We Affirm - Religious Denominations' Statements in Support of Abortion Rights

In 1965 the Supreme Court upheld the right of married couples to seek contraception in the landmark case Griswold v. Connecticut. Seven years later this right was extended to unmarried couples. Then in 1973 the right to safe, legal abortion was affirmed in Roe v. Wade.

Efforts to overturn or override these decisions and to restrict access to contraception and abortion services have been ceaseless. In 1976, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, eliminating federal funding of abortions for women on Medicaid and sharply reducing their access to abortion services. After the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, state requirements for parental involvement, waiting periods, and mandatory state-scripted lectures proliferated; these requirements overwhelmingly affect the most vulnerable women and women with the fewest resources: young, rural, low-income, and working women. Opponents of safe, legal abortion are now pursuing legal actions related to the issue of fetal personhood as well as pushing for laws requiring pregnant women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound even if there is no medical reason for it.

Quick Facts on Access to Abortion and Contraception

Mandated Parental Involvement
Laws that require physicians to notify or gain consent of parents before performing an abortion can be harmful to teens who are at high risk.

Seventy-five percent of teens under the age of 16 already involve one or both parents in their decision about abortion. Teens who cannot involve their parents often have compelling reasons such as emotional or physical abuse, incest, and feelings of shame and guilt for being raped. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, one third of teenagers who do not tell their parents about a pregnancy have already been the victims of family violence—physical, emotional, and sexual abuse—and fear it will recur.

Young women subjected to abuse are particularly vulnerable when they are pregnant, a time when family violence increases. Among minors who did not tell a parent of their abortions, 30 percent had experienced violence in their family or feared violence or being forced to leave home.

Instead of encouraging teens to talk to their parents, mandatory parental consent laws may force teens to resort to illegal or self-induced abortions, delay abortion until the second trimester, harm or abandon the baby after it is born, or commit suicide. The desire to maintain secrecy has been a leading cause of deaths from illegal abortion since 1973.

Judicial bypass—often touted as the solution for such cases—is hardly a reasonable option for young women who (like most adults) have no experience with the legal system or who live in areas where it is impossible to ensure privacy. Even worse, the need to go to court creates further delay and increases health risks.

State-Scripted Lectures: Intrusion Into Privacy
Special laws requiring informed consent for abortion are unnecessary. Medical professionals who provide abortions are already subject to laws, regulations, and ethical standards for safe practice. They are already obliged to explain the procedure, its risks, and its alternatives. When they encounter a woman who seems unsure of her decision or its implications or who is being coerced, they are obliged not to proceed. So-called "informed consent" laws ignore these obligations and override the medical professional's own training and judgment. They require health professionals to do such things as:

• Show misleading pictures of advanced-stage fetuses,
• Describe risks associated with abortion at stages of pregnancy that may be well beyond the woman's stage, or risks that have not been proven—ignoring the far greater risks associated with childbirth, and
• Promote alternatives—such as prenatal care and child support—that may not be realistically available.

Proponents of such laws—who often oppose abortion in all cases—hope that the woman who is given such "information" will decide not to terminate her pregnancy. Their goal is not to better inform women but to intimidate and manipulate them into not having an abortion.

Waiting Periods Discriminate Against Young, Rural, Low-Income and Working Women
Those who claim that it is reasonable to ask women who seek abortion services to wait 24 to 48 hours to reconsider their decision do not know the facts. Most women have already gone through considerable soul-searching before seeking an abortion. Physicians have an ethical responsibility not to proceed with any procedure if the patient is unsure. Such claims also deny the reality of women's experience:
• Only 13% of U.S. counties have an abortion provider. Unless a woman lives in a large city, she must travel—sometimes hundreds of miles—for services that may only be offered once a week.
• Delays impose additional out-of-town expenses, child care costs, and loss of income—all of which can quickly place abortion out of reach.
• Most women have made up their minds by the time they arrive for medical care. Waiting periods are opportunities for invasions of family privacy and outright harassment. Opponents of legal abortion use waiting periods to trace women's identities, inform their parents, boyfriends, or employers, and otherwise interfere with these women's actions.

People of Faith Call for Affordable Reproductive Health Care for All Americans
Considering the unjust and inequitable conditions in which many women live—poverty, underemployment, abandonment by spouses or partners, physical and sexual abuse, and discrimination—abortion is a necessity for thousands of women every year.

Rather than denying this fact, the pro-choice religious community calls on all Americans to join us in creating a just and compassionate society in which women have real options and every child is welcomed. To do that, we need to create a society in which families can choose when to have children and a woman who becomes pregnant will know that:
• she is physically, emotionally, and economically able to welcome and nurture a child in whatever ways the child needs.
• her community will help her ensure that she and her child will have adequate food and clothing and be safely housed, well educated, and free from violence.

As we strive toward these goals, we must also trust women to make moral decisions and to do what is best for themselves and their families, based on their own religious or spiritual understandings.

May 2010