The vote March 13 in the U.S. Senate to limit late-term abortions was not only an attack on a woman’s right to control her own medical and reproductive choices, but also an attack on gender equity and basic human rights.
As a matter of clarification, only 1.4 percent of all abortions occur in the second half of pregnancy, and these are typically done in an effort to save the life of the mother, or in instances where the fetus will not survive past delivery.
That having been said, the attempts made to legislate this decision, to take a personal, often medically necessary, choice away from women and their care providers is a symbol of the very real and evident inequality that continues to exist in our society. As a further example of this, one only need look at who the decision makers were this week — the vote in the Senate was composed of 14 women and 86 men.
The ripple effects of this decision and others like it are something that concerns all of us as citizens and as students. One’s educational opportunities and economic well-being are dramatically affected by his or her ability to make comprehensive, informed decisions about when and how to start a family.
Women need to be able to control when they have children to get a good education, and they need a good education to ensure that they can support the children that they want to have.
This is not the first attack on the reproductive rights of women, and it most likely will not be the last. Knowing this, the time for complacency, if ever there was one, is over. To ignore one’s rights is to lose them — advocate for equality now.