Legislating Abortion Stigma

22.02.2011 By Leila Hessini and Anu Kumar

Last week, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce heard three "experts" on abortion policy testify on H.R. 358, the "Protect Life Act," one of several bills before Congress right now aimed at reducing access to legal abortion services. The witness panel included two well-known opponents of women's choice, Helen Alvaré, associate professor of law at George Mason University and Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee; and Sara Rosenbaum, chair of the health policy department at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. Only Rosenbaum spoke in defense of protecting U.S. women's legal right to abortion.

Alvaré, formerly general counsel for the National Council of Catholic Bishops and self-described "born-again Catholic," said in her testimony that even after 38 years of legal abortion, the United States "is a market that looks like this: 87 percent of U.S. counties with no abortion providers; steadily declining numbers of abortion clinics (which decline began long before clinic prayer vigils and protests began in earnest), largely due to the stigma associated with abortion among physicians and in the medical profession generally...."

Let's not be coy about this stigma; since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973, anti-abortion advocates like Alvaré and Johnson have been working to eliminate abortion in the United States by shaming women and doctors and nurses and their families. Women walking into clinics are taunted. Providers of abortion care are stalked, threatened and assassinated. Even landlords and office suppliers to clinics are harassed. By creating controversy, they created an environment that separates abortion from comprehensive health care for women. More >>