This past year Democratic Women of South Carolina has partnered with Young Democrats of Furman on several events including the recent visit by attorney Sarah Weddington. Weddington served as the lead attorney for Roe v. Wade. She argued the case before the United States Supreme Court in 1973, when she was 26 years old. I had the opportunity to hear Weddington speak for the first time at Converse College in 1993. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to spend some time with Dr. Weddington during her recent visit to Furman University on February 28^th. Dr. Weddington recounts her journey to a place in legal history in her best selling book, “A Question of Choice.”

It’s been nearly 40 years since a woman’s right to privacy was affirmed by the nations highest court. How tragic that after all this time we find ourselves still debating a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. As a 52 year old woman, I well remember the fierce battles for women’s rights. I became engaged when I read Gremaine Greer’s “The Female Eunuch.” By the late 70’s my sisters and I assumed we had established the right to decide when and how to reproduce and how best to protect ourselves from sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. I was able to use the college health clinic and later Planned Parenthood to access birth control and also obtain preventative gynecological check ups. Access to birth control and abortion wasn’t even an issue for us.

I am of the opinion that the most ardent foes of legalized abortion don’t just want to out law abortion they also want to control and even deny women access to birth control. Hard to believe but 50 years ago birth control was illegal. Attorney Louise G. Trubeck established the right of women to control their fertility in Griswold v. Connecticut http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/opinion/contraception-war-goes-on.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Louise%20Trubeck%20editorial&st=cse Back then, doctors were forbidden from prescribing birth control even to married women. Planned Parenthood helped force the issue into court by opening a clinic in Connecticut, prompting the state to close it down. The Supreme Court found the ban an unconstitutional intrusion on marital privacy, which led to the legalization of contraception. The privacy doctrine set the stage for Roe v. Wade.

I believe that conservative religious zealots may be motivated by religion but are also subscribing to an archaic male dominated system that forces women to be celibate and punishes them with pregnancy or disease if they are not. It’s a source of fascination to me that avowed Christians seek to impose their morality and beliefs upon us but scream like banshee’s when their religious freedoms are infringed upon.

The language of abortion is part of the problem. I don’t know anyone who is “pro-abortion” we are all pro-life but these decisions are up to the individual to make. You may not agree with their decision to end the pregnancy but it is ultimately the woman’s choice to make. Even the label pro-choice doesn’t feel quite right. The opponents of abortion have dominated and demonized the debate with inflammatory language.

Dr. Weddington was also in disbelief that today’s headlines are still dominated by the fight over a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body. She expresses concern about young people not truly comprehending the gravity of these debates. She related a story about being on board a plane, wearing a a pin depicting a wire hanger with a slash through it. The flight attended stared intently at the pin and finally asked Weddington, “What do you have against wire hangers?” Unless young women today in 2012 understand the consequences of outlawing abortion, we may slip back into those dark times. Desperate women will do desperate things, including using a wire hanger to end their unwanted pregnancy. People must understand that outlawing the procedure won’t end the debate or solve the problem.

Abortion is a necessary medical procedure, not only for victims of rape or incest but also for women facing a doomed pregnancy. We have the medical expertise to determine when the fetus isn’t viable and we must offer women the right to choose the fate of the embryo. It’s untenable to me that we would live in a world dictated by religious beliefs that trump medical expertise.

In countries that have outlawed abortion researchers found that legal restrictions did little to reduce the rate of abortions but did drive up the medical deaths and complications for women undergoing the procedure. Dr. Paul Van Look, director of the W.H.O. Department of Reproductive Health and Research, said in the NY Times, “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.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/12abortion.html

Research shows that the most effective way to lower abortion rates was to make contraception more widely available. In Eastern Europe, abortions rates fell as much as 50% when contraception was widely distributed. The key to reducing the number of abortions lies in giving women more choices not enacting further restrictions on a legal medical procedure. Setting aside morality, wide spread use of contraception makes sound fiscal sense. Publicly financed contraception pays for itself by reducing tax dollars spent on Medicaid for childbirth and child care. The Guttmacher Institute found that every $1 invested in family planning saved taxpayers $3.74.

The only way to preserve a woman’s reproductive freedom is to get involved. It’s your body, it’s your choice, don’t let a bunch of old white men decide your future.