Equal rights for women? Bush is against it.

Equal rights for women? Bush is against it.

... Adrienne Germain, president of the International Women's Health Coalition, applauded the American move but said the American proposals for economic empowerment of women and a ban on prostitution might cause new stresses between the United States and other countries. The United States is proposing the prostitution ban to curb sex tourism and trafficking in women ...

The American effort produced objections from every regional group at the conference, which had argued for the statement's approval without amendments. After days of lobbying, the Bush administration was virtually alone in pressing the issue, and the many advocacy groups in attendance accused the United States of injecting national political views into an international forum.

Pressin' for the economic empowerment of women and for de-comoditizin' their bodies, globally, hardly strikes me as an assault on women's rights.

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.

Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt. Yet, 19 years after our holding that the Constitution protects a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy in its early stages, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), that definition of liberty is still questioned. . . .

Men and women of good conscience can disagree, and we suppose some always shall disagree, about the profound moral and spiritual implications of terminating a pregnancy, even in its earliest stage. Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that cannot control our decision. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. The underlying constitutional issue is whether the State can resolve these philosophic questions in such a definitive way that a woman lacks all choice in the matter, except perhaps [505 U.S. 833, 851] in those rare circumstances in which the pregnancy is itself a danger to her own life or health, or is the result of rape or incest.

It is conventional constitutional doctrine that, where reasonable people disagree, the government can adopt one position or the other. See, e.g., Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726 (1963); Williamson v. Lee Optical of Okla., Inc., 348 U.S. 483 (1955). That theorem, however, assumes a state of affairs in which the choice does not intrude upon a protected liberty. Thus, while some people might disagree about whether or not the flag should be saluted, or disagree about the proposition that it may not be defiled, we have ruled that a State may not compel or enforce one view or the other. See West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943); Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989).

Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S., at 685 . Our cases recognize the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child. Eisenstadt v. Baird, supra, 405 U.S., at 453 (emphasis in original). Our precedents "have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter." Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944). These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State. [505 U.S. 833, 852]

These considerations begin our analysis of the woman's interest in terminating her pregnancy, but cannot end it, for this reason: though the abortion decision may originate within the zone of conscience and belief, it is more than a philosophic exercise. Abortion is a unique act. It is an act fraught with consequences for others: for the woman who must live with the implications of her decision; for the persons who perform and assist in the procedure; for the spouse, family, and society which must confront the knowledge that these procedures exist, procedures some deem nothing short of an act of violence against innocent human life; and, depending on one's beliefs, for the life or potential life that is aborted. Though abortion is conduct, it does not follow that the State is entitled to proscribe it in all instances. That is because the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition, and so, unique to the law. The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.

It should be recognized, moreover, that in some critical respects, the abortion decision is of the same character as the decision to use contraception, to which Griswold v. Connecticut, Eisenstadt v. Baird, and Carey v. Population Services International afford constitutional protection. We have no doubt as to the correctness of those decisions. They support [505 U.S. 833, 853] the reasoning in Roe relating to the woman's liberty, because they involve personal decisions concerning not only the meaning of procreation but also human responsibility and respect for it. As with abortion, reasonable people will have differences of opinion about these matters. One view is based on such reverence for the wonder of creation that any pregnancy ought to be welcomed and carried to full term, no matter how difficult it will be to provide for the child and ensure its wellbeing. Another is that the inability to provide for the nurture and care of the infant is a cruelty to the child and an anguish to the parent. These are intimate views with infinite variations, and their deep, personal character underlay our decisions in Griswold, Eisenstadt, and Carey. The same concerns are present when the woman confronts the reality that, perhaps despite her attempts to avoid it, she has become pregnant. . . .

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The inquiry into reliance counts the cost of a rule's repudiation as it would fall on those who have relied reasonably on the rule's continued application. . . .

To eliminate the issue of reliance that easily, however, one would need to limit cognizable reliance to specific instances of sexual activity. But to do this would be simply to refuse to face the fact that, for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.

Borrowed from au's post in another forum:

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Which side of the fence is Bush in the effort to fight the spread of AIDs?

The Bush administration has contributed to suffering and death through the so-called global gag rule, which prohibits Washington from giving money to any group that performs - or even talks about - abortions. Organizations that provide desperately needed family planning and women's health services have lost their financing. Now there are moves in Congress and inside the administration to apply a similar rule to needle-exchange programs. That would be an even more deadly mistake..
Allowing drug users to trade used needles for clean ones gets dangerous needles off the street and minimizes needle sharing. A proven weapon against AIDS transmission, it has not been shown to increase drug use, and may indeed reduce drug addiction by providing a way to talk to drug users and lead them to treatment. It is endorsed by virtually every mainstream public health group..
Getting users into drug treatment is the best way to keep them safe. But the push for treatment - which is expensive and difficult - should come with needle exchanges..
Drug use is not a significant source of AIDS infection in Africa. In parts of Asia, the former Soviet bloc and Eastern Europe, needles are the major source of infection; three-quarters of all newly infected people in Russia are intravenous drug abusers, as are half of those newly infected in China. These are just the places where the AIDS epidemic is likely to explode next. A bumper poppy crop in Afghanistan will worsen the outlook, producing cheap heroin that could turn opium smokers into heroin injectors and thus fuel the epidemic..
Opponents of needle exchanges, mainly among the religious right, argue that the practice muddies the message that illegal drug use is unacceptable, and keeps drug abusers from suffering the consequences of their addiction. By this twisted logic, doctors should refuse to treat lung cancer in smokers. In any case, AIDS infections from sharing needles are not limited to drug users. They infect sexual partners, spreading the epidemic through societies..
While Washington does not buy syringes for needle-exchange programs, it does give money to groups that use other people's money to administer needle exchanges. But some conservatives are attempting to stop even that. The assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, Robert Charles, warned the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the joint program UNAIDS, that the organization should not work on needle-exchange issues and should remove positive references to them from its Web site, which it did..
Representatives Mark Souder of Indiana and Tom Davis of Virginia, both Republicans, have asked the U.S. Agency for International Development for details on all financing for programs in which any group strongly advocating needle exchanges also participates. .
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So far, attempts to eliminate needle-exchange programs overseas seem to have limited support. Many administration officials and conservatives in Congress do not want to see crucial AIDS prevention measures derailed or American support withdrawn from such organizations as the Global Fund. One important test will be what the administration does in early March at the annual meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs. Last year, U.S. representatives there attacked the scientific evidence in favor of needle exchanges as unconvincing. This year, the United States should refrain from such attacks - and members of Congress should call off their budding witch hunt..
Washington's antipathy toward needle exchanges is a triumph of ideology over science, logic and compassion. The United States should help pay for these important programs. If it cannot bring itself to do so, it should at least allow the rest of the world to get on with saving millions of lives..

When you say "OUR" money, many of us also believe our government should not withhold that money.

Abortion-on-demand-for-convenience? That's exactly what
the current President wants us to believe. Trust me timber,
I've worked as a counselor at Planned Parenthood for a number of years, and none of the women who ultimately opted for
an abortion, took it lightly for convenience reason.

You're degrading all women by saying this.

Being against the death penalty and being pro choice are
two different subjects. Abortion not only legal, it is NOT
murder, in case you're insinuating a connection here.