Reproductive Rights - Essay Example

Dear Congressman, From the time that slavery was abolished, the United s has consistently expanded upon the freedoms of its people. With freedom to vote, to own land, to marry, and so on, one group after another has gained rights. Somehow, that trend seems to not only have slowed down, but to have reversed itself. Now, the government has seemingly decided that they have reached their limit of freedom—though many of us did not know there was such a thing. These days, as one group gains more rights, another group watches as theirs are eroded.

At this time, it seems that women’s rights are under attack. For many years women have retained the right to make their own choices regarding their bodies. Should a woman find herself pregnant and, for whatever reason, not wish to remain so, she has had the right to have an abortion. Untold numbers of women were forced to endure sometimes difficult, sometimes life-threatening pregnancies and labors to deliver children they did not want. Sometimes these women were the victims of rape or incest, and yet they had to bear the child.

The child itself would potentially be neglected, or given away to be brought up in a bad home. All this, before women were allowed the right to choose to not carry a fetus to term. These days, the Powers That Be have decided that they don’t want women to have abortions. Laws are being passed left and right that make it harder and harder for women to have an abortion, regardless of her reasoning. According to Susan Neilson, laws for three-day waiting periods, cut-off dates of 20 weeks, and graphic, in-depth descriptions of the fetus to the patient are already laws on the books (Neilson).

Next, the government wants to completely cut federal funding. Kathleen Hennessey write, “The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a sweeping antiabortion package to further distance federal funds from the procedure by solidifying existing measures and imposing new ones” (Hennessey). The current bill would not only eliminate access of women to federal funds to pay for abortions, it would also go out of its way to make it harder for clinics to provide abortions. “Under the measure, businesses that offer health insurance policies covering abortion could not recoup tax credits under the new healthcare law” (Hennessey).

With such hard economic times, making the choice to provide care at the expense of one’s practice income is not a choice many are likely to make. The bill does not stop there, though. This bill both restricts federal funding and limits how an individual woman could pay for the procedure. “In addition, individuals could not deduct the cost of an abortion when itemizing health expenses on their taxes, nor could they use a tax-exempt savings account to pay for an abortion” (Hennessey). My question is this: How can we continue to call this great country the “Land of the Free” when the government is taking away our freedoms?

References Hennessey, Kathleen. “House passes restrictive antiabortion package.” LA Times (2011): n. pag. Web. 5 May 2011. Neilson, Susan. "Behind the abortion laws: From bills, a disturbing portrait of women emerges."OregonLive (2011): n. pag. Web. 5 May 2011. .