Quantifying 'survival' : A Woman's Right to Choose

 Quantifying 'survival' : A Woman's Right to Choose

Oregon election could decide abortion rights for all states & all women

Shawn Thew, European Press photo Agency

 

Megan Chambers, 30, lives in Portland, Oregon — “the north star of reproductive rights.”

When Chambers was 27, she was trapped in an abusive marriage and was the mother of two young children. Chambers was also expecting a third child; however, she did not want to be pregnant.

ACLU of Oregon

A Medicaid patient, Chambers made a decision — a decision she said she has never had second thoughts about. A choice that cost Chambers nothing out of pocket — a result of living in a state that is considered “the most progressive state on abortion rights” in the United States.

Chambers had an abortion.

“I had done the emotional and physical labor of parenting two kids … So I chose myself and my children,” Chambers said.

Chambers knows the cost of motherhood, but anti-abortion groups and Oregon lawmakers are trying to speak for mothers across the entire state. They are trying to take away Chambers’s ability to choose, and if they succeed, women in Oregon, who rely on tax dollars to pay for their healthcare, will be stripped of their freedom to choose.

Chambers’s story is not valued by Michigan political officials and anti-abortion groups, but her medical bill is.

If abortion rights are taken away in this “liberal utopia,” what is protecting women everywhere from being subject to the same kind of decision making, leaving them powerless over their own bodies.

“Anti-abortion groups could use this as a rallying cry to go after other states and ultimately reopen the debate on Roe vs. Wade, allowing the now Conservative-leaning Supreme Court to overturn a law that’s stood since 1973,” writes Lindsay Schnell, USA Today reporter.

In Oregon, this topic has been politicized and is being framed as an economic debate. Anti-abortion group members are proposing an amendment to the Oregon constitution, Measure 106, a change that will eliminate elective abortions for anyone who relies on state-funded health insurance.

It’s one of three anti-abortion measures before voters this November in the latest effort to dramatically limit abortion access in America,” Schnell reports. “West Virginia and Alabama, two typically red states are also voting on anti-abortion initiatives.”

Oregon Live

This debate is not new. 

Issues surrounding reproductive rights are simply being reframed. For years, politicians and organizations have tried to dictate a woman’s right to choose how she controls her body — specifically women who rely on government-funded programs and who are considered to be low-income individuals.

The neo-Malthusian movement promoted the idea of eugenics, a type of thinking that ranks the reproduction of select groups as being more “valuable” and “worthy” (Takeshita, 9) compared to others.

When officials and neo-Malthusians were worried about the “population boom” (12), they took matters into their own hands by convincing the World Health Organization to take on family planning as a program and established the United Nations Population Fund (11). 

United Nations, Contraceptive Use

 

The irony: these individuals were not looking at women as people. Instead, they saw them as a threat; however, not all women were viewed as a threat. Low-income, minorities became the targets of free IUDs, abortion kits, and other methods of birth control in the global South. While members of the global South were given these technologies, they were not informed of the damage they would do to their bodies.

Birth control and other methods of contraceptives then grew to be seen as weapons used “to fight these battles” of overpopulation, poverty, the cold war, and a potential communist takeover (Takeshita 12).

Women have become part of the problem, and officials have turned birth control into their controller — not women’s. Decisions were economically motivated and turned birth control into a masculine issue and economic discussion, and sadly, not much has changed today.

The debate in Oregon is driven by economic arguments, creating a “backdoor ban on abortion” as Measure 106 proponents have targeted the state’s poorest residents — people who will have to pay $400 to $600 out of their own pocket for abortion procedures, according to ABC News.  

“In many ways, Oregon is the North Star when it comes to reproductive rights and abortion access, and if we, in this election, were to lose, it would be incredibly emboldening to the anti-abortion movement,” said Grayson Dempsey, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon. “It’s really scary to me to know that we have one of the most serious threats to abortion in Oregon in my lifetime.”

Yes on Measure 106

Much like women in the global South, voters in Oregon are not being properly educated about the implications of Measure 106. While voters were not in favor of a similar proposal in 1978 and 1986, this year, their economic side is being appealed to.

“Those supporting the measure say it’s not an attack on abortion but an attempt to give Oregon residents a say in how their tax dollars are spend after years with no referendums on the issue,” writes Gillian Flaccus, Associated Press reporter.

Instead of seeing people, people are being seen as dollar signs.

Megan Chambers is not a threat. Chambers is a human being, a person — a woman with a story, but her story is being ignored by groups motivated by economic, religious, and chauvinistic agendas.

Patricia Ramirez/The Inquisitor

Chambers is one in about 3,600 women who had abortions last year, amounting to $2 million.

3,600 women who had the opportunity to make a choice without having to worry about cost.

“They’re choosing survival,” Chambers said. 

A person’s right to choose cannot be quantified.  

Relevant course reading: 

Takeshita, Chikako. The Global Biopolitics of the IUD: How Science Constructs Contraceptive Users and Women's Bodies. The MIT Press, 2012.