It's Not Just About Choice
October 30, 2000
Voter.com columnist Margot Magowan believes a position on choice is a political barometer, indicative of how politicians feel not only about the basic rights of women, but the role of women in society.
By Margot Magowan
Exclusively for Voter.com
Ask a pro-choice person to explain casting a vote for a pro-life candidate and the proud response will be: "I don't support candidates based on just one issue. I care about education, healthcare and the economy too."
Even politically savvy Nader supporters aren't that concerned with the threat to a woman's right to choose, claiming it's one issue among so many.
But choice has never been a single issue. Reproductive rights don't exist in a vacuum. They have everything to do with women's economic and political power, women's access to education and healthcare, women's status in society and women's abilities to take care of themselves and their children.
Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger once said, "If a woman does not have the right to control her own body, she has no rights."
Choice is a political barometer, indicative of how politicians feel not only about the basic rights of women, but the role of women in society, their beliefs on sex education, healthcare, welfare, poverty, the economy and the part government should play in an individual's life. A position on choice indicates whether or not your representative will fight to get your kids vaccinated and to make your contraception affordable.
Years ago, Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said that pro-lifers believe that "life begins at conception and ends at birth," meaning that pro-life politicians are adamant about protecting the fetus but don't care much about protecting the child once it is born.
His notion was proved only recently when Professor Jean Schroedel of Claremont College came out with the first survey of its kind to examine the relationship between states' abortion laws and spending on children. Her research revealed that the states that most severely limit abortion are the very ones that spend the least on foster care, stipends for parents who adopt special-needs children and poor women with dependent children.
For example, Louisiana has some of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the country and pays an average of $602 for each poor child, while Hawaii has liberal abortion laws and spends an average of $4,648 for each child in poverty.
Schroedel also discovered that the states with pro-life abortion laws consistently accorded lower political, economic and social status to women.
Schroedel's findings support the work of Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund. Sadik has been instrumental in turning the debate over how to limit population growth into a campaign for women's rights. She is widely credited with bringing awareness to the correlation between overpopulation and the status of women. When women are educated, when they achieve economic independence, when they have access to good healthcare, when they are valued in society for their intellect and accomplishments, they have fewer babies.
Unfortunately, pro-life politicians don't seem concerned with improving the status of women One classic example is presidential candidate George W. Bush and his record as governor of Texas.
Texas women have a higher than average chance of living in poverty. The state minimum wage, earned by the female-dominated service and domestic workers industries, is $3.35 an hour, totaling $6,700 annually for full-time employment.
The percentage of women and children in Texas without health insurance is the second highest in the country.
Texas ranks 42nd in per capita welfare spending.
Bush has made it more difficult for women in Texas to obtain abortions in times of crises, but offered no preventative policy initiatives to reduce unintended pregnancy, no expansion of family planning or funding services, no comprehensive sexuality education program and no insurance coverage for contraceptives.
Texas has the second-highest rate of teen pregnancies in the nation.
And the Texas system doesn't promote sexual health. Texas law requires sex education courses teach abstinence but does not require teaching contraception or HIV/STD prevention.
Compare that to France, where there is a nationally mandated sexuality education that begins when students are 13. Parents are prohibited from withdrawing their teenagers from this program. France's teenage birthrate is approximately six times lower that that of the U.S., its teenage abortion rate is more than two times lower, and its overall AIDS rate is more than three times lower.
Conservatives like to say, "The government governs best that governs least." But when it comes to choice, they sound much more like big-government liberals.
Americans wonder how the Republican Party has come to intrude so much in our private lives, legislating personal choices like whom we should sleep with and how we should pray. They wonder why the party won't just give in on abortion.
The reason is that if politicians aren't going to provide access to healthcare, contraception, STD prevention, childcare and economic autonomy, there's nowhere to go but blaming pregnancy on loose morals and loose women.
If Republicans acknowledge that women have reproductive rights, they will be forced to address other rights of women as well. For Texas, that would include funding for family planning and welfare, a higher minimum wage, insurance to cover contraceptives, real sex education and access to healthcare.
Pro-choice isn't one issue and it isn't one choice. Pro-choice means women have the choice to graduate from college, the choice to borrow money from a bank to start a business, the choice to get a good job with a fair wage, the choice not to live in poverty and to keep their kids out of poverty. Choice means real equality; that women get to be autonomous citizens-- just like men do-- with the power to determine their own destinies.
Pro-life candidates like George W. Bush understand better than anyone that choice isn't just one issue. Before heading to the ballot box in November, Americans need to realize that pro-life is really just pro-birth. The Republicans' concern for mother and child is severed with the cutting of the umbilical cord.
Margot Magowan produces the Bernie Ward KGO Radio Talk Show, and is a writer and commentator whose work has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, Salon.com, Voter.com and Glamour magazine. She has been on national television programs including CNN's Crossfire, Hardball with Chris Mathews and Fox News. She co-founded the Woodhull Institute, a think tank for women and Women Count, an organization that implements media campaigns to inspire women to vote.
Voter.com has shut down their website. We have posted Champ or Vamp? by Margot Magowan at This is Sports? You bet! Also see Femonics 101 and You Pussy!
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