are proposing Medicaid cuts in order to fill budget gaps in both the current and the next
fiscal year. The Medicaid cuts discussed in the states listed below will greatly affect the health and wellbeing of thousands of Americans, and unfortunately, it is likely that the worst is yet to come. A few of these
states had proposed even deeper Medicaid cuts, but they were able to find revenue to fill in some of their budget
gaps. There were also a number of states that we did not include in this report that proposed Medicaid cuts that
were never enacted. However, the effects of a recession are generally felt over a number years even after
the economy begins to bounce back. Thus, regardless of whether states have been or will be able to stave
off or minimize proposed cuts this year, they will most certainly be faced with these difficult decisions
again next year—unless the federal government acts to provide relief.
And, there is a spillover. The election of Obama presents a unique opportunity to present
the US as a leader in reproductive justice policy.
Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, 09
(Nancy, 1-1-09, “How to Restore America's Position as a Leader on Reproductive Rights”,
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/115080/how_to_restore_america's_position_as_a_leader_on_reproducti
ve_rights/ accessed 7-3-09, KLM)
With the election of Barack Obama, women around the world can heave a collective sigh of relief and
look forward to an end to the Bush administration's relentless assault on women's reproductive health
and rights. It's been a very long and destructive eight years. While the rest of the world has been moving
forward in a growing recognition of reproductive rights as human rights, the United States has moved
backwards. In the past two years, the United States Supreme Court -- with two new Bush justices -issued Gonzales v. Carhart , a decision that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called "alarming," which she said
represented antiquated and rejected notions of a woman's place in the family. At the same time, the
Constitutional Court in Colombia said that protecting reproductive rights is a direct path to promoting the
dignity of all human beings. We need to get back on that direct path. Under the leadership of Presidentelect Obama, the United States has the opportunity to again take the world stage as a leader in
promoting women's reproductive health, equality and human rights. Make no mistake, our country's
new vision for reproductive rights and health needs to go further than simply undoing the policies of the
previous administration. The Obama administration must work toward a nation and world in which all
women are free to decide whether and when to have children, where all women have access to quality
reproductive health care, where all women can exercise their choices without coercion or
discrimination, and where all women can participate with full dignity as equal members of society.
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Abortion 1AC – Critical
Contention One: Inherency
The Hyde Amendment denies women living in poverty access to an abortion.
NWLC, Advancement Center for Women, 2007
(National Women’s Law Center, October 2007,
http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/Public%20Funding%20factsheet%2010%2007.pdf, 06-29-09, NG)
In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion for all women, including poor women. Poor women were able to access
abortions funded by Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that provides low-income individuals with basic
healthcare services. Just three years after Roe, however, Congress passed a prohibition on the use of federal
funds for abortion services in Medicaid. The prohibition – known as the Hyde Amendment – became effective in
1977 and has been reauthorized every year by Congress.1 Although the language has changed over the years, the
Hyde Amendment currently prohibits states from using federal Medicaid funds for abortions unless the
pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or the woman’s life is in danger.2 Before the Hyde Amendment,
Medicaid paid for one-third of all abortions in the U.S.; today it pays for less than 1 percent of all abortions.3
In fiscal year 2001, the most recent year for which statistics are available, only 81 abortions were paid for by both
federal and state Medicaid under the narrow exceptions.4 Every state but one covers the abortions permitted by the
Hyde Amendment.5 Only 17 states go beyond the restrictions of the Hyde Amendment and use their own funds to
cover medically necessary abortions for Medicaid beneficiaries.6 This means that the vast majority of poor
women in the U.S. are denied the right to abortion because of their inability to pay.
The Hyde Amendment represented a major victory for anti-abortion forces at the federal
level.
Chamberlain and Hardisty, Founder and President Emerita of Political Research
Associates and Ph.D. from Northwestern University, 2008
(Pam and Jean, Reproducing Patriarchy: Reproductive Rights Under Siege,
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v14n1/ReproPatriarch-09.html) PMK
The anti-abortion movement was losing ground in public opinion as well. Approval of abortion rights grew
substantially in the decade between the mid-60s to the mid-70s and then leveled off without significant
overall change in either direction.20 Although pro-life advocates enlisted their own pollster (Richard
Wirthlin who worked for Reagan as his adman and strategist at the White House) and elaborately distorted
polling results,21 they could not increase their hard core support. Six to eight percent of respondents, a very
small percentage of the US public, wanted to prohibit abortion under almost all circumstances. Hard core
pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, who believed in a woman's right to an abortion under almost all
circumstances, hovered at about 32 percent. The remainder of Americans, about 60 percent, were willing to
support abortion with some restrictions. After Roe and through most of the 1980s, anti-choice activity could
not really budge these figures, and by 1990 support for the "pro-life" movement began to decline.22 Despite
this appearance of failure, the anti-abortion movement has seriously eroded the reproductive rights of
US women. One of the most significant losses resulted from the 1977 Hyde Amendment, which cut off
federal Medicaid funding for abortions, leaving poor women relying on Medicaid with no health
insurance for the procedure. In order to receive abortion coverage, such women needed to live in states
that fully fund Medicaid abortions with state money. Sixteen states currently use their own money to pay for
all or most medically necessary abortions. This number has fluctuated over the years due both to state level
court orders and to voluntary policy change. The Hyde Amendment, and its many incarnations, was the
most visible of a series of successful anti-abortion initiatives in Congress. Despite prolonged debate over
its constitutionality, it ultimately represented a major victory for anti-abortion forces.23 It is a painful
reminder for poor women and their allies of the powerful impact that pro-life activity has unleashed
at the federal level. Restrictive anti-abortion laws passed by state legislatures across the country also have
slowly and steadily eroded a woman's right to abortion. One restriction, mandatory counseling for a
pregnant woman seeking abortion, can create emotional trauma or intimidation. Waiting periods in which
women are required to return to an abortion facility after waiting at least one day after their initial
appointment place unfair emotional and financial burdens on rural and other women who must leave work
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and travel for treatment. Parental consent for minors, requiring one or both parents' permission or a judge's
decision before an abortion on a minor can take place burdens adolescent women, especially those with
potential violence at home, more than adults. In each case, pro-choice activists have had to mount a legal
challenge to the state law, pursuing it to state Supreme courts and federal courts. The mixed rulings often
resulted in additional loss of abortion access despite substantial pro-choice resources being spent on the
defense of a women's right to choose.
Thus, the plan: The United States federal government should provide Medicaid coverage
for abortion.
Contention Two: Biopower
State control over women’s bodily choices is an exercise of biopower
Deveax, Prof. of Political Science and Political Theory at Williams College, ‘94
(Monique, Feminist Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, Women's Agency: Empowerment and the Limits of, Accessed 7-1-9,
Summer 1994, CMM)
Bartky's use of the docile bodies and Panopticon theses is problematic for at least two reasons. First, it is not
clear why Bartky argues that more subtle and insidious forms of domination characterize the modern
era or what she calls the "modernization of patriarchal power." In fact, current examples abound of
overt control of women's choices and bodies, like lack of accessible abortions and frighteningly high
rates of rape and assault. This is not to suggest that glaring barriers to women's freedom should preclude reflection on less
tangible obstacles but, rather, to point out the danger of taking up the latter in isolation from a broader discussion of women's social, economic, and political subordination. Furthermore, the way Bartky conceives of
women's interaction with their bodies seems needlessly reductionist. Women's choices and differ- ences are
lost altogether in Bartky's description of the feminine body and its attendant practices: This description may
draw attention to the pernicious effects of cultural standards of attractiveness, but it blocks meaningful
discussion of how women feel about their bodies, their appearance, and social norms. It obscures the
complex ways in which gender is constructed, and the fact that differences among women-age, race, culture,
sexual orientation, and class-translate into myriad variations in responses to ideals of femininity and their
attendant practices Bartky's use of the docile bodies thesis has the effect of diminishing and delimiting
women's subjectivity, at times treating women as robotic receptacles of culture rather than as active
agents who are both constituted by, and reflective of, their social and cul- tural contexts. Susan Bordo,
in "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity," also takes up Foucault's docile bodies thesis to show
the ways in which women's bodies serve aa locus for the social construction of femininity. Bordo argues
that anorexia nervosa and bulimia are located on a contin-uum with feminine normalizing phenomena such as
the use of makeup, fashion, and dieting, all of which contribute to the construction of do- cile, feminine
bodies. Thus, "anorexia begins, emerges out of... con- ventional feminine practice"14; the docile feminine
body becomes, in the case of the anorectic, the ultimate expression of the self-disciplining fe- male caught up
in an insane culture.
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The state’s control over reproductive rights lead to docile bodies which makes women
vessels for the creation of children.
Deveaux, Ph.D., 1992
(Monique, “Feminism and Empowerment: A critical Reading of Focoult”, 1992, accessed 7-3-09, NG)
just So Many Docile Bodies? Feminism and Panopticonism. The transition from sovereign, or monarchical,
power to modem regulatory power comprised of disciplinary regimes, systems of surveillance, and
normalizing tactics provides the backdrop to Foucault’s early, "docile bodies" thesis. Modem power
requires "minimum expenditure for the maximum return," and its central organizing principle is that of
discipline} Aspects of sovereign power are carried over into the modern period but function as ruses,
disguising and legitimating the emerging discourse of disciplinary power. This new regime of control is
minimalist in its approach (in the sense of lesser expenditures of force and linance) but more far- reaching
and localized in its effect on bodies. For Foucault, sex is the pivotal factor in the proliferation of mech
nisms of discipline and normalization; it is also at the center of a system of "dividing practices" that
separate off the insane, the delinquent, the hysteric, and the homosexual. As the sovereign’s rights over
the life and death of subjects began to shift in the seventeenth century, two axes or poles emblematic of the
modern power paradigm evolved. They were the "anatomo·politics of the human body,” which emphasizes a
disciplined, useful body (hence, "docile bodies”); and the model Foucault calls the “bio·politics of the
population," in which the state’s attention turns to the reproductive capacities of bodies, and to health,
birth, and mortal- ity.’ The prime focus of the lirst axis of power is thus "the body and its forces, their utility
and their docility, their distribution and their submission. "° The body becomes a "political feld," inscribed
and consti- tuted by power relations. the transition from sovereign authority to modem, disciplinary
forms of power is seen to parallel the shift from more overt manifestations of the oppression of women
to more insidious forms of control. This new method is disciplinary in nature and more subtle in its
exercise; it involves women in the enterprise of surveillance.
The idea that women are supposed to have children and this is their gender role is a way to
control the female population
Butler, Ph.D., 1992(Judith, “Sexual Inversions”
http://books.google.com/books?id=210x7_AwML8C&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq="Feminism+and+Empowerment:+A+critical+reading+of+Fo
ucault"&source=bl&ots=OKF5OY0U6U&sig=RioXJqrQdVqX2hvzyIrd1H0bpbc&hl=en&ei=7jZOStHCHIXysQOErsiqDQ&sa=X&oi=book_re
sult&ct=result&resnum=3, 1992, accessed 7-3-09)
Some might say that the scandal of the first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality consists in the claim
that we did not always have a sex. What can such a notion mean? Foucault proposes that there was a
decisive historical break between a sociopolitical regime in which sex existed as an attribute, an
activity, a dimension of human life, and a more recent regime in which sex became established as an
identity. This particularly modern scandal suggests that for the first time sex is not a contingent or arbitrary
feature of identity but, rather, that there can be no identity without sex and that it is precisely through
being sexed that we become intelligible as humans. So it is not exactly right to claim we did not always
have a sex. Perhaps the historical scandal is that we were always our sex, that sex did not always have the
power to characterize Juridical laws are transformed into instances of productive power, in which
power effectively generates objects to control, in which power elaborates all sorts of objects and identities
that guarantee the augmentation of regulatory scientific regimes} The category of "sex” is constructed as
an "object" of study and control, which assists in the elaboration and justification of productive power
regimes. lt is as if once the threat of death is overcome, power turns its idle attention to the construction of
objects to control. Or, rather, power exerts and articulates its control through the formation and
proliferation of objects that concern the continuation of life. (Later I shall briefly examine the way in
which the term “power" operates in Foucault’s text, its susceptibility to personification and the interrelations
of the juridical and productive modalities.
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The state’s control over reproductive rights lead to docile bodies which makes women
vessels for the creation of children.
Deveaux, Ph.D., 1992
(Monique, “Feminism and Empowerment: A critical Reading of Focoult”, 1992, accessed 7-3-09, NG)
just So Many Docile Bodies? Feminism and Panopticonism. The transition from sovereign, or monarchical,
power to modem regulatory power comprised of disciplinary regimes, systems of surveillance, and
normalizing tactics provides the backdrop to Foucault’s early, "docile bodies" thesis. Modem power
requires "minimum expenditure for the maximum return," and its central organizing principle is that of
discipline} Aspects of sovereign power are carried over into the modern period but function as ruses,
disguising and legitimating the emerging discourse of disciplinary power. This new regime of control is
minimalist in its approach (in the sense of lesser expenditures of force and linance) but more far- reaching
and localized in its effect on bodies. For Foucault, sex is the pivotal factor in the proliferation of mech
nisms of discipline and normalization; it is also at the center of a system of "dividing practices" that
separate off the insane, the delinquent, the hysteric, and the homosexual. As the sovereign’s rights over
the life and death of subjects began to shift in the seventeenth century, two axes or poles emblematic of the
modern power paradigm evolved. They were the "anatomo·politics of the human body,” which emphasizes a
disciplined, useful body (hence, "docile bodies”); and the model Foucault calls the “bio·politics of the
population," in which the state’s attention turns to the reproductive capacities of bodies, and to health,
birth, and mortal- ity.’ The prime focus of the lirst axis of power is thus "the body and its forces, their utility
and their docility, their distribution and their submission. "° The body becomes a "political feld," inscribed
and consti- tuted by power relations. the transition from sovereign authority to modem, disciplinary
forms of power is seen to parallel the shift from more overt manifestations of the oppression of women
to more insidious forms of control. This new method is disciplinary in nature and more subtle in its
exercise; it involves women in the enterprise of surveillance.
The expression of human biopower will destroy the planet.
Bernauer, philosophy professor, Boston College, 1990
(James, MICHAEL FOUCAULT'S FORCE OF FLIGHT: TOWARD AN ETHICS OF THOUGHT, pp. 141-2,
CMM)
This capacity of power to conceal itself cannot cloak the tragedy of the implications contained in
Foucault's examination of its functioning. While liberals have fought to extend rights and Marxists have
denounced the injustices of capitalism, a political technology, acting in the interests of a better administration
of life, has produced a politics that places man's "existence as a living being in question." The very period
that proclaimed pride in having overthrown the tyranny of monarchy, that engaged in an endless
clamor for reform, that is confident in the virtues of its humanistic faith -- this period's politics created
a landscape dominated by history's bloodiest wars. What comparison is possible between a sovereign's
authority to take a life and a power that, in the interest of protecting a society's quality of life, can
plan, as well as develop the means for its implementation, a policy of mutually assured destruction?
Such a policy is neither an aberration of the fundamental principles of modern politics nor an
abandonment of our age's humanism in favor of a more primitive right to kill; it is but the other side
of a power that is "situated and exercised at the level of life, the species the race, and the large-scale
phenomena of population. The bio-political project of administering and optimizing life closes its circle
with the production of the Bomb. "The atomic situation is now at the end point of this process: the
power to expose a whole population to death is the underside of a power to guarantee and individuals
continued existence. " The solace that might have been expected from being able to gaze at scaffolds empty
of the victims of a tyrant's vengeance has been stolen form us by the noose that has tightened around each of
our own necks.
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Contention Three: Heteronormativity
“Pro-life” dialogue conceptualizing the Child idealizes a commitment for sustaining the
future at all costs
Lee Edelman. No Future: Queer Theory and Death Drive. 2004 pp. 19-22 PMK
The Child, in the historical epoch of our current epistemological regime, is the figure for this compulsory
investment in the misrecognition of figure. It takes its place on the social stage like every adorable Annie
gathering her limitless funds of pluck to "stick out [her] chin/ And grin/ And say: 'Tomorrow!/
Tomorrow!/1 love ya/ Tomorrow/ You're always/ A day/ Away.' " 2 0 And lo and behold, as viewed
through the prism of the tears that it always calls forth, the figure of this Child seems to shimmer with the
iridescent promise of Noah's rainbow, serving like the rainbow as the pledge of a covenant that shields us
against the persistent threat of apocalypse now—or later. Recall, for example, the end of Jonathan
Demme's Philadelphia (1993), his filmic act of contrition for the homophobia some attributed to The
Silence of the lambs (1991}. After Andrew Beckett (a man for all seasons, as portrayed by the saintly Tom
Hanks), last seen on his deathbed in an oxygen mask that seems to allude to, or trope on, Hannibal Lecter's
more memorable muzzle (see figures 1 and 2), has shuffled off this mortal coil to stand, as we are led to
suppose, before a higher law, we find ourselves in, if not at, his wake surveying a room in his family home,
now crowded with children and pregnant women whose reassuringly bulging bellies (see figure 3) displace
the bulging basket (unseen) of the Hiv-positive gay man (unseen) from whom, the filmic text suggests, in a
cinema {unlike the one in which we sit watching Philadelphia) not phobic about graphic representations of
male-male sexual acts, Saint Thomas, a.k.a. Beckett, contracted the virus that cosegerous "lifestyles" on
the Internet; the Child who might choose a provocative book from the shelves of the public library; the
Child, in short, who might find an enjoyment that would nullify the figural value, itself imposed by adult
desire, of the Child as unmarked by the adult's adulterating implication in desire itself; the Child, that is,
made to image, for the satisfaction of adults, an Imaginary fullness that's considered to want, and therefore
to want for, nothing. As Lauren Berlant argues forcefully at the outset of The Queen of America Goes to
Washington City, "a nation made for adult citizens has been replaced by one imagined for fetuses and
children."2 2 On every side, our enjoyment of liberty is eclipsed by the lengthening shadow of a Child
whose freedom to develop undisturbed by encounters, or even by the threat of potential encounters, with an
"otherness" of which its parents, its church, or the state do not approve, uncompromised by any possible
access to what is painted as alien desire, terroristically holds us all in check and determines that political
discourse conform to the logic of a narrative wherein history unfolds as the future envisioned for a Child
who must never grow up. Not for nothing, after all, does the historical construction of the homosexual as
distinctive social type overlap with the appearance of such literary creations as Tiny Tim, David Balfour,
and Peter Pan, who enact, in an imperative most evident today in the uncannily intimate connection
between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, a Symbolic resistance to the unmarried men (Scrooge, Uncle
Ebenezer, Captain Hook) who embody, as Voldemort's name makes clear, a wish, a will, or a drive toward
death that entails the destruction of the Child. That Child, immured in an innocence seen as continuously
under seige, condenses a fantasy of vulnerability to the queerness of queer sexualities precisely insofar as
that Child enshrines, in its form as sublimation, the very value for which queerness regularly finds itself
condemned: an insistence on sameness that intends to restore an Imaginary past. The Child, that is, marks
the fetishistic fixation of heteronormativity: an erotically charged investment in the rigid sameness of
identity that is central to the compulsory narrative of reproductive futurism. And so, as the radical right
maintains, the battle against queers is a life-and-death struggle for the future of a Child whose ruin is
pursued by feminists, queers, and those who support the legal availability of abortion. Indeed, as the Army
of God made clear in the bombmaking guide it produced for the assistance of its militantly "pro-life"
members, its purpose was wholly congruent with the logic of reproductive futurism: to "disrupt and
ultimately destroy Satan's power to kill our children, God's children.
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Homosexuality is Pro-lifer’s biggest threat towards procuring a future with the Child
Lee Edelman. No Future: Queer Theory and Death Drive. 2004 pp. 19-22 PMK
The Child, in the historical epoch of our current epistemological regime, is the figure for this compulsory
investment in the misrecognition of figure. It takes its place on the social stage like every adorable Annie
gathering her limitless funds of pluck to "stick out [her] chin/ And grin/ And say: 'Tomorrow!/ Tomorrow!/1
love ya/ Tomorrow/ You're always/ A day/ Away.' " 2 0 And lo and behold, as viewed through the prism of
the tears that it always calls forth, the figure of this Child seems to shimmer with the iridescent promise of
Noah's rainbow, serving like the rainbow as the pledge of a covenant that shields us against the persistent
threat of apocalypse now—or later. Recall, for example, the end of Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (1993),
his filmic act of contrition for the homophobia some attributed to The Silence of the lambs (1991}. After
Andrew Beckett (a man for all seasons, as portrayed by the saintly Tom Hanks), last seen on his deathbed in
an oxygen mask that seems to allude to, or trope on, Hannibal Lecter's more memorable muzzle (see figures
1 and 2), has shuffled off this mortal coil to stand, as we are led to suppose, before a higher law, we find
ourselves in, if not at, his wake surveying a room in his family home, now crowded with children and
pregnant women whose reassuringly bulging bellies (see figure 3) displace the bulging basket (unseen) of
the Hiv-positive gay man (unseen) from whom, the filmic text suggests, in a cinema {unlike the one in
which we sit watching Philadelphia) not phobic about graphic representations of male-male sexual acts,
Saint Thomas, a.k.a. Beckett, contracted the virus that cosegerous "lifestyles" on the Internet; the Child who
might choose a provocative book from the shelves of the public library; the Child, in short, who might find
an enjoyment that would nullify the figural value, itself imposed by adult desire, of the Child as unmarked
by the adult's adulterating implication in desire itself; the Child, that is, made to image, for the satisfaction
of adults, an Imaginary fullness that's considered to want, and therefore to want for, nothing. As Lauren
Berlant argues forcefully at the outset of The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, "a nation made
for adult citizens has been replaced by one imagined for fetuses and children."2 2 On every side, our
enjoyment of liberty is eclipsed by the lengthening shadow of a Child whose freedom to develop
undisturbed by encounters, or even by the threat of potential encounters, with an "otherness" of which its
parents, its church, or the state do not approve, uncompromised by any possible access to what is painted as
alien desire, terroristically holds us all in check and determines that political discourse conform to the logic
of a narrative wherein history unfolds as the future envisioned for a Child who must never grow up. Not for
nothing, after all, does the historical construction of the homosexual as distinctive social type overlap with
the appearance of such literary creations as Tiny Tim, David Balfour, and Peter Pan, who enact, in an
imperative most evident today in the uncannily intimate connection between Harry Potter and Lord
Voldemort, a Symbolic resistance to the unmarried men (Scrooge, Uncle Ebenezer, Captain Hook) who
embody, as Voldemort's name makes clear, a wish, a will, or a drive toward death that entails the
destruction of the Child. That Child, immured in an innocence seen as continuously under seige, condenses
a fantasy of vulnerability to the queerness of queer sexualities precisely insofar as that Child enshrines, in its
form as sublimation, the very value for which queerness regularly finds itself condemned: an insistence on
sameness that intends to restore an Imaginary past. The Child, that is, marks the fetishistic fixation of
heteronormativity: an erotically charged investment in the rigid sameness of identity that is central to the
compulsory narrative of reproductive futurism. And so, as the radical right maintains, the battle against
queers is a life-and-death struggle for the future of a Child whose ruin is pursued by feminists, queers, and
those who support the legal availability of abortion. Indeed, as the Army of God made clear in the
bombmaking guide it produced for the assistance of its militantly "pro-life" members, its purpose was
wholly congruent with the logic of reproductive futurism: to "disrupt and ultimately destroy Satan's power
to kill our children, God's children.
Deconstructin the notion of the Child cedes a departure from fallacious discourse and prolife fanaticism
Lee Edelman. No Future: Queer Theory and Death Drive. 2004 pp. 2-13, 10-12 PMK
In its coercive universalization, however, the image of the Child, not to be confused with the lived
experiences of any historical children, serves to regulate political discourse—to prescribe what will
count as political discourse—by compelling such discourse to accede in advance to the reality of a
collective future whose figurative status we are never permitted to acknowledge or address. From
Delacroix's iconic image of Liberty leading us into a brave new world of revolutionary possibility—her
bare breast making each spectator the unweaned Child to whom it's held out while the boy to her left,
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reproducing her posture, affirms the absolute logic of reproduction itself—to the revolutionary waif in
the logo that miniaturizes the "politics" of Its Mis (summed up in its anthem to futurism, the
"inspirational" "One Day More"), we are no more able to conceive of a politics without a fantasy of the
future than we are able to conceive of a future without the figure of the Child. That figural Child alone
embodies the citizen as an ideal, entitled to claim full rights to its future share in the nation's good,
though always at the cost of limiting the rights "real" citizens are allowed. For the social order exists to
preserve for this universalized subject, this fantasmatic Child, a notional freedom more highly valued
than the actuality of freedom itself, which might, after all, put at risk the Child to whom such a freedom
falls due. Hence, whatever refuses this mandate by which our political institutions compel the
collective reproduction of the Child must appear as a threat not only to the organization of a given
social order but also, and far more ominously, to social order as such, insofar as it threatens the logic of
futurism on which meaning always depends. So, for example, when P. D. James, in her novel The
Children of Men, imagines a future in which the human race has suffered a seemingly absolute loss of
the capacity to reproduce, her narrator, Theodore Faron, not only attributes this reversal of biological
fortune to the putative crisis of sexual values in late twentieth-century democracies—"Pornography and
sexual violence on film, on television, in books, in life had increased and became more explicit but less
and less in the West we made love and bred children," he declares—but also gives voice to the
ideological truism that governs our investment in the Child as the obligatory token of futurity:
"Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being
dead yet live," he later observes, "all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more
than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruins."12 While this allusion to Eliot's "The
Waste Land" may recall another of its well-known lines, one for which we apparently have Eliot's wife,
Vivian, to thank—"What you get married for if you don't want children?" —it also brings out the
function of the child as the prop of the secular theology on which our social reality rests: the secular
theology that shapes at once the meaning of our collective narratives and our collective narratives of
meaning. Charged, after all, with the task of assuring "that we being dead yet live," the Child, as if by
nature (more precisely, as the promise of a natural transcendence of the limits of nature itself), exudes
the very pathos from which rhe narrator of The Children of Men recoils when he comes upon it in non
reproductive "pleasures of the mind and senses." For the "pathetic" quality he projectively locates in
nongenerative sexual enjoyment—enjoyment that he views in the absence of futurity as empty,
substitutive, pathological—exposes the fetishistic figurations of the Child that the narrator pits against
it as legible in terms identical to those for which enjoyment without "hope of posterity" is peremptorily
dismissed: legible, that is, as nothing more than "pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our
ruins." How better to characterize the narrative project of The Children of Men itself, which ends, as
anyone not born yesterday surely expects from the start, with the renewal of our barren and dying race
through the miracle of birth? After all, as Walter Wangerin Jr., reviewing the book for the Neu? York
Times, approvingly noted in a sentence delicately poised between description and performance of the
novel's pro-procreative ideology; "If there is a baby, there is a future, there is redemption."1 3 If,
however, there is no baby and, in consequence, no_future, then the blame must fall on the fatal lure of
sterile, narcissistic enjoyments understood as inherently destructive of meaning and therefore as
responsible for the undoing of social organization, collective reality, and, inevitably, life itself.
Continued homophobia creates a stigmatized hierarchy that dehumanizes homosexuals
Herek, Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, 2004
Gregory M., Sexuality Research and Social Policy, Beyond “Homophobia”: Thinking About Sexual Prejudice
and Stigma in the Twenty-First Century, April 2004
http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/pdf/10.1525/srsp.2004.1.2.6?cookieSet=1, Accessed 7-8-09, AMG
Previous authors have used sexual stigma (Plummer, 1975) and erotic stigma (Rubin, 1984) as labels for the
stigma attached to male homosexuality (Plummer) and an array of sexual behaviors to which society accords
low status, including sex that is nonprocreative, promiscuous, commercial, and public (Rubin). Similarly, in
the present article sexual stigma refers to the shared knowledge of society’s negative regard for any
nonheterosexual behavior, identity, relationship, or community. The ultimate consequence of sexual stigma
is a power differential between heterosexuals and nonheterosexuals. It expresses and perpetuates a set
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of hierarchical relations within society. In that hierarchy of power and status, homosexuality is
devalued and considered inferior to heterosexuality. Homosexual people, their relationships, and their
communities are all considered sick, immoral, criminal or, at best, less than optimal in comparison to
that which is heterosexual.
Heterosexism justifies dehumanization and violence as Anti-Semitism did with the Jews in
Nazi Germany
Rozdzial, co-chair of the National Council of NOMAS, 2000
Moshe, NOMAS, Anti-Semitism and Heterosexism: Common Constructs of Oppression, Winter 2000,
http://www.nomas.org/node/139, Accessed 7-8-09, AMG
Similarly, religious attacks on homosexuals, defended under biblical precedent, echo the vilest forms of
anti-Semitism. The slander of "sodomites” has replaced "Christ-killers" in the vocabulary of hatred
and heaven's retribution against a minority community has, once again, become the excuse to justify
victimizing the victim. Even the promise of "salvation" through "conversion" (Jews to Christianity;
homosexuals to heterosexuality) reflects the common perception that both minorities are "outcast in
the sight of G-d." And the stereotype of stubborn adherence to a despised lifestyle even in the shadow of
salvation is another common accusatory theme. After all, how can the "other" want to be who he is and
stubbornly hold on to a life of deprivation when the doors are, figuratively, opened to a life of safety,
privilege, and saving grace? To look at the similar language of marginalization of these two groups
without noticing the historical connection would mean yielding to ignorance. Common weapons of
oppression include the emasculation of Jews and stereotyping of homosexuals to perpetuate an excuse
for dehumanization and a perception of facile targeting for violence. Thus, Jewish men are labeled
Hymies, nerds, weaklings, just as gay men are the sissies and pansies - to mention only a few of the
epithets hurled at them. Jewish women and lesbians are, respectively, bitches and princesses, or butches
and dykes. The modern propaganda of hatred that equates AIDS to homosexuality echoes Hitler's
racial anti-Semitism that accused the Jews of spreading disease, contagion and contamination and are
reminders of past genocide and the excuses for a present violence. The recent push to find a biological
origin for homosexuality has a frightening parallel to the Nazi's eugenics response to the "Jewish
problem."
Contention Four: Solvency
Repealing the Hyde Amendment takes the first step in creating true equality in health care.
National Network of Abortion Funds 09
Jan 16, “Plea for End to the Hyde Amendment”, http://cfidc.wordpress.com/2009/01/, accessed 7/5/09, KLM
For more than thirty years, the Hyde Amendment and other funding restrictions have affected the
poorest and most vulnerable of low-income Americans, with a disproportionate impact on women of
color and immigrant women. The Hyde Amendment denies abortion access to the seven million women of
reproductive age who are currently enrolled in Medicaid. These funding restrictions are the most
detrimental of all attacks on safe, legal abortion care, and represent a clear violation of low-income
women’s human rights. In addition, abortion funding restrictions marginalize abortion care and
disregard the fact that it is an integral part of the continuum of women’s reproductive health care. By
striking funding restrictions, President Obama can place abortion back in the context of health care,
thereby setting a new tone and signaling to Congress his commitment to comprehensive women’s
health care. Further, this early commitment will bolster the efforts of our diverse and growing grassroots
advocacy campaign as we continue educating the public and Members of Congress about the urgent need for
a full repeal of these restrictions. There is precedent for a President who supports reproductive freedom
to take this action, and we look forward to working with and supporting President Obama as he takes this
step. 1 Today, more than ever, low-income women in the United States must have access to the resources that
allow them to determine the size and timing of their families. Many of these women are already balancing the
demands of jobs, children, school, diminishing paychecks, and the disproportionate burden of an economic
downturn.
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The Hyde Amendment is the main restriction to abortion access. Striking it down would
protect the rights and dignity of indigent womyn in the US.
Northup, President Center for Reproductive Rights, 09
(Nancy, 1-22-09, “On this 2009 anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the Center for
Reproductive Rights calls on President Barack Obama to strike the Hyde Amendment which bans funding for
medically necessary abortion from his proposed budget and support Congressional repeal of these funding
restrictions.”, http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?cat=25, accessed 7/5/09, KLM)
For thirty-six years, women in this country have had the right to obtain safe, legal abortion. But since 1977
when Hyde was first enacted, low-income women have been deprived of that right by anti-choice
politicians intent on doing away with a woman’s access to abortion altogether. The Hyde Amendment
prohibits federal funds from being used to pay for abortion except under extremely limited circumstances. As
a result, a woman who relies on Medicaid cannot get an abortion in most circumstances—even if her health is
jeopardized by her pregnancy—unless she is able to cover the entire cost out-of-pocket. Similar restrictions
have been imposed on women who rely on the health benefits provided to federal employees, military
personnel and their dependents, women served by the Indian Health Service, Peace Corps volunteers,
Medicare enrollees, women in federal prisons, and low-income women in the District of Columbia. These
restrictions patently discriminate against women. Abortion is a health service only used by women, and it
is the only medically necessary service not covered by Medicaid for instance. According to the
Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, as many as 35% of women who are eligible for the
program and seeking an abortion are prevented from making the personal decision about their own lives and
forced to carry their pregnancies to term. On the other hand, virtually all other health services are covered.
Since Medicaid is the primary provider of reproductive healthcare for low-income minority communities,
Hyde also disproportionately affects women of color. Many of these women are already struggling with the
challenges of supporting a family on limited resources and now, the ever-growing burden of the economic
recession. Under Hyde, a poor woman must often delay obtaining a medically necessary abortion while she
tries to raise the funds. The longer she waits, the more it costs and the greater the risks to her health.
President Barack Obama’s leadership provides a tremendous opportunity for the U.S. government to
stop excluding women’s specific healthcare needs from federal health programs based on political
preferences and join the 17 states across the country that pay for poor women’s medically necessary
abortions. As the California Supreme Court ruled in 1981, “There is no greater power than the power of
the purse. If the government can use it to nullify constitutional rights, by conditioning benefits only
upon the sacrifice of such rights, the Bill of Rights could eventually become a yellowing scrap of paper.
Once the state furnishes medical care to poor women in general, it cannot withdraw part of that care solely
because a woman exercises her constitutional right to choose an abortion.” Roe v. Wade recognized that a
woman’s ability to make reproductive decisions essential to her life and health. On the day commemorating
this landmark case, the Center for Reproductive Rights urges the new president to protect the dignity and
health of all women by striking restrictions on public funding for medically necessary abortions.
Congressional action demonstrates our commitment to reproductive freedom as a human
rights leader
Center for Reproductive Rights, 8
(“Reproductive Rights: Federal Policy Agenda – Advancing What’s Right for Women and the Nation,” Center for
Reproductive Rights, Fall 2008, CMM)
The United States has been a world leader with a long and proud history of championing equality and human
rights. However, we now face a tipping point in the struggle to recognize and protect reproductive rights.
Decades of hard-won progress that improved women’s reproductive heath care and autonomy have been
eroded. These losses are as alarming as they are widespread: state and federal court decisions have
undermined the protections established by Roe v. Wade; funding for basic reproductive health care is
inadequate to serve those in need; and maternal mortality rates among women of color remain
shamefully high. Moreover, restrictions that the United States places on foreign assistance aimed at
improving reproductive health worldwide, based on opposition to abortion and support for ineffective
abstinence programs, hamper progress and place this country out of step with other major donors. These
injustices demand a bold agenda for change, ensuring that women’s reproductive rights are
understood and protected by law- and policy-makers. We can no longer rely on the courts to protect
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reproductive rights or to meet internationally recognized standards regarding access to reproductive
health care. It is time for Congress and the President to demonstrate their commitment to women’s
health and self-determination, and to acknowledge this nation’s obligations to respect reproductive
rights as human rights.
The federal government funding is the only way to keep Medicaid alive – state budget cuts
will kill Medicaid programs in the long run.
Families USA, non-profit organization supporting healthcare, 08
(FamiliesUSA.org, 7-2008, http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/state-budget-cuts-2008.pdf, accessed 7-1-2009,
AEL)
The need for federal fiscal relief for states is clear: A number of states have already begun cutting their
Medicaid budgets or are proposing Medicaid cuts in order to fill budget gaps in both the current and the next
fiscal year. The Medicaid cuts discussed in the states listed below will greatly affect the health and wellbeing of thousands of Americans, and unfortunately, it is likely that the worst is yet to come. A few of these
states had proposed even deeper Medicaid cuts, but they were able to find revenue to fill in some of their budget
gaps. There were also a number of states that we did not include in this report that proposed Medicaid cuts that
were never enacted. However, the effects of a recession are generally felt over a number years even after
the economy begins to bounce back. Thus, regardless of whether states have been or will be able to stave
off or minimize proposed cuts this year, they will most certainly be faced with these difficult decisions
again next year—unless the federal government acts to provide relief.
And, there is a spillover. The election of Obama presents a unique opportunity to present
the US as a leader in reproductive justice policy.
Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, 09
(Nancy, 1-1-09, “How to Restore America's Position as a Leader on Reproductive Rights”,
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/115080/how_to_restore_america's_position_as_a_leader_on_reproducti
ve_rights/ accessed 7-3-09, KLM)
With the election of Barack Obama, women around the world can heave a collective sigh of relief and
look forward to an end to the Bush administration's relentless assault on women's reproductive health
and rights. It's been a very long and destructive eight years. While the rest of the world has been moving
forward in a growing recognition of reproductive rights as human rights, the United States has moved
backwards. In the past two years, the United States Supreme Court -- with two new Bush justices -issued Gonzales v. Carhart , a decision that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called "alarming," which she said
represented antiquated and rejected notions of a woman's place in the family. At the same time, the
Constitutional Court in Colombia said that protecting reproductive rights is a direct path to promoting the
dignity of all human beings. We need to get back on that direct path. Under the leadership of Presidentelect Obama, the United States has the opportunity to again take the world stage as a leader in
promoting women's reproductive health, equality and human rights. Make no mistake, our country's
new vision for reproductive rights and health needs to go further than simply undoing the policies of the
previous administration. The Obama administration must work toward a nation and world in which all
women are free to decide whether and when to have children, where all women have access to quality
reproductive health care, where all women can exercise their choices without coercion or
discrimination, and where all women can participate with full dignity as equal members of society.
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Topicality – Social Services
Abortion is a social service
Kleinbach, PhD. In Sociology and Professor at Philadelphia University, 83
(Ross, Summer 1983, Abortion: Law, Public Services and Decision,
http://faculty.philau.edu/kleinbachr/abortion.htm) KLM
While I have spoken of law in terms of the prohibition of abortion, I see social service programs (which
are also established by law) in terms of their helping function. Community services for individuals in
need are developing in western liberal capitalist societies as the means for guaranteeing every
individual in society at least minimal access to those goods and services necessary for his/her human
development and for living a reasonably comfortable life. Public services as a concept and policy
accepts social stratification, but also accepts the liberal position that, among other things, to be human
requires that a person effectively participate in decisions concerning his/her life. To effectively
participate in decisions requires at least (a) absence of legal restraints, (b) access to all relevant
information, and (c) access to material resources necessary to actualize the decisions. Without the
material resources one can have only the idea of decisions and not actual decisions. Access to
necessary material resources as a right has been explicitly denied by the U.S. Legislature and U.S.
Supreme Court in the Hyde Amendment and the Maher (1977) and McRae (1980) decisions. What these
decisions in effect say is that (a) although government may not place obstacles in the path of a woman's
exercise of her freedom of choice, it need not remove those not of its own creation, i.e., poverty and (b) the
constitution does not confer entitlement to such funds as may be necessary to realize all the advantages of the
freedom of choice.3
Medicaid a federally funded social service
New York State Commission on Public Integrity, 94
(New York State Ethics Commission, 10/26/94, “New York State Ethics Commission,”6/30/09,
http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/edocs/ethics/94-18.htm , JM)
Medicaid is a social service program funded with local, state and federal money. DSS is
authorized by [statute] to be the single DSS responsible for administering the Medicaid program in New
York State and to be the State representative with the federal Department of Health and Human Services
("HHS"). It is authorized to promulgate such regulations as may be necessary to implement Medicaid in New
York. Its responsibilities include submitting to HHS, on a quarterly basis, estimates of Medicaid
expenditures, adjustments thereto for the previous quarter's actual expenditures and in-detail audits of prior
quarterly statements.
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Topicality – Persons Living in Poverty (1/2)
Women covered by Medicaid have an average income of 65% of the poverty line.
Boonstra, Senior Public Policy Associate at the Guttmacher Institute, 2007
(Heather D. Guttmacher Policy Review, “The Heart of the Matter: Public Funding of Abortion for Poor Women in
the United States,” Winter, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/10/1/gpr100112.pdf, 7/1/09, GMK)
Medicaid enrollees are the poorest of poor Americans. For a woman to qualify, she must have an
income below the very low eligibility ceiling set by her state. State income eligibility ceilings range as
low as 18% of the federal poverty level in Arkansas and average 65% of poverty. That average
translates to an annual income of $11,160, or roughly $930 per month for a family of three. Nearly four in 10
poor women of reproductive age are covered under Medicaid (related article, page 24).
While some states fund abortions for few people above the income requirements, it is rare
and the majority of funding is for impoverished persons.
Kaiser , Operator of the Current Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005
(Henry J, "The Medicaid Program at a Glance," Key Facts (January 2005), CMM).
Authorized in 1965, Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that provides the nation's low-income
population with basic health and long-term care coverage. Medicaid is the largest health care program
in the United States, and covers more than 50 million people.1 Under Medicaid states receive federal
matching funds to provide health care for low-income individuals.Medicaid coverage is critical to the
health care of millions of women. More than 16 million women receive their basic health and long-term
coverage through Medicaid.2 In 2003, 3 In 2003, 11.5% of women of reproductive age were covered by
Medicaid. Currently, all state Medicaid programs must cover pregnant women who meet the federal
income requirements. Many states have elected to cover women with incomes that are higher than the
federal requirements. However, this coverage is not without limits, and abortion services are among
the provisions that are most stringently regulated. In September 1993, Congress rewrote the provision
to include Medicaid funding for abortions in cases where the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.
The present version of the Hyde Amendment requires coverage of abortion in cases of rape, incest, and life
endangerment.
Medicaid is targeted at persons living under the federal poverty level.
Kaminsky, Attorney for the Conjecture Cooproration for Governmental Services, 2009
(A. “What is Medicaid”, AD:7-6-9, http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-medicaid.htm)
Ensuring that the poor receive quality health care has long been a priority in the United States. Medicaid is
one program designed by the federal government to meet this need. Medicaid provides medical care to the
poor, to children and to pregnant women living under the federal poverty level. It is funded jointly by
the states and the federal government.
Medicaid eligibility varies on state-to-state bases, but coverage is universal.
ConsesusProject, Colaboration of State Health Services and Public Information Distribution, 2009
(An Explanation of Federal Medicaid and Disability Program Rules1, Appendix C, AD:7-6-9,
http://consensusproject.org/downloads/AppendixC.pdf)
Medicaid is a joint federal-state program. To qualify, a person must fall into one of several eligibility
categories. Once eligible, the individual is covered by a package of services de- fined by the state under
broad federal requirements. Federal law requires some services to be available, such as physician
services and general hospital care. Others are offered at state option-among them, various communitybased mental health clinic and rehabilitative services. As a result, Medicaid cover- age varies from
state to state. However, all states cover a significant array of mental health services for people with
severe mental illnesses.
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Topicality – Persons Living in Poverty (2/2)
Medicaid is only available to low-income individuals
Dept. of Health and Human Services, Exactly What it Sounds Like, 2006
(“Medicare and Medicaid Overview”, AD: 7-6-9, http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MedicaidGenInfo/, CMM)
Medicaid is available only to certain low-income individuals and families who fit into an eligibility
group that is recognized by federal and state law. Medicaid does not pay money to you; instead, it
sends payments directly to your health care providers.
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Inherency – Hyde Amendment Now (1/2)
Since 1976, the Hyde Amendment has been ratified to limit abortion coverage in
MEDICAID.
Cook and Dickens, Professors in the Faculty of Law, Medicine, and the Joint Centre for
Bioethics at the University of Toronto, 08
(Rebecca and Bernard, “Human Rights Dynamics of Abortion Law Reform”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25 No.
1, March 13, 2008, http://www.law.utoronto.ca/documents/reprohealth/PUB-HumanRightsDynamics.pdf, accessed
6-29-09, KLM)
In countries with liberal laws, courts are beginning to address the lack of provision of abortion services
particularly when they are necessary for therapeutic reasons. In the United States, for instance, since the
“Hyde Amendment” of 1976, 114 Congress has passed legislation every year exclud- ing abortion from
health care funding for low-income women, except in limited cases. Federal funding of abortion is
limited to instances where the woman’s life is at stake or where pregnancy is the result of rape or
incest. 115
The Hyde Amendment is still in place and blocks access to abortions for many womyn.
Susan, CRNP, Ph.D, 06
(Schewel, Susan “The Hyde Amendment’s Prohibition of Federal Funds for Abortion—30 Years is Enough!” The
Women’s Health Activitst. September/October 2006. pp. 1-5., accessed 6-30-09, KLM)
When the Hyde ban was implemented, the pro-choice movement immediately challenged this
inequitable measure in the courts. In 1980, the Supreme Court found the Hyde Amendment to be
constitutional. Since its inception, both Congress and the courts have fluctuated about including exceptions
to the Medicaid coverage ban. Presently, federal Medicaid funds can be used in cases where the
pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or if the pregnancy endangers the woman’s life. Yet states
have set up myriad bureaucratic hurdles that make it difficult for individual women—often already
traumatized by the circumstances of their pregnancy—to take advantage of these exceptions.
The Hyde amendment denies women living in poverty access to an abortion.
NWLC, Advancement Center for Women, 2007
(National Women’s Law Center, October 2007,
http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/Public%20Funding%20factsheet%2010%2007.pdf, 06-29-09, NG)
In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion for all women, including poor women. Poor women were able to
access abortions funded by Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that provides low-income individuals
with basic healthcare services. Just three years after Roe, however, Congress passed a prohibition on the
use of federal funds for abortion services in Medicaid. The prohibition – known as the Hyde
Amendment – became effective in 1977 and has been reauthorized every year by Congress.1 Although
the language has changed over the years, the Hyde Amendment currently prohibits states from using federal
Medicaid funds for abortions unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or the woman’s life is in
danger.2 Before the Hyde Amendment, Medicaid paid for one-third of all abortions in the U.S.; today it
pays for less than 1 percent of all abortions.3 In fiscal year 2001, the most recent year for which statistics
are available, only 81 abortions were paid for by both federal and state Medicaid under the narrow
exceptions.4 Every state but one covers the abortions permitted by the Hyde Amendment.5 Only 17 states go
beyond the restrictions of the Hyde Amendment and use their own funds to cover medically necessary
abortions for Medicaid beneficiaries.6 This means that the vast majority of poor women in the U.S. are
denied the right to abortion because of their inability to pay.
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Inherency – Hyde Amendment Now (2/2)
The tight regulations are preventing women from getting safe abortions or giving women
physical and emotional damage.
NAF, 2006
(national abortion federation, “Public Funding for Abortion: Medicaid and the Hyde Amendment” No Specific Date
Give, Accessed 6-29-09, NG)
Unique barriers face low-income women accessing comprehensive reproductive health care. Barriers to
abortion access such as the lack of providers, state laws delaying women from receiving timely care,
and funding restrictions like the Hyde Amendment fall disproportionately on low-income women who
have limited resources with which to overcome these obstacles. The Guttmacher Institute has found that
20-35% of Medicaid-eligible women who would choose abortion carry their pregnancies to term when
public funds are not available.13 Additionally, lack of public funding results in women waiting while they
raise funds, postponing their abortions until later in their pregnancies when the costs and health risks can be
higher. For women who are struggling to make ends meet and who do not have insurance that covers
abortion care, the legal right to have an abortion does not guarantee access. The restrictions imposed by
the Hyde Amendment unfairly jeopardize the health and well-being of low-income women and their families.
Women who do not have the ability to pay for abortion services may resort to self-inducing an
abortion or obtaining unsafe, illegal abortions from untrained practitioners. Also, the Hyde
Amendment harms women's health by denying coverage for abortion services in cases where women
have serious physical or mental health concerns.
The Hyde Amendment is the focus of the federal government’s opposition to abortion.
Brooks et al., Staff Attorney at the National health Law Program, 2006
(Jamie D., Ipas, “The Hyde Amendment: a violation of human rights,” Sept.,
http://www.hyde30years.nnaf.org/documents/HydeandHumanRights2.pdf, 7/5/09, GMK)
Through the Hyde Amendment, the federal government denies poor women, women of color, women
in the military and immigrants the ability to make their own decisions about pregnancy and
childbearing. For 30 years, the Hyde Amendment has violated the human rights of women who receive
Medicaid by prohibiting federal funding for abortion in the majority of cases. Medicaid is a federal and
state government program that entitles beneficiaries to a right to health care. However, the right to abortion is
not guaranteed for Medicaid recipients. Since 1976, year after year, the Hyde Amendment has been
attached to the annual federal spending bill. Passed by Congress in 1976, as part of the Department of
Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare Appropriation Act, the original amendment banned “using
funds appropriated by this Act to perform abortions except where the life of the mother would be
endangered if the fetus were carried to term.” The current version also allows funds to be used in cases
of rape and incest. Similar language in other bills also prohibits federal funding for abortion for women in
the military, Peace Corps and federal prisons and for women who receive health care from Indian Health
Services. The majority of states have also banned state Medicaid coverage for abortion. These funding
restrictions violate women’s reproductive rights and ignore universal human rights recognized by the United
States and other countries around the world.
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Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – I/L: Abortion (1/4)
Womyn’s empowerment reduces birth rates and can solve the population problem
Miller, Reuters and NYT correspondent, 08
Bill Miller, “Book cites population growth as key driver of global warming” 29 may 08
http://www.desmogblog.com/population-growth-cited-as-key-driver-of-global-warming, accessed 7/7/09, KLM
Now, a book by Worldwatch Institute vice-president Robert Engelman argues not only that it gets
harder to curb greenhouse emissions as the global population increases, but also that human growth is
a major factor in greenhouse emissions. Engelman notes, furthermore, that we can’t grow forever, and if
we can't curb carbon emissions in a world of 6.8 billion, it will be impossible when there are 9 billion.
"You really can't talk about the supply and demand imbalance that is sending energy and food prices up
without acknowledging that we are adding 78 million people each year, the equivalent of a new Idaho every
week," says Engleman. In “More: Population, Nature and What Women Want,” Engelman suggests the
surest route to achieving an environmentally sustainable population is to enable women everywhere to
choose when to bear children. A former reporter who worked in population and family-planning
before joining Worldwatch in 2007, Engleman interviewed women in Africa, Asia, and Latin America
over a 25-year period. Weaving their stories with research in history and the social sciences,
Engleman studies sexuality and procreation to illustrate how women’s lives and status have influenced
modern society. His conclusion: The key to limiting population growth is to give control over
procreation to women. Even in countries and societies where large families have always been the norm,
when women take control over family size, birth rates shrink.
The US is failing to address population issues. Family planning services need to be
increased.
Population Connection 03
An organization devoted to raising awareness about population issues, “FAQ Master Sheet”,
www.populationconnection.org/site/DocServer/FAQ_MASTER.doc?docID=601, accessed 7/7/09, KLM
6. What role does the U.S. play in population issues? The U.S. could potentially play a leading role in
population issues by providing funding and support for family planning initiatives, domestically and
internationally. Both domestically and abroad the U.S. is failing to represent people’s beliefs about the
necessity of comprehensive family planning programs. While there is a strong consensus that the U.S. government
should fund and support family planning programs around the world, we have barely begun to address these issues.
The U.S. is lagging domestically, despite the fact that most Americans feel the government should
provide voluntary family planning services as part of low-income women’s health care. In response,
Population Connection lobbies for Title X funding which aims to reduce unintended pregnancies by providing contraceptives and related reproductive
health care services to low-income women. Additionally, 67% of those surveyed believe that insurance companies should cover the costs of family
planning. When weighed against the fact that most insurance companies claim that prescription contraceptives are not “medically necessary,” it is clear that
there is a discrepancy between government policy and the wants and needs of the people. Population Connection is trying to address this gap by lobbying
for contraceptive coverage laws to increase funding for family planning among insurance companies. With an overwhelming 80% of people (across the
demographic spectrum) in support of family planning programs in developing countries, it is hard to believe that in
2002, the government
dedicated a mere 0.02% of the total U.S. budget to international family planning assistance. The U.S.
spends less on international family planning as a proportion of GNP than any other industrialized
nation. Even on an individual level the cost of population assistance to each American is negligible. In
1995, before the 30% budget cut imposed by Congress, the U.S. family planning cost of $577 million, amounted to little more than $2
for every American; Danes and Norwegians contribute the most, about $10 per capitai. (Note: Please see the box below of information
about 2002 U.S. funding changes.) U.S. politicians need to represent the people in their decision-making by not
only allocating more funding for population assistance activities , but by fulfilling promises of aid. International
family planning programs depend on U.S. money, and failing to stand by our word and proffering promised funds has serious
ramifications on thousands of lives overseas, lives that have been trapped in political pandering by U.S. politicians. Both abroad and at
home, American politicians need to represent the wishes of their constituents.
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Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – I/L: Abortion (2/4)
It’s imperative to increase access to abortions to decrease population growth in the US.
Speidel and Grossman, M.D., 08
Joseph Speidel Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, University of California, San Francisco and Richard
Grossman Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology University of Colorado, “Family Planning and Access to Safe and Legal Abortion are Vital
to Safeguard the Environment”, The Reporter, Vol 40, Issue 1, pg. 5, accessed 7/7/09, KLM
The substantial decline in world birth rates over the past 50 years is a family planning success
story, but it has lulled our sense of urgency toward increasing annual population growth. In 1950,
the world’s population was 2.6 billion; the lifetime average number of children per woman (total fertility rate, or TFR)
was 5.3; and annual population growth was 48 million.4 Since then, the TFR has decreased to 2.6, and death rates have declined. This is
good news. Unfortunately, world population has increased to 6.6 billion, and about 78 million people are now added to the world each
year.4 Most
of worldwide population growth will be caused by population momentum—resulting from
by unintended or unwanted pregnancy.5 Of 210
million pregnancies annually worldwide, 80 million (38%) are unplanned, and 46 million (22%)
end in abortion.6 More than 200 million women in developing countries would like to delay their
next pregnancy—or stop bearing children altogether—but rely on traditional, less effective
methods of contraception (64 million) or use no method because they lack access or face other barriers
large numbers of people entering their childbearing years—and
to using contraception (137 million).7 These barriers include cultural values that support high fertility, opposition to use of
In contrast to almost all
other developed countries, the United States—the world’s third largest country—is experiencing
rapid population growth of nearly three million each year.9 The United States is projected to
grow from 303 million in 2007 to nearly 350 million in 2025 and to 420 million by 2050.10 An
estimated 1.4 million of 4.1 million annual U.S. births result from unintended pregnancy. The other
contraception by family members, and fears about health risks or side effects of contraception.8
2.7 million are largely offset by the 2.4 million annual deaths.11 Even with immigration contributing more than one million people
annually, unintended
pregnancy is the source of about half of annual population growth in the
United States. 1. We must improve access to family planning and safe, legal
Empirically proven: nations that grant access to abortions see lower birth rates. The US is
seeing higher unplanned pregnancies and needs to increase Medicaid funding.
Speidel, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the
University of California at San Francisco, 08
Joseph Speidel, February 20, 2008, “Population and Climate Change: Relationships, Research and
Responses”, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/events/docs/Speidel%20Edited%20Transcript.pdf, accessed 7/7/09
Here's some more problems with the demand-creation approach to population work. Certainly, these policies have intrinsic value, but
the cost and difficulty of bringing about, say, economic development or education is quite great compared to meeting the existing
demand for family planning. And I think it's also fair to say that you might argue that providing the means to satisfy this demand
should precede, or at least go concomitant, with increasing the demand. And here's a table which many, or a chart that many have seen
before. It just shows that there is demand for family planning in many different countries with different
levels of development. And I think the history of the family planning movement shows that that exists.
Between 1960 and 2005, we went from a contraceptive prevalence rate of just 9 percent to 58 percent.
And during that same period, the total fertility rate, that is the completed family size for women,
declined from about half, from around six to three. And what happened during that period?
Unfortunately, it wasn't that we got everybody educated, or that all of the developed world became wealthy or healthy, but in fact, the
world community and many governments made a concerted effort to provide good family planning
services. Now here's a couple of examples. In Thailand, they started a program in the early ‘70s, when the
average family size was seven children. By 20 years later, that had declined to about two and
apparently, fertility is quite low in Thailand. Another, more recent example is Iran. They restored their national family
planning program in 1989 with strong government support. One of the reasons they did this was they were looking at environmental
degradation in Iran, and the total fertility rate declined from 5.5 in 1988 to 2.8 in 1996, one of the most rapid declines in fertility on
record. I've always liked Dr. Potts’ statement that all societies with unconstrained access to fertility regulation,
including abortion, rapidly get down to replacement levels of fertility and often lower. And one thing we
should probably underline in this statement is abortion. Abortion is often necessary to allow women
and men to get to the fertility they want. By the way, this statement came out of Dr. Potts’ article in the Population
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Population Control – I/L: Abortion (3/4)
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
Development Review. If anybody wants to look it up, he backs up that statement with good research.
I'd like to turn to what I
think is the factor in population growth that is most amenable to program and policy intervention,
and that's unintended pregnancy. You may recall from the previous chart, there were some 80 million
pregnancies that are unintended and there are about 200 million women in developing countries who
would like to delay or stop bearing children altogether. And about one-third of these women are
relying on traditional, less effective means of fertility regulation, and about two-thirds have no access
at all or face barriers they can't overcome to using contraception.
Now, I'd like to turn to a missing
element in the family planning picture, and that's funding. The ICPD, the International Conference on Population and
Development, or the Cairo Conference held in 1994, laid out these four categories of funding: family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, and basic
research. And I have modified their original call for funds under the family planning rubric; I basically increased the amount from 11 to 15billion, which is
just an inflation factor. In reproductive health, they vastly underestimated the means there. And I have to admit, this is somewhat of an arbitrary figure, but
at least 15 billion a year is needed. For HIV/AIDS, this is the UNAIDS estimate, so it's kind of a tidy 15 billion for each of those three factors, which
gives us a bottom line of 45 billion, instead of the Cairo's 18.5 billion.
So now let's take a look at how we're doing. How much, and I'm focusing on
donors here. And the Cairo plan called for one-third of the funds to come from donors. That's been modified a bit to say that two-thirds of the funds for
HIV/AIDS should come from donors because of the poverty of the countries that are hard hit by HIV/AIDS. So then on the far right, you can see the new
targets for donors are about 5 billion, 5 billion, and 10 billion for each of those categories. Then if you look at the far left, you can see how we're doing.
And this is 2003 data. Unfortunately, up-to-date data is not easy to get. But we're only at 10 percent of the target for family planning. We were doing a
little bit better for reproductive health and HIV/AIDS at about a quarter of the target.
Okay, how are we doing up to date? Now, these are projections;
they're kind of fuzzy estimations, but on the far right, you can see we've got a total of 9.2 billion for all the Cairo categories of funding. This top figure,
general contributions, is because we couldn't categorize the UN FPA/NIDI project. We couldn't categorize them into family planning, reproductive health,
or basic research. But then, when you take a look at where we are, remember, our goal was 5 billion for family planning, 5 billion for reproductive health.
And you can see we're way under that. We're in the millions on the far right.
And for HIV/AIDS, the 10 billion goal -- well, at 7.4 billion, we're getting
a lot closer to where we need to be for HIV/AIDS. But clearly, the funding of the Cairo program is lopsided with a huge effort in HIV/AIDS -- not that
that isn't a good thing, but we're neglecting the other aspects of that program.
I'd also like to spend a minute or two talking about public support for
family planning in
the United States. Whereas you can recall, we are not doing very well in terms of unintended
pregnancy. It's much higher in the United States than it is in Europe. About half of women of
reproductive age who need contraceptive services are low income and would benefit from publicly
supported programs. Current funding for these programs totals about $1.85 billion. This comes from
a number of places, Title 10, the biggest part is Medicaid. But this is about half of the $3.5 billion
needed. And a bit over a billion dollars come from Medicaid. If you think this is a large share of
Medicaid, you would be wrong, because the total Medicaid funding is $300 billion dollars a year. So
family planning and other related reproductive health makes up a very small share of the total
Medicaid budget in the U.S.
Abortion access is a necessary part to solving extreme population rates.
Mumford, DrPH Center for Research on Population and Security, and Kessel, Department
of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Oregon Health Sciences University, 86
SD Mumford and E Kessel, Clinics in Obstetrics Gynaecology, 1986 Mar;13(1):19-31,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3709011, accessed 7/6/09, KLM
No nation desirous of reducing its growth rate to 1% or less can expect to do so without the widespread
use of abortion. This observational study, based on the experience of 116 of the world's largest
countries, supports the contention that abortion is essential to any national population growth control
effort. The principal findings are: Except for a few countries with ageing populations and very high contraceptive prevalence rates, developed countries
will need to maintain abortion rates generally in the range of 201-500 abortions per 1000 live births if they are to maintain growth rates at levels below 1%.
The current rate in the USA is 426 abortions per 1000 live births. Developing countries, on the other hand, are faced with a different and more difficult set
of circumstances that require even greater reliance on abortion. No developing nation wanting to reduce its growth to less than 1% can expect to do so
without the widespread use of abortion, generally at a rate greater than 500 abortions per 1000 live births. Widespread availability of abortion is a necessary
but not sufficient condition to achieve growth rates below 1%. A high contraceptive prevalence is essential as well in order to achieve growth rates below
A high rate of
abortion (generally 201-500 or more abortions per 1000 live births in the developed and greater than 500 abortions per 1000 live births in the
developing countries) is essential to achieve growth rates below 1%. The different and more difficult set of circumstances faced by
1%. A high contraceptive prevalence is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve population growth rates below 1%.
developing countries that will necessitate even higher abortion rates than developed countries includes a young population with resultant rapidly growing
numbers of young fertile women, poor contraceptive use-effectiveness, low prevalence of contraception, and poor or non-existent systems for providing
contraceptives.
These data show that high death rates of infants and children can moderate population
growth rates--a most undesirable solution. The data in this report suggest that actual alternatives are
high death rates of infants and children or widespread use of contraception and abortion. African
nations tend to have the very lowest abortion rates and the very highest infant and child death rates.
To avoid a world with deteriorating social, economic and political stability, with the concomitant loss
of personal and national security, we must ensure that safe abortion is made available to all who wish
to use this service. PIP: Population control is an important but neglected social benefit of abortion. To
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Population Control – I/L: Abortion (4/4)
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Examine this role, the outhors compared population growth rates and abortion (legal and illegal)
incidence rates for the 116 largest countries in the world. These 116 countries were first ranked by their abortion rates into 4
groups: very high (greater than 500/1000 live births), high (201-500/1000), moderate (50-200/1000) and low (less than 50/1000). Then each of these 4
groups was ranked according to contraceptive prevalence: very high (60% or above), high (40-59%), moderate (15-39%), and low (less than 15%). Within
each of the 16 groups, the countries were then ranked according to their population growth rate. The age distribution and mortality of children under 5 years
of age were also considered for each country. The
data indicate that where abortion and contraceptive prevalence
rates are the highest and populations are the oldest, growth rates tend to be the lowest. As
contraceptive prevalence decreases, the growth rate increases. The younger the population, the greater
the growth rate. Where the abortion rate is very high with only modest use of contraception, a high
growth rate can result. Thus, abortion is necessary but not sufficient to cause low growth rates. With the exception of a few countries with aging
populations and very high contraceptive prevalence rates, developed countries need to maintain abortion rates in the range of 201-500/1000 if they are to
maintain growth rates at levels below 1%. An even greater reliance on abortion--over 500/1000 live births--is required in developing countries to reduce
population growth.
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Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – Impact (1/4)
Overpopulation is the biggest internal to biodiversity loss, resource consumption, and
global warming. The only solution is to limit population sizes.
Stott, trustee of the Optimum Population Trust, 09
5-20-09, Adrian, “Why we need population reduction”, http://www.spikedonline.com/index.php/site/printable/6559/ accessed 7/6/09, KLM
Earth’s human population is already at a level well in excess of that which the eco-system can sustain.
In other words, in each period we are now using up more natural resources than the environment
produces. We are spending all our biological income, and then running down the capital to cover the
rest of our consumption. Do that for too long, and the capital runs out. Perhaps the clearest example of
this is fish. We are now catching a significantly greater weight of many species each year than the
living stock grows. The result is that the average age of many such fish has dropped substantially, and
we are now catching only youngsters because they never get the chance to grow big. And, of course, as a
fish stock declines, so does its ability to reproduce. Fewer fish make fewer new fish. For years, deceptively bumper catches were presented
by the fishing industry, driven by the ever-rising price of landed fish, as evidence that no reductions in take are needed . Then, suddenly, there
are no longer enough fish alive to make up a year’s take, and the fishery abruptly collapses. This is
what happened on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, which once had an enormous cod population
which could have provided partners for our chips indefinitely. Fishing, or rather over-fishing, stopped
there several decades ago, but only after the fish population crashed. The cod have never returned.
We’ve turned to exterminating other species. As with fish, so with other natural resources. Forests are
destroyed by over-cutting, animals are hunted to extinction, or both simply die out because we turn
their habitats into farmland or cities. And it isn’t just living things. Climate change is occurring
because we are putting pollutants into the atmosphere faster than it can clean itself. Our overconsumption has already badly damaged many of the very systems that keep us alive. And our
numbers are still growing fast. Irreversible and potentially deadly changes to our environment seem all
too likely in our lifetimes. I’m not making this up – there is plenty of credible scientific evidence to support it (1). So what might we
do about it? The following equation covers all the possibilities: I = P x A x T I is our total environmental impact. It is made up of the average
Affluence (consumption) per person, times the number of people (Population), mitigated by improvements in Technology. So to reduce our
impact, we could reduce average Affluence. The trouble is, most of the world is determined to do the
opposite. Can you really believe that all those Indians and Chinese, who outnumber us, are going to
agree to forego rising out of poverty? In that light, trading our Chelsea Tractors for Priuses, or not
leaving the TV on standby, is simply irrelevant. Or we could improve our Technology. And we surely
will. But, also surely, not enough and not in time to prevent even more serious damage. Technology didn’t
prevent the destruction we’ve already caused, so why should we believe it will do that enough in future? There’s simply too much inertia. That
leaves only Population, which fortunately we can do something about. Births are already fewer than
deaths in several countries. We know how to achieve this, and it isn’t difficult or expensive. It needs
little government intrusion and no coercion, although it does require persuasion. That is the OPT’s message. The conference O’Neill
attended merely filled in some details. However, O’Neill described something quite different. Apparently, pointing out there are too many of us shouldn’t be
taken seriously, because the idea is dark and apocalyptic. So you should ignore it, even though it’s true. Estimating how many people the planet can sustain,
using studies on urbanisation and the availability of fresh water, is ‘spooky’ and therefore should be dismissed. Our campaign is portrayed as an intention to
kill off millions of people, something only an insane person would endorse, when in fact the opposite is proposed – to reduce the number being born. No
The whole concept is condemned as ‘population
control’, when what is being aimed for is actually population reduction. There’s no need to control the
number of children a woman has. She must continue to decide that for herself. It turns out that, with
education and better availability of contraceptives, most women choose to have fewer children all by
themselves, especially because one-third of present births around the world are unwanted. Even a country as
matter, the idea is branded as anti-life, and thus repulsive, according to O’Neill.
religious as Iran has reduced its fertility to below replacement levels using only these means, not by using dictates from ayatollahs.
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Population Control – Impact (2/4)
Overpopulation will cause human extinction; multiple reasons.
Simonetta, author of Seven Words That Can Change the World 09
Joe, June 21, 2009, “Global Overpopulation: Effects and Solutions - Human Overpopulation”
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/global-overpopulation-effects-and-solutions-human-overpopulation984318.html, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
Each week, we add about a million and half people to our current world population, which is at 6.8
billion. We have we reached the point many describe as global overpopulation. The family of humans, known as the
hominids, has populated Earth, according to the fossil record, for 5 to 6 million years. The hominids transitioned from one genus to
another before our genus, homo, appeared about a million and half to two million years ago. We transitioned through a number of homo
species before our species, homo sapiens (“sensible humans”) emerged about 150,000 years ago. Over time, we’ve accumulated
people. Two-thousand years ago, our population was at 250 million. In the year 500 A.D., it remained the same. By 1000 A.D., we
climbed to 500 million people. We reached 750 million people around 1500 A.D. We hit our first billion mark in 1800 at which time the
Industrial Revolution kicked in. We added people more rapidly and began to move quickly in the direction of human overpopulation.
Between 1800 and 1900 we added 600 million people. At 1900, we were at 1.6 billion. By 1960, in 60 short years, we nearly doubled
that as we reached 3 billion. In 1960, we humans had been here about 150,000 years. It took us that long to accumulate 3 billion
people. How long did it take for us to double that number? Thirty-nine years! In 1999, we reached 6 billion people. It is estimated that
we will be at 9.2 billion by 2050. The effects of global overpopulation are multiple and ominous . As the result of
having so many people who do not understand our reality and its behavioral demands, we have created an interrelated web
of global environmental problems. We are depleting our natural resources: our forests, fisheries, range
lands, croplands, and plant and animal species. We are destroying the biological diversity on which
evolution thrives (this is being called the sixth great wave of extinction in the history of life on earth,
different from the others in that it is caused not by external events, but by us). With powerful new
electrical and diesel pumping techniques, we are draining our aquifers and lowering our water tables.
We are systemically polluting our air, water, and soil, and consequently our food chain. We are
depleting the stratospheric ozone that shields us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. And, we are
experiencing symptoms of global warming: heat waves, devastating droughts, dying forests, accelerated species extinction,
dying coral reefs, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, more frequent and intense storms, and a more rapid spread of diseases. With so
many of us on a very small and fragile planet, and with the addition of so many more every week, we
can no longer continue to relate to each other, our environment, ecological systems and biosphere as
we have throughout our history. Nature, which could not care less, will eliminate us. To sustain
humanity and advance our civilization, humankind must travel on a new and far more enlightened
track. The solutions to global overpopulation and other pressing issues can be found at the website below.
Overpopulation will bring us to an era of desolation culminating in our extinction.
Hedges, NYT Correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner, 09
March 10, Chris, “We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction”, http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/8489-weare-breeding-ourselves-to-extinction.html, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not
cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have
between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase. And
yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and
documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” fail to discuss the
danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut
back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind
turbines, will plunge us into an age of extinction and desolation unseen since the end of the Mesozoic
era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared. We are experiencing an accelerated
obliteration of the planet’s life-forms—an estimated 8,760 species die off per year—because, simply
put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food
and other resources. The Yangtze River dolphin, Atlantic gray whale, West African black rhino, Merriam’s elk, California grizzly bear,
silver trout, blue pike and dusky seaside sparrow are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E.O. Wilson says, is
“the monster on the land.” Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they
did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one
of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water,
food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear . Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of
mammals, and entering the Eremozoic—the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a
belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a
biological wasteland.
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Population Control – Impact (3/4)
Overpopulation trends threaten to destroy democracy, individualism, and ultimately
humyn civilization.
Caldwell, Professor of Political Science emeritus and Professor of Public and
Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, 99
Lynton Keith Caldwell, “Is Humanity Destined to Self-Destruct?”, Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 18, No. 1
(Mar., 1999), pp. 3-14, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4236457.pdf, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
Today there is one human force that is driving the expansive course of the material economy
and stressing all parameters of the natural environment. It may be the most significant factor
in the prospect of societal self-destruction. This is the unprecedented and presently irreversible explosive growth,
dispersal, and concentration of human populations. There are few real environmental, economic, and social
problems that would not ultimately be eased significantly if world popula- tions were stabilized
below present and projected levels. The interactions of population, resources, environment, and the economy are
complex and controversial. Generalizations risk error; and yet the adverse ecological and sociological
consequences of unrestrained population growth seem undeniable albeit nevertheless widely
denied. If society over- shoots the limits of sustainability, retrenching to a stable state would
likely be painful and disruptive (Catton, 1980). Whether democracy and individualism as we know
them could survive a reverse transition is, at least, questionable. Numbers count in numerous ways. But
continuing human preemption of physical space, habitat, and natural resources seems certain to
destroy the living world within which hu- manity evolved. It is plausible that human populations are today
too large to sustain indefinitely their present demands upon the planet. Yet their numbers are projected to grow into the
coming century and their demands upon the Earth to in- crease. Reproductive practices that served humanity during past
centuries have now become counterproductive for hu- manity as a whole, and are the major force driving the envi- ronmental
future over which humans, in principle, have control. At some point, the adverse effects of overpopulation
seem certain to stop, stabilize, or reverse population dynam- ics.
It remains to be demonstrated whether or how
the so-called demographic transition to stabilization will relieve the social and environmental pressures attributed to over- population. A sudden
collapse of population levels would have, at least, a short-term disruptive effect on human soci- ety. The oft-rejected concept of optimal
population may have future relevance. The question of optimality has a practical relevance to the inordinate concentration of population in urban
centers, var- iously called megalopoli or conurbations. The socioecological implications of these concentrations of Is Humanity Destined to SelfDestruct? unprecedented size are not yet certain. Some students of be- havioral abnormalities have identified a condition of "patho- logical
togetherness" that results from stress-inducing overpopulation in confining areas. Symptoms range from in- terpersonal indifference and rudeness
to serious sociopsychological dysfunction and violent crime (e.g., Milgram, 1970; Caldwell, 1978).8 The "urban problem" has been exacerbated
as cities have become havens for increas- ing numbers of the world's poor, low-skilled, and dispos- sessed, who often also come from
different?and not easily accommodated?ethnic backgrounds. Historically, cities concentrated populations and?given past technologies of
communication?became centers for the advancement of civilizations. Today, unprecedented changes in communication technologies have
diminished the importance of geographic concentration for numerous intellectual, economic, and professional activities. New modes of
transportation have similarly facilitated decentral- ization. Whether social demographics and the consequences of crowding will diminish the
magnetism of large cities is a question yet to be answered. Advancements in television and the Internet may diminish the importance of large
cities as cultural centers. Decentralizing trends are also proceed- ing in government administration. Defensible answers to the "urban question"
may well be forced before the end of the twenty-first century. Mean- while, such indirect evidence as we now have regarding the effects of
Stabilizing populations at
significantly reduced numbers would greatly improve the human prospect . But this objective seems far
crowding within species does not encourage ex- pectations of continuing benefits from growth.
from acceptable in today's world. There would be pain in the transition, with benefits discernable only in the long-range
future. The plausible expectation is that humanity will be un- willing or unable to attempt this
transition until it is imposed by forces exceeding human volition or control. The conse- quences for humanity
may be disastrous.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – Impact (4/4)
Biodiversity loss causes extinction.
Whitty, Environmental Correspondent at Mother Jones magazine, 07
Julia, April 30 2007, “Animal Extinction - The Greatest Threat to Mankind”,
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/30/862, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
Today we're living through the sixth great extinction, sometimes known as the Holocene extinction event. We carried
its seeds with us 50,000 years ago as we migrated beyond Africa with Stone Age blades, darts, and harpoons, entering pristine Ice Age
ecosystems and changing them forever by wiping out at least some of the unique megafauna of the times, including, perhaps, the sabretoothed cats and woolly mammoths. When the ice retreated, we terminated the long and biologically rich epoch sometimes called the
Edenic period with assaults from our newest weapons: hoes, scythes, cattle, goats, and pigs. But, as harmful as our forebears may have
been, nothing compares to what's under way today. Throughout the 20th century the causes of extinction - habitat
degradation, overexploitation, agricultural monocultures, human-borne invasive species, humaninduced climate-change - increased exponentially, until now in the 21st century the rate is nothing
short of explosive. The World Conservation Union's Red List - a database measuring the global status of Earth's 1.5 million
scientifically named species - tells a haunting tale of unchecked, unaddressed, and accelerating biocide. When we hear of extinction,
most of us think of the plight of the rhino, tiger, panda or blue whale. But these sad sagas are only small pieces of the extinction puzzle.
The overall numbers are terrifying. Of the 40,168 species that the 10,000 scientists in the World
Conservation Union have assessed, one in four mammals, one in eight birds, one in three amphibians,
one in three conifers and other gymnosperms are at risk of extinction. The peril faced by other classes of
organisms is less thoroughly analysed, but fully 40 per cent of the examined species of planet earth are in danger, including perhaps 51
per cent of reptiles, 52 per cent of insects, and 73 per cent of flowering plants. By the most conservative measure - based on the last
century's recorded extinctions - the current rate of extinction is 100 times the background rate. But the eminent Harvard biologist
Edward O Wilson, and other scientists, estimate that the true rate is more like 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate. The actual
annual sum is only an educated guess, because no scientist believes that the tally of life ends at the 1.5 million species already
discovered; estimates range as high as 100 million species on earth, with 10 million as the median guess. Bracketed between
best- and worst-case scenarios, then, somewhere between 2.7 and 270 species are erased from existence
every day. Including today. We now understand that the majority of life on Earth has never been - and will never be - known to
us. In a staggering forecast, Wilson predicts that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by
2100. You probably had no idea. Few do. A poll by the American Museum of Natural History finds that seven in 10 biologists believe
that mass extinction poses a colossal threat to human existence, a more serious environmental problem
than even its contributor, global warming; and that the dangers of mass extinction are woefully
underestimated by almost everyone outside science. In the 200 years since French naturalist Georges Cuvier first floated
the concept of extinction, after examining fossil bones and concluding "the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some sort
of catastrophe", we have only slowly recognised and attempted to correct our own catastrophic behaviour. Some nations move more
slowly than others. In 1992, an international summit produced a treaty called the Convention on Biological Diversity that was
subsequently ratified by 190 nations - all except the unlikely coalition of the United States, Iraq, the Vatican, Somalia, Andorra and
Brunei. The European Union later called on the world to arrest the decline of species and ecosystems by 2010. Last year, worried
biodiversity experts called for the establishment of a scientific body akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to provide a
united voice on the extinction crisis and urge governments to action. Yet, despite these efforts, the Red List, updated every two years,
continues to show metastatic growth. There are a few heartening examples of so-called Lazarus species lost and then found: the wollemi
pine and the mahogany glider in Australia, the Jerdon's courser in India, the takahe in New Zealand, and, maybe, the ivory-billed
woodpecker in the United States. But for virtually all others, the Red List is a dry country with little hope of rain, as species ratchet
down the listings from secure to vulnerable, to endangered, to critically endangered, to extinct. All these disappearing species are part of
a fragile membrane of organisms wrapped around the Earth so thinly, writes Wilson, that it "cannot be seen edgewise from a space
shuttle, yet so internally complex that most species composing it remain undiscovered". We owe everything to this membrane of life.
Literally everything. The air we breathe. The food we eat. The materials of our homes, clothes, books, computers, medicines. Goods and
services that we can't even imagine we'll someday need will come from species we have yet to identify. The proverbial cure for cancer.
The genetic fountain of youth. Immortality. Mortality. The living membrane we so recklessly destroy is existence itself. Biodiversity
is defined as the sum of an area's genes (the building blocks of inheritance), species (organisms that
can interbreed), and ecosystems (amalgamations of species in their geological and chemical
landscapes). The richer an area's biodiversity, the tougher its immune system, since biodiversity
includes not only the number of species but also the number of individuals within that species, and all
the inherent genetic variations - life's only army against the diseases of oblivion.
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Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – US Key (1/3)
US Action Key
Population Connection, 2003. (Population Connection: “Population Connection: Statement of
Policy,” 5-3-03,
www.populationconnection.org/site/DocServer/Statement_of_Policy.doc?docID=401, accessed
7-6-09)
Population Connection believes the well-being and even the survival of humanity depend on the
attainment of an equilibrium between population and the environment. Just as the earth and its
resources of land, air and water are limited, so are the demands that can be placed upon them.
Continued population growth is foremost among the factors aggravating deforestation, wildlife
extinction, climate change and other critical environmental and social problems. It also erodes
democratic government, multiplies urban problems, consumes agricultural land, increases volumes of
waste, heightens competition for scarce resources and threatens the aspirations of the poor for a better
life. The only acceptable solution to the population problem is through expanding educational,
advocacy and service efforts that lower birth rates. Rather than support a larger population at a
poorer level, we believe it is preferable to support a smaller population at adequate standards of living.
Population Connection recognizes the gravity of global overpopulation and encourages citizens in
every nation to work towards slowing population growth. Recognizing the interdependence of the
nations of the earth, we support the development and growth of citizen organizations in other
countries dedicated to those ends. As a U.S. based organization, Population Connection works
primarily to educate and motivate Americans to help meet the global population challenge, and to
mobilize this support for the adoption of policies and programs necessary to slow global population
growth. Because the United States is the chief consumer of the world's resources, slowing its
population growth is disproportionately important for protecting the global environment. Because the
United States has a major influence on international political, economic and military affairs, reshaping
its policies is important for the success of international efforts to slow population growth. In pursuit of these
goals, Population Connection participates in coalitions; influences governmental policies on the international, national, state and local levels;
works extensively with the media; engages in teacher training and public education programs; and produces educational materials. We
conduct research, interpret and apply the research of others, and provide a population perspective on social and environmental problems.
Population Connection recognizes the significant roles which consumption, lifestyles, and technology play in determining the total impact of
human society on the earth. Together, these factors will determine whether we maintain a habitable planet and achieve a sustainable society,
i.e., one that meets the needs and aspirations of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
needs. We support efforts to create a sustainable society, both in the United States and worldwide, which integrate an awareness of the central
role population plays in meeting this objective. Specifically, for the United States, these include efforts to conserve energy and natural
resources and improve efficiency, eliminate our "disposable society" lifestyle, and use the best possible technology to protect the natural and
human environment. Population Connection recognizes that broad social, economic and political changes may be necessary to slow
population growth. We endorse and actively support methods which are voluntary and which are positive enhancements of human rights and
conditions. Population Connection condemns any use of force or violence. Population Connection condemns racism in all of its forms. We
will not support or tolerate being knowingly associated with organizations which support or promote the use of force or violence or which
espouse racism or racist beliefs. Population Connection strives to be believable on a complex topic, creative in thinking about the future,
concerned for the welfare of all human beings, and forceful but not strident in the presentation of its views. World population now
exceeds six billion and at current growth rates could exceed nine billion by 2050. The continued
pressures of a growing world population are pushing the world towards global environmental
catastrophe. Population Connection believes that to achieve lasting improvements in the quality of life
for all, the nations of the world must make slowing population growth a top priority. The United States
should assume a leadership role in international efforts to slow population growth and should set an
example by adopting a national population policy that commits the United States to this goal .
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – US Key (2/3)
US overpopulation disproportionally affects the global environment, reshaping its policies
is key to international efforts.
Population Connection, 1997
(Population Connection: “Population Connection: Statement of Policy,” 5-3-03, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
www.populationconnection.org/site/DocServer/Statement_of_Policy.doc?docID=401, accessed 7-6-09)
The only acceptable solution to the population problem is through expanding educational, advocacy and
service efforts that lower birth rates. Rather than support a larger population at a poorer level, we believe it is preferable to
support a smaller population at adequate standards of living. Population Connection recognizes the gravity of global overpopulation and
encourages citizens in every nation to work towards slowing population growth. Recognizing the interdependence of the nations of the
earth, we support the development and growth of citizen organizations in other countries dedicated to those ends. As a U.S. based
organization, Population Connection works primarily to educate and motivate Americans to help meet the global population challenge,
and to mobilize this support for the adoption of policies and programs necessary to slow global population growth. Because the
United States is the chief consumer of the world's resources, slowing its population growth is
disproportionately important for protecting the global environment. Because the United States has a
major influence on international political, economic and military affairs, reshaping its policies is
important for the success of international efforts to slow population growth.
Humyn survival depends on US action – developing nations model our population policies.
Erlich, Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford
University, and Erlich, associate director and policy coordinator of the Center for
Conservation Biology at Stanford University, 91
Paul R.Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, “The Most Overpopulated Nation”
http://www.npg.org/forum_series/ehrlich.htm, accessed 7/7/09, KLM
Basically, like most of the rest of the world, the United States has been consuming environmental capital –
especially its deep, fertile soils, ice-age ground water, and biodiversity– and calling it “growth.”
Furthermore, directly and by example, it has been helping other nations to do the same. It would not be
remotely possible for Earth to support today’s 5.4 billion people on humanity’s “income” (which consists largely of solar energy) with
present technologies and lifestyles – even though for billions their life-style is living in misery, lacking adequate diets, shelter, health
care, education, and so on. And in the last decade, America has retarded the worldwide movement towards
population control because of the brain dead policies of the Reagan and Bush administration. The key
to civilization’s survival is reduction of the scale of the human enterprise and thus of the impact of
human society on our vital life support systems. This can be achieved most rapidly by reducing all of the P, A, and T
factors. In rich nations, this means immediate and rapid conversion to much more efficient use of energy and an immediate press
towards population shrinkage. Fortunately, rich nations have the kind of age composition that makes the transition towards negative
population growth (NPG) a relatively simple matter (a few European countries have already achieved it).THE HOLDREN SCENARIO
The best overall strategy would be based on the Holdren scenario.2 That scenario deals with a combination of population size and percapita energy use. As you can see in the chart below, total annual worldwide energy use today is almost 14 terrawatts, produced by the
combination of a relatively small population of rich people each using a great deal of energy, and a huge population of poor people each
using relatively little energy. The essence of Holdren's scenario is that rich countries would become much more energy efficient,
reducing their per-capita use from almost 8 kilowatts to 3 kilowatts (this means a reduction in the United States to less than one third of
current use, but this clearly is technically feasible with no loss in quality of life). In poor countries, per-capita use would increase from
1.2 to 3 kilowatts, so that at the end of a century everyone would basically have the same standard of living (at least as measured by
access to energy). If population shrinkage in rich countries and population control in poor countries could limit the peak size of the
human population to 10 billion, the Holdren scenario would result in a total global energy use of about 30 terrawatts. Whether or not that
would be sustainable for even a short time would depend, among other things, on whether or not the poor countries repeat the previous
mistakes of the rich countries in development or concentrated on using more environmentally benign energy technologies – in particular,
some form of solar power and the use of hydrogen as a portable fuel. Our guess is that it might be possible to run a world temporarily on
30 terrawatts, but to prevent long-term deterioration it will be necessary to reduce the population size substantially below 10 billion.
Indeed, the population eventually should be reduced to the vicinity of 1 or 2 billion with an aggregate energy use of, say 5-7 terrawatts,
if the health of ecosystems is to be restored and a substantial safety margin provided. THE AMERICAN ROLE A large part of the
responsibility for solving the human dilemma rests on the rich countries, and especially on the United
States. We are the archetype of a gigantic, overpopulated, overconsuming rich nation, one that many
illinformed decision makers in poor nations would like to emulate. Unless we demonstrate by example
that we understand the horrible mistakes made on our way to overdevelopment, and that we are intent on reversing
them, we see little hope for the persistence of civilization.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
50
Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – US Key (3/3)
The US can become a leader in international population goals with domestic policies.
Population Connection, 1997
(Population Connection: “Population Connection: Statement of Policy,” 5-3-03, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
www.populationconnection.org/site/DocServer/Statement_of_Policy.doc?docID=401, accessed 7-6-09)
World population now exceeds six billion and at current growth rates could exceed nine billion by
2050. The continued pressures of a growing world population are pushing the world towards global
environmental catastrophe. Population Connection believes that to achieve lasting improvements in the
quality of life for all, the nations of the world must make slowing population growth a top priority.
The United States should assume a leadership role in international efforts to slow population growth
and should set an example by adopting a national population policy that commits the United States to
this goal.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – A2: Simon (1/4)
Simon and others fail to consider standard of living.
Diamond, author of “Collapse,” 2008
(Jared, New York Times, “What’s Your Consumption Factor?” 1/2,/08,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02diamond.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2, 7/8/09, GMK)
If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole
developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if
the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates). Some
optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven’t met anyone crazy
enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they
will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy —
they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are
having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people. We Americans
may think of China’s growing consumption as a problem. But the Chinese are only reaching for the
consumption rate we already have. To tell them not to try would be futile.
Cornucopians like Simon have flawed theories, they use faith-based extrapolations and
ignore contradictions when presenting their ideas.
Grant, Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment and Population,
92
Lindsey, “THE CORNUCOPIAN FALLACIES”, http://dieoff.org/page45.htm, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
An intense if intermittent debate is under way between environmentalists and "cornucopians." The
environmentalists warn of threats to the ecosystem and to renewable resources, such as cropland and
forests, caused by population growth and exploitative economic activities. The cornucopians say that
population growth is good, not bad (Julian Simon), or that it will solve itself (Herman Kahn), that shortages are
mythical or can be made good by technology and substitution, and generally that we can expect a glorious future. The debate has strong
political overtones. If things are going well, we don't need to do anything about them—a useful argument for laissez faire. If something
is going wrong, the environmentalists usually want the government to do something about it. The debate thus gets mixed up in the
current reaction against "petty government interference" and a generalized yearning to return to earlier, more permissive economic and
political practices. Although there are substantial differences between their views (as we shall see later in this chapter), both men are
identified with a simple message of reassurance to a society that does not seem to want to be told about problems. The message is best
exemplified in the title of the article in Science magazine that brought Simon to prominence: "Resources, Population, Environment: An
Oversupply of False Bad News." 2 For the employer seeking assurance of cheap labor or the businessman hoping for the larger market,
it is comforting to be told that more immigration and population growth are good things. The idealist, eager to help hungry fellow
humans and fearful that pleas for lower fertility are a cover for racism, is just as likely to be beguiled by the message, unless he or she
has come to realize that laudable purposes sometimes conflict with each other. One could hardly object to having a couple of
cornucopians urging people to be of good cheer and stout heart, were it not for the danger that may convince some citizens and policy
makers not to worry about some pressing problems that urgently need attention. The cornucopians' argumentation,
however, is seriously flawed as a tool for identifying the real and important present trends. There is an
asymmetry in the nature of the arguments of the environmentalists and the cornucopians. The
environmentalist—the proponent of corrective action—is (or should be) simply warning of
consequences if trends or problems are ignored; he or she does not need to predict. The cornucopian,
on the other hand, must predict to make his or her case. He must argue that problems will be solved
and good things will happen if we let nature take its course. Since nobody has yet been able to predict
the future, cornucopians are asking their listeners to take a lot on faith. They say, in effect, "Believe as
I do, and you will feel better." Simon says explicitly that his conversion to his present viewpoint
improved his state of mind. The cornucopians have made assumptions and chosen methodologies that
simply ignore or dismiss the most critical issues that have led the environmentalists to their concerns: *
The cornucopians pay little attention to causation and they project past economic trends mechanically.
* They casually dismiss the evidence that doesn't "fit." * They employ a static analysis that makes no
provision for feedback from one sector to another. * They understate the implications of geometric
growth. * They base their predictions on an extraordinary faith in uninterrupted technological
progress. We will look into some of these cornucopian fallacies, the reasoning processes and omissions that characterize Simon's and
Kahn's analyses. Estrapolating Past Growth: The Wrong Methodology Simon argues that the past is the best guide to the
future. Perhaps, but much depends on what part of the past you look at. He devotes most of his effort
to demonstrating in various ways that humankind's economic lot has improved in the past century or
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
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Population Control – A2: Simon (2/4)
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
so, which is not an issue. Simon bases much of his argument on an econometric study of past
correlations between the number of children and economic growth. 3 This approach leaves
unanswered the question: Which, if either, phenomenon caused the other one? The mathematics may
simply obscure the commonsense proposition that family size grows in a period of prosperity. That 1977
study presumably remains the basis for Simon's views, but his line of argumentation has shifted somewhat. He shows graphs of
long-term trends in the prices of certain minerals and foodgrains to show price declines that suggest
that things are getting better. If one selects the right series (aluminum, for instance, but not lumber),
the graphs can be made to show the desired downward curve. They reflect a long-term improvement in
the efficiency of production, and to some extent they are a product of the fossil fuel era through which
we have been passing, which has made energy very cheap. The graphs do not address the questions
"The prices to whom? Expressed in what currency?" They are not adjusted for the buying power of
different groups, or the lack thereof. Perhaps more fundamentally, this line of argumentation
addresses only one small aspect of the many implications of population growth which are of concern .
Kahn is more nimble polemically. He extrapolates mid-twentieth-century growth trends with a line of reasoning that comes very close to
economic vitalism. His specialty is impressive graphic presentations of the future, but examination suggests there is more of the airbrush
than of intellectual discipline in those graphs. In one of his major works, The Next 200 sears, he projects per capita
"gross world product" at $20,000 in A.D. 2176, but one is uncertain whether these are constant dollars,
current dollars, or imaginary ones. As best one can gather from the text, this projection is based on a freehand plot of logistic
or "S-curves" (slow/fast/slow) of GNP growth for different categories of countries, drawn roughly from the U.S. and European
experience. 4 There are two problems with this method. First, analogy can be a dangerous process.
To
predict the future performance of the poor countries based upon the past performance of the rich
countries may involve too loose an analogy to justify the faith put in it. The analogy assumes that the
underlying factors are substantially similar. They are not. In contrast to Europe when it industrialized,
poor countries today tend to have faster population growth rates, no colonies in which capital can be
mobilized, lower incomes (probably), extreme foreign exchange problems, no technological lead over
the rest of the world, and no empty new worlds to absorb their emigrants. Second, and even more
important, gross national product—or "gross world product"—is not tangible and exists only in
people's minds. It has no life of its own. It is simply a way of giving a numerical abbreviation to a sum
of economic activities. It is determined by underlying realities: the availability and quality of land,
water, industrial raw materials, and energy; technological change; the impact of population change on
production and consumption; the productivity of the supporting ecosystems; labor productivity: and
so on. However, Kahn simply projects GNP, without analyzing the forces that generate it. Proof of past success is no
assurance of future well-being, and the mechanical projection of economic curves is hardly a reliable
guide to the future.
Simon’s methods are flawed when checked by simulation.
Ahlburg, Ph.D., Economics, University of Pennsylvania, 1998
(Dennis, “Julian Simon and the Population Growth Debate,” Population and Development Review, Volume 24,
Number 2, June, pg. 317-327, JSTOR, GMK)
Simon concluded that his model and the empirical evidence he reported refuted Malthus and modernday computerized Malthusian models. I think his claim is overstated. In reviews of his model, Warren
Sanderson (1980) and I (Ahlburg 1987) noted a number of questionable features that are critical to the
support of his optimistic findings. For example, social overhead capital (better roads and
communications, economies of scale, improved government organization, and health benefits) are
assumed to follow directly and costlessly from population growth. Social overhead capital then
increases output. A doubling of the population would not just double production but increase output
by an additional 20 percent. However, in a simulation with no increase in social overhead capital as a
result of population growth, the model produces a monotonic inverse relationship between the birth
rate and economic performance. The finding of a positive impact of population growth is also very
sensitive to the large effect on investment of a small difference in industrial output and the dependency
effect of children.5 To paraphrase Simon, his findings were persuasive enough to cause one to distrust
the Malthusian theorizing that is the basis of almost all academic strictures about the ill effects of
population growth (Simon 1977: xxii) but not so persuasive as to lead one to reject Malthusianism out of
hand.
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Population Control – A2: Simon (3/4)
The future can’t be extrapolated from the present; therefore disproving Simon’s theories.
Ahlburg, Ph.D., Economics, University of Pennsylvania, 1998
(Dennis, “Julian Simon and the Population Growth Debate,” Population and Development Review, Volume 24,
Number 2, June, pg. 317-327, JSTOR, GMK)
Simon's arguments predicting a rosy environmental future are based on extrapolation of observations
from the past. His opponents believe that such extrapolations are unwarranted because of the possible
consequences of nonlinearities and discontinuities in the relevant relationships. They assert that if the
future imitates the present, we will encounter resource and environmental discontinuities that will
produce a future very different from what extrapolation suggests. Simon did not see this as a problem.
He felt that the signals given by the negative impacts of population growth will be clear and early, and
behavior will respond to them well before catastrophe strikes. This view certainly reflects Simon's belief in
the responsiveness of markets to changes in prices. In many developing countries, however, markets are
imperfect or do not exist at all, as is the case with common-property resources. How then will market signals
avert disaster? In a review of The Ultimate Resource published in this journal in 1982, Peter Timmer
argued that because of structural changes in the relationship between population, resources, and
knowledge, the future may be quite different from the past. Most economic models, including Simon's,
assume linearity and continuity. Yet, many natural scientists argue that nonlinearities, discontinuities,
and nonreversibilities are present in the environment. Warren Sanderson has developed an ingenious
collapsible economic- demographic-environmental model called Wonderland that incorporates such features.
None of Simon's signals of distress materializes in this model before disaster strikes. Sanderson shows that,
with nonlinearity, relatively large changes in some variables can happen over short periods of time.
Thus, as Sanderson (1995) has noted, an unfaltering belief in continuity can lead to the faulty belief that
the future will be very much like the past. If the world is like the environmentalists claim it is, with
nonlinearities, discontinuities, and nonreversibilities, then we would receive no warning of impending
doom.
More education to provide for resources doesn’t necessarily accompany greater
population; this threatens Simon’s theory about society’s ability to continue.
Ahlburg, Ph.D., Economics, University of Pennsylvania, 1998
(Dennis, “Julian Simon and the Population Growth Debate,” Population and Development Review, Volume 24,
Number 2, June, pg. 317-327, JSTOR, GMK)
Simon's discussion of knowledge creation is not fully satisfactory and we are left with an act of faith:
"If the past two hundred years brought a great deal of new knowledge relative to all the centuries before that
time, . . . why should one believe that the next century or millennium or seven billion years will not bring
forth knowledge that will greatly enhance human life? To do so is to reject all of human experience" (1996:
390). But extrapolation is a dangerous game, a fact of which demographers are particularly well aware.
It does not take a billion years but only centuries for even very low rates of population growth to generate
colossal numbers of human beings. Richard Easterlin (1996) has surveyed the literature on the growth of
knowledge and notes that no mention (apart from Simon) is made of population size. Indeed, Easterlin argues
that causality is the reverse of that asserted by Simon: population growth is a result, not a cause, of the
revolution in public health knowledge that led to the mortality revolution. 9 And while it is possible that
knowledge will indeed be created as Simon assumes, one would feel much more comfortable if we had
some insight into how knowledge is created-how the raw material of human beings is transformed into
Simon's skilled, spirited, and hopeful resource. One mechanism for imparting skill, spirit, and hope is
education, but Simon does not outline a mechanism by which population growth can promote
education. All we are offered in Chapter 27 of The UltimateR esource2 is the conclusion that "the
negative effect [of population growth on education] is nowhere near as great as the simple Malthusian
theory would suggest, and in general the effect does not seem to be large if it exists at all" (Simon 1996:
397). And that "the effects are so small that it is safe to assert that allowing parents to have as many children
as they desire will not drag down economic development by reducing the educational level"
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – A2: Simon (4/4)
Cornucopians ignore climate change as a factor and assume economic growth happens in a
vacuum.
Grant, Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment and Population,
92
Lindsey, “THE CORNUCOPIAN FALLACIES”, http://dieoff.org/page45.htm, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
Ignoring Climate Change As a single example, let us take the question of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere. It takes little imagination to recognize that CO2-induced rainfall and temperature
changes, rising sea levels, and perhaps the necessity to curtail fossil fuel use could influence future
economic activities. The fact that human activity is changing the very chemical composition of the air
we live in would seem adequate justification to bring the issue into any consideration of current trends
affecting the well-being of our species. A particular target of the cornucopians in the early 1980s was
the Global 2000 Report to the President, 5 which was the most serious effort to date within the U.S.
Government to relate resource, environmental, population and economic issues to each other. "Global
2000" devoted fourteen pages to man-induced effects on the climate, focusing primarily on CO2 but dealing
with other issues as well. It concluded that agreed-upon climate projections are not currently possible to
make, but it called attention to the problem: "The energy, food, water and forestry projections [in the report]
all assume implicitly a continuation of the nearly ideal climate of the 1950s and 1960s. The scenarios are
reported here to indicate the range of climatic change that should be analyzed in a study of this sort." 6
Simon seems to have ignored the carbon dioxide issue. Kahn discusses the problem along with other
possible causes of a warming trend. He concedes that a warming trend might raise the level of the
oceans, but argues that "this would hardly mean the end of human society. Major shifts might be
forced in agricultural areas and in coastal cities." He concludes: "It seems unlikely now that the
carbon dioxide content will ever double unless mankind wants it to happen." 7 Thus, he cheerfully
dismisses this problem and thereby illustrates the curious inversion of his logic. Why does he dismiss
substance for "prediction"? He dismisses the real issues for fear they would lead his readers to lose
faith in the future he has promised them. Would he not better join the environmentalists and concentrate
on telling his audience that, if they want that future, they may need to take the carbon dioxide problem
seriously? Which intellectual approach is the more valid way of attempting to understand current
trends affecting human welfare? If you seek a sense of what will shape the future, examine the issues
generated by population and economic growth; do not simply extrapolate the growth. Economic
changes cannot be studied in a vacuum.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – A2: Underpopulation Worse (1/2)
People who claim that unlimited population growth is better than underpopulation fail to
see the mathematical impossibility of unending growth.
Daleiden, statistician, demographer, economist, and public policy analyst, 99
Joseph, “The American Dream: Can it survive the 21st Century?”, p64-98,
http://www.mnforsustain.org/pop_issues_policies_daleiden_j.htm, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
In 1970, the Club of Rome* predicted that, unless the world took imme diate action, the planet faced a
population explosion that would result in widespread famine, pollution, and exhaustion of natural
resources. The growth in population has been less than the club predicted, in large part because of the
efforts of China and several other nations to seriously curb their population growth . There has been famine,
but it has been limited primarily to Africa, most notably Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Sudan. Even in these areas, famine has been due, in
part, to the civil wars that have racked these countries for over two decades. Some natural resources have suffered a decline ―especially
forests and species diversity― but substitute materials and more efficient means of extraction have not resulted in higher prices for most
raw materials such as oil or metals. * The Club of Rome is a group of scientists, economists, businessmen, international civil servants, as
well as current and former heads of state from five continents. Their self-defined role is "to address new global imbalances caused by
differing speeds of population and economic growth as well as the disruptive effects of global competition, resulting in unemployment in
some countries and miserably low pay in others and leading to poverty and exclusion." Founded in 1968, the club's first report, "Limits
to Growth," was pub lished in 1970. It stressed the importance of the environment, and the essential links with the population and
energy. The report sold twelve million copies in thirty-seven languages and was the wake-up call to the nations of the world that the rate
of growth in world pop ulation (about 1.8 percent annually in 1970) was unsustainable. Since the dire consequences
predicted by the Club of Rome, such as worldwide famine, have failed to materialize, some futurists
and business economists such as Ben Wattenberg, the late Julian Simon and the late Herman Kahn,
have been quick to point out that doomsday scenarios have been forecast since the time of Thomas
Malthus but have never been realized. In fact, Simon and Wattenberg argue that growth in population
has led to increased affluence worldwide. The explanation they offer is that more people result in more minds to solve the
problems facing humankind. By this logic, China and India should be two of the most prosperous countries in
the world. And, oh, those lucky people of Bangladesh―if only their population could continue
increasing, what a wonderful future they will have! Conversely, countries such as Japan, Korea, and
the nations of Western Europe, all of whom have dramatically slowed their growth in population,
should have faired poorly since World War II. Clearly the theory of Simon and Wattenberg bears no
relationship with the facts. The fact is that anyone with a hand calculator can determine
the impossibility of maintaining an increasing or even a constant rate of population growth. The
theoretical reason is that a positive percentage change results in an ever increasing growth in the
absolute amount of change. In other words, if we increase a series starting at 100 by 3 percent
annually, the series increases to 103, 106.1, 109.3, 112.3, and so on. Note that not only is the series
increasing, but it is increasing by larger amounts each year. Now this small difference in incremental
change might not seem much, but when we are dealing with large numbers over long periods of time it
becomes explosive. Let me demonstrate with actual population data. Suppose we extrapolate the 3.7 percent rate of growth the
world was ex periencing at the time the Club of Rome made its projections. Extrapolating chat growth rate for the next
two hundred years ―just six generations― would result in the world's population exploding from 3.7
billion people in 1970 to 3.6 trillion people by the year 2270. That's 1,400 times more people. Even
maintaining the 1990s' significantly lower rate of growth of 1.48 percent1 for 200 years would result in
over 108 billion inhabitants on the planet, the equivalent of 100 new countries the size of China. The
physical impossibility of maintaining such a rate of growth is seen by extrapolating the present growth
rate out 800 years: it would result in 529 trillion people, enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder over
every foot of the earth's land mass!2 Even reducing population growth to only 1 percent per year would result in tripling the
earth's population during the next cen tury, approaching 38 billion people in two hundred years, and eventually reaching 4 trillion
people ―1000 Chinas― before 2700 C.E. Those who ignore the effect of compounding growth rates suffer from
mathematical ignorance or historic myopia.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Population Control – A2: Underpopulation Worse (2/2)
Empirically proven: high population densities destroy the environment to maintain high
living standards.
Daleiden, statistician, demographer, economist, and public policy analyst, 99
Joseph, “The American Dream: Can it survive the 21st Century?”, p64-98,
http://www.mnforsustain.org/pop_issues_policies_daleiden_j.htm, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
The Netherlands is often used as an example by those who believe that population growth is a good
thing, or at least neutral. Although it has a population density eighteen times that of the United States,
the Netherlands enjoys a high standard of living. Paul Ehrlich explains that this argument, which he
calls the Netherlands Fallacy, ignores the huge amount of physical resources acquired outside of the
Netherlands's borders that are required to sustain its living standard.41 "The Netherlands consumes
the output equivalent of fourteen times the productive land contained within its borders."42 Similarly,
Japan sustains its standard of living by importing 70 percent of its corn, wheat and barley, 95 percent
of soybeans, and 50 percent of wood from the rapidly vanishing rain forests of Borneo.43 Biologist E.
O. Wilson observes that so called economic miracles "occur most often when countries consume not
only their own material resources, including oil, timber, water and agricultural produce, but those of
other countries as well."44 Most of the world's industrialized economies, including the United States,
maintain their standard of living by using a very disproportionate amount of the earth's resources and
generate much greater pollution per capita as well. This cannot continue forever. The poorer nations of the
world are beginning to understand that if the rich nations are using a disproportionate amount of resources,
they do so at the expense of the less developed nations. One result is that the disparity between rich and poor
nations is growing larger rather than smaller. As the poor nations seek to catch up, they will find it
increasingly more difficult to close the gap. Shrinking per capita resources and the need for more
stringent standards to prevent further degradation of the environment will result in additional
constraints on the LDCs, for example, limits on fish catches or the amount of pollutant emissions.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Racist
The denial of abortions specifically to indigent womyn is discrimination and an injustice to
those people.
Fuentes, senior research associate at National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, 08
(Liza, RHReality Check, “Americans Demand Justice, Even When the Supreme Court Doesn't”, 10/23/08,
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/10/14/americans-demand-justice-even-when-supreme-court-doesnt,
accessed 6/29/09, KLM)
As a member of an abortion fund and as an activist in the "Hyde - 30 Years is Enough!" Campaign, I
demand that the federal government quit denying women essential medical care simply because they
are poor. Medicaid is Americans' commitment to the poor and underserved, and the right to an
abortion is one protected by the Constitution. By denying women abortion services under Medicaid,
the Hyde Amendment undermines both of these pledges, and does so in ways that directly discriminate
against women - above all young women, poor women and women of color. This blatant discrimination
is antithetical to American values of justice and equity. We do not allow the government to deny us the
right to vote because we are poor, nor are we denied the rights to freedom of religion or of assembly
because we cannot afford them. So why is the right to an abortion, one explicitly protected by the
Constitution, any different? The answer is because the need for abortion care under Medicaid affects
only poor women, whose political voice is more likely to be marginalized and more likely to be ignored
by politicians. Therein lies a deep injustice, and it is that laws and regulations meant to preserve the
rights and health of Americans have left out certain women because a powerful few have alternative
definitions of "rights" and "health" for those women.
The Hyde Amendment reduces the rights of lower income women by stigmatizing and
marginalizing abortions.
National Abortion Federation, 2000
(National Abortion Federation, “Public Funding for Abortion: Medicaid and the Hyde Amendment”,
http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/public_funding.html, accessed 6-29-09, SLR)
The Hyde Amendment marginalizes and stigmatizes abortion care rather than recognizing it as an
essential component of women's health, and denies low-income women basic reproductive health care.
The Hyde Amendment is reauthorized each year under appropriations bills for the Department of Labor and
the Department of Health and Human Services. The current restrictive version of the Hyde Amendment
does not provide coverage for abortions in cases of fetal abnormalities, or health exceptions apart from
life-threatening conditions. Removing funding restrictions for abortion care is an integral step in
ensuring that abortion remains safe, legal, and accessible. American women have had the legal right to
choose abortion for more than thirty years. To achieve reproductive equality for all women, restrictive
barriers such as the Hyde Amendment must be removed.
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (1/7)
The Hyde Amendment tramples the rights established in the Roe decision and forces
womyn into more dangerous abortions.
Douglas, Assistant Editor at RH Reality Check, 08
(Emily, RHReality Check or Reproductive Health Reality Check, “Hyde Amendment Robs Women of Reproductive
Choice”, http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/10/17/hyde-amendment-robs-women-reproductive-choice,
accessed 6/29/09, KLM)
Roe was perhaps most significantly compromised by the Hyde Amendment, which passed three years
after Roe was decided and all but invalidated Roe for low-income women. Hyde outlawed the use of
federal funding for abortion care except in cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment, meaning
women on Medicaid, women in the military, disabled women and women receiving care through the Indian
Health Services cannot access funded abortion through their health insurance. Prior to Hyde, Medicaid
paid for nearly one-third of all abortions. Since Hyde, federal Medicaid has paid for less than one
percent of all abortions, and thirty-three states have enacted funding bans. "The Hyde Amendment,"
Toni Bond Leonard and Marlene Gerber Friend have written, "makes reproductive decisions
privileges instead of rights." Barack Obama opposes the Hyde Amendment. Obama's campaign staff told
RH Reality Check last December, "He believes that the federal government should not use its dollars to
intrude on a poor woman's decision whether to carry to term or to terminate her pregnancy and selectively
withhold benefits because she seeks to exercise her right of reproductive choice in a manner the government
disfavors." While many anti-choice activists credit Hyde for protecting their tax dollars from
supporting a procedure they find morally repugnant, Hyde's impact, in fact, is far less neat, and it is
hardly confined to the realm of moral judgment. The number of women of reproductive age on
Medicaid is far from negligible: more than seven million women of reproductive age - 12% of all U.S.
women in that age-group-are enrolled in Medicaid. (Most women on Medicaid are already mothers, as
childless adults are typically ineligible.) Studies have repeatedly shown that Hyde pushes women to have
later, less safe and more expensive abortions rather than to forego abortion altogether; poor women
take up to three weeks longer than other women to access abortion care. "[T]he risk of complications
increases exponentially at higher gestations, so many poor women become trapped in a vicious cycle in
which their difficulties are exacerbated and their health risks increased,"writes Heather Boonstra in a
Guttmacher Institute policy review. Guttmacher studies show that 22% of Medicaid-eligible women
having second-trimester abortions would have terminated their pregnancies in the first trimester if
Medicaid had covered abortion care. Researchers Stanley K. Henshaw and Lawrence B. Finer
concluded that "the lack of Medicaid coverage may be the public policy that has the greatest impact on
the number of women who want an abortion but are unable to get one." Being unable to cover the cost
of an abortion means women may forego food, rent or bills to pay for the procedure. (Even a 10-week
abortion costs an average of $372.) And some women in the end carry a pregnancy to term they
intended to terminate. Two decades of studies found that 18-35% of women who would have had an
abortion continued their pregnancies after Medicaid funding was cut off. "This is not about the
morality of abortion," says Liza Fuentes, recent board member of the National Network of Abortion
Funds. "It's undercutting the health and well-being of women with the least amount of money. The
effect is to steal women's dignity away because they are poor."
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (2/7)
Getting rid of political barriers isn’t enough—funding is needed to stop accentuating the
race and class divisions
Gerber Fried; Professor at Hampshire College, director of the Civil Liberties and Public
Policy Program; 2006
The failure to make abortion funding and access more prominent in the prochoice agenda has accentuated
race and class divisions. The history of compromising the rights of more vulnerable women has created a
political fissure that weakens the movement. It signals to poor women and women of color that the
movement is not prepared to fight for their rights. There are several reasons for this failure. As
mentioned above, the mainstream prochoice movement tried to draw in more conservative voters by creating a
prochoice position that allows support for legal abortion without necessarily supporting public funding. In
addition, the mainstream movement has been primarily concerned with the legal right to abortion, rather
than questions of access. This reflects both the fact that the initial strategy was to change the law and, since the
1980s, the movement has had to fight a backlash determined to recriminalize abortion. In short, the legal right
to abortion although won, is not secure. This changed under the Clinton administration where we finally saw a
greater focus on access, although even then, not on access for low-income women. In general, the liberal
conception of rights demands that the government dismantle obstacles to exercising rights but does not call
for the government to take affirmative action to create the enabling conditions required for rights to be
exercised—or, as some would say, for rights to be meaningful. There is then a class and race dimension to
the very understanding of what it means to have a right—for women with relative economic privilege,
restrictive laws are the barriers to access, not lack of funding. Thus the language of choice appeals to those
who see themselves as having choices, but does not have much resonance for those who do not.
Not funding abortions leads to class divisions
Boonstra; Senior Public Policy Associate at the Guttmacher Institute, and Sonfield; Senior
Public Policy Associate at the Guttmacher Institute, 2000
(Heather and Adam, Guttmacher Policy Review, “Rights Without Access: Revisiting Public Funding of Abortion for
Poor Women,” April 2000, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/03/2/gr030208.html, 6-29-09, AMG)
Campaign supporters will seek not only to highlight the fundamental injustice of the Hyde Amendment and its
progeny, but also to place these restrictions in the context of other policies that impede poor women's ability to care
for themselves and their families. By singling out abortion for exclusion, says Marlene Gerber Fried of NNAF,
government creates a two-tiered system of health care in which poor and low-income women do not have the
same freedom to make their own decisions as those who can afford abortion or who are covered by private
insurance. "It is fundamentally unjust and discriminatory for the government to deny women on Medicaid
the same reproductive health options as women with the economic means," says Fried. Moreover, the impact of
restrictions on Medicaid funding for abortion is only compounded by welfare reform requirements for poor families.
Welfare provisions such as mandated work hours, time limits on child care subsidies, "family caps" that deny
additional benefits for another child and paternity proof requirements, Fried says, punish poor and low-income
women who give birth, making real reproductive choice a privilege of those who can afford it, rather than a
fundamental right. "In the year 2000," Fried continues, "the right to choose, in its fullest sense, is an empty
promise for thousands of poor and low-income women."
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (3/7)
The Hyde Act is discriminatory. It excludes indigent womyn from abortions.
ACLU 04
(American Civil Liberties Union Public Funding for Abortion 7/21/2004
http://www.aclu.org/reproductiverights/lowincome/16393res20040721.html accessed June 28 2009, KLM)
The Hyde Amendment and other bans should be repealed because they are discriminatory and harm
women's health. If a woman chooses to carry to term, Medicaid (and other federal insurance programs)
offer her assistance for the necessary medical care. But if the same woman needs to end her
pregnancy, Medicaid (and other federal insurance programs) will not provide coverage for her abortion,
even if continuing the pregnancy will harm her health. The government should not discriminate in this
way. It should not use its dollars to intrude on a poor woman's decision whether to carry to term or to
terminate her pregnancy and selectively withhold benefits because she seeks to exercise her right of
reproductive choice in a manner the government disfavors. With these bans, the federal government
turns its back on women who need abortions for their health. Women with cancer, diabetes, or heart
conditions, or whose pregnancies otherwise threaten their health, are denied coverage for abortions.
Only if a woman would otherwise die, or if her pregnancy results from rape or incest, is an abortion
covered. The bans thus put many women's health in jeopardy. Does Medicaid pay for other reproductive
health care? Yes. Medicaid offers comprehensive reproductive health care, including family planning,
prenatal care, and services related to childbirth. By singling out abortion for exclusion, politicians have
attempted to impose their own choices on poor women.
Lack of Medicaid funding for abortions exacerbates social inequalities between the rich
and poor.
Boonstra, Guttmacher Institute Senior Public Policy Associate, 2007
(Heather A., Guttmacher Institute, “The Heart of the Matter: Public Funding of Abortion for Poor Women in the
United States,” Winter 2007, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/10/1/gpr100112.html, accessed July 1, 2009,
GD).
Research indicates that women who are economically disadvantaged are delayed at two key stages. Poor
women typically take more time than better-off women to confirm a suspected pregnancy, which could
be because of the cost of a home pregnancy test or the difficulty in getting a test from a clinic or doctor.
In addition, they take several more days between making the decision to have an abortion and actually
obtaining one. When asked why they were delayed at this stage, poor women are about twice as likely as
more affluent women (after controlling for other personal characteristics) to report having difficulties in
arranging an abortion, usually because of the time needed to come up with the money. Moreover, other
research shows that poor women who are able to raise the money needed for an abortion often do so at
great sacrifice to themselves and their families. Studies indicate that many such women are forced to
divert money meant for rent, utility bills, food or clothing for themselves and their children. One
reason why delays in obtaining an abortion are important is because the cost and the risk of a procedure
increases with gestational age. In 2001, the average charge for an abortion in 2001 was $370 at 10 weeks'
gestation, but jumped to $650 at 14 weeks and $1,042 at 20 weeks. Thus, the longer it takes for poor
women to obtain an abortion, the harder it is for them to afford it. In addition, the risk of complications
increases exponentially at higher gestations, so many poor women become trapped in a vicious cycle in
which their difficulties are exacerbated and their health risks increased.
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (4/7)
The Hyde act forces womyn into diverting funds to get necessary abortions.
ACLU 04
(American Civil Liberties Union Public Funding for Abortion 7/21/2004
http://www.aclu.org/reproductiverights/lowincome/16393res20040721.html accessed June 28 2009, KLM)
Federal funding restrictions have left some women on Medicaid little choice but to use money they
need for food, rent, clothing, or other necessities to pay for an abortion. One study showed that nearly
60% of women on Medicaid were often forced to divert money that would otherwise be used to pay
their daily and monthly expenses, such as rent, utility bills, food and clothing for themselves and their
children. Some even resorted to pawning household goods to come up with the necessary cash.4 Many
Medicaid-eligible women delay their abortions, increasing their medical risks, while they scrape funds
together. Other women have been forced to carry their pregnancies to term or to seek illegal
abortions. Studies have shown that from 18 to 35 percent of Medicaid-eligible women who want
abortions, but who live in states that do not provide funding for abortion, have been forced to carry
their pregnancies to term.5
The economic crisis means this is a critical time to assist the growing number of indigent
womyn.
Oliver, A founder and board member of the Richmond Reproductive Freedom project, 09
(Lindsey, RHReality Check, “When The Money Runs Out: Abortion Funds Struggling”, 1-14-09,
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/01/12/when-money-runs-out-abortion-funds-scrape-together-supportwomen Accessed 6/29/09 KLM)
At a time when more and more women will begin to rely on Medicaid for their health care, the Hyde
Amendment is an insidious obstacle to full access to reproductive health care. It's clear that the
recession is having a disproportionate impact on the women we serve. More than ever, our intake
forms are filled with women telling us that they have lost their jobs, had hours cut back, been evicted,
or are living on the streets. Just a few short months ago these women would have been able to scrape
together the money for an abortion without the aid of my organization, but so much has drastically
changed in a few short months. It has always been our protocol to encourage women to pawn and sell their
posessions in order to pay for their procedures, to pay their cell phone bills a few weeks late or ask for help
from their friends and families. Now, women greet our brainstorms with an almost ironic laughter. What
do you sell when you have nothing left? How do you pay a bill late you were never planning on paying
anyway because you never had the money? How do you ask your mom or dad to pay for your abortion
when they just had their own home foreclosed?
The restrictions on the Hyde Amendment force many womyn into a vicious cycle of
expensive, dangerous abortions.
Towey et. al 05
Shawn Towey and Stephanie Poggi of NNAF and Rachel Roth of Ibis Reproductive Health, “Abortion Funding:
A Matter of Justice”, National Network of Abortion Funds,
http://www.hyde30years.nnaf.org/resources/nnaf_policy_report.pdf, accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
The case studies of grassroots abortion funds in this report provide a firsthand look at the harsh impact of
abortion funding bans on women and girls across the country. Additional perspective on the magnitude of the
problem comes from studies conducted in the years after the Hyde Amendment went into effect. Findings
show that a significant number of Medicaid-eligible women – between 18% and 35% – who would
have had abortions if fund- ing had been available, instead carried their preg- nancies to term. 23 The
studies also demonstrate the great personal cost for many low-income women who did manage to
obtain abortions. They often scraped together the money for an abortion by bor- rowing from several
people, postponing bills, and even skimping on food and other basic necessities for themselves and
their families. Moreover, these women had abortions two to three weeks later than other women. 24
Because later abortions cost more money , lower-income women found themselves – as they do today –
in a vicious cycle. By the time they raise enough money for a first-trimester abor- tion, they may be in
the beginning of the second trimester, and need to raise yet more money.
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (5/7)
Repealing the Hyde amendment is the first step to abolishing class and race discrimination.
National Network of Abortion Funds, 2009
(Center for the Inquiry of Public Policy Plea to End the Hyde Amendment, 1-16-09,
http://cfidc.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/plea-for-end-to-the-hyde-amendment/ Accessed 7-1-09, AMG)
Today, more than ever, low-income women in the United States must have access to the resources that
allow them to determine the size and timing of their families. Many of these women are already balancing
the demands of jobs, children, school, diminishing paychecks, and the disproportionate burden of an
economic downturn. Funding restrictions are often insurmountable obstacles for women with limited
resources. Removing them is the first step to true health care reform, to abolishing class- and racebased discrimination, and to placing control, dignity, and self-determination back in the hands of the
women to whom it belongs
Abortion rates are higher for impoverished women, there unintended pregnancy rate is 4
times as high
Guttmacher Institute, 2008
(Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States, July 2008,
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html, accessed 7-1-09, AMG)
The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with
no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions
per 1,000 women). This is partly because the rate of unintended pregnancies among poor women (below
100% of poverty) is nearly four times that of women above 200% of poverty* (112 vs. 29 per 1,000
women[3,1]
The Hyde Amendment specifically targets low income women depriving them of their
constitutional right
NOW, 2006
(National Organization for Women, Hyde Amendment: 30 Years of Injustice for Poor Women, 10-9-06
http://www.now.org/issues/abortion/10-09-06hyde.html?printable, Accessed 7-1-09, AMG)
Because it creates a barrier to women's access to abortion services, a right that women with financial means
are able to utilize, the Hyde amendment is unjustly harmful to the health of poor and low-income women by
burdening access to otherwise safe and legal medical procedures. The risk of complication increases the later an
induced abortion is performed, so administrative delays imposed on women decrease the safety of abortion
procedures by forcing women to wait until later in pregnancy to receive necessary funding. Furthermore, women
who cannot pay for abortion services may be forced to choose a self-induced or illegal, life-threatening
abortion. For those low-income women who do not seek such desperate measures, the amendment effectively
forces them to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Since the amendment's enactment, the Guttmacher Institute
has found that 20-35 percent of women eligible under Medicaid who would choose abortion have carried their
pregnancies to term due to lack of personal financial means and the absence of state funding. The right to
reproductive health care necessitates that women have equal access to all care, including abortion, regardless
of their economic means or the specific circumstances of their pregnancies. Since 12 million women of
reproductive age are covered under Medicaid, the current Hyde Amendment compromises millions of
women's right to abortion access and routinely puts their health and lives at risk. Furthermore, the
Amendment specifically targets women of low economic status, effectively blocking their Constitutional right
to reproductive options and invading their privacy. As a result, the Amendment further politicizes abortion
care, instead of recognizing it as a fundamental component of reproductive and family planning health care. In
order to achieve complete reproductive equality that has been constitutionally guaranteed to all women for
more than three decades, NOW urges that the Hyde Amendment be repealed.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (6/7)
Legalizing abortion is not enough – the high costs make it a privilege only for the elite
Schindler, Master’s candidate Free University of Berlin, Germany; Anna E. Jackson A.B.,
Harvard University; Charon Asetoyer, B.A., M.A. Executive Director Native American
Women’s Health Education Resource Center Lake Andes, 02
(Kati Schindler, South Dakota, “Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Rights: The Indian Health Service and Its
Inconsistent Application of the Hyde Amendment,” Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center,
A Project Of The Native American Community Board, October 2002,
http://www.prochoice.org/pubs_research/publications/downloads/about_abortion/indigenous_women.pdf, JM)
The legalization of abortion was one important step in improving women’s rights. However, ensuring
that low-income women can financially realize this right is another issue, and one that often has been
neglected. For instance, the pro-choice movement in the 1970s was primarily led by white feminists and did
not address the issue of providing funding for abortion. Therefore, the cost of abortion services remains a
major barrier for many women, in particular for low-income, immigrant, minority, and Indigenous
women. These women are at risk of not being able to exercise their right to abortion services because
they lack the financial means. As long as funding for abortion is not ensured, the right to choose
remains a privilege only for those who can afford it.
Current policies make the lives of the poor and minorities much harder and are unfair.
Rosoff, Author, 80
(Jeannie I., JSTOR, “Family Planning Perspectives”, August 1980,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2134782?&Search=yes&term=amendment&term=hyde&term=rights&term=women&lis
t=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhyde%2Bamendment%2Bwomen%2Brights%26g
w%3Djtx%26prq%3Dhyde%2Bamendment%2Bfeminism%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&ite
m=3&ttl=1688&returnArticleService=showArticle, accessed 7-1-9, SLR)
Should all of these developments take place, the cruel impact on poor women and their families of the ban on
public funding of abortions would be decreased but not eliminated. It would still be true that it is brutal, as
a matter of public policy, to heap hardships upon the poorest, most vulnerable and most helpless
members of our society. To bar the poor, and only the poor, from the exercise of their rights and
responsibilities is fundamentally unfair. Policies which precipitate or deepen their dependency make
little sense except as they serve to appease the political passions and fears of some legislators.
Poor women are used as pawns in the politics of abortion
Boonstra, Senior Public Policy Associate in the Guttmacher Institute's, 2008
Heather D. Guttmacher Institute,The Impact of Government Programs on Reproductive Health Disparities: Three
Case Studies, Summer 2008, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/11/3/gpr110306.html, accessed 7-1-09, AMG
It is ironic, then, that soon after the nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973 (the year the Supreme
Court handed down its decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton), poor women became pawns in the
congressional debate over the procedure. After failing to overturn Roe by persuading Congress to pass a
"human life amendment" to the U.S. Constitution, abortion opponents focused on restricting poor
women's access to the procedure, by withdrawing public funding for abortion under Medicaid. "I
certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middleclass woman, or a poor woman," said then-Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) during a congressional debate over
public funding in 1977. "Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the…Medicaid bill."
The ability to have an abortion is key to social justice
Boonstra, Senior Public Policy Associate in the Guttmacher Institute's, 2008
Heather D. Guttmacher Institute,The Impact of Government Programs on Reproductive Health Disparities: Three
Case Studies, Summer 2008, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/11/3/gpr110306.html, accessed 7-1-09, AMG
The bottom line is that even as advocates press for targeted initiatives to reduce sexual and
reproductive health disparities, they need to give greater attention to the larger forces that drive
disparities. Addressing social and economic disparities is critical to reproductive health. At the same
time, empowering women and couples to decide if and when to have a child and enabling them to have
a healthy pregnancy and baby are critical to achieving social justice.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – I/L: Hyde Classist (7/7)
The Hyde Amendment takes away basic rights from poor people
Ross, National Coordinator of the SisterSong, 2009
(Loretta, Sister Song, Women of Color Need Human Rights, Not Concessions,1-29-09,
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/01/28/women-color-need-human-rights-not-concessions, Accessed 7-1-09,
AMG)
As an organization that represents both pro-life and pro-choice women of color, SisterSong believes that
poor women should have the same rights and access as middle class women in making decisions about
our bodies. But the Hyde Amendment and other federal rules prohibit federal funding for abortion
services for poor women on Medicaid, for Native American women in the Indian Health Services, for
women in the military and in the Peace Corps. As a first step, the Hyde Amendment should be repealed -immediately! The government should not be in the business of telling us what to do with our
reproductive choices. These are our private decisions. The situation is comparable to choosing to fly in an
airplane. The government should not tell us which airline to use, which destination to choose or if we should
fly at all. But the government does have an obligation to ensure that the airlines are safe, that the airfares are
affordable and that the airports are accessible. The questions of safety, affordability and accessibility are
necessary to enable our private decisions to be meaningful. The same is true when it comes to
abortion. Poor women demand the right to safe, affordable and accessible conditions in which to
implement our private decisions on whether or not to have children. A manufactured “consensus,”
claiming that the new administration should not fight for the reproductive rights of poor women, is
simply wrong.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – Plan Solves
Fighting for reproductive justice breaks the cycle of control that traps indigent womyn and
prevents the reproductive justice movement from gaining support.
Ross, National Coordinator for the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health
Collective, 07
(Loretta J., “Pro Choice is not enough”, http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pro-choice-not-enough, accessed
7/1/09, KLM)
For many activists, especially women of color and poor women, a key development has been an expansion of
the "reproductive rights" movement to a model of "reproductive justice." The concept of reproductive
justice is to empower women to take control of our reproductive desti-nies, which includes the right to an
abortion or birth control, the right to have a child, and the right to parent our children. Women who fight for
reproductive justice know the importance of organizing beyond the pro-choice framework. Poor women don't
always relate to the pro-choice movement because they often have few real choices. Without the economic
ability to afford an abortion, or without the support to parent the children they already have, a systematic
cycle of reproductive oppression continues for all poor women, and especially for women of color.
Reproductive justice focuses on organizing women, girls, and their communities to challenge structural
power inequalities in a comprehensive and transformative process. Instead of focusing on the means - a divisive
debate on abortion and birth control that neglects many of the real-life experiences of women and girls - the reproductive justice
analysis focuses on the ends: better lives for women, healthier families, and sustainable communities. Working for All Women in
2008 In the upcoming election year, it is essential for people to refuse to support candidates who don't support women's rights
and who become weak in the face of criticism from anti-abortion opponents. A politician who claims to work on behalf of poor
women and women of color must strongly support our human rights and understand the dilemmas poor women face when
making reproductive choices. One immediate goal of the reproductive justice movement is to repeal the Hyde
Amendment of 1976. The Hyde Amendment declares that no Medicaid funds - a federal program that
provides payment to health care providers for poor and low-income people - can be used to pay for abortions,
unless the procedure is necessary to save the mother's life, or the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or
incest. As a result of this law, poor women are forced to spend their food or rent money to pay for an
abortion. If they are unable to raise the funds, they are forced to have a child for which they are unable to
provide. The National Network of Abortion Funds and other organizations are working collectively to end this legislation that
has kept poor and low-income women from controlling their lives. Women must organize to challenge and confront the
oppressive policies affecting our communities. When a woman enters an abortion clinic she enters with all her problems,
whether it is domes-tic abuse, economic hardship, or confusion about her options. Understanding how a woman's age, race,
immigration status, sexual identify, and class directly affect her options is a key element in strengthening the pro-choice
movement and transforming it into a Reproductive Justice movement.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – Impact: Racism (1/2)
Racism and classism support the system of power that makes nuclear war inevitable.
LaBalme, activist, 2002
(Fen, Activism.net, “Activism: Pease: NVCD: Discrimination,” 2002,
http://www.activism.net/peace/nvcdh/discrimination.shtml, accessed July 2, 2009, GD).
In this action, our struggle is not only against missiles and bombs, but against the system of power they
defend: a system based on domination, on the belief that some people have more value than others, and
therefore have the right to control others, to exploit them so that they can lead better lives than those they
oppress. We say that all people have value. No person, no group, has the right to wield power over the
decisions and resources of others. The structure of our organizations and the processes we use among
ourselves are our best attempt to live our belief in self-determination. Besides working against
discrimination of all kinds among ourselves, we must try to understand how such discrimination
supports the system which produces nuclear weapons. For some people who come to this action, the
overriding issue is the struggle to prevent nuclear destruction. For others, that struggle is not separate from
the struggles against racism, sexism, classism, and the oppression of groups of people because of their
sexual orientation, religion, age, physical (dis)ability, appearance, or life history. Understood this way, it is
clear that nuclear weapons are already killing people, forcing them to lead lives of difficulty and
struggle. Nuclear war has already begun, and it claims its victims disproportionately from native
peoples, the Third World, women, and those who are economically vulnerable because of the history of
oppression. All oppressions are interlocking. We separate racism, classism, etc. in order to discuss
them, not to imply that any form of oppression works in isolation. We know that to work against any one
of these is not just to try to stop something negative, but to build a positive vision. Many in the movement
call this larger goal feminism. Calling our process "feminist process" does not mean that women dominate or
exclude men; on the contrary, it challenges all systems of domination. The term recognizes the historical
importance of the feminist movement in insisting that nonviolence begins at home, in the ways we treat
each other.
Racism justifies nuclear war.
LaBalme, activist, 2002
(Fen, Activism.net, “Activism: Pease: NVCD: Discrimination,” 2002,
http://www.activism.net/peace/nvcdh/discrimination.shtml, accessed July 2, 2009, GD).
Similarly, racism, or the institutionalized devaluation of darker peoples, supports both the idea and the
practice of the military and the production of nuclear weapons. Racism operates as a system of divide
and conquer. It helps to perpetuate a system in which some people consistently are "haves" and others
are "have nots." Racism tries to make white people forget that all people need and are entitled to selfdetermination, good health care, and challenging work. Racism limits our horizons to what presently exists;
it makes us suppose that current injustices are "natural," or it makes those injustices invisible. For
example, most of the uranium used in making nuclear weapons is mined under incredibly hazardous
conditions by people of color: Native Americans and black South Africans. Similarly, most radioactive and
hazardous waste dumps are located on lands owned or occupied by people of color. If all those people
suffering right now from exposure to nuclear materials were white, would nuclear production remain
acceptable to the white-dominated power structure? Racism also underlies the concept of "national
security": that the U.S. must protect its "interests" in Third World countries through the exercise of
military force and economic manipulation. In this world-view, the darker peoples of the world are
incapable of managing their own affairs and do not have the right to self-determination. Their struggles
to democratize their countries and become independent of U.S. military and economic institutions are
portrayed as "fanatic," "terrorist," or "Communist." The greatest danger of nuclear war today lies in the
likelihood of superpower intervention in Third World countries, fueled by government appeals to
nationalistic and racist interests.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – Impact: Racism (2/2)
Racism will lead to a global catastrophe worse than any other we have seen
Barndt, Writer and pastor, 91
(Jospeh R., GoogleBooks, “Dismantling Racism,”
http://books.google.com/books?id=GX6dqt35fIEC&pg=PP1&dq=dismantling+racism&client=firefox-a, accessed 72-9, SLR)
To study racism is to study walls. We have looked at barriers and fences, restraints and limitations, ghettos
and prisons. The prison of racism confines us all, people of color and white people alike. It shackles the
victimizer as well as the victim. The walls forcibly kept people of color and white people separate from each
other; in our separate prisons we are all prevented from achieving the human potential that God intends for
us. The limitations imposed on people of color by poverty, subservience, and powerlessness are cruel,
inhuman, and unjustl the effects of uncontrolled power, privilege and greed, which are the marks of
our white prison, will inevitably destroy us as well. But we have also seen that the walls of racism can
be dismantled. We are not condemned to an inoxerable fate, but are offered the vision and the
possibility of freedom. Brick by brick, stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cultural
racism can be destroyed. You and I are urgently called to join the efforts of those who know it is time to
tear down, once and for all, the walls of racism. The danger point of self-destruction seems to be
drawing ever more near. The results of centuries of national and worldwide conquest and colonialism,
of military buildups and violent agresesion, of overconsumption and environmental destruction may be
reaching a point of no return. A small and predominantly white minority of the global population
derives its power and privilege from the sufferings of the vast majority of peoples of color. For the sake
of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – Impact: Classism (1/2)
Class inequality is the root cause of all the evils in the world, abolishing it our first priority
Spritzler, Research Scientist at Harvard School of Public Health, 2008
(John, Turn the World Upside Down, Class Inequality: Abolish It or Win Nothing, 12-7-08,
http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/2008/12/class-inequality-abolish-it-or-win.html, Accessed 7-2-09, AMG)
Why do we need to make abolishing class inequality our number one priority? It is not simply that
class inequality is unfair, which it certainly is. It is because class inequality is the root of all the other
evils in society that people struggle against. It is the root of crime and corruption. It is the root of
governments being undemocratic even when they are officially democratic. It is the root of human
rights being denied to people, including rights that have nothing directly to do with class inequality.
Until the root of class inequality is eradicated, the evils that grow from that root will always grow
back, no matter what. As long as we tolerate class inequality those at the top will buy or otherwise obtain
more than their fair share of social wealth. Some will possess several mansions while others are homeless.
Worse--and this is the key point--they will live in and enjoy those mansions with full social approval.
Likewise some will, with full social approval, buy a team of personal doctors and enjoy unrestricted use
of expensive medical technology while others have no medical insurance and die waiting to be seen in
emergency rooms. In a society that tolerates class inequality, buying things like this is as easy as buying
a slave in a society that tolerates slavery, or buying a child to molest in a society that tolerates child
abuse.
Classism leads to militarization.
LaBalme, activist, 2002
(Fen, Activism.net, “Activism: Pease: NVCD: Discrimination,” 2002,
http://www.activism.net/peace/nvcdh/discrimination.shtml, accessed July 2, 2009, GD).
All forms of discrimination are interrelated with economic discrimination, or classism. Classism justifies
a system in which competition is the norm, and profit is believed to be a universal motivation. Thus, poor
and working class people lack access to education, leisure time and frequently basic things like food and
shelter. But a classist society blames them for their poverty, or devalues their particular way of living.
Classism values certain kinds of work over others, and sets up a system of unequal rewards. Our society
threatens the majority of our members with economic insecurity, forcing us to accept things the way they
are for fear of losing the few things we've gained through hard work. Since most poor people are women,
children and people of color, classism and other forms of discrimination work together to hide the
injustice of our economic system. Poor and working class people feel the effects of the military directly,
profoundly, and brutally. Vital social services have been cut to feed the Pentagon. Inflation, aggravated
by the military budget, chews away at what is left after disproportionately high taxes are deducted from our
pay. Poor people are prime military recruits, with historically little access to draft deferments or information
about conscientious objection, forced by unemployment to think of the military as a "career
opportunity." Our militarized society does not support cooperative and socially productive work, but
counts on unequal competition and economic deprivation to provide workers in defense industries,
miners in uranium mines, and soldiers in the armed forces.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – Impact: Classism (2/2)
Class equality is a prerequisite to human rights
Spritzler, Research Scientist at Harvard School of Public Health, 2008
(John, Turn the World Upside Down, Class Inequality: Abolish It or Win Nothing, 12-7-08,
http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/2008/12/class-inequality-abolish-it-or-win.html, Accessed 7-2-09, AMG)
Like democracy, human rights cannot flourish in a society that tolerates class inequality. The United
Nations Declaration of Human Rights in the very first sentence of its first Article says: "All human beings are
born free and equal in dignity and rights." Unfortunately, people do not have equal rights, and hence to
not enjoy equal dignity today. Most people on the planet do not have the human rights identified in the
Declaration, such as the right to "life, liberty and security of person" (Article 3) or the "right to a standard of
living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing
and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment,
sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control"
(Article 25). If people truly enjoyed these things as unconditional rights, then they would not need to do
the bidding of those with lots of money in order to have these things. Money would lose its power and
society would be more equal. Those at the top rungs of an unequal society, who value inequality and fear
equality, understand this. That is why they do all sorts of evil things to prevent people from enjoying
the human rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The fight for human rights is thus
a fight against the defenders of class inequality. The power of these defenders of inequality comes
precisely from the inequality they defend. This is why any effort to win human rights that doesn't aim
to abolish class inequality is doomed to fail.
Saying class inequality is inevitable was like saying abolishing slavery is impossible
Spritzler, Research Scientist at Harvard School of Public Health, 2008
(John, Turn the World Upside Down, Class Inequality: Abolish It or Win Nothing, 12-7-08,
http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/2008/12/class-inequality-abolish-it-or-win.html, Accessed 7-2-09, AMG)
There are those today who insist that it is impossible and even undesirable to abolish class inequality.
Inequality, they say, is what motivates people to work--to "get ahead"-- and without it people wouldn't
work or be creative or become extraordinarily skilled at anything. Without inequality our culture of greatness
would become a culture of mediocrity. Abolishing inequality is a wild and crazy idea, impossible they
say. But those who defend class inequality today are as wrong as those who defended slavery in the
past. The notion that equality means mediocrity and laziness is just wrong. People work hard and excel
in different ways and tackle social problems for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting to have
more social wealth than others. We could have a modern and wonderful economy in a society based on
equality. As with slavery, far more people want to abolish class inequality than want to keep it. In
health care, for example, the public wants equality. The most recent expression of this longstanding fact
occurred in Massachusetts in the November 2008 election, when the following question was on the ballot in
ten legislative districts:
Class inequality dooms democracy
Spritzler, Research Scientist at Harvard School of Public Health, 2008
(John, Turn the World Upside Down, Class Inequality: Abolish It or Win Nothing, 12-7-08,
http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/2008/12/class-inequality-abolish-it-or-win.html, Accessed 7-2-09, AMG)
When having little money means having little claim to the ownership or use of social wealth, like food
and shelter and health care, then people with little are forced to obey those with lots just to survive.
Even those who are better off than many will still be tempted to do the bidding of the wealthiest in
exchange for a bribe that will enable them to rise higher on the ladder of class inequality. Class
inequality guarantees that corruption of government officials will be rife. Real democracy is out of the
question. If instead of money class inequality is based on rank in a Communist party or religion, the result is
the same: those with the lion's share of social wealth at their disposal will use it to bribe and corrupt
government officials. Any effort to win real democracy that doesn't aim to abolish class inequality is
doomed to fail.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism -- A2: Abortion Racist
The restrictions to abortions make room for sterilization funding for poor women and
women of color – this is modeled around the world.
The Boston Women's Health Book Collective, Nonprofit organization devoted to education
about women and health 98
(“Abortion”, http://www.feminist.com/resources/ourbodies/abortion.html, accessed 7/1/09, KLM)
Women with few economic resources, especially women of color in the U.S. and throughout the world, have
been the primary targets of population control policies. For example, although abortion has become
increasingly less accessible in the U.S., sterilization remains all too available for women of color. The federal
government stopped funding abortions in 1977, but it continues to pay for sterilizations. During the 1970s,
women's health activists exposed various forms of sterilization abuse (see section on sterilization in chapter 13,
Birth Control). Since the 1980s, advocates have fought against new policies that coerce women with low incomes
into using Norplant, a long-term hormonal contraceptive. In the Third World, in addition to the widespread
unavailability of desired contraceptives, there is a long history of coercive fertility control, primarily funded
and inspired by developed countries, especially the U.S. (see chapter 26, The Global Politics of Women and
Health, for the international dimensions of population control). The right to abortion is part of every woman's
right to control her reproductive choices and her own life. We must reject all efforts to coerce women's
reproductive decisions. The goals of reproductive rights activists must encompass the right to have children
as well as the right not to.
Ethnic disparities in abortion directly correlate to the number of unintended pregnancies
Cohen, Director of Government Affairs for Guttmacher Institute, 2008
(Susan, Guttmacher Institute, “Abortion and Women of Color: The Bigger Picture,” Summer 2008,
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/11/3/gpr110302.html, Accessed 6-30-09, AMG)
This much is true: In the United States, the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for
white women. Antiabortion activists, including some African-American pastors, have been waging a
campaign around this fact, falsely asserting that the disparity is the result of aggressive marketing by
abortion providers to minority communities. The Issues4Life Foundation, for example, is a faith-based
organization that targets and works with African-American leaders toward achieving the goal of "zero
African-American lives lost to abortion or biotechnology." In April, Issues4Life wrote to the Congressional
Black Caucus to denounce Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and its "racist and eugenic
goals." The group blamed PPFA and abortion providers in general for the high abortion rate in the AfricanAmerican community—deeming the situation the "Da[r]fur of America"—and called on Congress to
withdraw federal family planning funds from all PPFA affiliates. These activists are exploiting and
distorting the facts to serve their antiabortion agenda. They ignore the fundamental reason women
have abortions and the underlying problem of racial and ethnic disparities across an array of health
indicators. The truth is that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy. This applies
to all women—black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American alike. Not surprisingly, the variation
in abortion rates across racial and ethnic groups relates directly to the variation in the unintended
pregnancy rates across those same groups.
Need to advocate for all women’s, regardless of race, access to a safe abortion
Cohen, Director of Government Affairs for Guttmacher Institute, 2008
(Susan, Guttmacher Institute, “Abortion and Women of Color: The Bigger Picture,” Summer 2008,
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/11/3/gpr110302.html, Accessed 6-30-09, AMG)
The fact that AAWE and other minority-focused groups argue as passionately for alleviating poverty,
promoting access to health care more broadly and advancing women’s equality more generally as they
do for family planning or abortion rights in no way diminishes their commitment to those rights.To the
contrary. In stark contrast to the antiabortion pastors who appear intent on trying to protect minority
women from themselves, it is these groups and their advocates in Congress who are working to
advance the real interest of women of color, by advocating for all women’s meaningful access to the
range of health information, services and rights they need to live and improve their own lives.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
Racism/Classism – A2: Pro-Life Criticism
Rightist pro-life movements are rooted in classist and racist depictions of indigent womyn.
Chamberlain and Hardisty 09
(Pam and Jean, “Reproducing Patriarchy: Reproductive Rights Under Siege” The Public Eye Magazine, Vo. 14,
No. 1, http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v14n1/ReproPatriarch-12.html Accessed 6-29-09, KLM)
In the case of abortion, the various sectors of the anti-abortion movement treat all women equally. No
matter what race or class, women should not have abortions. But in the larger sphere of reproductive
rights-the rights to conceive, bear, and raise children-pro-life strategists apply a double standard.
Middle and upper class white women should bear children and stay at home to raise them. Single, lowincome women (especially low-income women of color), and immigrant women should limit their
childbearing and should work outside the home to support their children. Even a cursory examination of
the right's policy agenda demonstrates that, when the focus is changed from abortion to broader reproductive
freedom, the right applies race and class criteria that distinguish between the rights of white, middleclass women and low-income women of color. The right has viciously attacked welfare mothers for
their "sexuality" and immigrant women for bearing "too many" children.34 In its worldview,
"excessive" childbearing by low-income, single women causes poverty. To eliminate poverty, it is necessary
to prevent that childbearing.35 Right-wing activists reserve their most vicious attacks for these groups of
women, promoting negative stereotypes of low-income women of all races as dependent, irresponsible,
prone to addictions, and inadequate mothers.36 They use these stereotypes to inflame public opinion
against all sexual behavior that lies outside the narrow parameters of right-wing ideology. The right
advocates policies that discourage childbearing by depriving low-income women of the means to support a child. In the 1990s, using
stereotypes such as the "welfare queen," the right successfully promoted the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act, the "welfare reform" bill. As part of that policy initiative, the right has sought to discourage women on welfare from
becoming pregnant by punishing them when they bear children. This form of punishment known euphemistically as a "family cap,"
which is increasingly popular with state legislatures, denies any increase in payments to women who become pregnant or give birth to a
child while on welfare. Another right-wing policy that discourages or prevents childbearing by low-income women mandates or
encourages women to use Norplant, Depo-Provera, or the newest form of contraception, contraceptive vaccines such as quinacrine.
These policies designed to control the child-bearing of poor women are but the latest in a series of practices that date back to the
eugenics movement of the 19th century, which promoted, racial theories of "fitness" and "unfitness." During this time of a significantly
declining birth rate within the white population, politicians and eugenicists raised the specter of white "race suicide." The eugenics
movement, which was adopted briefly by the birth control movement in the early 20th century,
advocated a higher birthrate for white, middle class, "fit" women and a lower birthrate (aided by
birth control) for poor women, especially poor "unfit" women of color and immigrant women.37 The
best-known method of denying a woman her right to have children is sterilization abuse. Sterilization
is a medical procedure that, like abortion, often is experienced differently in low-income communities
of color and in middle-class white communities. Historically, doctors have made it difficult for white
women, especially middle-class white women, to choose to be sterilized: insisting, for example, that they
come back a second time after they have taken time to "think about it." The attitude of the same medical
professionals toward women of color and poor white women has been dramatically different. In these
instances, many doctors have long encouraged the procedure, sometimes sterilizing these women
without their consent through manipulation or actual deceit. By 1968, for example, a campaign by
private agencies and the Puerto Rican government resulted in the sterilization of one-third of Puerto
Rican women of childbearing age. A similar campaign in the 1970s resulted in the sterilization of 25
percent of Indian women living on reservations.38
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Unwanted – Abortion Decreases Crime (1/2)
By giving womyn the ability to choose when and where to have children, children are born
into better environments and decrease crime.
Donohue and Levitt, Professor of law and Director of the Becker Center on Chicago Price
Theory, 01
(JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITT, “THE IMPACT OF LEGALIZED ABORTION ON
CRIME”, THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Vol. CXVI May 2001 Issue 2, pg. 379, KLM)
Legalized abortion may lead to reduced crime either through reductions in cohort sizes or through
lower per capita offending rates for affected cohorts. The smaller cohort that results from abortion
legalization means that when that cohort reaches the late teens and twenties, there will be fewer young
males in their highest-crime years, and thus less crime. More interesting and important is the possibility
that children born after abortion legalization may on average have lower subsequent rates of criminality for either of two reasons. First, women who have abortions are those most at risk to give birth to
children who would engage in criminal activity. Teenagers, unmarried women, and the eco- nomically
disadvantaged are all substantially more likely to seek abortions [Levine et al. 1996]. Recent studies have
found children born to these mothers to be at higher risk for committing crime in adolescence
[Comanor and Phillips 1999]. Gruber, Levine, and Staiger [1999], in the paper most similar to ours,
document that the early life circumstances of those children on the margin of abortion are difficult
along many dimensions: infant mortality, growing up in a single-parent family, and experiencing
poverty. Second, women may use abortion to optimize the timing of child- bearing. A given woman’s
ability to provide a nurturing environ- ment to a child can fluctuate over time depending on the
woman’s age, education, and income, as well as the presence of a father in the child’s life, whether the
pregnancy is wanted, and any drug or alcohol abuse both in utero and after the birth. Consequently,
legalized abortion provides a woman the opportunity to delay childbearing if the current conditions
are suboptimal. Even if lifetime fertility remains constant for all women, children are born into better
environments, and future criminality is likely to be reduced. Empirically proven: when abortions are
legalized, states see crime rates fall in the future. Donohue and Levitt, Professor of law and Director of the
Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory, 01 (JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITT, “THE
IMPACT OF LEGALIZED ABORTION ON CRIME”, THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS,
Vol. CXVI May 2001 Issue 2, pg. 379, KLM) A number of anecdotal empirical facts support the
existence and magnitude of the crime-reducing impact of abortion. First, we see a broad consistency
with the timing of legalization of abortionand the subsequent drop in crime. For example, the peak ages
for violent crime are roughly 18–24, and crime starts turning down around 1992, roughly the time at
which the first cohort born following Roe v. Wade would hit its criminal prime. Second, as we later
demonstrate, the five states that legalized abortion in 1970 saw drops in crime before the other 45 states
and the District of Columbia, which did not allow abortions until the Supreme Court decision in 1973.
Crime Rates drop after 20 years, separating it from alternate causes
Donohue and Levitt, Professor of law and Director of the Becker Center on Chicago Price
Theory, 01
(JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITT, “THE IMPACT OF LEGALIZED ABORTION ON
CRIME”, THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Vol. CXVI May 2001 Issue 2, pg. 379, NG)
Summary statistics for the sample are provided in Table III. The summary statistics on abortion
correspond to the effective abortion rate, which is well below the actual abortion rate throughout the
sample because much of the criminal population was born prior to legalized abortion. Actual national
abortion rates in the years immediately after Roe v. Wade were roughly 300 abortions per 1000 live births,
but with considerable variation across states. For example, over the period from 1973–1976, West Virginia
had the lowest abortion rate (10 per 1000 live births), while New York (763) and Washington, D.C. (1793)
had the highest rates. There is a great deal of variation in crimes per 1000 residents, both across states
and within states over time. The same is true for arrest rates. An important limitation of the data is
that state abortion rates are very highly serially correlated. The correlation between state abortion rates
in years t and t 1 1 is .98. The five-year and ten-year correlations are .95 and .91, respectively. One
implication of these high correlations is that it is very difficult using the data alone to distinguish the impact
of 1970s abortions on current crime rates from the impact of 1990s abortions on current crime rates; if one
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Unwanted – Abortion Decreases Crime (2/2)
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includes both lagged and current abortion rates in the same specification, standard errors explode due to
multicollinearity. Consequently, it must be recognized that our interpretation of the results relies on the
assumption that there will be a fifteen-to-twenty year lag before abortion materially affects crime. This
lag between the act of abortion and its impact on crime differentiates it from many other social
phenomena like divorce and poverty which may have both lagged and contemporaneous effects,
making it very difficult to separately identify any lagged effects.
Abortions are responsible for dropped crime rates and save 30 billion a year on police and
prisons
Donohue and Levitt, Professor of law and Director of the Becker Center on Chicago Price
Theory, 01
(JOHN J. DONOHUE III AND STEVEN D. LEVITT, “THE IMPACT OF LEGALIZED ABORTION ON
CRIME”, THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Vol. CXVI May 2001 Issue 2, pg. 379, NG)
We know that teenagers, unmarried women, and poor women are most likely to deem a pregnancy to be
either mistimed or unwanted, and that a large proportion of these unintended pregnancies will be
terminated through abortion.36 According to a recent National Academy report, there appears to be “a
causal and adverse effect of early childbearing on the health and social and economic well-being of
children; this effect is over and above the important effects of background disadvantages” [Institute of
Medicine 1995, p. 58]. Moreover, unintended pregnancies are associated with poorer prenatal care, greater
smoking and drinking during pregnancy, and lower birthweights. Consequently, the life chances of children
who are born only because their mothers could not have an abortion are considerably dampened
relative to babies who were wanted at the time of conception. The drop in the proportion of unwanted
births during the 1970s and early 1980s appears to be the result of the increasing availability and
resort to abortion. The evidence we present is consistent with legalized abortion reducing crime rates with a
twenty-year lag. Our results suggest that an increase of 100 abortions per 1000 live births reduces a cohort’s
crime by roughly 10 percent. Extrapolating our results out of sample to a counterfactual in which abortion
remained illegal and the number of illegal abortions performed remained steady at the 1960s level, we
estimate that (with average national effective abortion rates in 1997 for all three crimes ranging from
between 142 and 252) crime was almost 15–25 percent lower in 1997 than it would have been absent
legalized abortion. These estimates suggest that legalized abortion is a primary explanation for the
large drops in murder, property crime, and violent crime that our nation has experienced over the last
decade. Indeed, legalized abortion may account for as much as one-half of the overall crime reduction.
Assuming that this claim is correct, existing estimates of the costs of crime (e.g., Miller, Cohen, and
Rossman [1993] suggest that the social benefit to reduced crime as a result of abortion may be on the
order of $30 billion dollars annually.
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Hyde Affirmative
Unwanted – Impact: Poor Unfortunate Souls (1/3)
Unwanted children and the entire family suffer mentally and physically when an abortion
is not carried out.
Rice, Ethics Writer for Associated Content, 2006
(Brian, Associated Content, “Abortion: Ethical Analysis, a Utalitarian Argument for Abortion” 3-23-6,
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/25347/abortion_ethical_analysis_pg2.html?cat=37, Accessed 6-29-09,
SLR)
Mothers with unwanted births suffer from higher levels of depression and lower levels of
happiness than mothers without unwanted births. They spank and slap their children more often than
other mothers, and spend less leisure time outside the home with their children. Lower-quality
mother/child relationships are not limited to the child born as a result of the unwanted pregnancy —
all the children in the family suffer.
Women that are denied abortions either get illegal abortions or resent their child
Planned Parenthood, 2007
(“The Emotional Effects of Induced Abortion” Janaury 2007, accessed 7-1-09, NG)
The mental health of women faced with unwanted pregnancy is at greater risk when they are compelled to
deliver than when they are allowed to choose abortion. According to one study, 34 percent of women who were
denied abortions reported one to three years later that the child was a burden that they frequently resented ·
Children of women denied abortion have more genetic malformations than average; have insecure, divorce-fraught
childhoods; perform worse at school; have more psychosomatic symptoms; are often registered with welfare
officials; and often need psychiatric treatment · A study in Sweden indicated that 24 percent of women who
applied for and were refused abortion seven years earlier had not yet been able to adjust emotionally. Another
53 percent had been able to adjust but with difficulty. Only 23 percent could be described as well-adjusted · A 1981
study indicated that less than half of the women who elected to terminate a pregnancy would not have had an
illegal abortion if that were their only recourse. Fifty-eight percent were uncertain or would have had an illegal
abortion if that were their only alternative
Unwanted children suffer from emotional and intellectual handicaps.
Arthur, Pro-Choice Press editor, 1999
(Joyce, Pro-Choice Action Network, “Legal Abortion: the Sign of a Civilized Society,” October 1999,
http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/civilize.html#unwanted, accessed June 29, 2009, GD).
The anti-choice suffer from what I call the "fetus focus fallacy." They put fetuses ahead of just about
everything else, including women's lives and rights, the alleviation of human suffering, freedom of
conscience and religion, and truth itself. But let's take a look at these "unborn children", the ones who end up
being aborted, but who should, according to anti-abortionists, be forced to live. Unwanted childbearing has
long been linked with adverse consequences to children. Several studies, conducted in countries like the
U.S., Czechoslovakia, and Sweden, have documented the long-term developmental problems suffered
by children whose mothers did not want to bear them. The findings point to various emotional,
educational, and functional disorders that get worse as children become adults. These difficulties
happen even to children born to healthy, adult women who have stable marriages and adequate economic
resources. The problems are compounded for the majority of unwanted children who are born to poor,
unhealthy, unmarried, or teenage mothers. The studies focused on women who tried to get abortions and
were denied them by law or by circumstance. Some used control groups of wanted children and compared
them to groups of unwanted children. The studies found that when compared to wanted children, unwanted
children are more likely to suffer from:
* crippling emotional handicaps * stunted intellectual
and educational development * patterns of anti-social behaviour * troubled home and family life
* abuse or neglect by parents * dissatisfaction and dysfunction in adult life For example, unwanted
children are:
* significantly more likely to have mental handicaps at birth * more likely to dislike
school and perform significantly worse academically * more than twice as likely to have a record of
juvenile delinquency, up to four times more likely to have an adult criminal record, and three times
more likely to be repeat offenders * more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs in youth and early
adulthood * up to six times more likely to receive welfare between ages 16 and 21 * twice as likely
to be less adaptive to frustration and stress, a handicap that continues into adulthood * nearly three
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Unwanted – Impact: Poor Unfortunate Souls (2/3)
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times more likely to describe themselves as unhappy and unable to cope with their problems The
findings of these studies of unwanted children paint a clear and disturbing picture of what happens to
children when abortion and family planning services are restricted. Forced motherhood and a lack of social
support mean that unplanned children too often become victims of life, simply through an accident of birth.
And an unwanted child may become an unwanted adult. A recent study in the United States concluded that
the legalization of abortion there in 1973 may account for half of the 30-40% reduction in crime that
America has experienced since 1991. Legal abortion allows women and men to plan their families and
provide for wanted children adequately. The result is more confident, happier, healthier children, who
will be more likely to lead fulfilling and constructive lives than their unwanted counterparts. Legal
abortion benefits the health and well-being of children in other ways, too. Children are no longer
orphaned when their mothers die from dangerous, illegal abortions, leaving their families without the critical
economic and social contributions of a mother. And safe abortions enable women to bear wanted children
later, instead of never, because of infertility due to botched abortions.
Women who are denied abortions suffer from depression and engage in unhealthy
behaviors such as smoking.
Smith, Yale Law School Information Society Project Visiting Fellow, 2008
(Priscilla J., Lexis Nexis, “Responsibility for Life: How Abortion Serves Women’s Interests in Motherhood,” 2008,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T6876415571&f
ormat=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T6876415501&cisb=22_T6876415583&tr
eeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=145268&docNo=14, accessed June 30, 2009, GD).
For example, even after controlling for socio-demographic factors, one recent study found that women with
unwanted or mistimed pregnancies were more than two times as likely to smoke during the last 3
months of pregnancy--and presumably throughout pregnancy because it is unlikely that women would start
smoking while they are pregnant n112 --were more than twice as likely to report inadequate daily
consumption of folic acid, n113 and were more likely to delay initiation of prenatal care until after the
first trimester. n114 While many mothers with unintended births attempt to practice healthy behaviors such
as initiation of breast feeding, n115 the study reports that "the more challenging [healthy] behaviors, such
as continuing breastfeeding for 8 weeks' duration and smoking cessation, were less prevalent among
women with [unintended pregnancies] than among women with intended or mistimed ones." n116
Moreover, studies have found "strong evidence that mothers who reported [unintended childbearing]
have worse mental health in terms of self-reported depression and happiness" and that "[t]hese
associations between having [unintended] births and [poor] mental health are quite strong."
Women who are denied abortions are more likely to mistreat their children.
Smith, Yale Law School Information Society Project Visiting Fellow, 2008
(Priscilla J., Lexis Nexis, “Responsibility for Life: How Abortion Serves Women’s Interests in Motherhood,” 2008,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T6876415571&f
ormat=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T6876415501&cisb=22_T6876415583&tr
eeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=145268&docNo=14, accessed June 30, 2009, GD).
Postpartum depression is a concern not only for the mother but also for her child. Postpartum depression "has
been shown to result in poor mother-infant interactions and subsequent behavioral and cognitive difficulties
for the child." n118 Specifically, "mothers who had [unintended births] spent significantly less leisure
time outside of the home with their children," n119 and spank or slap their children more often than
other mothers. n120 While these "findings roughly parallel research on interaction between depressed
mothers and their infants" which shows that "depressed mothers interact either aggressively (e.g.,
physical punishment) or in a withdrawn manner (e.g., spend less leisure time) with their infants," n121
the incidence of withdrawn or aggressive behavior of mothers with unwanted childbearing towards their
children does not correlate completely with their mental health status. n122 In other words, while poor
mental health status "may exacerbate the relationship between unwanted childbearing and lower
quality mother-child interactions," it does not account for it entirely.
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Hyde Affirmative
Unwanted – Impact: Poor Unfortunate Souls (3/3)
Mothers who are denied abortions and their unwanted children experience negative
ramifications.
Smith, Yale Law School Information Society Project Visiting Fellow, 2008
(Priscilla J., Lexis Nexis, “Responsibility for Life: How Abortion Serves Women’s Interests in Motherhood,” 2008,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T6876415571&f
ormat=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T6876415501&cisb=22_T6876415583&tr
eeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=145268&docNo=14, accessed June 30, 2009, GD).
poor parent child relationships that can develop from unwanted childbearing "impede[] the [child's]
socialization process, [which] . . . may have implications for many other dimensions of well-being, even
into adulthood. n124 For example, the socialization process "has been linked to a variety of important social
outcomes such as educational attainment, occupational attainment, personality, child development, selfesteem and marital relationships." n125 Unintended childbearing and these poor parent-child
relationships that develop continue to affect the way the mother-child relationship develops into
adulthood; [*127] mothers with more births than they wanted give less social support to their adult
children. n126 In conclusion, unintended childbearing "leads to outcomes that are problematic for
both mothers and their children, including mental health problems for mothers, lower quality
relationships between mothers and children in terms of affection and social support, and increased
violence and less leisure time interaction during childhood." n127 Many women who choose abortion
are choosing to decrease the likelihood that these outcomes will become reality for them and their
children. They are choosing abortion in the interest of motherhood.
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Hyde Affirmative
Patriarchy – Inherency (1/2)
Current abortion policies are shaped by patriarchal power structures, making women's
bodies an arena for power struggles.
Braam and Hessini, experts on sexual and reproductive rights, 04
(Tamara and Leila, “The Power Dynamics Perpetuating Unsafe Abortion in Africa: A Feminist Perspective,”
African Journal of Reproductive Health,” Vol. 8:1, 4-2004, p. 43-51, AEL)
This paper is premised on the belief that African women, like their sisters elsewhere, have the right to life. It
seeks to understand and deconstruct the underlying ideologies and power dynamics that undermine this right
and that serve to sustain abortion as an illegal, unsafe and highly stigmatised procedure in African countries.
Patriarchal ideologies and existing power structures shape policies concerning access to contraception,
abortion and comprehensive sexuality education as well as the ability of women to make independent sexual
and reproductive health choices. A focus on power dynamics helps to understand the continued
marginalisation of abortion by drawing attention to those whose interests are at stake, those who benefit and
those who suffer as a result. Women's bodies, as the personification of society reproducing itself, represent a
critical arena for power struggles. Society has found ways to exert control over women's bodies through law,
customs and traditions, and value systems. Criminalisation of abortion and consistent denial of women's right
to bodily autonomy and decision-making is a means to control women's wombs, which are truly the forces of
reproduction.
Society’s expectations are oppressive and patriarchal.
Lindemann, associate editor of the Hastings Center Report,‘95
(Hilde, "Feminism, Social Policy and Long-Acting Contraception," Special Supplement, Hastings Center Report
25.no. 1, 1995, , http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go2103/is_n1_v25/ai_n28652512/, Accessed 6-29-1, CMM)
Like many societies, our own has forged iron links between women's procreative capacity, the
nurturing of children, and limitations on other forms of social expression and reward. Here as
elsewhere, being female has implied bearing children; being female and bearing children have
typically implied almost full responsibility,' for the children's upbringing; being female, bearing children,
and having nearly total responsibility for their upbringing has excluded women from full participation in
business, the arts, higher education, the professions, and other forms of social expression, activity, and
reward. To a significant degree, this exclusion takes place whether or not the woman has in fact borne
children. We regard the links between reproductive capacity, unjust apportioning of responsibilities for
rearing, and consequent social exclusion as part of the common framework in which the individual
narratives of many women's lives are played out; they are part of what is meant when feminists say
that women as women have; been harmed, wronged, or treated unfairly.
In the present system of patriarchy, men assume significantly less responsibility to raise
children.
Lindemann, associate editor of the Hastings Center Report,‘95
(Hilde, "Feminism, Social Policy and Long-Acting Contraception," Special Supplement, Hastings Center Report
25.no. 1, 1995, , http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go2103/is_n1_v25/ai_n28652512/, Accessed 6-29-1, CMM)
In saying this, we don't mean to argue that birthgivers are not or should not be mothers--namely, nurturers
and protectors of their young. But begetters as well as birthgivers bear responsibility for nurturing their
offspring. This is properly called maternal work, as Sara Ruddick has argued, and men are equally
obliged to do it.[ 1] Yet men do not fulfill this obligation in anything like equal shares with women.
Indeed, for men the link between the capacity to procreate and the obligation to rear is so weak that it
not infrequently snaps altogether. A feminist ethics, starring from women's experience, will note that just
as the connection between birthgiving and nurturing has been systematically exaggerated and so kept all
women, not only mothers, from full participation in the public sphere, so by contrast the connection
between siring a child and nurturing it has been systematically underplayed, to the detriment of
children, women, and men alike.
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Patriarchy – Inherency (2/2)
Patriarchy is maintained through the law, which has hasn’t been challenged due to our
“supposed” separation of church and state
Stopler, Assistant Professor, Academic Center of Law & Business, Ramat Gan Israel, JSD, LLM NYU School of
Law; LLB Tel Aviv University, 2008
(Gina, Lexis, Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, "A Rank Usurpation of Power" August 08, Accessed 6-30-09,
CMM)
Thus, the hegemony of patriarchy is maintained by translating patriarchal religious edicts and
patriarchal cultural assumptions into patriarchal law. In a [*393] society such as the United States, in
which separation between religion and the state is allegedly maintained, religiously-based patriarchal
edicts are buttressed by non-religious patriarchal traditions in order to legalize patriarchal laws. In
countries that do not mandate separation between church and state, patriarchal law can rest directly on
religious grounds. n192 But, one could argue that this is merely a semantic difference. The fusion so clearly
apparent in Mcrae between patriarchal religious values, patriarchal traditional values, and patriarchal laws
demonstrates the central argument of this article, namely, that the hegemony of patriarchy is maintained
through the creation of patriarchal values within patriarchal religions and cultures which are then
incorporated into patriarchal law. Because power operates through discourses that legitimate its
operation and conceal domination, it is exactly the hegemonic nature of patriarchy which keeps us
oblivious to its pervasive presence. n193 As a result, the fundamental problem with Mcrae, namely that
it maintains the domination of women by usurping their power to control their bodies, cannot even be
discussed in terms of domination and subordination because in a patriarchal world abortion is not a
matter of women's equality. n194 At the same time, the underlying cause of the problem is that the
patriarchal religious and cultural assumptions that are the basis for the law cannot be challenged because they
are protected by religious liberty, by the right to culture and by freedom of association. This is how the
hegemony of patriarchy is maintained.
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Hyde Affirmative
Patriarchy -- I/L: Hyde Amendment (1/4)
The Hyde Amendment is the most patriarchal anti-women’s rights law in practice
Chamberlain and Hardisty, Founder and President Emerita of Political Research
Associates and Ph.D. from Northwestern University, 2008
(Pam and Jean, Reproducing Patriarchy: Reproductive Rights Under Siege,
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v14n1/ReproPatriarch-09.html) PMK
The anti-abortion movement was losing ground in public opinion as well. Approval of abortion rights grew
substantially in the decade between the mid-60s to the mid-70s and then leveled off without significant
overall change in either direction.20 Although pro-life advocates enlisted their own pollster (Richard
Wirthlin who worked for Reagan as his adman and strategist at the White House) and elaborately distorted
polling results,21 they could not increase their hard core support. Six to eight percent of respondents, a very
small percentage of the US public, wanted to prohibit abortion under almost all circumstances. Hard core
pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, who believed in a woman's right to an abortion under almost all
circumstances, hovered at about 32 percent. The remainder of Americans, about 60 percent, were willing to
support abortion with some restrictions. After Roe and through most of the 1980s, anti-choice activity could
not really budge these figures, and by 1990 support for the "pro-life" movement began to decline.22 Despite
this appearance of failure, the anti-abortion movement has seriously eroded the reproductive rights of US
women. One of the most significant losses resulted from the 1977 Hyde Amendment, which cut off federal
Medicaid funding for abortions, leaving poor women relying on Medicaid with no health insurance for the
procedure. In order to receive abortion coverage, such women needed to live in states that fully fund
Medicaid abortions with state money. Sixteen states currently use their own money to pay for all or most
medically necessary abortions. This number has fluctuated over the years due both to state level court orders
and to voluntary policy change. The Hyde Amendment, and its many incarnations, was the most visible of a
series of successful anti-abortion initiatives in Congress. Despite prolonged debate over its constitutionality,
it ultimately represented a major victory for anti-abortion forces.23 It is a painful reminder for poor women
and their allies of the powerful impact that pro-life activity has unleashed at the federal level. Restrictive
anti-abortion laws passed by state legislatures across the country also have slowly and steadily eroded a
woman's right to abortion. One restriction, mandatory counseling for a pregnant woman seeking abortion,
can create emotional trauma or intimidation. Waiting periods in which women are required to return to an
abortion facility after waiting at least one day after their initial appointment place unfair emotional and
financial burdens on rural and other women who must leave work and travel for treatment. Parental consent
for minors, requiring one or both parents' permission or a judge's decision before an abortion on a minor can
take place burdens adolescent women, especially those with potential violence at home, more than adults. In
each case, pro-choice activists have had to mount a legal challenge to the state law, pursuing it to state
Supreme courts and federal courts. The mixed rulings often resulted in additional loss of abortion access
despite substantial pro-choice resources being spent on the defense of a women's right to choose.
Patriarchy has been upheld by the Supreme Court – Harris v. Mcrae proves.
Stopler, Assistant Professor, Academic Center of Law & Business, Ramat Gan Israel, JSD, LLM NYU School of
Law; LLB Tel Aviv University, 2008
(Gina, Lexis, Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, "A Rank Usurpation of Power" August 08, Accessed 6-30-09,
CMM)
One pertinent example concerning abortion is Harris v. Mcrae, in which a challenge was made to the Hyde
amendment which prohibits federal funding of abortions for Medicaid recipients except when the
continuation of the pregnancy would endanger the woman's life. n183 The plaintiffs in Mcrae argued that
the Hyde amendment was a violation of the Establishment clause because it codified the teachings of the
Roman Catholic church with regard to abortions. The Supreme Court rejected this argument on the
ground that the fact that the law happens to coincide with the teachings of a certain religion does not
lead to a violation of the Establishment clause as long as there is a legitimate secular purpose for the
law. n184Beyond the court's intentional failure to take notice of the connection between the law and Roman
Catholic teachings, the secular purpose that the Court found is particularly instructive. According to the
Court, denying federal funding for abortions is not an establishment of religion because "the Hyde [*392]
amendment ... is as much a reflection of "traditionalist' values towards abortion, as it is an embodiment of the
views of any particular religion." n185 The Court might very well be right. Patriarchal values are
prevalent in both culture and religion, and consequently in law.
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Hyde Affirmative
Patriarchy – I/L: Hyde Amendment (2/4)
Male dominance over female reproductive capabilities forms the foundation for patriarchy.
Beechey, Prof. sociology at Warwick University, 1979
(Veronica, Palgrave Macmillin Journals, “On Patriarchy” P.69-70 Accessed 6-29-9, JSTOR)
Revolutionary feminism has recently developed the radical feminist analysis of female subordination, and
claims that gender differences can be explained in terms of the biological differences between men and
women. Revolutionary feminism in fact develops a theory of patriarchy and sex class which is rooted in
women's reproductive capacities. It follows the analysis of The Dialectic of Sex (Firestone, 1971) in which
Shulamith Firestone tried to resolve the dilemma posed by Sexual Politics by asserting that the basis of
women's oppression does lie in women's reproductive capacities insofar as these have been controlled
by men. I shall discuss some of the papers which have been reprinted in Scarlet Women (Number Five) as an
example of the revolutionary feminist tendency. Sheila Jeffreys argues in 'The Need for Revolutionary
Feminism' (Scarlet Women Five:10) that there exist two systems of social classes: (i) the economic class
system, which is based on the relations of production; and (ii) the sex class sys- tem, which is based on the
relations of reproduction. It is the second system of classes, the sex class system, which, according
to Sheila Jeffreys, accounts for the subordination of women. The concept of patriarchy refers to this
second
system of classes, to the rule of women by men which is based upon men's ownership and control of
women's reproductive powers. Finella McKenzie outlines in her paper 'Feminism and Socialism' (Scarlet
Women Five) the ways in which reproductive differentiation gives rise to male power and control. She
argues that the first division of labour was between men and women and was developed on account of
women's reproductive capacities and men's greater strength. Since women have throughout history been at
the mercy of their
biology, she argues, this has made them dependent upon men for physical survi- val, especially during
menstruation, childbearing and so on. This female depen- dency established an unequal system of power
relationships within the biological family - a sex class system. Finella McKenzie thus identifies three aspects
of the subordination of women: women's different reproductive capacities; women's lack of control over
them; and men who turned the dependency elicited by women's biology into psychological dependency.
Thus, as Jalna Hanmer, Kathy Lunn, Sheila Jeffreys and Sandra MacNeill point out in 'Sex Class - Why is it
important to call women a class?', it is not women's biology which is in itself oppressive, but the value men
place on it and the power they derive from their control over it. The precise forms of control change, in
Sheila Jeffreys' view, according to the cultural and historical period and according to developments in
the economic class system. However, it is the constancy of men's power and control over women's
reproductive capacities which, revolutionary feminists argue, constitutes the unchanging basis of
patriarchy.
Strategically, revolutionary femi- nism is committed to developing the class consciousness of women - that
is, women's consciousness of the operation of the sex class system. The papers in Scarlet Women Five
emphasize the importance of consciousness-raising activities and of exposing male power and its mode of
operation through activities around rape, sexual violence and violence within the family.
The control of women’s reproductive capabilities and capacity is inherently a hegemonic
construal of patriarchy by the dominant group.
Stopler, Assistant Professor, Academic Center of Law & Business, Ramat Gan Israel, JSD, LLM NYU School of
Law; LLB Tel Aviv University, 2008
(Gina, Lexis, Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, "A Rank Usurpation of Power" August 08, Accessed 6-30-09,
CMM)
One of Foucault's most important insights is that power operates by forming knowledge and producing
discourses that define and legitimate its operation. n94 Men's monopoly over defining, determining, and
interpreting truth [*378] and knowledge perpetuates the hegemony of patriarchy and maintains
men's control over women. Nowhere is the structure of patriarchy more evident than in patriarchal
religions, which are built on two pillars of control - men's control over truth and knowledge, which
ensures their control over women, and men's control over women's sexuality and reproductive
capacity. The considerable influence of patriarchal religions in liberal democratic societies also manifests
itself along these same two pillars of control. In the United States this is demonstrated very well in the
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abortion controversy. The "knowledge" that life begins at conception not only serves to prevent women
within some patriarchal religions from having abortions, but when allegedly severed from its religious origins
and presented as socio-cultural "knowledge," this "knowledge" also serves to justify legal restrictions on
abortions imposed by the secular state. n95 The control of women's reproductive ability and the
division of labor attached to it has been crucial in maintaining men's control of knowledge.
Throughout history men have left themselves free to control culture by relegating most tasks of
domestic production and reproduction to women. n96 Based on their procreative abilities, women have
been assigned to perform all of the domestic work, leaving men free to engage in cultural and religious
definitions that justify and normalize this division of labor. Accordingly, women's procreativity and sexuality
have served as the basis for creating the hegemony of patriarchy by excluding women from the creation of
religion and culture and by turning them from persons into property. These exclusions enable the proprietor
(father/husband) to exploit their labor, fail to remunerate it, and declare it non existent and insignificant while
still relying on it as the indispensable basis for his own achievements. n97
The exercise of power by the state over women’s bodies further entrenches the patriarchal
hegemony that is the status quo.
Stopler, Assistant Professor, Academic Center of Law & Business, Ramat Gan Israel, JSD, LLM NYU School of
Law; LLB Tel Aviv University, 2008
(Gina, Lexis, Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, "A Rank Usurpation of Power" August 08, Accessed 6-30-09,
CMM)
A similar understanding of the socio-cultural process is embraced by practice theory anthropologists. In
practice theory, human action in seen as both "constrained by the given social and cultural order" and as
making "structure"" by reproducing it, transforming it, or both. n45 Consequently, the refusal of some
religions to ordain women should be seen both in the context of an established, sexist power structure and as
an individual exercise of power by religious leaders who may have the power to transform the unequal social
structure, but choose not to act. Similarly, state refusal to utilize the law to intervene on behalf of women
who are refused ordination or discriminated against in religious positions should also be seen as both a
manifestation of the established sexist power structure within the state and an individual exercise of
power by state officials - such as judges or legislatures - who choose to utilize their power to protect the
system rather than transform it. Finally, the religious women who challenge the discrimination within
their own faith, who support it, or who merely refuse to challenge it should be understood as individual
actors acting [*372] within their (highly constrained) positions in the patriarchal structure with the goal of
either transforming or reproducing the structure itself. By using the force of law to bar both internal and
external challenges to patriarchal religion and culture, liberal states are reneging on their expressed
commitment to transforming the system to achieve women's equality and are subsequently
entrenching patriarchal hegemony. In the legal systems of liberal states, the hegemony of patriarchy is
partially challenged by equality legislation that is aimed at ensuring equality before the law, equality in the
public sphere, and equality in specific areas such as employment. However, such challenges are inadequate
because the nucleus of the hegemonic power of patriarchy lies within religion and culture. If hegemony is
secured not through public social institutions, but primarily through control over religious and cultural
language and imagery, through the shaping of everyday practices, and through constituting meaning
and feeling, then the hegemony of patriarchy can never truly be challenged without an outright
challenge to the patriarchal practices entrenched in most religions and cultures.
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Anti-Abortion legislation forces poor women into unwanted pregnancy. This signals the
state’s desire to continue a patriarchal society by controlling women’s bodies.
Bernstein, Brooklyn Law School, 2008 (Janessa L. “The Underground Railroad to Reproductive Freedom:
RESTRICTIVE ABORTION LAWS AND THE RESULTING BACKLASH,” 73 Brooklyn L. Rev. 1463,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T6892311919&f
ormat=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T6892309149&cisb=22_T6892309148&tr
eeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=7328&docNo=1, accessed 7-1-09)
Despite its illegality or near impossibility, women who live in places where abortion is illegal will seek out
abortions even though they pose serious health risks as well as deep psychological trauma. n216 The high
mortality rates that resulted from illegal "abortion mills" in the years prior to Roe influenced state legislatures
to regulate the conditions for abortion in order to prevent abortion-related injuries and deaths. n217 As noted
by Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun sixteen years after authoring Roe v. Wade, "To overthrow Roe
. . . . will turn thousands of American women into criminals & their MD's too. Or it will return us to the back
alley, and a number of these women, an unconscionable number, will die." n218 Despite Justice Blackmun's all
too accurate prediction, some state's laws continue to restrict the abortion right. [*1506] When legislatures
choose to ignore the desperate and deadly lengths to which women are willing to go to obtain
abortions, they send a significant message to the citizenry that women's bodies and lives are less
valuable than those of men, and that women's bodies must be controlled. Rather than allowing women
to determine when and whether they are prepared to bear and rear children, these legislatures have
attempted to restrict, or even eliminate, a right to abortion. They have done so under the guise of
protecting women. n219 Typically, as was the case in South Dakota, lawmakers argue that a woman could
never voluntarily choose to abort her child, but instead that spouses, boyfriends, parents, abortion doctors,
and even society, promote and pressure women in our abortion culture. n220 Such arguments, though, promote
gender stereotypes of women as dependent and easily controlled. Such arguments ultimately allow for
state lawmakers to control women's bodies and to determine their futures .Excessive abortion
restrictions do not prevent abortions, but instead they relegate the procedures to back-alleys and to
clinics in other states. n221 What is worse, such laws harm poor women to a greater degree because
restrictive state abortion laws ensure that these women are forced into unwanted pregnancy while
"wealthy women, middle class women, and women who have some money stashed away will be able to
obtain abortions in another country or across a state line or from a doctor who is a relative or friend."
n222
When legislators ignore the obvious impact of state laws, they ensure that women go underground and
take matters into their own hands.
Denying abortions renders sexual and reproductive freedom guaranteed by constitutional
interpretation meaningless.
MacKinnon, Professor of Law, 91
(Catharine A. MacKinnon, Reflections on Sex Equality under Law, Source: The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 100, No. 5,
Centennial Issue (Mar., 1991), pp. 1281-1328, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
Because the social organization of reproduction is a major bulwark of women's social inequality, any
constitutional interpretation of a sex equality principle must prohibit laws, state policies, or official
practices and acts that deprive women of reproductive control or punish women for their
reproductive role or capacity. Existing examples include nonconsensual sterilization, forced obstetrical
intervention, supervision of women's activities during pregnancy under the criminal law, and denials of
abortion through criminalization or lack of public funding where needed. Women's right to
reproductive control is a sex equality right because it is inconsistent with an equality mandate for
the state, by law, to collaborate with or mandate social inequality on the basis of sex, as such legal
incursions do. This is not so much an argument for an extension of the meaning of constitutional sex
equality as a recognition that if it does not mean this, it does not mean anything at all.
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Access to abortion rights ends the patriarchal notions of womyn as baby-makers.
Hayler, Assistant Professor of Social Justice, 79
(Barbara, “Abortion”, Chicago Journals, Signs, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter, 1979), pp. 307-323, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
Linda Gordon has produced a history of the birth control move- ment which succeeds as a
work of feminist theory.20 It examines the significance of birth control to women and the
women's movement, as well as the development of birth control as a concept and a social movement. Gordon offers relatively little information about contraceptive techniques; she argues that birth
control is more a result of social and political influences than medical or technological capability. She
does not treat abortion as a separate issue but develops an analysis of attitudes toward women and
reproduction that is applicable to all forms of birth control (defined as individual control over
reproduction). Gordon points out that the prohibition of birth control has been a means of enforcing
women's subjection to men. The existence and availability of abortion mean that a woman need
not be "born to have children." Gordon shows that the central issue of the birth control
movement has been not contraception but the control of contraception- reproductive selfdetermination.21 Control exercised solely by women, without the intervention of physicians or
other professionals, has been opposed by patriarchal institutions consistently. The successful
planned parenthood movement of this century, for example, focused on the family, not the
individual woman, as the unit for reproductive decisions. This focus implicitly denied the sexism and
power imbalances of the traditional family structure and thus helped to keep women locked into
traditional roles. Birth control in this context-as a means of family planning-was acceptable
because it supported women's "natural" roles. The current feminist movement has rejected this
male-dominated perspective, defining a woman's right to control her reproductive capacity as a
central political issue. Opposition to women's demand for freedom of reproductive choice
reveals deep patriarchal anxiety about how women may act when freed from the restraints of
biological motherhood. Gordon argues that reproductive self-determination requires more than
the availability of contraception, for reproductive patterns are determined by the feasible
alternatives to motherhood.
Motherhood is valued only if endorsed by patriarchal domination. Abortion rights break
this down.
Hayler, Assistant Professor of Social Justice, 79
(Barbara, “Abortion”, Chicago Journals, Signs, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter, 1979), pp. 307-323, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
The right to choose abortion-as part of a claim to reproductive self-determination-is central to
the feminist movement. The importance to patriarchy of asserting male control and ownership
of women's reproductive capabilities, and of denying that control to women, has been analyzed
in much of the feminist literature. I would like to draw attention to the way in which feminist
theory helps us understand the character of antiabortion sentiment today. In her study of motherhood,
Adrienne Rich examines the violence of institutionalized motherhood.69 Institutionalized
motherhood demands of women not self-conscious intelligence and commitment but maternal
"instinct," and submission to the "natural" order of things. Not all motherhood is praised, nor
all maternal instincts approved-only those that serve patriarchal institutions. "Motherhood is
'sacred' so long as its offspring are 'legitimate'-that is, as long as the child bears the name of
a father who legally controls the mother." Women who deprive their children of a father are
viewed as selfish, unnatural, condemnable, just as women who deprived their husbands of
children by birth control or abortion were viewed as unnatural and immoral in the nineteenth
century.
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In a patriarchal society, womyn embody passivity to the male. Abortion asserts womyn into
autonomous roles against dominance.
Hayler, Assistant Professor of Social Justice, 79
(Barbara, “Abortion”, Chicago Journals, Signs, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter, 1979), pp. 307-323, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
In patriarchal society, the basic female principle is passivity. Con- ception and motherhood are
no exceptions: Woman's role in conception is to receive and to incubate; woman's role in
motherhood is to be selfless and giving, to meet familial needs and demands. Feminist theory has
begun to explore the damage done to women by this denial of self. Mary Daly suggests that
enforced passivity may properly be viewed as a form of gynocide; involving the domestication
and deprivation of female vi- tality and the destruction of women's autonomous wills.70
Abortion makes it possible for women to resist forced motherhood. The issue of control of
reproductive power is central to the abortion controversy. Many of the authors discussed in this
essay have argued that opposition to abortion is only one aspect of a broader opposition to female
autonomy generally. In a patriarchal society where male identity is largely based on power over
women, changes in power relationships are indeed disturbing. One physician explained the
perceived threat in this way: "The pregnant woman symbolizes proof of male potency and if
the male loosens his rule over women and grants them the right to dispose of that proof when
they want to, the men then feel terribly threatened lest women can, at will, rob them of their
potency and mascu- linity."71
Because children are the only way to guarantee male immortality, abortions are restricted
in order to remove the threat they pose.
Hayler, Assistant Professor of Social Justice, 79
(Barbara, “Abortion”, Chicago Journals, Signs, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter, 1979), pp. 307-323, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
As Mary Daly points out, "It is the condition of all males to be childless."72 Men's necessary
dependence on women for their biological reproduction has been used to justify male control
over women's re- productive capacities. In a patriarchal, patrilineal society, women's chil- dren
are guarantees of men's immortality. Several authors reviewed here argue that male opposition to
abortion stems in part from the fear that, given a truly free choice, many women would elect
not to have children. This fear implies recognition of the unequal distribution of parenting
responsibilities and the enormous social and personal costs imposed on women by the current
arrangements.73 It also reflects the continuing power of the patriarchal view of woman as
whore-selfish, amoral, and socially irresponsible. The fear that women will abuse their
reproductive freedom suggests that the archetypal castrating bitch has become a destructively
rapacious creature-a Medea in modern dress. In a chilling analysis, Marvin Kohl argues that the
"sanctity-of-life" ar- gument against abortion derives from "the most deadly anti-woman bias of
them all, namely: that unless women are carefully controlled they will kill their own progeny
without reason because they are not fully rational creatures."74
Court decisions and the Hyde Amendment directly oppose the rights granted by Roe.
Hayler, Assistant Professor of Social Justice, 79
(Barbara, “Abortion”, Chicago Journals, Signs, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter, 1979), pp. 307-323, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
These decisions represent a significant erosion of the right to choose abortion as it was initially
announced in 1973.13 In order to make this shift, the Supreme Court had to accept several
propositions. First, the Court agreed that an abortion sought by a pregnant woman on the basis
of her needs rather than recommended by a doctor is "medically un- necessary."'4 Second, the
Court held that the state has a strong and legitimate interest throughout pregnancy in
"encouraging normal childbirth," that is, a legitimate right to "encourage" women, by means as
coercive as the denial of financial benefits, to stay pregnant and have children. Third, the
Court ruled that state refusal to fund elective abor- tions placed "no obstacles-absolute or
otherwise-in the pregnant woman's path to an abortion." The state's decision to pay for
childbirth, but not abortion, supposedly leaves the indigent woman no worse off than she
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would have been without Medicaid. According to this reason- ing, it is her preexisting
indigency, not the denial of benefits, that limits her access to abortion. In summary, the Court
found that only those laws which absolutely prevent the exercise of the fundamental right to
choose abortion are unconstitutional; laws which "merely" make the exercise of that right more
difficult, in order to promote some desired public goal, were accepted by the majority as a
legitimate use of state power.15 The practical effect of these decisions is to make abortion a
right for women who can afford it and a privilege for the rest. The Hyde Amendment,16 put
into effect after these decisions, limits federal re- imbursement to abortions performed when the
pregnant woman's life is endangered, when severe and long-lasting physical health damage to the
mother would result from a full-term pregnancy, or where the pregnant woman is a victim of rape or
incest. Although low-income women are most severely affected by these restrictions, the rights
of all women are reduced by this failure to give substance to the guarantees of Roe and Doe.
Restrictions to access to abortions are discriminatory. Only womyn with privileges get
rights.
Rhode, Stanford Professor of Law, 94
(Deborah L. Rhode, “Feminism and the State”, Source: Harvard Law Review, Vol. 107, No. 6 (Apr., 1994), pp.
1181-1208 Published by: The Harvard Law Review Association, Accessed: 30/06/2009, KLM)
Abortion has been central to reproductive freedom campaigns, and its current status points up the
gap between legal entitlements and daily experience. Although women have formal rights to
terminate a pregnancy free from "undue burdens" by the state,"' the definition of these "burdens"
has been skewed by race, class, and ethnicity. Leg- islators have enacted and the courts have
upheld a range of funding and service restrictions that disproportionately burden access to abortion by poor and minority women.112 Such restrictions target women who are least able to protect
their interests through political channels and least able to bear the costs of an unwanted child.
The result is that only "women with privileges get rights."113
Abortion control is a way for the patriarchal state to dominate over womyn.
Rhode, Stanford Professor of Law, 94
(Deborah L. Rhode, “Feminism and the State”, Source: Harvard Law Review, Vol. 107, No. 6 (Apr., 1994), pp.
1181-1208 Published by: The Harvard Law Review Association, Accessed: 30/06/2009, KLM)
In many left feminist accounts, the state is a patriarchal institution in the sense that it reflects and
institutionalizes male dominance. Men control positions of official power and men's interests
determine how that power is exercised. According to Catharine MacKinnon, the state's invocation
of neutrality and objectivity ensures that, "[t]hose who have freedoms like equality, liberty,
privacy and speech socially keep them legally, free of governmental intrusion."15 In this view,
"the state protects male power [by] appearing to prohibit its excesses when necessary to its
normalization."'6 So, for example, to the extent that abortion functions "to facilitate male sexual
access to women, access to abortion will be controlled by 'a man or The Man.'"17
Having the ability to choose abortion is the only way out of a completely patriarchal
society.
MacKinnon, Professor of Law, 91
(Catharine A. MacKinnon, Reflections on Sex Equality under Law, Source: The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 100, No. 5,
Centennial Issue (Mar., 1991), pp. 1281-1328, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
The range of procreative events along which inequality is experienced contextualizes the fact that
when women are forced into maternity, they are reproductively exploited. Short of achieving sexual
and social equality-short of changing the context-abortion has offered the only way out. However
difficult an abortion decision may be for an individual woman, it provides a moment of power in a
life otherwise led under unequal conditions which preclude choice in ways she cannot control. In
this context, abortion provides a window of relief in an unequal situation from which there is no
exit. Until this context changes, only the pregnant woman can choose life for the un- born.157
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Women’s control of their body is key to personal identity. Loss of control results in the loss
of autonomy
Hanigsberg in 1995
(Julia, Columbia Law School MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW; Homologizing pregnancy and motherhood: a
consideration of abortion, 1995]
It is clear to me, that ... all our little skirmishing for better laws, and the right to vote, will yet be swallowed
up in the real question, viz: Has woman a right to herself? It is very little to me to have the right to vote,
to own property, &c. if I may not keep my body, and its uses, in my absolute right. Not one wife in a
thousand can do that now, and as long as she suffers this bondage, all other rights will not help her to her true
position. The abortion context provides the archetypal example of the connection between bodily integrity
and selfhood. This is true despite the fact that the Court in Roe n42 gave short shrift to the bodily integrity
argument made before it. n43 Bodily integrity is constructed, n44 for it is developed according to a
variety of cultural mechanisms and bolstered by other persons' statements and behaviors. n45 [*382]
Thus, our bodies, by which I mean our symbolic interpretation and sense of dominion over our bodies,
are central to our identity and our personal dignity. This is not a simple physical fact. While a missing
body part does not result in a loss of identity n46 and the symbolic meaning we give to our bodies is
culturally and historically mediated, our selves and our identities become implicated by our bodies and
how we experience them. n47 This view of bodily integrity also occurs in constitutional discourse. Justice
O'Connor's concurring opinion in the "right-to-die" case, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health,
n48 observes,
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The impact is try or die – the unmanageable catastrophes of present-day society are all
consequences of this patriarchal system – war, violence, and environmental destruction are
inevitable absent the plan
Warren and Cady, 96
(Karen Warren and Duane Cady, Professors at Macalester and Hamline, Bringing peace home: feminism, violence,
and nature, 1996, p.12-13, CMM)
Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which it
gives rise, (c) the unmanageability, (d) which results. For example, in the United States, current estimates are
that one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape,
sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-massochistic pornography are examples of
behaviors practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally
destructive behaviors, strip-mining, factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil
are instances of behaviors maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too, rest on the
faulty beliefs that it is okay to “rape the earth,” that it is “man’s God-given right” to have
dominion (that is domination) over the earth, that nature has only instrumental value that
environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for “progress.” And the presumption of warism,
that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or nation, goes
hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to
international unmanageability. Much of the current “unmanageability” of contemporary life in
patriarchal societies, (d) is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation
with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-gender-identified beliefs, values,
attitudes, and assumptions. Included among these real-life consequences are precisely those
concerns with nuclear proliferation, war, and environmental destruction, and violence
towards women, which many feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking.
In fact, it is often only through observing these dysfunctional behaviors—the symptoms of
dysfunctionality—that one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them.
When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this “unmanageability” can be seen for what it is—
as a predictable and thus logical consequence of patriarchy. The theme that global environmental crises, war,
and violence generally are predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is
pervasive in ecofeminist literature. Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that “a militarism
and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill
patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal
conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life on
Earth.” Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by
Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning: Patriarchal conceptual frameworks
legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict, the
environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if continued, will make life on earth
difficult, if not impossible It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility lies in
understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in regional, national, and
global contexts.
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Patriarchy – Impact: Womyn
Constructions of womanhood give reproductive decisions to patriarchal structures,
harming women and destroying their rights.
Braam and Hessini, experts on sexual and reproductive rights, 04
(Tamara and Leila, “The Power Dynamics Perpetuating Unsafe Abortion in Africa: A Feminist Perspective,”
African Journal of Reproductive Health,” Vol. 8:1, 4-2004, p. 43-51, AEL)
Societal constructions of womanhood play a central role in shaping individual women's sense of self and
consequently their ability to exercise personal power in relation to their sexual and reproductive health.
Motherhood, culturally viewed as a core aspect of womanhood, has had the following consequences: (i)
childbearing accords women status and a degree of personal power; (ii) women are under considerable pressure
to become mothers; (iii) motherhood is seen as a natural process over which women should not try and assert
control; and (iv) abortion, as a deliberate intervention to stop the process of mothering, is therefore seen as the
antithesis of women assuming their assigned role in life. By virtue of their biologically unique role in
pregnancy, women potentially have significant personal power in relation to the issue of abortion. Yet this
power is often eroded by these overt or interalised messages. As women's choices and options have expanded in
many areas of life, including education, work and others, their ability to exercise sexual and reproductive
choices has not followed suit. Patriarchal, institutional, legal, economic, religious and cultural power structures
play themselves out in private relationships and undermine women's confidence and ability to enjoy
reproductive autonomy. The involvement of male partners contributes to the limitations women feel in this area.
Men have been socialised to make decisions, and many find self-expression through their ability to control
financial resources and assert dominance. Women's need to remain attached to men due to legal, financial or
cultural reasons often results in them giving up their human right to make decisions about whether and when to
have children and how many to have. Women's lack of personal power to make decisions and choices about sex
often threatens their lives and health because of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections and/ or unwanted
pregnancies. If a woman has an unintended pregnancy, her decision to resort to an unsafe abortion is heavily
influenced by the response of her male partner to her pregnancy, the extent of her financial dependency on him,
and her concerns about the survival of other children. Rather than putting a woman in a position of power, the
practical ramifications of a pregnancy may increase her vulnerability and lack of power. In this context, unsafe
abortion may become the means by which a woman takes back the power of decision-making in relation to her
body despite the potential risks to her life and health.
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Every aspect of war discourse feminizes the enemy and the weak, reentrenching the
patriarchy.
Workman, University of New Brunswick associate professor of political science, 1996
(Thom, York University Publications, “Pandora’s Sons: The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War,” January
1996, www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP31-Workman.pdf, accessed July 1, 2009, GD).
This mysogynistic reflex undergirds the representation of opponents (on the war front and the "home" front)
as women. Those opposing war routinely are dismissed in feminine terms, as being too emotional, too
sentimental, as lacking in firmness and determination, as naïve, unthoughtful, weak, confused, and, in
the branding coup de grâce, as unmanly (it is commonly suspected that peaceful people or doves, after all,
don't "have balls"). There is a common and essential association between women and peace, an
association that has permeated a share of social activism and scholarly research.18 Military enemies,
moreover, typically are represented as woman. Military targets, especially the ground or earth itself, also
are connotatively feminized in war-think. The practice of war surfaces within gendered understandings
and identities. War embodies the rehearsal of patriarchal consciousness. Numerous leaders (mainly
male but occasionally female) overtly draw upon gendered understandings for policy guidance. It is this
sense of war being constituted and inflected through gender that informs the claim that patriarchy lies at the
root of war. Without gender it is unlikely that war would arise as such a frequent alternative in human
life, and that entire societies could be so extensively militarized regardless of the costs and trade-offs
involved.
War discourse glorifies women in a cult of domesticity despite their roles in war efforts.
Workman, University of New Brunswick associate professor of political science, 1996
(Thom, York University Publications, “Pandora’s Sons: The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War,” January
1996, www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP31-Workman.pdf, accessed July 1, 2009, GD).
The potential for a lasting interruption in gendered understandings and practices are circumscribed during the
prosecution of war and in the post-war era. Wartime life is more suggestive of a modification in the
practices associated with gendered constructs rather than a fundamental shift in the constructs themselves.
Altered practices are represented in a manner consistent with the relentless narratives of gender. Women
continue to be depicted as nurturers, as mothers, in attentive and supportive roles, as sexual objects, as
vulnerable, as emotional, and as man's enemy.35 The growing involvement of women within the
workforce during wartime also gets represented in terms of traditional gendered constructs. Women
move from the home to the home front; the family broadens to include the entire nation. The
involvement of women in the generalized war effort is animated with images of supporting the men at
the front. During World War II women typically were perceived to be working "for the duration" of the war
and no longer. The extensively altered practices do not undermine conventional gendered
understandings. As Leila Rupp concludes in her examination of World War II German and American
propaganda: "... the adaptation of public images to the demands of war allowed both the German and the
American public to accept the employment of women in `unwomanly' occupations without challenging
basic ideas about `woman's place'... The war was not a social revolution, for society generally or for
women in particular. As long as women had a `place', in the home or in the war, little had changed".36
Maureen Honey's examination of the Rosie the Riveter phenomenon in the United States similarly concludes
that women were represented with traditional gender markers—especially the roler of nurturer and
helper—that undermined any positive images that might have emerged through the war experience.37
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Representations of war reentrench the patriarchy and traditional gender roles.
Workman, University of New Brunswick associate professor of political science, 1996
(Thom, York University Publications, “Pandora’s Sons: The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War,” January
1996, www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP31-Workman.pdf, accessed July 1, 2009, GD).
The capacity for patriarchal culture to recover in post-war periods appears considerable. The utter
destruction of warfare, the growing sense of war fatigue or collective exhaustion that can accompany drawn
out wars, the revoicing of ideas about the "way of life" that was supposedly defended or protected, the
need to refine the purpose of the war in general, the difficulties of readjusting to civilian life, especially
during periods of large-scale demobilization, the general social and economic dislocation that can accompany
the disruptive effects of war, and political crises often attendant to war can contribute to a cultural
environment prone to reenlivening reactionary gendered constructs.40 In this atmosphere the
relaxation, interruption, modification, or oftpurported rupture of traditional gendered constructs is
confronted directly and aggressively, and would appear to conclude invariably with the rigidification
and consolidation of traditional gendered understandings. In other words, any residual effects of gendersoftening during the war are contained.
Feminist analysis is crucial to question the structures of patriarchy that justify nuclear
war.
LaBalme, activist, 2002
(Fen, Activism.net, “Activism: Pease: NVCD: Discrimination,” 2002,
http://www.activism.net/peace/nvcdh/discrimination.shtml, accessed July 2, 2009, GD).
Part of struggling against nuclear weapons involves understanding the ways in which the oppression of
particular groups of people supports militarism, makes the institutionalized system of war and violence
appear "natural" and "inevitable." For instance, heterosexism, or the assumption that sexual relations are only
permissible, desirable, and normal between opposite sexes, justifies a system of rigid sex roles, in which men
and women are expected to behave and look in particular ways, and in which qualities attributed to women
are devalued. Thus, men who are not willing to be violent are not virile -- they are threatened with the real
sanctions placed on homosexuality (physical violence, housing and economic discrimination) unless they
behave like "real men." The military relies upon homophobia (the fear of homosexuality) to provide it with
willing enlistees, with soldiers who are trained to kill others to prove their masculinity. Sexism, or the
systematic devaluation of women, is clearly related to this. Women have traditionally opposed war
because women bear the next generation and feel a responsiblity to protect it. But feminists are not content to
speak only from traditional roles as mothers and nurturers. Many activists see a feminist analysis as crucial
to effectively challenging militarism. The system of patriarchy, under which men benefit from the
oppression of women, supports and thrives on war. In a sexist or patriarchal society, women are
relegated to limited roles and valued primarily for their sexual and reproductive functions, while men
are seen as the central makers of culture, the primary actors in history. Patriarchy is enforced by the
language and images of our culture; by keeping women in the lowest paying and lowest status jobs, and by
violence against women in the home and on the streets. Women are portrayed by the media as objects to
be violated; 50% of women are battered by men in their lives, 75% are sexually assaulted. The sexist
splitting of humanity which turns women into others, lesser beings whose purpose is to serve men, is the
same split which allows us to see our enemies as non-human, fair game for any means of destruction or
cruelty. In war, the victors frequently rape the women of the conquered peoples. Our country's foreign policy
often seems directed by teenage boys desparately trying to live up to stereotypes of male toughness, with no
regard for the humanity or land of their "enemy." Men are socialized to repress emotions, to ignore their
needs to nurture and cherish other people and the earth. Emotions, tender feelings, care for the living,
and for those to come are not seen as appropriate concerns of public policy. This makes it possible for
policymakers to conceive of nuclear war as "winnable."
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Patriarchy – Impact: War (3/6)
Hegemonic masculinity of patriarchy is the root of war. Only when we rethink our
approach to masculinity can we better our international relations
Clark, Prof. of Biopsychology at Berkeley, ‘04
(Mary E. Rhetoric, patriarchy & war: explaining the dangers of "leadership" in mass culture., AD:7-6-9, September
2004, CMM)
Today's Western patriarchal world view now dominates globalwide dialogue among the "leaders" of
Earth's nearly two hundred nation-states. Its Machiavellian/Realpolitik assumptions about the necessity of'
military power to preserve order within and between groups of humans trumps--and stifles--other potential
viewpoints. Founded on the belief that "evil" is innate, it dictates that human conflict must be
"controlled": global "law" backed by coercive force. This view, when cross-culturally imposed,
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, thus "legitimating" an escalating use of force. Western leaders
(male and female) use a rhetoric couched in a "hegemonic masculinity" to justify their ready use of
military force to coerce "those who are against us" into compliance. This translates globally as
"national leaders must never lose facet!" Changing this dominant paradigm requires dismantling the
hierarchic hegemony of masculine militarism and its related economic institutions, through global crosscultural dialogues, thus replacing a hegemonic world view and institutions with new, more adaptive visions,
woven out of the most useful remnants of multiple past cultural stories.
Under these conditions, the dialogue possible between nations in serious conflict is virtually
condemned to failure. Interlocutors are speaking as much to their own countrymen and women as to
their enemies on the opposite side of the negotiating table. This communications enigma is all too familiar
to international mediators, who recognize it as a major barrier to resolving disputes. It results in what Anna
Hoglund calls the language of "hegemonic masculinity." She points to US President George W. Bush's
constant use of phrases reflecting "man the warrior." (9) The public language of leaders and diplomats
speaking on unresolved international issues tends to be confrontational and uncompromising. Listeners to
their comments, broadcast just before or just after private negotiating sessions, can often readily detect this
hegemonic masculinity: "saving face," "not giving in," "standing strong"-all are critical for "leaders" of
hierarchies. The mentality of war is rooted in patriarchy. Dominating and oppressive mindsets
maintain organized violence and perpetuate female subjectivity.
Martin, Professor of Social Sciences Univ. Wollongong, 1990
(Brian, Uprooting War, “Patriarchy”, AD:7-5-9, http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw10.html)
In virtually every known society past and present, women have not been treated as the full equals of
men. In a few societies, such as the Eskimo, women have had a great deal of liberty and influence, though
still less than men. In many other societies women have been and are severely oppressed.In some nonindustrialised societies there is no organised violence, and also relatively little 'structural violence' such as
oppression, exploitation and inequality. But many nonindustrialised societies do engage in organised
violence, which can be called 'war' (though the similarity to modern war is limited). In most of these
warlike societies, fighting is directly organised around the gender division of labour. For example, in
some hunter-gatherer societies, men have sole responsibility for hunting and fighting, while women are
involved in child-rearing, cooking and gathering. In these situations, men control the means of violence
against outside enemies and can use this control to dominate the women.The link between the gender
division of labour and organised violence in non-industrialised societies strongly suggests that there
may be a close connection between modern forms of male domination over women and modern
war.Modern military forces are overwhelmingly composed of men. Furthermore, sexism is a common
part of military training and military life. Soldiers are trained to be violent, competitive, tough, and
'masculine.' They are trained to reject feminine characteristics of supportiveness, cooperativeness,
tenderness and physical softness. Often military training is accompanied by explicit verbal abuse of
women and the portrayal of women only as sex objects.The masculine ethos of military life has much
in common with the oppressive treatment of women in both military and civilian life, including rape,
batterings, prostitution and poor working conditions. In direct person-to-person violence, it is
primarily men who are the perpetrators. Another connection between modern patriarchy and war is the
service provided by women to men in both military and civilian life. Cynthia Enloe in her book Does Khaki
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
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CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
Become You? has analysed a range of areas in which women serve the military: as prostitutes, as military
wives, as nurses, as soldiers, and as workers in arms industries. In each of these cases women are placed in
a subordinate position where they are easily exploited. The service of women to men is carried out in
civilian life in a similar fashion, and in very similar categories: as prostitutes, as wives, as workers in
the 'helping professions,' and as workers in occupations which are poorly paid, low-skilled and lacking
security and career prospects.
The root of war is based in patriarchy. The biological male aggression of patriarchy
directly translates into warring practices created by cultural patriarchy. The breaking
down of patriarchy itself can break down this thinking.
Workman, Assistant Professor of Political Science University of New Brunswick, ‘96
(Thom, Univ. New Brunswic Publications, “Pandora's Sons: The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War “ Jan. 96,
Accessed 7-1-9, CMM)
The gender critique of war provides a generalized account of wars and the way they are fought. The
gender critique tells us why we have wars at all. While it is suggestive with respect to the frequency,
character, and scope of war, it does not try to account for the timing and location of specific wars. It tells us
why war is viewed widely as an acceptable practice or way to resolve human differences (although this
acceptance invariably is accompanied with obligatory protestations of reluctance). The gender critique of
war, for example, cannot account for the timing and location of the 1991 Gulf War, although it can
provide an explanation of the warring proclivities of modern Western states, especially the
inconsistency between the peaceful rhetoric of the US and its incessant warring practices. It can account
for the spectre of war in the aftermath of Vietnam, with the end of the Cold War, and with the election of
George Bush. It is less able to account for the appearance of war in the Middle East in January of 1991. The
opening intellectual orientation of the gender critique of war rests upon a constructivist view of human
understanding and practice, that is, a view that anchors practices, including war, within humankind's
self-made historico-cultural matrix. This view is contrasted starkly with those that ground human
practices psychologically or biologically or genetically. War is not viewed as a natural practice as if
delivered by the Gods; it arises out of human-created understandings and ways-of- living that have
evolved over the millennia. More specifically, the assumption that men (the nearly exclusive makers
and doers of war) are biologically hard-wired for aggression and violence is resisted, as is the related
notion that women are naturally passive and non-violent. The explanation for war will not be found in
testosterone levels. It is not the essential or bio-social male that makes war. War is the product of the
gendered understandings of life—understandings of the celebrated masculine and the subordinated
feminine—that have been fashioned over vast tracts of culturaltime. And since war arises from humancreated understandings and practices it can be removed when these understandings change. War is not
insuperable. Indeed, the rooting of war in human created phenomena is recognized as a response to the
political incapacitation associated with biologically determinist arguments: "Attempts of genetic
determinists to show a biological basis for individual aggression and to link this to social aggression, are not
only unscientific, but they support the idea that wars of conquest between nations are inevitable."8 The
rooting of war within patriarchal culture can be examined by focussing upon the relationship between
the masculine and feminine ethos.9 The ways of thinking about and practicing war arise within a highly
disciplining gendered discourse, a discourse marked with well elucidated boundaries of the masculine and the
feminine. The sphere of appropriate concerns and alternatives is established by these boundaries. The
thinking and practice of war is limited by the consonance with the masculine ethos and corresponding
dissonance with the feminine ethos. The boundaries of gender must be respected, and transgressions will
necessitate immediate correction and expiation, especially if a subject is to avoid ideational ostracization or
to be taken seriously. Carol Cohn's recounting of the musings of a white male physicist is telling:
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Sex and war are manifestations of the gendered notions of power-over, submission, and
inequality and destruction.
Workman, Assistant Professor of Political Science University of New Brunswick, ‘96
(Thom, Univ. New Brunswic Publications, “Pandora's Sons: The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War “ Jan. 96,
Accessed 7-1-9, CMM)
The practices of war emerge within gendered understandings that inflect all spheres of social life.
As we created "man" and "woman" we simultaneously created war. Contemporary warfare, in
complementary terms, emerges within the inner-most sanctums of gendered life. Gender constructs
are constitutive of war; they drive it and imbue it with meaning and sense. War should not be
understood as simply derivative of the masculine ethos, although it numerous facets accord with
the narratives and lore of masculinity. The faculty of war is our understanding of man and women,
of manliness and womanliness, and particularly of the subordination of the feminine to the
masculine. It is the twinning of the masculine and the feminine that nourishes the war ethic. This
can be illustrated by examining the infusion of the language of war with heterosexual imagery
typically of patriarchy, that is, with ideas of the prowess-laden male sexual subject conquering the
servile female sexual object. Both sex and war are constituted through understandings of male
domination and female subordination. The language is bound to be mutually reinforcing and easily
interchangeable. War is a metaphor for sex and sex is a metaphor for war . A recent study of
nicknames for the penis revealed that men were much more inclined to metaphorize the penis with
reference to mythic or legendary characters (such as the Hulk, Cyclops, Genghis Khan, The Lone
Ranger, and Mac the Knife), to authority figures and symbols (such as Carnal King, hammer of the
gods, your Majesty, Rod of Lordship, and the persuader), to aggressive tools (such as screwdriver,
drill, jackhammer, chisel, hedgetrimmer, and fuzzbuster), to ravening beasts (such as beast of
burden, King Kong, The Dragon, python, cobra, and anaconda), and to weaponry (such as love
pistol, passion rifle, pink torpedo, meat spear, stealth bomber, destroyer, and purple helmeted love
warrior).11 The intuitive collocation of sexuality with domination, conquering, destruction, and
especially instruments of war is confirmed by this study. Both sex and war, however, are
manifestations of the gendered notions of power-over, submission, inequality, injury, contamination,
and destruction. Both practices are integral expressions of patriarchal culture and proximate to its
reproduction. It is hardly surprising that the language of sexuality and war is seamless.
The “domesticated women” ensures future war.
Workman, Assistant Professor of Political Science University of New Brunswick, ‘96
(Thom, Univ. New Brunswic Publications, “Pandora's Sons: The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War “ Jan. 96,
Accessed 7-1-9, CMM)
The flight from the feminine entails the simultaneous denial and appropriation of the things women do.
Labels such as heroism, bravery, and sacrifice, for example, are reserved for war; the attendant pain
and loss of life in childbirth is socially repressed.15 There is no equivalent effort to commemorate
or celebrate the bringing forth of life. In fact, childbirth has been epidemiologized over the last
century, while gestation and birth imagery has been appropriated by weapons designers. Birthing
does not have the recollective equivalent of war. At best, the womb is enlisted to further the war
project, that is, to insure future soldiering generations. Womanliness is domesticated, in a sense, to
ensure that it does not undermine war. Men's killing is acclaimed typically in terms of its
"protective" function, that is, as protectors of the home and the hearth.16 Men are cast, in the end,
as the most important caretakers.
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Modern war is connotatively inseparable from the dehumanizing representations of woman
Workman, Assistant Professor of Political Science University of New Brunswick, ‘96
(Thom, Univ. New Brunswic Publications, “Pandora's Sons: The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War “ Jan. 96,
Accessed 7-1-9, CMM)
These motifs shade into outright loathing. War may be hell indeed; but it is driven by an ideology
of hatred. Misogyny is the theory; war is the practice. Myths surrounding woman as the enemy of
man (and the things men do) lay at the heart of war-thought. Modern war is connotatively
inseparable from the dehumanizing representations of woman. The drive "to war" is recessed within
the myth of woman as man's worst enemy. Modern warfare is a relentlessly Pandoran affair. Its
abundant coital imagery is organically inspired by its mysogynistic cradle. Common parlance
routinely asserts that an enemy that has been consigned to ignominious defeat is an enemy that has
been "thoroughly fucked" (which resonates culturally as being reduced to a woman). It has been
observed that the construction of a soldier requires the killing of the woman within.17 The training
of the soldier is replete with a litany of disciplining epithets regarding the feminine. The
transformation from boy-recruit into man-soldier requires the extirpation of any feminine traits and
identities; it demands the vanquishing of any lurking womanliness. War is femicidal. This
foreshadows, moreover, the vigilance with respect to the subversive feminine being looming within
the warring fabric. Soldier and policymakers guard against the association of their actions or ideas
with feminine traits. Regardless of its particular manifestation or definition of a practice, ritual, or
goal linked to militaries and to battle, the ideology of war requires a strict, unrelenting overcoming
of anything understood as womanly. Its discourse of identity and achievement, in other words,
repudiates and disavows the feminine as much as it is embraces the masculine.
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Biopower – I/L: Anti-Abortion
State control over women’s bodily choices is an exercise of biopower
Deveax, Prof. of Political Science and Political Theory at Williams College, ‘94
(Monique, Feminist Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, Women's Agency: Empowerment and the Limits of, Accessed 7-1-9,
Summer 1994, CMM)
Bartky's use of the docile bodies and Panopticon theses is problematic for at least two reasons. First, it is not
clear why Bartky argues that more subtle and insidious forms of domination characterize the modern
era or what she calls the "modernization of patriarchal power." In fact, current examples abound of
overt control of women's choices and bodies, like lack of accessible abortions and frighteningly high
rates of rape and assault. This is not to suggest that glaring barriers to women's freedom should preclude reflection on less
tangible obstacles but, rather, to point out the danger of taking up the latter in isolation from a broader discussion of women's social, economic, and political subordination. Furthermore, the way Bartky conceives of
women's interaction with their bodies seems needlessly reductionist. Women's choices and differ- ences are
lost altogether in Bartky's description of the feminine body and its attendant practices: This description may
draw attention to the pernicious effects of cultural standards of attractiveness, but it blocks meaningful
discussion of how women feel about their bodies, their appearance, and social norms. It obscures the
complex ways in which gender is constructed, and the fact that differences among women-age, race, culture,
sexual orientation, and class-translate into myriad variations in responses to ideals of femininity and their
attendant practices Bartky's use of the docile bodies thesis has the effect of diminishing and delimiting
women's subjectivity, at times treating women as robotic receptacles of culture rather than as active
agents who are both constituted by, and reflective of, their social and cul- tural contexts. Susan Bordo,
in "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity," also takes up Foucault's docile bodies thesis to show
the ways in which women's bodies serve aa locus for the social construction of femininity. Bordo argues
that anorexia nervosa and bulimia are located on a contin-uum with feminine normalizing phenomena such as
the use of makeup, fashion, and dieting, all of which contribute to the construction of do- cile, feminine
bodies. Thus, "anorexia begins, emerges out of... con- ventional feminine practice"14; the docile feminine
body becomes, in the case of the anorectic, the ultimate expression of the self-disciplining fe- male caught up
in an insane culture.
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Biopower – I/L: Hyde Amendment
Reproductive control by the state is an unethical exercise of biopower.
Deveax, Prof. of Political Science and Political Theory at Williams College, ‘94
(Monique, Feminist Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, Women's Agency: Empowerment and the Limits of, Accessed 7-1-9,
Summer 1994, CMM)
Feminism and the Rise of Biopower. The second axis of modern power is what Foucault calls the
"biopolitics of the population," or simply "bio- power." The account of the rise of biopower in the West
in the modern period, signaling a whole new politics of population control and man- agement, is used by
some Foucauldian feminists of this first wave to cast light on those "discourses"-such as fetal
protection laws and new repro- ductive and genetic technologies (NRGTs)-that directly affect women's
control of their bodies and reproductive choices.'7 Foucault uses the term "biopower" to denote a
transformation in the nature of the sovereign's power over its subjects, in which the state's focus on
prohibition and juridical authority is replaced by new interests in the birth rate, education, discipline,
health, and longevity of its population.Thus, what Foucault calls a "normalizing society" replaces the
juridical authority of the sovereign. There is a concurrent shift from struggles for political rights to "life
rights"-that is, a right to one's body, health, and the fulfillment of basic needs. As with the "docile bodies"
aspect of modern power, sexuality is key to the exercise of biopower: both axes of power-the body and
biopower-revolve around sexuality, which in turn becomes "a crucial target of a power organized
around the management of life rather than the menace of death." This focus is manifested in the sciences
of the "new technology of sex" starting from the end of the eighteenth century-namely, pedagogy, medicine,
and demography.18 Of particular interest to feminists who employ the biopower analysis are the accounts of
discourses and innovations which facilitate increased state control of reproduction or what Foucault calls the
"socialization of pro- creation." These developments are used by feminists to theorize about current
reproductive practices, ranging from birth control and abortion
to new reproductive and genetic technologies.
State intervention in reproductive rights fits Foucault’s paradigm which is part of a larger
struggle against coercive biopower.
Deveax, Prof. of Political Science and Political Theory at Williams College, ‘94
(Monique, Feminist Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, Women's Agency: Empowerment and the Limits of, Accessed 7-1-9,
Summer 1994, CMM)
Although part of Terry's argument falls back on the docile bodies the- sis, the biopower paradigm
nevertheless seems appropriate to describe the dramatic character of medical and state intervention.
Yet like the do- cile bodies thesis, Foucault's biopower model deemphasizes agents' ca- pacities to resist
regulatory and disciplinary technologies. Terry is able to avoid the worst excesses of the paradigm by
inserting descriptions of var- ious resistances, both individual and collective, into her account. She points, for
instance, to the Women's AIDS Network, an international group of women in law, health, and education
who are concerned with HIV and AIDS and advocate women's rights to freedom from medical
surveillance. Without such correctives, readers would be left with a pro- found sense of
disempowerment in the face of ubiquitous state and med- ical surveillance of our reproductive lives.
More importantly, failing to point out women's responses to this intervention would give a false pic- ture of
feminist politics: women's health issues have been a constant fo- cus for feminist activism-more so today
than ever, as evidenced by the renewed prochoice movement, groups demanding increased funding for breast
cancer research and treatment, grassroots initiatives to establish women's community health clinics, and so
forth. Foucault's biopower analysis helps to reveal the implications of the mechanisms for the control
and regulation of our bodies discussed by Terry. However, taken unamended, the paradigm obscures
both individ- ual women's and collective struggles against coercive medical and social practices. As
Terry's work shows, feminist appropriation of Foucault's biopower framework must include discussions
of strategies employed by women to mediate and resist encroachments on their bodies and lives.
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Biopower – I/L: Conventional Views of Womyn
The idea that women are supposed to have children and this is their gender role is a way to
control the female population
Butler, Ph.D., 1992(Judith, “Sexual Inversions”
http://books.google.com/books?id=210x7_AwML8C&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq="Feminism+and+Empowerment:+A+critical+reading+of+Fo
ucault"&source=bl&ots=OKF5OY0U6U&sig=RioXJqrQdVqX2hvzyIrd1H0bpbc&hl=en&ei=7jZOStHCHIXysQOErsiqDQ&sa=X&oi=book_re
sult&ct=result&resnum=3, 1992, accessed 7-3-09)
Some might say that the scandal of the first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality consists in the claim
that we did not always have a sex. What can such a notion mean? Foucault proposes that there was a
decisive historical break between a sociopolitical regime in which sex existed as an attribute, an
activity, a dimension of human life, and a more recent regime in which sex became established as an
identity. This particularly modern scandal suggests that for the first time sex is not a contingent or arbitrary
feature of identity but, rather, that there can be no identity without sex and that it is precisely through
being sexed that we become intelligible as humans. So it is not exactly right to claim we did not always
have a sex. Perhaps the historical scandal is that we were always our sex, that sex did not always have the
power to characterize Juridical laws are transformed into instances of productive power, in which
power effectively generates objects to control, in which power elaborates all sorts of objects and identities
that guarantee the augmentation of regulatory scientific regimes} The category of "sex” is constructed as
an "object" of study and control, which assists in the elaboration and justification of productive power
regimes. lt is as if once the threat of death is overcome, power turns its idle attention to the construction of
objects to control. Or, rather, power exerts and articulates its control through the formation and
proliferation of objects that concern the continuation of life. (Later I shall briefly examine the way in
which the term “power" operates in Foucault’s text, its susceptibility to personification and the interrelations
of the juridical and productive modalities.
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Biopower – Impact: Reduces People (1/2)
Reproductive Biopower Reduces Women to Political Fields
Deveax, Prof. of Political Science and Political Theory at Williams College, ‘94
(Monique, Feminist Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, Women's Agency: Empowerment and the Limits of, Accessed 7-1-9,
Summer 1994, CMM)
For Foucault, sex is the pivotal factor in the proliferation of mecha- nisms of discipline and
normalization; it is also at the center of a system of "dividing practices" that separate off the insane, the
delinquent, the hysteric, and the homosexual. As the sovereign's rights over the life and death of subjects
began to shift in the seventeenth century, two axes or poles emblematic of the modern power paradigm
evolved. They were the "anatomo-politics of the human body," which emphasizes a disci- plined, useful
body (hence, "docile bodies"), and the model Foucault calls the "biopolitics of the population," in
which the state's attention turns to the reproductive capacities of bodies, and to health, birth, and
mortality.5 The prime focus of the first axis of power is thus "the body and its forces, their utility and their
docility, their distribution and their submission."6 The body becomes a "political field," inscribed and
constituted by power relations.
The biopower of patriarchal power reduces individuals to docile subjects of the dominant.
Without outside help, resistance by the individual is futile.
Armstrong, Prof. of Philosophy University of Queensland, ‘06
(Aurelia, Univ. of Tennessee Martin, “Foucault and Feminism”, AD:7-3-9, CMM)
Although the use that Bartky and Bordo make of Foucault's insights into the operation of normalizing
disciplinary power is a corrective to his failure to recognize the gendered nature of disciplinary
techniques, some feminists have argued that their work reproduces a problematic dimension of
Foucault's account of modern disciplinary power. Jana Sawicki explains that the problem faced by this
kind of feminist appropriation of Foucault is its inability to account for effective resistance to disciplinary
practices. Like Foucault, Bartky and Bordo envisage modern disciplinary power as ubiquitous and
inescapable. Foucauldian power reduces individuals to docile and subjected bodies and thus seems to
deny the possibility of freedom and resistance. According to Sawicki, 'Bartky and Bordo have
portrayed forms of patriarchal power that insinuate themselves within subjects so profoundly that it is
difficult to imagine how they (we) might escape. They describe our complicity in patriarchal practices
of victimization without providing suggestions about how we might resist it' (Sawicki 1988:
293).Feminist critics of Foucault like Nancy Hartsock argue that his failure to develop an adequate notion of
resistance is a consequence of his reduction of individuals to effects of power relations. Hartsock echoes a
widespread feminist concern that Foucault's understanding of power reduces individuals to docile
bodies, to victims of disciplinary technologies or objects of power rather than subjects with the
capacity to resist (Hartsock 1990: 171-2). The problem for Hartsock and others is that without the
assumption of a subject or individual that pre-exists its construction by technologies of power, it becomes
difficult to explain who resists power? If there are no ready-made individuals with interests that are defined
prior to their construction by power, then what is the source of our resistance?\
The States Control Over reproductive rights lead to docile bodies which makes women
vessels for the creation of children.
Deveaux, Ph.D., 1992
(Monique, “Feminism and Empowerment: A critical Reading of Focoult”, 1992, accessed 7-3-09, NG)
just So Many Docile Bodies? Feminism and Panopticonism. The transition from sovereign, or monarchical,
power to modem regulatory power comprised of disciplinary regimes, systems of surveillance, and
normalizing tactics provides the backdrop to Foucault’s early, "docile bodies" thesis. Modem power
requires "minimum expenditure for the maximum return," and its central organizing principle is that of
discipline} Aspects of sovereign power are carried over into the modern period but function as ruses,
disguising and legitimating the emerging discourse of disciplinary power. This new regime of control is
minimalist in its approach (in the sense of lesser expenditures of force and linance) but more far- reaching
and localized in its effect on bodies. For Foucault, sex is the pivotal factor in the proliferation of mech
nisms of discipline and normalization; it is also at the center of a system of "dividing practices" that
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separate off the insane, the delinquent, the hysteric, and the homosexual. As the sovereign’s rights over
the life and death of subjects began to shift in the seventeenth century, two axes or poles emblematic of the
modern power paradigm evolved. They were the "anatomo·politics of the human body,” which emphasizes a
disciplined, useful body (hence, "docile bodies”); and the model Foucault calls the “bio·politics of the
population," in which the state’s attention turns to the reproductive capacities of bodies, and to health,
birth, and mortal- ity.’ The prime focus of the lirst axis of power is thus "the body and its forces, their utility
and their docility, their distribution and their submission. "° The body becomes a "political feld," inscribed
and consti- tuted by power relations. the transition from sovereign authority to modem, disciplinary
forms of power is seen to parallel the shift from more overt manifestations of the oppression of women
to more insidious forms of control. This new method is disciplinary in nature and more subtle in its
exercise; it involves women in the enterprise of surveillance.
BIOPOWER ELIMINATES ANY VALUE TO HUMAN LIFE.
Boleau, Philosophy Professor Seattle U, 2000
(“GENUINE RECIPROCITY AND GROUP AUTHENTICITY”, p. 27, CMM)
According to Foucault, in the current era of bio-power, there is a strong voice in our culture that views
the body as a resource or a machine. Knowledge of the body causes the body’s dispersion into a
complex myriad of political strategies and techniques. In contrast to Aristotelian man, who was (for
some) self-grounded, Foucault sees modern man as “animal whose politics places his existence as a
living being in question. In other words, Foucault sees individuals as social creations: no individual is
his or her own ground.
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Biopower – Impact: Violence/War
State power to “care” for populations is the same power that enables massacre
Milchman, Queens Professor of Philosophy, 1998
(D., Philosophy and Social Criticism, v. 22, 1, p. 104, PK)
In several lectures, and in his HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, Foucault began to develop the idea that the state
which had progressively taken as its task the ‘care” of the population in all its dimensions may also be
massacre it. “Since the population is nothing mare than what the state takes care of for its own sake, of
course, the state is entitle to slaughter it if necessary. So the revere of biopolitics is thanatopoltiics. A
formidable power of death in w2hich political regimes inflict “holocaust on their own populations” is, for
Foucault, the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer,
optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations. Such is the
outcome when the stathification of power, and the governmentalization of the state, make it possible to
“produce docile bodies.”
Biopower is a murderous enterprise that culminates in a cycle of violence by the
elimination of the “other”
Ajana, Professor of Philosophy -London School of Economics, 2007
(Btihaj, “Surveillance and Biopolitics Electronic Journal of Sociology”,
http://www.sociology.org/content/2007/__btihaj_surveillances.pdf)
Embedded within this biopolitical overdetermination is a murderous enterprise. Murderous not insofar as it
involves extermination (although this might still be the case) but inasmuch as it exerts a biopower that
exposes ‘someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or, quite simply, political death,
expulsion, rejection, and so on’ (Foucault 2003 [1976]: 256), and inasmuch as it is ‘based on a certain
occluded but inevitable and thus constitutive violence’ (Zylinska, 2004: 530); a symbolic violence
(manifested, for instance, in the act of ‘naming’ as Butler (in Zylinska, 2004) and Derrida argue ‘asylum
seekers’, ‘detainees’, ‘deportees’, ‘illegal immigrants’, etc) as well as a material one (for example, placing
‘asylum seekers’ and ‘illegal immigrants’ in detention centres), attesting to that epistemic impulse to
resuscitate the leftover of late modernity and the residual of disciplinary powers that seek to eliminate and
ostracise the unwanted-other through the insidious refashioning of the ‘final solution’ for the asylum and
immigration ‘question’. Such an image has been captured by Braidotti (1994: 20):
Biopower produces war in the name of populations.
Atterton, University of California San Diego Philosophy Professor, 1994
(Peter, HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES JOURNAL, v. 7,
http://www.acusd.edu/~atterton/Publications/foucault.htm)
The 'principle underlying the tactics of battle' defining 'the strategy of states' as bio-politics, is not
military and does not derive from military theory. As a plan for 'life and survival,' it belongs more
properly to evolution and to what Darwin called 'the struggle for existence,' which he use . . . in a large
and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more
important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny (Darwin, 1958: 74-75).
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Biopower – Impact: Extinction
The expression of human biopower will destroy the planet.
Bernauer, philosophy professor, Boston College, 1990
(James, MICHAEL FOUCAULT'S FORCE OF FLIGHT: TOWARD AN ETHICS OF THOUGHT, pp. 141-2,
CMM)
This capacity of power to conceal itself cannot cloak the tragedy of the implications contained in
Foucault's examination of its functioning. While liberals have fought to extend rights and Marxists have
denounced the injustices of capitalism, a political technology, acting in the interests of a better administration
of life, has produced a politics that places man's "existence as a living being in question." The very period
that proclaimed pride in having overthrown the tyranny of monarchy, that engaged in an endless
clamor for reform, that is confident in the virtues of its humanistic faith -- this period's politics created
a landscape dominated by history's bloodiest wars. What comparison is possible between a sovereign's
authority to take a life and a power that, in the interest of protecting a society's quality of life, can
plan, as well as develop the means for its implementation, a policy of mutually assured destruction?
Such a policy is neither an aberration of the fundamental principles of modern politics nor an
abandonment of our age's humanism in favor of a more primitive right to kill; it is but the other side
of a power that is "situated and exercised at the level of life, the species the race, and the large-scale
phenomena of population. The bio-political project of administering and optimizing life closes its circle
with the production of the Bomb. "The atomic situation is now at the end point of this process: the
power to expose a whole population to death is the underside of a power to guarantee and individuals
continued existence. " The solace that might have been expected from being able to gaze at scaffolds empty
of the victims of a tyrant's vengeance has been stolen form us by the noose that has tightened around each of
our own necks.
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Biopower -- Discouse Shapes Identity
Our discourses shape our identity
Deveax, Prof. of Political Science and Political Theory at Williams College, ‘94
(Monique, Feminist Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, Women's Agency: Empowerment and the Limits of, Accessed 7-1-9,
Summer 1994, CMM)
Judith Butler is at the center of the third wave of Foucauldian feminist theory. In Gender Trouble: Feminism
and the Subversion of Identity, Butler builds on Foucault's account of the proliferation of discourses on
sex in the modern era. What we see today, she argues, is the constant reproduction of sexual identities
via "an exclusionary apparatus of production" in which the meanings of these practices are curtailed,
restricted, and rein- forced. Whereas Foucault is most interested in the way regimes of power produce
discourses on sexual perversion, pathology, delinquency and criminality, and new subjects emerging from
these categories, Butler is equally interested in the construction of gender and sexual minority
identities. For feminists, her most controversial move is to use Foucault's thesis on modern power to
deconstruct the very notion of woman. Butler proposes that we view gender as discursively and
materially constructed through repetitive "performances" of "words, acts, gestures and desire."
Foucault's influence on Butler's formulation is clear in her claim: "If the inner truth of gender is a
fabrication and if a true gender is a fan- tasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies then it
seems that genders can be neither true nor false, bur are only produced as the truth effects of a
discourse of primary and stable identity." Rather than cling- ing to fixed notions of femaleness as
necessary for feminist praxis, Butler suggests that we reconceptualize identity as "an effect" in order to destabilize gender and open up new, unforeseen possibilities for agency.
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Humyn Rights – I/L: Hyde Amendment
The Hyde Amendment is a direct violation of the universal human rights
Brooks, Staff Attorney, National Health Law Program; Skuster, Policy Associate, Ipas Horsley,
Communications and Campaigns Director, National Network of Abortion Funds. 06
(Jamie D, Patty, and Sarah. “Hyde Amendment: A Violation of Human Rights.” 10/2006. 7/3/09
http://www.hyde30years.nnaf.org/documents/HydeandHumanRights2.pdf. JM)
Through the Hyde Amendment, the federal government denies poor women, women of color, women
in the military and immigrants the ability to make their own decisions about pregnancy and
childbearing. For 30 years, the Hyde Amendment has violated the human rights of women who receive
Medicaid by prohibiting federal funding for abortion in the majority of cases. Medicaid is a federal and
state government program that entitles beneficiaries to a right to health care. However, the right to
abortion is not guaranteed for Medicaid recipients. Since 1976, year after year, the Hyde Amendment has
been attached to the annual federal spending bill. Passed by Congress in 1976, as part of the Department of
Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare Appropriation Act, the original amendment banned “using funds
appropriated by this Act to perform abortions except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the
fetus were carried to term.” The current version also allows funds to be used in cases of rape and incest.
Similar language in other bills also prohibits federal funding for abortion for women in the military,
Peace Corps and federal prisons and for women who receive health care from Indian Health Services.
The majority of states have also banned state Medicaid coverage for abortion. These funding restrictions
violate women’s reproductive rights and ignore universal human rights recognized by the United
States and other countries around the world.
Using restrictions to force pregnancies on womyn who want abortions are the same as rape.
Cook and Dickens, Professors in the Faculty of Law, Medicine, and the Joint Centre for
Bioethics at the University of Toronto, 08
(Rebecca and Bernard, “Human Rights Dynamics of Abortion Law Reform”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25 No.
1, March 13, 2008, http://www.law.utoronto.ca/documents/reprohealth/PUB-HumanRightsDynamics.pdf, accessed
6-29-09, KLM)
It is accordingly a human rights infringement when women who have suffered the violation of rape are
compelled to endure pregnancy against their will by the coercion of criminal sanctions. The Platform further condemns
“torture . . . sexual slavery, rape, sexual abuse and forced pregnancy.”27 Forced pregnancy describes both forced initiation of
pregnancy, and forced continuation of pregnancy. The Treaty of Rome constituting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court
similarly recognizes forced pregnancy as a crime against humanity. 28 This was in reaction to preceding evidence, presented before
tribunals addressing humanitarian outrages in conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, of systematic rape as part of “ethnic
cleansing,” when women pregnant by rape were denied abortion due to religious influence. Countries with criminal laws that do not
permit abortion for rape recognized their vulnerability to condemnation for perpetrating forced pregnancy, and joined the Treaty only
upon the acceptance of Treaty language providing that their legislation does not violate the Treaty. Nevertheless, human rights treaty
monitoring bodies have identified the inconsistency between human rights principles and criminal abortion laws that have no explicit
exception that allows lawful abortion on complaints of rape. Recognition of forced pregnancy, however initiated,
exposes the coercion women suffer to continue pregnancies against their will, by criminal laws and
other means, as a human rights violation. 29 This is analogous to rape and sexual abuse. The Chief
Justice of Canada, in a majority judgment holding Canada’s restrictive criminal abortion law unconstitutional and inoperative,
observed in 1988 that: Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a foetus to term
unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound
interference with a woman’s body and thus a violation of security of the person. 30 This reconceptualization of criminal abortion laws as human rights viola- tions when they deny women’s
choice shows that restrictive laws and governmental policies can be as disrespectful of women’s wishes,
interests, health, and bodily integrity as are rapists. Those who support and enforce such laws and
policies similarly enforce their will upon women by their power of domination, in order to advance
their own social, spiritual, or other purposes.
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The election of Obama presents a unique opportunity to present the US as a leader in
reproductive justice policy.
Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, 09
(Nancy, 1-1-09, “How to Restore America's Position as a Leader on Reproductive Rights”,
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/115080/how_to_restore_america's_position_as_a_leader_on_reproducti
ve_rights/ accessed 7-3-09, KLM)
With the election of Barack Obama, women around the world can heave a collective sigh of relief and
look forward to an end to the Bush administration's relentless assault on women's reproductive health
and rights. It's been a very long and destructive eight years. While the rest of the world has been moving
forward in a growing recognition of reproductive rights as human rights, the United States has moved
backwards. In the past two years, the United States Supreme Court -- with two new Bush justices -issued Gonzales v. Carhart , a decision that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called "alarming," which she said
represented antiquated and rejected notions of a woman's place in the family. At the same time, the
Constitutional Court in Colombia said that protecting reproductive rights is a direct path to promoting the
dignity of all human beings. We need to get back on that direct path. Under the leadership of Presidentelect Obama, the United States has the opportunity to again take the world stage as a leader in
promoting women's reproductive health, equality and human rights. Make no mistake, our country's
new vision for reproductive rights and health needs to go further than simply undoing the policies of the
previous administration. The Obama administration must work toward a nation and world in which all
women are free to decide whether and when to have children, where all women have access to quality
reproductive health care, where all women can exercise their choices without coercion or
discrimination, and where all women can participate with full dignity as equal members of society.
That’s key to global leadership
Shattuck, CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library, 8
(John,; “How US can get its groove back,” Accessed: 7-1-9,
,http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/08/02/how_us_can_get_its_groove_back/
, CMM)
One of the biggest challenges facing the next president is how to restore US credibility in the world.
Despite military assets unparalleled in history, US global standing has hit rock bottom. The United
States government is widely perceived today to be a violator of human rights. A poll conducted by the
British Broadcasting Corp. last year in 18 countries on all continents revealed that 67 percent disapproved of
US detention and interrogation practices in Guantanamo. Another poll in Germany, Great Britain, Poland,
and India found that majorities or pluralities condemned the United States for torture and other violations of
international law. A third poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations showed that majorities in 13
countries, including traditional allies, believe "the US cannot be trusted to act responsibly in the world." The
gap between America's values and its actions has severely eroded US global influence. How does it get it
back?
Congressional action demonstrates our commitment to reproductive freedom as a human
rights leader
Center for Reproductive Rights, 8
(“Reproductive Rights: Federal Policy Agenda – Advancing What’s Right for Women and the Nation,” Center for
Reproductive Rights, Fall 2008, CMM)
The United States has been a world leader with a long and proud history of championing equality and human
rights. However, we now face a tipping point in the struggle to recognize and protect reproductive
rights. Decades of hard-won progress that improved women’s reproductive heath care and autonomy
have been eroded. These losses are as alarming as they are widespread: state and federal court
decisions have undermined the protections established by Roe v. Wade; funding for basic reproductive
health care is inadequate to serve those in need; and maternal mortality rates among women of color
remain shamefully high. Moreover, restrictions that the United States places on foreign assistance aimed at
improving reproductive health worldwide, based on opposition to abortion and support for ineffective
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abstinence programs, hamper progress and place this country out of step with other major donors. These
injustices demand a bold agenda for change, ensuring that women’s reproductive rights are
understood and protected by law- and policy-makers. We can no longer rely on the courts to protect
reproductive rights or to meet internationally recognized standards regarding access to reproductive
health care. It is time for Congress and the President to demonstrate their commitment to women’s
health and self-determination, and to acknowledge this nation’s obligations to respect reproductive
rights as human rights.
Womyn worldwide are experiencing the same problems in relation to reproduction. US
policy is essential to worldwide emancipation.
Byllye et al, The U.S. Women of Color Delegation to The International Conference on
Population and Development, 06
(Byllye Y. Avery, Founding President, NBWHP, Cynthia I. Newbille, Executive Director, NBWHP; Julia R. Scott, NBWHP, Public Policy & Education Office; Luz Alvarez Martinez, National
Latina Health Organization; Charon Asetoyer, Native America Women's Health Education Resource Center; Denese Shervington, Women of Color Health Forum/Institute of Women & Ethnic
Studies; Mary Chung, National Asian Health Organization; C. Hope Brown, National Coalition of 100 Black Women; Ingrid Washingwatok, Indigenous Women's Network, c/o Fund of the Four
Directions; Gail Small, Native Action; Mililani B. Trask, c/o Gibson Foundation; Leni Marin, Senior Program Specialist, Family Violence Prevention Fund; Giselle Aguillar Hass; Pam
Kingfisher, Native Americans for a Clean Environment; Wenny Kusuma, Executive Director, La Casa de las Madres; Vernice Miller, National Resource Defense Council (West Harlem
Environmental Action); Viola Plummer, December 12th Movement; Elsa A. Rios, Committee for Hispanic Children & Families; Gregoria Rodriguez, TNEEI; Eva Royale, No. California
Coordinator United Farm Workers; Young Shin, Executive Director, Asian Immigrant Women Advocates; Grace Sison, ATT: T.H.E. Clinic, Asian Health Project , July 20, 2006, “Statement
on Poverty, Development, and Population Activities”, http://www.cwpe.org/node/126, accessed July 1, 2009, KLM)
Population control policies are targeted at people in the so called "Third World", all of whom are
people of color. Substantial emphasis is placed on contraceptive distribution as the key to improving
the quality of life for people, "family planning" and not "farming" they say. Within industrial
countries like the U.S., the targets are indigenous peoples, and other marginalized, poor communities, the
majority of whom are peoples of color. The U.S. women of color are very concerned about the
aggressive contraceptive distribution that is at the core of policies aiming to reduce poverty via
population control. There is an increased likelihood of human rights abuse such as coercion and
violation of the personal rights of women. For example, poor women are being targeted to use only
controversial long-acting contraceptives, e.g. Norplant and Depo Provera, which are being promoted
as the solution to the problem of teenage pregnancy and out of wedlock births. The side effects of these
substances are quite problematic, and they do not protect women against sexually transmitted diseases, STDs, including HIV/AIDS,
despite the fact that poor women and sexually exploited women are at greater risk. Pregnant poor women who abuse drugs are 10
times more likely to be prosecuted and have their children taken away than white women even when
they abuse drugs at the same rate. Furthermore, government policies are being proposed that will
require poor women to accept long acting contraceptives or face losing the inadequate health and
social benefits they may currently have. And while the official U.S. policy may presently be supportive
of choice, poor women still have limited or no access to abortion services because of restricted funding,
thus aggravating the number of unwanted pregnancies. Also millions of women have no access to basic health care
nor private, voluntary, unbiased, non-directive contraceptive information that is linguistically and culturally appropriate. Despite the
level of technological advancement of the United States, African-Americans still experience the highest
rate of infant mortality, a condition attributable to substandard women's health care that is only
experienced in the poorest Third World countries. While the numbers count, the widespread rhetoric
that population growth is to blame for hunger, underdevelopment and prevailing poverty is at least,
suspect. According to Oxfam America and many other development organizations, "our planet produces more than enough food to feed the world's
population". In rural/urban America community organizers discuss the root causes of poverty in their communities [as] lack of access to land/housing,
credit, markets, education, and training. Governments must address the problems of society rather than blame the victims of oppression for their
predicament. The agenda that is being developed for the ICPD will require the world's governments to implement a population control policy. Nevertheless,
our participation in the Cairo international conference anticipates an opportunity for real global transformation, a chance to urge a thorough review of the
global power and economic structures, so as to rectify the inconsistencies and inequities which have arrested development and entrenched poverty for
marginalized groups in the U.S. and abroad. We are advocating a change of the present global development model that is built around wasteful
consumption, economic growth pitted against social progress. We need to require a new index for measuring progress besides the economistic production
and consumption of goods and services . We,
(the Women of Color for Reproductive Health and Rights,
WOCCRHR, and the U.S. Women of Color Delegation to the ICPD) wanted to bring attention to the
similarities between the Southern conditions of women in this Northern country and women in the Southern countries, and to urge our
government to act decisively in addressing and rectifying unjust policies and power imbalances within
our society and worldwide. Governments must increase the resources towards implementing more
socially just economic and social development policies. At home and abroad, standards of ethics,
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education and meaningful employment at decent wages for everyone will check immigration, alleviate
poverty, reduce birth rates and subsequently population growth. Women's empowerment is being won
through difficult and costly struggles which must not be devalued by those who recently discovered
that the women's movement could be used to disguise their population control agenda. In this context
initiatives for women's empowerment must not be confused with activities to control population.
Governments must support community efforts that address the problem of jobs especially during this transitional global economy.
Efforts to improve quality of life for poor people and women should never overlook the spectrum of
problems to be addressed concurrently. We don't want to wait until the "unmet need" for
contraceptives has been satisfied before realizing that we have utterly neglected to boost social and
economic progress, and failed to alleviate poverty, again.
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Humyn Rights – I/L: Reproductive Freedom
Denying womyn access to medical procedures that are exclusive to them violates equal
rights.
Human Rights Watch 05
(“Q&A: Human Rights Law and Access to Abortion” June 15, 2005 http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/06/15/qahuman-rights-law-and-access-abortion#_Right_to_life Accessed 6-28-09 KLM)
Access to legal and safe abortion services is essential to the protection of women's rights to
nondiscrimination and equality. Women are in practice more likely than men to experience personal
hardship as well as social disadvantage as a result of economic, career, and other life changes when
they have children. Where women are compelled to continue unwanted pregnancies, such
consequences forcibly put women at further disadvantage. Abortion is a medical procedure that only
women need. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has implied
that the denial of medical procedures only women need is a form of discrimination against women.
Therefore, restrictive abortion laws may amount in certain cases to discrimination against women in and
of themselves. The committee has also clarified that states have an obligation not to put barriers in place
that prevent women's access to appropriate health care. As examples of such prohibited barriers, the
committee has explicitly cited laws that criminalize medical procedures only needed by women and that punish women
who undergo these procedures. The U.N. Human Rights Committee has also repeatedly established a clear
link between women's equality and the availability of reproductive health services, including abortion.
Denying womyn from abortions based on faith-based agendas stomps their right to
religion. They aren’t allowed to choose if abortions comply with their beliefs.
Human Rights Watch 05
(“Q&A: Human Rights Law and Access to Abortion” June 15, 2005 http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/06/15/qahuman-rights-law-and-access-abortion#_Right_to_life Accessed 6-28-09 KLM)
Like abortion itself, religious faith is a highly personal issue. The human right to freedom of thought,
conscience and religion cannot be limited under any circumstances, and applies to established and nonestablished religions, as well as to the right not to have a religion. Freedom of religion includes freedom
from being compelled to comply with laws designed solely or principally to uphold doctrines of
religious faith. It includes the freedom to follow one's own conscience regarding doctrines of faiths one
does not hold. With regard to abortion, women cannot be compelled to comply with laws based solely or
principally on religious doctrines, which many abortion restrictions are. Likewise, where abortion is
legalized, women who do not wish to have an abortion for religious or other reasons should not be
forced to have one. Freedom of religion and conscience is often invoked by health practitioners opposed to
abortion, claiming a "conscientious objection" to providing certain services, notably abortions. While the
human rights framework allows for conscientious objection in some cases, there are limits. For
example, conscience cannot justify the refusal to perform a lifesaving abortion when there is no other
suitable alternative treatment for the pregnant woman. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women has explicitly stated that women's human rights are infringed where
hospitals refuse to provide abortions due to the conscientious objection of doctors. The Committee has
also expressed concern about the limited access women have to abortion due to conscientious
objections of practitioners. The Committee has expressly, in the context of legal abortion, recommended
that public hospitals provide abortion services.
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Denying reproductive freedom violates the right to equal citizenship.
Cook and Dickens, Professors in the Faculty of Law, Medicine, and the Joint Centre for
Bioethics at the University of Toronto, 08
(Rebecca and Bernard, “Human Rights Dynamics of Abortion Law Reform”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25 No.
1, March 13, 2008, http://www.law.utoronto.ca/documents/reprohealth/PUB-HumanRightsDynamics.pdf, accessed
6-29-09, KLM)
Discrimination excludes those who are subjected to it from equality with others who are not,
particularly the perpetrators of discrimination. That is, discrimination is an exercise in superiority.
The abortion-related discrimina- tion that women suffer on grounds of sex and gender, often coupled
with discrimination on grounds of race, ethnicity, and, for instance, age, illustrates the pervasive
violation of the right to equality that creates the subordinate status that many women occupy in their
families, communities, wider societies, and legal systems. The burdens of pregnancy, post-partum
recovery, nursing, and care of a dependent child or children for years, deny a woman other
opportunities for applications of her energy, time, and talents that she may justly forgo only
voluntarily. The power that a state claims to conscript women to give their bodies against their will to
deliver children at its legal demand confirms that women are only lesser or second-class citizens. Since
the end of legal feudalism and slavery, men are not forced by law to render bodily service and sacrifice at the
will of social superiors, and military conscription in war almost invariably allows rights of conscientious
objection. Under restrictive criminal laws, women who conscientiously object to involuntary continuation of pregnancy by termination become criminals, liable to forfeit many of the freedoms that remain to
them. Women’s lack of equality and bodily integrity under laws that deny them reproductive selfdetermination is increasingly perceived as a viola- tion not only of human equality, but of full
citizenship. Citizens in democracies are full participants in making the laws by which they voluntarily
abide, whose will can become law. Restrictive laws on abortion are products of times, many of which
continue, when women lacked or lack the political power of full citizenship to overcome patriarchal
governments. Such governments are often reliant on the support of authoritarian religious institutions whose
leaders exercise spiritual autocracy and command obedience. The governments and religious institutions that
support restric- tive abortion laws include few if any women, and some deliberately exclude them.
Limiting abortions violates womyn’s right to free religion and equal protection.
ACLU 00
(“The Right to Choose: A Fundamental Liberty”, fall 2000, http://www.aclu.org/FilesPDFs/rightchoose2000.pdf,
accessed 7/1/09, KLM)
Although the Supreme Court has not so held, ACLU believes that reproductive choice is not only
protected by the right to privacy, but by several other constitutional principles, including the
Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws" and the First Amendment's
guarantee of freedom of religion. Laws that force women to bear children not only rob women of their
bodily integrity but make women, as a class, involuntary servants to fetuses. Since only women can
become pregnant, only women are affected by laws that dictate whether and under what conditions
childbearing should occur. By limiting only women's right to make personal decisions, laws that prohibit
or restrict abortion discriminate on the basis of sex in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal
Protection Clause. All of the world's major religions regard abortion as a theological issue, although
their doctrines on the issue differ. Some religions teach that abortion is a sin; others, that it is a woman's
duty if a pregnancy imperils her life or health. Bans on abortion force all citizens to conform to particular
religious beliefs. Thus, the ACLU believes that such laws violate the First Amendment's Free Exercise
Clause, which prohibits governmental encroachment on an individual's right to act according to her
own beliefs or conscience. Abortion bans that establish, as a matter of law, that a fetus is a person
violate the First Amendment's stricture against "an establishment of religion."
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Abortion law for fetal rights intrudes on the mother’s right because it puts the state in
control of what they can do with their bodies.
Johnsen, Professor of Law, 86
(Dawn E. Johnsen, “The Creation of Fetal Rights: Conflicts with Women's Constitutional Rights to Liberty,
Privacy, and Equal Protection”, Source: The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 95, No. 3 (Jan., 1986), pp. 599-625, Accessed
6/30/09, KLM)
Vesting fetuses with rights that are assertable against the women bearing them would create an
unprecedented intrusion on women's bodies and personal lives. The magnitude of the intrusion
on women's rights threatened by the current expansion of fetal rights implicates basic
constitutional liberty and privacy interests that have been recognized by the Court in Roe and in
other cases. The Court has long held that the Constitution protects certain aspects of personal
autonomy from state intervention. The Court has described the "right to be left alone" as "the most
comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized man."62 This right is particularly
important when the state intervention involves a physical intrusion on an individual's body: "No
right is held more sacred, [n]or is more carefully guarded . . . than the right of every
individual to the possession and control of his own person."63 The right to be free from
government control of one's physical person has been described as the right to "personal privacy
and dignity,"64 "personal security,"65 and "bodily security and personal privacy."66
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Re-conceptualizing abortions as a social justice issue is key to women's empowerment.
Braam and Hessini, experts on sexual and reproductive rights, 04
(Tamara and Leila, “The Power Dynamics Perpetuating Unsafe Abortion in Africa: A Feminist Perspective,”
African Journal of Reproductive Health,” Vol. 8:1, 4-2004, p. 43-51, AEL)
A social justice framework requires a re-conceptualisation of abortion from an issue that is exclusively a
woman's concern to one that is a concern for the society as a whole. Two issues of social justice should be
examined: (1) the inequality that rich and poor women have to safe abortion regardless of legal availability; and
(2) the impact of a woman's death or long-term illness from unsafe abortion on her family, her work and her
community at large. Viewed from these perspectives, unsafe abortion becomes a societal problem in which
women are denied the basic human right to make choices and decisions about their bodies and to have access to
the means to do so. Approached in a social justice framework, unsafe abortion would become a concern of men,
families, communities, statesmen and policymakers, health providers, and rights activists. Linkages should also
be made between the basic right of national self-determination, as expressed in many anti-colonial struggles,
and the right of all individuals to self-determination in relation to their bodies. The parallels between the impact
of colonialism on dispossessed peoples and the impact of male-dominated decision-making on women's bodies
need to be explored and made in ways that do not alienate but rather build support and understanding for
women's access to safe abortion services as part of comprehensive reproductive health care. Toward Effective
Strategies to Increase Women's Access to Safe Abortion Drawing on the above approaches and the exploration
of power, it is clear that a women's rights and feminist agenda is needed. Women must reclaim their power at a
personal and relationship level and link their individual power with each other, building strong social
movements around the issue of choice in a broad sense of the term, ranging from the choice about when and
with whom to engage in sexual relationships, to choice in use of high quality affordable contraception and the
choice to bear and raise children. The decision to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is only one issue in a broad
range of issues that most directly affect women. Women's control of their bodies and their need to understand,
enjoy and look after their own bodies, is at the very heart of women's empowerment. Such control potentially
gives women significant social power particularly as their bodies represent the forces of reproduction, a power
that society has historically sought to take away through law, cultural norms, violence and exclusion. Instead,
society must assume responsibility for the processes associated with human and social reproduction and create
an enabling environment for sexual and reproductive choice.
Viewing abortion as a human rights issue is key to all levels of emancipation.
Braam and Hessini, experts on sexual and reproductive rights, 04
(Tamara and Leila, “The Power Dynamics Perpetuating Unsafe Abortion in Africa: A Feminist Perspective,”
African Journal of Reproductive Health,” Vol. 8:1, 4-2004, p. 43-51, AEL)
Ensuring women's access to safe abortion is a political challenge that requires building an understanding of the
issue at all levels of society, linking it to other critical issues and framing it in ways that encourage a holistic
and integrated approach. Abortion must be demystified, simplified and embraced as contributing to an African
continent in which all human beings, men and women, are able to fully exercise their human rights. Ultimately,
it is necessary to shift from penalising and even criminalising women for abortions to recognising abortion as an
extremely common experience, a positive social need and the right of all women of childbearing age. The
tactics and strategies used to facilitate such a shift have to lay claim deliberately to the language of those
historically challenging access to safe services. No apology should be necessary for the need to save women's
lives. Instead, asserting the value of women's lives is an integral part of rebuilding a continent around the
principle of self-determination and selfemancipation. Advocating for access to safe abortion services is part of
the rebirth of an Africa in which all women, all children, all men and all communities can determine their own
destinies.
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The government has an obligation to respect, protect and fulfill women’s rights
Amnesty International, 2009
Women’s Rights, http://www.amnestyusa.org/violence-against-women/stop-violence-against-womensvaw/womens-rights/page.do?id=1108231, Accessed 7-7-09, AMG
Each of the human rights treaties and the whole of the human rights framework are essential for the
realization of women's full spectrum of rights. States have a responsibility whether abuses against
women are committed by state or non-state actors, in the public or private spheres. Their obligations
under international human rights law can be summarized under three categories: •Respect: The state has
an obligation to respect women's human rights through its direct action, agents and structures of
law. A state's constitution must recognize equality between women and men in all spheres; state or
official actors must be held accountable when they perpetrate violence against women; private
actors who perpetrate violence against women must be prosecuted. •Protect: The state has an
obligation to protect women's human rights. The state must take all necessary measures to prevent
individuals or groups from violating the rights of each individual. As such, the state must take
affirmative steps to prevent direct and indirect discrimination against women. Women must be fairly
represented in government and have legal access to all forms of employment. •Fulfill: The state is also
required to fulfill the human rights of women by ensuring opportunities for individuals to obtain
what they need and to provide that which cannot be secured by personal efforts. This obligation for
women and men ranges from providing food, water, housing and education to ensuring the conditions
necessary for women's organizations to form and function.
Medicaid funding is key to allowing woman to access their right of abortion.
Rosoff, Author, 80
(Jeannie I., JSTOR, “Family Planning Perspectives”, August 1980,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2134782?&Search=yes&term=amendment&term=hyde&term=rights&term=women&lis
t=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhyde%2Bamendment%2Bwomen%2Brights%26g
w%3Djtx%26prq%3Dhyde%2Bamendment%2Bfeminism%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&ite
m=3&ttl=1688&returnArticleService=showArticle, accessed 7-1-9, SLR)
In the past, poor women and teenagers have been much more likely that other women to obtain
abortions relatively late in pregnancy and to obtain them in hospitals rather than clinics. This pattern
has occurred not only because hospitals have traditionally been used by the poor for treatment of
illness, but also because accessibility and information problems have tended to delay poor and young
people in finding medical assistance to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, and because nonhospital
facilities often are not equipped (or not allowed) to perform abortions late in pregnancy. Whatever the
reasons, without Medicaid funding, the financial obstacle face by poor women in obtaining abortions
will be greatly magnified.
Giving women the opportunity for abortions gives them key moral rights.
Kolbert, writer for BBC, 92
(Kathryn, BBC , “Childbearing, Freedom, and Equality” http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/mother/for_4.shtml,
6-30-9, SLR
Many people regard the right to control one's own body as a key moral right. If women are not allowed
to abort an unwanted foetus they are deprived of this right. The simplest form of the women's rights
argument in favour of abortion goes like this: • a woman has the right to decide what she can and
can't do with her body •
the foetus exists inside a woman's body • a woman has the right to
decide whether the foetus remains in her body •
therefore a pregnant woman has the right to
abort the foetus
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Women who are able to access abortions easier maintain a key part of their sovereignty.
Pomeroy, Quals, 08
(Claire, Serendip, “Abortion and Women's Rights: Unification of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice through Feminism,” 115-8, http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1845, accessed 6-30-9, SLR)
Pro-choice feminism views the right to an abortion as integral to a women's right to sovereignty.
Without abortion, women would unjustly be forced into motherhood. From a feminist standpoint,
denying the right for women to choose to have an abortion forces them into submissive roles in society.
Pregnancy works to condemn women to second class citizenship, since in our society, mothers are second
class citizens. Once a woman becomes a mother, her resources to education, employment, and health care
become severely limited.
Reproductive rights are key to guaranteeing women equal participation in the economic
and social aspects of the nation.
Bernstein, Brooklyn Law School, 2008 (Janessa L. “The Underground Railroad to Reproductive
Freedom: RESTRICTIVE ABORTION LAWS AND THE RESULTING BACKLASH,” 73
Brooklyn L. Rev. 1463,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=2
1_T6892311919&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T68
92309149&cisb=22_T6892309148&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=7328&docNo=1,
accessed 7-1-09)
The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation has been facilitated
by [*1508] their ability to control their reproductive lives. In order to best ensure that women retain control
over their reproductive freedom, abortion proponents must reframe the abortion debate. When attention is
drawn to injuries and deaths caused by illegal abortions, activists will be more successful in lobbying for
more liberal abortion laws. Until then, it seems that the underground abortion railroad will provide the
means by which women resist laws that control their bodies. But as with any underground movement, many are
left behind due to lack of funds, lack of volunteers, lack of knowledge about the existence of these networks, and the
inability of such small organizations to provide a meaningful level of outreach. The best strategy to ensure that
abortions are not made illegal or almost impossible to obtain is through the sharing of stories about illegal and
unsanitary abortions that have caused death and injury to so many women throughout the world. If that tactic fails,
abortion proponents will be forced to retreat underground, mobilize as many volunteers as possible, and emulate
their sisters and brothers of the pre-Roe years who mobilized an effective and safe underground abortion railroad
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Empirically proven – “fetal rights” causes discrimination and risk to pregnant womyn.
ACLU 00
(“The Right to Choose: A Fundamental Liberty”, fall 2000, http://www.aclu.org/FilesPDFs/rightchoose2000.pdf,
accessed 7/2/09, KLM)
Our courts have always held that the government cannot compel an individual to use his or her body
as an instrument for preserving people who are already born, much less for preserving a fetus in the
womb. For example, the government cannot force a relative of a child afflicted with cancer to donate
bone marrow or an organ to the child, even if the child is sure to die without the donation. Obviously,
if the state cannot force someone to undergo a bone marrow or organ transplant for a person already
born, it cannot force a woman to continue a pregnancy that might entail great health risks for the sake
of a fetus. As the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stated in a 1989 decision, "surely a fetus
cannot have rights superior to those of a person who has already been born." Enforcement of the idea that
a fetus has legal rights superseding those of the woman who carries it would make pregnant women
second-class citizens with fewer rights, and more obligations, than others. Moreover, application of the
"fetal rights" concept has already had devastating effects on women's right to bodily integrity. For
example, cancer patient Angela Carder, forced by the District of Columbia Superior Court to undergo
a caesarean delivery of her 26-week-old fetus, died prematurely as a result. Under the banner of "fetal
rights," pregnant women have been prosecuted for failing to follow medical advice, and even for
failing to get to a hospital quickly enough after the onset of labor. The concept also inspired industrial
employers to adopt "fetal protection" policies, whereby the capacity to become pregnant, and pregnancy
itself, became the bases for closing off certain jobs to all women of childbearing age who refused to be
sterilized. Fortunately, the Supreme Court struck down this discriminatory practice in a 1991 decision.
Denying abortions reduces womyn to vessels of the fetus.
Copelon et al 05
(Rhonda Copelon, Christina Zampas, Elizabeth Brusie, Jacqueline deVore, Professor of Law and Director,
International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic, b Legal Advisor for Europe, International Program,
c IWHR Legal Intern and CUNY Law Graduate 2005, Reproductive Health Matters, Vol. 13, No. 26, The
Abortion Pill (Nov., 2005), pp. 120- 129, “Human Rights Begin at Birth: International Law and the Claim of
Fetal Rights”)
In recent decades, however, the rejection of claims for "fetal rights" has been increasingly grounded,
and most significantly so, on their incompatibility with women's human rights.* To do otherwise,
would reduce women to a vessel - and yet a human one - deprived of bodily integ- rity, the right to
be sexual and the right to life, not only in the physical sense illustrated by abortion-related maternal
mortality but also as sentient, feeling, and rational beings entitled to shape their lives, to resist the
dictates of others, to be respected as full persons, to be other than a mother, and to undertake the
enormous respon- sibilities of pregnancy and parenthood, not by force or coercion, but as a
voluntary under- taking - out of desire and as a gift. The long-standing and constantly re-enacted
insistence of women, written largely in their blood, upon voluntary motherhood is at its foundation both a demand for minimal control over one's destiny as a human being and a refusal to be
enslaved to another whether that be the advo- cate or enforcer of patriarchal obligation or
itssurrogate, the fetus. It is for this reason that the careless, but at first blush seemingly logical
assertion that fetal personhood would extinguish a women's right to abortion is wrong (Para.19)45 (Pt.
IX-A).62 No fully developed person has the right to subordinate another in the way that unwanted
pregnancy subordinates a woman. Nor is any fully developed person required to risk their health
or life or even significant comfort to save another person, even their own child. To impose upon a
full human being such subordi- nation and risk for the sake of potential human life, is, by contrast,
absurd as well as cruelly unfair. Pregnancy is the most intimate and continual form of labour and
rescue, and like labour and rescue, it must be voluntary. Abortion is, thus, for theoretical and
practical reasons indispensable to women's equality, dignity and rights as a human being (p.102124).67-71
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Control of reproductive processes turn womyn into tools of the state.
Cook, Professor in the Faculty of Law, Medicine, and the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the
University of Toronto, 93
Rebecca J. Cook, International Human Rights and Women's Reproductive Health, Studies in Family Planning, Vol.
24, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1993), pp. 73-86, Accessed: 01/07/2009, KLM
The widespread disadvantage that women suffer through neglect of their reproductive rights, under
laws and practices perpetuated by states, denies them more than their enjoyment of health. Women’s
reproductive functions have been used to control women themselves. States have advanced their
chosen social, economic, and population agendas by implementing laws and employing practices that
control women’s reproduction. To gain autonomy, women must attain reproductive selfdetermination, their path to many of life’s opportunities. Respect for the human right of reproductive
self-determination includes the prohibition of all forms of discrimination against women, and the changing
of laws and of practices that are the instruments of such discrimination. Governments must be made
accountable not only for their acts of discrimination and their failure to eliminate the discriminatory laws
and practices that they have inherited, but also for the effects of their conduct on the status of women
within their countries.
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Reproductive freedom is the key first step to all other gender equality rights.
McCafferty et al 07
January, Christine, Chair, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive
Health and the rest of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health,
“RETURN OF THE POPULATION GROWTH FACTOR Its impact upon the Millennium Development Goals”
http://www.populationconnection.org/site/DocServer/Return_of_the_Population_Growth_Factor.pdf?docID=22
4, accessed 7/7/09, KLM
“Although women’s ability to control their fertility is by itself not sufficient to gaining their full
empowerment and gender equality, it is the first and most important step.”98 Women need to have
many opportunities opened to them – education, fair treatment in employment, income, property, and
a voice in civic matters. But no woman can be free unless she has the technologies and information
required to enable her to decide whether, and when, to have a child and to escape the tyranny of
unintended pregnancy. Women with numerous pregnancies and life-long child care find it difficult to
participate in education, markets or politics. 99 Women without access to family planning are likely to
be younger when they have their first child, and less able to space or limit subsequent births. 100 The
early initiation of sexual activity and unwanted pregnancies curtails education for those girls who do
begin to get an education. In sub- Saharan Africa, between 8% and 25% of girls who drop out of school do
so because of unwanted pregnancies. 101 Early marriage, as in Afghanistan or Ethiopia, deters parents from
investing in female education, or curtails the education of the few girls who do start school.
Minority rights must always be protected, otherwise democracy can’t exist
Chenoweth, codirector and cofounder of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, no
date given
Eric, Democracy Web, Majority Rule/Minority Rights: Essential Principles,
http://www.democracyweb.org/majority/principles.php, Accessed 7-7-09, AMG
Democracy therefore requires minority rights equally as it does majority rule. Indeed, as democracy is
conceived today, the minority's rights must be protected no matter how singular or alienated that
minority is from the majority society; otherwise, the majority's rights lose their meaning. In the United
States, basic individual liberties are protected through the Bill of Rights, which were drafted by James
Madison and adopted in the form of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. These enumerate the
rights that may not be violated by the government, safeguarding—in theory, at least—the rights of any
minority against majority tyranny. Today, these rights are considered the essential element of any liberal
democracy.
A women’s right to govern her body inevitably trumps whatever the law in her country is.
Cheng, AP Medical Writer, 07
(Maria, Associated Press, October 11, http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article/article?f=/n/a/2007/10/11/international/i160211D71.DTL) PMK
Women are just as likely to get an abortion in countries where it is legal as where it is outlawed, according
to research published Friday. In a study examining abortion trends from 1995 to 2003, experts also found
that abortion rates are virtually equal in rich and poor countries, and that half of all abortions worldwide
are unsafe. The study was done by Gilda Sedgh of the Guttmacher Institute in the United States and
colleagues from the World Health Organization. It was published in an edition of The Lancet medical
journal devoted to maternal health. whatever reason, seek to end pregnancy," Beth Fredrick of the
International Women's Health Coalition in the U.S. said in an accompanying commentary. Abortion
accounts for 13 percent of maternal mortality worldwide. About 70,000 women die every year from unsafe
abortions. An additional 5 million women suffer permanent or temporary injury. "The continuing high
incidence of unsafe abortion in developing countries represents a public health crisis and a human rights
atrocity," Fredrick wrote. The number of worldwide abortions has dipped from about 46 million in 1995 to
just under 42 million in 2003. But there was no change in the rate of unsafe abortions; nearly half the
procedures are still performed illegally in potentially dangerous conditions. "The only way to decrease
unsafe abortion is to increase contraception," said Sharon Camp, president and chief executive officer of
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
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CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
the Guttmacher Institute. Camp said that more countries are allowing women to have abortions legally, but
many women only receive medical attention after a procedure has gone wrong. "I don't think women
should have to hurt themselves before they get medical treatment," she said. The vast majority of abortions
-- 35 million -- were in the developing world. And nearly 97 percent of all unsafe abortions were in poor
countries. Worldwide, one in five pregnancies ends in abortion, and nine out of 10 women will have an
abortion before age 45. The study defined unsafe abortions as those performed either by people lacking the
necessary skills or in an environment that does not conform to minimum medical standards. Europe has
both the highest and lowest rates of abortion. In eastern Europe, there are more abortions than live births:
105 abortions for every 100 live births. But in Western Europe, there are just 12 abortions for every 1,000
women. In North America, there are about 21 abortions for every 1,000 women. Despite abortion being
illegal in most African countries, 12 percent of pregnancies on the continent end in abortions. Improving
women's health, experts said, means improving access to safe abortions. Some experts criticized the
restrictions that often come with donor money. Because providing safe abortions depends on a working
health care system, experts said tackling the problem is difficult. In related papers published in The Lancet
this week, experts said there has been little improvement in helping women survive pregnancy and
childbirth in the last two decades, particularly in the world's poorest countries. Unlike improving child
health, which can be done relatively easily by things like immunizing children against various diseases,
"you can't give women a pill for obstetric complications," said Ann Starrs, executive vice president for
Family Care International in the U.S., who was not linked to the study. Competing with other health issues
for limited health dollars is also a problem. "Donors love to distribute bed nets for malaria because it's
simple to do and it's easy to show the progress you've made," said Dr. Lale Say, a WHO maternal health
expert. "But unfortunately for women's health, there is no single strategy that will work
The unique social implications of pregnancy give fetal rights in a male dominated society
the risk of entrenching womyn’s inequalities even more.
MacKinnon, Professor of Law, 91
(Catharine A. MacKinnon, Reflections on Sex Equality under Law, Source: The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 100, No. 5,
Centennial Issue (Mar., 1991), pp. 1281-1328, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
The fetus is not even like gendered body parts. A fetus is lived by the pregnant woman through
her pregnancy. A pregnancy is not, in fact or in social meaning, a body part, even a female body
part. The cultural meanings of pregnancy are distinct. Pregnancy can be an emblem of female
inferiority or adulation, of denigration or elevation; it can bring closeness or estrangement, can
give a new sense of the meaning of life and new depth or desperation to the experience of family. It
attracts violence against women, sentimentality, attempts at control, gives rise to financial costs and
the need for difficult decisions.147 Women have lost jobs and been stigmatized and excluded from
public life because they are pregnant-jobs and access they had in spite of having breasts and uteruses. It
seems that it is one thing to have them, another to use them.14 No body part has the specific
consequences pregnancy has on women's social destiny. Now place the legal status of the fetus
against the backdrop of women's tenuous to nonexistent equality. Women have not been considered
"persons" by law very long; the law of persons arguably does not recognize the requisites of
female personhood yet. Separate fetal status of any sort, in a male-dominated legal system in
which women have been controlled through the control of their procreative capacity, risks
further entrenchment of women's inequality. If the fetus were deemed a person, it may well have
more rights than women do, especially since fetal rights would be asserted most often by men in
traditionally male institutions of authority: progenitors, husbands, doctors, legislators, and courts.
Fetal rights as such are thus in direct tension with sex equality rights.
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Denying abortions to women is immoral- it exposes them to health risks and denies them
rights.
Beenfeldt, writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, 2006 (Christian, Capitalism Magazine “Abortion is
Not Muder: So-Called ‘Pro-Life’ Movement’ is Anti-Human,” 11-11-06,
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4833, accessed 6-30-09, AAJ)
Consider what banning abortion would mean for human life--not the "lives" of embryos or primitive
fetuses, but the lives of real, living, breathing, thinking women.It would mean that women who wanted
to terminate a pregnancy because it resulted from rape or contraceptive failure--or because the wouldbe father has abandoned her--or because the fetus is malformed--would be forbidden from doing so. It
would mean that they would be forced to endure the misery of unwanted pregnancy and the incredible
burdens of child rearing. It would mean that women would be sentenced to 18-year terms of
enslavement to unwanted children--thereby suffocating their hopes, their dreams, their personal
ambitions, their chance of happiness. And it would mean that women who refused to submit to such a
fate would be forced to turn to the "back-alley" at a staggering risk to their health. According to a
World Health Organization estimate, 110,000 women worldwide die each year from such illegal abortions
and up to six times as many suffer injury from them.
The "pro-life" movement is not a defender of human life--it is, in fact, a profound enemy of
actual human life by providing the State with jurisdiction over a women’s body.
Beenfeldt, writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, 2006 (Christian, Capitalism Magazine “Abortion is
Not Muder: So-Called ‘Pro-Life’ Movement’ is Anti-Human,” 11-11-06,
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4833, accessed 6-30-09, AAJ)
What can justify the sacrifice of an actual woman's life to human potential of the most primitive kind? There
can be no rational justification for such a position--certainly not a genuine concern for human life. The
ultimate "justification" of the "pro-life" position is religious dogma. Led by the American Roman Catholic Church
and Protestant fundamentalists, the movement's basic tenet, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church, is that an embryo must be treated "from conception as a person" created by the "action of God." What
about the fact that an embryo is manifestly not a person, and treating it as such inflicts mass suffering on
real people? This tenet is not subject to rational scrutiny; it is a dogma that must be accepted on faith. The "prolife" movement tries to obscure the religious, inhuman nature of its position by endlessly focusing on the
medical details of late-term abortions (although it seldom mentions that "partialbirth" abortions are
extremely rare, and often involve a malformed fetus or a threat to the life of the mother). But one must not
allow this smokescreen to distract one from the real issue: the "pro-life" movement is on a faith-based crusade to
ban abortion no matter the consequences to actual human life--part of what the Pro-Life Alliance calls the
"absolute moral duty to do everything possible to stop abortion, even if in the first instance we are only able
to chip away at the existing legislation." This is why it supports the South Dakota law, which is the closest the
movement has come to achieving its avowed goal: to ban abortion at any stage of pregnancy, including the first
trimester--when 90 percent of abortions take place. As the Pro-Life Alliance puts it: "We continue to campaign for
total abolition." The "pro-life" movement is not a defender of human life--it is, in fact, a profound enemy of
actual human life and happiness. Its goal is to turn women into breeding mares whose bodies are owned by
the state and whose rights, health and pursuit of happiness are sacrificed en mass--all in the name of
dogmatic sacrifice to the pre-human.
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Providing funds only in the instance when life is at risk, but health is at stake, impinges
upon the fundamental right of a women to control her destiny.
Pollack, New Jersey Supreme Court Justice, 1982 (91 N.J. 287; 450 A.2d 925; 1982 N.J. LEXIS
2187, . Right to Chose v. Byrne, decided 8-18-1982,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/mungo/lexseestat.do?bct=A&risb=21_T6892352010&
homeCsi=146215&A=0.09831469766281375&urlEnc=ISO-88591&&citeString=450%20A.2d%20925,at%20934&countryCode=USA, accessed 7-1-09)
Neither poverty nor pregnancy gives rise to membership in a suspect class. See Maher v. Roe, 432
U.S. 464, 470, 97 S.Ct. 2376, 2380, 53 L.Ed.2d 484 (1977); San Antonio School Dist. v.
Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 28-29, 93 S.Ct. 1278, 1293-94, 36 L.Ed.2d 16 (1973); Taxpayers
Ass'n v. Weymouth Tp., 80 N.J. 6, 38 n.15 (1976), appeal dismissed, 430 U.S. 977, 97
S.Ct. 1672, 52 L.Ed.2d 373 (1977). Nor is there a fundamental right to funding for an
abortion. Harris v. McRae, supra, 448 U.S. at 316, 100 S.Ct. at 2687-88; Maher v. Roe,
432 U.S. at 469, 97 S.Ct. at 2380. The right to choose whether to have an abortion, however, is a
fundamental right of all pregnant women, including those entitled to Medicaid reimbursement for
necessary medical treatment. As to that group of women, the challenged statute discriminates
between those for whom medical care is necessary for childbirth and those for whom an
abortion is medically necessary. Under N.J.S.A. 30:4D-6.1, those needing abortions
receive funds only when their lives are at stake. By granting [***29] funds when life is at
risk, but withholding [*306] them when health is endangered, the statute denies equal
protection to those women entitled to necessary medical services under Medicaid. Thus,
the statute impinges upon the fundamental right of a woman to control her body and destiny. That
right encompasses one of the most intimate decisions in human experience, the choice to terminate a
pregnancy or bear a child. This intensely personal decision is one that should be made by a woman in
consultation with trusted advisers, such as her doctor, but without undue government
interference. In this case, however, the State admittedly seeks to influence the decision between
abortion and childbirth. Indeed, it concedes that, for a woman who cannot afford either medical
procedure, the statute skews the decision in [**935] favor of childbirth at the expense of the
mother's health.
The Hyde Amendment forces women to deny themselves and their families life essentials in
order to safely exercise a constitutional right---one the State refuses to provide towards the
indigent.
Berenknopf, Temple University Law Student, 1997. (Sandra, Temple Law Review: 70 Temp. L.
Rev. 653,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=2
1_T6891998783&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T68
91998735&cisb=22_T6891998734&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=139129&docNo=2,
accessed 7-1-09)
The most serious problem with the Hyde Amendment, however, is that it causes significant health risks
to poor women who need Medicaid funding to have an abortion. Primarily, Congress improperly uses the
Hyde Amendment to promote its "pro-motherhood" philosophy by favoring women who carry their fetuses
to term over those who do not. n38 For example, while in 1977 Congress used the Hyde Amendment
basically to cut off Medicaid fund- [*661] ing for women who sought abortions, in 1986 Congress expanded
Medicaid funding for women who carried the fetus to term. n39 In addition, Congress, cognizant of the special
needs of pregnant women, currently allocates Medicaid funding for pregnancy testing, pre-natal care, and
post-birth care. n40 And while Congress provides this funding without limitations from appropriations
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measures, the same cannot be said for the aid it gives women who choose not to carry their pregnancies to
term. Congress's use of the Hyde Amendment also forces women who choose to abort a fetus to face
severe economic consequences. Poor women who cannot receive Medicaid funding for abortions are
left searching for alternative means of funding. n41 As women search for funding, they waste valuable
time. n42 As women wait longer and longer to abort the fetus, the abortion becomes more and more
expensive. n43 While roughly eighty percent of the Medicaid-eligible women who are denied public
funding find an alternative way to pay for the abortions on their own, n44 many of them must go
without such staples as food, clothing, and shelter as a result. The average cost of an abortion in 1993 was
$ 250. n45 Women who must self-fund these abortions are often left with no recourse but to use the money
they receive under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children [hereinafter AFDC] program. n46 These are
the same AFDC payments which women would normally use to pay for food, clothing, rent, n47 children's
expenses, household bills, and transportation. n48 The Hyde Amendment thus forces women to deny
themselves and their families such essentials in order to safely exercise a constitutional right.
Sometimes, even AFDC payments are not enough to cover a safe abortion. Consequently, a pregnant woman
may be [*662] forced to pursue alternative, and possibly illegal, means to supplement the difference. n49
Poor women who must invest the extra time into locating money to pay for an abortion may also incur
health risks which women who are able to pay for this service outright would not incur. When
Medicaid-eligible women experience delay, they have their abortions much later than do other women.
n50
Consequently, a once safe procedure may become quite dangerous. In fact, women who wait until their
sixteenth week of pregnancy are sixteen times more likely to die from an abortion than those women
who obtain one within eight weeks of their pregnancy. n51 Medicaid-eligible women who delay also may
need a more complicated procedure, a longer hospital stay, or a higher dose of anesthesia. n52 Some women
may be forced to wait so long to have an abortion that by the time they are ready to do so, it is
medically too late. In fact, about twenty percent of the women denied public funding, many of whom
are teenagers, bear unwanted children. n53 And since abortion is often safer than full-term pregnancy,
n54 when the government denies public funding, it forces poor women to undergo unnecessary health
risks. The government cannot, and does not, impose these same health risks upon women who can pay for an
abortion themselves. Congress cannot even justify its use of the Hyde Amendment based on an economic
argument since government refusal to publicly-fund abortions does not reduce federal expenditures. It is
estimated that every dollar spent to fund abortions for low-income women saves roughly four dollars
in public medical and welfare expenditures within the next two years. n55 This savings would
otherwise have to be spent on prenatal care, delivery, and postnatal care for the mother, and for
newborn care, neonatal intensive care,
Current legislation discriminates against and deprives indigent women of a constitutional
right.
Pollack, New Jersey Supreme Court Justice, 1982 (91 N.J. 287; 450 A.2d 925; 1982 N.J. LEXIS
2187, . Right to Chose v. Byrne, decided 8-18-1982,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/mungo/lexseestat.do?bct=A&risb=21_T6892352010&
homeCsi=146215&A=0.09831469766281375&urlEnc=ISO-88591&&citeString=450%20A.2d%20925,at%20934&countryCode=USA, accessed 7-1-09)
To justify the discrimination, the State asserts as its compelling interest the protection of potential life.
HN16
Although that is a legitimate state interest, at no point in a pregnancy may it outweigh the superior
interest in the life and health of the mother. Roe v. Wade, supra, 410 U.S. at [***30] 163-65, 93
S.Ct. at 731-33. Yet the funding restriction gives priority to potential life at the expense of maternal
health. From a different perspective, the statute deprives indigent women "of a governmental benefit for
which they are otherwise eligible, solely because they have attempted to exercise a constitutional
right." Harris v. McRae, supra, 448 U.S. at 346, 100 S.Ct. at 2710 (Marshall, J., dissenting).
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Protecting reproductive rights is a critical step towards achieving social justice.
Center for Reproductive Rights, 2009. ( “Human Rights Courts Recognize Access to Safe
Abortion” http://reproductiverights.org/en/feature/are-repro-rights-human-rights, accessed 7-309)
These breakthroughs did more than strengthen access to abortion where it was already legal. They also
changed how abortion is understood by lawmakers and national courts—as a right central to a woman’s
health and autonomy—and opened the door for legal reforms. In May 2006, Colombia’s Constitutional Court
made history when it ruled that the country's blanket ban on abortion was unconstitutional. "Women's
sexual and reproductive rights have finally been recognized as human rights," the court declared, going
on to say that these rights "emerge from the recognition that equality in general, gender equality in
particular, and the emancipation of women and girls are essential to society. Protecting sexual and
reproductive rights is a direct path to promoting the dignity of all human beings, and a step forward in
humanity's advancement towards social justice."
Legislation restricting abortion is inherently discriminatory by continuing to pose women
as subordinate to men.
Center for Reproductive Rights, 2004. ( “Safe and Legal Abortion is a Woman’s Human
Right,” August 2004,
http://reproductiverights.org/sites/crr.civicactions.net/files/documents/pub_bp_safeandlegal.pdf,
accessed 7-3-09.)
Laws that deny access to abortion, whatever their stated objectives, have the discriminatory purpose of
both denigrating and undermining women’s capacity to make responsible decisions about their bodies
and their lives. Indeed, governments may find the potential consequences of allowing women to make such
decisions threatening in some circumstances. Recognizing women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy
contradicts long-standing social norms that render women subordinate to men in their families and
communities. It is not surprising that unwillingness to allow women to make decisions about their own
bodies often coincides with the tendency to deny women decision-making roles in the areas of political,
economic, social, and cultural affairs.
A women’s right to choose is the MOST important decisional right.
Cole, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional
Rights, legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, a commentator on National Public Radio: All Things Considered,
author of three books: Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (New
Press, 2d ed. 2005); Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties for National Security (New Press, 3d
ed. 2005) (with James X. Dempsey); and No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System
(New Press, 1999). Enemy Aliens received the American Book Award and the Hefner First Amendment Prize in
2004. No Equal Justice was named Best Nonfiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review, best book on an
issue of national policy in 1999 by the American Political Science Association, and was awarded the Alpha Sigma
Nu prize from the Jesuit Honor Society in 2001 2007 (David, “TOWARD
A MORE CIVILIZED SOCIETY: Reproductive Freedom as an American Value,” 11-13-07,
http://reproductiverights.org/sites/crr.civicactions.net/files/documents/Toward%20a%20More%20Civilized%20Soci
ety.pdf, accessed 7-3-09)
The decision to terminate a pregnancy is a difficult one for everyone that I've known who has made
that decision, but it doesn't mean that it ought not be a right. It means that we need to think about how
we talk about it – maybe differently. And – I borrow heavily here from my wife Nina Pillard who teaches at
Georgetown Law School and has written an excellent Law Review article on this called “Other Reproductive
Choices” – we need to draw the camera back and expand the field of vision to talk more broadly about all the
factors that make reproductive choice meaningful and accessible for women in the United States today.
Some things we might consider taking on are challenging state-sponsored sex education that reinforces
stereotypical notions of male and female roles in sex, including abstinence-only sex education. This stateCARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
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sponsored sex education instantiates the very sex role stereotyping that the Court has held invalidates all
kinds of federal and state laws. And yet, here we are providing it to young people at a particularly important
time in their developmental lives. Second, we must challenge comprehensive health plans that fail to cover
prescription contraception as a denial of equality to women. Third, and most significantly I think, we need to
look at the whole range of work/family issues that are critical to deal with if we are going to make it possible
for women to have truly meaningful reproductive choices and equality in the world at large. This includes
things like paid leave to care for dependents; affordable and subsidized child care; extended school days for
children; better part-time jobs; and reversing the trend toward longer work weeks. The Supreme Court
recognized that these kinds of issues are central to women's equality in a case called Nevada v. Hibbs, which
upheld the Family Medical Leave Act on the grounds that it was permissible as a way to try to restore the
balance between men and women in the work force by providing everybody, not just women, but everybody
with a guaranteed leave to care for dependents. The reason it affected women and responded to inequality for
women was because women tend to be the ones who do the majority of dependent care. But, the sex neutral
response was one that was designed to both protect women's jobs and also encourage men to take these
leaves as well. Judge Learned Hand, probably the greatest judge never to be on the Supreme Court,
once said that constitutional rights are only as strong as the people who stand up for them. I salute
Planned Parenthood of New York City, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and those in this room for
standing up for a woman's right to choose – perhaps the most important decisional right a woman has
in her life. It is only through our efforts that we will maintain that right as a meaningful constitutional
protection for generations to come. Thank you.
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A nation that denies womyn complete freedom of choice over their bodies can never be a
truly free nation.
Mascle, College English teacher, 08
(Deeana, “Why I Believe Abortion Should Be Legal, Safe, and Rare”, 1-3-08, http://www.buzzle.com/articles/whyi-believe-abortion-should-be-legal-safe-and-rare.html, accessed 7-1-09, KLM)
I have always been a supporter of a woman's right to choose. It is not simply that I am a supporter of
abortion. I have never had an abortion and don't think I could. However, I should have the right to make that decision
myself -- not have it forced on me. My position on abortion is really very simple -- it should be legal, safe and rare. The
most important reason for my belief that abortion should be legal and safe is very closely tied to
women's rights. A society that controls and shackles women's freedom cannot be wholly free . I do believe
the issue is one of power and control -- of domination -- over women. If men could become pregnant
abortion would not even be an issue. Pregnancy and child care have long been ways that men have
controlled and dominated women as well as restricted their education and professional lives. When
abortion is outlawed or restricted by laws then it becomes even more of an issue of control and
discrimination -- aimed at the lower classes. We know that abortion will never disappear entirely, at least until universal
fail-safe birth control exists, and that people of means will be able to obtain a safe abortion here or abroad. Outlawing abortion
simply ensures that the poor and disadvantaged will have no safe alternative. I have never understood why so
many people put so much time, money and effort into outlawing abortion when spending that same time, money and effort on helping
women without choices and helping the many abused and neglected children we already have would do far more to prevent abortions
than any law ever could. Contrary to many abortion foes belief, I don't believe abortion is an easy choice for most
women -- and for those it is an easy choice it is probably better they not be given responsibility for the health and welfare of a fetus or
child. Many women who choose to have an abortion feel they have no alternative. Why not work to truly help
those women so they do have choices and options? Until our society truly takes its responsibility to the children already born so we have
no child suffering starvation, poverty, neglect, and abuse -- and all our children are given every opportunity for a quality education and
future then I don't want to see time and resources devoted to the prevention of abortion. Think of helping these disadvantaged women
and children as preventing the abortions of tomorrow. Simply outlawing abortion will not solve the root problem,
instead it will drive those in need of an abortion into back alleys, but if you can solve the problems of abuse and
poverty then there will be fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer abortions. Another important reason I believe the
choice should be left up to the woman in question is that I believe the decision to reproduce has to be
made willingly and only by the person involved. Pregnancy and child birth is a physical ordeal that can
have a lifelong impact on a woman's mental and physical health and well being. In addition, the
decision to raise a child has tremendous personal, professional, and financial repercussions. While it
takes two to make a baby, all too often in the case of an unplanned pregnancy it is the woman who is
left to cope alone. It is really quite simple. I believe that if I am going to undergo a process that effects my
physical and mental well being as well as my financial and professional future then I should be able to
make the decision myself. I am a mother and I love my child more than anything, but my pregnancy and child birth were
difficult and life threatening. I am not sure if I could have survived either without the support of my husband, family, friends, and coworkers. I know this group has been even more important to me while raising my child. I am an educated professional with a good job
and a good support system. I cannot imagine how people with fewer resources do it . We are failing as a society when we
force so many to do so. If we want a society that is truly free and truly responsible for all its members
then abortion must be legal and safe. If abortion foes truly want to stop abortions then they should work on addressing the
root causes of abortion -- poverty, abuse, and lack of opportunity. The more we do to give women freedom of choice and control over
their lives then the rarer abortion will be. Then everyone wins.
Restrictive abortion laws are abusive of women’s human liberty and freedom violating
their right to avoid inhuman torture, causing injuries
Cook, Faculty of Medicine and the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto; CoDirector, International Programme on Reproductive and Sexual Health Law, and Dickens
Professor of Health Law and Policy at the Faculty of Law, cross-appointed to the Faculty of
Medicine and Joint Centre for Bioethics. 03
(Rebecca and Bernard, “Human Rights Dynamics of Abortion Law Reform,” Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25, No.
1,Feb 2003, pp. 1-59. JSTOR. JM)
Evidence of abuses of women's physical security due to restrictive abortion laws can influence democratic law
reform. In Ireland, for instance, public reaction against judicial obstruction of access to abortion services by abused
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young girls in highly publicized cases triggered intense political action for legislative liberalization, resulting in a
referendum that approved constitutional reform.129 Similarly, public outrage in Bolivia against judicial denial of
abortion for an 11-year-old rape victim resulted in a legislative bill to ease the restrictive Penal Code, on grounds of
promotion of human rights.130 3. Human Dignity and Freedom from Inhuman and Degrading Treatment.
Related to the human right to liberty and security of the person is the right to freedom from torture and from
inhuman and degrading treatment. The Beijing Platform recognizes that women are vulnerable to torture in
sexual and other ways because of their low status in almost every society,131 and requires governments to
take preventive action.132 Rape and domestic violence account for about 5 percent of the disease burden in
women ages 15-44 in developing countries, and about 19 percent in industrial coun tries.133 Violations of human
dignity result in many injuries, including to self-confidence and self-esteem, that are not quantifiable as
disease burdens. Prefer
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Reproductive freedom is the key first step to all other gender equality rights. McCafferty et
al 07
January, Christine, Chair, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health and the rest of the All
Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health, “RETURN OF THE POPULATION GROWTH
FACTOR Its impact upon the Millennium Development Goals”
http://www.populationconnection.org/site/DocServer/Return_of_the_Population_Growth_Factor.pdf?docID=224, accessed 7/7/09, KLM
“Although women’s ability to control their fertility is by itself not sufficient to gaining their full
empowerment and gender equality, it is the first and most important step.”98 Women need to have
many opportunities opened to them – education, fair treatment in employment, income, property, and
a voice in civic matters. But no woman can be free unless she has the technologies and information
required to enable her to decide whether, and when, to have a child and to escape the tyranny of
unintended pregnancy. Women with numerous pregnancies and life-long child care find it difficult to
participate in education, markets or politics. 99 Women without access to family planning are likely to
be younger when they have their first child, and less able to space or limit subsequent births. 100 The
early initiation of sexual activity and unwanted pregnancies curtails education for those girls who do
begin to get an education. In sub- Saharan Africa, between 8% and 25% of girls who drop out of school do so because of
unwanted pregnancies. 101 Early marriage, as in Afghanistan or Ethiopia, deters parents from investing in female education, or curtails
the education of the few girls who do start school.
The anti-choice movement of the right seeks to control all matters of reproductive freedom.
Allowing this to happen would lead to a new tyranny.
Evans, Phd, University of Michigan 05
Charles, “REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM AND THE SUPREME COURT VACANCY”, Volunteers for a Better
America, http://voba.blogs.com/vba/2005/07/reproductive_fr.html, accessed 7-2-09, KLM
Lest there be any doubt about the intentions of those who wish to exclude privacy from the list of
guaranteed constitutional rights, consider the remarks of Matt Daniels, a spokesperson for The
Alliance for Marriage. Mr. Daniels is quoted by The Nation magazine (July 18/25, 2005, p. 26) as
saying that the Alliance has a “broader agenda” than merely trying to “see that more kids are raised in a
home with a married mother and father.” The agenda, according to Bryce Christensen of Southern Utah
University, again quoted by The Nation, includes governmental regulation of “lifetime fidelity in
marriage...cohabitation and casual divorce, and deliberate childlessness.” The more extreme elements
of the conservative movement would use the loss of a privacy right to outlaw not only abortion, but
contraception, in vitro fertilization, cohabitation, homosexual relationships, divorce, and
evenchildlessness. How much more intrusive can one imagine government being? If it were not such a serious
threat to our civil liberties, the extreme right’s willingness to intrude into our intimate lives would be an amusing irony considering their adamant hostility to
governmental regulation of economic matters. They are comfortable with government regulating the bedroom, but not the boardroom. Although it is
beyond the scope of this discussion, it is worth noting that the present Administration, as well as some courts, appear less ambivalent about the application
of privacy considerations in areas outside of reproduction and intimate family or sexual relationships and the erosion of privacy rights. For instance, all
branches of the government are concerned with the protection of property interests threatened by identity theft of personal information. Congress, the
executive, and the courts are eager to protect people from theft of private personal financial information, and good for them. The President and VicePresident are very concerned about executive privilege and their ability to keep information confidential that they consider private to their decision making
process. The Administration and the courts do not seem as interested in protecting the privacy of reporters who use confidential sources. Consider the
distortion of the Fourth Amendment search and seizure protections by the Patriot Act. Of course, these examples involve other complex considerations of
the First and Fourth Amendments as well as the prerogatives of the Executive as outlined in Article II of the Constitution which are not appropriate for
extended treatment here. Reproductive
freedom is a thread which, if pulled, could unravel our right to privacy
and with it a whole array of constitutional protections we have thought of as forever secure. Those
who believe that it would be acceptable for the Supreme Court to have a majority willing to overrule
Roe v. Wade should look carefully at the logical consequences of such a decision. To lose Roe would be
a denial of privacy as a constitutionally protected right. Without a right to privacy we would no
longer have the right to be left alone by the government. The King would no longer be stopped at the
door to any humble cottage. Hundreds of years of Anglo Saxon history and jurisprudence would be
swept away. Our government would become a burdensome tyranny.
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We have an obligation to promote all humyn rights, including reproductive rights, as they
are universal and inalienable. Only this way can we live fulfilling lives.
Connaughton-Espino, North Carolina Healthy Start Foundation program manager, 07
Tania Connaughton-Espino, June 15, “Reproductive Rights are Human Rights”,
http://www.ipas.org/Publications/asset_upload_file712_3053.pdf, accessed 7/2/09, KLM
All of us have the responsibility to make sure that our governments do everything in their power to
promote and protect hu- man rights. If human rights are respected, we are more likely to live in peace
and obtain justice. Human rights are considered to be universal and inalienable. That means that we
can’t pick and choose the rights we want. Therefore, if we want to promote and protect the right to
work and enjoy “just and favorable conditions of work” (ICESCR Articles 6 &7), the right to
education (ICESCR Article 13), the right to freedom of association (ICCPR Article 22), then we must
also promote and protect reproductive rights. If we are well informed about our human rights, we
can also live healthy and fulfilling lives.
Denying reproductive freedom frames womyn as weaker and baby-makers.
Schwalbe, professor of sociology at North Carolina State University, 06
(Michael, “Reproductive Freedom 101”, Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0411-34.htm,
accessed 7/2/09, KLM)
Lesson Five: without reproductive freedom, including the right to abortion and access to safe abortion,
women will never achieve equality with men. If women are forced to be mothers, they can't compete as
equals with men who need not worry that pregnancy, or the obligation to care for a child, will impede
their striving for success in work and politics. But impeding women's ability to compete with men is
only part of the problem. Anti-abortion laws also send a message about the inferiority of women as a
group. Men presume themselves fit to make decisions that have life-and-death consequences for
millions of people -- decisions about economic policy, agricultural policy, health policy, and war. Antiabortion laws imply that women, in contrast to men, are not capable of making wise decisions in
matters related to life and death. Laws that limit women's reproductive freedom thus reinforce the
patriarchal view that women are not men's equals when it comes to dealing with the vital affairs of
society and the world. In this archaic view, it is best if women stick to making babies, rather than
making laws and history. In the thirty years since I learned these basic lessons, I've learned some other
things. One is that many anti-choicers lie outrageously. They lie about abortion being unsafe, and about
abortion causing breast cancer and depression. They lie when they lure desperate and vulnerable young
women to mislabeled "crisis pregnancy centers," where those women are emotionally manipulated and
propagandized into carrying unwanted pregnancies to full term. They lie when they say they care about
women's well-being, because genuine caring would mean respecting women's moral autonomy by telling the
truth. I've learned that in a patriarchal society women suffer from a lack of control over their lives, and
that reproductive freedom reduces women's suffering by expanding that control. This is not just
plausible theory. It's what is shown by the bulk of serious psychological research on the consequences
that follow when women exercise their right to choose. I've learned about the high rates of sexual assault
and sexual coercion in U.S. society. Victimization studies have found that the rate of rape and attempted rape
among college women in the U.S. is about 28 per thousand. Which means that on a campus with 10,000
undergraduate women, there could be as many as 280 rapes and attempted rapes occurring each year. Under
these conditions, any policy or practice that limits women's access to contraception and abortion is
cruel and morally irresponsible. I've also learned that if women, like members of any oppressed group, do
not stick together, they can be deprived of one right, one freedom, after another. When middle-class and
upper-middle-class women do not defend public funding of abortions for low-income women, they are one
step closer to losing their own reproductive freedom. When some women say, "I believe in choice, but /I/
wouldn't have an abortion," they make it harder for other women to choose abortion without being
stigmatized. When women in liberal states do not defend the rights of women in regressive states like South
Dakota and Mississippi, the rights of women everywhere are on shakier ground.
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Pursuing reproductive justice is key to give back meaning to the lives of subjugated people.
Ross, Human rights activist, 06
11-12-06, “Reproductive rights, sexual rights and human rights”,
http://www.ipas.org/Publications/asset_upload_file661_3322.pdf, accessed 7-2-09, KLM
Now when I talk about reproductive health issues, I actually talk about reproductive justice. This is
not just a substitute word for “pro-choice.” “Pro- choice” is a very good word; it is an excellent word,
for people who actually have choices. But women of color, and gay people, and poor people, we
understand that we don’t have those kinds of choices. Reproductive justice is a paradigm shift; it
refects an understanding that reproductive rights must be embedded in human rights and social
justice frameworks to have any meaning in our lives.
Governments have a moral obligation to uphold reproductive freedom. It is a prerequisite
to many other rights.
Billings et al 06
(Rodolfo Gómez Ponce de León, Deborah L. Billings, and Karina Barrionuevo, Rodolfo Gómez Ponce de León,
PhD, is Senior Health System Advisor at Ipas, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Deborah L Billings, PhD, is a Senior
Research Associate at Ipas, based in Mexico City; Karina Barrionuevo is Coordinator of Psychology Services,
Perinatal Care, Avellaneda Hospital, “WOMAN-CENTERED POST-ABORTION CARE IN PUBLIC
HOSPITALS IN TUCUMÁN, ARGENTINA: Assessing Quality of Care and Its Link to Human Rights”, Ipas,
http://www.ipas.org/Library/Other/Woman_centered_PAC_in_public_hospitals_Argentina.pdf?ht=upholding%2
0human%20rights%20good%20reproductive%20justice%20freedom%20upholding%20human%20rights%20go
od%20reproductive%20justice%20freedom, accessed 7/3/09, KLM)
The right of every human being to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
is enshrined in most basic human rights documents that guide work in this area.13 This broad
definition of the right to health is fundamental to guaranteeing other relevant rights, including
nondiscrimination in the provision of health services; universal access to adequate, quality,
comprehensive health care; access to the benefits of scientific advancements; the right to liberty and
security of person; and the right to be free from degrading treatment. Governments have an obligation
to ensure that conditions exist so that these interconnected rights can be exercised. The right to health
is understood to be violated when the ability to decide freely and in an informed manner about the timing
and spacing of pregnancy is impeded, including when access to safe and legal abortion services or postabortion contraceptive services are not available and accessible; when women are denied PAC services
because they are not avail- able or because health care providers take a position against abortion; and
when women receive substandard or degrading treatment.14
Laws that force pregnancy on womyn deny them selfhood by separating them from the
womb or reducing them to it.
Hanigsberg, Associate in Law, Columbia University School of Law, 09
(Homologizing Pregnancy and Motherhood: A Consideration of Abortion Author(s): Julia E. Hanigsberg Source:
Michigan Law Review, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Nov., 1995), pp. 371-418, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1289842.pdf,
accessed 7/3/09, KLM)
Law, as it structures women's procreative choices, disaggregates women from their own bodies,
fundamentally disrupting women's ability to conceptualize their bodily integrity because it is the ability
to internalize the projection of bodily integrity, to experience one- self as whole, that is necessary to
selfhood.75 In this sense, the de- nial of procreative autonomy enforces the kind of split that will
undermine a woman's sense of self because her womb and body are no longer hers to control but
instead have been turned over to the jurisdiction of courts and legislatures.76 When law denies women
abortions, it imposes on their bodies involuntary pregnancy - and by necessary implication, involuntary
motherhood. A woman is thus denied the necessary conditions of selfhood because she is either separated
from her womb or reduced to it.77
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Failure of the law to provide full reproductive freedom dehumanizes womyn, they lose
dignity and autonomy over the self.
Hanigsberg, Associate in Law, Columbia University School of Law, 09
(Homologizing Pregnancy and Motherhood: A Consideration of Abortion Author(s): Julia E. Hanigsberg Source: Michigan Law
Review, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Nov., 1995), pp. 371-418, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1289842.pdf, accessed 7/3/09, KLM)
The abortion context provides the archetypal example of the connection between bodily
integrity and selfhood. This is true de- spite the fact that the Court in Roe42 gave short shrift to the
bodily integrity argument made before it.43 Bodily integrity is con- structed,44 for it is developed
according to a variety of cultural mechanisms and bolstered by other persons' statements and
behav-iors.45 Thus, our bodies, by which I mean our symbolic interpreta- tion and sense of
dominion over our bodies, are central to our identity and our personal dignity. This is not a simple
physical fact. While a missing body part does not result in a loss of identity46 and the symbolic
meaning we give to our bodies is culturally and histori- cally mediated, our selves and our
identities become implicated by our bodies and how we experience them.47 This view of bodily integrity also occurs in constitutional discourse. Justice O'Connor's concurring opinion in the "right-todie" case, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health,48 observes, Because our notions of
liberty are inextricably entwined with our idea of physical freedom and self-determination, the
Court has often deemed state incursions into the body repugnant to the interests pro- tected by
the Due Process Clause.49 A sense of control over our own bodies is crucial for maintain- ing both
a sense of self and an ability to interact with others. In order to have a sense of self, the individual
must believe that she can coordinate her body's functions autonomously and regulate ac- cess to
it.50 Without recognition by others of her autonomous con- trol over her body and her bodily
integrity, without at least this most basic acknowledgment of dignity, the individual's self-image
becomes crippled along with the security she needs in order to in-teract successfully with others and
to express her own needs and feelings. The sanctity of bodily integrity thus surpasses its corporeal component: "[T]he constitutional protection
for the human body is surely inseparable from concern for the mind and spirit that dwell therein."51 Something resembling this conception of bodily integrity can be found
in the Supreme Court of Canada's decision striking down the abortion restrictions then contained in the Criminal Code.52 In coming to its conclusion, the Court offers
strong support of women's bodily integrity: Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a foetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her
What is at stake in the
abortion controversy is precisely a woman's sense of selfhood and identity. Bodily integrity is not
merely something that one has, but rather something that must be produced and protected.54
own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference with a woman's body and thus a violation of security of the person.53
Complete and total bodily integrity is, however, an illusion - an aspiration rather than a fact. Human beings never have total bodily integrity. We are
contained by our skins, but we are not impermeable. Our very physical borders are a conduit from inside to out and back. We breathe, we perspire, we
ingest drugs through our skin, we make love. Substances penetrate our bodies from without continuously .55Law
is part and parcel
of the process of the production and pro- tection of bodily integrity. Law reifies bodily integrity
by investing meaning and significance in it. To have meaning, bodily integrity must be supported
by a regulatory infrastructure, and law is part of this infrastructure. Law is not simply
prescriptive but has a role in shaping one's self-perceptions, for the law not only recognizes, but
also constitutes and confirms who is valued, who matters - who is a person.56 For example, when
women were not legal "persons" and their rights could not be recognized and adjudicated in a
court of law, their fundamental ability to act as autonomous individuals was compromised.57 The
law's failure to recognize women's bodily integrity similarly has a constitutive effect on
selfhood.58
Having the legal system challenge status quo notions of reproductive autonomy would a
transformative precedent for future challenges to patriarchy in the legal system.
Hanigsberg, Associate in Law, Columbia University School of Law, 09
(Homologizing Pregnancy and Motherhood: A Consideration of Abortion Author(s): Julia E. Hanigsberg Source: Michigan Law
Review, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Nov., 1995), pp. 371-418, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1289842.pdf, accessed 7/3/09, KLM)
The abortion decision, like other mothering decisions, occurs within a framework of circumstances
that the pregnant woman confronts. Far from a de facto devaluation of life, the abortion decision
can be life-affirming in itself, by both acknowledging the importance of the woman's life and
intrauterine life, and by recognizing the imperfection of the social contexts into which children are
born. By contrast, abortion law centers around notions of rights, boundaries, and autonomy in
the liberal sense of the individual citizen able to structure his decisionmaking free of state coercion.
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
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CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
The underlying supposition of this view of abortion is that women's bodily integrity can be
violated and that the state needs to mediate between intrauterine life and mother, between mother
and womb. Notionally, women's wombs and their contents can be abstracted from women themselves, and women's decisionmaking
about the contents of their own bodies entails a conflict of rights. The way the law frames these decisions pays no attention to the
subjective realities of mothering decisions, and the law fails to see the body that surrounds the intrauterine life, thereby both
erasing the maternal and reducing women to it. The law is unable to "see" corporeal materiality - unable to account for how
bodies, particularly female bodies, matter. The political and legal constructions that pit women's self-
interest, and assert that this interest must be a unified and fixed one, against a concern for "fetal
life" fundamentally misconstrue the relationships of women to their own bodies and to intrauterine
life. By envisioning women as uniform containers that may be emptied at will, the law ignores and
perhaps destroys any concept of women's bodily integrity, nullifies the role of the mother, and at
the same time, paradoxically, establishes women's bodies as always maternal. Neither the law, as a
fundamental system of symbolization, and as a real and inflexible structure of constraints and requirements, nor the fact that the
law cannot serve a "neutral" role vis -a- vis women and their relationship with procreativity can be ignored. Women's right
to bodily integrity must be protected, and women's own multiple understandings of intrauterine
life must serve as the anchor for the interaction of law and their procreativity. The meaning that
women ascribe to their abortions, to their mothering decisions, and to intrauterine life is crucial to this
legal process. Any legal construction that keeps women from making these decisions will reaffirm
procreativity as the object of male domination. A reconceived right to abortion would be
transformative because it insists that women define how mothering matters to them and be- cause
this right would be situated within a framework that asserts the primacy of both the liberty to have
children and not to have them. This process would be a revolutionary task for a legal system that
seeks to choose between stories, to look for the correct version of events, to ignore multiple
accounts of experiences and to abide by only one mens rea.189 Law is thus of necessity torn between its need for
what it interprets to be certainty and its regulation of human subjectivities in their necessarily multiple and mobile complexity.190
Suffering attributed to lack of abortions violate the right to life and are due to deliberate
neglect by governments to take action.
Echegaray and Saperstein 06
Jacqueline Nolley Echegaray is a Senior Program Assistant at the Moriah Fund. Shira Saperstein is the Deputy Director
of the Moriah Fund and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. “Reproductive Rights are Human Rights:
Promises Unfulfilled”, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/12/human_rights.html, accessed 7-3-09, KLM
The right to survive pregnancy and childbirth is inherent in the fundamental human right to life, yet a
third of all pregnant women in the developing world receive no health care whatsoever during
pregnancy. Maternal mortality rates have held steady at unacceptably high levels for the past 15 years when, according to The Lancet, “simple, cheap
and effective interventions have existed for more than 50 years...but...are not available in many parts of the world.” This disparity is a clear
indication that governments and other institutions are ignoring reproductive health needs—a clear
violation of their female citizens’ human rights. Reproductive rights are a legitimate part of
international law. Yet because these rights continue to be violated with impunity, women, men, and
families suffer. This suffering is not unavoidable; it is the product of deliberate neglect by governments
and other institutions. Countries that have agreed to adhere to international human rights guarantees
must no longer be permitted to shirk their commitment to making reproductive rights a reality, and
organizations dedicated to promoting human rights must recognize and assume their responsibility to
hold governments accountable for all of their human rights commitments.
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Reproductive freedom is not just a throwaway issue, it is incredibly important.
Bennet, Author, 89
(Trudy, JSTOR, “Review: From Defense to Offense,” Dec. 1989,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4020631?seq=2&Search=yes&term=Reproductive&term=Fight&term=Victories%2C&t
erm=Backlash%2C&term=Attack&term=Women&term=Freedom&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSe
arch%3FQuery%3DWomen%2Bunder%2BAttack%253A%2BVictories%252C%2BBacklash%252C%2Band%2Bt
he%2BFight%2Bfor%2BReproductive%2BFreedom%26gw%3Djtx%26prq%3D%2528abortion, accessed 7-1-9,
SLR)
In a concluding chapter on organizing strategies, reproductive freedom is proposed as a paradigm of autonomy
and power to be used by all social justice movements. While advancing coalition work, the authors make a leap I
found troubling. Issues such as nuclear disarmament, decent housing and pay equity are viewed as “components of
reproductive freedom”; but it’s one thing to offer the reproductive rights perspective as a model, quite another
to subsume all social issues under reproductive freedom.
Denial of reproductive rights denies a womyn’s means to direct her own life.
Center for Reproductive Rights, 2009. ( “Are Repro Rights Human Rights?,”
http://reproductiverights.org/en/feature/are-repro-rights-human-rights, accessed 7-3-09)
The idea of reproductive rights as human rights is new and challenging. But consider this: Each one of
us has indispensable human rights—rights that underpin our ability to live with dignity, to enjoy full
and equal citizenship, to lead a healthy and fulfilling life. If a woman is to make her own decisions and
live the healthiest life possible—her basic human rights—she must be able to control her reproductive
life and obtain good reproductive healthcare and accurate information. Simply put, reproductive
freedom lies at the heart of the promise of human dignity, self-determination, and equality. When a
woman is denied her reproductive rights—when she is denied obstetric care, birth control, the facts
about reproductive health, or safe abortion, as the women above were—she is denied the means to
direct her own life, protect her health, and exercise her human rights
The anti-choice movement is rooted in the idea of state control over the sovereignty of
womyn by controlling how they can use their bodies. Submitting to this leads to tyranny.
Austin, Associate Professor of Social Change and Development and Chair of Sociology, 09
Andrew, 6-5-09, “Tiller is the victim of terrorism”, http://wwsword.blogspot.com/2009/06/tiller-is-victim-ofterrorism.html, accessed 7/5/09, KLM
An abortion is a private matter between the doctor and the patient. In a free society, women decide
whether to have children. Not the state. Not the father. Not the church. Nobody else and no other
entity can make that decision for women while at the same time maintaining the personal sovereignty
of women. Tiller helped tens of thousands of women realize their personal liberty by empowering them to
determine for themselves if and when they should use their sovereign bodies to multiply the numbers of
persons on earth. The state didn't decide for them. They state forced them neither to have a baby nor to have
an abortion. That is how it should be in a free society. What matters in this case is that a terrorist from a socalled movement calling itself "pro-life," but which is in fact a extremist countermovement aiming to deny
women sovereignty over their bodies, assassinated a doctor in the foyer of his church. Anybody who says
that the state must force women to have babies - and this includes everybody who believes abortion
should be restricted by local, state, or federal government - either does not love personal liberty or
does not understand what personal liberty means and why it is imperative to preserve it if we are as a
people to be free. At its core, the anti-choice countermovement is the authoritarian desire to place the
womb under state control, to control women by controlling their reproductive capacity. It is, whether
conscious of itself or not, a desire to enforce by law the essence of patriarchal domination. Tiller, and
all those other doctors assassinated by anti-choice extremists, are the victims of terrorism. These
terrorists, these religious zealots who desire theocracy, hate our freedoms. They hate our way of life.
Abortion is not an issue where reasonable people can agree to disagree. Either we defend the right of
women to control their own bodies or we submit to tyranny. Control over one's body is a fundamental
human right. There is no compromise.
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Human rights impacts always outweigh impacts of “National Security”.
Smiley, Pulitzer Prize winner (essayist and writer), 07
(Jane, The Huffington Post, November 19, “Why Human Rights are More Important than National Security”,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/why-human-rights-are-more_b_73286.html) PMK
On Friday, the morning after the Democratic debate, I was stunned to read in the War Room column over in Salon that Governor Bill
Richardson had said the wrong thing about national security versus human rights. Tim Grieve wrote, "We're not sure which office
Richardson is seeking these days, but he came pretty close to disqualifying himself from either of them last night when he insisted that
human rights are more important than America's national security." I'm not sure what planet Tim Grieve is living on, but on our planet, it
is human rights that are precious and rare and always to be preserved and "national security" that is ever and anon a cant boondoggle. I
was not alone in my dismay. I read War Room almost everyday and have liked Grieve's posts in the past. When I first read what he was
saying, I thought he was joking; so did other readers. The entry got 57 responses. Almost all of them were outraged, and several called
on Tim to explain himself. He never did. Human rights are defined, most notably in the U.S. Bill of Rights. They are
defined because the Founding Fathers realized that if they were not defined, they would be more likely to be
abrogated or lost entirely. The Founding Fathers understood the temptation on the part of governments to
give and remove human rights arbitrarily, because they had experienced such things before the Revolutionary War
-- in the Stamp Act, in the quartering of British soldiers on American households, and in illegal searches and seizures, in no taxation
without representation. They recognized that although British Law customarily acknowledged various human rights, it was essential to
name, codify, and write them down to make it less likely that they could be taken away. humans rights theory, if someone is human, he
or she has the same rights as every other human. The rights of American citizens as described in the Bill of Rights have been expanded
and extrapolated around the world so that they apply not only to us but to everyone. While in the U.S. this idea is a bit controversial, in
other countries it is standard, accepted, and cherished. The codification of human rights, and the widespread acknowledgment of this, is
one of the things that makes the modern world modern. To roll back human rights, even for some individuals, is to
return to a more primitive, hierarchical, and un-American theory of human relations. One example, of course,
concerns women. Can women routinely be imprisoned, sold, mutilated, or killed by their relatives? U.S. law
says they cannot; in practice, many are, but no one openly promotes what many secretly do. If a candidate,
even a Republican, ran on a platform of reducing the legal rights of women, he wouldn't get far (ask me again
in 10 years, though). Or consider lynching. The U.S. has a long tradition of lynching. It was only after the
Second World War that the Federal Government and state governments began enforcing their own antilynching laws. This was a victory for human rights. Do you want to go back? The Republicans would like
you to, in the name of: "national security." Guess what? There is no such thing as "national security"; it's a
concept that not only hasn't been defined, it can't be defined. It is a psychological state. The very phrase
describes an impossibility. All boundaries in the U.S. and in every other country are porous. Planes come and
go, as do ships, trains, trucks, autos, information superhighways, human relationships, and human emotions.
In addition, the smaller any threat becomes, the less safe we are against it. We no longer live in the world of
Mutually Assured Destruction, where our thousands of warheads aimed at the Russians protected us,
psychologically, from their thousands of warheads aimed at us. Since the end of the Cold War, threats have
gotten smaller and more invisible. Where is that suitcase of nuclear material? Where is that vial of anthrax?
But as they have gotten less easily detected, they have also gotten more local. 9/11 is what we always think of when
we think of a breach of national security, but in fact, the destruction was not national, or even city-wide, or even district wide -- although
the World Trade Center was less than a mile from the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE was only closed for six days after 9/11. The
phrase "national security" cannot mean anything in a nation of almost 10 million square miles. The Bush administration and the
corporatocracy knows this perfectly well. Witness how our chemical plants have not been secured from the possibility of terrorist attack
-- there are too many of them, and the likelihood of any one getting attacked is too small to make it worthwhile for either the nation or
the chemical industry to fortify them. The Dubai Ports deal of a couple of years ago demonstrated the same understanding on the part of
the administration, that "national security" is merely rallying cry for fear. The Bush administration has spent some trillions of dollars (I
shrink from naming a figure, since, as big as it is, it is surely a lie) to attack a nation of a mere 437,000 square miles. In doing so, they
have chosen to ignore such items of U.S. national security as public health and infrastructure maintenance. The population of the U.S. is
demonstrably poorer, hungrier, less healthy, more homeless, more likely to be injured in an infrastructure failure, and more likely to
suffer from a weather related loss than it was before the Bush administration came into office. A huge debt means that the economy is
more likely to fail. The prospects of our children for a peaceful and prosperous future are worse. Nothing that the Bush administration or
the Republicans or the Military Industrial Complex has done in the last seven years of foolish incompetence and braggadoccio has
benefited the nation as a whole, though it has benefited a small class of investors and government cronies. As a result of the Iraq War
and the Bush attack on the Constitution, I can be afraid of the obliteration of the entire idea of the U.S. -- I am afraid of that, thanks to
the tyrannies of the Bush administration and the professions of the current crop of Republican candidates -- but not of the obliteration of
the U.S. itself. Indeed, the war in Iraq shows more than one thing about the idea of national security, because even though the Iraqis have
been attacked by the largest military in the world, they have been damaged but not subdued. The same would be true of the U.S., no
matter who attacked us. Liberals, progressives, and Democrats recognize, at least intuitively, that "national security"
is a code word for tribalism, while "human rights" is a code word for the rule of law. Governor Richardson
was straightforward in acknowledging this fact, and deserves praise rather than blame, especially from a
writer for Salon.
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Women’s rights must take precedence over everything
Bunch, Director, International Council on Human Rights Policy, 1990
Charlotte, Human Rights Quarterly, Women's Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights, Nov
1990, http://www.jstor.org.floyd.lib.umn.edu/stable/pdfplus/762496.pdf?cookieSet=1, Accessed 7-7-09, AMG
The most insidious myth about women's rights is that they are trivial or secondary to the concerns of
life and death. Nothing could be farther from the truth: sexism kills. There is increasing
documentation of the many ways in which being female is life-threatening. The following are a few
examples: -Before birth: Amniocentesis is used for sex selection leading to the abortion of more female
fetuses at rates as high as 99 percent in Bombay, India; in China and India, the two most populous nations,
more males than 488 Vol. 12 Women's Rights as Human Rights females are born even though natural birth
ratios would produce more females.3 -During childhood: The World Health Organization reports that in
many countries, girls are fed less, breast fed for shorter periods of time, taken to doctors less frequently,
and die or are physically and mentally maimed by malnutrition at higher rates than boys.4 -In adulthood:
The denial of women's rights to control their bodies in reproduction threatens women's lives,
especially where this is combined with poverty and poor health services. In Latin America,
complications from illegal abortions are the leading cause of death for women between the ages of fifteen
and thirty-nine.5 Sex discrimination kills women daily. When combined with race, class, and other
forms of oppression, it constitutes a deadly denial of women's right to life and liberty on a large scale
throughout the world. The most pervasive violation of females is violence against women in all its
manifestations, from wife battery, incest, and rape, to dowry deaths,6 genital mutilation, 7 and female
sexual slavery. These abuses occur in every country and are found in the home and in the workplace,
on streets, on campuses, and in prisons and refugee camps. They cross class, race, age, and national
lines; and at the same time, the forms this violence takes often reinforce other oppressions such as
racism, "able-bodyism," and imperialism. Case in point: in order to feed their families, poor women in
brothels around US military bases in places like the Philippines bear the burden of sexual, racial, and
national imperialism in repeated and often brutal violation of their bodies.
Women’s rights must take precedence over the state.
Nossiff, Associate Professor of Political Science at Marymount Manhattan College, 2007
(Rosemary, “Gendered Citizenship: Women, Equality, and Abortion
Policy,” New Political Science, Volume 29, Number 1, March, pg. 61-76, Academic Search Premier, GMK)
Absent a policy that would enable women to make procreative decisions without restraints, any restrictions
on abortion inevitably have the effect undermining their citizenship. In the balancing of rights between
a woman, the man who impregnated her, and the State, only the rights of one interest can prevail. For
full citizenship to be achieved, the woman’s rights must take precedence over all others, for if she loses
control over her reproductive function she also loses her rights to privacy and equality which are at the
core of her personal liberty.
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The dialogue of “pro-lifers” has seized all hegemony of the abortion rights issue
Lee Edelman. No Future: Queer Theory and Death Drive. 2004 pp. 2-13 PMK
But what helped him most in these public appeals on behalf of America's children was the social consensus that such an appeal is
impossible to refuse. Indeed, though these public service announcements concluded with the sort of rhetorical flourish associated with
hard-fought political campaigns ("We're fighting for the children. Whose side are you on?"), that rhetoric was intended to avow that
this issue, like an ideological M6- bius strip, only permitted one side. Such "self-evident" one-sidedness— the affirmation of a value
so unquestioned, because so obviously unquestionable, as that of the Child whose innocence solicits our defense—is precisely, of
course, what distinguishes public service announcements from the partisan discourse of political argumentation. But it is also, I
suggest, what makes such announcements so oppressively political- political not in the partisan terms implied by the media
consultant, but political in a far more insidious way: political insofar as the fantasy subtending the image of the Child
invariably shapes the logic within which the political itself must be thought. That logic compels us, to the
extent that we would register as politically responsible, to submit to the framing of political debate—and,
indeed, of the political field—as defined by the terms of what this book describes as reproductive futurism:
terms that impose an ideological limit on political discourse as such, preserving in the process the absolute
privilege of heteronormativity by rendering unthinkable, by casting outside the political domain, the
possibility of a queer resistance to this organizing principle of communal relations. For politics, however
radical the means by which specific constituencies attempt to produce a more desirable social order,
remains, at its core, conservative insofar as it works to affirm a structure, to authenticate social order,
which it then intends to transmit to the future in the form of its inner Child. That Child remains the
perpetual horizon of every acknowledged politics, the fantasmatic beneficiary of every political
intervention. Even proponents of abortion rights, while promoting the freedom of women to control their
own bodies through reproductive choice, recurrently frame their political struggle, mirroring their antiabortion foes, as a "fight for our children—for our daughters and our sons," and thus as a fight for the
future.2 What, in that case, would it signify not to be "fighting for the children"? How could one take the
other "side," when taking any side at all necessarily constrains one to take the side of, by virtue of taking a
side within, a political order that returns to the Child as the image of the future it intends? Impossibly,
against all reason, my project stakes its claim to the very space that "politics" makes unthinkable: the space
outside the framework within which politics as we know it appears and so outside the conflict of visions
that share as their presupposition that the body politic must survive. Indeed, at the heart of my polemical engagement
with the cultural text of politics and the politics of cultural texts lies a simple provocation: that queerness names the side of those not
"fighting for the children," the side outside the consensus by which all politics confirms the absolute value of reproductive futurism.
The ups and downs of political fortune may measure the social order's pulse, but queerness, by contrast, figures, outside and beyond
its political symptoms, the place of the social order's death drive: a place, to be sure, of abjection expressed in the stigma, sometimes
fatal, that follows from reading that figure literally, and hence a place from which liberal politics strives—and strives quite
reasonably, given its unlimited faith in reason—to disassociate the queer. More radically, though, as I argue here, queerness attains its
ethical value precisely insofar as it accedes to that place, accepting its figural status as resistance to the viability of the social while
insisting on the inextricability of such resistance from every social structure.
“Pro-life” dialogue conceptualizing the Child idealizes a commitment for sustaining the
future at all costs
Lee Edelman. No Future: Queer Theory and Death Drive. 2004 pp. 19-22 PMK
The Child, in the historical epoch of our current epistemological regime, is the figure for this compulsory
investment in the misrecognition of figure. It takes its place on the social stage like every adorable Annie
gathering her limitless funds of pluck to "stick out [her] chin/ And grin/ And say: 'Tomorrow!/
Tomorrow!/1 love ya/ Tomorrow/ You're always/ A day/ Away.' " 2 0 And lo and behold, as viewed
through the prism of the tears that it always calls forth, the figure of this Child seems to shimmer with the
iridescent promise of Noah's rainbow, serving like the rainbow as the pledge of a covenant that shields us
against the persistent threat of apocalypse now—or later. Recall, for example, the end of Jonathan
Demme's Philadelphia (1993), his filmic act of contrition for the homophobia some attributed to The
Silence of the lambs (1991}. After Andrew Beckett (a man for all seasons, as portrayed by the saintly Tom
Hanks), last seen on his deathbed in an oxygen mask that seems to allude to, or trope on, Hannibal Lecter's
more memorable muzzle (see figures 1 and 2), has shuffled off this mortal coil to stand, as we are led to
suppose, before a higher law, we find ourselves in, if not at, his wake surveying a room in his family home,
now crowded with children and pregnant women whose reassuringly bulging bellies (see figure 3) displace
the bulging basket (unseen) of the Hiv-positive gay man (unseen) from whom, the filmic text suggests, in a
cinema {unlike the one in which we sit watching Philadelphia) not phobic about graphic representations of
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male-male sexual acts, Saint Thomas, a.k.a. Beckett, contracted the virus that cosegerous "lifestyles" on
the Internet; the Child who might choose a provocative book from the shelves of the public library; the
Child, in short, who might find an enjoyment that would nullify the figural value, itself imposed by adult
desire, of the Child as unmarked by the adult's adulterating implication in desire itself; the Child, that is,
made to image, for the satisfaction of adults, an Imaginary fullness that's considered to want, and therefore
to want for, nothing. As Lauren Berlant argues forcefully at the outset of The Queen of America Goes to
Washington City, "a nation made for adult citizens has been replaced by one imagined for fetuses and
children."2 2 On every side, our enjoyment of liberty is eclipsed by the lengthening shadow of a Child
whose freedom to develop undisturbed by encounters, or even by the threat of potential encounters, with an
"otherness" of which its parents, its church, or the state do not approve, uncompromised by any possible
access to what is painted as alien desire, terroristically holds us all in check and determines that political
discourse conform to the logic of a narrative wherein history unfolds as the future envisioned for a Child
who must never grow up. Not for nothing, after all, does the historical construction of the homosexual as
distinctive social type overlap with the appearance of such literary creations as Tiny Tim, David Balfour,
and Peter Pan, who enact, in an imperative most evident today in the uncannily intimate connection
between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, a Symbolic resistance to the unmarried men (Scrooge, Uncle
Ebenezer, Captain Hook) who embody, as Voldemort's name makes clear, a wish, a will, or a drive toward
death that entails the destruction of the Child. That Child, immured in an innocence seen as continuously
under seige, condenses a fantasy of vulnerability to the queerness of queer sexualities precisely insofar as
that Child enshrines, in its form as sublimation, the very value for which queerness regularly finds itself
condemned: an insistence on sameness that intends to restore an Imaginary past. The Child, that is, marks
the fetishistic fixation of heteronormativity: an erotically charged investment in the rigid sameness of
identity that is central to the compulsory narrative of reproductive futurism. And so, as the radical right
maintains, the battle against queers is a life-and-death struggle for the future of a Child whose ruin is
pursued by feminists, queers, and those who support the legal availability of abortion. Indeed, as the Army
of God made clear in the bombmaking guide it produced for the assistance of its militantly "pro-life"
members, its purpose was wholly congruent with the logic of reproductive futurism: to "disrupt and
ultimately destroy Satan's power to kill our children, God's children.
Cries for saving the unborn represent the same ideology that fuels homophobia
Bateman, doctoral candidate in English at the University of Virginia, 06
(Benjamin, Spring 2006, Review of “No Future”,
http://www.theminnesotareview.org/authors/b/bateman_r_benjamin.shtml) PMK
Such extremity finds full expression in Lee Edelman's polemic, No Future. Subtitled Queer Theory and
the Death Drive, the book argues that politics as we know it relies upon a future-oriented logic that is
indissociably intertwined with heterosexuality and with what Edelman terms "reproductive futurism." On
Edelman's reading, the face of the child, epitomized by Dickens's Tiny Tim, coerces us—through
conjuring our compassion—into subordinating our present wants and enjoyments to the always-deferred,
future needs of "innocent" children. Tim's vulnerability turns vindictive, Edelman proceeds, when
conservatives use 'protecting children' as a pretext for discriminating against gays and lesbians. Nowhere
is this disguised homophobia more apparent than in recent 'arguments' against gay marriage. But when
gays and lesbians respond by insisting that they value marriage, children, and their society's future—and
not simply the ephemeral delights of sex and drugs, as conservatives would have it—they abandon the
subversive force of queer sexuality. Instead of pleading for seats at heteronormativity's table, Edelman
argues, queers should consent to their figuration as parasites upon the social order and embody the death
drive for which they have come to stand.
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Homosexuality is Pro-lifer’s biggest threat towards procuring a future with the Child
Lee Edelman. No Future: Queer Theory and Death Drive. 2004 pp. 19-22 PMK
The Child, in the historical epoch of our current epistemological regime, is the figure for this compulsory
investment in the misrecognition of figure. It takes its place on the social stage like every adorable Annie
gathering her limitless funds of pluck to "stick out [her] chin/ And grin/ And say: 'Tomorrow!/ Tomorrow!/1
love ya/ Tomorrow/ You're always/ A day/ Away.' " 2 0 And lo and behold, as viewed through the prism of
the tears that it always calls forth, the figure of this Child seems to shimmer with the iridescent promise of
Noah's rainbow, serving like the rainbow as the pledge of a covenant that shields us against the persistent
threat of apocalypse now—or later. Recall, for example, the end of Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (1993),
his filmic act of contrition for the homophobia some attributed to The Silence of the lambs (1991}. After
Andrew Beckett (a man for all seasons, as portrayed by the saintly Tom Hanks), last seen on his deathbed in
an oxygen mask that seems to allude to, or trope on, Hannibal Lecter's more memorable muzzle (see figures
1 and 2), has shuffled off this mortal coil to stand, as we are led to suppose, before a higher law, we find
ourselves in, if not at, his wake surveying a room in his family home, now crowded with children and
pregnant women whose reassuringly bulging bellies (see figure 3) displace the bulging basket (unseen) of
the Hiv-positive gay man (unseen) from whom, the filmic text suggests, in a cinema {unlike the one in
which we sit watching Philadelphia) not phobic about graphic representations of male-male sexual acts,
Saint Thomas, a.k.a. Beckett, contracted the virus that cosegerous "lifestyles" on the Internet; the Child who
might choose a provocative book from the shelves of the public library; the Child, in short, who might find
an enjoyment that would nullify the figural value, itself imposed by adult desire, of the Child as unmarked
by the adult's adulterating implication in desire itself; the Child, that is, made to image, for the satisfaction
of adults, an Imaginary fullness that's considered to want, and therefore to want for, nothing. As Lauren
Berlant argues forcefully at the outset of The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, "a nation made
for adult citizens has been replaced by one imagined for fetuses and children."2 2 On every side, our
enjoyment of liberty is eclipsed by the lengthening shadow of a Child whose freedom to develop
undisturbed by encounters, or even by the threat of potential encounters, with an "otherness" of which its
parents, its church, or the state do not approve, uncompromised by any possible access to what is painted as
alien desire, terroristically holds us all in check and determines that political discourse conform to the logic
of a narrative wherein history unfolds as the future envisioned for a Child who must never grow up. Not for
nothing, after all, does the historical construction of the homosexual as distinctive social type overlap with
the appearance of such literary creations as Tiny Tim, David Balfour, and Peter Pan, who enact, in an
imperative most evident today in the uncannily intimate connection between Harry Potter and Lord
Voldemort, a Symbolic resistance to the unmarried men (Scrooge, Uncle Ebenezer, Captain Hook) who
embody, as Voldemort's name makes clear, a wish, a will, or a drive toward death that entails the
destruction of the Child. That Child, immured in an innocence seen as continuously under seige, condenses
a fantasy of vulnerability to the queerness of queer sexualities precisely insofar as that Child enshrines, in its
form as sublimation, the very value for which queerness regularly finds itself condemned: an insistence on
sameness that intends to restore an Imaginary past. The Child, that is, marks the fetishistic fixation of
heteronormativity: an erotically charged investment in the rigid sameness of identity that is central to the
compulsory narrative of reproductive futurism. And so, as the radical right maintains, the battle against
queers is a life-and-death struggle for the future of a Child whose ruin is pursued by feminists, queers, and
those who support the legal availability of abortion. Indeed, as the Army of God made clear in the
bombmaking guide it produced for the assistance of its militantly "pro-life" members, its purpose was
wholly congruent with the logic of reproductive futurism: to "disrupt and ultimately destroy Satan's power
to kill our children, God's children.
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Abortions are equivalent to homosexuality according to pro-life theories. Allowing for
abortions will remove homophobia.
Sears & Williams, Ph.D., 97
(James & Walter, Columbia University, “Overcoming heterosexism and homophobia: strategies that work”,
http://books.google.com/books?ei=l7pSSoagOJXUlQTQ95jbAg&as_brr=3&q=homophobia+is+due+to+the+lack+o
f+procreation&btnG=Search+Books, Accessed 7-6-09, NG)
Their fear of homosexuality—if it can be accurately described as fear- manifests itself in
an unwillingness to recognize a complete equality between homosexuality and
heterosexuality or to accord same-sex marriages equal recognition and standing in the
Church and society. For them, homosexuality represents a non-normative expression of
human sexuality because of some perceived lack (physical procreation, biological and
psycho spiritual complementarily, etc.) that makes it not sinful, immoral, evil, or sick
but simply something less than the ideal or fully human expression of sexuality. Catholic
theologians like James Harigan who argue for some qualified recognition of
homosexuality best articulate this position (Hanigan 1988). ln terms of continuing
dialogue and public discourse in Church circles about homosexuality, I believe it is
both more helpful and more accurate to describe this group as homonegative or
heterocentrist rather than homophobic. Likewise, the response suggested in this case
would not be to homophobia but to heterosexism or heterocentrism. Heterocentrism, in
probably the most benign definition of the term, is the belief or conviction that
heterosexuality (and all the social structures that support and enforce it) is normative
for human sexuality both theologically and philosophically. No matter how accepting of
homosexuality this last group of priests are, they nevertheless place a negative value
judgment on homosexuality both as orientation and activity. Theirs is the language at
least academic.
Deconstructin the notion of the Child cedes a departure from fallacious discourse and prolife fanaticism
Lee Edelman. No Future: Queer Theory and Death Drive. 2004 pp. 2-13, 10-12 PMK
In its coercive universalization, however, the image of the Child, not to be confused with the lived experiences
of any historical children, serves to regulate political discourse—to prescribe what will count as political
discourse—by compelling such discourse to accede in advance to the reality of a collective future whose figurative
status we are never permitted to acknowledge or address. From Delacroix's iconic image of Liberty leading us into a
brave new world of revolutionary possibility—her bare breast making each spectator the unweaned Child to whom
it's held out while the boy to her left, reproducing her posture, affirms the absolute logic of reproduction itself—to
the revolutionary waif in the logo that miniaturizes the "politics" of Its Mis (summed up in its anthem to futurism,
the "inspirational" "One Day More"), we are no more able to conceive of a politics without a fantasy of the future
than we are able to conceive of a future without the figure of the Child. That figural Child alone embodies the
citizen as an ideal, entitled to claim full rights to its future share in the nation's good, though always at the cost of
limiting the rights "real" citizens are allowed. For the social order exists to preserve for this universalized subject,
this fantasmatic Child, a notional freedom more highly valued than the actuality of freedom itself, which might, after
all, put at risk the Child to whom such a freedom falls due. Hence, whatever refuses this mandate by which our
political institutions compel the collective reproduction of the Child must appear as a threat not only to the
organization of a given social order but also, and far more ominously, to social order as such, insofar as it threatens
the logic of futurism on which meaning always depends. So, for example, when P. D. James, in her novel The
Children of Men, imagines a future in which the human race has suffered a seemingly absolute loss of the capacity
to reproduce, her narrator, Theodore Faron, not only attributes this reversal of biological fortune to the putative
crisis of sexual values in late twentieth-century democracies—"Pornography and sexual violence on film, on
television, in books, in life had increased and became more explicit but less and less in the West we made love and
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bred children," he declares—but also gives voice to the ideological truism that governs our investment in the Child
as the obligatory token of futurity: "Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the
assurance that we being dead yet live," he later observes, "all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to
me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruins."12 While this allusion to Eliot's "The
Waste Land" may recall another of its well-known lines, one for which we apparently have Eliot's wife, Vivian, to
thank—"What you get married for if you don't want children?" —it also brings out the function of the child as the
prop of the secular theology on which our social reality rests: the secular theology that shapes at once the meaning
of our collective narratives and our collective narratives of meaning. Charged, after all, with the task of assuring
"that we being dead yet live," the Child, as if by nature (more precisely, as the promise of a natural transcendence of
the limits of nature itself), exudes the very pathos from which rhe narrator of The Children of Men recoils when he
comes upon it in non reproductive "pleasures of the mind and senses." For the "pathetic" quality he projectively
locates in nongenerative sexual enjoyment—enjoyment that he views in the absence of futurity as empty,
substitutive, pathological—exposes the fetishistic figurations of the Child that the narrator pits against it as legible in
terms identical to those for which enjoyment without "hope of posterity" is peremptorily dismissed: legible, that is,
as nothing more than "pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruins." How better to characterize the
narrative project of The Children of Men itself, which ends, as anyone not born yesterday surely expects from the
start, with the renewal of our barren and dying race through the miracle of birth? After all, as Walter Wangerin Jr.,
reviewing the book for the Neu? York Times, approvingly noted in a sentence delicately poised between description
and performance of the novel's pro-procreative ideology; "If there is a baby, there is a future, there is redemption."1
3 If, however, there is no baby and, in consequence, no_future, then the blame must fall on the fatal lure of sterile,
narcissistic enjoyments understood as inherently destructive of meaning and therefore as responsible for the undoing
of social organization, collective reality, and, inevitably, life itself.
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Continued homophobia creates a stigmatized hierarchy that dehumanizes homosexuals
Herek, Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, 2004
Gregory M., Sexuality Research and Social Policy, Beyond “Homophobia”: Thinking About Sexual Prejudice
and Stigma in the Twenty-First Century, April 2004
http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/pdf/10.1525/srsp.2004.1.2.6?cookieSet=1, Accessed 7-8-09, AMG
Previous authors have used sexual stigma (Plummer, 1975) and erotic stigma (Rubin, 1984) as labels for the
stigma attached to male homosexuality (Plummer) and an array of sexual behaviors to which society accords
low status, including sex that is nonprocreative, promiscuous, commercial, and public (Rubin). Similarly, in
the present article sexual stigma refers to the shared knowledge of society’s negative regard for any
nonheterosexual behavior, identity, relationship, or community. The ultimate consequence of sexual stigma
is a power differential between heterosexuals and nonheterosexuals. It expresses and perpetuates a set
of hierarchical relations within society. In that hierarchy of power and status, homosexuality is
devalued and considered inferior to heterosexuality. Homosexual people, their relationships, and their
communities are all considered sick, immoral, criminal or, at best, less than optimal in comparison to
that which is heterosexual.
Homophobia justifies violent acts towards the gay community
ADL, Anti- Defamation League, 2001
Homophobia, http://www.adl.org/hate-patrol/homophobia.asp, Accessed 7-8-09, AMG
Homophobia is most dangerous when it serves as the justification for violent action against
homosexuals. In recent years attacks on homosexuals have risen. While the violent crime rate in many
areas continues to drop, anti-gay crime is moving in the other direction. What is most disturbing is the
cruelty and viciousness of many of these attacks. The severity of many of these crimes helps to show
the strong hatred that homophobia can create
Homophobia entrenches sexism
NOMAS, National Organization of Men Against Sexism, no date given
Position Statement on Homophobia, http://www.nomas.org/node/63, Accessed 7-8-09, AMG
As well as a weapon of heterosexism, Suzanne Pharr has rightly called homophobia a weapon of sexism, as
it reveals the misogyny of a male supremacist culture’s hatred of the female. Sadly, many have
accepted the culture’s assumption that for a man to appear effeminate is to appear gay, is to
be bad and worthy of abuse. These men act out a hostile and violent hyper-masculinity due to their
rigid conformity to this oppressive cultural norm, and men, both gay and straight, pay for their
deviance from the artificial norm with life and limb, as do women and others violating heterosexual
standards. Heterosexist men are often more willing to tolerate lesbian sexuality, especially in the form of
pornography, while working to deny these women equal standing before the law. The freedom to enjoy
with impunity that which is condemned in public is another expression of sexist male privilege
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Heterosexism is congruent with Anti-Semitism
Rozdzial, co-chair of the National Council of NOMAS, 2000
Moshe, NOMAS, Anti-Semitism and Heterosexism: Common Constructs of Oppression, Winter 2000,
http://www.nomas.org/node/139, Accessed 7-8-09, AMG
All oppressions have common roots. Born out of misinformation and directed toward the "other," the
goal of any oppression is the unjust, destructive, and unequal distribution of power to the advantage of
one group over another. And although there is no specific hierarchy of oppressions, the context in
which they manifest themselves - history, economics, or politics - makes some types of oppressions more
closely related than others. I propose that anti-Semitism and heterosexism (which manifests as
homophobia) are directly analogous to one another. To disregard anti-Semitism while claiming to
understand heterosexism is to overlook the most potent of historical lessons. I believe that these two
oppressions share many elements that are deeply rooted in the psyche of our culture and, as antiSemitism has gone underground and heterosexism has become institutionalized, the open hatred and
scapegoating of Jews has almost effortlessly been transferred to homosexuals.
Heterosexism justifies dehumanization and violence as Anti-Semitism did with the Jews in
Nazi Germany
Rozdzial, co-chair of the National Council of NOMAS, 2000
Moshe, NOMAS, Anti-Semitism and Heterosexism: Common Constructs of Oppression, Winter 2000,
http://www.nomas.org/node/139, Accessed 7-8-09, AMG
Similarly, religious attacks on homosexuals, defended under biblical precedent, echo the vilest forms of
anti-Semitism. The slander of "sodomites” has replaced "Christ-killers" in the vocabulary of hatred
and heaven's retribution against a minority community has, once again, become the excuse to justify
victimizing the victim. Even the promise of "salvation" through "conversion" (Jews to Christianity;
homosexuals to heterosexuality) reflects the common perception that both minorities are "outcast in
the sight of G-d." And the stereotype of stubborn adherence to a despised lifestyle even in the shadow of
salvation is another common accusatory theme. After all, how can the "other" want to be who he is and
stubbornly hold on to a life of deprivation when the doors are, figuratively, opened to a life of safety,
privilege, and saving grace? To look at the similar language of marginalization of these two groups
without noticing the historical connection would mean yielding to ignorance. Common weapons of
oppression include the emasculation of Jews and stereotyping of homosexuals to perpetuate an excuse
for dehumanization and a perception of facile targeting for violence. Thus, Jewish men are labeled
Hymies, nerds, weaklings, just as gay men are the sissies and pansies - to mention only a few of the
epithets hurled at them. Jewish women and lesbians are, respectively, bitches and princesses, or butches
and dykes. The modern propaganda of hatred that equates AIDS to homosexuality echoes Hitler's
racial anti-Semitism that accused the Jews of spreading disease, contagion and contamination and are
reminders of past genocide and the excuses for a present violence. The recent push to find a biological
origin for homosexuality has a frightening parallel to the Nazi's eugenics response to the "Jewish
problem."
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Heterogender is the basis of sexual inequality
Nielson, University of Colorado, Walden, Universtiy of Colorado, Kunkel, Luther College,
2000
(Joyce, Glenda, Charlotte, Sociological Quarterly, GENDERED HETERONORMATIVITY:Empirical Illustrations
in Everyday Life, Spring 2000 http://www.jstor.org.floyd.lib.umn.edu/stable/pdfplus/4121025.pdf, Accessed 7-809, AMG)
We do not measure or examine gender inequality directly, but our findings are relevant to theoretical
work that relates sexuality and gender inequality. A central premise of early radical feminist thought
is that "heterosexuality is the linchpin of gender inequality" (MacKinnon 1989, p. 113). Adrienne Rich
(1980) articulated its institutionalized character with the phrase" compulsory heterosexuality."M any gender
scholars routinely accept that the gender system is predicated on the control of women's sexuality (Renzetti
and Curran 1999; Lorber 1994), even though other sites of women's subordination( such as the appropriation
of women's labor) are also acknowledged. Queer theorists (Fuss 1991; Richardson 1996; Rubin 1984;
Warner 1993) and feminist cultural theorists (e.g., Butler 1991) have further developed the idea that
institutionalized heterosexuality is at the intersection of the gender and sexuality systems. Their point
is that heterogender rather than gender per se is the basis of inequality (Ingraham 1994). Our findings
are consistent with this approach to gender stratification. Further, the examples presented here suggest that a
key component of maintaining gender inequality and heterosexual privilege is upholding and
highlighting differences - differences in appearance and action between women and men. It is
primarily when women do "male" things and vice versa that questions about sexuality come into play.
Although many writers, queer theorists in particular emphasize that it is not differences per se but their
evaluation and cultural meanings that are key to social inequality, our findings stress the critical role of
upholding differences in maintaining heterogender. Thus, "sameness" may be more important for
equality than previously thought
Homophobia has real impacts on every person
Kimmel and Mahler, Doctors of Sociology, 01
(Michael and Matthew, Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia and Violence,
www.health.columbia.edu/pdfs/adolescent_masculinity.pdf)
There is much at stake for boys and, as a result, they engage in a variety of evasive strategies to make
sure that no one gets the wrong idea about them (and their manhood). These range from the seemingly
comic (although telling), such as two young boys occupying three movie seats by placing their coats on
the seat between them, to the truly tragic, such as engaging in homophobic violence, bullying, menacing
other boys, masochistic or sadistic games and rituals, excessive risk taking (drunk or aggressive
driving), and even sexual predation and assault. The impact of homophobia is felt not only by gay and
lesbian students but also by heterosexuals who are targeted by their peers for constant harassment,
bullying, and gay baiting. In many cases, gay baiting is “misdirected” at heterosexual youth who may be
somewhat gender nonconforming. This fact is clearly evidenced in many of the accounts we have
gathered of the shootings. For example, young Andy Williams, recently sentenced to 50 years to life in
prison for shooting and killing two classmates in Santee, California, and wounding several others was
described as “shy” and was “constantly picked on” by others in school. Like many of the others, bullies
stole his clothes, his money, and his food, beat him up regularly, and locked him in his locker, among
other daily taunts and humiliations (Green & Lieberman, 2001). One boy’s father baited him and called
him a “queer” because he was overweight. Classmates Described Gary Scott Pennington, who killed his
teacher and a custodian in Grayson, Kentucky, in 1993 as a “nerd” and a “loner” who was constantly
teased for being smart and wearing glasses (Buckley, 1993). Barry Loukaitas, who killed his algebra
teacher and two other students in Moses Lake, Washington, in 1996 was an honor student who
especially loved math; he was also constantly teased and bullied and described as a “shy nerd” (“Did
Taunts Lead to Killing?” 1996). And Evan Ramsay, who killed one student and the high school principal
in Bethel, Alaska, in 1997 was also an honor student who was teased for wearing glasses and having
acne (Fainaru, 1998)
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Hyde Affirmative
Heteronormativity – Impact (4/4)
The utopian construct of a society without abortion justifies the extermination of those who
believe in women’s rights
Stavrakakis. Lacan and the Political. 99-101 PMK
What I will try to do in this chapter is, first of all, to demonstrate the deeply problematic nature of utopian
politics. Simply put, my argument will be that every utopian fantasy construction needs a ‘scapegoat’ in
order to constitute itself – the Nazi utopian fantasy and the production of the ‘Jew’ is a good example,
especially as pointed out in Zizek’s analysis. Every utopian fantasy produces its reverse and calls for its
elimination. Put another way, the beatific side of fantasy is coupled in utopian constructions with a horrific
side, a paranoid need for a stigmatized scapegoat. The naivety – and also the danger – of utopian structures
is revealed when the realization of this fantasy is attempted. It is then that we are brought close to the
frightening kernel of the real: stigmatization is followed by the extermination. This is not an accident. It is
inscribed in the structure of utopian constructions; it seems to be the way all fantasy constructions work. If
in almost all the utopian visions, violence and antagonism are eliminated, if utopia is based on the
expulsion and repression of violence (this is its beatific side) this is only because it owes its own creation
to violence; it is sustained and fed by violence (this is its horrific side). This repressed moment of violence
resurfaces, as Marin points out, in the difference inscribed in the name of utopia itself (Marin, 1984:100).
What we shall argue is that also resurfaces in the production of the figure of an enemy. To use a phrase
enunciated by the utopianist Fourier, what is ‘driven out through the door comes back through the window’
(is not this a ‘precursor’ of Lacan’s dictum that ‘what is foreclosed in the symbolic reappears in the real’? –
VII: 131). The work of Norman Cohn and other historians permits the articulation of a genealogy of this
Manichean, equivalential way of understanding the world, from the great witch-hunt up to modern antiSemitism, and Lacanian theory can provide valuable insights into any attempt to understand the logic
behind this utopian operation – here the approach to fantasy developed in Chapter 2 will further
demonstrate its potential in analyzing our political experience. In fact, from the time of his unpublished
seminar on The Formations of the Unconscious, Lacan identified the utopian dream of a perfectly
functioning society as a highly problematic area (seminar of 18 June 1958).
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Hyde Affirmative
Abortion Good – Laundry List
Abortions are beneficial and are not a moral problem. The proponenets of abortion laws
have moral problems because they increase maternal death rates.
Levy, Graduate Student at Columbia University, 07
(Alon, Abstract Nonsense, “Abortion is Good” 2-24-7, http://abstractnonsense.wordpress.com/2007/02/24/abortionis-good/ , Accessed 6-29-09, SLR)
Abortion is a beneficial medical procedure that removes something that is often a health risk;
childbirth is as a rule more dangerous than safe abortion… The act of heart surgery is of course morally
neutral. A person’s choice to have a heart surgery, or for that matter an abortion, isn’t a moral question
because it doesn’t impact any other person. As Jill says, the good comes from the fact that this option is
available. And conversely, the moral evil in abortion legislation comes from people who pass laws that
cause the maternal mortality rates to skyrocket.
Abortion is caused by some tragic event but the actual act of abortion is good, like openheart surgery and appendectomy too.
Unkown, Hardcore Feminist, 07
(Jill, Publication, “Article Title” 4-24-7, http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/02/23/abortion-is-a-moralgood/, Accessed 6-29-09, SLR)
Abortion itself, though, can be a savior for women, and a positive choice. Abortion is a medical
procedure and, like most medical procedures, is preempted by some sort of negative event. And yet the
discourse around abortion is focused on how “tragic” it is. Is open-heart surgery “tragic”? Is an
appendectomy “tragic”? Obviously the circumstances leading up to open-heart surgery and
appendectomy are bad. But the procedures themselves, I would argue, are good responses to bad
situations. As is abortion.
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Hyde Affirmative
Abortion Good – Spending (1/2)
Abortion was even nine times safer than carrying a pregnancy in the 70’s
The Freelance Star, Newspaper, 1977
(http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gqwSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7PYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2457,3059978) PMK
Women who went through childbirth ran a risk of death nine times greater than those who had abortions
performed by licensed physicians in the first three months of pregnancy, says a federal study of the years 19721974. Dr. Willard Cates Jr. and three associates at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta conducted the study
as part of the federal center’s surveillance of abortion-related deaths. “Legal abortion in the United States in
1972 through 1974 was a relatively safe surgical procedure” with a death rate below that for the removal of
tonsils or appendix, concludes the study. The report appears in the today’s issue of the Journal of the American
Medical Association. “When compared with mortality from pregnancy and childbirth, legal abortion in the first
trimester was nearly nine times safer than carrying the pregnancy to term,” the study said. The study compares
statistics for abortion-related deaths between 1972 and 1974 with similar figures for full-term pregnancies.
Abortion decreases infant mortality and saves the state money.
Meier and McFarlane, PhD and DrPH, 1994
(Kenneth J. and Deborah R., American Journal of Public Health, “State Family Planning and Abortion
Expenditures:Their Effect on Public Health,” Sept. Vol. 84, No. 9, Academic Search Premier, GMK)
Previous studies suggest that the availability of both abortion and family planning services produces
public health benefits. Grossman and Jacobowitz found that increased access to legal abortion was the
most important factor in the large decreases in US neonatal mortality from 1964 to 1977^; the second
most important factor was subsidized family planning services for poor women. In a subsequent study,
Corman and Grossman reported that increased availability of abortion was by far the most important factor in
the decline in Black neonatal mortality^; for Whites, however, abortion availability was only the fifth leading
contributor to lower neonatal rates. Abortion affects neonatal mortality by reducing the number of unwanted
births. Because unwanted births are less likely to receive early prenatal care and may be linked to low
birthweights,^"* access to abortion should be indirectly associated with earlier prenatal care and fewer low
birthweights. Both reduce neonatal mortality. (It has been found that Medicaid restrictions on abortion
funding increase the probability of birth but have no impact on birthweights.*) A 1984 study found that
states that did not have public funds available to pay for abortions for low-income women had to
spend more money "to provide maternity care, medical care for the infant. Aid to Families with
Dependent Children, and nutritional assistance to women on Medicaid."'(P'") For every dollar used to pay
for abortions for poor women, the study found that more than $4 were saved in medical and social
welfare costs over the next 2 years.
Medicaid funded abortions are cheaper for the government than birth
Boonstra; Senior Public Policy Associate at the Guttmacher Institute, and Sonfield; Senior
Public Policy Associate at the Guttmacher Institute, 2000
(Heather and Adam, Guttmacher Policy Review, “Rights Without Access: Revisiting Public Funding of Abortion for
Poor Women,” April 2000, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/03/2/gr030208.html, 6-29-09, AMG)
Funding restrictions not only force some women to carry their pregnancy to term and others to wait
longer before having an abortion. They also cost taxpayers millions of dollars annually in medical and
other costs. Both prochoice and antiabortion supporters have traditionally shied away from discussing
Medicaid coverage for abortion from a monetary perspective; nevertheless, the macroeconomic
implications of government pressure on poor women not to have an abortion are real. At the most basic
level, the cost to the taxpayer of subsidizing a first-trimester nonhospital abortion will always be far
less than the cost of subsidizing prenatal and delivery services—not to mention the secondary costs of
an unwanted birth, including the additional time a woman spends on Medicaid while struggling to
provide for her family and obtain self-sufficiency.
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Hyde Affirmative
Abortoin Good – Spending (2/2)
Unintended babies saps money from the taxpayers, when cheaper ways are available.
Stiffler, Editor of the Delta College Newspaper, 02
(Joshua, Delta College Newspaper, “Abortion is good,” 10-18-2,
http://media.www.deltacollegian.com/media/storage/paper320/news/2002/10/18/Opinion/Abortion.Is.Good301031.shtml , Accessed 6-29-09, SLR)
And we have all heard the gruesome stories about how the baby is vacuumed out limb-by-limb, some with
their little heart still beating. Let's think about it; if the baby is born to a mother who does not want it or
can't afford to give it the nourishment it needs, why make society pay for this child?
If the mother can't afford the baby, and she collects welfare or any other government aid, that is you,
me, and every taxpayer in America paying for her mistake. When all that is needed is a $200-$250
operation at a local clinic, or getting a bottle of RU-486 from their doctor. At least I don't have to pay for
it. And maybe while she is there she can pick up some condoms or get some education about how to not
become pregnant in the future.
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Hyde Affirmative
Abortion Good – Utilitarianism
From a rule-utalitarian point of view, abortions are ethical.
Rice, Ethics Writer for Associated Content, 2006
(Brian, Associated Content, “Abortion: Ethical Analysis, a Utalitarian Argument for Abortion” 3-23-6,
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/25347/abortion_ethical_analysis_pg2.html?cat=37, Accessed 6-29-09,
SLR)
Abortion is a sensitive topic that requires a considerable amount of understanding when addressing the
ethics behind it. Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy thus ending the life of the embryo/fetus
prematurely. My ethical justification for abortion stems from a rule-utilitarianism standpoint. When using
the rule-utilitarian consequential principle of ethics, we establish a set of general morals and rules in
which we can apply to every moral question based upon our utilitarian findings. When this is applied to
abortion, we can see that abortion is a completely ethical entity that provides the greatest amount of
happiness for the greatest amount of people. Since utilitarianism in general is based on the empirical
evidence that supports the widespread happiness of many, it’s important to include statistical data to support
one’s position. By looking at the medical and social health benefits of abortion, we can come to the
conclusion that it is ethical on the basis that it spreads happiness amongst a great number of the
populace. The following statistics reflect the social, physical, and emotional benefits of abortion: •
Half of all pregnancies in the U.S. each year are unintended, and about half of these are terminated
by medically safe, legal abortions. In 2000, 1.31 million abortions took place, down from an estimated
1.61 million in 1990. From 1973 through 2000, more than 39 million legal abortions occurred • Following
the legalization of abortion, the largest decline in birthrates were seen among women for whom the
health and social consequences of unintended childbearing are the greatest — women over 35,
teenagers, and unmarried women (Levine, et al., 1999). Today, thirty percent of the abortions in the
U.S. are provided to women over 35 and to teenagers
From a utilitarian view, abortions will create a better lifestyle for more people in the long
run.
Rice, Ethics Writer for Associated Content, 2006
(Brian, Associated Content, “Abortion: Ethical Analysis, a Utalitarian Argument for Abortion” 3-23-6,
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/25347/abortion_ethical_analysis_pg2.html?cat=37, Accessed 6-29-09,
SLR)
By utilizing abortion from a utilitarian standpoint, life is generally much happier for those directly and
indirectly involved. Fewer children are uncared for, fewer families are burdened by unwanted
children, fewer resources have to be divulged towards state children facilities, and population control
is thus put into practice. The ethical question of abortion isn’t as difficult as one may think initially,
particularly when looking at it through a utilitarian standpoint
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Hyde Affirmative
Abortion Good – Mother > Fetus
Pro-life discourse's focus on the fetus discounts the rights of the mother. We need to
rethink life to encompass human rights.
Braam and Hessini, experts on sexual and reproductive rights, 04
(Tamara and Leila, “The Power Dynamics Perpetuating Unsafe Abortion in Africa: A Feminist Perspective,”
African Journal of Reproductive Health,” Vol. 8:1, 4-2004, p. 43-51, AEL)
The discourse and language surrounding abortion is a significant factor in maintaining and entrenching a
largely conservative approach to the issue. The discourse used by the anti-choice movement focuses on terms
such as life, babies, families, all of which tend to put those who advocate for women's rights to control their
bodies and access to safe abortion services morally on the defensive. By contrast, the discourse of abortion,
death, blood and infertility conjures up highly unfavorable images in communities already facing death, disease
and poverty as a result of a number of factors, including the high levels of HIV infection. It is clear on closer
examination that the core arguments of anti-abortion groups are not about protecting life per se but, rather, are
reflections of a belief system that values women's lives primarily in relation to their ability to bring new life into
the world. The fact that millions of women die globally from unsafe abortions, with Africa accounting for 40%
of these deaths, appears to be of little consequence to these groups; what matters most is that the lives of
fetuses, which are totally unable to survive outside of the womb, be maintained and protected. The discourse of
the anti-choice movement historically has played a significant role in defining the terms. As we will discuss
further, it is critical to find innovative ways to shift the power within the debate, reclaim the concept of life and
re-conceptualise the issue of abortion in paradigms of sustainable human development, social justice, public
health, human rights and self-determination. The power of saying one thing but doing another also serves to
reinforce an anti-choice message. Five years of implementing legal safe services in South Africa have
highlighted the existence of a dual morality in relation to the issue of abortion, in which individuals who are
vocally opposed to abortion actually choose pregnancy termination when an unwanted pregnancy affects them
personally." This duality between actual behaviour and expressed attitudes may present an opportunity to shift
thinking around the issue of abortion and needs to be explored creatively.
Hundreds of thousands of women die annually when hypothetical life precedes the actual
Beenfeldt, MA in philosophy and guest writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, 06
(Christian, 11/11/06, Capitalism Magazine, http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4833) PMK
South Dakota voters have rejected the state's proposed abortion law--a law that would have outlawed
abortion in virtually every case. The law's supporters claim that its rejection is a blow to "the sanctity of
human life." But is it? Consider what banning abortion would mean for human life--not the "lives"
of embryos or primitive fetuses, but the lives of real, living, breathing, thinking women. It would
mean that women who wanted to terminate a pregnancy because it resulted from rape or
contraceptive failure--or because the would-be father has abandoned her--or because the fetus is
malformed--would be forbidden from doing so. It would mean that they would be forced to endure
the misery of unwanted pregnancy and the incredible burdens of child rearing. It would mean
that women would be sentenced to 18-year terms of enslavement to unwanted children--thereby
suffocating their hopes, their dreams, their personal ambitions, their chance of happiness. And it
would mean that women who refused to submit to such a fate would be forced to turn to the
"back-alley" at a staggering risk to their health. According to a World Health Organization
estimate, 110,000 women worldwide die each year from such illegal abortions and up to six times
as many suffer injury from them. Clearly, anti-abortionists believe that such women's lives are an
unimportant consideration in the issue of abortion. Why? Because, they claim, the embryo or fetus is
a human being--and thus to abort it is murder. But an embryo is not a human being, and abortion is not
murder.
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Hyde Affirmative
Abortion Good – Mother> Fetus
Abortions give women a chance to fulfill their lives by not forcing them to have children
that restrict their independence.
Rice, Ethics Writer for Associated Content, 2006
(Brian, Associated Content, “Abortion: Ethical Analysis, a Utalitarian Argument for Abortion” 3-23-6,
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/25347/abortion_ethical_analysis_pg2.html?cat=37, Accessed 6-29-09,
SLR)
By utilizing abortion, women whom pregnancy is not an optimal decision (demographics stated above)
are able to terminate births before they can have a disastrous effect on their bodies, emotions, and even
lives. Women over 35 and teenagers have physical, financial, emotional, and mental reasons to abstain
from getting pregnant. Services that provide abortions to women of these likes give teenager a second
chance at fulfilling her life, or a middle-aged woman the chance to avoid physical complications from
birth.
The life of the mother outweighs the life of the dependent fetus
Peikoff, 03
(Leonard Peikoff, MD and Former Professor of Philosophy at New York University, 2003
http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2404.JM)
Abortion-rights advocates should not cede the terms "pro-life" and "right to life" to the anti-abortionists. It is
a woman's right to her life that gives her the right to terminate her pregnancy. Nor should abortion-rights
advocates keep hiding behind the phrase "a woman's right to choose." Does she have the right to choose
murder? That's what abortion would be, if the fetus were a person. The status of the embryo in the first
trimester is the basic issue that cannot be sidestepped. The embryo is clearly pre-human; only the
mystical notions of religious dogma treat this clump of cells as constituting a person. We must not
confuse potentiality with actuality. An embryo is a potential human being. It can, granted the woman's
choice, develop into an infant. But what it actually is during the first trimester is a mass of relatively
undifferentiated cells that exist as a part of a woman's body. If we consider what it is rather than what
it might become, we must acknowledge that the embryo under three months is something far more
primitive than a frog or a fish. To compare it to an infant is ludicrous. If we are to accept the equation
of the potential with the actual and call the embryo an "unborn child," we could, with equal logic, call
any adult an "undead corpse" and bury him alive or vivisect him for the instruction of medical
students. That tiny growth, that mass of protoplasm, exists as a part of a woman's body. It is not an
independently existing, biologically formed organism, let alone a person. That which lives within the
body of another can claim no right against its host. Rights belong only to individuals, not to collectives
or to parts of an individual. ("Independent" does not mean self-supporting--a child who depends on its
parents for food, shelter, and clothing, has rights because it is an actual, separate human being.) "Rights," in
Ayn Rand's words, "do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights
until it is born." It is only on this base that we can support the woman's political right to do what she
chooses in this issue. No other person--not even her husband--has the right to dictate what she may do
with her own body. That is a fundamental principle of freedom. There are many legitimate reasons
why a rational woman might have an abortion--accidental pregnancy, rape, birth defects, danger to
her health. The issue here is the proper role for government. If a pregnant woman acts wantonly or
capriciously, then she should be condemned morally--but not treated as a murderer. If someone capriciously
puts to death his cat or dog, that can well be reprehensible, even immoral, but it is not the province of the
state to interfere. The same is true of an abortion which puts to death a far less-developed growth in a
woman's body. If anti-abortionists object that an embryo has the genetic equipment of a human being,
remember: so does every cell in the human body. Abortions are private affairs and often involve painfully
difficult decisions with life-long consequences. But, tragically, the lives of the parents are completely ignored
by the anti-abortionists. Yet that is the essential issue. In any conflict it's the actual, living persons who count,
not the mere potential of the embryo. Being a parent is a profound responsibility--financial,
psychological, moral--across decades. Raising a child demands time, effort, thought and money. It's a
full-time job for the first three years, consuming thousands of hours after that--as caretaker,
supervisor, educator and mentor. To a woman who does not want it, this is a death sentence. The antiCARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
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abortionists' attitude, however, is: "The actual life of the parents be damned! Give up your life, liberty,
property and the pursuit of your own happiness." Sentencing a woman to sacrifice her life to an embryo is not
upholding the "right-to-life." The anti-abortionists' claim to being "pro-life" is a classic Big Lie. You cannot
be in favor of life and yet demand the sacrifice of an actual, living individual to a clump of tissue. Antiabortionists are not lovers of life--lovers of tissue, maybe. But their stand marks them as haters of real human
Societal Pressures force women to sacrifice their lives for their unborn children.
Cassidy, 04
(Feminist Perspectives on the Self, first published June 28, 1999, substantive revision Jan 7, 2004;
http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries//feminism-self/, JM)
“Feminist critiques, we have seen...gesture of self-renunciation.”Although coverture has been
rescinded, vestiges of this denial of women's selfhood can be discerned in recent legal rulings, and the
doctrine remains influential in culture. For example, pregnant women remain vulnerable to legally
sanctioned violations of their right to bodily integrity. Courts have forced pregnant women to submit
to invasive medical procedures for the sake of the fetuses they were carrying, although no court would
compel any other woman or man to undergo comparable procedures for the sake of a living individual,
including a family member (Bordo 1993). Selflessness remains the pregnant woman's legal status.
Moreover, the stereotype of feminine selflessness still thrives in the popular imagination. Any selfconfident, self-assertive woman is out of step with prevalent gender norms, and a mother who is not
unstintingly devoted to her children is likely to be perceived as selfish and face severe social censure.
Despite the fact that it is no longer legally mandatory for wives to give up their maiden names, many women
adhere to this custom and perpetuate this traditional gesture of self-renunciation.
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Hyde Affirmative
Abortion Good -- Impact: Morality/Choice (1/3)
We have a moral obligation to uphold abortion to protect society, the individual, and even
the unborn child.
Alstad, National Abortion Rights Action League and doctorate at Yale, ‘97
(Diana, Resources for Independent Thinking, ABORTION & THE MORALITY WARS:
TAKING THE MORAL
OFFENSIVE, AD: 7-5-9, Fall 1997, http://www.rit.org/editorials/abortion/moralwar.html, CMM)
Unless we present a morality that's superior to what I call the "pro-force" side, all other justifications for
abortion will be continually eroded and our right to choose endangered. Instead of continuing to talk past
each other, we must confront the religious right on the turf it wishes to monopolizemorality. We must
challenge their polemic that depicts the act of abortion as immoral. The time is ripe to offer a
powerfully articulated alternative moral view of abortion itselfnot just of reducing the need for it. We
cannot take the moral offensive to protect womens choice until we present abortion as a moral, positive
act.Many will argue that lowering the rate of unwanted pregnancies should be the top priority. I believe it
should be a top priority. I also think that womens having unimpeded access to abortion is a prerequisite
for the social changes needed to bring education and consciousness into the whole arena of
reproduction. The essential reason for this is that freedom to choose the direction of ones life enables
more women to consciously participate in the social, political spheres. Only by women being able to
determine their reproductive destinies will the social climate begin to change and the need for abortion
lessen. This alone gives women the protection needed in an imperfect world.First of all, for abortion to be
considered a moral act, it cannot be viewed as an isolated act, and thereby separate from other aspects of
society. Instead the immense and negative repercussions on society of removing choice must be made clear.
We must not only undermine the opposition's stance on abortion, we have to undermine the whole moral
system that stands behind it by presenting abortion rights as a consequence of a moral point of view thats
good for everyone--women, men, children, families and society as a whole. One of our strategies should be to
spell out the difference between our family values and theirs, which could break the spell this buzzword has
over the media and politicians. Moral Politics by George Lakoff is useful because it contrasts the two
opposing sets of family values and shows theirs is having a far more powerful effect on current politics partly
because we do not articulate our moral framework as consistently and forcefully as they do.The reason
abortion is moral is very simple--although its implications are complex. The reason is this: forcing any
woman to have a child she doesn't want is harmful for the woman and for society. It means bringing
another unwanted and potentially uncared-for child into this world while limiting the potential of
women, including the potentials of her motherhood should she choose to become one at a more
appropriate time. It's not abortion but rather unwanted, inadequately cared for children who are one of the
greatest sources of violence on the planet. Such children as they grow older are not only typically angry and
prone to violence, but are potential time-bombs that can capriciously explode and destroy whatever is around
them. To choose not to give birth to a child when there's little foundation for her or his well-being is a
moral and protective act.
Claims of immorality are misplaced; banning abortion is the real immorality
Armstrong and Hseigh, writers for Capitalism Magazine and PhD. Candidate of
Philosophy at University of Colorado, 08
(Ari and Diana, September 6, Capitalism Magazine, http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5255) PMK
Much of the popular opposition to abortion stems from a faulty analysis of the morality of abortion.
Contrary to the critics of abortion, the termination of even a healthy pregnancy can be a morally
responsible choice. Why do women get abortions? A 2005 article in Perspectives on Sexual and
Reproductive Health published relevant polling results. Thirteen percent of women cited "Possible
problems affecting the health of the fetus." Twelve percent cited "Physical problems with my health."
One percent got an abortion because of rape, and fewer than half of a percent got an abortion because
of incest. The most popular answer given (where women could list multiple reasons) was, "Having a
baby would dramatically change my life," at 74 percent. Many women also offered financial reasons
(73 percent), lack of a partner or problems with a romantic relationship (48 percent), or desire not to
have another child (38 percent).57 Most people do not object to abortions in cases involving rape,
incest, deformity, or risk to the woman's life. What about abortions obtained for other reasons, when
the pregnancy is healthy? Is abortion morally acceptable even if a woman failed to use birth control—
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or failed to use it properly? Irresponsible sex is the most common cause of unintended pregnancy.
One study found that 46 percent of women who got pregnant unintentionally weren't using any birth
control. Among the rest, only 13 percent of birth-control users and 14 percent of condom users
reported correct use.58 That's not surprising, as the difference in outcomes between "perfect use" and
"typical use" of birth-control methods is dramatic.59 Abortion can be a moral choice for the
significant minority of pregnancies due to a failure of properly-used birth control. Responsible adults
do not allow themselves to be buffeted about in life by accidental circumstances. Instead, they
consciously direct the course of their lives by their own rational judgment. So a woman (and her
partner) ought not bear a child just because she happens to become pregnant, despite careful use of
birth control. Instead, they ought to consider the impact of the pregnancy and resulting child on their
health, finances, careers, and well-being. They ought to consider whether their relationship is stable
enough to withstand the strain of raising a child. They ought to have a child only if they are willing
and able to be good parents. That's why, when the birth control of a sexually responsible couple fails,
terminating an unwanted pregnancy is a morally responsible course. Opponents of abortion often
claim that couples can protect themselves against unwanted pregnancy by refraining from sex
entirely. However, sex is a magnificent human value integral to any healthy, developed romantic
relationship. Moreover, carrying a pregnancy to term itself involves some risk, as well as time, effort,
and endurance. Putting up a child for adoption can involve high emotional costs. And raising a child
to adulthood is an 18-year (and longer) commitment of time, energy, and resources. Those costs may
be more than many couples are willing to bear, including married couples. So people who condemn
abortion as immoral even when birth control fails (or worse, who advocate a ban) demand that a
woman and her partner choose between abstinence and procreation. That is morally wrong: it's not a
choice that couples in a modern society should be forced to make. Couples who cannot be bothered to
use birth control or who use it carelessly, then terminate the resulting pregnancy by abortion,
understandably earn the frustration of much of the public. Yet such abortions should not be restricted
or outlawed, nor even condemned as immoral. The fact that a fetus is not a person means that the
government must uphold the woman's right to choose whether to maintain or terminate a pregnancy,
regardless of how it was caused. However, respect for a woman's rights does not require endorsing
her decision to terminate a pregnancy. Yet if an unwanted pregnancy was caused by irresponsible
behavior, then that behavior ought to be morally blamed, not any ensuing abortion. Similarly, if a
skier breaks his leg by skiing too fast in dangerous terrain, we ought to blame him for that skiing, not
for his sensible choice to restore his leg to health by surgery. Moreover, the fact that an embryo is not
a person, nor even sentient, means that the woman (and her partner) have no moral obligation to
consider its not-yet-existent interests in their decision to abort or not. They ought to consider the
impact of bearing a child on their own lives, as well as the kind of life they could offer that born child.
Nothing else matters. So when an unwanted pregnancy results from the careless use or absence of
birth control, an abortion may be the most responsible course of action, as the couple is likely illprepared for the immense burdens of raising a child well. In such cases, the couple ought to resolve to
always use birth control properly, in order to avoid the distress of another unintended pregnancy. Yet
they should feel no guilt for the abortion, if that best served their interests, only for engaging in
irresponsible sex. The opponents of abortion often gather support for their cause by associating
abortions with promiscuous, irresponsible sex and other self-destructive behaviors. However, women
often become pregnant unexpectedly through no fault of their own. In other cases, the moral wrong
was not the abortion but the irresponsible sex. In any case, the moral condemnation of abortion is
often wrong: the embryo or fetus is not a person whose interests must be balanced against those of the
woman. The attempt to outlaw abortion in order to punish irresponsible sex is doubly wrong: it is a
violation of the rights of the woman and it is abusive to the children born to irresponsible, uncaring
parents.
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Abortion Good -- Impact: Morality/Choice (3/3)
Moral imperative to uphold abortion to protect the futures of unready parents and society
who will feel the negative impact. Anything but abortion availability is not sane.
Alstad, National Abortion Rights Action League and doctorate at Yale, ‘97
(Diana, Resources for Independent Thinking, ABORTION & THE MORALITY WARS:
TAKING THE MORAL
OFFENSIVE, AD: 7-5-9, Fall 1997, http://www.rit.org/editorials/abortion/moralwar.html, CMM)
We owe it to young women to protect their futures and development. But who is trying to convince
young teens to terminate? This is another example of being gagged from telling the truth--perhaps
even thinking it. Anti-abortionists can beg, insult, deceive, harass, guilt-trip and use violence to
convince a teenager to have a baby. Instead of saying, "You have to make a difficult decision," we
should be presenting the vast and problematic implications of a child bringing a child into the world.
Failure to do so is not sane. Might this not have prevented the tragic incidents of teen infanticide? The
moral climate created by the fundamentalists greatly contributes to making abortion a hard decision for
young teens. However upsetting it may be, for a 15-year-old to choose abortion over motherhood should not
be a difficult choice. She needs to realize that choosing abortion can be morally right. That many
teenagers want babies for lack of other sources of respect, meaning, and love is a social problem. For a
young teen to bring a baby into this complex and dangerous world is to be a mother unprepared and
unequipped for the great challenge of raising a child. It handicaps her options and ability to develop so
that she can be more prepared for life, and also for later motherhood should she so choose. The real
moral outrage is that the religious wrong is keeping society from doing what it can to prevent children
from having children. A sane and moral society would provide free or at least freely available
contraception, sex education, pregnancy counseling discouraging unprepared parenting, and abortions
when needed.
Many social and personal tragedies are rooted in unprepared parenting. Choice is key to
conscious reproduction
Alstad, National Abortion Rights Action League and doctorate at Yale, ‘97
(Diana, Resources for Independent Thinking, ABORTION & THE MORALITY WARS:
TAKING THE MORAL
OFFENSIVE, AD: 7-5-9, Fall 1997, http://www.rit.org/editorials/abortion/moralwar.html, CMM)
Womans recent ability to control her reproductive destiny is bringing about an unprecedented leap in
social evolution. Like it or not, the potentials brought about by choice in one of humanity's most important
and basic functions, reproduction, have implications of enormous magnitude. Freeing women to partake in all
other aspects of society if they so choose transforms basic social roles and structures. Choice opens the
possibility of conscious conception and reproduction for humanity, which is new and necessary
because so many social problems and personal tragedies stem from the lack of consciousness in
reproduction and unprepared parenting. Even though we are at the threshold of a new era, we are still
fighting for reproductive freedom because the old authoritarian moral order cannot integrate its vast
repercussions and extraordinary potential. Choice is necessary for conscious reproduction, and
conscious reproduction is necessary to meet the momentous challenges humanity is facing.
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: Abortion Bad -- Abortion Inevitable (1/4)
Outlawing abortion results in unsafe abortions and does not reduce the number of
abortions that occur.
Rosenthal, New York Times reporter, 2007
(Elisabeth, The New York Times, “Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Compare,” October 12, 2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/12abortion.html, accessed June 29, 2009, GD).
A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries
where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter
women seeking it. Moreover, the researchers found that abortion was safe in countries where it was
legal, but dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely. Globally, abortion
accounts for 13 percent of women’s deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, and there are 31 abortions for
every 100 live births, the study said. The results of the study, a collaboration between scientists from the
World Health Organization in Geneva and the Guttmacher Institute in New York, a reproductive rights
group, are being published Friday in the journal Lancet. “We now have a global picture of induced abortion
in the world, covering both countries where it is legal and countries where laws are very restrictive,” Dr. Paul
Van Look, director of the W.H.O. Department of Reproductive Health and Research, said in a
telephone interview. “What we see is that the law does not influence a woman’s decision to have an
abortion. If there’s an unplanned pregnancy, it does not matter if the law is restrictive or liberal.” But
the legal status of abortion did greatly affect the dangers involved, the researchers said. “Generally,
where abortion is legal it will be provided in a safe manner,” Dr. Van Look said. “And the opposite is
also true: where it is illegal, it is likely to be unsafe, performed under unsafe conditions by poorly
trained providers.” The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make
abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the
Guttmacher Institute.
Restrictive abortion laws result in more harmful, illegal abortions.
Sedgh et al, Guttmacher Institute senior research associate, 2007
(Gilda, Stanley Henshaw, Susheela Singh, Elisabeth Ahman, and Iqbal H. Shaw, The Lancet, “Induced abortion:
estimated rates and trends worldwide,” October 2007, http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2007/10/17/13/ChangGuttmacher_Institute_abortion_report.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf, accessed June 29, 2009, GD).
Unsafe and safe abortions correspond in large part with illegal and legal abortions, respectively
(panel 1). The findings presented here indicate that unrestrictive abortion laws do not predict a high
incidence of abortion, and by the same token, highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with
low abortion incidence. Indeed, both the highest and lowest abortion rates were seen in regions where
abortion is almost uniformly legal under a wide range of circumstances. Results of previous studies have
shown a strong correlation between abortion and contraception use such that, in settings with steady
fertility rates over time, abortion incidence declines as contraceptive use increases.26 An analysis of trends
in eastern Europe and western and south-central Asia indicates that this pattern is evident in those
regions.22 Although abortion is likely to be safe in countries where it is legally available under a wide
range of circumstances, unsafe abortions still take place in some of these areas because of poor
information or access to safe medical services. In eastern Europe and central Asia, 8–16 per 100
procedures lead to post-abortion complications and 15–50% of maternal deaths are related to abortion.21
Some of the high-risk abortions are illegal, whereas others are legal but done under poor conditions or
using inappropriate methods. More often, however, legal abortions are safe. In the USA, fewer than 0•3%
of women undergoing abortions have a complication that necessitates admission to hospital,27 and
abortions (both spontaneous and induced) account for 4% of maternal deaths.28 Similarly, some abortions
in restricted settings are done by trained providers, but most abortions in these settings have high risks to a
woman’s life and health. In Africa, where abortion is highly restricted by law in nearly all countries,
there are 650 deaths for every 100 000 procedures, compared with fewer than 10 per 100 000
procedures in developed regions.18 Worldwide, an estimated 5 million women are hospitalised every
year for treatment of complications related to unsafe abortion.29 Moreover, illegal procedures are
harmful even when they do not lead to these consequences, because they require women to take
actions in violation of the law and often without the knowledge or support of their partners or
family.
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A2: Abortion Bad – Abortion Inevitable (2/4)
Abortions are inevitable, they‘ve been happening since ancient Greece. The only question is
will society allow these operations or force womyn into illegal ones.
Newman, Managing Editor for RH Reality Check, 08
(Amie, RH Reality Check, “A Pre-Roe Voice On Why Legal Abortion Is Crucial”,
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/06/03/a-preroe-voice-on-why-legal-abortion-is-crucial, accessed 6/30/09,
KLM)
Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion - darning needles, crochet
hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off. The above
excerpt is from an eye-opening essay in today's New York Times by obstetrician/gynecologist and pre-Roe
abortion provider Dr. Warren Fielding. Dr. Fielding spent five years in New York City municipal
hospitals (from 1948-1953) treating women who were admitted suffering from the complications of
illegal abortion. His essay is disturbing to read but not at all surprising. Dr. Fielding's essay is a polemic -but not on the debate about whether abortion is "good" or "bad." His essay presents explicit facts on what
happens to women when abortion is safe and legal versus what women experience when abortion is
illegal. When Dr. Fielding writes of a patient's "desperate need to terminate her pregnancy" most
women can almost viscerally relate. The desire not only to outlaw abortion from U.S. society but to
excise it is a call to eviscerate one of the most basic of women's dual natures. Many women have the
ability to become pregnant and all women have brains and complex emotions. It's a question of how
much of woman we allow women to be. The only thing that is left out of the essay is precisely what Roe
does not address - which is that Roe v. Wade, over three decades in, has not made legal abortion a reality for
many women in this country. The promise of legal abortion is not a promise of accessible or affordable
abortion for: women who are uninsured, women who are under-insured, marginalized women who do
not have ready access to the information they need to make fully informed decisions based on language
barriers or immigration status, and young women. But Dr. Fielding provides us with the cold data that
allows us to understand and accept not only that abortion exists - as he writes, "They have always been
done, dating from ancient Greek days" - but that we must afford women safety and security, under
law.
Abortions are going to happen whether we like it or not. With current intolerant
mindsets, the mother and child’s life will be lowered.
Rice, Ethics Writer for Associated Content, 2006
(Brian, Associated Content, “Abortion: Ethical Analysis, a Utalitarian Argument for Abortion” 3-23-6,
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/25347/abortion_ethical_analysis_pg2.html?cat=37, Accessed 6-29-09,
SLR)
Abortions are going to occur regardless of whether or not society finds them ethical; if this is the case,
then does it not make more sense (in regards to protecting and serving the greatest amount of happiness for
the greatest number of people) to create an accepting, tolerant, and safe environment for such
procedures to occur? Without these facilities, more unwanted births would occur and statistical
evidence proves that these situations create undue hardships on not only the mother, but the entire
family. This, in turn, lowers the quality of life of all those involved and can be seen as impeding the
quality of life for the mother and her family.
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A2: Abortion Bad – Abortion Inevitable (3/4)
The criminalization of abortion forces many womyn into dangerous illegal ones that can
seriously injure them.
Human Rights Watch 05
(“Q&A: Human Rights Law and Access to Abortion” June 15, 2005
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/06/15/qa-human-rights-law-and-access-abortion#_Right_to_life Accessed 628-09 KLM)
Every year, as many as 78,000 women worldwide die as a direct result of illegal and unsafe abortions.
An unknown number of others suffer serious and sometimes permanent health complications from the
some 20 million illegal abortions performed worldwide each year. Common complications of unsafe
abortions include infertility, serious infections that may lead to the need for a hysterectomy, hemorrhaging
and severe blood-loss, uterine perforation, pelvic inflammatory disease, and difficulties in retaining later
pregnancies. Illegal and unsafe abortions do not always involve complications, and are not always life
threatening. Nonetheless, complications are potentially life threatening when women do not have access
to fast, effective, and adequate medical attention. Why are illegal abortions generally unsafe? The
criminalization of abortion contributes to it being unsafe for women for three main reasons: 1) unsafe
abortion methods; 2) lack of medical accountability; and 3) discouraging post-abortion care. First,
where abortion is illegal, women who are unable to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term are driven to
desperate measures. Some women attempt to abort by inserting knitting needles or other sharp
objects into their uterus, with a high possibility of severe infections of hemorrhaging as a result. Other
women resort to abortive medicines that can seriously compromise their health if taken without proper
medical supervision. Second, where abortion is illegal, clandestine abortion clinics escape government
regulation and oversight. As a consequence, these clinics can operate with little regard for women's
health and lives. Third, where abortion is illegal, women who fear criminal proceedings may not seek
necessary and lifesaving post-abortion care.
The Hyde Amendment is modeled worldwide, resulting in 70,000 deaths per year due to
illegal abortions.
Brooks, Staff Attorney, National Health Law Program; Skuster, Policy Associate, Ipas Horsley,
Communications and Campaigns Director, National Network of Abortion Funds. 06
(Jamie D, Patty, and Sarah. “Hyde Amendment: A Violation of Human Rights.” 10/2006. 7/3/09
http://www.hyde30years.nnaf.org/documents/HydeandHumanRights2.pdf. JM)
The 1973 Helms Amendment, which is the equivalent of the Hyde Amendment in the international
arena, prohibits U.S. funding for abortion-related activities outside of the United States. In 2001, the
Bush administration reintroduced the Global Gag Rule, which prohibits U.S. funding for foreign
organizations that work to promote access to abortion with their own, non-U.S. government funding. These
restrictive U.S. policies have resulted in increased risk to the health and lives of women in the
developing world. Worldwide, where safe abortion is unavailable, nearly 70,000 women die from
unsafe abortions each year and tens of thousands more suffer serious injury.10
Legal abortions are typically safe.
Public Health and Social Justice, No Year
(Public Health and Social Justice Website, “Obstacles to Abortion Short Version,” http://phsj.org/?page_id=32, 630-9, SLR)
Facts re Abortion [is] One of the safest and most common medical procedures available [and the] Risk of
death from legal abortion [is] less than that from a shot of penicillin 10-30 times more dangerous to carry
a fetus to term than to undergo a legal abortion
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A2: Abortion Bad – Abortion Inevitable (4/4)
Abortion rates decrease when abortion is legalized.
St. Petersburg Times, editorial, 2007
(“Want to Curb Abortion? Keep it safe and legal,” 10/20, 16A, Lexis, GMK)
If abortion became illegal tomorrow, it wouldn't become less prevalent, just less safe. That is the conclusion of
a comprehensive global study comparing abortion rates in countries where the procedure is legal to those in places
where it is outlawed. The study, a collaboration between the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher
Institute in New York, found that when women around the world experience an unwanted pregnancy, they will
seek out abortion services at about the same rates, regardless of the law. The only difference is that those who
obtain illegal abortions are far more likely to die from complications. The statistics indicate that the places in
the world where abortion is legal and where contraceptives are easily available are also the places with the
fewest abortions relative to population. For example, in Uganda, where abortion is illegal and abstinence is the
exclusive focus of sex education programs, the abortion rate is approximately 54 per 1,000 women. Compare that to
Western Europe, where abortion is legal and contraception is widely available. There the abortion rate is the lowest
in the world at 12 per 1,000 women. If antiabortion activists really want to sharply reduce the rate of abortions
worldwide, this study provides a road map: Keep abortion safe and legal and ramp up education on contraception
and its wide distribution.
Absence of abortion provisions justifies self induced, inhumane illegal abortion. Pre-Roe
era proves. Such is the ultimate evil.
Bollinger 2005 (Michelle, “When abortion was illegal,” October 21,
http://socialistworker.org/2005-2/562/562_06_Abortion.shtml, accessed 7-1-09)
But by the early 1960s, the situation had reversed dramatically. In New York, for example, deaths resulting
from illegal abortions accounted for 42 percent of the maternal mortality rate. There were fewer abortionists
in 1955 than there were in 1940. Across the U.S., larger and larger numbers of women died from illegal
abortion after the Second World War than before. In the post-Second World War era in the U.S., there was a
backlash against women's rights, and women working outside the home and living independent lives. Central
to this was a crackdown on illegal abortion that drove it underground and ushered in an era of tragedy and
horror for women. Clinics and midwives' homes and offices were raided and their patients' lives exposed
publicly in show trials that mirrored the worst of the anti-communist witch-hunts of the McCarthyist era.
Women were accosted by police detectives outside clinics and forced to testify against those who performed
abortions. Anyone who didn't cooperate was likely to wake up the next morning with details of their personal
lives splashed all over the pages of the newspaper. As a result, most illegal abortions were increasingly
self-induced by women, or performed by a back-alley butcher. Both were nightmares in their own right.
Women often tried to induce abortion or cause a miscarriage by throwing themselves down stairs or
inflicting violence on themselves. They ingested, douched with or inserted into themselves a chilling
variety of chemicals and toxins--from bleach to potassium permanganate to turpentine to gunpowder
and whiskey. Knitting needles, crochet hooks, scissors and coat hangers were all among the tools used
by women who had no choice but to resort to these means. Thousands of women died from poisoning
and injury. Thousands of others lived, but with the pain of permanent injuries and disfigurement.
Women who sought abortions from back-alley butchers encountered similar horrors. Because of the
crackdown, the clandestine nature of illegal abortion meant that women who sought them were often
blindfolded, driven to remote areas and passed off to people they didn't know or couldn't see. Leslie
Reagan's book contains stories of women forced to get abortions from drunk abortionists, using
unsanitary tools in filthy rooms and even the backseats of cars.
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The anti-choice movement uses the smokescreen of abortion as murder to mask deep
patriarchal underpinnings.
Arthur, writer for the Pro-Choice Action Network, 03
(Joyce, Pro-Choice Action Network newsletter, “SPECIAL REPORT: WHERE IS THE ANTI-CHOICE
MOVEMENT HEADED?”, http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/print-friendly/03summer.shtml,
accessed 7-1-09, KLM)
The primary motivation behind the anti-choice agenda is a sexist paternalism that requires control of
women and their sexuality. A patriarchal worldview steeped in religious fundamentalism leads antichoicers to resent and resist feminism and women's autonomy. They believe that a woman's highest
calling is to devote herself to husband and family.[3] Religious fundamentalism is also permeated with a
puritanical view of sex, complete with a double standard of sexual behaviour for men and women. Boys will
be boys and must sow their wild oats, but good girls shouldn't even think about sex, let alone have it. The
only acceptable sexual activity for women is procreative sex in the marriage bed. In fact, sex without
the intent to procreate is a sin even for married couples, according to the Catholic Church. In light of
all this, it's obviously wrong for any woman to get an abortion—it means she is escaping the
consequences of her sexual sins and dodging her motherhood duty. Whether abortion is murder or not
is almost immaterial—that argument becomes just a smokescreen, a cheap slogan used mainly to
inflame passions and incite violence.
Most national and international laws state that life begins at birth.
Cook and Dickens, Professors in the Faculty of Law, Medicine, and the Joint Centre for
Bioethics at the University of Toronto, 08
(Rebecca and Bernard, “Human Rights Dynamics of Abortion Law Reform”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25
No. 1, March 13, 2008, http://www.law.utoronto.ca/documents/reprohealth/PUB-HumanRightsDynamics.pdf,
accessed 6-29-09, KLM)
Everyone may legitimately claim respect for and protection of their human rights between complete live birth
and death. Strongly contested, however, is whether the same claim may be made on behalf of a
fertilized ovum from conception. In parts of the world, the contest has been particularly animated since
1869, when the Roman Catholic Church adopted the view that human life warrants full protection from
conception. 61 Historical law has not recognized this claim. The highest courts in many countries have
declared that legal protec- tion of human beings originates at live birth. In the Anglo-Saxon common
law tradition, a child does not become a human “in being” (that is, a “human being” or “person”)
until it has completely proceeded in a living state from the body of its mother. 62 International human
rights tribunals also generally adhere to the “born alive” rule, according to which a claim may be
pursued for prenatal injury only on condition that the fetus is born alive.
Life begins at birth--Thus no adequate brain development at conception
Swomle, M Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Colorado, 93
(John Swomle, Dickinson College, , 1993 St Louis University Public Law Review, p. 410-11. JM)
Charles Gardner, who did his doctoral research on the genetic control of brain development at the University of
Michigan Medical School’s Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, writes, “The biological’ argument that a
human being is created at fertilization . . . comes as a surprise to most embryologists . . . for it contradicts all
that they have learned in the past few decades.” Gardner notes that in humans when two sibling embryos
combine into one . . . the resultant person may be completely normal. If the two original embryos were
determined to become particular individuals, such a thing could not happen. The embryos would recognize
themselves to be different . . . and would not unite. But here the cells seem unaware of any distinction between
themselves . . . . The only explanation is that the individual is not fixed or determined at this early stage. Gardner
also writes, “The fertilized egg is clearly not a prepackaged human being . . . . Our genes give us a propensity
for certain characteristics, but it is the enactment of the complex process of development that gives us our
individual characteristics. So how can an embryo be a human being?” He further states, “The information required
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
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CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
to make an eye or a finger does not exist in the fertilized egg. It exists in the positions and interactions of cells and
molecules that will be formed only at a later time.” Such research and discoveries lead to the conclusion that a
developmental process taking about nine months produces a human being. Therefore the idea that a human exists
at conception is a theological statement rather than a medical or scientific fact. Gardner concludes that
“fertilization, the injection of sperm DNA in the egg, is just one of the many small steps toward full human
potential. It seems arbitrary to invest this biological event with any special moral significance . . . . It would be
a great tragedy if, in ignorance of the process that is the embryo, state legislators pass laws restricting
individual freedom of choice and press them upon the people. The embryo is not a child. It is not a baby. It is
not yet a human being.”
Defining personhood as beginning at birth is necessary in a world of sexual inequalities to
avoid trivializing and perpetuating sexism.
MacKinnon, Professor of Law, 91
(Catharine A. MacKinnon, Reflections on Sex Equality under Law, Source: The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 100, No. 5,
Centennial Issue (Mar., 1991), pp. 1281-1328, Accessed 6/30/09, KLM)
Personhood is a legal and social status, not a biological fact. As gestation progresses, the fetus grows
from something that is more like a lump of cells to something that is more like a baby. As the body
part analogy draws on the earlier reality to define the later one, the personhood analogy draws on the later
reality to define the earlier one. In my opinion and in the experience of many pregnant women, the fetus is a
human form of life. It is alive. But the existence of sex inequality in society requires that completed
live birth mark the personhood line. If sex equality existed socially-if women were recognized as
persons, sexual aggression were truly deviant, and childrearing were shared and consistent with a full life rather
than at odds with it-the fetus still might not be considered a person but the question of its political
status would be a very different one.153 So long as it gestates in utero, the fetus is defined by its relation to the pregnant
woman. This is why its status turns on her status. More than a body part but less than a person, where it is, is largely what it
is. From the standpoint of the pregnant woman, it is both me and not me.15 It "is" the pregnant woman in the sense that it is in
her and of her and is hers more than anyone's. It "is not" her in the sense that she is not all that is there. In a legal system that
views the individual as a unitary self, and that self as a bundle of rights, it is no wonder that the pregnant woman has eluded
legal grasp, and her fetus with her. The legal status of the fetus cannot be considered separately from the
legal and social status of the woman in whose body it is. The pregnant woman is more than a
location for gestation. She is a woman, in the socially gendered and unequal sense of the word. In an
analysis of women's status as socially disadvantaged, the woman is not a mere vehicle for an event
which happens to occur within her physical boundaries for biological reasons.155 Women's relation
to the fetus is not that of a powerful, fully capacitated being in relation to a powerless,
incapacitated, and incomplete one. Indeed, it shows how powerless women are that it takes a fetus
to make a woman look powerful by comparison. The relation of the woman to the fetus must be
seen in the social context of sex inequality in which women have been kept relatively powerless
compared with men. The fetus may have been conceived in powerlessness and, as a child, may be
reared in powerlessness-the woman's.156 The effects of women's inequality in procreation can range
from situations in which the woman does not choose to conceive but is forced to deliver to those in
which the woman chooses to conceive and deeply desires to deliver but the baby dies.
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Abortions should not be condemned as immoral due because a fetus is not a life.
Armstrong, writer for FreeColorado.com, AriArmstrong.com, Grand Junction's Free Press,
author of Values of Harry Potter and Hsieh, founder of the Coalition for Secular Government
and a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, 2008. (Ari and
Diana, Capitalism Magazine “Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Morality and Abortion (Part 6 of 6),”
9-6-08, http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5255, accessed 6-30-09)
Couples who cannot be bothered to use birth control or who use it carelessly, then terminate the resulting
pregnancy by abortion, understandably earn the frustration of much of the public. Yet such abortions
should not be restricted or outlawed, nor even condemned as immoral. The fact that a
fetus is not a person means that the government must uphold the woman's right to
choose whether to maintain or terminate a pregnancy, regardless of how it was
caused. However, respect for a woman's rights does not require endorsing her
decision to terminate a pregnancy. Yet if an unwanted pregnancy was caused by
irresponsible behavior, then that behavior ought to be morally blamed, not any
ensuing abortion. Similarly, if a skier breaks his leg by skiing too fast in dangerous
terrain, we ought to blame him for that skiing, not for his sensible choice to restore
his leg to health by surgery.
Abortion is not immoral; an embryo is not sentient
Armstrong, writer for FreeColorado.com, AriArmstrong.com, Grand Junction's Free Press,
author of Values of Harry Potter and Hsieh, founder of the Coalition for Secular Government
and a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, 2008. (Ari and
Diana, Capitalism Magazine “Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Morality and Abortion (Part 6 of 6),”
9-6-08, http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5255, accessed 6-30-09
Moreover, the fact that an embryo is not a person, nor even sentient, means that the woman (and her partner)
have no moral obligation to consider its not-yet-existent interests in their decision to abort or not. They ought
to consider the impact of bearing a child on their own lives, as well as the kind of life they could offer that
born child. Nothing else matters. So when an unwanted pregnancy results from the careless use or absence of birth
control, an abortion may be the most responsible course of action, as the couple is likely ill-prepared for the
immense burdens of raising a child well. In such cases, the couple ought to resolve to always use birth control
properly, in order to avoid the distress of another unintended pregnancy. Yet they should feel no guilt for the
abortion, if that best served their interests, only for engaging in irresponsible sex. The opponents of abortion
often gather support for their cause by associating abortions with promiscuous, irresponsible sex and other
self-destructive behaviors. However, women often become pregnant unexpectedly through no fault of their
own. In other cases, the moral wrong was not the abortion but the irresponsible sex. In any case, the moral
condemnation of abortion is often wrong: the embryo or fetus is not a person whose interests must be
balanced against those of the woman. The attempt to outlaw abortion in order to punish irresponsible sex is
doubly
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158
Hyde Affirmative
A2: Abortion Bad – Murder (4/4)
A potential baby does not have the moral status of an actual baby- no right to life
Armstrong, writer for FreeColorado.com, AriArmstrong.com, Grand Junction's Free Press,
author of Values of Harry Potter and Hsieh, founder of the Coalition for Secular Government
and a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, 2008. (Ari and
Diana, Capitalism Magazine “Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Morality and Abortion (Part 5 of 6),”
9-5-08, http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5254, accessed 6-30-09)
Establishing a fertilized egg as "life" takes the debate nowhere. Burton is wrong when she claims that
"life begins at the time of fertilization." Both the sperm and the egg are already alive prior to
fertilization, so life precedes fertilization. Yet we do not regard every sperm (and egg) as sacred, as in
the classic Monty Python sketch. In general, the fact that something is alive is not sufficient to give it the
moral status of a person: animals and plants are alive, yet they are not persons. Nor is the fact that
something is human and alive sufficient to make it a person. Every cell in our body is both human and
alive, yet we don't worry about giving blood for testing or scraping off a few skin cells in a fall. Also, a
cancer is a distinct, human, living entity that we try very hard to kill. A fertilized egg is different from
those other living things because, in addition to being alive and human, it might develop into a born baby
given the right conditions. Nobody disputes this fact. What opponents of abortion fail to establish,
however, is that a potential baby has the moral status of an actual baby. In fact, the advocates of
Amendment 48 depend on an equivocation on "human being" to make their case. A fertilized egg is human,
in the sense that it contains human DNA. It is also a "being," in the sense that it is an entity. That's
also true of a gallbladder: it is human and it is an entity. Yet that doesn't make your gallbladder a
human person with the right to life. Similarly, the fact that an embryo is biologically a human entity is
not grounds for claiming that it's a human person with a right to life. Calling a fertilized egg a "human
being" is word-play intended to obscure the vast biological differences between a fertilized egg
traveling down a woman's fallopian tube and a born infant sleeping in a crib. It is intended to obscure
the fact that anti-abortion crusaders base their views on scripture and authority, not science.
An embryo nor a fetus constitutes a human being- science proves.
Beenfeldt, writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, 2006 (Christian, Capitalism Magazine “Abortion is
Not Muder: So-Called ‘Pro-Life’ Movement’ is Anti-Human,” 11-11-06,
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4833, accessed 6-30-09, AAJ)
Clearly, anti-abortionists believe that such women's lives are an unimportant consideration in the issue of
abortion. Why? Because, they claim, the embryo or fetus is a human being--and thus to abort it is murder.
But an embryo is not a human being, and abortion is not murder. There is no scientific reason to
characterize a raisin-size lump of cells as a human being. Biologically speaking, such an embryo is far
more primitive than a fish or a bird. Anatomically, its brain has yet to develop, so in terms of its
capacity for consciousness, it doesn't bear the remotest similarity to a human being. This growth of
cells has the potential to become a human being--if preserved, fed, nurtured, and brought to term by
the woman that it depends on--but it is not actually a human being. Analogously, seeds can become
mature plants--but that hardly makes a pile of acorns equal to a forest.
Fetus is not considered human until 23 weeks after conception.
Penner and Hall, 2000
(Paul and Richard, “The Beginning of Indevidual Human Personhood” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy , 33 :
174 – 182, 2008, 178-182, JM)
Given that the sensory end organs and the thalamus develop at roughly the same time in the
gestation process, we can conclude that the earliest that a fetus can begin storing the receptor data
that serve as the foundation for its eventual unique personhood is at the 23-week mark. Thus, in
order not to destroy a person in the making (as opposed to a “ mere ” human organism), we should
refrain from aborting any fetus later than 23 weeks in the gestation process except under special
circumstances. 7
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
159
Hyde Affirmative
A2: Abortion Bad – Religion (1/5)
The patriarchal political system discounts women's reproductive experiences while
coopting and marginalizing their sexual rights.
Braam and Hessini, experts on sexual and reproductive rights, 04
(Tamara and Leila, “The Power Dynamics Perpetuating Unsafe Abortion in Africa: A Feminist Perspective,”
African Journal of Reproductive Health,” Vol. 8:1, 4-2004, p. 43-51, AEL)
Patriarchal power lies at the core of understanding abortion as a contested and political issue. Patriarchy is the
systematic, structural, unjustified domination of women by men. It consists of those institutions, behaviours,
ideologies, and belief systems that maintain, justify and legitimate male gender privilege and power. Men are
viewed as the norm, and their life experiences and approaches are most often used as the basis on which to
determine social needs, articulate policy requirements and assign resources. The logical consequence of a maledefined and male-dominated world view is that experiences that are not directly informed by men's experiences,
notably pregnancy, childbirth, abortion and violence against women, are not seen as priority areas. Critical areas
that impact significantly on women's health and lives such as unsafe abortion cannot compete with traditional
development priorities such as unemployment and poverty. While we are not arguing for a hierarchy of social
needs, we believe that a feminisation of development issues is necessary, in which women's sexual and
reproductive health and rights are seen as central to the sustainable human development agenda. Simple biology
means that it is only women who must deal with the realities of unwanted pregnancy including facing the
potential dilemma of resorting to a life-threatening and unsafe abortion. By contrast, a maledominated paradigm
of development tells us in effect that (i) abortion is not an important social issue; (ii) abortion is immoral and
wrong, most often based on interpretations of religious texts by male religious gatekeepers; and (iii) abortion is
culturally problematic, as it challenges women's fundamental role and responsibility to bear children. Most
often, abortion is simply neglected by policymakers because it affects women and because its significance and
impact is not fully comprehended. The Political Power of Institutionalised Gender Inequality Gender inequality
is pervasive in institutions that govern education, employment, religious practice and other critical areas of life.
Political leadership is male-dominated and men's needs and experiences establish political agendas, the norms
for policy decisions, and priorities for resource allocation. African responses to HIV/ AIDS, for example, have
failed to address adequately the realities of women's vulnerability to infection as a result of unsafe and
unwanted sex. Many political leaders have also deliberately ignored abortion because it is seen as a volatile
issue that could compromise electoral support from key constituencies. In some countries, political trade-offs
have been made with respective stakeholders in order to avoid the issue. In many parts of the continent, the
power of the Catholic Church and its influence on politics has been cited as a major factor inhibiting political
movement around abortion.6 There are some exceptions, however, that have happened when key political
leaders have had direct experience of seeing the impact of unsafe abortion on women's lives and health and been
willing to address this politically difficult issue. Another exception is the enabling political context in which
choice and human rights overall were emphasised and respected that facilitated the enactment of liberal abortion
legislation in South Africa in 1996.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
160
Hyde Affirmative
A2: Abortion Bad – Religion (2/5)
Religion is the cause of impacts of the 1AC
Stopler, Global Public Service Scholar at NYU School of Law, 05
(Gila, Social Theory and Practice, April, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1010448) PMK
In his study of public religions in the modern world, Casanova posits that there are three levels on which
religions can be involved in the public sphere. (147) The first is through its establishment at the state
level. The second level is the level of political society, through confessional parties and through the
involvement of religious institutions and groups in political and electoral mobilization. The third level is
the level of civil society on which religions participate in the public discourse on various issues. While
Casanova argues that ultimately only at the level of civil society can religions have a legitimate public
role, consistent with modern universalistic principles and with differentiated structures, (148) I have
shown that in contemporary Western liberal democracies religions have a significant public role on all
three levels, which adversely, and in my view illegitimately, affects the situation of women. I would
therefore argue that church- state relations in liberal democracies pose a serious challenge to women's
right to equality, and that there are two reasons why this challenge cannot be resolved merely by
maintaining legal separation between religion and the state. First, even in countries where legal separation
between church and state does exist, strict separation on the practical level rarely, if ever, exists. As we
have seen, even the two paradigmatic examples of strict legal separation, the U.S. and France, do not
maintain such separation in practice. Second, beyond its legal status in the state, there are many other
factors that affect the ability of patriarchal religion to circumvent women's right to equality. These factors
include patriarchal religion's involvement in politics, its role in administering social and educational
services, the protection of religious liberty and church autonomy, and the levels of individual religious
belief. When all these factors are taken into account, the inadequacy of the assumption that legal
separation between religion and the state results in the relegation of organized religion to a private space
from which it cannot have an impact on women's equality in the liberal state becomes clear. Thus, in most
liberal democracies, patriarchal religions that advocate discrimination against women continue to get
extensive financial support from the state in the form of tax cuts as well as other forms of financial
support; patriarchal religions continue to play a major role in society and in the lives of many individual
citizens; patriarchal religions continue to act as government agents in supplying essential charitable,
social, and educational services and thus directly shape the nature of these services; patriarchal religions
continue to have significant influence on the politics of the state, especially with regard to issues
pertaining directly to women's status in society such as family values, abortion, and control of sexuality;
and patriarchal religions continue to be regarded as respectable and as promoting public virtue and moral
values regardless and sometimes because of their discriminatory stances toward women. In sum, it seems
that far from being on the verge of disappearance, the public role, the influence, and the privilege of
religion in liberal democracies are both significant and enduring. In fact, with regard to Western Europe,
for example, it has been argued that a new pattern of "ecumenical establishment" is emerging, in which
the traditional preference for the single established religion is being replaced not with disestablishment,
but with a plurality of privileges for all religions. First, as I will show, at the state level, the relationship
between religion and the state in liberal democracies adversely affects the rights of all women. The
historical move from pre-liberal societies to liberal democratic societies can be characterized as a move
from status societies in which a person's identity and social roles were determined by the status he or she
where born into, to an equal citizenship society in which each person should be given the equal
opportunity and the freedom to carve out for herself her own identity and social roles. (16) Nevertheless, I
will claim that the special status, functions, and protection that the liberal state grants patriarchal religions
allow them to legitimate ideologically, as well as to implement in practice at the state level, their vision of
a sex-based status society in which women are, due to "the mere circumstance of sex," (17) restricted only
to those choices that are commensurate with patriarchal ideology. Thus, for example, despite the
institutional separation between religion and the state, in many liberal democracies patriarchal religious
ideologies implemented at the state level prevent women from having basic services such as easily
accessible contraceptives and abortions or full-day daycares for their children, which are prerequisites if
women are to have any meaningful options and not be restricted to their status as wives and mothers. (18)
Hence, the current deference that liberal states afford patriarchal religions and the powers that they grant
them serve as status-enforcing mechanisms that result in the perpetuation of women's inferior and
restricted status in society as a whole.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
161
Hyde Affirmative
A2: Abortion Bad – Religion (3/5)
Multiple examples show the Bible doesn’t define a fetus as a living humyn being.
McKinley Internet consultant, Church youth group leader, 06
(Brian Elroy, “Why abortion is Biblical” http://www.overpopulation.org/abortion.html Accessed 6-28-09
KLM)
People don't take time to read their own Bibles. This website talks about the few biblical verses that antiabortionists cite to demonstrate that abortion is murder. But there are others that would seem to make the
case for abortion. This is one of the verses commonly cited to support the stance the abortion is murder: "For
Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for
Thou art fearfully wonderful (later texts were changed to read "for I am fearfully and wonderfully made");
wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was
made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed
substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was
not one of them." Psalm 139:13-16 But the Bible also says this: "And if men struggle and strike a woman
with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall be fined as the woman's
husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury,
then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise." Exodus 21:22-25 In Leviticus 27:6 a monetary
value was placed on children, but not until they reached one month old (any younger had no value).
Likewise, in Numbers 3:15 a census was commanded, but the Jews were told only to count those one
month old and above - anything less, particularly a fetus, was not counted as a human person. In
Ezekiel 37:8-10 we watch as God re-animates dead bones into living soldiers, but the passage makes
the interesting note that they were not alive as persons until their first breath. Likewise, in Genesis 2:7,
Adam had a human form and a vibrant new body but he only becomes a fully-alive human person
after God makes him breathe. Making a judgment against people in God's name, when God is not
behind the judging, is nothing short of claiming that our own beliefs are more important than God's.
There is an inherent contradictions in the acts of radical pro-lifers
Stiffler, Editor of the Delta College Newspaper, 02
(Joshua, Delta College Newspaper, “Abortion is good,” 10-18-2,
http://media.www.deltacollegian.com/media/storage/paper320/news/2002/10/18/Opinion/Abortion.Is.Good301031.shtml , Accessed 6-29-09, SLR)
We have all seen abortion clinics being picketed by right wing Christians and other hardcore lifers. Others
have gone as far as bombing abortion clinics and even murdering doctors who carry out the
procedures. If they truly follow religion, wouldn't they let God take care of these so-called "sinners"?
Is an eye-for-an-eye in the Bible, I don't remember seeing it.
Why do these people feel like they have to make decisions for everybody else? If they really wanted to
do "good," wouldn't they just pray for the departing souls of these "unplanned mistakes"?
Religion is the cause of impacts of the 1AC
Stopler, Global Public Service Scholar at NYU School of Law, 05
(Gila, Social Theory and Practice, April, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1010448) PMK
In his study of public religions in the modern world, Casanova posits that there are three levels on which
religions can be involved in the public sphere. (147) The first is through its establishment at the state
level. The second level is the level of political society, through confessional parties and through the
involvement of religious institutions and groups in political and electoral mobilization. The third level is
the level of civil society on which religions participate in the public discourse on various issues. While
Casanova argues that ultimately only at the level of civil society can religions have a legitimate public
role, consistent with modern universalistic principles and with differentiated structures, (148) I have
shown that in contemporary Western liberal democracies religions have a significant public role on all
three levels, which adversely, and in my view illegitimately, affects the situation of women. I would
therefore argue that church- state relations in liberal democracies pose a serious challenge to women's
right to equality, and that there are two reasons why this challenge cannot be resolved merely by
maintaining legal separation between religion and the state. First, even in countries where legal separation
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
162
Hyde Affirmative
A2: Abortion Bad – Religion (4/5)
ARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
between church and state does exist, strict separation on the practical level rarely, if ever, exists. As we
have seen, even the two paradigmatic examples of strict legal separation, the U.S. and France, do not
maintain such separation in practice. Second, beyond its legal status in the state, there are many other
factors that affect the ability of patriarchal religion to circumvent women's right to equality. These factors
include patriarchal religion's involvement in politics, its role in administering social and educational
services, the protection of religious liberty and church autonomy, and the levels of individual religious
belief. When all these factors are taken into account, the inadequacy of the assumption that legal
separation between religion and the state results in the relegation of organized religion to a private space
from which it cannot have an impact on women's equality in the liberal state becomes clear. Thus, in most
liberal democracies, patriarchal religions that advocate discrimination against women continue to get
extensive financial support from the state in the form of tax cuts as well as other forms of financial
support; patriarchal religions continue to play a major role in society and in the lives of many individual
citizens; patriarchal religions continue to act as government agents in supplying essential charitable,
social, and educational services and thus directly shape the nature of these services; patriarchal religions
continue to have significant influence on the politics of the state, especially with regard to issues
pertaining directly to women's status in society such as family values, abortion, and control of sexuality;
and patriarchal religions continue to be regarded as respectable and as promoting public virtue and moral
values regardless and sometimes because of their discriminatory stances toward women. In sum, it seems
that far from being on the verge of disappearance, the public role, the influence, and the privilege of
religion in liberal democracies are both significant and enduring. In fact, with regard to Western Europe,
for example, it has been argued that a new pattern of "ecumenical establishment" is emerging, in which
the traditional preference for the single established religion is being replaced not with disestablishment,
but with a plurality of privileges for all religions. First, as I will show, at the state level, the relationship
between religion and the state in liberal democracies adversely affects the rights of all women. The
historical move from pre-liberal societies to liberal democratic societies can be characterized as a move
from status societies in which a person's identity and social roles were determined by the status he or she
where born into, to an equal citizenship society in which each person should be given the equal
opportunity and the freedom to carve out for herself her own identity and social roles. (16) Nevertheless, I
will claim that the special status, functions, and protection that the liberal state grants patriarchal religions
allow them to legitimate ideologically, as well as to implement in practice at the state level, their vision of
a sex-based status society in which women are, due to "the mere circumstance of sex," (17) restricted only
to those choices that are commensurate with patriarchal ideology. Thus, for example, despite the
institutional separation between religion and the state, in many liberal democracies patriarchal religious
ideologies implemented at the state level prevent women from having basic services such as easily
accessible contraceptives and abortions or full-day daycares for their children, which are prerequisites if
women are to have any meaningful options and not be restricted to their status as wives and mothers. (18)
Hence, the current deference that liberal states afford patriarchal religions and the powers that they grant
them serve as status-enforcing mechanisms that result in the perpetuation of women's inferior and
restricted status in society as a whole. These mechanisms are therefore in direct conflict with the liberal
commitment to the elimination of the status society and the creation of an egalitarian society in which
people's opportunities in life are not dictated by their sex, race, or religion.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
163
Hyde Affirmative
A2: Abortion Bad – Religion (5/5)
Multiple examples show the Bible doesn’t define a fetus as a living humyn being.
McKinley Internet consultant, Church youth group leader, 06
(Brian Elroy, “Why abortion is Biblical” http://www.overpopulation.org/abortion.html Accessed 6-28-09
KLM)
People don't take time to read their own Bibles. This website talks about the few biblical verses that antiabortionists cite to demonstrate that abortion is murder. But there are others that would seem to make the
case for abortion. This is one of the verses commonly cited to support the stance the abortion is murder: "For
Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for
Thou art fearfully wonderful (later texts were changed to read "for I am fearfully and wonderfully made");
wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was
made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed
substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was
not one of them." Psalm 139:13-16 But the Bible also says this: "And if men struggle and strike a woman
with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall be fined as the woman's
husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury,
then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise." Exodus 21:22-25 In Leviticus 27:6 a monetary
value was placed on children, but not until they reached one month old (any younger had no value).
Likewise, in Numbers 3:15 a census was commanded, but the Jews were told only to count those one
month old and above - anything less, particularly a fetus, was not counted as a human person. In
Ezekiel 37:8-10 we watch as God re-animates dead bones into living soldiers, but the passage makes
the interesting note that they were not alive as persons until their first breath. Likewise, in Genesis 2:7,
Adam had a human form and a vibrant new body but he only becomes a fully-alive human person
after God makes him breathe. Making a judgment against people in God's name, when God is not
behind the judging, is nothing short of claiming that our own beliefs are more important than God's.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
164
Hyde Affirmative
A2: Abortion Bad – Trauma (1/4)
Abortion does not cause mental health problems
Mooney, senior correspondent for The American Prospect, 04
(Chris, Washington Monthly, October, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.mooney.html) PMK
Intelligent design proponents aren't the only religious conservatives who have adopted the trappings of
science. Take David Reardon, an Illinois-based researcher who during the 1980s set out to prove that abortion
causes mental illness, chemical dependency, and a range of other poor health outcomes in women. It's true that
women sometimes feel temporarily depressed or guilty after an abortion. But the notion that abortion regularly
causes severe or clinical mental problems has been rejected by, among others, a group of experts convened by
the American Psychological Association and Ronald Reagan's surgeon general, C. Everett Koop.
Abortion is safer than childbirth; relief rather than psychological injury results. Also,
abortion is not linked to breast cancer.
American Civil Liberties Union, 2001
(“Biased Counseling Against Abortion”, 4-11-01,
http://www.aclu.org/reproductiverights/abortion/16402res20010411.html, accessed 6-30-09)
Mandatory anti-choice lectures do not give women accurate or meaningful medical information.
Women are not told, for example, that a legal, first-trimester abortion has a lower complication rate
than any other surgery - in fact, the mortality risk of full-term pregnancy and childbirth is more than
20 times greater than that of a first-trimester abortion. Rather, women are typically read a list of possible
but very rare complications from the abortion procedure. Some state laws require that women be told that
abortions pose risks of post-traumatic stress disorder, severe depression, and other psychological
injury. In fact, according to a 1987-88 investigation by the former Surgeon General of the United
States, Dr. C. Everett Koop (who is no champion of choice), as well as a study by the World Health
Organization, there is no medical evidence that abortion causes psychological injury. On the contrary,
relief is the most common reaction to a voluntary abortion, whereas women who are forced to continue
unwanted pregnancies suffer adverse and sometimes severe psychological consequences. Some biased
counseling proposals would require physicians to tell their patients that abortion increases a woman's
chance of developing breast cancer. This is a scientifically unsupported statement mandated not out of
concern for women's health, but in order to scare women away from choosing abortion. A study of
more than 1.5 million women in Denmark, the largest study to date, found that "induced abortions
have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer."
Women are less likely to have psychological effects from an abortion than a pregnancy.
Rice, Ethics Writer for Associated Content, 2006
(Brian, Associated Content, “Abortion: Ethical Analysis, a Utalitarian Argument for Abortion” 3-23-6,
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/25347/abortion_ethical_analysis_pg2.html?cat=37, Accessed 6-29-09,
SLR)
Most women report a sense of relief, although some may experience temporary depression. Serious
psychological disturbances after abortion occur less frequently than after childbirth.
The degree of trauma postpartum is far greater than those of abortions, resulting in better
living for those who had abortions.
Rice, Ethics Writer for Associated Content, 2006
(Brian, Associated Content, “Abortion: Ethical Analysis, a Utalitarian Argument for Abortion” 3-23-6,
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/25347/abortion_ethical_analysis_pg2.html?cat=37, Accessed 6-29-09,
SLR)
Lastly, statistical evidence proves that more women suffer from depression after birth than after
receiving an abortion. Any situation that spreads depression on the populace can be seen as ethically
wrong from the utilitarian outlook. Women whom undergo abortions have averted (often times) sudden
disaster in their life, often due to the fact they are not emotionally and financially ready to accept the
responsibilities of raising a child. This absolving of unwanted hardships will ultimately result in the
lessening of unnecessary burdens on not only the individual, but more importantly society as a whole.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
165
Hyde Affirmative
A2: Abortion Bad – Trauma (2/4)
Abortion doesn’t lead to mental problems APA proves
Cohen, Director of Government Affairs for Guttmacher Institute, 2006
(Susan, Guttmacher Institute, “Abortion and Mental Health: Myths and Realities,” Summer 2006,
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/09/3/gpr090308.html, Accessed 6-30-09 AMG)
Likely because the science attesting to the physical safety of the abortion procedure is so clear, abortion foes
have long focused on what they allege are its negative mental health consequences. For decades, they have
charged that having an abortion causes mental instability and even may lead to suicide, and despite
consistent repudiations from the major professional mental health associations, they remain
undeterred. For example, the "postabortion traumatic stress syndrome" that they say is widespread is
not recognized by either the American Psychological Association (APA) or the American Psychiatric
Association. To a considerable degree, antiabortion activists are able to take advantage of the fact that
the general public and most policymakers do not know what constitutes "good science" (related article,
November 2005, page 1). To defend their positions, these activists often cite studies that have serious
methodological flaws or draw inappropriate conclusions from more rigorous studies. Admittedly, the body of
sound research in this area is relatively sparse because establishing or conclusively disproving a causal
relationship between abortion and subsequent behavior is an extremely difficult proposition. Still, it is fair to
say that neither the weight of the scientific evidence to date nor the observable reality of 33 years of
legal abortion in the United States comports with the idea that having an abortion is any more
dangerous to a woman's long-term mental health than delivering and parenting a child that she did not
intend to have or placing a baby for adoption
Studies are wrong- Abortion and mental health are not linked
Cohen, Director of Government Affairs for Guttmacher Institute, 2006
(Susan, Guttmacher Institute, “Abortion and Mental Health: Myths and Realities,” Summer 2006,
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/09/3/gpr090308.html, Accessed 6-30-09 AMG)
Yet neither the Koop investigation nor the APA review ended the debate. Antiabortion researchers have
persisted in trying to prove abortion's harmful mental health effects. Most prominent among them are David
Reardon, director of the antiabortion, Illinois-based Elliot Institute, and Priscilla Coleman, family studies
professor at Bowling Green State University. Reardon and Coleman believe that abortion harms women, but
their own studies and the others upon which they rely to make that assertion are so flawed
methodologically that they cannot be said to establish a causal relationship. The studies do not address
the fundamental question of whether women who have had abortions experience more adverse
reactions than do otherwise similar women who have carried their unwanted pregnancies to term.
Again, as described in Abortion in Women's Lives, "none adequately control for factors that might
explain both the unintended pregnancy and the mental health problem, such as social or demographic
characteristics, preexisting mental or physical health conditions, childhood exposure to physical or
sexual abuse, and other risk-taking behaviors.…Because of these confounding factors, even if mental
health problems are more common among women who have had an abortion, abortion may not have
been the real cause." By contrast, the Royal Colleges of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and of General
Practitioners in the United Kingdom sponsored a major study that did address that fundamental question. The
study followed more than 13,000 women in England and Wales over an 11-year period ending in the early
1990s. Importantly, it considered two groups: women facing an unintended pregnancy who had an abortion
and women facing an unintended pregnancy who gave birth. The study's authors concluded that those
women who had an abortion following an unintended pregnancy were not at any higher risk of
subsequent mental health problems than were women whose unintended pregnancy was carried to
term.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
166
Hyde Affirmative
A2: Abortion Bad – Trauma (3/4)
There is no link between having an abortion and mental problems
Cohen, Director of Government Affairs for Guttmacher Institute, 2006
(Susan, Guttmacher Institute, “Abortion and Mental Health: Myths and Realities,” Summer 2006,
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/09/3/gpr090308.html, Accessed 6-30-09 AMG)
Seventeen years after the Koop investigation, there is still no conclusive evidence directly linking abortion
to subsequent mental health problems—and not because of a lack of trying. Although it is true that
some women who have had an abortion suffer severe mental health problems later in life, the current
body of research has not been able to rule out a plethora of preexisting conditions or familial or other
contextual factors that could affect or explain those problems. It is also true, not surprisingly, that
some women experience pain and sadness either shortly after having an abortion or even many years
later (see box). These emotions, however, are not unique to women who have had an abortion or
necessarily more or less common than the pain and sadness felt by many women who have placed a
baby for adoption or raised an unplanned child under adverse conditions.
Abortions are a positive experience to women, they show signs of relief. 98% of women
don’t have regrets
Planned Parenthood, 2007
(“The Emotional Effects of Induced Abortion” Janaury 2007, accessed 7-1-09, NG)
Research studies indicate that emotional responses to legally induced abortion are largely positive. They
also indicate that emotional problems resulting from abortion are rare and less frequent than those following
childbirth (Adler, 1989; Kero et al., 2004). Anti-family planning activists, however, circulate unfounded
claims that a majority of the 29 percent of pregnant American women who choose to terminate their
pregnancies (Henshaw & Van Vort, 1990) suffer severe and long-lasting emotional trauma as a result.
They call this nonexistent phenomenon "post-abortion trauma" or "post-abortion syndrome." They hope that
terms like these will gain wide currency and credibility despite the fact that neither the American
Psychological Association nor the American Psychiatric Association (APA) recognizes the existence of these
phenomena. The truth is that most studies in the last 25 years have found abortion to be a relatively
benign procedure in terms of emotional effect — except when pre-abortion emotional problems exist or
when a wanted pregnancy is terminated, such as after diagnostic genetic testing (Adler, 1989; Adler et
al., 1990; Russo & Denious, 2001). The many studies of the emotional effects of abortion, however, do not
measure precisely the same variables in regard to culture, time, demographics, or the socioeconomic and
psychological situation of women who seek abortion. Since the results of these studies cannot be combined or
"averaged out," the following data illustrate, in general, the conclusions of the overwhelming majority of
more than 35 of the worldwide studies that have measured the emotional effects of abortion since its
legalization in the U.S. in 1973. Abortion as a Positive Coping Mechanism For most women who have
had abortions, the procedure represents a maturing experience, a successful coping with a personal
crisis situation (DeVeber et al., 1991; Kero et al., 2004; Lazarus, 1985; Russo & Zierk, 1992; Zabin et al.,
1989). In fact, the most prominent emotional response of most women to first-trimester abortions is relief
(Adler et al., 1990; Armsworth, 1991; Kero et al., 2004; Lazarus, 1985; Miller, 1996). Up to 98 percent of
the women who have abortions have no regrets and would make the same choice again in similar
circumstances (Dagg, 1991). More than 70 percent of women who have abortions express a desire for
children in the future (Torres & Forrest, 1988). There is no evidence that women who have had abortions
make less loving or suitable parents (Bradley, 1984). Women who have had one abortion do not suffer
adverse psychological effects. In fact, as a group, they have higher self-esteem, greater feelings of worth
and capableness, and fewer feelings of failure than do women who have had no abortions or who have
had repeat abortions (Russo & Zierk, 1992; Zabin et al., 1989). A recent two-year study of the psychological
effects of abortion confirmed that most women do not experience psychological problems or regrets two
years after their abortion. (Major et al., 2000). A study of a group of teenagers who obtained pregnancy tests
at one of two Baltimore clinics found that the young women who chose to have abortions were far more
likely to graduate from high school at the expected age than those of similar socioeconomic status who
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carried their pregnancies to term or who were not pregnant. They showed no greater levels of stress at the
time of the pregnancy and abortion and no greater rate of psychological problems two years after the abortion
than did the other women (Zabin et al., 1989). The positive relationship of abortion to well-being may be
due in part to abortion's role in controlling fertility and its relationship to coping resources (Russo &
Dabul, 1997; Russo & Zierk, 1992).
PAS is due to the unwanted child, not the abortion. PAS is also due to pre-existing
symptoms.
Planned Parenthood, 2007
(“The Emotional Effects of Induced Abortion” Janaury 2007, accessed 7-1-09, NG)
Mild, transient, immediately postabortion depressive symptoms that quickly pass occur in less than 20
percent of all women who have had abortions (Adler et al., 1990; Zabin et al., 1989). Similar symptoms
occur in up to 70 percent of women immediately following childbirth (Ziporyn, 1984). · Up to 10 percent
of women who have abortions experience depressive symptoms of a lingering nature (Adler, 1989). Similar
symptoms occur in up to 10 percent of women after childbirth (Sachdev, 1993; Ziporyn, 1984; Zolese &
Blacker, 1992). · The experience of an unwanted pregnancy, rather than the abortion itself, may be the
cause of any guilt or depression that exists (Adler et al., 1990; Zolese & Blacker, 1992). · Pre-existing
psychiatric illnesses — depression and psychosis — often predict post-pregnancy mental health
difficulties regardless of pregnancy outcome (Gilchrist et al., 1995; Schmiege & Russo, 2005; Zabin et al.,
1989; Zolese & Blacker, 1992). The research showed that among women without pre-existing psychiatric
conditions, those that gave birth were significantly more likely to have a psychotic episode than women who
had an abortion (Gilchrist et al., 1995). · While not generalizable, a Japanese study found that a negative
personal and cultural opinion of abortion was the most significant predictor of postabortion anxiety
(Kishida, 2001). · Studies that have concluded that terminating a pregnancy leads to an increased risk of
anxiety or depression are often methodologically flawed. Their study populations are often at an increased
risk for anxiety or depression before the abortion procedure — due to either individual or cultural risk factors
(Broen et al., 2005; Fergusson et al., 2006; Gissler et al., 1996; Gissler et al., 2005; Reardon et al., 2004). For
example, o a study of young New Zealand women suggested that abortion leads to an increased risk of
numerous mental health problems, including anxiety and depression. However, researchers admitted
to not asking subjects if they had previous psychiatric illnesses, and further complicating the study
admit that women must claim psychiatric or physical illness in order to have an abortion in New
Zealand in the first place (Fergusson et al., 2006). o a Norwegian study suggested that while women who
miscarried were at a greater risk for short-term mental health problems, women who electively terminated
their pregnancies were at a greater risk for long-term mental health problems such as anxiety and guilt.
However, the study does not show if having an abortion caused the women to be more anxious or if the
women who had abortions were already more anxious, in poorer psychiatric health, and more
vulnerable to post-abortion distress (Broen et al., 2005).
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Because of lack of funding, poor women must delay their abortions
Boonstra, Senior Public Policy Associate at the Guttmacher Institute, 2007
(Heather D, Guttmacher Policy Review, The Heart of the Matter: Public Funding Of Abortion for Poor Women in
the United States, Winter 2007, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/10/1/gpr100112.pdf, 6-29-09, AMG)
Researchers have studied the impact of funding restrictions on women’s reproductive decisions and have
found that despite the relatively high cost of the procedure, most poor women in need of an abortion
manage to obtain one—a testament to women’s determination not to bear a child they feel unprepared
to care for. But their doing so often comes at a cost, as many poor women have to postpone their
abortion. For those who are affected, the delay is substantial: Poor women take up to three weeks longer
than other women to obtain an abortion. Little wonder that, according to a 2004 Guttmacher study
published in Contraception, 67% of poor women having an abortion say they would have preferred to
have had the abortion earlier.
No abortion funding delays abortions leading to serious medical complications
Boonstra; Senior Public Policy Associate at the Guttmacher Institute, and Sonfield; Senior
Public Policy Associate at the Guttmacher Institute, 2000
(Heather and Adam, Guttmacher Policy Review, “Rights Without Access: Revisiting Public Funding of Abortion for
Poor Women,” April 2000, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/03/2/gr030208.html, 6-29-09, AMG)
Research also indicates that while many women may be able to ultimately scrape together the funds, the
time this effort takes increases the delay between the decision to have an abortion and actually having
the procedure. The 1983 AGI study found that Medicaid-eligible women wait on average 2-3 weeks
longer than other women to have an abortion because of difficulties they have in obtaining the
necessary funds. The cost of an abortion, of course, increases the longer a woman waits to have the
procedure, exacerbating her difficulties. While the average cost of a first-trimester nonhospital abortion in
1997 was $316, the charge jumped to $618 at 16 weeks of gestation and the charge more than tripled to
$1,109 at 20 weeks. Such delays also can have health implications, because the risk of complications
following an induced abortion increases as the procedure is done later in gestation.
Restricting abortions puts womyn at risk in the event of a late abortion.
Human Rights Watch 05
(“Q&A: Human Rights Law and Access to Abortion” June 15, 2005 http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/06/15/qahuman-rights-law-and-access-abortion#_Right_to_life Accessed 6-28-09 KLM)
Restrictive abortion laws have a devastating impact on women's right to life. Evidence suggests not
only that restrictive abortion laws drive women to unsafe abortion, but that women die from the
consequences of such abortions. Approximately 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide are
attributable to unsafe abortion-between 68,000 and 78,000 deaths annually. These deaths are largely
preventable. The U.N. Human Rights Committee and the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women have repeatedly expressed concern about the relationship between
restrictive abortion laws, clandestine abortions, and threats to women's lives. The committees have
recommended the review or amendment of punitive and restrictive abortion laws.
Delays in abortions due to the restriction of the Hyde Amendment and Medicaid can lead
to more health risks and costs for the mothers.
National Abortion Federation, 06
(National Abortion Federation, “Public Funding for Abortion: Medicaid and the Hyde Amendment”,
http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/public_funding.html, accessed 6-29-09, SLR)
Unique barriers face low-income women accessing comprehensive reproductive health care. Barriers
to abortion access such as the lack of providers, state laws delaying women from receiving timely care,
and funding restrictions like the Hyde Amendment fall disproportionately on low-income women who
have limited resources with which to overcome these obstacles. The Guttmacher Institute has found
that 20-35% of Medicaid-eligible women who would choose abortion carry their pregnancies to term
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when public funds are not available.13 Additionally, lack of public funding results in women waiting
while they raise funds, postponing their abortions until later in their pregnancies when the costs and
health risks can be higher. For women who are struggling to make ends meet and who do not have
insurance that covers abortion care, the legal right to have an abortion does not guarantee access.
The restrictions imposed by the Hyde Amendment unfairly jeopardize the health and well-being of lowincome women and their families. Women who do not have the ability to pay for abortion services may
resort to self-inducing an abortion or obtaining unsafe, illegal abortions from untrained practitioners.
Also, the Hyde Amendment harms women's health by denying coverage for abortion services in cases
where women have serious physical or mental health concerns.
Having an abortion doesn’t lead to breast cancer or hurt future fertility
Cohen, Director of Government Affairs for Guttmacher Institute, 2006
(Susan, Guttmacher Institute, “Abortion and Mental Health: Myths and Realities,” Summer 2006,
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/09/3/gpr090308.html, Accessed 6-30-09 AMG)
Despite the strong and lengthy history of evidence attesting to the physical safety of abortion, antiabortion
activists frequently charge that the procedure threatens women’s future fertility and is a particular
risk factor for breast cancer. Neither is true. Abortion foes cite research that suggests that abortion can
cause infection or injury, sometimes undetectable at the time of the abortion, which in turn increases
women’s risk of preterm and low-birth-weight delivery. Those studies, however, typically fail to account for
the fact that factors such as a history of sexually transmitted infection may be more common among
women who have unintended pregnancies (and thus abortions) and may lead to premature delivery
among women giving birth. The preponderance of evidence from well-designed and well-executed
studies shows no connection between abortion and future fertility problems. Several reviews of the
research conclude that first-trimester abortions pose virtually no long-term fertility risks—not only for
premature and low-birth-weight delivery but for infertility, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage and birth defects
as well. The evidence is less extensive when it comes to repeat abortion and second-trimester abortion, but
the research indicates that the claims of abortion opponents are unfounded. As for the link between
abortion and breast cancer, researchers have studied for years whether the abrupt hormonal changes
caused by interrupting a pregnancy alter a woman’s breast in a way that increases her susceptibility to
the disease. Until the mid-1990s, the research findings were inconsistent. Abortion opponents seized upon
a 1996 analysis that combined the results of numerous flawed studies and concluded that having an
abortion did elevate the risk of cancer. However, data from this analysis were unreliable, because they
were collected only after a diagnosis of cancer. Furthermore, rather than relying on medical records, the
researchers asked the women themselves whether or not they had had an abortion, a process that
would be expected to lead to more complete reporting of a prior abortion by women with cancer than
by women who did not have cancer.
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A2: Abortion Bad – Cloning
Abortion will not lead to cloning
Davis, 02
(Dena S. Davis, 2002, “Stem Cells, Cloning, and Abortion: Making Careful Distinctions,” The American Journal of
Bioethics,7/1/09, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_journal_of_bioethics /v002/2.1davis.html, JM)
The current controversy over federal funding for research involving stem cells derived from very early
embryos is situated between two other equally difficult issues: abortion and cloning. As Laurie Zoloth (2002)
says, talk about stem cells is "directly proximate" to the abortion debate. Nonetheless, a settled
position in favor of abortion rights does not necessarily lead to support for research that involves the
death of embryos. Nor should opposition to reproductive cloning necessarily entail opposition to therapeutic
cloning. There are important ways in which our attitudes toward research with embryonic stem cells ought
to be entwined with our thinking about abortion and cloning, but there are also some very important
distinctions which are getting lost in the noisy debate.
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Stem cell research is good, is will save hundreds of lives from a non-living embryo
Rowley, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and a member of the
President's Council on Bioethics, 09
(Janet Rowley, 3/23/09, “Embryonic Stem Cell Research Does Too Much Good to Be Evil, Says Janet Rowley,”
US News, 7/1/09, http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion /2009/03/23/embryonic-stem-cell-research-does-toomuch-good-to-be-evil-says-janet-rowley.html , JM )
The decision to end many restrictions on embryonic stem cell research has removed a key barrier to
research and discovery. Scientists are driven by the desire to succeed as fervently as our most successdriven businessmen, entrepreneurs, or lawyers. But for years they have contended with research limits that
prevent innovation but do not serve a clear moral purpose. A responsible expansion of embryonic stem cell
research can advance a vital goal—the search for new medical treatments—while respecting the dignity
of human life. At present, there are about 400,000 human embryos in the freezers of in vitro fertilization
clinics. Many are destined to be thawed and discarded and thus die. It is a true moral dilemma, but
science offers a way to bring something good from a flawed situation. The parents of these embryos
could allow them to die, or they could donate the embryos for research that someday might benefit
patients with incurable diseases. This is a high purpose, one that promotes both human health and
understanding. Scientists have worked tirelessly to develop useful alternatives to these rare sources of
embryonic stem cells. Through trial and error, they have developed a cocktail of genes that can transform
adult human skin cells (from you and me) into cells closely resembling embryonic stem cells. But make no
mistake—these are not embryonic stem cells. They are induced pluripotent stem cells. The study of these
cells is in its infancy. The hope is that induced pluripotent cells could be developed from individuals who
have genetic disorders like juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, and muscular dystrophy. Having stem cells
with these defects could dramatically help scientists in their efforts to understand the basic, underlying
problems in cells with these mutations. That's because stem cells offer a unique window into cell
development—and they can shed light on how development goes awry in serious diseases. However,
investigators also desperately need embryonic stem cells developed from patients with these genetic
disorders to confirm that studies with induced pluripotent cells faithfully reproduce the genetic disorders.
Scientists in the United States have developed such cell lines from embryos with genetic defects that were
identified by genetic analyses. They have developed cell lines using money from private philanthropy
because they have been prohibited by the previous administration from using federal money to carry out this
important research.
And These Stem Cells will cure many diseases and provide a renewable source of organs
Bethesda, MD 2009(Stem Cells and Diseases . In Stem Cell Informatio, May 2009 Bethesda, MD:
National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,6-28-09, NG)
Studying stem cells will help us understand how they transform into the dazzling array of specialized cells that
make us what we are. Some of the most serious medical conditions, such as cancer and birth defects, are due to
problems that occur somewhere in this process. A better understanding of normal cell development will allow us
to understand and perhaps correct the errors that cause these medical conditions. Another potential application of
stem cells is making cells and tissues for medical therapies. Today, donated organs and tissues are often used to
replace those that are diseased or destroyed. Unfortunately, the number of people needing a transplant far
exceeds the number of organs available for transplantation. Pluripotent stem cells offer the possibility of a
renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat a myriad of diseases, conditions, and disabilities
including Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal cord injury, burns, heart disease, diabetes, and
arthritis. Scientists have been able to do experiments with human embryonic stem cells (hESC) only since 1998,
when a group led by Dr. James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin developed a technique to isolate and grow
the cells. Although hESC are thought to offer potential cures and therapies for many devastating diseases,
research using them is still in its early stages.
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Stem cells have been empirically proven to cure diseases
Warden, Writer University World News, 2009
(Rebecca, University World News, 06-28-09, “SPAIN: Stem cells cure disease but only in lab”
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20090626120334592, 6-28-09, NG)
Spanish researchers have cured a disease using pseudo-embryonic stem cells for the first time. The
team, led by scientists from Barcelona's Centre for Regenerative Medicine, has corrected a genetic defect
in cells belonging to three sufferers of Fanconi's anaemia, a serious blood disease. But the process was
carried out in the laboratory and there is still a long way to go before clinical trials on humans can be
envisaged. …Director of the stem cell bank at the centre and co-author of an article published in Nature
recently. "So we are demonstrating that is possible and that when we have overcome the other
obstacles, we can start talking of a cure." The researchers used gene therapy to eliminate the disease
from skin cells taken from patients …These act like embryonic stem cells and have a similar capacity
for changing into different kinds of cells, a process known as cell differentiation The process makes use
of known techniques but combines them for the first time. It holds the promise of producing stem cells
specific to each patient.
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The link is non-unique -- Domestic terrorism is increasing
Robinson, Campaign for America’s Future, 2009
Sara, Alternet, 9 Conservative Myths About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism 6-20-09
http://www.alternet.org/media/140792/9_conservative_myths_about_right-wing_domestic_terrorism/?page=2,
Accessed 7-8-09, AMG
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the U.S. is up 54 percent since
2000, with nearly 1,000 such groups active across the country right now. Fueled by bone-deep racism, an
unnatural terror of liberal government, frustration over the economic downturn, and fears about America's
loss of world standing, they tell us, the militant right is rising again. You can find groups in every corner of
the country, incidents of racist violence are rising; and the traffic on far-right Web sites is up, too. Make no
mistake: The right-wing radicals are angry, and there are enough of them out there to do some real damage.
As noted, they're far more cohesive and better-connected than they've ever been. And they're only getting
started.
No reason to vote neg, that’s just giving into terrorism. Congress acting to increase
abortion access would effectively nullify the political implications of this terrorism.
Klein, associate editor at the American Prospect, 09
Ezra, June 1, 2009, “How Should Congress Respond to George Tiller's Murder?”, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezraklein/2009/06/how_should_congress_respond_to.html, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
There is an impulse to understand George Tiller's murder as a horrific, but comfortingly aberrational,
act of extremist violence. That is the wrong way to think about it. Tiller is not the first abortion provider to be shot to death. Hell,
this wasn't even the first time an anti-abortion extremist tried to shoot George Tiller to death. In 1993, Shannon Shelley traveled to
Tiller's clinic and shot Tiller in both arms with a semiautomatic pistol. Scott Roeder's contribution was managing to actually kill him.
As The American Prospect's Ann Friedman writes, this has to be understood in context. It is the final,
decisive act in "an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment against someone who was
providing completely legal health-care services." That campaign stretched over decades of protests, lawsuits, violence,
and, finally, murder. The different elements were not always orchestrated. But the intent remained constant: To counter the absence of a
statute that would make Tiller's work illegal with enough intimidation to render it impossible. This was, in other words, a
political act. Tiller was murdered so that those in his line of work would be intimidated. In conversations with
folks yesterday, I heard well-meaning variants on the idea that it would be unseemly to push legislation in the emotional
aftermath of Tiller's execution. I disagree. Roeder was acting in direct competition with the United
States Congress. And it's quite likely that he changed the status quo. Legislative language and judicial
rulings had made abortive procedures legal and thus accessible. Yesterday's killing was meant to
render abortive procedures unsafe for doctors to conduct and thus inaccessible. If a woman cannot get
an abortion because no nearby providers are willing to assume the risk of performing it, the actual
outcome is precisely the same as if the procedure were illegal. Roeder has, in all likelihood, made abortion less
accessible. It would be, in my view, a perfectly appropriate response for the Congress to decisively
prove his action not only ineffectual, but, in a broad sense, counterproductive. That's not to suggest fasttracking legislation that radically transforms the county's uneasy consensus. But there are plenty of remedies that speak to
the question of access alone: Bills that make abortion centers safer and help poor women afford
treatment, for instance. We can't stop Scott Roeder from killing George Tiller. But we can stop him
from having his intended effect on a woman's ability to choose
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The only response to this terrorism is to push for more abortions. Otherwise, we risk losing
a key part of womyn’s rights.
Welsh, Huffington Post Contributor, 09
Ian, June 9 “Anti-Abortion Terrorism Chalks Up Another Success”, http://crooksandliars.com/ian-welsh/pro-lifeterrorism-succeeds, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
The bottom line on right wing terrorism against abortion rights is that it's succeeding and has been for
some time. Take a good hard look at the chart at the top and try and tell me otherwise. And when it comes to late term abortions, well, Tiller was one
of the very few who still provided the service. According to Tiller, speaking in March before his assassination, he was one of only three doctors left in the
US doing such abortions. Now there are two. If those numbers are right, one third of all abortion doctors doing these abortions were just killed.
In the
aftermath of Tiller's death, I heard a lot of progressives talking about how the anti-abortion folks were
losing. The bottom line is that they're winning. It is harder to get abortions than it was 5 years ago, or
10 years ago, or 25 years ago. Abortion access peaked in 1982 and has been declining ever since. Consider
that the US population has increased by approximately 30% since 1982. At the same time the number of providers has dropped by over a third. Now, most
types of abortion violence had been in a slow, long term decline (the exception is burglary) so there's certainly some reason for optimism. At the same time I
The larger
point is simpler. It's harder to get an abortion than it has ever been since Roe vs. Wade, because there
are just less doctors who perform abortions. Until more doctors step up and start providing abortions, especially late term
strongly suspect that anti-abortion violence will rise, along with other types of right wing terrorism, during Obama's administration.
abortions, this will continue. It's hard to blame doctors for not being willing to provide abortions. Not only could you be killed for doing
so, your family will be stalked and perhaps harmed, your clinic will be burglarized, you will be subject to constant legal harassment and
your life will, in general, be made a living hell along with the lives of your family, friends and associates. It's a lot to ask of someone.
But this comes back to the truth of rights. You have no rights that people aren't willing to suffer and
die for. Rights that someone won't put their life on the line for will be taken away by people who are
willing to resort to intimidation, violence and to push for laws which take those rights away. So the
questions, then are these: 1) Where are the doctors who are willing to risk their lives, the lives of their families, and to endure constant
harassment to ensure that women keep this right, not just in theory, but in practice? 2) Where are the mass of people who will provide
money, aid, and physical protection to the doctors who put their lives on the line? Yes, they exist even now, but obviously there aren't
enough of them, because the number of abortion providers keeps going down. Is this a right you're willing to risk your
life to keep? If enough people don't answer that question yes, then you will continue to lose it.
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Talking about abortions destroys the stigma, government policies need to address this.
Baker, founder and executive director of Exhale, 05
Aspen Baker | August 3, 2005,” Overcoming Stigma: Talking Freely About Abortion”
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2005/08/b939545.html, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
I didn't know how common abortion is until I had one. And then, I only learned because I searched for someone comforting to talk to
afterward. You can imagine my shock when I discovered that more than one third of women in America will have an abortion in their
lifetime. My fears of being one of the few, one of "those - selfish, stupid, immature, immoral, overly sexed, irresponsible (you can use
your own imagination to fill in the blank here) - women" to have had an abortion began to subside, just a bit. But as I began to pay
more attention to the topic of abortion, I found little connection between the political and moral
rhetoric and my own personal experience. There seemed to be only two types of stories worthy of
mention in the debate and because I didn't have either - the "pre-Roe, illegal, unsafe, back alley,
lecherous doctor with a hanger that results in relief and empowerment" abortion, or the "cold,
coercive, profit-driven abortion-mill experience which causes emotional pain and trauma" abortion - I
was out of luck. I just had your standard, safe, legal abortion that I appreciated but that also left me
feeling sad and alone. Surrounded by social myths about women who have abortions and judgments
about our decision, I looked for a place to work through it all. When it turned out what I was looking for didn't exist,
I worked with a group of women to create it. In 2002, we launched Exhale, the nation's only non-judgmental after-abortion talkline, in
the San Francisco Bay Area. On June 1, 2005, we expanded access to the talkline, making it available for free, nationwide, in multiple
languages, seven days a week. Since our launch, Exhale has offered hundreds of women and men the opportunity to talk freely about
their experience with abortion. The need to talk about their experience - whether they see it as positive or negative or both - is why
people call Exhale. Our experience on the talkline demonstrates the disconnect between the lives of women
and men who experience abortion and the rhetoric that often clouds the debate. In the public sphere, it
is often assumed that women who have abortions do so in alignment with political beliefs . Listening to our
callers proves that the women who have abortions hold the same questions and beliefs that form the full spectrum of the abortion debate.
Questions about when life begins, whether abortion can be a moral, responsible decision, and the
potential impact of abortion on women's physical or emotional health are all important considerations
to many women who have abortions. Yet, because the political debate remains closed to the
experiences and stories of these women, many feel stigmatized, isolated, and alone after an abortion.
The most frequent question callers pose is whether or not what they're feeling is normal. Some callers feel like a "bad feminist" for being
sad after abortion. Others feel like a "bad Christian" for having had one in the first place. Many are surprised by their lack of guilt or
regret, and fear that their response makes them cruel or callous. Many are confused by the mix of emotions they're experiencing and
wonder whether they are the only ones who've felt this way. Across the range of experiences and backgrounds, callers often describe
feeling alone and unable to talk about their feelings with their support networks. Beyond providing immediate support to
women after an abortion, the need for society to transform the stigma of abortion is crucial because
stigma is a barrier to health and well-being. Stigma can impact an individual's health in a number of
ways, often acting as an obstacle for those who would otherwise seek support . The woman who won't pick up
the phone to call Exhale because she believes her intense feelings of grief are abnormal is experiencing the consequences of stigma. The
husband who is forced to leave his faith community and find a new church to attend with his wife and kids after confiding with friends
suffers the pain of exclusion. The mother, no longer invited to office parties, who held the hand of her daughter through her abortion
feels remorse for having shared her feelings about the experience with a co-worker. As a powerful tool of discrimination,
stigma drives a wedge between families and support networks. The sheer number of men and women who call
Exhale anonymously is a testament to the harmful presence of stigma and the lack of safe, supportive, non-judgmental spaces for women
and men to talk freely about their experience. People across the political spectrum want to ensure that women can lead emotionally and
physically healthy lives. To achieve this goal, a caring friend, parent, or health provider can start by recognizing that each person's
experience with abortion is unique and by focusing on listening, being there for someone affected by abortion, and reserving judgment.
With this approach, each of us can participate in creating a social climate based on support and respect, not stigma and shame.
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A2: Abortion Bad – Stigma (2/2)
Reforming legal restrictions to abortions solves stigma, we can’t let it paralyze us into
inaction.
Kumar et al 09
Anuradha Kumar a *, Leila Hessini a and Ellen M.H. Mitchell b a Ipas, North Carolina, USA; b Department of
Clinical Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Bioinformatics, Amsterdam Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam,
The Netherlands, “Conceptualising abortion stigma” http://www.sxpolitics.org/wpcontent/uploads/2009/04/kumarchs2009-abortion-stigma.pdf, accessed 7/8/09, KLM
We find that abortion stigma is a ‘compound stigma’, that is, it builds on other forms of discrimination
and structural injustices. Stigma is dependent on the appropriation and use of different forms of power. Ultimately, abortion
stigma serves to erase and disguise a legitimate medical procedure, discredit those who would provide
or procure it and undermine those who advocate for its legality and accessibility. However as Castro and
Farmer (2005) caution, we must be careful not to ascribe disproportionate import to stigma and allow it to
paralyse us into inaction. Indeed the roots of abortion stigma – narrow gender roles, intent to control
female sexuality, compulsory motherhood – are social constructs that can be deconstructed. As in the case
of HIV and AIDS, we must empirically determine what role stigma plays, how it is expressed in particular communities and how it can
be countered most effectively. Only then can we design meaningful advocacy strategies and clinical interventions to address abortion
stigma. There is, therefore, an urgent need for evidence-based and woman-centred knowledge about the impact of abortion stigma.
Along these lines, we have identified three complementary tasks for moving forward the global understanding of abortion stigma.
Firstly, there is an extensive research agenda to be pursued. It is critical to understand abortion stigma better,
measure it empirically, deconstruct it in particular contexts and re- construct its contours at a more
general level. In order to reflect the fact that abortion stigma is neither natural nor ‘essential’, research should explore historical
periods and country contexts where the role of abortion stigma remains minimal or is declining. While most stigma research has focused
on the individual, psychological level, we feel that this would be inappropriate for abortion stigma. We concur with Aggleton, Parker
and Mulawa (2003) and Yang et al. (2007) that the community should be the central locus of research and, ultimately, resistance to
abortion stigma. Comparative qualitative and quantitative research on the scope andmanifestations of felt and enacted abortion stigma,
will help to reveal how ideologies related to gender, female sexuality andmotherhood sustain or undermine abortion stigma in specific
contexts. Further, research must include both stigmatisers and stigmatised as they share an often-
contested social space and struggle to define values and norms (Weiss and Ramakrishna 2006). The
relationship between the law and abortion stigma merits further research. Liberalising abortion laws
may help to change abortion-related norms and behaviours or they may heighten stigmatising
attitudes. Legal restrictions on abortion jeopardise women’s health and lives, but their relationship to
societal climates of secrecy, denial and discrimination deserves scrutiny. In countries like Romania and South
Africa, liberalisation had a direct and positive impact on maternal mortality (Hord et al. 1991, Jewkes et al. 2005). However, whether the
levels of felt and enacted abortion stigma have also declined is an open question. Initial thinking by Burris (2006), especially on the role
law plays in the resistance to stigma, deserves further attention.
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A2: Abortion Bad – Eugenics
Turn: Hyde forces more coercive eugenics
Davis, Presidential Chair, UC Santa Cruz, 81
Angela, "Women, Race & Class" 1981, vintage books Accessed 7 10 09
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/margins-to-centre/2006-December/001053.html
The 1977 Hyde Amendment has added yet another dimension to coercive sterilization practices. As a
result of this law passed by Congress, federal funds for abortions were eliminated in all cases but those
involving rape and the risk of death or severe illness.
According to Sandra Salazar of the California Department of Public Health, the first victim of the Hyde
Amendment was a twenty-seven-year-old Chicana woman from Texas. She died as a result of an illegal
abortion in Mexico shortly after Texas discontinued government-funded abortions. There have been
many more victims — women for whom sterilization has become the only alternative to the abortions,
which are currently beyond their reach. Sterilizations continue to be federally funded and free, to poor
women, on demand.
Over the last decade the struggle against sterilization abuse has been waged primarily by Puerto Rican,
Black, Chicana and Native American women. Their cause has not yet been embraced by the women's
movement as a whole. Within organizations representing the interests of middle-class white women, there
has been a certain reluctance to support the demands of the campaign against sterilization abuse, for these
women are often denied their individual rights to be sterilized when they desire to take this step. While
women of color are urged, at every turn, to become permanently infertile, white women enjoying
prosperous economic conditions are urged, by the same forces, to reproduce themselves. They therefore
sometimes consider the "waiting period" and other details of the demand for "informed consent" to
sterilization as further inconveniences for women like themselves. Yet whatever the inconveniences for white
middle-class women, a fundamental reproductive right of racially oppressed and poor women is at stake.
Sterilization abuse must be ended.
Allowing indigent womyn the freedom of choice is not eugenic, if anything, denying them
that right results in the totalitarian impacts of eugenics.
Birkenhead, contributor to Salon.com, 07
Peter, May, 11, "Eugenics" or freedom of choice?,
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/05/11/down_syndrome_take_2/index.html, accessed 7/10/09, KLM
Is a woman who decides to abort a fetus that would be born into poverty, or addicted to crack,
practicing "eugenics"? I don't happen to think so -- I would also exempt screening for genetic diseases
and syndromes that significantly impair a person's quality of life from that term, which I think should
be reserved for the clearly malign use of genetic testing to screen out undesirable attributes, like
gender or hair color or sexual identity -- but my opinion is irrelevant. The only opinion that counts is
the opinion of the women making the decision. And if we think leaving it up to those women puts us on
a "slippery slope" we need to take a look around us, because we are already on the slope. We always
have been. The trick is to keep our feet, and that's what personal ethics are for. The slope toward a
dystopian future where life is devalued has unquestionably been greased, but not by mostly poor
women making wrenching decisions about what to do with their own bodies and their own lives. It has
been greased by a ruling class that, in countless ways, circumscribes the lives of those women while
seeking to remove all restraints on their own depravity.
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Plan Solves – General (1/2)
The state must let the public decide the issue of abortion independently of government.
Barclay, lecturer in philosophy at La Trobe University, 1999
(Linda, “Rights, Intrinsic Values and the Politics of Abortion,” Utilitas, Vol. 11, Number 2, July, Academic Search
Premier, GMK)
The key step in defending the legal solution is to insist that on controversial matters of intrinsic value the
state should be neutral. Clearly, if our debate were about foetal rights, if the foetus really did have a right
to life, then the state could not be neutral. It is the state's role, its obligation, to protect rights. But with
respect to controversial debates about intrinsic value exactly the opposite is the case. Abortion should be
legally available so that each person can decide for himself or herself how best to respect the intrinsic
value of human life. People have the moral right, and responsibility, to confront fundamental questions
about the meaning and value of life for themselves, answering 'to their own consciences and
convictions' (p. 166). This right has an important role in Western political culture and underpins the moral
requirement of state neutrality.
Repealing the Hyde Amendment takes the first step in creating true equality in health care.
National Network of Abortion Funds 09
Jan 16, “Plea for End to the Hyde Amendment”, http://cfidc.wordpress.com/2009/01/, accessed 7/5/09, KLM
For more than thirty years, the Hyde Amendment and other funding restrictions have affected the
poorest and most vulnerable of low-income Americans, with a disproportionate impact on women of
color and immigrant women. The Hyde Amendment denies abortion access to the seven million women
of reproductive age who are currently enrolled in Medicaid. These funding restrictions are the most
detrimental of all attacks on safe, legal abortion care, and represent a clear violation of low-income
women’s human rights. In addition, abortion funding restrictions marginalize abortion care and
disregard the fact that it is an integral part of the continuum of women’s reproductive health care. By
striking funding restrictions, President Obama can place abortion back in the context of health care,
thereby setting a new tone and signaling to Congress his commitment to comprehensive women’s
health care. Further, this early commitment will bolster the efforts of our diverse and growing
grassroots advocacy campaign as we continue educating the public and Members of Congress about
the urgent need for a full repeal of these restrictions. There is precedent for a President who supports
reproductive freedom to take this action, and we look forward to working with and supporting President
Obama as he takes this step. 1 Today, more than ever, low-income women in the United States must have
access to the resources that allow them to determine the size and timing of their families. Many of these
women are already balancing the demands of jobs, children, school, diminishing paychecks, and the
disproportionate burden of an economic downturn. Funding restrictions are often insurmountable
obstacles for women with limited resources. Removing them is the first step to true health care reform,
to abolishing class- and race-based discrimination, and to placing control, dignity, and selfdetermination back in the hands of the women to whom it belongs.
Medically Safe Abortions Must Be an Option Regardless of Income
Population Connection, 2003. (Population Connection: “Population Connection: Statement of
Policy,” 5-3-03,
www.populationconnection.org/site/DocServer/Statement_of_Policy.doc?docID=401, accessed
7-6-09)
Population Connection believes that quality family planning services should be made available to all
people who desire such services. The nations of the world should agree to achieve this goal at the earliest
possible date. The developed nations of the world, including the United States, should provide much of the
funding necessary to implement this objective. We recommend that Congress ensure universal
accessibility to family planning and abortion services in the United States, and sufficient funds to
accomplish this goal. We recommend that state and local government also commit funds to provide family
planning and abortion services. Population Connection recommends that states remove the existing legal
restrictions on contraceptive availability for teenagers and that they enact legislation to guarantee access to
both information and services. Population Connection recommends that the print and broadcast media
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
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CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
increase their dissemination of information about contraceptive methods and about means of access to them,
for all individuals and couples who need them. We recommend that the mass media accept tasteful
advertising of contraceptives. We recommend that state laws and hospital and physician policies which
restrict adults from obtaining sterilization be eliminated to allow sterilization at the discretion of the
individual. We recommend that physicians provide information on the available procedures, health risks, and
consequences of sterilization to all potential patients to facilitate informed consent. Population Connection
recommends that federal government funding for contraceptive research be increased to reduce health risks
to women and men, to provide Americans with better contraceptive devices, and to protect them from
unwanted pregnancy. It is a fact of today's world that unwanted pregnancies occur. Many of them are
terminated by abortion. Where abortions are not legal, women seek illegal abortions, at great risk to
their health and lives. Population Connection believes that every child should be a wanted child.
Achieving this goal would prevent the suffering of families and the social problems that often follow
the births of unwanted children. We therefore support laws and social practices that ensure access for
all women to medically safe and affordable abortion services. Specifically: We endorse the U.S.
Supreme Court's holding in Roe v. Wade and oppose attempts through legislation, litigation, or
Constitutional amendment to weaken or overturn the ruling. U.S. population assistance under the
Foreign Assistance Act should be available to fund abortion services in any country desiring such assistance
in accordance with the laws of that country. Public programs such as Medicaid and federally-financed
insurance plans underwriting obstetric services should be modified where necessary to ensure that all
women, regardless of income, have access to medically safe abortion services. Any other legislative or
administrative prohibitions at federal and state levels limiting access to abortion should be repealed.
Hospitals that receive public funding should be required by federal law to meet the need for abortion
in their areas.
Government funding is key to ensuring that impoverished women have access to an
abortion.
Tribe, Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School, 11/1995
(Laurence H. Tribe, “The Abortion Funding Conundrum: Inalienable Rights, Affirmative Duties, And the Dilemma
of Dependence,” Harvard Law Review, 99 Harv. L. Rev. 330, JM)
How about a woman too poor to pay for an abortion? It might be supposed that her plight is not the
government's doing but her own responsibility. We might even assume, for the sake of argument, that the
impecunious woman deliberately chose to conduct herself so as to save too little to pay what an abortion costs -- by
rejecting available work, or by spending all her earnings on other things. Even so, the government obviously has
the constitutional authority under such circumstances to make abortion available at no charge to the woman - either in a public facility or by public subsidy of an otherwise willing private provider. Its affirmative choice
not to do so can be described, without doing violence to the language, as a decision to "enforce" the woman's
implied waiver -- her alienation, if you will -- of the right she would otherwise have enjoyed: the right to end
her pregnancy. After all, the unavailability of abortion to such a woman follows from her lack of funds only
by virtue of government's quite conscious decision to treat the needed medical procedure as a purely private
commodity available only to those who can pay the market price.
It is the government’s duty to provide equal choices available to all women.
Tribe, Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School, 11/1995
(Laurence H. Tribe, “The Abortion Funding Conundrum: Inalienable Rights, Affirmative Duties, And the Dilemma
of Dependence,” Harvard Law Review, 99 Harv. L. Rev. 330, JM)
Bridges, a poet once observed, may be poor places for living or planting potatoes -- but they offer fine
opportunities for "long views." In that spirit, I invite you to consider a view of our Constitution's structure
from the conceptual bridges that connect the inalienable rights of individuals, the affirmative duties of
government, and those legal norms that seek to avoid domination and to assure the diffusion and
sharing of power. As we look in those directions, our gaze may be sharpended by focusing on the always
difficult problem of abortion -- a problem that implicates not only an individual woman's freedom of
choice but government's duty to make that choice available to all women.
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Plan Solves – Questioning
Questioning systemic issues that restrict abortions is key to providing women in poverty
with safe, legal abortions.
Braam and Hessini, experts on sexual and reproductive rights, 04
(Tamara and Leila, “The Power Dynamics Perpetuating Unsafe Abortion in Africa: A Feminist Perspective,”
African Journal of Reproductive Health,” Vol. 8:1, 4-2004, p. 43-51, AEL)
The previous section has provided an overview of the power structures that serve to sustain the illegal and taboo
status of abortion across Africa. Women who are disadvantaged by poverty, geographical location, racism, age,
economic status, violence and other forms of social marginalisation need support to take full control over their
bodies. To move toward the goal of increasing women's access to safe abortion services, it is critical to confront
the deep systemic issues of unequal gender power relations, inadequate and under-funded health systems, and
lack of political will. The role of religious, cultural and patriarchal institutions as gatekeepers must also be
examined and critiqued. Attitudes regarding women's sexuality and reproductive choice are constructed through
ideology and given expression through discourse; we believe that they can also be challenged and
deconstructed. The following section will highlight different approaches that have been used to shift the power
relationships that affect women's access to safe abortion, drawing on legal, rights-based, public health and social
justice frameworks. A Legal Reform Approach Advocacy efforts exist in a number of African countries to
change the criminal nature of abortion laws, either by completely overturning or modifying current legislation.
This approach has usually involved one or more of the following strategies: (i) clarifying and informing women
and providers of existing legislation and ensuring that abortion services are available for all legal indications;
(ii) expanding the indications for which abortion is legal; (iii) decriminalising existing codes that include
punitive measures for women seeking and providers offering abortion services; and (iv) removing regulatory
and medical barriers that impede women's access to services. These approaches are necessary as women and
health care providers are often not aware of the right to legal abortion in certain circumstances or of the
availability of safe legal services for those conditions. Indeed, in every African country, abortion is allowed for
certain indications. However, these laws are usually not enforced and services often do not exist to ensure their
implementation. In addition, other barriers may limit women's access including who can provide abortion and
where, spousal and parental consent, waiting periods and approval procedures, biased counselling, and the use
of conscientious objection by providers to avoid performing abortions when no other providers are available.
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Plan Solves – Societal Violence
Abortion legalization decreases the incentive for societal violence---it is a substitute for
infanticide
Boon, philosopher at the University of Colorado, 2002
(David , “A Defense of Abortion”, p. 298 7/1/09, JM)
There are three reasons to reject this culture of death argument. The first is that there is insufficient
statistical evidence to warrant the claim that infanticide rates are higher now than they were generally
when abortion was illegal. In fact, according to Everett Lee, a demographer who has analyzed decades
worth of such statistics, precisely the opposite is the case: The deliberate killing of newborns was more
common 30 years ago than it is today, although today individual cases are more likely to receive
national attention. Moreover, there is a sensible explanation for why this would be the case: “There’s no
question that abortion prevents, or substitutes for, a lot of these infanticides” (Lee, quoted in Kantrowitz
1997: A-24 ). Indeed, as a recent unpublished paper by John Donohue of Stanford University Law School
and economist Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago argues, the decriminalization of abortion
throughout the United States in 1973 has likely been responsible for the significant decrease in overall crime
that occurred during the late 1990s. As Donohue and Levitt point out in the abstract of their paper, three
strands of relatively uncontroversial empirical evidence support this thesis (1999 : abstract): First, the
significant decline in the crime rate in the United States began to occur just as the first generation of
Americans to have been born after Roe v. Wade began to reach the peak ages of criminal activity.
Second, the few states that decriminalized abortion a few years prior to 1973 were the first to
experience a decreasing crime rate. Third, the states with the highest abortion rates have seen a
greater decrease in crime. In addition, as Donohue and Levitt also point out, there is a natural explanation
for why liberal access to abortion would eventually lead to a decrease rather than an increase in crime.
Abortion, after all, is not randomly distributed throughout the population. A disproportionate number of
abortions are performed on women who are, on average, at a higher risk of having children who would
go on to engage in criminal activity. According to Donohue and Levitt’s statistical study, then, legalized
abortion in the United States “can explain about half of the recent fall in crime.” None of this is to say, of
course, that the resulting decrease in crime counts as a good argument in favor of abortion (and neither
Donohue nor Levitt claim that it is). Rather, it is to say that it presents a decisive consideration against
the empirical assumption underlying the culture of death argument against abortion. The second
reason to reject that argument is that even if we assume for the sake of the argument that there has
been an increase in infanticide in particular, or of crime in general, it does not follow that the
decriminalization of abortion in the United States in 1973 played an actual causal role in the (assumed)
subsequent increase in criminal activity. There are many other possible explanations as well. And a
general survey of existing attitudes toward abortion suggests that the claim is implausible. In contemporary
Japan, for example, abortion is treated as the primary method of birth control, and there is no evidence that
this has fostered a more general culture of death in that country.
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A2: States CP – Hyde Amendment is a Symbol (1/2)
The Hyde Amendment is an important symbol for the anti-abortion movement.
Fried, director of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, 2007
(Marlene, William Patterson University.edu, “Hyde Amendment: the opening wedge to abolish abortion,” Winter
2007, http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue42/Fried42.htm, accessed July 9, 2009, GD).
Passing the Hyde Amendment was the first big victory for the anti-abortion movement and evidence of
its growing political clout. It was also a clear example of the anti-abortion two-pronged strategy of
pushing for restrictions on abortion in the short-term while pursuing a full ban in the long-term. In
response to the challenge that the Amendment was a vote against poor people, Rep. Hyde said during the
floor debate, "I would certainly like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman,
a middle class woman, or a poor woman. Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the HEW Medicaid bill.
A life is a life."5
The Hyde Amendment is the most famous pro-life measure.
National Right to Life News, 2009
(National Right to Life.org, “Pro-Life US House Members Resist FOCA, Defend Hyde Amendment in Letter to
Obama, Pelosi, March 2009, http://www.nrlc.org/news/2009/NRL03/Letters.html, accessed July 9, 2009, GD).
Pro-life forces are bracing for a likely assault on important pro-life policies that have been adopted
and continued through enactment of provisions in annual federal appropriations bills. The best-known
of these appropriations provisions is the Hyde Amendment, named after the late pro-life champion Rep.
Henry Hyde (R-Il.), which prohibits funding of abortions (with narrow exceptions) under the federal
Medicaid program. Other appropriations-bill provisions prevent funding of abortion in other federal
programs, protect the rights of pro-life health care providers, restrict federal funding of embryo-destructive
research, and advance other important pro-life purposes.
The Hyde Amendment was an important step for the anti-abortion lobby.
The Economist, editorial, 2005
(“Old-fashioned courtesy; Henry Hyde,” 4/23, Lexis, GMK)
Mr Hyde made a more lasting contribution to America's political landscape much earlier in his
Washington career. In 1976, as a freshman Republican in a Democrat-dominated Congress, he sponsored an
amendment to cut federal funding for abortions by women on Medicaid. The Hyde amendment, which
survived a Supreme Court challenge in 1980, was a political watershed for the anti-abortion lobby.
Mr Hyde's right-wing credentials are well entrenched: today he chairs the House Committee on International
Relations, and has been a loyal backer of the war on terrorism. But it would be mistake to dismiss the courtly
octogenarian, known for his quips in Latin, as a diehard. He has crossed party lines at times, notably to vote
for the Brady bill favouring gun control. Even abortion, his signature issue, has not always been a litmus test:
during the Illinois Republican gubernatorial primary in 1990, Mr Hyde endorsed pro-choice Jim Edgar, who
was running against an anti-abortionist.
The Hyde Amendment, banning tax funds from funding abortions for poor women, is a key
anti-abortion victory.
Mears, CNN Supreme Court Producer, 2008
(Bill, CNN.com, “35 years after Roe: A legacy of law and morality,” 1/21,
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/21/scotus.roevwade/index.html, 7/6/09, GMK)
After Roe, the high court affirmed the right to abortion in subsequent cases: striking down a provision
requiring a husband's consent for a first-trimester abortion and a provision requiring parental consent for an
unmarried woman under 18; striking down efforts to expand on laws requiring women to give informed
consent before having an abortion; striking down a 24-hour waiting period; and striking down a law requiring
doctors to inform women of the risks and of assistance available if she completed pregnancy. But there was
one notable victory for anti-abortionist activists: banning use of taxpayer funds to finance abortions
for poor women.
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The Hyde Amendment is a famous anti-abortion measure.
Rovner, health policy correspondent for NPR, 5/15/09
(Julie, National Public Radio, “More Abortion Battles Loom For Obama,”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104184421, 7/6/09, GMK)
The oldest and best known is the so-called Hyde amendment, which bars federal funding for abortion
in the Medicaid program. It's named for the late Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, who first proposed it in 1976.
The measure, in various iterations, has been included in the spending bill that funds the Department of
Health and Human Services continuously since 1977. Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life
Committee says the Hyde amendment has been one of the most effective anti-abortion laws ever
enacted. "At the very minimum, there are over 1 million Americans walking around today alive because of
the Hyde amendment," he says.
The Hyde Amendment is the main restriction to abortions. Striking it down would protect
the rights and dignity of indigent womyn in the US.
Northup, President Center for Reproductive Rights, 09
(Nancy, 1-22-09, “On this 2009 anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the Center for
Reproductive Rights calls on President Barack Obama to strike the Hyde Amendment which bans funding for
medically necessary abortion from his proposed budget and support Congressional repeal of these funding
restrictions.”, http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?cat=25, accessed 7/5/09, KLM)
For thirty-six years, women in this country have had the right to obtain safe, legal abortion. But since
1977 when Hyde was first enacted, low-income women have been deprived of that right by anti-choice
politicians intent on doing away with a woman’s access to abortion altogether. The Hyde Amendment
prohibits federal funds from being used to pay for abortion except under extremely limited
circumstances. As a result, a woman who relies on Medicaid cannot get an abortion in most circumstances—even if her health is jeopardized by her
pregnancy—unless she is able to cover the entire cost out-of-pocket. Similar restrictions have been imposed on women who rely on the health benefits
provided to federal employees, military personnel and their dependents, women served by the Indian Health Service, Peace Corps volunteers, Medicare
enrollees, women in federal prisons, and low-income women in the District of Columbia. These restrictions patently discriminate against women. Abortion
is a health service only used by women, and it is the only medically necessary service not covered by Medicaid for instance. According to the Guttmacher
Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, as many as 35% of women who are eligible for the program and seeking an abortion are prevented from
making the personal decision about their own lives and forced to carry their pregnancies to term. On the other hand, virtually all other health services are
covered. Since Medicaid is the primary provider of reproductive healthcare for low-income minority communities, Hyde also disproportionately affects
women of color. Many of these women are already struggling with the challenges of supporting a family on limited resources and now, the ever-growing
burden of the economic recession. Under Hyde, a poor woman must often delay obtaining a medically necessary abortion while she tries to raise the funds.
The longer she waits, the more it costs and the greater the risks to her health. President Barack Obama’s leadership provides a tremendous opportunity for
the U.S. government to stop excluding women’s specific healthcare needs from federal health programs based on political preferences and join the 17 states
As the California Supreme Court ruled in 1981,
“There is no greater power than the power of the purse. If the government can use it to nullify
constitutional rights, by conditioning benefits only upon the sacrifice of such rights, the Bill of Rights
could eventually become a yellowing scrap of paper. Once the state furnishes medical care to poor
women in general, it cannot withdraw part of that care solely because a woman exercises her
constitutional right to choose an abortion.” Roe v. Wade recognized that a woman’s ability to make
reproductive decisions essential to her life and health. On the day commemorating this landmark case, the
Center for Reproductive Rights urges the new president to protect the dignity and health of all women
by striking restrictions on public funding for medically necessary abortions.
across the country that pay for poor women’s medically necessary abortions.
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A2: States CP – Fed Key (1/3)
The federal government is the only viable solvency option – states have no long term
solutions to their budget crises and need immediate federal government support.
Families USA, non-profit organization supporting healthcare, 08
(FamiliesUSA.org, 7-2008, http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/state-budget-cuts-2008.pdf, accessed 7-1-2009,
AEL)
State leaders often have a knee-jerk tendency to cut Medicaid and other safety net programs when their state is
in a fiscal crisis. As mentioned above, states often have no choice but to balance their budgets, so they must
either make cuts or increase taxes, neither of which is popular or even politically feasible. States do have a few
other options to avoid making drastic cuts in Medicaid and other important programs, such as tapping tobacco
settlement or rainy day funds (see “Sin Taxes and Other Funding Sources” on page 9), but these measures are
short-term solutions that do not boost a state’s economy. These measures are not long-term solutions, and they
should not be seen as a substitute for federal action. During a national recession, only federal relief can help
states protect and sustain Medicaid. As the nation’s economy continues its downward spiral, Medicaid programs
in a number of states are in jeopardy. Several states are proposing to balance their budgets by making cuts to
Medicaid in the form of raising cost-sharing amounts, shrinking eligibility, or reducing benefits. Many of these
cuts can be minimized or averted if Congress acts now to bring fiscal relief to the states.
The federal government funding is the only way to keep Medicaid alive – state budget cuts
will kill Medicaid programs in the long run.
Families USA, non-profit organization supporting healthcare, 08
(FamiliesUSA.org, 7-2008, http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/state-budget-cuts-2008.pdf, accessed 7-1-2009,
AEL)
The need for federal fiscal relief for states is clear: A number of states have already begun cutting their
Medicaid budgets or are proposing Medicaid cuts in order to fill budget gaps in both the current and the next
fiscal year. The Medicaid cuts discussed in the states listed below will greatly affect the health and well-being
of thousands of Americans, and unfortunately, it is likely that the worst is yet to come. A few of these states had
proposed even deeper Medicaid cuts, but they were able to find revenue to fill in some of their budget gaps.
There were also a number of states that we did not include in this report that proposed Medicaid cuts that were
never enacted. However, the effects of a recession are generally felt over a number years even after the
economy begins to bounce back. Thus, regardless of whether states have been or will be able to stave off or
minimize proposed cuts this year, they will most certainly be faced with these difficult decisions again next
year—unless the federal government acts to provide relief.
Ending federal Medicaid funding would be a financial catastrophe to states.
Rallinow, Arizona real estate Web site sponsored by Arizona Association of Realtors, 6/23
(Rallinow.com, “State governors fight proposed Medicaid expansion,” 6-23-2009,
http://www.rallinow.com/news/show/480, accessed 7-8-2009, AEL)
The latest challenge to President Obama’s national healthcare plan comes from a bipartisan group of state
governors who are pushing to scale back or kill proposals to expand Medicaid to provide healthcare coverage
to the uninsured. Medicaid, the healthcare program for the poor, is funded through a combination of
federal and state tax money. Current healthcare proposals in the House and Senate would expand the
program to cover at least a third of the nation's 46 million uninsured, but states are worried they will get
stuck with a big part of the tab. Many states are experiencing major budget deficits and are unable to
cover their current expenses and programs. The governors are concerned about the additional
financial burden that the Medicaid plan would put onto states in these troubling economic times. With
many states facing financial devastation, the concern is that if the federal government changes the
Medicaid rate it could be the final financial catastrophe. Under the House Democratic proposed plan the
federal government will assume all the costs for the expansion at first, followed by a transition to shared
responsibility with the states within 5 years to assume 50% of the costs associated with the expansion.
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Federal action is key to solve the “chilling effect” and prevent more restrictive state
legislation
Stewart, MD, UCSF Center for Reproductive Health Reseach & Policy; Wayne C. Shields,
ARHP President and CEO; Ann C. Hwang, MD, UCSF Center for Reproductive Health
Research & Policy, 04
(Felicia H. Stewart, “The federal abortion ban: a clinical and moral dilemma, and international policy setback,”
Contraception 69 (2004) 433–435, Elsevier. JM)
The only logical extension, based on the valuation of the fetus as a child, is that other kinds of abortion
will also face bans or restrictions on the basis that they too are “inhumane” to the “unborn child.”
Anti-abortion legislators are already pursuing this logic: a recently proposed Virginia law requires that
fetuses receive pain medication (through the pregnant woman) before abortions after the first trimester [4].
This proposed law builds on the use of a “cruelty to fetuses” argument that legitimates subjecting pregnant
women to interventions that have nothing to do with protecting their health. The ultimate result of this logic
can be found in South Dakota's recent proposed law that bans all abortions unless a mother's life is in
danger. There is no exception for rape victims or women who could suffer permanent serious health
problems from delivery. The chief sponsor of the proposed legislation, Republican Rep. Matt McCaulley,
explained, “When we're considering an innocent life, the health of the mother is not a substantial enough
justification to take the innocent life” [5]. In addition to furthering a fetus-centered framework for abortion
(which lays the groundwork to ban all abortion), the Federal Abortion Ban is the first federal law to
criminalize abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United
States in 1973. Physicians convicted of performing the procedure face up to 2 years in jail.
Incarceration is a serious threat, and one that undoubtedly intimidates potential providers. In
addition, the “chilling effect” of criminalization may deter clinicians from a wider range of patient
care, education, and research activities than is explicitly banned. Physicians challenging the ban in court
have had their patients' medical records subpoenaed by the U.S. Department of Justice. The Justice
Department argues that the records are needed to counter the plaintiffs' claim that procedures outlawed by the
Federal Abortion Ban are at times necessary to preserve a woman's health. Opponents of the subpoena worry
that the Justice Department is violating patients' privacy and intimidating and harassing abortion patients and
providers. In some cases, judges have rejected the subpoena, agreeing that turning over the records would
violate patients' privacy protections. The chilling effect has international implications as well, by
discouraging reform of restrictive abortion laws. The Mexico City Policy, or “global gag rule”,
currently bans foreign non-governmental organizations from receiving U.S. family planning aid if they
provide any abortion-related counseling or advocate liberalizing abortion, with their own funds. Like
the global gag rule, the Federal Abortion Ban is likely to create confusion about what is and is not
banned, and thus has the potential to “chill” a much broader range of clinical and educational
activities. Finally, Federal Abortion Ban supporters are exploiting and fomenting discomfort over late term
abortions, even though the law is written in a way that applies to abortions over a much broader range of
gestational ages. Some abortion-rights advocates might understandably believe that restricting or banning
later term abortion would be a reasonable compromise to shore up public support for abortion rights, given
that the vast majority of abortions in the United States occur in the first trimester [6]. But ceding this issue
in the hopes of establishing a truce or compromise is simply misguided. The Federal Abortion Ban
specifies no gestational limits, and the ban itself is predicated on principles antithetical to allowing
women to make decisions about their pregnancies: namely, that fetal “interests” can overcome the
health considerations of the pregnant woman, and can justify the criminalization of medically
appropriate care
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Federal action is key – the Hyde Amendment is preventing states from being able to pay for
abortions through Medicaid
Schewel, Ph.D., 2006
(susan, Womens health network, “The Hyde Amendment's Prohibition of Federal Funding for Abortion -- 30
Years is Enough!”, http://www.nwhn.org/newsletter/article1.cfm?newsletterarticles_id=106, October 2006,
accessed 7-1-09, NG )
For the 12.8 million women of reproductive age who depend upon Medicaid for health care today, the
impact of the Hyde Amendment is staggering.4 Between 1973, when abortion was decriminalized
nationally, and 1977, when the Hyde Amendment went into effect, Medicaid paid for about one third of all
U.S. abortions.5 Today, women who are least able to pay for an abortion must cobble together the fee
or continue an unwanted pregnancy to term. In Philadelphia, a first trimester abortion costs about $350,
but delays can result in fees as high as $2,000. Women who are able to raise the money for an abortion often
do so at great cost to themselves and their families—using meager public assistance checks or paychecks
from low-wage jobs, forgoing payments for rent and heat, sometimes risking homelessness or resorting to
prostitution. The time it takes to raise the needed money means that lowincome women often have to delay
their abortion procedure by two or three weeks; as a result, they are more likely to have later abortions and to
need more complicated and expensive second trimester abortions than do women with higher incomes.6
Those who continue the pregnancy to term may be forced to stay in abusive relationships, end their formal
education, or experience greater difficulty raising their children with dignity. When the Hyde ban was
implemented, the pro-choice movement immediately challenged this inequitable measure in the courts. In
1980, the Supreme Court found the Hyde Amendment to be constitutional. Since its inception, both
Congress and the courts have fluctuated about including exceptions to the Medicaid coverage ban.
Presently, federal Medicaid funds can be used in cases where the pregnancy resulted from rape or
incest, or if the pregnancy endangers the woman’s life. Yet states have set up myriad bureaucratic hurdles
that make it difficult for individual women—often already traumatized by the circumstances of their
pregnancy—to take advantage of these exceptions.
Only the federal government can pay for women that are under federal health plans
NNAF, 2008
(National Netword of Abortion Funds, “Abortion Funding” http://www.nnaf.org/pdf/NNAF%20Policy%20Reportp
d f, 2005, accessed 7-05-09, NG)
The central problem is the denial of funding for abortion in government health programs for lowincome people. When abortion first became legal in 1973, poor women who qualified for healthcare through
the Medicaid program were covered for abortion just as they were for other medical care. But only three
years later, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, banning federal Medicaid funding for abortion. No
other medical procedure was singled out for exclusion. Today, 33 states have followed suit, prohibiting
state Medicaid funding as well. Bans on Medicaid funding for abortion burden some of the most
disadvantaged women in our society – those who rely on the government for healthcare. Given racial
inequalities, women of color disproportionately depend on such coverage, making abortion funding a
matter of racial justice as well as economic justice and women’s rights. Young women and rural women
are also hard hit by funding bans. In addition, Congress denies abortion coverage to many other women
who rely on federal health plans: women in the U.S. military and Peace Corps, federal employees,
disabled women, residents of the District of Columbia, federal prisoners, and women covered by the
Indian Health Service.
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Only federal government can guarantee abortion rights for female prisoners.
Martin, managing editor, 2006
(Brent, Missourinet, “Prison Abortion Rights Upheld,” 7/18,
http://www.missourinet.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=40EBA924-6FFF-419D-9500747473D76EBF, 7/5/09, GMK)
A court ruling that forced the state to transport a pregnant female prisoner to an abortion clinic last
year has been made to apply to all women in Missouri prisons. Federal Judge Dean Whipple has ruled
that the US Supreme Court order that Missouri provide the transportation and guards to the inmate,
known only as Jane Roe, applies to any pregnant inmate who wants an abortion. Whipple made the
original ruling that the state must provide transportation and guards so that Roe could be taken from the
Vandalia prison to a St. Louis abortion clinic. The state estimated the cost for transportation and guard
salaries at $350. Roe had been sentenced to four years in prison after being arrested for probation violation in
California. She had an abortion October 20th, three days after the US Supreme Court upheld Whipple's
ruling. The American Civil Liberties Union asked the court to make the ruling a class action on behalf of all
pregnant women imprisoned in Missouri. The ACLU states that at least one female inmate was denied
transportation to an abortion clinic since the Roe case. Governor Blunt has urged the Attorney General to
appeal the decision, stating, "This ruling violates our traditional Missouri values and is an affront to everyone
that values the sanctity of human life."
Only federal constitutional rights can protect incarcerated women who want abortions.
Roth, 2006 Soros Justice Fellow 2005
(Rachel, Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance, “Women’s Rights Don’t Stop at Jailhouse Door,” 8/31,
http://www.womenandprison.org/prison-industrial-complex/roth-2.html, 7/5/09, GMK)
Two important constitutional rights protect women's decisions about pregnancy and abortion. These
are the right to choose abortion that applies to all American women and the right to adequate medical
care that is guaranteed specifically to prisoners, as part of the right to be free from cruel and unusual
punishment. Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that government policies cannot "unduly
burden" a woman's exercise of her abortion rights. Forcing women to hire an attorney, appeal to a
judge for a court order authorizing the abortion and risk delays of such magnitude that they can no
longer obtain an abortion constitute precisely such undue burdens. "Jane Doe," who brought the lawsuit
against Arpaio, decided early on to have an abortion and paid the clinic's fee in advance, but still spent eight
long weeks trying to get a court order so that the jail would take her to the clinic. She succeeded only when
the ACLU stepped in to represent her and had an abortion shortly before her 14th week of pregnancy, after
which she would have needed a more expensive, more complicated procedure. Women in Houston, St.
Louis, and other communities have experienced similar problems and have only succeeded in
obtaining abortions because they had legal assistance. Although no one knows precisely how often these
conflicts occur, advocates say they have been going on for a long time and continue to crop up in different
parts of the country.
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A2: States CP – Perm Do Both
Perm Do Both: The USFG and 50 States working together is normal means for Medicaid
coverage
NAF, 2006
(national abortion federation, “Public Funding for Abortion: Medicaid and the Hyde Amendment”
http://www.prochoice.org/pubs_research/publications/downloads/about_abortion/public_funding.pdf No Specific
Date Given, Accessed 6-29-09, NG)
Authorized in 1965, Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that provides the nation's low-income
population with basic health and long-term care coverage. Medicaid is the largest health care program in
the United States, and covers more than 50 million people.1 Under Medicaid states receive federal
matching funds to provide health care for low-income individuals. Medicaid coverage is critical to the
health care of millions of women. More than 16 million women receive their basic health and long-term
coverage through Medicaid.2 In 2003, Medicaid covered one in ten women and one in five low-income
women.3 In 2003, 11.5% of women of reproductive age were covered by Medicaid.4 Currently, all state
Medicaid programs must cover pregnant women who meet the federal income requirements. Many states
have elected to cover women with incomes that are higher than the federal requirements. However, this
coverage is not without limits, and abortion services are among the provisions that are most stringently
regulated. Medicaid Spending Medicaid is the largest form of aid to the states from the federal
government, comprising 43% of all federal grants.5 As the national economy has worsened, state tax
revenue has lessened and health care costs have continued to rise. This resulted in more people eligible for
Medicaid.6 This has placed pressure on states to control Medicaid costs, typically the second-largest budget
expenditure.7
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No solvency – country-wide deep cuts in Medicaid programs are slashing health services.
Goldstein, Washington Post staff writer, 08
(Amy, The Washington Post, “States Cut Medicaid Coverage Further,” 12-26-2008,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/25/AR2008122501148.html, accessed 7-1-2009,
AEL)
States from Rhode Island to California are being forced to curtail Medicaid, the government health insurance
program for the poor, as they struggle to cope with the deteriorating economy. With revenue falling at the
same time that more people are losing their jobs and private health coverage, states already have pared their
programs and many are looking at deeper cuts for the coming year. Already, 19 states -- including Maryland
and Virginia -- and the District of Columbia have lowered payments to hospitals and nursing homes,
eliminated coverage for some treatments, and forced some recipients out of the insurance program
completely. Many are halting payments for health-care services not required by the federal government, such
as physical therapy, eyeglasses, hearing aids and hospice care. A few states are requiring poor patients to chip
in more toward their care. "It's not a pretty list at all," said Michael Hales, Medicaid director in Utah.
Medicaid, a central piece of the Great Society safety net created in the 1960s, is the nation's largest source of
government health insurance. It covered 50 million Americans last year. The program is a shared
responsibility of the federal government and the states, with federal money paying an average of 57 percent
of the bills and states providing the rest. Federal health officials set minimum rules about who can enroll and
what care must be covered, but states are free to add to the basics. Those optional patients and services are
what many states are rethinking now. With the program the largest or second-largest expense in every state's
budget, governors and state legislators have been pleading with Congress and the incoming Obama
administration for help. The Democrats, who hold majorities in the House and the Senate, are sounding
sympathetic for now. They are considering close to $100 billion to increase the share of Medicaid's costs that
the federal government would pay during the next two years. President-elect Barack Obama also is open to
extra help for Medicaid as part of a broad strategy to spur the economy. "We are considering a number of
proposals . . . including helping states meet Medicaid needs; reducing health-care costs; rebuilding our
crumbling roads, bridges and schools; and ensuring that more families can stay in their homes," said Nick
Shapiro, an Obama transition spokesman. According to a Washington source who is in close contact with
lawmakers, some in Congress also are beginning to entertain the idea of allowing unemployed people who
have lost health benefits to sign up for Medicaid, with federal money paying the entire bill. In the meantime,
uncertainty over how much help may come, and when it might arrive, is prompting many states to make the
biggest reductions to their Medicaid programs in years -- and in some cases, ever. Diane Rowland, executive
director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, said the pressure on Medicaid programs
is particularly acute because the economy has deteriorated so soon after a milder recession early in the
decade. States already "have taken the cuts that were making the program more efficient. . . . Now they are
making . . . cuts into the core," she said. Nineteen states and the District have cut Medicaid for the current
fiscal year, according to a survey this month by Families USA, a liberal consumer health lobby. All but one,
plus six other states, are drafting deeper reductions for the coming fiscal year that they hope to avoid.
Florida's Medicaid officials have just handed the governor and legislature a blueprint for a 10 percent
reduction; it would eliminate coverage for 7,800 18- and 19-year-olds and 6,800 pregnant women. Among
the states with the gravest financial problems -- and pressures on Medicaid -- is California. In July, Medi-Cal,
as the program there is known, slashed by 10 percent the rates it pays hospitals, nursing homes, speech
pathologists and other providers of health care. It tried to lower payments to doctors and dentists, too, but
they have sued to block the decreases. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has asked the state legislature to
approve other cuts, including an end to dental care for adults, about 1 million of whom use it now, and a
sharp reduction in care for recent immigrants. At two hospitals run by NorthBay Healthcare, midway
between San Francisco and Sacramento, about one patient in five is on Medi-Cal. The rate cuts translate into
a $4 million loss this year. In September, the health system closed a rehabilitation program for children that
provided physical therapy, speech therapy and other help to about 300 young patients at a time -- with 100
more usually on the waiting list. "It was heart-wrenching to have to go out and announce," said Steve
Huddleston, NorthBay's vice president of public affairs. The strain has spread through the Washington area.
The District's Medicaid rolls have risen by 5,000 in the past year to nearly 150,000. To cope, the District
made $20 million worth of changes to the program and a separate fund for people who are uninsured,
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including postponing an increase in payments to primary-care doctors. In Maryland, Medicaid enrollment has
jumped by 8 percent in the past year, and the state has pared $82 million from the program for this year,
reducing planned increases in payments to nursing homes, managed-care organizations, private nurses and
home health aides. With a larger state deficit forecast for next year, Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) is expected to
propose deeper cuts in his budget next month, probably including a lengthy delay of the state's biggest
Medicaid expansion in years: a planned extension of coverage to 100,000 parents and other adults.
In October, Virginia eliminated a small fund for indigent patients. For the coming year, Gov. Timothy M.
Kaine (D) has just proposed $245 million in cuts from the nearly $3.3 billion that the commonwealth devotes
to Medicaid, including reduced payments to hospitals and new limits on home health care. Rhode Island's
approach has been the most far-reaching to date. This week, it announced an agreement with U.S. health
officials that would, if the state legislature consents, change the entire financial basis of the program. The
state would forfeit its Medicaid entitlement and accept a total of $12 billion in federal money over the next
five years. In exchange, Rhode Island would win uncommon freedom from federal rules, allowing it to enroll
all its Medicaid patients in managed care, cover less treatment and expand care for elderly patients at home,
instead of in more-expensive nursing homes. In South Carolina, Medicaid officials last week announced the
third round of cuts since August. They are "real unpleasant stuff," said Jeff Stensland, spokesman for the
state's Department of Health and Human Services. The program will stop paying for most dental care for
adults, eliminate nutritional supplements, cut home-delivered meals from 14 a week to seven, curtail mental
health counseling, stop building wheelchair ramps and pay for fewer breast and cervical cancer screenings.
Edna McClain, founder of Hospice Care of Tri-County in Columbia, S.C., helped coax state health officials
to expand Medicaid to cover nursing care and other support for dying patients in the mid-1990s. She was
stunned this month when an e-mail arrived from South Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services
informing her that as of Jan. 1, Medicaid no longer would pay for new hospice patients. And after March 31,
it would stop covering most people on Medicaid already in hospice care. With a $500,000 hole in her budget,
she worries about how to care for low-income hospice patients, including a 47-year-old man whose weakened
body is dangerously retaining fluid as he awaits a liver transplant. The day after she received notice from the
state, McClain composed a letter and fired it off to 107 state legislators. "They can at least hear from me," she
said. But she knows, she said, her protest is too late to make a difference .
States can't fund the billions required to expand Medicaid.
Weisman, freelance political correspondent, 6/23
(Jonathan, The Wall Street Journal, “States fight Medicaid expansion,” 6-23-2009,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124571731912339159.html, accessed 7-1-2009, AEL)
WASHINGTON -- Some governors are pushing to scale back or kill proposals to expand Medicaid to provide
health-care coverage to the uninsured, raising a new challenge to President Barack Obama's effort to overhaul
the system.
Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor, is funded through a combination of federal and state tax money.
Proposals in the House and Senate would expand the program to cover at least a third of the nation's 46 million
uninsured, but states are worried they would get stuck with a big part of the tab. Several governors, including
Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington and Republican Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, plan to
come to Washington this week to discuss health issues with White House and congressional officials. Medicaid
is expected to be a primary topic. The latest challenge to President Obama's national health-care plan comes
from a bi-partisan contingent of governors who oppose an expansion of Medicaid eligibility. White House
correspondent Jonathan Weisman reports. "[W]e're wary of additional financial obligations when we're
struggling to cover the obligations we have," said Jonathan Seib, a Gregoire health-policy adviser. In private
meetings, Senate Democrats working on health care have assured the governors that the federal government will
assume all the costs for the expansion at first, followed by a transition to shared responsibility. House
Democrats are pressing to have the federal government take on the full cost permanently. The governors say
their states aren't likely to ever return to the tax receipts they saw before the recession, much less the higher
receipts they would eventually need to cover the cost of expanding Medicaid to people with incomes as high as
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150% of the poverty line. Sen. Diane Feinstein, a California Democrat, said Sunday the issue could be a deal
breaker for her. California is in "a state of financial catastrophe," she said on CNN's "State of the Union." "[I]f
you change the Medicaid rate, for example, it has an impact on California between $1 billion and $5 billion a
year. Now, how could I support that?" she asked. "It would take down the state." Currently, governmentsponsored coverage of children offered by a combination of Medicaid and the State Children's Health-Insurance
Program generally extends to 200% of the poverty line, or $36,620 for a family of three, $44,100 for a family of
four. Parents are generally covered by Medicaid up to 67% of the poverty line, or $14,800 for a family of four.
Adults without dependent children often aren't covered by Medicaid at all. The House Democratic plan would
offer coverage to any uninsured American with incomes up to 133% of the poverty line, with the federal
government assuming all the cost of expansion. Proponents haven't said what that will cost. A proposal by the
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee may go up to 150% of the poverty line. The federal
government would assume all the cost for five years. During the next five years, the states would gradually
assume half the cost. The Senate Finance Committee is working on legislation along the same lines, but not as
generous. Pregnant women would be covered up to 150% of the poverty line. Childless adults could be closer to
115%, a senior committee aide said. White House officials appear to be looking at other options for the
uninsured poor. "It's too early in the process to determine how low-income individuals without health insurance
will be covered," said Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for the White House budget office.
The joint impacts of a recession create a perfect storm for states. Their only choice is to
strip Medicaid programs to stay afloat.
Families USA, non-profit organization supporting healthcare, 08
(FamiliesUSA.org, 7-2008, http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/state-budget-cuts-2008.pdf, accessed 7-1-2009,
AEL)
State revenues also decline significantly during a national recession. Income tax receipts fall as unemployment
rises, a drop in consumer activity leads to a reduction in sales tax revenue, and the declining housing market
greatly diminishes real estate taxes. And at the same time as unemployment increases the demand for Medicaid,
a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate causes state general fund revenues to drop by 3 to 4
percent.9 All of these factors are coming together to make a perfect storm for states: falling revenues, spikes in
unemployment, increased demand for Medicaid and other safety net programs, and the need to balance state
budgets. Unfortunately, policymakers often respond to such circumstances by stripping their Medicaid
programs, which then no longer meet the needs of enrollees—or of the additional Americans who need
Medicaid but who are forced to join the ranks of the uninsured. What’s more, these Medicaid cuts harm state
economies, compounding the underlying economic problems that led to their budget shortfalls in the first place.
States have exerted paternalism with the ability to determine abortion rights
Bazelon, senior editor for Slate, 08
(Emily, October 22, Slate Magazine, http://www.slate.com/id/2202765/) PMK
For many pregnant women, ultrasounds are like candy—there can't be too many of those grainy black-andwhite images of the fetus napping or kicking in the womb. But if you're pregnant and don't want to be and are
considering an abortion, an ultrasound image could be an object of dread. It might force you to think about
the fetus as having a separate identity or as the baby it could become. Dread is the emotion pro-life groups
look to instill when they push states to pass laws that make an ultrasound part of the abortion procedure. It
should also be said that women may, in fact, react otherwise: They could shrug off the ultrasound as a matter
of indifference or even greet it with relief, because an image taken during the first trimester may look much
more like a blinking light, or a newt, than a baby. I've never seen a study measuring how many women feel
what, but abortion opponents believe that if women see the physical evidence of their pregnancy on the
screen, at least some of them will decide not to end it. Accordingly, 14 states have passed abortion-related
ultrasound laws. Some of these statutes merely instruct clinics to offer an ultrasound to each abortion patient.
Since many clinics do this anyway to help determine the week of the pregnancy, these laws don't intrude all
that much on the doctor-patient relationship. And as William Saletan has pointed out in Slate, it's hard to
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argue that women deciding whether to have an abortion should be shielded from accurate scientific
information, which is what ultrasounds are, after all. But what if a woman doesn't want an ultrasound, and
there's no pressing clinical reason for her to have it? Four states—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and
Oklahoma—have taken the galling step of requiring her to have one regardless of need. They recently passed
laws that go beyond offering ultrasounds to mandating them. Oklahoma's new statute dictates that either the
doctor performing the abortion or a "certified technician working in conjunction" with that doctor do the
ultrasound, "provide a simultaneous explanation of what the ultrasound is depicting," and also "display the
ultrasound images so that the pregnant woman may view them." The law goes so far as to specify the doctor's
script: The physician must describe the heartbeat and the presence of internal organs, fingers, and toes. The
patient then has to certify in writing that the doctor or technician duly did all of this before the abortion. She
can avert her eyes from the screen, the statute allows. Maybe the legislators should have also thought to
mention putting her hands over her ears. The Oklahoma law, scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 1, has other
objectionable provisions. Its confusing rules about medical abortions (drugs) would force the clinic bringing
suit to stop offering that procedure entirely, says Stephanie Toti, a lawyer for the Center for Reproductive
Rights, a public-interest law group that challenged the statute in court earlier this month on behalf of one of
the state's abortion providers. Forty percent of the women who come to the clinic choose medical abortions,
but the law talks about administering the drugs and follow-up care in a way that doesn't jibe with standard
practice, so doctors would be stuck practicing medicine in a way that doesn't make sense to them. The law
would also prevent women from recovering damages from any obstetrician-gynecologist whose "act or
omission contributed to the mother's not having obtained an abortion"—in other words, women cannot bring
suit against a doctor who failed to tell her about a detected birth defect.
State programs fail. Several laws require deliberate misinformation to turn away
abortions.
Human Rights Watch 06
(“U.S.: Abortion Regulations Undermine Women’s Right to Choose” 10-26-06,
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/10/29/us-abortion-regulations-undermine-women-s-right-choose , Accessed
6-29-09, KLM)
The mounting obstacles to abortion services include in some states a legal requirement to provide
medically inaccurate information as part of obligatory pre-abortion counseling. For example, some
state regulations compel doctors and nurses to say that abortion leads to breast cancer and that fetuses
feel pain throughout the pregnancy. Both claims are scientifically unfounded. “These regulations
undoubtedly are a back-door attempt to curtail women’s rights. There is a direct assault on women’s
right to safe abortion through deliberate misinformation,” said Marianne Mollmann, advocacy
director in Human Rights Watch’s Women’s Rights Division. Several U.S. state laws and regulations on
abortion may in fact contravene Supreme Court rulings. Since 1973, the Supreme Court has consistently held
that states cannot place an “undue” regulatory burden on a woman or girl seeking to terminate her pregnancy.
But some regulations do just that, notably where the law compels the mandatory imposition of false
information. States have also sought to curtail access to abortion by re-imposing criminal sanctions
for the provision of services. Most prominent is the blanket ban on abortion in South Dakota, signed
into law in March, and subject to a state referendum during the mid-term elections next week. South
Dakota’s law makes abortion illegal except when the procedure is carried out to save the pregnant
woman’s life. Several other states, including Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana and Tennessee, have
moved to enact similar legislation.
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States don’t usually cooperate successfully in the long term.
Cyr, The News-Herald, 7/3/09
(Arthur I., “State fiscal crises becoming national,” http://www.newsherald.com/articles/2009/07/03/opinion/nh1112243.txt, 7/3/09, GMK)
The proposed prison cooperation between California and Michigan is reflected in other public policy
initiatives. For instance, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin and Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty of
Minnesota have established a partnership to control costs through joint purchase and distribution regarding
food, fuel, transportation and other expenses. The U.S. has relatively few examples of effective long-term
regional cooperation, reflecting the great, established power of individual states in our federal system.
One exception is the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a very successful New Deal innovation to
provide basic electric power to poor rural areas.
States don’t have adequate funding for all abortions
Boonstra, Senior Public Policy Associate at the Guttmacher Institute, 2007
(Heather D, Guttmacher Policy Review, The Heart of the Matter: Public Funding Of Abortion for Poor Women in
the United States, Winter 2007, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/10/1/gpr100112.pdf, 6-29-09, AMG)
Perhaps the most tragic result of the funding restrictions, however, is that a significant number of women
who would have had an abortion had it been paid for by Medicaid instead end up continuing their pregnancy.
A number of studies have examined how many women are forced to forgo their right to abortion and bear
children they did not intend. Studies published over the course of two decades looking at a number of states
concluded that 18–35% of women who would have had an abortion continued their pregnancies after
Medicaid funding was cut off. According to Stanley Henshaw, a Guttmacher Institute senior fellow and one
of the nation’s preeminent abortion researchers, the best such study, which was published in the Journal of
Health Economics in 1999, examined abortion and birthrates in North Carolina, where the legislature
created a special fund to pay for abortions for poor women. In several instances between 1978 and 1993,
the fund was exhausted before the end of the fiscal year, so financial support was unavailable to
women whose pregnancies occurred after that point. The researchers concluded that about one-third
of women who would have had an abortion if support were available carried their pregnancies to term
when the abortion fund was unavailable.
Hostile states limit access to abortions.
Towey, Poggi and Roth, communications director, executive director, PhD in Political
Science at Yale University, 2005
(Shawn, Stephanie, and Rachel, National Network of Abortion Funds, “Abortion Funding: a Matter of Justice,”
http://www.nnaf.org/pdf/NNAF%20Policy%20Report.pdf, 7/1/09, GMK)
Some six million women of reproductive age (15-44) depend on Medicaid for their health care.3 Because of
the Hyde Amendment and state bans on Medicaid funding, the majority of these women are denied
coverage for abortion. In 33 states and the District of Columbia, women have virtually no access to
Medicaid-funded abortions, unless their pregnancy is a result of rape or their doctors will attest that
continuing the pregnancy endangers their life. Even women in these circumstances are frequently
denied coverage because of hostile state agencies, bureaucratic barriers, and misinformation. In these 33
states, Medicaid pays for less than 1% of abortions. By contrast, in the 17 states that provide coverage,
Medicaid pays for 27% of abortions.4
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States have many restrictions that delay the abortion.
Towey, Poggi and Roth, communications director, executive director, PhD in Political
Science at Yale University, 2005
(Shawn, Stephanie, and Rachel, National Network of Abortion Funds, “Abortion Funding: a Matter of Justice,”
http://www.nnaf.org/pdf/NNAF%20Policy%20Report.pdf, 7/1/09, GMK)
Restrictions on the state level further burden low-income women and girls. For example, 22 states
impose mandatory delays, typically of 24 hours, between abortion counseling and the abortion itself,
even though an estimated 93% of women are certain of their decision by the time they come for their
appointment.15 Five of these states require women to receive counseling in person instead of over the
phone or Internet. This means they must make at least two trips to the clinic. Four states specifically
prohibit insurance policies from covering abortion unless employers or policy-holders pay extra for an
optional rider, and eleven states prohibit or severely limit abortion coverage for public employees and their
dependents. Teenagers contend with all of these restrictions and more if they are under age 18; some form
of parental consent or notification policy is in effect in 32 states.16 Laws mandating parental involvement
force girls who cannot tell their parents, as well as those whose parents say no, to petition a court for
permission. These policies severely burden girls in foster care and those who live with relatives acting as
parents but without legal custody.
States like South Dakota want to ban most abortion through the 10th Amendment.
Murphy, 2006
(Mike, Stateline Midwest, “All eyes on South Dakota after legislators OK abortion ban,” March,
http://www.csg.org/pubs/Documents/slmw-0603AllEyesOnSD.pdf, 7/1/09, GMK)
The South Dakota bill banning most abortions was approved by comfortable margins in both
legislative chambers (23-12 in the Senate, 50- 18 in the House). Attempts to provide exceptions to the ban
in cases of rape and incest, or to protect the health of the mother, were unsuccessful. “We’re only trying to
protect the lives of the unborn and to be consistent,” says Rep. Roger Hunt, a Republican from
Brandon, who was the primary sponsor of the House legislation. “It doesn’t make any sense in the case of a
rape to take the life of a child.” Backers of the bill will defend it based on the state’s reserve powers in
the U.S. Constitution, he says. “States have a right under the 10th Amendment to make decisions
regarding the health and welfare of their residents,” Hunt adds. Opponents of the legislation say it
wrongly and unconstitutionally infringes on the rights of women, and also will cost the state millions of
dollars in litigation costs.
There is no consistency between states. The states that do support abortions aren’t
successful.
Simon & Schuster, Writers for our bodies ourselves, 2006
(Our Bodies Ourselves, “Abortion”, http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/book/companion.asp?id=20&compID=64,
accessed 7-3-09, NG)
Medicaid is a state-federal partnership that pays for health care services to certain low-income individuals,
including children, the elderly and people with disabilities. Each state administers its Medicaid program
within the guidance of federal law and regulations. States and the federal government share the cost of the
program. Beneficiaries must meet various restrictions, such as income or medical need, and Medicaid
programs and eligibility varies from state to state. Access to abortion services can be especially
problematic for women who are dependent upon Medicaid. The Hyde Amendment, enacted in 1976,
denies federal Medicaid coverage of abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment.
However, because each state runs its own Medicaid program, some states use state-only funds to cover
abortions under a wider range of circumstances.
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State deficits will only get bigger.
Lav and McNichol, senior adviser at the Center, senior fellow at the Center, 6/29/09
(Iris J. and Elizabeth, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “State Budget Troubles Worsen,”
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711, 7/2/09, GMK)
Figure 2 compares the size and duration of the shortfalls that occurred in the recession of the first part of this
decade to shortfalls this time. The current recession is more severe — deeper and longer — than the last one,
and state fiscal problems have proven to be worse and are likely to remain so. Unemployment, which
peaked after the last recession at 6.3 percent, has already hit 9.4 percent, and many economists expect it
to rise higher. This would further reduce state income tax receipts and increase demand for Medicaid
and other essential services that states provide. With consumers’ reduced access to home equity loans and
other sources of credit, sales tax receipts have fallen more steeply than in the last recession. These factors
suggest that state budget gaps will continue to be significantly larger than in the last recession. All but a
handful of states have had to face or are still dealing with shortfalls in fiscal year 2010 that total some $166
billion. If, as is widely expected, the economy does not begin to significantly recover until the end of
calendar year 2009 or later, state shortfalls are likely to be even larger in fiscal year 2011 (which begins
in July 2010 in most states).[1] The deficits over the next two-and-a half years are likely to be in the $350
billion to $370 billion range.
Arizona faces unresolved budget problems.
Davenport and Cooper, Associated Press, 7/1/09
(Paul and Jonathan J., “Budget Vetoes Leave Ariz.’s Fiscal Woes Unresolved,” http://www.naztoday.com/news/topstories/2009/07/budget-vetoes-leave-arizs-fiscal-woes-unresolved/, 7/2/09, GMK)
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer avoided a shutdown of state government Wednesday by signing a budget bill from
the Legislature, but her vetoes of other spending proposals leave the state’s fiscal woes unresolved.
Hours after the Legislature adjourned its regular session, the governor called a special session to begin
Monday to focus on the budget and reconsider her sales tax hike that lawmakers had already rejected. “These
budget bills would prevent the proper function of many critical components of state government, as
well as undermine our efforts to develop and encourage a prosperous future,” Brewer said in a letter
explaining her vetoes. Brewer used her line-item veto power on the budget’s spending for K-12 public
schools as a way to compel lawmakers to increase that funding above the approximately $4 billion provided
in the budget. Her office said the K-12 school system has enough money to get by temporarily. She also
eliminated the Legislature’s lump-sum spending cuts to environmental quality, social services and health
services departments, as well as some funding for the state’s three public universities. It’s not known whether
there will be enough lawmakers at the statehouse Monday to have a quorum for the special session.
Lawmakers have been in session for more than five months, and several of them have vacation plans that
conflict with the special session. House Democratic leaders cast doubts about the prospects for success
with the special session, saying the outcome won’t be any different in the special session if the governor
leaves out the concerns of rank-and-file Democrats. “What is the point of calling a special session if there’s
no agreement and nothing has changed — and nothing will probably change between now and Monday,”
said House Minority Leader David Lujan, a Democrat from Phoenix.
Illinois faces a $9 billion budget deficit.
McDermott, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7/2/09
(Kevin, “Pat Quinn vetoes partial Illinois budget, as huge shortfalls loom,”
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/politics/story/178868A462DA0BFB862575E6007F8C4E?OpenD
ocument, 7/2/09, GMK)
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn on Wednesday carried out his threat to veto a partial state budget sent to him by
the Legislature because it doesn't contain a tax increase that he says is crucial to overcoming a massive
deficit and keeping the state running for a full year. The move leaves Illinois without an official spending
plan as it starts its new fiscal year, and it's unclear what that will mean for government services in the
coming weeks. It's a gambit by Quinn on behalf of subsidized day care, elder care, drug counseling and an
array of other human services, which would have gotten only part of their expected funding under the partial
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budget. Those services would get full funding for the year if Quinn's tax hike is approved when the
Legislature returns to Springfield in two weeks. If it isn't, entire agencies could find themselves shut down
completely, absent the partial budget that Quinn vetoed. Quinn acknowledged other potential fallout from
his showdown with his fellow Democrats who control the Legislature, including the fact that vendors who
provide services to the state won't be paid unless and until a new budget is put in place. "Any bill incurred
(by the state) as of today, we cannot pay that bill," Quinn said Wednesday. Quinn's administration says
the state faces a roughly $9 billion budget deficit, mostly because of the downturn in the national
economy. Quinn has called for a two-year increase in the state's income tax, from the current 3 percent flat
rate to 4.5 percent, to close that gap.
Pennsylvania’s budget crisis cuts off payments to Medicaid.
Levy, Associated Press, 7/1/09
(Marc, “State loses authority to pay bill, vendors warned,”
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/20090701_ap_statelosesauthoritytopaybillvendorsw
arned.html, 7/2/09, GMK)
HARRISBURG, Pa. - A partisan deadlock over Pennsylvania's budget stretched into the new fiscal year
Wednesday, as the state lost legal authority to pay most of its bills and warned vendors that they may not
be paid on time. Nursing homes, hospitals and others that rely on billions of dollars in Medicaid
reimbursements were among the vendors and contractors that were advised about the potential
interruption in payments. Spokesmen for some state agencies acknowledged that their operations depend
on the willingness of vendors to extend credit. But delaying payments to vendors could force those
businesses to scrape bank accounts and put off paying their own bills. "We are not a corporation, so I don't
have homes in Ohio or Florida that can get me by in a crisis," said Nancy Kleinberg, who owns the Park
Pleasant Nursing Home with her sister in Philadelphia. The business typically bills the state $500,000 a
month in care for Medicaid patients. In the just ended 2008-09 fiscal year, tax receipts ended up $3.3
billion shy of expectations, adding up to a shortfall of more than 11 percent, the Revenue Department
said Wednesday. Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell and GOP lawmakers, who control the Senate, have no
agreement on how to resolve the deficit, and their spending proposals for the 2009-10 fiscal year are at least
$1.5 billion apart.
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Uniqueness -- Unless California immediately ceases spending, it will have a financial
meltdown.
Reuters, international news producer, 6/11
(Moneynews.com, “California on Brink of Financial Meltdown,” 6-11-2009,
http://moneynews.newsmax.com/economy/california_economy/2009/06/11/224058.html, accessed 7-3-2009, AEL)
SAN FRANCISCO -- California's government risks a financial "meltdown" within 50 days in light of its
weakening May revenues unless Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers quickly plug a $24.3 billion
budget gap, the state's controller said on Wednesday. Underscoring the severity of California's cash crisis,
Controller John Chiang, who has previously warned the state's government risks running out of cash without a
budget deal, said revenues in May fell by $1.14 billon, or 17.7 percent, from a year earlier. Additionally, the
revenues of the government of the most populous U.S. state fell short of estimates in Schwarzenegger's budget
plan by $827 million, Chiang said. He warned California's state government is speeding toward a financial
disaster unless officials act urgently to balance its books. "Without immediate solutions from the governor and
legislature, we are less than 50 days away from a meltdown of state government," Chiang said in a statement.
California's revenues have been on a dramatic slide as a result of recession, rising unemployment and its
lengthy housing downturn. The state's revenues from personal income taxes tumbled by 39.3 percent in May
from a year earlier while revenues from corporate taxes fell by 52.1 percent and revenues from sales taxes
sagged by 7.6 percent, according to a report released by Chiang's office. "A truly balanced budget is the only
responsible way out of the worst cash crisis since the Great Depression," Chiang, a Democrat, said. DUELING
BUDGET CONCEPTS Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has proposed filling the state's budget gap with deep
spending cuts, borrowing from local governments and by scrapping some state programs, including its welfare
program. Democrats who control the legislature are crafting a rival budget plan that includes spending cuts and
saves programs Schwarzenegger has proposed eliminating. They instead would use reserves estimated in his
budget to narrow the budget gap. State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said on Tuesday he wants a
budget agreement by the end of this month. California's new fiscal year begins on July 1. The sooner the state
has a budget the better poised it will be to raise short-term cash to fund its operations by selling revenue
anticipation notes, or RANs, on the municipal debt market. If pressed, California could sell revenue
anticipation warrants, or RAWs, an idea floated by Schwarzenegger when he unveiled his budget plan last
month. But he quickly shelved it amid opposition from lawmakers. "No one wants to issue RAWs for our cashflow borrowing," said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for State Treasurer Bill Lockyer. "Everyone would prefer to
issue RANs for the obvious reason: It costs less." Lockyer, a Democrat, supports a budget with the reserve
Schwarzenegger has proposed. That would increase confidence among investors that California has cash to pay
the $7 billion to $9 billion in short-term debt notes that Lockyer's office assumes the state will need to sell,
Dresslar said.
Uniqueness -- Falling California state revenues make anything but budget cuts impossible
to fund.
Omoto, Director of California Disability Community Action Network, 08
(Marty D, California Progress Report, “California Budget Deficit Through June of 2010 Projected Now At $28
Billion--Legislative Budget Analyst Issues Warning--Assembly Budget Committee Will Meet Friday,” 11-12-2008,
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/11/california_budg_22.html, accessed 7-3-2009, AEL)
The Legislature’s budget analyst issued a report – and a warning – that the state budget deficit will grow to over
$28 billion by the end of the 2009-2010 State Budget year if the State fails to take action on addressing
increases to revenues and more spending cuts to programs. The figure is $4 billion higher than what the
Governor’s Department of Finance projected the shortfall to be last week and underscores what the Governor
last week said was a budget “state of emergency”. The Assembly Budget Committee, chaired by outgoing
Assemblymember John Laird (Democrat – Santa Cruz) is scheduled to hold a hearing on the budget crisis,
Friday, November 14th, at 1:30 PM at the State Capitol in Room 4202. The specific agenda for the hearing is
not yet available and it is not certain at this point what the focus of the hearing will be. The State Senate has not
yet scheduled any budget hearings at this point. IHSS Rally In Front of State Capitol Meanwhile a crowd of
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about 150 or so persons with disabilities, seniors, mental health needs and low income families and advocates
held a rally on the South Steps of the State Capitol protesting the Governor’s proposed cuts. Assembly Speaker
Karen Bass (Democrat – Los Angeles) made a surprise appearance and assured the audience that she would not
agree to a budget solution that had no revenue increases. See separate CDCAN Report later today for more
details on the rally. Legislative Analyst Supports Governor’s Proposal and Also New Revenues The Legislative
Analyst supported the Governor’s proposals that he made last week, that included calling the current Legislature
back in for a special session. The Governor proposed about half permanent spending cuts to take effect this
budget year – and just over half of proposed revenue increases, including a temporary three year 1.5% increase
to the state sales tax. The combination of both spending cuts – that include major cuts to education (K-12),
health and human services focused on Medi-Cal, In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS), CalWORKS, SSI/SSP
and regional centers and increased revenues would close the current year budget gap currently estimated to be
$11 billion. With projected State revenues continuing to fall sharply below what was budgeted, the huge gap
continues to grow and is expected to be higher by the time the Governor releases his proposed budget for the
2009-2010 State Budget year on January 10. The state budget year begins July 1 of each year and ends the
following June 30th. Schwarzenegger Administration officials last week warned that more spending reductions
proposals would be likely given the “unprecedented” size of the shortfall. The Legislative Analyst also proposed
increases in state revenues that went much further than what the Governor proposed, including increase in the
State income taxes. The Legislative Analyst, is a non-partisan agency who works for both houses of the
Legislature reviewing and analyzing state budget issues. The new analyst, Mac Taylor, was recently selected to
replace Elizabeth Hill, who retired last month after 22 years as the Legislative Analyst overseeing the
Legislative Analyst Office (LAO). Special Session Update Both the State Senate and Assembly met briefly on
Thursday, November 6th after the Governor’s proclamation calling them back into a special session to deal with
the budget crisis. They have not met since then – and have no further floor sessions scheduled until there is
some agreement among the four legislative leaders and the Governor. No agreement however seems likely at
this point – with Republican legislative leaders strongly opposed to any increases to taxes, and Democratic
leaders opposed to only spending reductions. The special session for the current Legislature is under a tight
time constraint, with terms of office expiring November 30th for 100 of the 120 members. Newly elected
members – all 80 Assemblymembers and 20 State senators (except those seats where the election result is still
not decided) take office December 1. The Governor would have to issue a new special session proclamation to
cover the new Legislature. NEXT STEPS ASSEMBLY The Assembly Budget Committee is scheduled to meet
at 10:00 AM (instead of 1:30 PM – note time change) on Friday morning, November 14, 2008, in the State
Capitol, Room 4202. No agenda or specifics are yet available, though the hearing will likely focus on the
general aspects of the Governor’s special session proposals dealing with the growing State budget crisis.
CDCAN will issue a special report on the hearing as more information becomes available. As previously
reported, the State Senate has – for the moment – not scheduled any committee budget hearings. STATE
SENATE * No Senate Budget Committee hearings scheduled yet at this time. Major Impact of
DeadlineMeanwhile, CDCAN has raised questions regarding the actual deadline for the current Legislature to
act on the Governor’s special session proposals. The current Legislature has 100 (out of 120) members whose
terms will expire after November 30, with members who were elected or re-elected in the November
4thelections taking office December 1, 2008. There never before has been a special session of the Legislature
called this late into the legislative year before. Article 4 of the State Constitution deals with bills and the
Legislature – and specifically sets a deadline for “any bill” to be presented to the Governor, of November 15th
during the second year of session, which the 2008 session is. The constitution provision does not appear to
make any exception for special session or:”urgency” bills. The deadline of the 15th was meant to provide a
governor with enough time to review and take action on bills that could be sent to him – and enough time for a
Legislature to consider overriding any veto before the session officially ends and terms offices expire after
November 30th. The exact deadline has major implications on whether there is time for the current Legislature
to act. If it is the 15th of November – that gives them ;less than 4 days. Senate President Don Perata (Democrat
– Oakland) said it was November 23rd – not for any state law or constitutional reason, but that the legislative
computer system run by the Legislative Counsel will be taken down for overhaul to prepare for the new session
that begins after December 1. Another possible deadline is November 30th – when the constitution says the
legislative session is officially over.
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Uniqueness -- California is at the brink of bankruptcy – increasing spending will send it
over the edge.
Garrick, California Assembly Member, 09
(Martin, San Francisco Chronicle, “Spending Limit Essential to California Fiscal Recovery,” 2-6-2009,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/06/EDRO15ODOF.DTL, accessed 7-3-2009, AEL)
With California standing at the brink of bankruptcy, lawmakers must ask a fundamental question: Why is the
Legislature incapable of producing the fiscally responsible budgets taxpayers expect and deserve? The answer
lies in the Legislature's unwillingness to control spending and plan for the future. Since I first came to
Sacramento two years ago, I have seen lawmakers routinely spend more than the state takes in, while setting
aside practically nothing to help us address shortfalls in bad economic times. That's why it is essential that we
pass a spending limit and create a strong rainy day fund to force the Legislature to only spend money on growth
and new programs where it can be sustained. Here's how our spending limit would work: Lawmakers could
only increase spending each year by the combined growth rates of population and inflation. Any revenues above
the limit would be saved in a rainy-day fund and used to pay down debt or help balance the budget in future
down years. If our spending limit had been in place over the past five years, California would not be facing the
fiscal Armageddon we are today. The proof is in the numbers. Absent a spending limit, lawmakers increased
spending from $79.5 billion in the 2003-04 budget year to $107.3 billion in 2007-08. Even with a huge deficit,
they still increased health and welfare programs 6 percent last year. In 2006 alone, lawmakers increased
spending a whopping 13.8 percent. Much of this increased spending was one-time revenues being used to fund
ongoing programs. If a spending limit had been in place, government spending would still have increased over
the past five years, but modestly, with annual increases ranging between 4.37 percent and 5.49 percent
depending on the year. Overall, spending would have grown from $79.5 billion in 2003-04 to $95.9 billion in
2007-08, but spending would not have exceeded revenue any year. By no means would this destabilize
government or destroy our schools, as some have charged. To be sure, lawmakers would be forced to get their
spending priorities in check. But we would have more than enough money to ensure the priorities of working
families are fully met, i.e., education, public safety and infrastructure. More important, we would not be facing
a deficit today. Better still, we would have accumulated $11.72 billion in a rainy day fund that we could have
used to pay down debt, invest in infrastructure or protect our schools from painful cuts in a down year like this
one. The only thing that would be harmed is the Legislature's ability to overspend your tax dollars catering to
the costly demands of special interests. Now this is not some extreme proposal. It is an essential, mainstream
reform, supported by the vast majority of Californians - including 67 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of
independents in the most recent nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California survey. Taxpayers understand
that if we fail to control spending, then California will face severe deficits for years to come. If we fail to
implement reform now, we will be right back where we started next year. Republicans are committed to
preventing that from happening and stand ready to work to pass the commonsense reforms to restore fiscal
responsibility to the people's government.
Uniqueness and Internal Link -- California’s economy is on the brink of collapse and
California’s Economy is Key to the United States economy
WILLIAMS, Writer for the accosiated Press, 7-1
(Juliet, Accosiated Press “Ailing Calif. economy could prolong US recession” http://www.google.com/hostednews/
ap/article/ALeqM5gdFIGvDgqhCgEQHICPnGQ6uXy9xAD994HNN83, 7-1-09, Accessed 7-3-09)
California faces a $24 billion budget shortfall, an eye-popping amount that dwarfs many states' entire annual
spending plans. Beyond California's borders, why should anyone care that the home of Google and the Walt
Disney Co. might stop paying its bills this week? Virtually all states are suffering in the recession, some
worse than California. But none has the economic horsepower of the world's eighth-largest economy, home
to one in eight Americans. California accounts for 12 percent of the nation's gross domestic product and
the largest share of retail sales of any state. It also sends far more in tax revenue to the federal
government than it receives — giving a dollar for every 80 cents it gets back — which means Californians
are keeping social programs afloat across the country. While the deficit only affects the state, California's
deepening economic malaise could make it harder for the entire nation's economy to recover. When the state
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stumbles, its sheer size — 38.3 million people — creates fallout for businesses from Texas to Michigan.
"California is the key catalyst for U.S. retail sales, and if California falls further you will see the U.S.
economy suffer significantly," said retail consultant Burt P. Flickinger, managing director of Strategic
Resource Group. He warned of more bankruptcies of national retail chains and brand suppliers. Even if
California lawmakers solve the deficit quickly, there will likely be more government furloughs and layoffs
and tens of billions of dollars in spending cuts. That will ripple through the state economy, sowing fear of
even more job losses. Californians have already been scaling back for months as the state's
unemployment rate has climbed to a record 11.5 percent in May. Increases to the income, sales and
vehicle license taxes approved by lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in February acted as a further
drag on spending. Personal income declined in California in 2008 for the first time since the Great
Depression, and income tax revenue fell by 34 percent during the first five months of this year. The decrease
in spending is especially evident in automobiles. California is the nation's largest single auto market, and
sales are down 40 percent from last year. Auto dealers see little hope of a quick turnaround, especially after a
1 percentage point increase in the state sales tax and hike of the vehicle license fee. State agencies also
canceled contracts for hundreds of new vehicles, retroactive to March, said Brian Maas, director of
government affairs for the California New Car Dealers Association. Because California's $1.7 trillion
annual economy is so important, the state's treasurer has asked for federal help — in the form of a
guarantee that would allow California and other states to take out short-term loans at lower interest rates. A
federal guarantee would cut the interest rate on the state's borrowing by as much as half, saving California
taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. "It's not that California got itself into trouble and wants the federal
government to bail it out," said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Los Angeles. "California wants the federal
government to do for a fee that which Wall Street would do for a fee if Wall Street wasn't broken." But some
members of Congress worry about setting a precedent for bailing out local governments. "You've got many
states throughout this country, you've got many cities that are in tough financial problems, so they will all
come for help," explained Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield. Any extra federal assistance is sure to be a
hard sell in Washington and elsewhere because of California's free-spending image. That may have been true
before the recession, but the state cut $15 billion in government spending in February and plans to solve
most of the $24 billion deficit through even more cuts. Government workers face the possibility of threeday-a-month furloughs, teachers are being laid off, lower-income college students stand to lose their grants
and hundreds of thousands of poor children could go without health care. The recession is behind this fiscal
turmoil. Some 1 million jobs are expected to be lost in California in two years and unemployment is
estimated to peak at 12.3 percent in early 2010, said Jeff Michael, director of the Business Forecasting
Center at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. Schwarzenegger has repeatedly stressed that he hasn't
asked for a bailout and doesn't want any special treatment for California — though he likely wouldn't reject
more stimulus funding if it came his way. Economist Stephen Levy, director of the Center for the Continuing
Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto, has argued for another nationwide stimulus package to help
all states avoid further cuts to social programs intended to help vulnerable people. If we are the bellwether, I
would have Californians reach out to other states and really make a plea for national assistance," Levy said.
"The recession is not our fault."
Internal link -- California budget problems lead to national problems.
Farrell, Christian Science Monitor, 7/1/09
(Michael B., “California crisis a threat to US economic recovery,”
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/07/01/california-crisis-a-threat-to-us-economic-recovery/,7/3/09, GMK)
California is not the only state struggling to pass a budget, but the depth of its crisis and the size of its
economy raises the financial problem to a level of national concern. “It’s easy to make fun of all those
greedy, flaky Californians, but the national economy can’t recover with an anchor the size of California
holding it back,” says Dan Schnur, political scientist at the University of California in Berkeley and a former
Republican strategist. Home to more than one-tenth of all Americans and an annual economy of $1.7
trillion, California is a national retail behemoth and engine for the overall economy – in real estate, auto
sales, technology, construction, and agriculture. Economists worry that the budget crisis could harm the state
just when it is starting to show signs of improvement. The trouble in California “makes everything
worse” nationwide, says James Galbraith, a political scientist at the University of Texas in Austin.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: States CP – California DA (5/6)
Internal link -- California's huge economy is crucial to the US economy as a whole.
Williams, AP writer, 6/30
(Juliet, NBC Los Angeles, “What's bad for California is bad for the country,” 6-30-2009,
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Whats-Bad-for-California-Is-Bad-for-the-Country.html, accessed 7-22009, AEL)
California faces a $24 billion budget shortfall, an eye-popping amount that dwarfs many states' entire annual
spending plans. Beyond California's borders, why should anyone care that the home of Google and the Walt
Disney Co. might stop paying its bills this week? Virtually all states are suffering in the recession, some worse
than California. But none has the economic horsepower of the world's eighth-largest economy, home to one in
eight Americans. California accounts for 12 percent of the nation's gross domestic product and the largest share
of retail sales of any state. It also sends far more in tax revenue to the federal government than it receives —
giving a dollar for every 80 cents it gets back — which means Californians are keeping social programs afloat
across the country. While the deficit only affects the state, California's deepening economic malaise could make
it harder for the entire nation's economy to recover. When the state stumbles, its sheer size — 38.3 million
people — creates fallout for businesses from Texas to Michigan. "California is the key catalyst for U.S. retail
sales, and if California falls further you will see the U.S. economy suffer significantly," said retail consultant
Burt P. Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resource Group. He warned of more bankruptcies of national
retail chains and brand suppliers. Even if California lawmakers solve the deficit quickly, there will likely be
more government furloughs and layoffs and tens of billions of dollars in spending cuts. That will ripple through
the state economy, sowing fear of even more job losses. Californians have already been scaling back for months
as the state's unemployment rate has climbed to a record 11.5 percent in May. Increases to the income, sales and
vehicle license taxes approved by lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in February acted as a further
drag on spending. Personal income declined in California in 2008 for the first time since the Great Depression,
and income tax revenue fell by 34 percent during the first five months of this year. The decrease in spending is
especially evident in automobiles. California is the nation's largest single auto market, and sales are down 40
percent from last year. Auto dealers see little hope of a quick turnaround, especially after a 1 percentage point
increase in the state sales tax and hike of the vehicle license fee. State agencies also canceled contracts for
hundreds of new vehicles, retroactive to March, said Brian Maas, director of government affairs for the
California New Car Dealers Association. Because California's $1.7 trillion annual economy is so important, the
state's treasurer has asked for federal help — in the form of a guarantee that would allow California and other
states to take out short-term loans at lower interest rates. A federal guarantee would cut the interest rate on the
state's borrowing by as much as half, saving California taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. "It's not that
California got itself into trouble and wants the federal government to bail it out," said Rep. Brad Sherman, DLos Angeles. "California wants the federal government to do for a fee that which Wall Street would do for a fee
if Wall Street wasn't broken." But some members of Congress worry about setting a precedent for bailing out
local governments. "You've got many states throughout this country, you've got many cities that are in tough
financial problems, so they will all come for help," explained Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield. Any extra
federal assistance is sure to be a hard sell in Washington and elsewhere because of California's free-spending
image. That may have been true before the recession, but the state cut $15 billion in government spending in
February and plans to solve most of the $24 billion deficit through even more cuts. Government workers face
the possibility of three-day-a-month furloughs, teachers are being laid off, lower-income college students stand
to lose their grants and hundreds of thousands of poor children could go without health care. The recession is
behind this fiscal turmoil. Some 1 million jobs are expected to be lost in California in two years and
unemployment is estimated to peak at 12.3 percent in early 2010, said Jeff Michael, director of the Business
Forecasting Center at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. Schwarzenegger has repeatedly stressed that he
hasn't asked for a bailout and doesn't want any special treatment for California — though he likely wouldn't
reject more stimulus funding if it came his way. Economist Stephen Levy, director of the Center for the
Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto, has argued for another nationwide stimulus package
to help all states avoid further cuts to social programs intended to help vulnerable people. "If we are the
bellwether, I would have Californians reach out to other states and really make a plea for national assistance,"
Levy said. "The recession is not our fault."
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
Gordon/Lacy/Symonds
202
Hyde Affirmative
A2: States CP – California DA (6/6)
Internal link -- California helps to hold up the national economy.
Williams, Associated Press, 6/30/09
(Juliet, “Ailing Calif. economy could prolong US recession,”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gdFIGvDgqhCgEQHICPnGQ6uXy9xAD994HNN83,
7/3/09, GMK)
California faces a $24 billion budget shortfall, an eye-popping amount that dwarfs many states' entire annual
spending plans. Beyond California's borders, why should anyone care that the home of Google and the Walt
Disney Co. might stop paying its bills this week? Virtually all states are suffering in the recession, some
worse than California. But none has the economic horsepower of the world's eighth-largest economy, home
to one in eight Americans. California accounts for 12 percent of the nation's gross domestic product
and the largest share of retail sales of any state. It also sends far more in tax revenue to the federal
government than it receives — giving a dollar for every 80 cents it gets back — which means
Californians are keeping social programs afloat across the country. While the deficit only affects the
state, California's deepening economic malaise could make it harder for the entire nation's economy to
recover. When the state stumbles, its sheer size — 38.3 million people — creates fallout for businesses
from Texas to Michigan. "California is the key catalyst for U.S. retail sales, and if California falls
further you will see the U.S. economy suffer significantly," said retail consultant Burt P. Flickinger,
managing director of Strategic Resource Group. He warned of more bankruptcies of national retail chains
and brand suppliers.
Internal Link -- US economy impacts world economy.
Birmingham Post, editorial, 2008
(“US economy’s tough times ‘will impact on Europe,’” 7/3, pg. 24, Lexis, GMK)
Denmark said on Tuesday its economy was in recession, the first EU state to report that its output shrank for
two quarters in a row. US data also on Tuesday added to concerns that the United States is facing weak
growth combined with high inflation. Mr Paulson told the IHT that the US woes would have an impact
on Europe. "I've never been one to accept the decoupling theory," he told the newspaper. "In a global
world, we're all interrelated." A weaker Europe could also hurt the US economy due to a lower
demand for US exports, Mr Paulson said, adding emerging economies would now give the biggest lift to
global output. Mr Paulson has used his trip to reinforce the message from Washington that the US
administration believes in a strong US dollar.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: States CP – Illinois (1/3)
Illinois transferred to a cuts-only budget after its financial crisis – there’s no money to fund
social services.
McKenna, Social worker in Chicago, 7/1
(Alison, Socialistworker.org, “Illinois’ doomsday budget crisis,” 7-1-2009,
http://socialistworker.org/2009/07/01/illinois-doomsday-budget-crisis, accessed 7-8-2009, AEL)
TODAY IS the day when a new fiscal year begins in Illinois--and the state government's "doomsday
budget" could become a reality. Unless something is done to close a multibillion-dollar budget deficit-lawmakers say it amounts to $7 billion, Gov. Pat Quinn says it's more like $9.2 billion--social service
agencies will be hit hard and fast. At the end of May, the Illinois legislature passed a budget that Quinn
says underfunds state agencies and programs by at least 50 percent. If the measures were signed into law, the
cutbacks would be catastrophic. The budget for the Department of Human Services would lose $2.2 billion,
and the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) would lose $460 million, half of the expected
state allotment. DCFS would have to lay off 38 percent of its employees--with unknown consequences for
the state's most vulnerable residents who rely on the system. Quinn demanded that legislators reduce the
scale of the cuts by increasing taxes--a temporary two-year increase in the state income tax from 3 percent to
4.5 percent and a hike in the corporate income tax rate from 4.8 percent to 7.2 percent. Lawmakers rejected
the tax hikes, leading to a special session while the legislature was supposed to be recessed. State senators
gave their approval to a measure for emergency borrowing of around $2.2 billion, but that still leaves a giant
hole in the budget, and no clear idea what will fill it. The list of what would be cut under legislature's budget
measure passed in May is mind-numbing. According to analysts: -- 65,000 people with addiction problems
would lose access to treatment;-- 80,000 low-income working mothers would lose subsidized child care;-175,000 people would lose access to mental health services;-- 190,000 students would lose college
scholarships; -- Foster parents would lose 50 percent of reimbursements for caring for children; -- State
workers would face massive layoffs. There are pages and pages of program and services that have already
been cut--including all psychological evaluations and Systems of Care services, to name a couple that impact
just the foster children I work with. What's worse is nobody knows what will happen next. ONE FAVORITE
tactic among lawmakers and the media establishment has been to try to pit the victims of the budget crisis
against one another. For example, in a June 14 editorial, titled "Sharing the pain," the Chicago Tribune
acknowledged that 1,500 unionized city workers in Chicago had already received pink slips earlier in the
month. But it went on to blame unions as a source of the state budget crisis: Social service providers and
their clients--battered women, at-risk youth, developmentally disabled adults, homebound elders-are...accustomed to their role as hostages to the budget process. When the money gets divvied up each
year, they always seem to find themselves at the end of the line, wondering if there will be any cash left
for subsidized child care or rape crisis centers after those untouchable union raises are handed out. That's an
outrageous statement coming in a state where government workers have already had to endure their share of
pain, even in economic good times--while officials have handed out huge tax breaks to corporations, in the
name of "attracting business." Meanwhile, the U.S. government is bailing out Wall Street banks and
corporations where top executives still make more in bonuses than most workers see in decades of hard
work--and at the other end of the chain, people who depend on social service agencies in states like Illinois
get cut off.Quinn's proposal for solving the budget crisis by raising taxes has the backing of unions, which
have mobilized their members for demonstrations in support. But the burden ought to be shifted in any tax
increase--onto those who afford to give up a greater share. An increase in the flat-rate income tax won't put
the burden on the rich, who should be sacrificing in a crisis that they had a greater part in causing than
anyone else. And unfortunately, Quinn has indicated he would agree to lower the increase in the corporate
income tax rate, in the hopes of attracting Republican votes. Ask ordinary people what they think should be
done to solve the budget crisis, and the answer is resounding--increase taxes on the rich. ANGER AT the
severity of the looming cuts and the politicians' failure to come up with a solution that doesn't hurt working
people has boiled up at recent demonstrations and events. There have been press conferences and enthusiastic
rallies across the state in response to the pending cuts. On June 16, the YWCA helped organize a rally to
protect funding for health and human services in Chicago, as did the Campaign for Illinois Future. The Teen
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: States CP – Illinois (2/3)
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
Parent Connection hosted seven rallies that same day, including one that joined with the Campaign for
Illinois' Future protest. Many of the actions were at legislators' offices throughout the Chicago area. The
following day, the Campaign for Illinois' Future again rallied at six legislative representative offices
throughout the Chicago area. On June 18 the Child Care Association or Illinois along with Planned
Parenthood, Illinois Action for Children and several other social service and community organizations held
press conferences and a rally at the State of Illinois building in downtown Chicago. The Campaign for
Illinois' Future kept up the pressure on Friday, June 19, as did service providers in Wheaton, Ill., in a rally at
the DuPage County Human Services office to protest the proposed budget cuts. These are just some of the
rallies, large and small, held throughout the state. Social service workers and clients have been the majority
of those attending the rallies. Some actions attracted hundreds, some thousands. But no matter how many
people or what locale, the message is clear: the working people of Illinois say stop the cuts! The actions have
been spirited and passionate, with handmade signs proclaiming, "Cuts hurt kids" and "We need to work: Our
children need day care!" The rallies have been multicultural, multiracial and intergenerational, with children
holding colorful signs reading, "Don't leave me behind! I do count!" Many people focused on the upsidedown priorities of the state, demanding, "You found money for the Olympics...find money for our
programs!" One of the largest actions took place June 23, when more than 12,000 rallied in the state capitol
building of Springfield under the slogan, "Just Fix It." Social Work students from DePaul University reported
that when they arrived at the capitol, they were asked to remain outside, because for the first time in more
than 25 years the building was at capacity. When the students finally entered the building to listen to a
special budget hearing, they reported, "it soon became clear to all the citizens; that the legislators did not care
one bit about social services." While the question of a tax increase was discussed, a lone man with significant
physical disabilities started chanting, "No budget cuts!" A security guard warned the students not to say
anything, but soon everyone joined in the chant. Reportedly, the legislators looked up in disbelief, and the
security guards could do nothing to stop the protest. For legislators focused only the bottom line, it may have
been a surprise to hear from those directly affected by the cuts. I am no economist. I am a social worker. But
it doesn't take someone with a Ph.D. to know that prevention works. Even if the budget-balancers want to
ignore the human cost of the budget reductions today, these draconian cuts make no sense. It will cost the
state exponentially more money in the long term, by way of incarceration and juvenile detention, than the
programs currently on the chopping block. More than a few legislators, business interests and members of the
mainstream media have implied that unions are a big part of the budget problem. In fact, unions provide state
employees with the protections and rights that every worker deserves. And when it comes to the budget
crisis, unions can be a part of the solution--tools for workers to organize themselves and the clients they
serve. Union and nonunion workers need to organize together, and not let bureaucrats and politicians sow
false divisions among them. Key to the struggle are social services clients themselves--the people who can
speak most eloquently about their needs. Foster parents, teens, the disabled and elderly along with social
service workers need to build solidarity with one another. Most people in society do care about the lives of
their family, friends, neighbors and community. Many don't yet understand the full impact of these cuts, and
would be appalled and outraged if they did. We need to organize urgently to make our voices heard, and
build a movement to fight back.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: States CP – Illinois (3/3)
Illinois plans to balance its budget through cuts, and Medicaid is at the top of the list of
programs to cut.
AP, international news organization, 09
(Huffington Post, “GOP Senators: Cut State Medicaid by $2 Billion,” 4-1-2009,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/01/gop-senators-cut-state-me_n_182061.html, accessed 7-8-2009, AEL)
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- Illinois should consider cutting health care programs by more than $2 billion
as part of a plan to help balance the budget without raising taxes, Republican senators said Wednesday.
Democrats are rushing toward an income tax increase, ignoring the possibility of deep budget cuts, they said,
releasing a list of $3.4 billion in potential cuts, most of them involving various health programs. "This is
meaningful deficit reduction without raising taxes, and it's a serious answer to those asking for an
alternative to the governor's record-setting tax hike," said Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine. About $1
billion of the proposed savings would come from changing health insurance for retired state employees - by
charging retirees more money and reducing their coverage, for example. Another $1 billion involves cuts
and management changes in the Medicaid program. One example would be discouraging unnecessary use
of prescription drugs for a savings of $110 million a year. The rests of the cuts would be in state purchasing,
retirement programs and unspecified state programs. Gov. Pat Quinn will review the suggestions, said
spokesman Bob Reed, but he has already carefully considered cutting Medicaid and "stands by his decision
to slightly increase its funding in the proposed fiscal budget." The Republicans presenting the potential cuts
served on a state Senate committee that studied ways of reducing the deficit but failed to agree on any
recommendations. The committee's chief accomplishment was eliciting testimony that the state budget deficit
in the coming year could reach $12.4 billion, rather than the $11.6 billion estimated by Quinn. One Democrat
who served on the committee said some of the Republican proposals might have merit but erasing the deficit
through cuts is "nearly impossible to do." "The services that would be lost and the people who would be laid
off would be detrimental to the already stagnant economy," said Sen. John Sullivan, D-Rushville
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: States CP – Arizona
Arizona is freezing spending and cutting programs now to avert a California-style
meltdown.
Kirkpatrick and Jenney, director of Arizona’s government information technology agency and executive
director of the Arizona Federation of Taxpayers, respectively, 08
(Chad and Tom, East Valley Tribune, “How to fix Arizona’s budget crisis,” 12-9-2009,
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/132141, accessed 7-8-2009, AEL)
2009 could be a great year for fiscal conservatives in Arizona. Thanks to voters, it appears that the Arizona
House and Senate in January will have fiscally conservative majorities for the first time in many years.
At the same time, the public is finally beginning to understand that the state government’s $2 billion
budget deficit ($1,000 for every household in the state) was caused by reckless overspending during the
past six years. The Arizona chapter of Americans for Prosperity offers the new Legislature its Reform
Arizona Plan, which outlines 10 steps to reduce the gigantic state deficit, prevent tax increases, avoid
taking on debt that will hurt future taxpayers, and implement reforms to bring government spending
under control for the long term: • Short-term budget reform: The Legislature should send a winter or
spring referendum to the voters to get permission to temporarily suspend voter-mandated spending
increases during budget emergencies. Otherwise, large portions of the budget will continue to shoot
upward, on autopilot, making the deficit crisis even worse. • No tax increases: Most importantly, we must
prevent the return of the state equalization property tax. If the Legislature and governor do nothing, there will
be an automatic property tax increase of $100 per homeowner per year. • No federal borrowing or generalobligation bonding: Those are recipes for long-term, California-style fiscal distress. Federal “help” will come
with dangerous policy strings attached. • Spending reductions: The state government can save $1.5 billion
by enacting immediate 15 percent reductions to all government agencies other than law enforcement.
Those reductions will take Arizona back to fiscal year 2007 spending levels, with per-recipient
government benefits reduced to 2005 levels. For the past six years, the state government — led by Gov. Janet
Napolitano — has increased spending at unrealistic rates. Now we must return to reality. We must not force
Arizona taxpayers (now, or in the future) to suffer because of the government’s spending problem. • Longterm budget reform: The Legislature should send to the 2010 ballot a referendum changing the personal
income spending limit in the Arizona Constitution from 7 percent to 6.4 percent, along with a taxpayerstanding clause for judicial enforcement, and a provision for immediate refund of excess monies to taxpayers.
That spending limit is not as stringent as the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, but it would keep the government from
growing faster than the economy. • Local government transparency: By 2010, taxpayers should be able to go
online and review every disbursement made by every political entity in Arizona. We passed a state-level
transparency bill back in June, but we must now ensure that every government entity in Arizona has open
books. • Treasurer certification of the Arizona budget: Enact legislation requiring the Arizona treasurer to
certify whether the state budgets are in legal compliance with the constitutional requirement for a balanced
budget and with the state spending limit. (A great idea we got from the Goldwater Institute.) • Move forward
with school choice: Every child who leaves a government district school and goes to a charter school or a
private school (via scholarship tax credits or choice grants) saves the state money — and greatly improves his
or her odds of getting a good education. • Increase the affordability of private health insurance: We must
allow Arizona consumers to have access to cheaper insurance plans available in other states. You can buy
shoes, automobiles and life insurance plans produced in other states. Why not health insurance plans? • Use
private financing for future statewide transportation projects: For Arizona’s transportation infrastructure, the
only viable alternative to a massive tax increase (which would mean billions wasted on light rail and other
transit boondoggles) is to allow private companies to finance, construct, operate and maintain new road
capacity. For privatization in other areas of state government, the Reason Foundation recommends creating a
Florida-style Council on Efficient Government to identify privatization opportunities and assist government
agencies in developing business plans for privatization. For reports on the progress of the 2009 Reform
Arizona Plan
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: Contraceptives CP
Using contraceptives do not always work leading women to resort to abortions
Cohen, Director of Government Affairs at Guttmacher Institute, 09
(Susan A., About.com, “Repeat Abortion, Repeat Unintended Pregnancy, Repeated and Misguided Government
Policieshttp://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/10/2/gpr100208.html, accessed 6-29-09, SLR)
Just as with women having their first abortion, however, the majority of women having their second
or even their third abortion were using contraceptives during the time period in which they became
pregnant. In fact, women having a repeat abortion are slightly more likely to have been using a highly
effective hormonal method (e.g., the pill or an injectable). This finding refutes the notion that large
numbers of women are relying on abortion as their primary method of birth control. Rather, it suggests
that women having abortions—especially those having more than one—are trying hard to avoid
unintended pregnancy, but are having trouble doing so.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: Private Donor CP
Private donations are not as effective as Medicaid funding is.
Rosoff, Author, 80
(Jeannie I., JSTOR, “Family Planning Perspectives”, August 1980,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2134782?&Search=yes&term=amendment&term=hyde&term=rights&term=women&lis
t=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhyde%2Bamendment%2Bwomen%2Brights%26g
w%3Djtx%26prq%3Dhyde%2Bamendment%2Bfeminism%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&ite
m=3&ttl=1688&returnArticleService=showArticle, accessed 7-1-9, SLR)
Dependence on private philanthropy is not a realistic alternative to public funding—at least $60
million would have to be raised each year. In addition, there are no feasible mechanisms through
which this aid could be channeled on such a massive scale and on a rational and equitable basis. The
only realistic approach, at this time, is to examine all of the cost factors which affect availability and
accessibility of abortion, and systematically attempt to lower them.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2009
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: Courts CP—Abortion/Women’s Rights
The Courts lack incentives, costs, or market mechanisms to enforce decisions on women’s
rights.
Rosenburg Assistant Professor of Political Science 08
(Gerald N. The Hollow Hope: Can the Courts Bring About Social Change University of Chicago Law p. 212)
Women’s rights activists have asked courts to change the way American institutions act and citizens
behave. Sometimes courts have ordered such change but, unfortunately, it has not occurred on a large
scale. The fault lies not with the lack of effort by women’s rights litigators nor with lack of earnestness
by judges and justices in requiring that their orders be implemented. It runs deeper than that. It is
inherent in the place courts hold in the American political system. Precedent-setting decisions in
women’s rights have produced little because courts lack all the essential tools required of any
institution hoping to implement change. Without the presence of non-court actors offering incentives,
or imposing costs, without a market mechanism for change, and without willing actors, court-ordered
change in women’s rights has changed little. As with civil rights in the years before congressional and
executive branch action, women’s rights litigators could not overcome the constraints of the
Constrained Court view.
Multiple examples prove: courts can’t solve women’s rights issues.
Rosenburg Assistant Professor of Political Science 08
(Gerald N. The Hollow Hope: Can the Courts Bring About Social Change University of Chicago Law p. 212)
Fortunately for the analysis, but unfortunately for America, there has been uneven improvement in
the position of American women in the key areas of` income and jobs. Despite Court and government
action prohibiting sex discrimination, there has been "little discernible progress in the relative labor
market status of women" (johnson and Solon 1986, 183). And in the places where change has occurred,
students trace it to congressional and executive branch action, not Court action. A particularly
depressing measure of the lack of progress is the difference between the salaries of men and women.
Table 7.1 presents the figures of the "earnings gap." As can be seen clearly from the table, year-round fulltime women workers made a smaller percentage of their male counterparts salaries in 1980 than they
did in l955! Even by 1987, after nearly two decades of Court and government action. the relative
position of men and women in terms of income was about the same as it was over thirty years earlier."
"Even when adjustments are made for education and occupation," the U.S. Corn- mission on Civil Rights
(USCCR) found in 1978, "women earn less than men" (USCCR l978. 9)." Other studies, controlling for
factors such as age. work experience, and education still find a large gap (Reskin and Hartmann 1986. l0—l
1, 70-73, l23; Blau l984. l33—39). In terms of` education, the Women’s Bureau found that "in 1974
women with 4 years of College had lower incomes than men who had only completed the 8th grade”
and "fully employed women high school graduates (no college) had less income on the average than
fully employed men who had not completed elementary school" (USDL. 1976b. 2-3). By the 1980s, little
had changed, with one study con- cluding that in l984, among all workers, "male high school graduates have
median incomes one and one-half times greater than women with college and graduate degrees" (TarrWhelan 1984, 3). With full—time workers, in 1985 female college graduates made less than male high
school graduates and women with graduate education made less than male college dropouts! (The
American Woman I988. 389). And a recent study by the Rand Corporation found that if "current trends
continued women would earn only 74 percent of men’s income by the year 2000" ("Women’s Pay" I984,
16}. Any contribu- tion of the Court to ending sex discrimination is not found in the area of wage
discrimination. The lack of Court efficacy also holds in the area of comparable worth. Despite
litigation, where comparable worth policies have been instituted, they have been the result of collective
bargaining and state government action, not litigation. From California and Washington to Minnesota,
comparative worth policies have been instituted "through the legislatures and private negotia- tion," not
courts (Clauss l986, 8). Blumrosen found that "long before the courts" became involved, "state and local
governments began identifying and attacking the problem of wage discrimination against women"
(Blumrosen l984, 111 n.5). In other words, "even before Gunther there had been consid- enable activity in
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the states, which themselves were under pressure from unions and women’s groups“ (Blumrosen 1984,111).
As of September, 1983, about a dozen and a half states had conducted, or were conducting, job evaluation
studies, the first step in ending wage discrimination." And "these studies have taken place through
collective bargaining, executive order, leg· islation or personnel and civil service department action"
(Tarr-Whelan 1984, 23). Thus, the change that has occurred does not appear to be a result of judicial
action (Special Issue 1984; Symposium 1986; USCCR 1934).
No solvency – previous landmark decisions on abortion didn't increase access to abortions
or even the number of abortions performed.
Rosenberg, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, PhD from Yale, and
important and qualified enough to have his own Wikipedia page, 97
(Gerald N., The University of Chicago Law Review, “The Implementation of Constitutional Rights: Insights from
Law and Economics,” Autumn 1997, Vol. 64:4, p. 1215-1224, AEL)
An analysis of the Supreme Court's 1973 landmark abortion decisions, Roe v Wade21 and Doe v Bolton,22
provides an illuminating comparison.23 In Roe, the Court held that a pregnant woman, in consultation with a
doctor, had a broad constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy without state interference during the first two
trimesters of pregnancy.24 In Doe, the Court rejected a Georgia law mandating that abortions be performed in
accredited hospitals.25 Roe, like Brown, is seen as a symbol of the ability of courts to provide
constitutionally guaranteed rights that further the interests of relatively powerless groups within society.
As one newspaper editorial put it, "No victory for women's rights since enactment of the 19th Amendment
[giving women the right to vote] has been greater . . ..26 Did Roe make abortion accessible? If so, why?
Traditional legal analysis provides little insight into the implementation of Roe. Under such an analysis, if
women have a constitutional right to obtain a legal abortion, then women should be able to exercise that
right. Thus, one might expect a steady increase in the number of legal abortions performed after the
decision,27 with abortion available throughout the country. An economic analysis, however, would be less
sanguine, suggesting large variation in the accessibility of abortion services, depending on the presence of
incentives, costs, and market forces. Data on the number of legal abortions performed over time illustrate this
point. They show a slow but steady rise in the number of legal abortions performed in 1973 and the years
following. There was no large jump in the number of legal abortions performed, measured either
numerically or percentage-wise, in 1973 or in any of the years following. Indeed the largest increases in the
number of legal abortions occurred in the years prior to Roe and Doe. Further, the abortion rate (a
standardized measure of the number of abortions per one thousand women of childbearing age in the population)
varies enormously across states and over time. Even proximate and adjacent states have very different rates
(Delaware three times West Virginia, Rhode Island twice Maine, New York twice Pennsylvania, Alabama twice
Mississippi, Nevada twice New Mexico and four times Idaho and Utah.
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The perceived finality of supreme court decisions undermines the democratic process.
Hershkoff, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, 99
(Helen, Harvard Law Review, “Positive Rights and State Constitutions: The Limits of Federal Rationality Review,”
Vol. 112:6, 4-1999, p. 1131-1196, AEL)
Rationality review further reflects concern[s] over "the seeming finality of constitutional pronouncement,"'68
stemming, in part, from Congress's apparent inability to override constitutional decisions other than through a
long and arduous amendment process.169 Thus, the Court holds an apparent monopoly over constitutional
interpretation, giving rise in some circles to the vision of an imperial ruler that usurps power from the people and
from democratic institutions.170 According to this view, the prudent course would be for the Court to avoid
constitutional decisionmaking, allowing the legislature ample discretionary space to develop policy.'71 For
example, when the majority in Goldberg v. Kelly held that due process guarantees welfare recipients a hearing
prior to termination of benefits, the "seeming finality"'72 of the Court's pronouncements motivated Justice
Black's dissent.'73 Black explained that because "the operation of a welfare state is a new experiment for our
Nation," the Court should avoid having "new experiments in carrying out a welfare program ... frozen into our
constitutional structure."174 Conversely, when Congress can override the Court by a simple majority and a
constitutional amendment is not necessary, doubts about judicial legitimacy are somewhat mitigated.175 The
availability of this kind of legislative veto offers an explanation for judicial activism under the negative
commerce clause.'76
Rulings on controversial issues create a backlash against the courts and undermine
legitimacy.
Wellington, professor at Columbia law school, 82
(Henry H., The Yale Law Journal, “The Nature of Judicial Review,” Vol. 91:3, 1-1982, p. 486-520, AEL)
Judicial review is another matter. Almost every important case that displeases some sizeable group leads to
questions about the legitimacy of the famous doctrine proclaimed in Marbury v. Madison.2 To speak only of
the recent past, it was some sixteen years after publication of The Nature of the Judicial Process that judicial
review of New Deal legislation brought the executive and the Supreme Court into direct confrontation.3 More
recently, the segregation,4 reapportionment,5 and abortion cases6 have provoked very serious attacks on the
Court. In addition, the attempt to find a justification for judicial review is again engaging the attention of
several of our prominent constitutional scholars,7 even as it did an earlier generation some twenty years ago.8
This difference in attitudes toward constitutional and common-law adjudication is fostered by a popular
and influential view of our legal and political landscape. We tend to think of courts at common law as
acting because the legislature has not and as making law the legislature can unmake. When statutes are
involved, we see our courts either as effectuating legislative will or, through an occasional misreading of
legislative intent, as producing an incorrect decision that can be remedied easily by a legislative reform. But
in picturing judicial review, we imagine Justices appointed for life permanently thwarting the will of the
people by striking down the work of their elected representatives.
The supreme court undermines the role of democracy because the justices are not held
accountable by the electorate.
Hershkoff, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, 99
(Helen, Harvard Law Review, “Positive Rights and State Constitutions: The Limits of Federal Rationality Review,”
Vol. 112:6, 4-1999, p. 1131-1196, AEL)
Rationality review further rests on a theory of democratic primacy, under which "governmental policymaking ...
ought to be subject to control by persons accountable to the electorate."'42 Federal judicial review of government
action thus presents a fundamental tension, because it allows unelected Article Im judges to override the policy
preferences of the people's elected representatives.'43 Rationality review attempts to mediate this tension by
granting a strong presumption of constitutionality to social and economic legislation challenged under the Equal
Protection and Due Process Clauses,144 and requiring the legislature to proffer only a hypothetical or theoretical
justification for a challenged policy.
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Court action alone can never solve, other actors have to provide incentives for people to
actually care about what the Court says.
Rosenburg Assistant Professor of Political Science 08
(Gerald N. The Hollow Hope: Can the Courts Bring About Social Change University of Chicago Law p. 212)
Advocates of women’s rights have “won” quite a number of legal cases. However, as the first part of this
chapter demonstrated, there is little evidence that these Court victories have much changed the position of
women in American society. Why might this be the case? For the question of Court efficacy in producing significant
social reform in women’s rights, three approaches are available: the Dynamic Court, the Constrained Court,
and the constraints and conditions derived from there. The Dynamic Court view predicts that Court
victories would have an important effect in furthering women’s rights and improving the condition of
women. The Constrained Court view, on the other hand, would expect little change. The constraints
and conditions would also predict little change, but for more subtle and fine-tuned reasons. At the
outset, the first part of this chapter shows that for women’s rights, the Dynamic Court view is simply wrong. Further,
the civil rights and abortion cases have suggested that the constraints and conditions may be most
helpful in explaining the lack of judicial efficacy in producing significant social reform. With civil
rights it was only after Congress and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare combined to
offer incentives for desegregation and to impose costs for failing to desegregate that courts were
helpful in producing change.39 With abortion, it was the availability of a market mechanism for
implementation that allowed the Court’s decisions to have at least some efficacy.
Empirically proven - Courts can’t solve – they rely on outside actors for implementation
and enforcement.
Rosenburg Assistant Professor of Political Science 08
(Gerald N. The Hollow Hope: Can the Courts Bring About Social Change University of Chicago Law p. 212)
It should be no surprise, then, that court decisions have not helped women. Victories in job
discrimination suits, setting new precedents, won’t help much, when the entire burden of
implementation remains with the plaintiffs. Women, in other words, face many of the same problems
as blacks in using the courts to produce reform. The difference is that women’s rights litigators lack
the non-court incentives (or the presence of one of the other conditions), little will change. Even winning, however, is not easy
when federal statutes are being challenged and the U.S. intervenes in opposition.42 In comparison, several studies have
found that executive and legislative action has made some difference, particularly government-mandated
affirmative-action programs and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (USCCR 1979b). Beller, for example found a 7.1 percent
reduction in the “sex differential earnings” and concluded that “Title VII has proved somewhat effective in narrowing the earnings gap
between men and women” (Beller 1983, 75; Bergmann 1986, 147). While enforcement has been “uneven and often
inadequate” (Reskin and Hartmann 1986, 91), where it has succeeded Reskin points to leadership and
incentives. Without them, little will change. The “interventions that were least effective lacked either
incentives for compliance or the support of those charged with their implementation” (Reskin and Hartmann
1986, 129). And this, of course, in the constraint that renders courts ineffective.
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No solvency – the supreme court alone can't change lives in a meaningful way.
Rosenberg, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, PhD from Yale, and
important and qualified enough to have his own Wikipedia page, 97
(Gerald N., The University of Chicago Law Review, “The Implementation of Constitutional Rights: Insights from
Law and Economics,” Autumn 1997, Vol. 64:4, p. 1215-1224, AEL)
Supreme Court decisions are not self-implementing. As Alexander Hamilton pointed out long ago in The
Federalist Papers, courts are particularly dependent on the actions of others. Hamilton argued in Federalist 78
that the judiciary "has no influence over either the sword or the purse . . . and must ultimately depend
upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments."2 Without external support-from
the other branches of government or directly from the citizenry-Court decisions announcing constitutional
rights are unlikely to affect or change people's lives in important ways. In contrast to traditional legal
analysis, the tools of economic analysis can help explain how Court-mandated constitutional rights of relatively
powerless groups are actually implemented. In particular, economic analysis suggests that implementation is
more likely to occur if at least one of three conditions is present: (1) non-court actors offer incentives for
compliance; (2) non-court actors impose costs for non-compliance; (3) court decisions allow for market
implementation.3 The explanatory power of this economic analysis can be illustrated by examining two famous
Supreme Court decisions finding constitutional rights that favor the claims of relatively powerless groups within
society, Brown v Board of Education4 and Roe v Wade.
No solvency – constitutional rights don't guarantee access. Expansion of programs is the
only way to solve.
Rosenberg, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, PhD from Yale, and
important and qualified enough to have his own Wikipedia page, 97
(Gerald N., The University of Chicago Law Review, “The Implementation of Constitutional Rights: Insights from
Law and Economics,” Autumn 1997, Vol. 64:4, p. 1215-1224, AEL)
While the availability of a market mechanism for implementation led to an increase in the number of legal
abortions, it did not do so evenly. The difficulty with market mechanisms is that they are dependent on local
beliefs and culture. In places where political leaders or large segments of the population oppose abortion, it is
less likely that clinics will open. Thus, the supply of abortion services varies widely across the country.37 Each
year, hundreds of thousands of women must travel considerable distances to obtain abortion services.
Considering that the Court has held that women have a fundamental constitutional right to obtain abortions, and
that abortion is the most common surgical procedure performed on American women today,38 the drawbacks to
the market mechanism as a way to implement constitutional rights are important. The availability of a market
mechanism can help implement Court decisions, but it cannot guarantee them. In sum, the finding of a
constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy has not guaranteed access to abortion for women. As the executive
director of a Missoula, Montana abortion clinic destroyed by arson in 1993 put it, "[i]t does no good to have the
[abortion] procedure be legal if women can't get it."39 In highlighting the role of market forces, an economic
approach, in contrast to a traditional doctrinal one, goes a long way to understanding the uneven availability of
the constitutional right to abortion services.
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The judicial branch can only make yes-or-no distinctions and can't consider a wide range
of policies and their implications. The legislature is key to solve.
Armacost, Professor at University of Virginia Law School, 96
(Barbara E., Michigan Law Review, “Affirmative Duties, Systemic Harms, and the Due Process Clause,” Vol. 94:4,
2-1996, p. 982-1040, AEL)
In our governmental system, it is uncontroversial that budgetary decisions are ordinarily political decisions. That is,
judgments about what combination of goods and services will be provided by the government, how much
money is required to supply such services, and how available funds will be allocated ordinarily are made by
citizens through their elected representatives. To the extent that failure-to-protect cases involve the judiciary in
second-guessing such decisions (an issue I discuss in the next section), they raise the question whether these cases
are appropriate for judicial resolution. As a matter of institutional design, budgetary decisions generally are
thought to be political decisions rather than judicial ones, at least in part, because they involve a kind of
decisionmaking that courts do not do well. Courts specialize in resolving disputes between two parties, each
of whom can represent its interests before the court, "by declaring victory for one and a loss for the
other."'04 They are not, however, well-suited to resolving what have been called "polycentric"105 problems.
"Polycentricity" is "the property of a complex problem with a number of subsidiary problem 'centers,' each of
which is related to the others, such that the solution to each depends on the solution to all the others."'06 To
illustrate, consider the task of deciding how one million dollars in research funds should be allocated among many
competing scientific projects: the decision is never one of Project A v. Project B, but rather of Project A v.
Project B v. Project C v. Project D ... bearing in mind that Project Q may be an alternative to Project B, while
Project M supplements it, and that Project R may seek the same objective as Project C by a cheaper method,
though one less certain to succeed, etc.107 The less the dispute at issue resembles the winner-takes-all model
and the more polycentric elements it contains, the less amenable it is to judicial resolution.108 z are
intertwined such that effectuating a workable arrangement among them after increasing the level of x requires a
number of interrelated adjustments and readjustments in order to reach a new, workable equilibrium. Courts are
not institutionally equipped to make the adjustments and readjustments necessary to resolve budgetallocation issues.1"0 These kinds of decisions are best handled in a forum where all the affected interests can
appear before the decisionmaking body and the "multiple centers can engage in exchange and consider the
claims of others,""' a forum that looks much more like a legislative committee or other political entity than a
court. Legislatures, unlike courts, have access to both the information and the deliberative processes necessary
to permit that kind of exchange. Legislators are in contact with both the wide variety of citizen demands for
and views about certain distributions of public resources and the administrative and fiscal realities faced by those
who administer various public programs. They can gather information, hold public hearings, and promote
negotiation and debate among affected interests in order to analyze various alternatives and consider the
broader ramifications of those alternatives. Indeed, the legislative process is the consummate forum for this
kind of multidimensional deliberation.112 The traditional judicial role, on the other hand, is to adjudicate
particular cases involving the specific legal rights and interests of the parties before the court. While judges
are clearly aware of and, in some cases, influenced by the broader consequences of their decisions, their ability
to consider such consequences is quite limited. For example, courts generally do not permit nonparties to
argue the broader ramifications of the case at bar for other situations or issues not before the court.113 Moreover,
unlike legislatures, courts cannot hold hearings to gather information that might be relevant to the polycentric
aspects or broader context of their decisions. They are limited to the facts and information made available by the
parties before them. To make the point in the budgetary context, a court holding that a municipality must increase
the level of a particular governmental service, such as police or fire protection, would not unlike the legislature that
made the initial allocation decisions have sufficient information to consider the complicated effects of its ruling on
other, interrelated budget allocations.114
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Rhetoric that frames rights as redeemable in courts crushes any actual humyn rights
reform.
Forbath, Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, 94
Review: Why Is This Rights Talk Different from All Other Rights Talk? Demoting the Court and Reimagining the
Constitution Author(s): William E. Forbath, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 46, No. 6 (Jul., 1994), pp. 1771-1805,
accessed 7/9/09, KLM
Why has the nation repeatedly avoided reckoning with the widely acknowl- edged positive
dimensions of the equal rights tradition? There are many an- swers. In part, this two-century-old drama of
acknowledgement and avoidance has been shaped by the realities of American abundance and the myth that economic opportunity
and security are there for the taking. As suggested above, the force and guile of the opponents of radical reform
also have proved central. So, too, have racism and ethnic and gender antagonisms. Often, throughout this history, white,
native-born, male farmers and workers proved ready to spurn inclusive equal rights politics and ideals in favor of an older identity
rooted in the image of the "free white workingman." The cultural and institutional residue of nineteenth century defeats of the
radical impulse, moreover, left the twentieth century heirs of those ideals ill- equipped for later battles. Thus, for example, the defeat
first of Reconstruction and then of Populism in the South, and the ensuing disenfranchisement of blacks and poor whites,
engendered a Southern Democratic Party that stoutly opposed generous and universal forms of social insurance in the New Deal in
order to maintain white supremacy and black (and white) serfdom in the South- ern economy. Finally, dominant
constitutional discourse itself has shaped Americans' rights consciousness. We continue to speak of
rights as negative and redeem- able in the courts, and so struggle to fit social and economic rights
into the lexicon. We should be grateful, then, to Professor Sunstein for his thoughtful assault on that discourse. But there is
more to do. Today, not only is the nation's economic order once again in flux, but the key institutions
for ensuring a measure of economic equity and workplace de- mocracy have broken down. The New
Deal labor laws now protect the rights of precious few workers, and the labor movement is dying on
its feet. As noted above, economic inequality has grown dramatically, and many foresee worsen- ing
prospects for broad swaths of the population. At last, the Clinton Adminis- tration has focused public debate on these
issues. Yet despite the rhetoric about job creation, public investment, and human capital, any talk of
rights, or, indeed, any clear normative discussion remains strikingly absent . To be sure, the President, the
Democratic Party, and others express concern over unemployment, unacceptable work conditions, and lack of medical care. Still,
the absence of any exigent normative views about social and economic reform is new and disturbing. If we continue to
frame political debate about jobs, health care, and other aspects of equal citizenship only in
terms of "the budget" and "sound policy," it seems safe to expect the status quo will go largely
undisturbed. No public, no social movement, will mobilize against it: People mobilize around
rights, not human capital policy. Every pre- vious generation of reformers addressed its task in the language of
citizenship and rights, as well as of budgets and policies. We have learned to be leery of high-sounding rights
talk; we have not learned to do without it. Why is this rights talk, which I have described,
different from other recent rights talk? First, it forthrightly addresses the polity more than the
courts. Sec- ond, it acknowledges the limitations of entitlements-based strategies in securing
positive rights. It does not abandon those strategies, but stresses institutional reform. Third, this
rights talk contains a vision of citizenship that includes norms of responsibility and self-reliance,
but recognizes that these virtues must be fostered by enabling rights to education, training, and decent
work, as well as other forms of social provision. Finally, this rights talk rejoins the broken constitutional link between economic and racial justice. Its norms and narratives may, as I have tried to sug- gest, supply bases for common identity and
cooperation among groups that today's rights talk often only divides.
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When the court acts as the exclusive voice on questions of constitutionality, it threatens
separation of powers by excluding the other branches.
Barkow, John M. Olin Fellow in Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, 02
More Supreme than Court? The Fall of the Political Question Doctrine and the Rise of Judicial Supremacy
Author(s): Rachel E. Barkow Source: Columbia Law Review, Vol. 102, No. 2 (Mar., 2002), pp. 237-336
On its own, the political question doctrine might seem to be rela- tively insignificant-after all, it
applies to a small subset of constitutional questions. Those questions, however, can have enormous
significance. Perhaps even more importantly, the doctrine is part of a larger vision of the
constitutional structure in which the institutional strengths and weak- nesses of each branch are
taken into account in resolving particular is- sues. The Court's utter disregard of the doctrine
thus reflects a broader and more dangerous trend. The current Court appears to believe that it
alone provides the final answer to almost all constitutional questions, while the interpretations
of the other branches are to be accepted at the Court's discretion. This view fails to tap the
resources that the political branches have to offer, namely their proximity and accountability
to the people. The proximity gives Congress and the Executive greater access to information
and the accountability makes them better barometers of popular sentiment than the Court. To
be sure, the Court's central role is to buck popular sentiment to uphold the Constitution's protection
of in- dividual rights. But not all questions bear on individual rights to the same degree, and it
is critical that the Court recognize that in some cases, its greatest strength-its independence and
social isolation-can also be its greatest weakness. Unfortunately, the current Court seems to
believe that it is superior to the other branches on virtually all constitutional questions. That
judi- cial immodesty inexorably led to the Court's entanglement in the Article II question
presented by the 2000 presidential election. Far from recog- nizing their limitations to decide the
controversy, the Justices were of the view that it was nothing less than their duty to lend their
expertise to the questions. Justices Kennedy and Thomas, for example, recently testified before
Congress that they had the "responsibility" to take the case.583 Jus- tice Thomas stated that he
would have "avoided getting involved in that difficult decision" if only "there was a way."584
Whatever one thinks of the Bush cases on their merits, the Court's belief that it had a
constitutional duty to decide the cases before the state and federal political branches even had a
chance to weigh in on the ques- tions-let alone conclusively resolve them-is disconcerting. It
belies a level of judicial immodesty that threatens to undermine the delicate con- stitutional
balance of power. Thus, while the Supreme Court has made much of its role in preserving and
protecting the separation of powers, it is blind to its own aggrandizement at the expense of the
other branches. The political question doctrine has been one of the unfortunate casual- ties of
that trend. But it does not appear to be the last.
Maintaining Separation of Powers and preventing Tyranny justifies an Aff Ballot
Martin H. Redish, Northwestern Law (Professor Of Law And Public Policy, Northwestern University), and Elizabeth J. Cisar,
Law Clerk to United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, Duke Law Journal, December, 1991, 1991 Duke L.J. 449
It might be argued that the dangers of tyranny thought to be prevented by the use of separation of powers are at best
speculative. After all, no one can predict with certainty that, but for the formal separation of branch power,
the nation would be likely to sink into a state of tyranny. It is, then, conceivable that all of the Framers'
efforts to separate and check powers have been wasted. But that is a risk inherent in the use of any form of
prophylactic protection: We cannot be sure that, but for the use of the protection, the harm we fear would result. The decision regarding whether to employ a particular
prophylactic device, then, must come down to a comparison of the costs incurred as a result of the device's use with an estimate of both the likelihood and severity of the feared harm. n125
Although some undoubtedly believe that separation of powers imposes severe costs on the achievement of substantive governmental goals, it would be inaccurate to suggest that
government has been paralyzed as a result of separation of powers. Too much legislation is enacted by Congress to accept such a criticism. More importantly, in critiquing the failure of
the federal government to act, one [*472] must do so behind a Rawlsian "veil of ignorance": n126 Assuming that abolition of separation of powers would result in an increase in
governmental action, we cannot know whether those actions will be ones with which we agree. Moreover, the facilitation of governmental action could just as easily lead to a withdrawal of
existing governmental programs that we deem to be wise and just. For example, but for separation of powers, election of Ronald Reagan could have easily led to the abolition of social
welfare programs that had been instituted in previous Democratic administrations. Liberals who criticize separation of powers for the constraints it imposes on governmental action should
therefore recognize how removal of separation of powers could act as a double-edged sword. Thus, the costs imposed by maintenance of separation of powers are probably nowhere near
as great as critics have suggested. Whether the costs that we actually do incur are justified by the system's benefits requires us to examine the likelihood and severity of harm that could
result if separation of powers were removed. As previously noted, some might question the likelihood of tyrannical abuse of power if separation of powers were abolished. After all,
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England lacks our system of formalistic separation of powers, and democracy still flourishes. Why, then, could we not do the same here? The same could, however, be said of the First
Amendment rights of free speech and press: In England, speech and press receive no counter-majoritarian constitutional protection, yet it is probably reasonable to believe that for the most
part those institutions flourish there. Yet few, we imagine, would feel comfortable with the repeal of the First Amendment. In any event, the political history of which the Framers were
often concentration of political power ultimately leads to the loss of liberty.
aware tends to confirm that quite
Indeed, if we have
begun to take the value of separation of powers for granted, we need only look to modern American history to remind ourselves about both the general vulnerability of representative
government, and the direct correlation between the concentration of political power and the threat to individual liberty. n127 [*473] The widespread violations of individual rights that took
place when President Lincoln assumed an inordinate level of power, for example, are well documented. n128 Arguably as egregious were the threats to basic freedoms that arose during the
Nixon administration, when the power of the executive branch reached what are widely deemed to have been intolerable levels. n129 Although in neither instance did the executive's
usurpations of power ultimately degenerate into complete and irreversible tyranny, the reason for that may well have been the resilience of our political traditions, among the most
important of which is separation of powers itself. In any event, it would be political folly to be overly smug about the security of either representative government or individual liberty.
Although it would be all but impossible to create an empirical proof to demonstrate that our constitutional tradition of separation of powers has been an essential catalyst in the avoidance
of tyranny, common sense should tell us that the simultaneous division of power and the creation of interbranch checking play important roles toward that end. To underscore the point, one
need imagine only a limited modification of the actual scenario surrounding the recent Persian Gulf War. In actuality, the war was an extremely popular endeavor, thought by many to be a
politically and morally justified exercise. But imagine a situation in which a President, concerned about his [or her] [or her] failure to resolve significant social and economic problems at
home, has callously decided to engage [*474] the nation in war, simply to defer public attention from his [or her] [or her] domestic failures. To be sure, the President was presumably
. However, at this particular point in time, but for the system
established by separation of powers, his [or her] [or her] authority as Commander in Chief n130 to engage
the nation in war would be effectively dictatorial. Because the Constitution reserves to the arguably even more
representative and accountable Congress the authority to declare war, n131 the Constitution has attempted to
prevent such misuses of power by the executive. n132 It remains unproven whether any governmental
structure other than one based on a system of separation of powers could avoid such harmful results. In
summary, no defender of separation of powers can prove with certitude that, but for the existence of
separation of powers, tyranny would be the inevitable outcome. But the question is whether we wish to take
that risk, given the obvious severity of the harm that might result. Given both the relatively limited cost
imposed by use of separation of powers and the great severity of the harm sought to be avoided, one should
not demand a great showing of the likelihood that the feared harm would result. For just as in the case of
the threat of nuclear war, no one wants to be forced into the position of saying, "I told you so."
elected by a majority of the electorate, and may have to stand for reelection in the future
Tyranny should be rejected in all instances
Petro, professor of law, Wake Forest University, 74
(Sylvester, TOLEDO LAW REVIEW, Spring, p. 480. (PDNSS511)
However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway – “I believe in only one thing: liberty.” And it
is always well to bear in mind David Hume’s observation: “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all
at once.” Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import
because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny,
despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if one
believes in freedom as a supreme value, and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to
maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically
identified and resisted with undying spirit.
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A2: Capitalism K
The right to abortion helps break down capitalism
SLP, Socialist Labor Part of America, 1981
(Resolution on Abortion Rights, 6-10-81, http://www.slp.org/res_state_htm/abortion_res.html, Accessed 7-1-09,
AMG)
For the right, opposition to abortion is a key part of its program for promoting the traditional
"morality" that serves as an ideological prop for decadent capitalism. The struggle for abortion rights
and reproductive freedom is an integral part of the efforts of women to free themselves from the sexist
oppression bred by capitalist society—to free themselves from the traditional role of rearing children
and housework and from traditional women's jobs which allow capitalists to reap huge profits from
the superexploitation of cheap female labor. However, the struggle for abortion rights and women's
liberation must be part of a more comprehensive, revolutionary struggle that challenges the capitalist
system itself. For those goals cannot be attained and secured within the confines of a capitalist system
that is based on exploitation and dependent for its very survival on keeping the working class divided
against itself. Moreover, the effort to restrict abortion rights reflects the ominous possibilities for
repression inherent in capitalism. The steady erosion of the abortion rights supposedly guaranteed by
the 1973 Supreme Court decision is evidence that all democratic rights are tenuous under capitalism.
Indeed, a capitalist state that arrogates to itself control over such a basic individual right as the
decision to reproduce will have few qualms about crushing other democratic rights as well.
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War Reps (1/3)
Externalizing war as part of a natural cycle of political reactions is a form of denial of the
impacts of violence on the body-political actions taken through the motivating rhetoric of
war work to legitimize the nation-state’s existence.
KOENIGSBERG 1999
Phd New School AWAKENING FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF HISTORY: Psychological Interpretation of War
and Genocide By Richard Koenigsberg JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalytic of Culture and Society 4(3): 54-63,
1999 (Fall).
THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF WAR Beneath the sound, fury, and grandiosity of warfare lies a profound
psychopathology, this willingness to kill, die and maim in the name of nations. Historical accounts deny
psychopathology by depicting war as if a normal, even natural human activity. The case study presented here
illuminates the pathological quality of warfare. Nations of the world continued to send men to die, day after
day, month after month, year after year, producing a quantity of casualties so mind-boggling that even now
people are attempting to comprehend and come to terms with what occurred. Perpetuation of warfare
requires a denial of what happens to the body of the soldier. Delusions of honor and glory can be sustained
only by turning away from the results of battle. Haig’s son reported that the British Commander-in-Chief felt
that it was his duty to “refrain from visiting the casualty stations because these visits made him physically ill”
(in Gilbert 221). The French Commander Joffre—after pinning a military decoration on a blinded soldier—
said to his Staff: “I mustn’t be shown any more such spectacles. I would no longer have the courage to give
the order to attack” (Gilbert 221). War is about the mutilation of the body of the soldier in the name of the
sacred ideal. We want the “beautiful” ideals, but don’t want to look at the body of the soldier. The idea of
omnipotent bodies politic is a dream that people experience while they are awake. Nations constitute a shared
fantasy of immortality. This may seem at times to be a benign, beautiful dream, fantasy of oneness with a
beloved country. However, this dream transmogrifies into a nightmare at the moment when people begin to
doubt the omnipotence of their nation. Wars come into being in order to demonstrate—test the
proposition—that one’s nation is all-powerful. Nations bring forth or manifest power by virtue of their
capacity to kill and to bring about death, that is, as a result of their willingness to sacrifice the lives of human
beings. As long as there are people who are in the process of “dying for the country,” we are persuaded that
nations are real.
The notion and discourse of war is inherently patriarchal
Peterson, Professor Department of Political Science U of Arizona, 2000
(V. Spike, ‘Rereading Public and Private: The Dichotomy that is Not One’, AD:7-7-9, Summer-Fall 2000, Muse,
CMM)
I n the first variant, I read the public-private dichotomy as emphasizing the governmental and coercive
features of the public/state, which are dominated by men and comprise stereotypically masculine
activities. This public is contrasted with what goes on within the state, which is called domestic politics in
IR, but actually refers to civil, socio-cultural, and economic relations that are “private” (when distinguished
from the public/state). In conventional IR discourse, domestic politics is deemed irrelevant to relations
between states, which are of a different order. Here, the public is highly visible—as the state in IR
discourse—while the domestic is obscured. Security is understood in the paradigmatically masculine
terms of national interest and protecting sovereign state power through assertive leadership and
military might. Economics is understood as “private”—business and market activities—and internal to
states; it does not include re/production within
households/families. This discourse reinscribes the modern privileging of (men’s) market activities, at the
expense of marginalizing that private which refers to familial/household relations. Gender-sensitive
accounts go beyond this by bringing everyday practices, reproductive processes, and the politics of
subjectivity into
relation with states, security, and political economy questions. For example, conventional neglect of the
family impoverishes our understanding not only of how reproductive labor keeps our worlds
“working,” but also of how individual and collective identities, cultural practices, divisions of labor,
group ideologies, and cultural meaning systems are (re)produced and resisted. In various ways, some
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more direct than others, these are crucial factors in sustaining (and contesting) the state and its legitimacy.
Consider that the family/household is the primary site of reproductive labor that
makes all societal reproduction possible, of subject formation and cultural learning that naturalizes
ideologies and encourages group identifications (religious, racial/ethnic, national), and of gendersocialization that encourages boys to be independent, competitive, in control, and “hard,” and girls to
be relationship-oriented, non- aggressive, nurturing, and “soft.”19
Violence is only possible with the notion of masculine dominance. The role of militarism is
not possible without masculinity.
Peterson, Professor Department of Political Science U of Arizona, 2000
(V. Spike, ‘Rereading Public and Private: The Dichotomy that is Not One’, AD:7-7-9, Summer-Fall 2000, Muse,
CMM)
Regarding security issues—a focal point of IR inquiry— feminists argue that gendered
identities are key to manifestations of violence. Empirical evidence indicates that, worldwide, most
acts of direct violence are committed by men.20 Yet not all men are violent, and societies vary
dramatically in exhibiting violence, which suggests that biologistic explanations are, at best, naïve.21
Whatever else is entailed in accounting for systematic violence, it is absolutely
remarkable—one might even suggest irrational—that so little attention has been devoted to
assessing the role of masculinity in this male-dominated arena. Feminists insist that our investigations
of violence—from war atrocities to schoolyard killings and domestic battering—take seriously how
masculinity is constructed, internalized, enacted, reinforced, and glorified . In IR, such recognition
requires that we seriously consider the question: Is militarism without masculinism possible?22
An extensive literature confirms two key observations: first, that cultures vary significantly in how
they construct masculinity (hence, war-making and rape are not universal), and second, that more
violent societies evidence more systematic cultivation of gender polarity, rigid heterosexism, male
power in physical and symbolic forms, and ideologies of masculine superiorit y.23 To ignore this
correspondence is to impoverish our understanding of violence and the security questions it
raises.
The discourse of war and violence and perpetuate patriarchy and masculinity, which in
turn re-entrenches the violence encapsulating our world in a cycle of patriarchy and war.
Peterson, Professor Department of Political Science U of Arizona, 2000
(V. Spike, ‘Rereading Public and Private: The Dichotomy that is Not One’, AD:7-7-9, Summer-Fall 2000, Muse,
CMM)
In addition, relegating women to an invisible private sphere lends authority and legitimacy to
excluding women from political leadership, military activities, and macroeconomic management . The
corollary is that women are not only denied access to more valued and powerful masculine
activities but are also assigned to specific roles and images required to enable, support, and
legitimate those activities. Hence, we are encouraged to believe that men lead because women are
apolitical, men work because women are dependents, men are strong and go to war because women
are weak and need protection. In spite of lived experience and material conditions that belie these
simplistic renderings, they have rhetorical force and emotional resonance that shape how we live—and
how some of us die. A second effect is that, when rendered as a dichotomy, definitive differences are
emphasized and linkages between states and the international system are obscured. That is, the
second variant tends to naturalize the dichotomy of the state and a conflictual interstate
system as “givens,” rather than mutually constituted features of modern history that could
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have developed differently. Conflict and violence are assumed and set the rules, while
cooperation and order are cast as exceptions. This generates both self-fulfilling expectations
regarding actual conflict (for example, the security dilemma) and inadequate explanations of why we
have conflict. In addition, it is a now familiar lament that IR’s preoccupation with the power
politics of interstate conflict has impeded the study of that power in relation to structural
violence. The latter does not respect political and territorial boundaries, and arguably
constitutes more systemic and life-threatening effects than even inter-state wars. Feminists,
for example, argue that constructions of masculinity that promote being “in control” effectively
encourage, and even require, males to engage in structural as well as direct violence. On this view,
dichotomies of inside-outside, war-peace, and direct-indirect violence deny how these terms are
mutually constituted and interactive, and hence, they disable more adequate analyses of power,
violence, and security.
Power relations are only achieved through cultural discourse of femininity and masculinity,
i.e. terms of war.
Peterson, Professor Department of Political Science U of Arizona, 2000
(V. Spike, ‘Rereading Public and Private: The Dichotomy that is Not One’, AD:7-7-9, Summer-Fall 2000, Muse,
CMM)
But in fact all adversarial constructions of us-them are implicated, whether “they” are demonized as a
group outside of the nation (with implications for interstate violence) or as a subgroup resisting
assimilation to the dominant group’s hegemony (with implications for violence) within the state. And
here I note a key feminist insight regarding structural hierarchies and their legitimation. Consider that
however else subordinated groups differ, what they share is objectification as feminized “others.”33
For example, colonialism and racism are legitimized by casting “natives” and minorities in feminized
terms: as insufficiently rational, lacking indiscipline and self-control, and/or too close to nature (primitive,
child-like, sexual, savage). The crucial political insight involves recognizing how the naturalized
privileging of masculine over feminine (belief in the foundational dichotomy of male-female) is invoked
to naturalize and hence depoliticize social hierarchies more generally. On this view, feminist critiques
are not only crucial for addressing male-female inequalities but are essential for analyzing and transforming
all structures of oppression that are linked by denigration of the feminine. Hence, critical theory/practice
that ignores gender fails to adequately analyze power relations and, in effect, reproduces the
objectification of “woman, native, other.”34 Consider that however else subordinated groups differ,
what they share is objectification as feminized “others.
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War Reps -- Links: War as an Event (1/3)
Spatial metaphors of war as a bounded event mask the everyday occurrence of violence
in political instiutions
Cuomo in 96
(Chris, Hypatia, War is Not Just An Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence, V 11, N 4)
Although my position is in basic agreement with the notion that war and militarism are feminist issues, I
argue that approaches to the ethics of war and peace which do not consider "peacetime" military violence are
inadequate for feminist and environmentalist concerns. Because much of the military violence done to
women and ecosystems happens outside the boundaries of declared wars, feminist and environmental
philosophers ought to emphasize the significance of everyday military violence. Philosophical attention to
war has typically appeared in the form of justifications for entering into war, and over appropriate activities
within war. The spatial metaphors used to refer to war as a separate, bounded sphere indicate assumptions
that war is a realm of human activity vastly removed from normal life, or a sort of happening that is
appropriately conceived apart from everyday events in peaceful times. Not surprisingly, most discussions of
the political and ethical dimensions of war discuss war solely as an event--an occurrence, or collection of
occurrences, having clear beginnings and endings that are typically marked by formal, institutional
declarations. As happenings, wars and military activities can be seen as motivated by identifiable, if complex,
intentions, and directly enacted by individual and collective decision-makers and agents of states. But many
of the questions about war that are of interest to feminists--including how large-scale, state-sponsored
violence affects women and members of other oppressed groups; how military violence shapes gendered,
raced, and nationalistic political realities and moral imaginations; what such violence consists of and why it
persists; how it is related to other oppressive and violent institutions and hegemonies--cannot be adequately
pursued by focusing on events. These issues are not merely a matter of good or bad intentions and
identifiable decisions
Political approaches that only present war as a distinct event create a crises driven politics
against violence, stifling resistance to the militarism that is structurally embedded in our
everyday lives.
Cuomo in 96
(Chris, Hypatia, War is Not Just An Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence, V 11, N 4)
Theory that does not investigate or even notice the omnipresence of militarism cannot represent or address
the depth and specificity of the everyday effects of militarism on women, on people living in occupied
territories, on members of military institutions, and on the environment. These effects are relevant to
feminists in a number of ways because military practices and institutions help construct gendered and
national identity, and because they justify the destruction of natural nonhuman entities and communities
during peacetime. Lack of attention to these aspects of the business of making or preventing military violence
in an extremely technologized world results in theory that cannot accommodate the connections among the
constant presence of militarism, declared wars, and other closely related social phenomena, such as
nationalistic glorifications of motherhood, media violence, and current ideological gravitations to military
solutions for social problems. Ethical approaches that do not attend to the ways in which warfare and military
practices are woven into the very fabric of life in twenty-first century technological states lead to crisis-based
politics and analyses. For any feminism that aims to resist oppression and create alternative social and
political options, crisis-based ethics and politics are problematic because they distract attention from the need
for sustained resistance to the enmeshed, omnipresent systems of domination and oppression that so often
function as givens in most people's lives. Neglecting the omnipresence of militarism allows the false belief
that the absence of declared armed conflicts is peace, the polar opposite of war. It is particularly easy for
those whose lives are shaped by the safety of privilege, and who do not regularly encounter the realities of
militarism, to maintain this false belief. The belief that militarism is an ethical, political concern only
regarding armed conflict, creates forms of resistance to militarism that are merely exercises in crisis control.
Antiwar resistance is then mobilized when the "real" violence finally occurs, or when the stability of privilege
is directly threatened, and at that point it is difficult not to respond in ways that make resisters drop all other
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olitical priorities. Crisis-driven attention to declarations of war might actually keep resisters complacent
about and complicitous in the general presence of global militarism. Seeing war as necessarily embedded in
constant military presence draws attention to the fact that horrific, state-sponsored violence is happening
nearly all over, all of the time, and that it is perpetrated by military institutions and other militaristic agents of
the state.
WARFARE IS A TOOL USED TO PRODUCE THE TRUTH/KNOWLEDGE OF AN
OBJECT – THE AFF/NEGs WAR REPRESENTATIONS FUNCTION AS A WAY TO
MAKE THE STATE AND ITS CULTURAL BELIEFS REAL
Koenigsberg 2004
AZTEC WARFARE, WESTERN WARFARE: The Soldier as Sacrificial Victim By Richard Koenigsberg phd
social psych @ new school http://foucault.info/Foucault-L/archive/msg09495.shtml Nov
WARFARE AND TRUTH Franco Fornari called war the “spectacular establishment of a general human
situation whereby death assumes absolute value.” The ideas for which we die must be true, because “death
becomes a demonstrative process.” Willingness to die shows sincerity; death in battle becomes the ultimate
testimonial to an ideology’s truth. The connection between death and truth grows out of our feeling that if
someone goes so far as to give their life for an idea, then there must be something to it. Surely human beings
would not die for nothing. Dead and mangled bodies on the field of battle imply the existence of some
“thing” that was the source of the frenzied activity and destruction. The soldiers’ bodies testify to the reality
of this thing. If nations were fictions, merely social constructions, certainly human beings would not allow
themselves to be “scorched, blown to atoms, gassed and tortured.” That which can generate so much death,
pain and destruction must be real. The above-mentioned British infantryman Coningsby Dawson tried to
explain what kept British soldiers going in the First World War in the face of the horrors that they
encountered. One motive that kept them at the front he said was a “sense of pride.” Yet Dawson saw
“something else,” something essential to the soldiers’ endurance: It seems a mad thing to say with reference
to fighting men, but that other thing which enables you to meet sacrifice gladly is love. It’s the love that helps
us to die gladly—love for our cause, our pals, our family, our country. Under the disguise of duty one has to
do an awful lot of loving at the Front. Similarly, Fornari states that war, to soldiers, symbolizes destruction
put into the service of the “preservation of what they love.” Those who make war are driven not by a hate
need, but “by a love need.” Men[sic] see war, Fornari says, as a “duty toward their love object.” What is at
stake in war is not so much the safety of the individual as the safety of the “collective love object.” The
collective love object for which men die and kill is the nation. Elaine Scarry claims that war performs a
“demonstrative” function. The dispute that leads to war initiates a process whereby each side “calls into
question the legitimacy and thereby erodes the reality of the other country's issues, beliefs, ideas, and selfconception.” War comes into being as each side attempts to “reassert that its own constructs are ‘real’ and
that “only the other side's constructions are ‘creations’ (and by extension, ‘fictions,’ ‘lies’)." In order to
certify the reality of its beliefs, each side will “bring forward and place before its opponent's eyes and, more
important, the eyes of its own population, all available sources of substantiation.” According to Scarry, the
fundamental characteristic of warfare (as compared with other activities that take the form of a contest) is
“injuring.” Wars and battles occur not only to determine a winner or loser, but also to provide an arena for
injuring, thus allowing “derealized and disembodied beliefs to reconnect with the force and power of the
material world.” Wars occur when nations—responding to doubt about their belief-systems and unable to
draw upon “benign forms of substantiation”—seek to allay their anxiety by other means. Scarry describes
injury in battle as the Mining of the ultimate substance, the ultimate source of substantiation, the extraction of
the physical basis of reality from its dark hiding place in the body out into the light of day, the making
available the precious ore of confirmation, the interior content of human bodies, lungs, arteries, blood, brains,
the motherlode that will eventually be reconnected to the winning issue, to which it will lend its radical
substance, its compelling, heartsickening reality, until benign forms of substantiation come into being.
When doubts about the truth of a society’s ideology become acute for those who embrace this ideology, a war
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may be the vehicle for putting doubt to rest. The injuries or wounds that soldiers suffer in battle, as well as
the deaths that occur, function to validate a culture’s belief system: “Look, men[sic] still are willing to be
mutilated and to die for our beliefs! They must be true.” Or, as Scarry puts it, the interior content of the
soldier’s body, “lungs, arteries, blood and brains” that ooze “into the light of day” constitute the
“motherlode” that substantiates the issue for which the war is being fought. The content of the wounded
soldier’s body are displayed on the field of battle: the “precious ore” of confirmation.In war, Scarry suggests,
the “incontestable reality of the body—the body in pain, the body maimed—the body dead and hard to
dispose of”—is “conferred on an ideology.” The ideology thus achieves for a time the “force and status of
material ‘fact’ by the sheer weight of the multitudes of damaged and opened human bodies.” War, in short, is
that cultural activity which seeks to produce dead and wounded soldiers in order to establish the truth of a
society’s ideology.
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War Reps – Link/Impact – Legitimize the State (1/2)
The affirmative presents war as a unitary act performed by the social institutions of the
state. This is an attempt to ignore the state as a contingent social construction and prove its
legitimacy by displaying and theorizing over the validity of its violence. Wars are
mobilized by individuals wishing to bolster the power of the nation-state
KOENIGSBERG 1999
Phd New School AWAKENING FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF HISTORY: Psychological Interpretation of War
and Genocide By Richard Koenigsberg JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalytic of Culture and Society 4(3): 54-63,
1999 (Fall).
Some scholars write about nations as “imagined communities” and we speak of reality as a “social
construction.” It is easy to say that nations are imagined communities or social constructions, but much more
difficult to know that they are. Deep down, most people believe that nations are real. When people utter
words like “France” or “Germany” or “America,” they feel that they are referring to entities that substantially
exist. Perhaps, however, at certain historical moments people do begin to sense that their nations are
contingent rather than absolute realities. Elaine Scarry focuses on injuring as the essence of warfare, stating
that the “massive opening of human bodies” in battle occurs in order to reconnect “disembodied beliefs with
the force and power of the material world” (129). Wars are undertaken we may hypothesize, in order to prove
that nations are more than social constructions. Surely we feel, that which can generate the death and
mutilation of human beings in massive numbers must be eminently real. Wars occur in order to verify the
existence of nations. According to the 19th century German nationalist Johann Fichte, people embrace their
nations as “vesture for the eternal.” One’s country represents the promise of a “life here on earth extending
beyond the period of life here on earth.” Nations, we may hypothesize, embody the fantasy of immortality,
the idea of a realm of existence that goes on eternally, independent of concrete, human existence. Nations as
“bodies politic” manifest the fantasy of a self-perpetuating entity not subject to death and decay. Nations
symbolize the idea of an immortal, body politic that will “live on.” War represents a ritual whereby human
bodies are sacrificed in order to affirm the reality of omnipotent bodies politic. Dead and maimed bodies on
the field of battle constitute “proof.” These bodies testify to the fact that there is “something else” beyond
mere, day-to-day existence; this “something else” is one’s nation, the entity in the name of which dying and
killing has occurred. When a nation goes to war, soldiers are called to duty, fitted with uniforms and trained.
Guns, bullets, bombs, artillery shells, tanks, ships, and airplanes are manufactured. Soldiers are transported to
the front where they engage in battle. Men are killed and bodies maimed, giving rise to a massive hospital
industry. All this occurs in the name of “nations.” If nations can evoke the extraordinary sound and fury of
war, mobilize prodigious expenditures of energy and resources, motivate people to die and kill, then surely,
people think, they must be real. Few would have the effrontery to say that these momentous events have
occurred in the name of nothing. The parsimonious hypothesis is that wars occurred for some thing.
However, consider an alternative hypothesis: that war is a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.” Watching a movie in the darkness of a theater, witnessing the chaos, absurdity, futility
and destructiveness of war, a thought often passes through one’s mind: “War is insane.” I do not believe I am
unique in having had this thought. Perhaps hundreds of millions of people have had a similar thought as they
watch a feature film or documentary about war.
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War Reps – Link/Impact – Legitimize the State (2/2)
Externalizing war as part of a natural cycle of political reactions is a form of denial of the
impacts of violence on the body-political actions taken through the motivating rhetoric of
war work to legitimize the nation-state’s existence
KOENIGSBERG 1999
Phd New School AWAKENING FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF HISTORY: Psychological Interpretation of War
and Genocide By Richard Koenigsberg JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalytic of Culture and Society 4(3): 54-63,
1999 (Fall).
THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF WAR
Beneath the sound, fury, and grandiosity of warfare lies a profound psychopathology, this willingness to kill,
die and maim in the name of nations. Historical accounts deny psychopathology by depicting war as if a
normal, even natural human activity. The case study presented here illuminates the pathological quality of
warfare. Nations of the world continued to send men to die, day after day, month after month, year after year,
producing a quantity of casualties so mind-boggling that even now people are attempting to comprehend and
come to terms with what occurred. Perpetuation of warfare requires a denial of what happens to the body of
the soldier. Delusions of honor and glory can be sustained only by turning away from the results of battle.
Haig’s son reported that the British Commander-in-Chief felt that it was his duty to “refrain from visiting the
casualty stations because these visits made him physically ill” (in Gilbert 221). The French Commander
Joffre—after pinning a military decoration on a blinded soldier—said to his Staff: “I mustn’t be shown any
more such spectacles. I would no longer have the courage to give the order to attack” (Gilbert 221). War is
about the mutilation of the body of the soldier in the name of the sacred ideal. We want the “beautiful” ideals,
but don’t want to look at the body of the soldier. The idea of omnipotent bodies politic is a dream that people
experience while they are awake. Nations constitute a shared fantasy of immortality. This may seem at times
to be a benign, beautiful dream, fantasy of oneness with a beloved country. However, this dream
transmogrifies into a nightmare at the moment when people begin to doubt the omnipotence of their nation.
Wars come into being in order to demonstrate—test the proposition—that one’s nation is all-powerful.
Nations bring forth or manifest power by virtue of their capacity to kill and to bring about death, that is, as a
result of their willingness to sacrifice the lives of human beings. As long as there are people who are in the
process of “dying for the country,” we are persuaded that nations are real.
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War Reps – Impact: Externalizing Violence
BY BLAMING OTHER NATION-STATES ON WAR, THE AFF EXTERNALIZES
KILLING ON THE OTHER
Koenigsberg 2004
AZTEC WARFARE, WESTERN WARFARE: The Soldier as Sacrificial Victim By Richard Koenigsberg phd
social psych @ new school http://foucault.info/Foucault-L/archive/msg09495.shtml Nov
THE NATION-STATE KILLS ITS OWN SOLDIERS
In Mexican warfare, the Aztec city-state fought other city-states to obtain victims that would become
sacrificial offerings to their gods. The other city-states also needed sacrificial victims in order to feed their
own gods. At a typical battle’s end, Aztec warriors reported to their King, Moeteuzcoma:
They said how they had taken a goodly number of captives. Of their own warriors 370 had died or been lost
through capture. And Moeteuzcoma said to the embassy, "Behold, brothers, how true was the word of the
ancestors who taught us that the sun, Talteutli, the god of battles, feeds alike from both sides."
Winning or losing was one dimension of Aztec warfare. However, as Brundage observes, “from the god’s
point of view neither side could win or lose.” Whatever the outcome of a battle, the gods would be fed with
the blood and bodies of sacrificial victims. In the West, the sacrificial mechanism contained within the
institution of warfare has up to now been disguised. We insist that the death or maiming of soldiers
constitutes kind of “collateral damage,” a by-product of the pursuit of “real” objectives. The First World War
gives the lie to this theory. If we allow ourselves to encounter the reality of what actually occurred, it is
difficult to avoid concluding that nations acted to sacrifice their own soldiers. In our conventional way of
thinking, the soldier has been killed by the enemy. When French or British soldiers got out of trenches during
the First World War, ran toward enemy lines and were slaughtered, we say that Germans killed them. When
Germans got out of trenches and ran toward the enemy line, we say that they were killed by the English or
French. Wouldn't it be more parsimonious to say that the French soldiers were killed by the French nation
and its leaders—who asked them to get out of trenches and run into artillery shells and machine gun fire?
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to state that German soldiers were killed by the German nation and its
leaders—who also asked their soldiers to get out of trenches and run into artillery shells and machine gun
fire? In the West, we disguise the sacrificial meaning of warfare by pretending that the other nation is
responsible for killing soldiers. In her groundbreaking book, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation, Carolyn Marvin
suggests that “our deepest secret, the collective group taboo" is knowledge that society depends on the “death
of its own members at the hands of the group.” At the behest of the group, according to Marvin, the lifeblood
of community members must be shed. Soldiers constitute the “sacrificial class,” to whom we delegate the
shedding of blood. The soldier is our chosen victim. When he[sic] dies for the country, Marvin says, he[sic]
dies for all of us. We continue to describe war as a form of violence and insist that if only we could control
our aggression by becoming more civilized, we could put an end to war. This conception functions as a
smoke-screen. Gwynne Dyer concludes his study of war by stating, "You offer yourself to be slain: This is
the essence of being a soldier.” By becoming soldiers, men “agree to die when we tell them to." Joanna
Bourke, in her book Dismembering the Male, observes that the most important point to be made about the
male body during the First World War was that it was “intended to be mutilated.” We represent war as a
drive for conquest and an outlet for energetic activity even as its fundamental purpose and inevitable
consequence is injury and death. We encourage the soldier’s delusion of masculine virility and call him a
hero—in order to lure him into becoming a sacrificial victim.
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Hyde Affirmative
War Reps – Viewing War as Ongoing Solves
Only by investigating war as a presence can we formulate effective theories of resistance to
violence and militarism.
Cuomo in 96
(Chris, Hypatia, War is Not Just An Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence, V 11, N 4)
Moving away from crisis-driven politics and ontologies concerning war and military violence also enables
consideration of relationships among seemingly disparate phenomena, and therefore can shape more nuanced
theoretical and practical forms of resistance. For example, investigating the ways in which war is part of a
presence allows consideration of the relationships among the events of war and the following: how militarism
is a foundational trope in the social and political imagination; how the pervasive presence and symbolism of
soldiers/warriors/patriots shape meanings of gender; the ways in which threats of state-sponsored violence
are a sometimes invisible/sometimes bold agent of racism, nationalism, and corporate interests; the fact that
vast numbers of communities, cities, and nations are currently in the midst of excruciatingly violent
circumstances. It also provides a lens for considering the relationships among the various kinds of violence
that get labeled "war." Given current American obsessions with nationalism, guns, and militias, and growing
hunger for the death penalty, prisons, and a more powerful police state, one cannot underestimate the need for
philosophical and political attention to connections among phenomena like the "war on drugs," the "war on
crime," and other state-funded militaristic campaigns.
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Hyde Affirmative
War Reps – A2: Permutation (1/2)
There is a solvency deficit between the permutation and alternative. The political lens of
their speech uses formalistic declarations of war as its starting point. Their dramatic
presentation of war precludes deeper investigations needed to resist militarism and
violence.
Cuomo in 96
(Chris, Hypatia, War is Not Just An Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence, V 11, N 4)
I propose that the constancy of militarism and its effects on social reality be reintroduced as a crucial locus of
contemporary feminist attentions, and that feminists emphasize how wars are eruptions and manifestations of
omnipresent militarism that is a product and tool of multiply oppressive, corporate, technocratic states.[2]
Feminists should be particularly interested in making this shift because it better allows consideration of the
effects of war and militarism on women, subjugated peoples, and environments. While giving attention to the
constancy of militarism in contemporary life we need not neglect the importance of addressing the specific
qualities of direct, large-scale, declared military conflicts. But the dramatic nature of declared, large-scale
conflicts should not obfuscate the ways in which military violence pervades most societies in increasingly
technologically sophisticated ways and the significance of military institutions and everyday practices in
shaping reality. Philosophical discussions that focus only on the ethics of declaring and fighting wars miss
these connections, and also miss the ways in which even declared military conflicts are often experienced as
omnipresent horrors. These approaches also leave unquestioned tendencies to suspend or distort moral
judgement in the face of what appears to be the inevitability of war and militarism
Reading war as an everyday event is mutually exclusive with traditional representations of
war. The representations of violence affect the trajectory of political theories toward
militarism
Schott in 96
(Robin May, Hypatia, Gender and “Postmodern War”, V 11 N 4)
While wars are being fought in streets and graveyards, intellectuals are carrying out their own skirmishes
about how to interpret what Lyotard has named the postmodern condition in which we live. In this climate,
writers as diverse as Frederic Jameson, Catharine MacKinnon, and Miriam Cooke use the term "postmodern
war" to describe how postmodernity has affected the interweaving of the waging and writing of war. In
Cooke's analysis, "postmodern war" refers both to a periodization and to a cluster of defining characteristics.
Chronologically, it refers to the violent conflicts in the post-World War II nuclear, postcolonial period. The
term "postmodern war" has been used especially in reference to the Vietnam War and more recently to the
Gulf War. Postmodern wars are both the products and the consumers of technological revolution, though
postmodern wars are not exclusively high-tech affairs.[2] In this epoch, there are multiple spaces for
individuals both to act and to interpret their own agency. Thus, women who have always been part of war can
articulate and hold on to their participation. Women's writing on war can challenge prevailing war myths,
expose the mechanisms of power, and decenter and fragment hegemonic discourse. Postmodern combatants
cannot be easily defined and compartmentalized. They occupy positions that are highly fluid: terrorist,
guerilla, liberation army activist, soldier in national army. Today's terrorist may be tomorrow's loyal soldier
of a new state military apparatus. In a postmodern context, violence is different from earlier forms of
violence not because it is more cruel, but because it is continuous, total, and undifferentiated. The centrality
of violence in social and political relations ensures that postmodern wars end through exhaustion. Judgements
about victories are open to continual renegotiation and reversal) The United States may have lost the war in
Vietnam, but for many it seemed that America won this war twenty years later through its victory over Iraq.
But this perception of victory could not be sustained for long. In June 1991, George Bush announced that
Saddam Hussein's nuclear activities might force the United States into another war. And by mid-January,
Hussein celebrated the anniversary of his victorious war. Cooke argues that it is not necessarily a substantive
difference that marks postmodern wars off from previous violent conflicts, but a representational difference.
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
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War Reps – A2: Permutation (2/2)
CARD CONTINUES, NO DELETIONS
Postmodern wars are not necessarily more inconclusive than earlier wars, but are represented as more
inconclusive. Moreover, postmodern wars are fought by and for the media. Hostage-taking, hijacking,
videotaping of rapes to be aired on the evening news become media events that create a theatricalization of
violence. Rules that used to define the beginning and end of wars, the distinction between war and peace, the
identity of the enemy, the roles women and men were to play in peacetime as opposed to wartime, have been
broken. Postmodern wars, Cooke argues, are represented as breaking the binary structures of war/peace,
good/evil, front/home front, combatant/noncombatant, friend/foe, victory/defeat, patriotism/pacifism. She
writes that postmodern wars reveal that "both gender and war are highly fluid and negotiable structures
within which meanings are constantly constructed and deconstructed" (Cooke 1993, 182).[4]
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: Realism Inevitable
IR’s claim to the ‘inevitability’ of its political thought assumes that male experience is the
only valuable experience, reintroducing and naturalizing a gendered hierarchy.
Peterson in 2000
(V Spike, Associate Professor of Political Science @ Arizona, SAIS Review, 20.2, rereading public and private: the
dichotomy that is not one, project muse)
In addition, relegating women to an invisible private sphere lends authority and legitimacy to excluding
women from political leadership, military activities, and macroeconomic management. The corollary is
that women are not only denied access to more valued and powerful masculine activities but are also
assigned to specific roles and images required to enable, support, and legitimate those activities. Hence,
we are encouraged to believe that men lead because women are apolitical, men work because women are
dependents, and [End Page 20] men are strong and go to war because women are weak and need
protection. In spite of lived experience and material conditions that belie these simplistic renderings, they
have rhetorical force and emotional resonance that shape how we live--and how some of us die. A third
effect is the assumption, pervasive in politics and international relations, that male experience and
perspective represents human experience and perspective. Modern political theory, its models of human
nature, the foundational myths of international relations (Hobbes' state of nature, Rousseau's stag hunt),
25 and the central constructs it employs (the state, rational actor, national security) are abstractions from
exclusively male (and especially elite male) experience. 26 The point is not that these accounts are false
in themselves (although this also warrants examination) but that their claim to universality--to represent
the human condition and its most pertinent problematics--is empirically and conceptually erroneous.
These androcentric accounts distort our understanding of actual social relations by excluding all but elite
male experience, by often reifying that experience, and by failing to embed that experience in historical
context. Insofar as these distortions occur in the foundations of international relations, the biases they
introduce permeate and have consequences throughout the discipline. On the one hand, the male
experience and vantage point presupposed is itself selective; it is not "everyman" who produces political
theory and participates in power. Because it is elite and typically European men who do so, feminists are
not alone in criticizing the generalization of this experience to all of humankind. Other critical voices
challenge the hegemony of Eurocentric accounts. 27 On the other hand, these critics typically do not
address gender as a structural feature of social hierarchies that is key to the reproduction of elite
prerogatives. From a feminist perspective, androcentrism constructs models of human nature and social
relations that exclude women's knowing and being, which differ systematically from men's (due to
institutionalized gender hierarchies). In sum, the bias of androcentrism is problematic analytically and
politically: it not only reproduces hierarchical assumptions conceptually but also institutionalizes
hierarchy in material practices.
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Hyde Affirmative
Representations First
Representations, not rational action, cause violence
Der Derian 2 (James, Professor of International Relations at Brown University and Professor of Political Science at UMASS/Amherst,
War as Game, http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/pmt/exhibits/1066/DerDerian.pdf)
The charge of moral equivalency—in which any attempt at explanation is identified as an act of
exoneration—should not deter investigations into the dangers of the mimetic relationships operating in war
and games. People go to war not only out of rational calculation but also because of how they see,
perceive, picture, imagine, and speak of each other: that is, how they construct the difference of other
groups as well as the sameness of their own. Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are not the first to mine this act
of mimesis for political advantage. From Greek tragedy and Roman gladiatorial spectacles to futurist art and
fascist rallies, mimetic violence has regularly overpowered democratic discourse. The question, then, is
how long after Baghdad has fallen will this mimetic game of terror and counter-terror last? Bush, Bin Laden
and Saddam Hussein need their mimetic foes—it takes two to play. Without a reciprocal hatred, their
politics and prophecies lose their self-fulfilling powers. Historically, terrorist movements either evolve into
states, or, without a mass base, they quickly weaken and rarely last longer than a decade. And empires
inevitably, by over-reach or defeat, fall. However, this mimetic struggle, magnified by the media, fought by
advanced technologies of destruction, and unchecked by the UN or U.S. allies, has now developed a logic of
its own in which assimilation or extermination become plausible solutions, credible policies. Under such
circumstances, one longs for the sure bet, a predictable unfolding of events, or at least a comforting
conclusion. "At this stage of the game" (as Schwartzkopf said in the midst of GW1), I have none, because the
currently designed game, to rid the world of evil, cannot possibly find an end. Inevitably, what Edmund
Burke called the empire of circumstance will surely, and let us hope not too belatedly, trump Bush's imperial
game as well as Bin Laden's terrorist one. When tempted in the interim by the promise of virtuous war to
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Hyde Affirmative
A2: War Reps (1/4)
War reps good – Realizes truth of violence, drives public determination, and fuels policy
ChinaDaily, Consisting of news, information, education and internet-based wireless services, ‘05
(“TV images driving public discourse on war”, AD:7-8-9, Jan 2005, http://www.chinadaily.cn/english/doc/200405/14/content_330699.htm, CMM)
Until stomach-churning pictures emerged of naked Iraqi prisoners stacked like firewood or held at the
end of a leash by their American captors, wartime prison abuse was a virtual non-storySimilarly, the
death of American Nick Berg in Iraq may have been little more than a footnote until
video was posted Tuesday showing an executioner cutting off the man's head with a
knife.To most of the world, Iraq is a war of images. Pictures and discourse can drive public
opinion and policy: the statue of Saddam Hussein toppling in Baghdad, U.S. President
Bush standing on an aircraft carrier in front of a "mission accomplished" sign, the
charred bodies of four contractors who had driven into disaster."It doesn't become real for
a lot of people until they see it," said Edward Trayes, a photojournalism professor at Temple
University. "It's truth in a way that even words don't describe."Past wars have produced similar iconic
images. The soldiers raising the American flag on Iwo Jima in World War II became a symbol of
determination and triumph, while a naked girl running away from a napalm attack spoke to Vietnam's
inhumanity.Historians don't discount the cumulative impact of nightly news reports on
American deaths in turning many Americans against the Vietnam War.A ban on media
coverage of coffins arriving from Iraq also shows the government's awareness of the
potency of images.What makes Iraq different is there are so many more potential sources for
images, and technology — digital cameras, the Web, live television cameras — can make them
available almost instantaneously, said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York
University.That's coupled with a deeply divided world eager to seize on images that prove their
political points, he said.Berg's body was found last Saturday. The first media reports of
the discovery were filed Tuesday, only hours before existence of the video became
known. Few, if any, media outlets showed the beheading, although some depicted a
knife held to Berg's head. The ominous, hooded assailants and Berg's obvious terror
told the story visually.
Regardless of how war should be viewed, it is still a bad thing and must be stopped.
Cuomo, theorist, activist, and artist, 1996
(Chris, Chris Cuomo’s Website, “War is Not Just an Event”, http://www.ccuomo.org/War23.htm, accessed July 8,
2009, TS)
But many of the questions about war that are of interest to feminists include how large-scale, statesponsored violence affects women and members of other oppressed groups; how military violence
shapes gendered, raced, and nationalistic political realities and moral imaginations; what such violence
consists of why it persists; how it is related to other oppressive and violent institutions and hegemonies
--cannot be adequately pursued by focusing on events. These issues are not merely a matter of good or bad
intentions and identifiable decisions.
We still need to nullify the effect of war; our view of it is irrelevant.
Cuomo, theorist, activist, and artist, 1996
(Chris, Chris Cuomo’s Website, “War is Not Just an Event”, http://www.ccuomo.org/War23.htm, accessed
July 8, 2009, TS)
These effects are relevant to feminists in a number of ways because military practices and institutions help
construct gendered and national identity, and because they justify the destruction of natural nonhuman
entities and communities during peacetime. Lack of attention to these aspects of the business of making or
preventing military violence in an extremely technologies world results in theory that cannot accommodate
the connections among the constant presence of militarism, declared wars, and other closely related
social phenomena, such as nationalistic glorifications of motherhood, media violence, and current
ideological gravitations to military solutions for social problems.
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A2: War Reps (2/4)
Wars still need to be stopped - it doesn’t matter if we see them as occurrences or events.
Cuomo, theorist, activist, and artist, 1996
(Chris, Chris Cuomo’s Website, “War is Not Just an Event”, http://www.ccuomo.org/War23.htm, accessed July 8,
2009, TS)
I propose that the constancy of militarism and its effects on social reality be reintroduced as a crucial locus of
contemporary feminist attentions, and that feminists emphasize how wars are eruptions and manifestations of
omnipresent militarism that is a product and tool of multiply oppressive, corporate, tech-nocratic states.'
Feminists should be particularly interested in making this shift because it better allows consideration of the
effects of war and militarism on women, subjugated peoples, and environments. While giving attention to
the constancy of militarism in contemporary life we need not neglect the impor-tance of addressing the
specific qualities of direct, large-scale, declared military conflicts. But the dramatic nature of declared,
large-scale conflicts should not obfuscate the ways in which military violence pervades most societies in
increasingly technologically sophisticated ways and the significance of mili-tary institutions and everyday
practices in shaping reality. Philosophical dis-cussions that focus only on the ethics of declaring and fighting
wars miss these connections, and also miss the ways in which even declared military conflicts are often
experienced as omnipresent horrors. These approaches also leave unquestioned tendencies to suspend
or distort moral judgement in the face of what appears to be the inevitability of war and militarism.
Military violence needs to be avoided no matter what; alternatives are needed.
Cuomo, theorist, activist, and artist, 1996
(Chris, Chris Cuomo’s Website, “War is Not Just an Event”, http://www.ccuomo.org/War23.htm, accessed July 8,
2009, TS)
When Peach discusses "alternatives to war," she is clearly referring to alternatives to entering into war, or to
participating in "the escalation of conflicts." The avoidance of eruptions of military violence is certainly
impor-tant, and Peach is correct that feminist insights about conflict resolution could present
significant recommendations in this regard. However, feminist moral imagination cannot end there. In
thinking of alternatives to war, we need to continue to imagine alternatives to militaristic economies,
symbolic systems, values, and political institutions. The task of constructing such alternatives is far more
daunting and comprehensive than creating alternatives to a specific event or kind of event.
Wars hurt not only the people, but also the environment around. These spikes of violence
should be smothered whenever possible.
Cuomo, theorist, activist, and artist, 1996
(Chris, Chris Cuomo’s Website, “War is Not Just an Event”, http://www.ccuomo.org/War23.htm, accessed July 8,
2009, TS)
In essence, Drucker believes military commanders ought to protect the environment during war
because, like noncombatants and cultural artifacts, natural entities are inherently valuable, morally
inappropriate targets of mili-tary aggression. Drucker argues from analogy that because "the
environment" (which he represents as a unified, self-evident entity) is free of intention and cannot wage or
fight in war, it is an innocent noncombatant in the realm of human affairs.
If we accept the view that the environment and its inhabitants all have inherent worth, then we need to give
genuine consid-eration to the well-being of all—plants, animals, and persons. In addition to exercising
due care I think commanders should take at least minimal risks with their soldiers' lives to protect the
environment
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A2: War Reps (3/4)
War hurts not only the natural environment, but noncombatants like children as well. Our
view of it doesn’t matter - people and nature still get destroyed.
Cuomo, theorist, activist, and artist, 1996
(Chris, Chris Cuomo’s Website, “War is Not Just an Event”, http://www.ccuomo.org/War23.htm, accessed July 8,
2009, TS)
Drucker's view depends on sharp distinctions: between combatants and noncombatants, between war and
peace. But both human and nonhuman noncombatants are always harmed or otherwise affected by
militarism, even when they are not directly harmed in battles. This simple truth was captured in a popular
Vietnam War era antiwar poster that read, "War is not healthy for children and other living things." Because
natural noncombatants are every-where; their destruction is necessary for war and for the existence of
military institutions, even when wars are not explicitly being fought. The ecological realities of war,
and of what it takes to be prepared for war in the contemporary world, are mind-boggling. To take
nature at all seriously entails acknowledging the effects of combat as well as the severe harm caused by
everyday military practices.
Military activity poses the biggest threat toward the environment. Our definitions of “war”
mean nothing - it still needs to be stopped no matter what we call it.
Cuomo, theorist, activist, and artist, 1996
(Chris, Chris Cuomo’s Website, “War is Not Just an Event”, http://www.ccuomo.org/War23.htm, accessed July 8,
2009, TS)
All told, including peacetime activities as well as the immense destruction caused by combat, military
institutions probably present the most dramatic threat to ecological well-being on the planet. The military is
the largest generator of hazardous waste in the United States, creating nearly a ton of toxic pollution
every minute, and military analyst Jillian Skeelclaims that, "Global military activity may be the largest
worldwide polluter and consumer of precious resources" (quoted in Thomas 1995, 5). A conventionally
powered aircraft carrier consumes 150,000 gallons of fuel a day. In less than an hour's flight, a single jet
launched from its flight deck consumes as much fuel as a North American motorist burns in two years. One
F-16 jet engine requires nearly four and a half tons of scarce titanium, nickel, chromium, cobalt, and energyintensive aluminum (Thomas 1995, 5), and nine percent of all the iron and steel used by humans is consumed
by the global military (Thomas 1995, 16). The United States Department of Defense generates 500,000
tons of toxins annually, more than the world's top five chemical companies combined. The military is
the biggest single source of environmental pollution in the United States. Of 338 citations issued by the
United States Environmental Protection Agency in 1989, three-quarters went to military installations
(Thomas 1995, 17). The feminization, commodification, and devaluation of nature helps create a reality in
which its destruction in warfare is easily justified. In imagining an ethic that addresses these realities,
feminists cannot neglect the extent to which military ecocide is connected, conceptually and practically,
to transna-tional capitalism and other forms of human oppression and exploitation. Virtually all of the
world's thirty-five nuclear bomb test sites, as well as most radioactive dumps and uranium mines, occupy
Native lands (Thomas 1995, 6). Six multinationals control one-quarter of all United States defense con-tracts
(Thomas 1995, 10), and two million dollars per minute is spent on the global military (Thomas 1995, 7). One
could go on for volumes about the effects of chemical and nuclear testing, military-industrial
development and waste, and the disruption of wildlife, habitats, communities, and lifestyles that are
inescapably linked to military practices.
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A2: War Reps (4/4)
Cuomo only promotes the expansion of war’s definition, ignoring the fact that they will still
happen no matter what you think they are.
Cuomo, theorist, activist, and artist, 1996
(Chris, Chris Cuomo’s Website, “War is Not Just an Event”, http://www.ccuomo.org/War23.htm, accessed July 8,
2009, TS)
It is of course crucial that the analysis I recommend here notice similarities, patterns, and connections without
collapsing all forms and instances of mili-tarism or of state-sponsored violence into one neat picture. It is also
important to emphasize that an expanded conception of war is meant to disrupt crisis-based politics that
distract attention from mundane, everyday violence that is rooted in injustice. Seeing the constant
presence of militarism does not require that middle-class and other privileged Americans suddenly see
themselves as constantly under siege. It does require the development of abilities to notice the extent to
which people and ecosystems can be severely under siege by military institutions and values, even when
peace seems present.
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Hyde Affirmative
Representations Not Key (1/2)
Discourse isn’t transformative – it only reflects preexisting changes in the objective world
Mearsheimer 95 ( John J., Profess of Political Science at the University of Chicago, “The False
Promise of International Institutions,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3.)
Critical theory maintains that state behavior changes when discourse changes. But that
argument leaves open the obvious and crucially important question: what determines why some
discourses become dominant and others lose out in the marketplace of ideas? What is the
mechanism that governs the rise and fall of discourses? This general question, in turn, leads to three
more specific questions: 1) Why has realism been the hegemonic discourse in world politics for so
long? 2) Why is the time ripe for its unseating? 3) Why is realism likely to be replaced by a more
peaceful communitarian discourse?
Critical theory provides few insights on why discourses rise and fall. Thomas Risse-Kappen writes,
"Research on ... 'epistemic communities' of knowledge-based transnational networks
has failed so far to specify the conditions under which specific ideas are selected and
influence policies while others fall by the wayside." (156) Not surprisingly, critical theorists
say little about why realism has been the dominant discourse, and why its foundations are now so
shaky. They certainly do not offer a well-defined argument that deals with this important issue.
Therefore, it is difficult to judge the fate of realism through the lens of critical theory.
Nevertheless, critical theorists occasionally point to particular factors that might lead to changes in
international relations discourse. In such cases, however, they usually end up arguing that
changes in the material world drive changes in discourse. For example, when Ashley makes
surmises about the future of realism, he claims that "a crucial issue is whether or not changing
historical conditions have disabled longstanding realist rituals of power." Specifically,
he asks whether "developments in late capitalist society," like the "fiscal crisis of the state," and the
"internationalization of capital," coupled with "the presence of vastly destructive and highly automated
nuclear arsenals [has] deprived statesmen of the latitude for competent performance of realist rituals of
power?" (157) Similarly, Cox argues that fundamental change occurs when there is a "disjuncture"
between "the stock of ideas people have about the nature of the world and the practical problems that
challenge them." He then writes, "So me of us think the erstwhile dominant mental construct of
neorealism is inadequate to confront the challenges of global politics today." (158)
It would be understandable if realists made such arguments, since they believe there
is an objective reality that largely determines which discourse will be dominant.
Critical theorists, however, emphasize that the world is socially constructed, and not
shaped in fundamental ways by objective factors. Anarchy, after all, is what we make
of it. Yet when critical theorists attempt to explain why realism may be losing its
hegemonic position, they too point to objective factors as the ultimate cause of
change. Discourse, so it appears, turns out not to be determinative, but mainly a
reflection of developments in the objective world. In short, it seems that when critical
theorists who study international politics offer glimpses of their thinking about the causes of change in
the real world, they make arguments that directly contradict their own theory, but which appear to be
compatible with the theory they are challenging. (159)
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Representations Not Key (2/2)
The Kritik doesn’t solve- Changing representational practices won’t alter policy, looking to
structures and politics is more vital
Tuathail 96 (Gearoid, Department of Geography at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Political Geography, 15(6-7), 664 )
While theoretical debates at academic conferences are important to academics, the discourse
and concerns of foreign-policy decision- makers are quite different, so different that they
constitute a distinctive problem- solving, theory-averse, policy-making subculture. There is a
danger that academics assume that the discourses they engage are more significant in the
practice of foreign policy and the exercise of power than they really are. This is not, however, to
minimize the obvious importance of academia as a general institutional structure among many that sustain certain
epistemic communities in particular states. In general, I do not disagree with Dalby’s fourth point about politics
and discourse except to note that his statement-‘Precisely because reality could be represented in
particular ways political decisions could be taken, troops and material moved and war fought’-evades the
important question of agency that I noted in my review essay. The assumption that it is
representations that make action possible is inadequate by itself. Political, military and
economic structures, institutions, discursive networks and leadership are all crucial in
explaining social action and should be theorized together with representational practices. Both
here and earlier, Dalby’s reasoning inclines towards a form of idealism. In response to Dalby’s fifth point (with
its three subpoints), it is worth noting, first, that his book is about the CPD, not the Reagan administration. He
analyzes certain CPD discourses, root the geographical reasoning practices of the Reagan administration nor its
public-policy reasoning on national security. Dalby’s book is narrowly textual; the general contextuality of the
Reagan administration is not dealt with. Second, let me simply note that I find that the distinction between critical
theorists and post- structuralists is a little too rigidly and heroically drawn by Dalby and others. Third, Dalby’s
interpretation of the reconceptualization of national security in Moscow as heavily influenced by dissident peace
researchers in Europe is highly idealist, an interpretation that ignores the structural and ideological crises facing
the Soviet elite at that time. Gorbachev’s reforms and his new security discourse were also strongly selfinterested, an ultimately futile attempt to save the Communist Party and a discredited regime of power from
disintegration. The issues raised by Simon Dalby in his comment are important ones for all those interested in
the practice of critical geopolitics. While I agree with Dalby that questions of discourse are extremely important
ones for political geographers to engage, there is a danger of fetishizing this concern with discourse
so that we neglect the institutional and the sociological, the materialist and the cultural, the
political and the geographical contexts within which particular discursive strategies become
significant. Critical geopolitics, in other words, should not be a prisoner of the sweeping ahistorical cant that
sometimes accompanies ‘poststructuralism nor convenient reading strategies like the identity politics narrative; it
needs to always be open to the patterned mess that is human history.
The kritik is complicit in the same representations of security.
Huysmans 2 (Jef, Lecturer in Politics, Department of Government, Open University, “Defining social constructivism in security
studies: the normative dilemma of writing security,” Alternatives 2002)
Social-constructivist authors face a normative dilemma that is central to their research project. They are
sensitive to how security "talk" about migration can contribute to its securitization (7)--that is, it can render
migration problematic from a security perspective. They may point out how criminological research
establishes a relationship between crime and immigration; for example, by looking for a correlation between
Turkish immigrants and trade in heroin, they establish a discursive link, irrespective of whether the
correlation is confirmed or not. The discursive link is thus embedded in the very setup of the research; in
other words, from the very beginning the research embodies an assumption, often already politicized, that a
particular group of aliens may have a special relationship to crime. (8) This observation is of course not a
dilemma as such: it becomes a dilemma for social-constructivist authors only when they realize that this
interpretation feeds back into their own research. They also pro duce security knowledge that
therefore could as such be securitizing. If an author values a securitization of migration negatively, she
faces the question of how to talk or write about the securitization of migration without contributing to
a further securitization by the very production of this knowledge.
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The DA conspires to maintain sexism. Don’t bow to majoritarian concerns
Leonard, Board President, National Network of Abortion Funds, 2006
Toni M. Bond, The Future of the Hyde Amendment: Learning from Our Past to Build Our Movement, November 2,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/11/hyde5.html
Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) played a key role in turning me into a reproductive health activist. The Amendment
that he authored restricting Medicaid funding of abortion made it almost impossible for me to obtain an
abortion at the tender age of twelve. My mother was able to scrape together the money, but not without
making huge financial sacrifices that affected our household for months.
The 1976 Hyde Amendment, and other funding bans that followed, have had a devastating impact on
families like mine, which are some of the most vulnerable in our society. With the cascade of restrictions on
reproductive health care over the past few decades, many people have recognized that the Hyde Amendment
was the first step in the anti-choice movement’s broader strategy to ban abortion and regulate all women’s
bodies by chipping away at our reproductive rights.
The Choice Movement Responds...or Does It?
The fact that the Hyde Amendment is still in effect 30 years later represents a key failure of the choice
movement. Time and again, women of color activists and supportive allies have voiced the need to work
actively toward the repeal of these despicable funding bans. Much to our dismay, some pro-choice
leaders have told us everything from “it’s not the right time,” to “it’s a losing fight.” This kind of response
has contributed to the relegation of marginalized women to the fringes of the movement and in a way,
has conspired with Congress to confirm that only women with economic means truly have the right to
an abortion.
Women of color activists took matters into their own hands in 1993 by launching the Campaign for Abortion
and Reproductive Equity. Led by the National Black Women’s Health Project, the CARE Campaign
pressured Congress to rescind the Hyde Amendment. Although we succeeded in restoring funding for
abortions that resulted from rape or threatened a woman’s health, we fell short of our ultimate goal of
ensuring that all women have access to the abortion care they need.
Abortion should not be debatable or subject to a vote because it is a fundamental human
right.
Pro-Choice Action Network, no date
(Pro-Choice Action Network. “Why We Don’t Debate Anti-Choice Spokespersons,”
http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/debate.shtml, accessed July 10, 2009, GD).
The right to abortion is not debatable, because access to legal, safe abortion is a fundamental human
right, one that is protected by law and supported by the majority of citizens. The provision of basic human
rights is not open to debate. Likewise, the right to choose abortion should not be subject to a vote,
because access to safe abortion is a fundamental health issue for women. Abortion cannot be legally
restricted without substantial harm to women. Debating the anti-choice would be an abdication of our
responsibility to help women and support abortion providers because the anti-choice position is harmful to
women and to providers. Debating the anti-choice would lend legitimacy to this harmful position. Debates
imply that the participants could be led to a compromise. We will never compromise a woman's right to
choose. And we suspect the anti-choice will never compromise their stance against legal abortion. This
leaves little justification for a debate. Debates imply opposing sides, but anti-choice and pro-choice are not
the opposite of each other. The opposite of forced pregnancy is forced abortion. We oppose both. Debates
are public relations events, usually staged by the anti-choice. Such debates are not designed to change
peoples' minds or provide useful information. Truth often becomes a casualty in such debates, because
the "winner" is the side with the slickest presentation and fanciest rhetoric.
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Politicizing abortion is inherently sexist.
Arthur, activist, 2004
(Joyce, Pro-Choice Action Network.org, “The Political Is Too Personal,” July 2004,
http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/political-personal.shtml, accessed July 10, 2009, GD).
But why did abortion become a political issue in the campaign at all? The answer is both insulting and
frightening. It's because a woman's right to control her own life is still seen as a legitimate political
football to be kicked around and debated. And that's where the political just gets too personal sometimes.
Few issues are more intensely personal than abortion. But it's an issue that everyone thinks they're
entitled to voice a public opinion on, an issue that many politicians feel they're entitled to pass laws on.
From the perspective of most women who have had an abortion though, there is something deeply offensive
about abortion being made into a political issue. Because it literally puts our bodies and our lives on the
public stage, where they're fair game for public scrutiny, judgment, and control. I find it truly alarming
that Canada's democratic government, held up as a progressive social model around the world, could even
consider the possibility of restricting women's reproductive rights—our fundamental human rights. The
assumption that these rights are up for debate is based on antiquated and sexist notions that biology is
destiny, that women's role is to be mothers, and that society at large has a right to regulate women's
behaviour to make that happen. But legal and available contraception and abortion should truly free
women to pursue other lifestyles and vocations in addition to or instead of parenthood. This is a freedom that
men simply take for granted. Since biology hasn't been destiny for men for at least a couple thousand years,
why do people insist it must stay that way for women?
Natural rights for reproduction must be separated from politics.
Zolkos, Ph.D., University of Copenhagen, 2006
(Magdalena, Irmgard Coninx Stiftung- Berlin, “Mapping Human Rights in the Polish Abortion Debates.
Reflections on the Subversion of Democratic Polity,” Summer, http://www.irmgard-coninxstiftung.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/roundtable07/Zolkos.pdf, 7/6/09, GMK)
The founding principle of “moral democracy” is that natural law (and its derivatives, natural rights)
has meta-physical connotations. It implicates legally embodied normative and unchangeable “truths,”
which derive from its moral (and religious) orthodoxy. In the “prochoice” texts, the presumptions of
immutability of natural law (in this context: the “right to life” of the fetus vis-à-vis the reproductive selfdetermination of women) has been phrased through the “universality” of human rights (versus the
alleged relativism of the pro-abortionist stance). The feminist “pro-choice” discourse in Poland centered on
challenging the founding assumptions of the “pro-life” texts. It demonstrated the repressive aspects of the
allegedly democratic strategy of constructing the fetus as state subject because in the abortion debate, the
human rights status of the fetus became counter-proportional to the human rights of women. Consequently,
the seemingly innocent validation of fetus’s “subjective experience” brought about the de-subjectivization of
women. In the feminist “pro-choice” texts this was depicted as correlative with the patriarchal state
that thrived on the depreciative imagery of women as individuals lacking in rationality and
responsibility. The “pro-choice” discourse endorsed the reproductive decision-making as a human
right to living (emphasizing the quality of life and the dignity of self-determination). Also, it
deliberately avoided the “natural” or “moral” rhetoric, and instead made a conjunction between
reproductive rights and citizen rights. The feminist argument in the “pro-choice” struggle for a
liberalized abortion law centered on the avoidance of dependence through civic engagement,
democratic participation and deliberation. Thus, human rights became dissociated from their
teleological positioning above the democratic order, and were seen as means interdependent with
democracy in keeping politics alive. The aspect of the mutuality of rights and democratic was particularly
pertinent: it was believed that reproductive self-determination was denied because of democratization flaws
and that it was because of the prohibitive reproductive law that dependency became constitutive of women’s
social and domestic life.
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Reproductive rights are necessary extensions of humans rights in the political system.
Wigley, PhD candidate at Victoria University, 2005
(Jenny, New Zealand Centre for Public Law, “Politics and Fertility: The Evolution of Sexual and Reproductive
Rights,” http://www.victoria.ac.nz/nzcpl/HRRJ/vol3/Wigley.pdf, 7/7/09, GMK)
Rights function to protect the vulnerable from the powerful. The twentieth century has seen an
expansion in the social acceptance of women as legitimate bearers of human rights in many countries in
the world. Hence it has not been until relatively recently that different physical needs and cultural roles have
justified the codification and application of human rights to the sexual and reproductive needs of women.
With the growth of women’s ability to articulate their right to political, social and economic self
determination in many countries, sexual and reproductive rights have emerged as means for women
(and nonheterosexual people) to label and condemn a number of barriers to wellbeing that women face,
such as discrimination, domestic abuse, religious and traditional norms that reduce wellbeing and autonomy,
rights violations by the state and health practitioners, and economic barriers to accessing healthcare.
Reproductive and sexual rights can be construed from existing rights that concern a person’s liberty,
sovereignty over their person, freedom from violence and degrading or cruel treatment, and their right
to health and to life, which in many places is severely endangered by pregnancy. However, from a political
perspective, this is perhaps the least significant aspect of their entry into international human rights
discussions. This is because of the degree to which the emergence and representation of sexual and
reproductive rights has been framed by the major players in the Global North, 1 particularly the
Anti-abortion laws can’t coexist with true political equality.
Arthur, coordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, 1/2009
(Joyce, Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, “The Case for Repealing Anti-Abortion Laws,” http://www.arcccdac.ca/press/repeal.pdf, 7/7/09, GMK)
Likewise, abortion rights should never be subject to a vote by the electorate, and antichoice laws
should never be enacted based on public referendums. We cannot trust citizens to fairly protect the
constitutional rights of minorities and disadvantaged groups. In the case of abortion, social opinions are
often rooted in stereotypical assumptions about women’s “proper” role as child-bearers, and in
religious beliefs about the value of fetal life, at the expense of pregnant women’s lives. Even in national
constitutions that do not have an explicit guarantee of equality for women, there are usually other
clauses that will support the repeal of abortion laws. For example, in the U.S. Constitution, the 14th
Amendment says no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
This clause, and similar clauses in other national constitutions, should require the repeal of abortion laws
because they unfairly apply only to women. An essential element of a democracy is that legislators who
pass laws must be subject to those laws, just like any other citizen. However, every abortion restriction
in every country was passed by legislatures made up mostly of men. Further, all men in a society are
automatically exempt from anti-abortion laws. Basic human rights are violated when half the
population is given a privileged legal status with more freedom and power, simply due to their gender.
Women alone must have control of abortion rights, not the state.
Arthur, coordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, 1/2009
(Joyce, Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, “The Case for Repealing Anti-Abortion Laws,” http://www.arcccdac.ca/press/repeal.pdf, 7/7/09, GMK)
The state has no legitimate interest in protecting the fetus at any stage, except to provide social and
medical resources to pregnant women to ensure good outcomes for their pregnancies. (And a good
outcome can be an abortion.) Pregnant women are in the best position to take care of their fetuses, so we
should trust women to make decisions on behalf of their fetuses, not the state. Further, the question of
when life begins, or whether abortion is murder, are matters of personal opinion. These issues cannot be
agreed upon by society or legislated. Only the pregnant woman has the right to decide the moral value
and status of her fetus, because it’s no-one else’s business. The fetus becomes a person when the woman
carrying it decides it does.
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