Roe v. Wade at thirty. (Church And State).

january 22, 2003, marked the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court's breakthrough 1973 ruling that acknowledged and recognized (not "created," as the religious right would have it) every woman's constitutional right to decide for herself whether or not to continue a problem pregnancy. Roe is comparable in importance to the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

While Americans hold an enormous variety of opinions on the morality or propriety of abortions for particular reasons or stages of pregnancy or circumstances, a majority continues to agree that it is the individual woman and not government that should do the deciding.

The primary argument against the right to choose has it that "personhood" begins at "conception," that fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses are "persons" or "unborn persons." This is a view with very little historical precedent, essentially a Vatican invention in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It is a view that has little religious backing, as the Jewish and Christian scriptures do not condemn abortion and, indeed, the Hebrew word for person is nefesh, which means one who breathes--that is, born.

Nor does the notion of early fetal personhood have scientific backing. In 1989 Americans for Religious Liberty arranged for an amicus curiae brief to be submitted to the Supreme Court in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services in which twelve Nobel laureates and over 150 other scientists pointed out that neuroscience shows that the brain functions associated with personhood aren't possible until rather late in gestation, sometime after twenty-eight weeks. (Over 90 percent of abortions are performed during the first trimester and over 99 percent by twenty weeks.)

The real reason behind the anti-choice crusade is an interest in the maintenance of male dominance. It is no coincidence that the religious bodies that are the most anti-choice are those which refuse to ordain women and find various ways to keep women in subordinate positions.

Where do matters stand today, thirty years after Roe v. Wade? Thanks to conservative appointments, the Supreme Court has allowed choice to be eroded while conservatives in Congress and many state legislatures have passed measures to increase reproductive health care costs and to reduce access, particularly for poorer women.

But the greatest threats to choice, to reproductive health care, and to freedom of conscience are the accession to power of George W. Bush and the extraordinarily strong influence of the religious right now over both houses of Congress. On his first day in office in 2001 President Bush reinstated the Reagan/Bush Sr. global gag rule on international family planning aid. In his first budget George W. Bush removed contraceptive coverage for federal employees. He has also vigorously promoted "abstinence only" education. (Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice makes the point that if abstinence only education doesn't work well in Catholic seminaries, why would it work anywhere else?) Meanwhile, administration operatives have opposed condoms for HIV/AIDS prevention.

On the international scene, in 2002 Bush withheld $34 million in congressionally approved funds from the United Nations Population Fund even after his own mission to China had approved the funding. That same year Bush withdrew U.S. support for the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Woman and is pulling the United States back from support for the reproductive health care services pledged by it and 160 other countries at the 1994 UN Population Conference in Cairo, Egypt. He also froze $3 million in funding for the World Health Organization for reproductive health research and stopped $200 million in funding for programs to support women and deal with HIV/AIDS in Afghanistan.

Domestically, Bush appointed one anti-choice governor as attorney general and another anti-choice governor to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. In October 2002 he removed medically accurate information from the HHS website. He also closed the White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach and has sought to appoint anti-choicers to federal appellate judgeships.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has passed bills to outlaw certain abortion procedures and to restrict stem cell research. In an effort to pave the way for eventual reversal of Roe v. Wade, the Bush administration is pushing for federal aid for fetal health rather than what is really needed: beefed-up programs for maternal health.

In short, what is developing, though far too many Americans seem neither to see nor care, is a national government increasingly under the influence and serving the ideological agenda of the zealous, well-organized religious right--a movement that clearly represents only a minority of Christian and Jewish citizens. Thoughtful citizens across the religious and political spectra will need to recognize the threat of the Talibanization or Falwellization of this country and take action to restore secular--that is, religiously neutral--democracy.

Edd Doerr is president of the Americans for Religious Liberty.