Pro Choice

Politicians are slippery characters. Broken promises, false principles, and insincere platitudes have time and time again taught the populace to view our elected officials with a degree of skepticism. And once again, Arizona has led the way in justifying public cynicism. The state has recently passed a bill that prohibits abortions performed for racial or gender-based reasons. Although such heinous prejudice is undeniably abhorrent, the need to prevent—legally—the practice is questionable. The lack of racist or sexist abortions performed in the United States suggests that Arizona’s law is not a sincere means to combat such non-existent discrimination but a sly attempt to restrict abortions. The practical effects of the bill are dangerous and ensure that Arizona’s latest law is more of a threat to constitutional rights than a protection.

The law states that it is illegal to perform an abortion due to the race or sex of the fetus. As a result, fathers of an aborted fetus and parents of underage mothers who have abortions can prosecute a doctor for carrying out an abortion that was sought for sexist or racist reasons. The doctor could face heavy fines and up to three-and-a-half years in prison.

Of course, to abort a fetus because of race or sex is horribly prejudiced, and the practice is rightly prohibited in areas where it is a concern, such as China. However, evidence that selective abortion takes place in Arizona is unfounded and disputed. Supporters of the bill claim that minority women constitute a high percentage of those who seek abortions and that abortion clinics are intentionally located in minority areas. Yet this does not logically imply that such women seek abortions for racist reasons, as surely a minority woman is no less likely to share her race with the foetus. The rationale of Arizona’s bill suggests that a woman might have no other reason to abort a foetus other than race, yet the prospect of a woman who is prepared to start a family with her partner but unwilling to share his ethnicity with their child seems highly improbable.

Currently, women are not required to state their reasons for wanting an abortion. However, the new bill ensures that a woman’s motives can be questioned and that doctors are subject to potential liability. The risk of sexist or racist accusations can surely only serve as deterrence for those doctors who perform abortions, while the difficulty of verifying personal motives suggests that groundless legal cases could still cause significant cost to any defendants.

Furthermore, Arizona’s official acknowledgment of such prejudiced motives suggests that women are apt to abort a fetus due to discriminatory reasons. This in itself casts an unsavoury shadow on women who seek abortions, and critics of the bill argue that the law is intentionally polarizing.

However, the law’s greatest threat lies in its insinuation that the rationale for seeking an abortion demands evaluation. A woman’s right to have an abortion is constitutionally sanctioned, and to limit this right due to personal incentives is dangerous. Although different people have different standards of acceptability with regard to various situations in which an abortion may be necessary,  a woman’s right to seek an abortion is absolute and not contingent on “justifiable” motives. As a result, Arizona’s latest abortion law is an unconstitutional restriction of personal rights.

Due to the lack of evidence for racists or sexist abortions in Arizona, the state’s latest bill is not a genuine effort to counter prejudice, but an attempt to restrict women’s right to choice. The claim by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s spokesperson that the legislation is “consistent with her pro-life record” reveals the true intentions that underlie the act’s pretence of egalitarianism. Arizona is notorious for racial profiling and has significant racist concerns to tackle. Discrimination against unborn fetuses is not such a concern, and the bill practically threatens the rights of the mother more than it protects those of the unborn child. This falsity and political cunning is dangerous indeed.

Olivia M. Goldhill ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, is a philosophy concentrator in Kirkland House.