As the state legislature wrestles with a potentially restrictive abortion rights law as November elections approach, strong pro-choice voices emerge from behind the scenes.
One of those supporters is expert in reproductive rights and justice Sara Ainsworth, the Senior Legal and Legislative Counsel with the Northwest Women’s Law Center.
Ainsworth spoke Thursday evening to discuss womens’ reproductive rights and justice as a part of a University Women’s Law Forum and Law Students for Choice weekend seminar at the Knight Law Center titled “Reproductive Freedom Rights, and Oregon’s Teens: Does Measure 43 Measure up?”
Reproductive rights and justice, Ainsworth said, is the right to decide to become a mother or not and be supported in that choice.
“To make a family or not to make a family” is the choice that’s being challenged by current and proposed laws such as parental notification, Ainsworth said.
Oregon law currently states that abortions are legal and no parent permission is needed. If Measure 43 passed, parental notification would become law, with no exception to rape or incest.
Supporters of Measure 43 argue that parental notification is required for all other major medical operations, and abortion should count as a major medical operation.
Ainsworth said she finds abortion restrictions in the legal system dangerous in a country where one out of three or four girls are sexually assaulted.
One way to halt sexual assault is through the justice system, Ainsworth said, but only to an extent. Most rape victims don’t report to law enforcement. When they do, they suffer from the harsh lights of media exposure and lose privacy rights throughout the process, Ainsworth said.
“Women’s full self-determination of autonomy,” can be found through distribution of emergency contraception, or Plan B, said Ainsworth. Next month women in Oregon can retrieve the pill over the counter.
Ainsworth believes part of women’s control of their own bodies and privacy is to have emergency contraception available, no matter what their age.
Sarah Peterson, from the University’s Women’s Law Forum, said that Measure 43, if passed, will erode rights for all women – not just teen girls.
“We would like it if Oregon would stay in the forefront of protecting women’s rights,” Peterson said. “I have to ask, ‘Is this constitutional?’ I think it would be overthrown if passed.”
Heather Henderson from Law Students for Choice said would be harmful to women’s rights.
“Context for what has gone on in the past and in neighboring states is needed to understand how dangerous this restrictive law is.”
Ainsworth works so women, especially poor, black and immigrant women, can exercise control over their bodies rather than that control being imposed by federal and state governments.
Carol Butler, political consultant and campaign director, is speaking on “Measure 43: Not so simple, Not At All Safe,” at noon today in the Wayne Morse Commons. To learn more about this issue, see a panel of professionals and the Planned Parenthood Teen Council speak on “Protecting Our Daughters: Understanding Measure 43,” at 12:30 p.m. in Room 110 in the School of Law. Catch “The Education of Shelby Knox,” an account of a 15-year-old Texas Baptist girl who pledged abstinence until marriage turned advocate for comprehensive sex education.