Realizing the right to choose

Twenty-nine years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision Roe v. Wade gave women what the Court called a "right to privacy," which allowed women to be more intimate practitioners of the American legacy of self-determinism. In addition to being granted the right to choose, women were granted the right to do so in a clean and safe environment. On the anniversary of this decision last Monday, we examined it and found that the affirmation of a woman's right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy enforces her ability to disentangle herself from the control of others.\nThe right to decide to have an abortion is a question of power. Two possibilities exist. First, the power to decide to carry a pregnancy to term could be in the hands of the state. The government could be the decisive party, requiring a woman, against her will, to have a child she does not want.\nThe second possibility is that the power to decide would lie in the hands of the woman. Should a woman decide to end her pregnancy, she would be able to do so privately and safely. In this option, a woman carrying an unwanted fetus would not have to allow the fate of her life to be determined by someone unrelated to her. In this question of power, a woman's right to an abortion places the power squarely in the hands of the responsible party: The woman, not the government. \n"Murder!" the opposition will cry. "The government should not allow people to murder one another." \nBut murder is not an action done unto oneself, it is an action perpetrated upon another individual. \nAbortion concerns a woman and her body, not those extraneous to her person. To allow the government the right to control a woman's pregnancy allows the government the right to control a woman -- to have decisive command of her existence. Should this control extend to instances of rape and incest? Certainly not.\nAbortion gives a woman control over the potential for life. In certain circumstances, our culture already attempts to control the potential for life. We fund government programs designed to encourage teens to practice safe sex. My resident assistant passes out condoms to her residents.\nThere are those among us who ask that the government assume the audacity to curtail that control at the point of conception. \nBefore the Roe decision, women who sought to end a pregnancy were forced to do so under unsafe, back-alley conditions. Just eight years before Roe, women did not even have the right to use contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies. With the Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) Supreme Court decision, a woman's right to contraception was codified in law -- bringing women one step closer to exercising their fundamental right to privacy.\nThe pro-life movement will ask that we elect presidents and lawmakers and appoint Supreme Court justices who will support pro-life legislation and hand-down pro-life decisions. But this will remove a woman's right to choose, to safely abort a pregnancy, doing so without molestation from her government. \nThis right allows a woman to act upon her own discretion and without the imposed morality of the state. There are gruesome alternatives to granting women this right. But these alternatives need not be explored, for women are given the power of choice.