metacycles

State Power vs. Women’s Rights

Part I. Introduction

In 1973, the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Roe v. Wade which recognized women’s right to obtain an abortion. However, many pregnant women today still face a multitude of barriers preventing them from exercising that right. One of the most detrimental and decisive of these barriers is the lack of financial means. Compared to the countless attacks Congress has made against indigent women from receiving funding for abortion services, the significance of the Supreme Court’s role in determining the fiscal matters of abortion has been minimized. But for the past 30 years, the Court has passed decision after decision that supported the victimization of low-income women, chipping away their precious right. In my paper, I examine several of these Supreme Court decisions that have undone the achievements won in Roe in order to highlight a pattern of judicial compliance with the State that trumps State rights over women’s rights.

To understand the severity of the consequences suffered by women because of the regulation of abortion, it is extremely important to grasp what abortion means in regards to women’s liberty and equality. In medical terms, abortion is the termination of a woman’s pregnancy. In the legal field, “nontherapeutic abortion” and “elective abortion” is used to denote abortions that are not due to threats to the woman’s life, rape, or incest. But these basic definitions alone cannot help us understand what is at stake for women if the right to abortion were to be lost, and why women and other Pro-Choice individuals continue to fight. To gain insight as to why abortion is an important women’s right, I explore the work of law philosopher and professor, Ronald Dworkin, who sees abortion as a necessary factor for gender equality. Believing that women can never achieve the same societal ranking as men if they cannot control their own destinies, Dworkin uses the argument of personal autonomy to defend his position. I also refer to the work of historian and professor, Linda Gordon, who believes that reproductive freedom is the key to women’s liberation.

In the following section, I provide detailed analyses of several Supreme Court cases. By using these cases, I show a trend in their decisions that expanded State powers, powers that were namely restricted in Roe‘s holding. Despite the Court’s claims that it has performed its judicial duties in accordance with Roe, I believe that the Court has in many ways, compromised and reversed the former decision. The fact that the Court has allowed states the authority to make it extremely difficult for women to obtain an abortion shows that it has done a poor job in securing a liberty that it previously ruled was protected. Close examinations of these cases that best demonstrates the Court’s series of failures allows me to not only question the constitutionality of their outcomes, but evaluate the validity of the methods the Justices used in reaching their decisions. Within the analysis of each case I also argue in favor for the dissenting opinions, which were written in favor of women and women’s right to abortion.
The last part of my paper applies the theory discussed earlier in part two with empirical evidence to show the social and economic ramifications of the expansion of State power at the expense of women’s rights. This section illustrates how states are able to take advantage of the powers granted to them by the Court to create financial barriers specifically against low-income women from obtaining abortions. By refusing to fund for abortion services, states have in many cases, managed to coerce indigent women into making personal lifestyle choices at odds with their own desires. Currently, more than seven million women of reproductive age rely on Medicaid. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit organization that conducts research and analyzes policy in regards to sexual and reproductive health to promote public education in these areas, a quarter of these women carry unwanted pregnancies to term due to the lack of funds available to them. By allowing the states to neglect their financial responsibility to these low-income women, both the Court and the states

have clearly impinged those women’s rights and negatively affected their quality of life. Widening the scope, it can be observed that their action has created devastating effects for efforts on gender equality and women’s liberation for years to come.

Part III: The Supreme Court and the State

Restriction on State Power

Roe v. Wade

On January 23, 1973, Justice Blackmun delivered the majority opinion of the Court and on that day, American women came one step closer towards piloting their own destiny. The Court found that the right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment is applicable to the cases in which women are seeking an abortion, and made women (in conjunction with her consulting physician) the primary decision-maker in determining the course of their pregnancy in the first two trimesters.

The States that had laws banning abortion argued for their interest in protecting both the life of the mother from the hazardous methods of abortion, as well as the potential life that is within the womb. Justice Blackmun swiftly struck down the State’s first interest, stating that medical technology has advanced so much that obtaining an abortion poses equal or less risk than normal childbirth; the State’s second interest, interest in potential life however, was deemed partially valid. It is the State’s interest in potential life that really helped to push the Supreme Court in determining certain boundaries for the State. The Court held that the State did reserve the right to act upon a compelling state interest towards potential life, if potential life was involved. The determinant for the existence of potential life would be viability, or the ability of the fetus to live outside of the woman’s womb with or without medical assistance. Thus Justice Blackmun divided pregnancy into three stages in terms of viability and described the State’s function at each stage:

(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician.

(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life of the mother… (“Roe v. Wade,” 1977)

The framework set forth in Roe v. Wade caused a sweeping change across the country, affecting the State laws of forty-six states. (The Oyez Project, accessed Dec 13, 2009)

Expansion of State Power

Beal v. Doe

At its core, Roe v. Wade’s decision resolved a great conflict that was present on both cultural and legal levels; it answered the question of whether or not the right to privacy extended to women in the case of seeking non-therapeutic abortions. Also achieved by Roe v. Wade was a judicial definition of State power in regards to abortion. However, the resolution found in Roe v. Wade opened the door to many other questions, one of which was the question of funding.

The issue of funding came up in 1977 during the Supreme Court case of Beal v. Doe. Eligible Medicaid candidates denied financial aid for abortion services went against the State of Pennsylvania. Because Pennsylvania refused to fund abortions under their Medicaid program (unless they were declared by physicians to be medically necessary for the health of the pregnant woman), those Medicaid candidates argued that the State of Pennsylvania has violated Title XIX of the Social Security Act and denied them equal protection of the law. The Court decided in favor of Pennsylvania after reviewing the language of Title XIX and declaring that nothing in its language required participating States of the Medicaid program to fund medically unnecessary abortions. In delivering the majority opinion, Justice Powell pointed out that Title XIX only required the coverage of five general categories of medical treatment, leaving each individual State to establish “reasonable standards…for determining…the extent of medical assistance under the plan which are consistent with” the purpose of Title XIX (Section I, para 1). Thus while States are free to fund nontherapeutic abortions, they are in no way obligated to do so. Furthermore, Justice Powell referred to Pennsylvania’s refusal of funding as merely showing preference for normal childbirth over termination; such a preference is not prohibited under the guidelines of Title XIX.

Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun each wrote dissenting opinions. Justice Brennan expressed a different view in looking at the objectives of Title XIX and the situation of abortion. Essentially, Justice Brennan dissented with the majority opinion that Title XIX does not lend itself to cover abortion services because abortion is not medically necessary. Pregnancy in itself is a medical condition that needs attention and in his perspective, abortion and normal childbirth are two different forms of treatment for it. The choice of treatment he claimed is to be left up to the pregnant woman and her physician; the only role the State has is to make sure that the treatments that the woman and her physician chooses are available and safely administered. Although Justice Brennan’s dissent defends women’s right to a Medicaid-funded abortion by declaring abortion as a necessary medical procedure, it is not the most effective argument against the State of Pennsylvania’s refusal to fund abortion. Adhering so closely to Title XIX’s Medicaid program and limitations, Justice Brennan was not able to realize that the issue at hand was more important than trying to fit abortion into the guidelines of Title XIX.

Justice Marshall and Justice Blackmun’s dissents were much stronger in that they both understood the issue to be greater than determining whether abortion as a medical alternative belonged under the category of Medicaid coverage. While that issue is central to this case, a much larger concern must be addressed. Justice Brennan’s dissent wasn’t enough because it failed to show the depth of the consequences faced by women who are denied funding. The language of Title XIX can be read and interpreted in many ways; sometimes it will be read in favor of nontherapeutic abortions like Justice Brennan did, and other times it won’t be, like the majority of the Court did in this case. That is why it is important to look beyond Title XIX and take into account other reasons why abortions should be funded by the State.

In his dissent, Justice Marshall pointed to a most detrimental outcome of the State’s refusal of funding for Medicaid candidates seeking abortions. By offering financial aid for normal childbirth and refusing to help those seeking abortions, the State is essentially using financial coercion to enforce a moral viewpoint. The Court’s majority stated that women denied of monetary aid may still choose to obtain abortion services if they so desired; their right to an abortion has not been impinged. This is where Justice Marshall objected most vehemently. The general purpose of Medicaid is to provide aid to qualified individuals within a low income bracket, who without the help of the State would be unable to fund for their own medical services. Although the Court’s majority maintains that the right to abort still exists as a viable choice and protected activity to all women, attaching a financial cost that is not affordable to indigent women who rely on Medicaid for a variety of medical services turns the choice into an impossibility. (Continued further in paper)

1) Beal v. Doe, 432 U.S. 438 (1977)

In this Supreme Court case, the issue at hand is whether or not Title XIX of the Social Security Act requires States that are participants of the Medicaid program to fund the costs of nontherapeutic abortions. Justice Powell delivered the opinion of the Court, holding that Title XIX does not require States that participate in the Medicaid program to provide financial assistance to those seeking nontherapeutic abortion. Title XIX only requires participating States to cover five general categories of medical treatment; the States are individually responsible for establishing “reasonable standards . . . for determining . . . the extent of medical assistance under the plan which are consistent with” the purpose of Title XIX. Justice Powell continues to say that there is nothing in the text of Title XIX that obliges the States to provide aid for abortion, and the denial of financially funding the cost of abortion does not violate Title XIX’s goals. The Act also does not state that States are not allowed to show preference for normal childbirth over termination. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Congress had intended to require States to cover nontherapeutic abortions under Title XIX since the time when Title XIX was passed, most States did not allow for nontherapeutic abortions. While Title XIX does have room for States to choose to cover nontherapeutic abortions in their Medicaid provisions, the majority of the Court agreed that it was not necessary for the States to do so. This Supreme Court case serves as representation for the multitude of state-enforced abortion barriers existing that I believe to be unconstitutional. In my project, I will be using this case to argue how policies such as these are biased against indigent women who rely on Medicaid assistance. The dissenting opinions are especially valuable to consider:

Justice Brennan dissented, and stated that abortion is only but an alternative to pregnancy, pregnancy being a condition that necessarily requires medical treatment. Abortion in that sense cannot be determined to be an unnecessary treatment by the state, and therefore is required under Title XIX to be covered within their Medicaid provisions. Additionally, Congress has expressed significance in the physician’s and patient’s roles in determining the choice of treatment for medical conditions that would best serve the patient’s needs and interests.

Justice Marshall also dissents, stating that measures by the States to limit the practice of abortion generally are used to enforce a moral viewpoint. The States are forcing poor women to have children, subjecting both mother and children to live financially hostile lives. Women in poverty cannot seek to escape because they have to give up their jobs in order to take care of their children when the choice of day-care is not available. Justice Marshall also points out that “the effect of the challenged regulations will fall with great disparity upon women of minority races. Nonwhite women now obtain abortions at nearly twice the rate of whites, and it appears that almost 40% of minority women – more than five times the proportion of whites – are dependent upon Medicaid for their health care,” and thus believes that States’ refusal to fund nontherapeutic abortions under its Medicaid program is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause under the Fourteenth Amendment.

2) Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992)

Lee v. Weisman is a Supreme Court case that deals with the Establishment Clause, which states that government may not “compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government” (Engel v. Vitale, 1962). In this case, a public school is being accused of violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment after asking a rabbi to offer prayers at its graduation ceremony. The Court ruled in favor of Weisman, stating that the public school’s inclusion of a religious figure in their ceremony for the purpose of conducting a prayer is “a state-sponsored and state-directed religious exercise in a public school.” Although state coercion in this case might be subtle and indirect, it is still a form of coercion that is not constitutionally permissible. Students present at the ceremony received pressure to stand or at least remain silent while the prayer is taking place, creating an environment that resembled one where a state religion is established. Justice Scalia however, dissents and states that the students all have a free will to sit if they wished; standing and remaining silent alone is not a form of assenting participation, rather it is just a form of respect. I will be using this case to bolster my argument that state policies are unconstitutional when they force a woman to carry their birth to full term. I believe the pressure that the students face in this case is comparable to a pregnant woman wishing to abort; although the state does not directly ban her from having an abortion, the state achieved the same effect by banning the places where she can obtain abortion services without difficulty.

3) Poelker v. Doe, 432 U.S. 519 (1977)

The issue in this case of Poelker v. Doe is whether or not publicly financed hospitals denying services for nontherapeutic abortions violate constitutional rights. The Court held that it does not; a city or State is not violating any part of the Constitution when it chooses to express a preference for normal childbirth over termination. Justice Brennan dissented, stating that the city’s decision to not provide services in their publicly financed hospitals was based on moral grounds. Unless the city can show a compelling state interest that can justify their choice (which merely expressing preference for normal childbirth does not satisfy), they are violating a woman’s fundamental rights by denying her access to a form of medical treatment in public hospitals. While it is true that women can still get access to abortion in clinics or private hospitals, there is still a burden on women seeking abortion. Some may not be able to afford an abortion, and others might be forced to travel beyond their own convenience just to find a place that would provide the service. Indigent women are told that the state would finance their medical costs if they were to choose to have a normal childbirth, but would be denied any aid if they were to choose to have the birth terminated. Thus women who can’t afford to pay for an abortion in a private hospital or clinic are coerced by the state to bring their pregnancy to full term. This Supreme Court case is another case I’m using to argue against state policies to barricade against abortion. I’m going to compare this case to Lee v. Weisman in terms of the existence of state coercion to further illustrate the unconstitutionality of a state’s actions that hinder the exercising of women’s right to abort.

4) Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)

Roe v. Wade is the landmark Supreme Court decision in which the right for woman to have an abortion was established. The Court decided that the Constitution did allow woman the right to terminate her pregnancy by abortion, falling within the right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment (Due Process Clause) that was recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965. The State can only interfere if it has a compelling interest, and acts to protect both the life of the mother and the potential life of the child. However as a prenatal life in the first trimester, the unborn child is not deemed to be viable (not able to live outside the womb of the mother) and therefore the decision for an abortion rests solely on the mother and her physician. During the second trimester the State may interfere only to protect the health of the mother, and regulate the procedures of abortion in the way that would promote maternal health. During the third trimester, the State may interfere and even forbid abortion on the grounds that both the mother’s health and the potential life of the child is at risk, unless the mother’s life is in danger if she goes through with normal childbirth. (Obtaining an abortion during the later months of pregnancy can increase risk to the mother’s health.) I will be referring to this Supreme Court case quite extensively, as this is one of the most fundamental cases in the discussion of abortion. The right given to women in this decision is what my claims are hugely based upon.

5) Feldt, G. (2004). The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women’s Rights and How to Fight Back. United States and Canada: Bantam.

The main purpose of this book by Gloria Feldt is to describe the threat that women are now facing. With ground-breaking decisions like Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, most pro-choice members believe that the abortion issue has been won. Unfortunately however, the right-wing pro-lifers have been finding ways to attack and reverse those decisions the moment they were made. And with their immense power, influence, and wealth, they have been making much more progress than they lead on. Like author Cristina Page, Feldt also claims that there is much more at stake than just the issue of the right to abortion. The rights to family planning, sex education, and privacy, for example are being attacked as well.  Feldt goes a step further and claims that the right-wing pro-lifers are also threatening our democratic principles in the process; the battle over abortion has escaladed into a war. For that reason, awareness of the imminent threat currently posed by the right-wing pro-lifers must be spread and action must be taken to protect our social justice.

This book is very similar to Cristina Page’s book, being that both of the authors are pro-choice and are out to write against the pro-life movement. However, while I had mentioned that Page’s book was a comical read, Feldt’s was the opposite. Very serious and to-the-point, Feldt started out immediately by discussing about certain laws and policies (such as the Partial Birth Abortion Act, and the Hyde Amendment) that greatly handicapped the decision made in Roe v. Wade, when the right to abortion was supposedly secured. And because of the fact that this book delves much more into law and policies and the repercussions of them, I believe that this book will prove valuable as a source in my project. Plus the sections in which Feldt advises on how to fight back in the war on choice shows a very practical side of this book, one that would be useful to me because I am hoping to end my paper in a similar manner.

6) Friedan, B. (2001). The Feminine Mystique. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

In this book, Betty Friedan introduces a problem which she calls “the feminine mystique” that had caused much unhappiness for women. The feminine mystique, she argues, is an image created by men to restrict the role of women into that of the home and the domestic sphere. Trapped and unable to move beyond the confines of the home, women are forced to realize their identity and potential as a human being through their husbands and children. While exploring certain causes that fueled the image of the feminine mystique (such as World War II), Friedan states that conforming to the image leads to dehumanization for women; while simultaneously finding her identity through her domestic life, her own identity dwindles away until she is just a part of “an anonymous biological robot in a docile mass.”

This was actually one of the first books I looked to as a possible source at the beginning of my project. But as my topic became more focused, I realized that this isn’t one of the most relevant sources that I have. Despite that fact however, I can still draw some similarities between the image of the feminine mystique being imposed on women during the time Friedan was writing, and the accusation of the pro-life movement imposing their morals on the rest of the country. One interesting thing to note is that Friedan did not address the issue of obtaining reproductive freedom, but the sense of being confined and blocked from reaching the peak of human potential is still true now as it was then. This agrees with Linda’s Gordon’s claim that reproductive rights have been and still remains to be one of the key issues in obtaining gender equality.

7) Gordon, L. (1979). The struggle for reproductive freedom: Three stages of feminism. In Z.R. Eisenstein (Ed.), Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism (pp. 107-132)
In writing this essay, Linda Gordon highlights the importance of reproductive freedom as a part of the feminist movement. She believes that women having control over their bodies and reproduction is the key to women’s liberation. Gordon makes a very important clarification of birth control, stating that its purpose is not to function as a means to reduce birth rate or control population numbers. Rather, birth control signifies the free exercise of women’s reproductive rights. The control that men are able to exert over women is made possible because of the control they have over women’s reproduction. Dividing and examining feminism in three different stages, (19^th century feminism, early 20^th century feminism, and 1970’s feminism) Gordon observes that the fight for control over reproduction existed in all three stages. And within each stage, women gain more understanding of how men control them through controlling reproduction.

This piece illuminates the significant role that reproductive rights play in moving towards gender equality. This will prove useful in my project because the second part of my thesis will discuss how deprivation of reproductive rights hinders the advancement of women. Within her essay, Gordon also evaluates Marxist theory as insufficient for explaining the conditions of male control over reproduction. This will help me better understand the limitations of Marxism in this area, while still using it as a part of the foundation of my paper.

8 ) Hendershott, A. (2006). The Politics of Abortion. New York, NY: Encounter Books.

In The Politics of Abortion, Anne Hendershott introduces a different perspective in contemplating the topic of abortion in the United States. Unlike the approaches that delve into the theories of class and gender struggles, Hendershott asserts that abortion continues to be a highly controversial debate because America is afflicted with a divide that is both cultural and moral in nature. Because of existing divide, the solution for abortion cannot be found within the court system. Instead, the best chance for a solution is found on a lower level where people from opposite camps (pro-lifers and their pro-choice opponents) can hopefully settle the heated debate. In supporting her claim, Hendershott cite certain events that helped trigger a public moral judgment, events such as the murdering of abortion-performing doctors by anti-abortion activists. Those moral judgments, in turn helped shaped the way the courts react while making their decisions on abortion. Hendershott claims that this is unfortunate however, since the courts seem to group all pro-lifers into one category and all pro-choicers in another. Whatever non-violent strategies a pro-life group might practice the courts easily associate them with a pro-life group that encourages violence. For example, the Pro-life Action League suffered in their court battle against NOW, due to the courts associating it with the Army of God (another pro-life group that supports violence in their strategies).

While there might be some truth in Hendershott’s claim, I do not agree with the weight she gives to the moral and cultural division in America. I do believe that abortion is a topic debatable on moral grounds, but that does not make it inherently a moral struggle. The implications that it carries has a greater impact on class and gender than Hendershott cares to acknowledge. Despite Hendershott’s claim that the courts are invaluable in deciding the abortion debate, I believe that they are they are definitely the level that abortion should be decided on. Moral judgment will continue to exist, but they cannot be used as a deciding factor in a topic as crucial as abortion. I will agree with Hendershott that gauging the public’s moral opinion is useful in deciding what time all of America will be ready for the idea of abortion. But for the purpose of my project, the readiness of America for a controversial practice is not relevant. This source however, provides a different view on what I believe to be the nature of reproductive freedom and gender equality, as well as the role that the court system plays. While I do not agree completely with Hendershott’s claims, I do feel that they are valid and including them in my project will help strengthen my overall claim.

9) Henshaw, S.K. (1998). Barriers to access to abortion services. In L.J. Beckham & S.M. Harvey (Eds.), The new civil war: The psychology, culture, and politics of abortion (pp. 61-80)

In this chapter Stanley K. Henshaw utilizes the Abortion Provider Survey (conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1993) to study the negative impacts that abortion barriers have on women and their access to abortion services. Although all women retain the right to an abortion, the only women who are able to get one are usually those living in large urban areas and can afford the service fees. The availability of abortion services is one barrier than many women seeking abortions have to face.  Ninety-four percent of nonmetropolitan counties have no abortion service providers, forcing women to either travel out of their convenience or carry their pregnancy to full term. Other provider problems are availability of appointments (abortions are semi-urgent cases, waiting too long for an abortion raises the risk of a woman’s health), the fee that the providers charge for abortions, and harassment such as blockades and picket lines at the abortion facilities.

This chapter is useful since it supplies the statistical information of abortion providers in the country. I plan to use parts of the data gathered in this chapter to show a correlation between the number of abortion providers and the number of women obtaining abortions. Like the author, I believe that barriers to abortion prevent women from exercising their right to abortion as guaranteed in the decision of Roe v. Wade. Although I agree with the author that a wide range of abortion barriers all limit women from exercising that right, I am going to focus only on the availability of abortion service providers and the limitation placed on indigent women through their state Medicaid programs for the purpose of my project.

10) Marsiglio, W. & Diekow, D. (1998). Men and abortion: The gender politics of pregnancy resolution. In L.J. Beckham & S.M. Harvey (Eds.), The new civil war: The psychology, culture, and politics of abortion (pp. 269-284)

This chapter briefly examines the role of men in the discussion of abortion, which authors William Marsiglio and Douglas Diekow state is an area often overlooked during research.

There is much more concentration on women’s autonomy and lack of choices, overshadowing the fact that men are also in a similar position as well.  Phrasing it as “forced fatherhood,” Marsiglio and Diekow describe the inequality that men face in the process of reproduction. Case law gave women the right to abort (Roe v. Wade, 1973) and decided that men had no right to go against her decision for termination (Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, 1976), yet at the same time he must pay child support without contest if she decides to carry the birth to full term. Men are just as affected on a psychological level as well and sometimes become emotionally scarred for decisions that are placed beyond their hands by law.

In my opinion, this is also another very interesting piece to read. Initially I had decided that the subject of this chapter is completely irrelevant to my research. On a second look however, certain parts of it started to look more and more useable. All parts of my project deals with the championing of women’s rights. This chapter made me realized that women’s rights are not the only ones that should be concentrated on. While not being able to fully change my opinion, I do see the claim made by Marsiglio and Diekow to be valid and worth addressing so I can build the strength of my own claims. What I did like about this chapter is that it drew the discussion of abortion away from the usual “war” rhetoric. By addressing men’s rights, it made me wonder whether or not women’s reproductive rights can only be advanced at the expense of men’s rights. I am also reconsidering my approach to my project, perhaps one that can embrace universal rights as opposed to rights to just one particular group over another.

11) Marx, K. (1978). Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 . The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed., pp. 66-125). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Within the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx examines the alienation of the worker produced by the capitalistic society. There are ways the worker is alienated. First, by continuously creating objects that are not his own to keep, he becomes estranged from the objects of his own labor; he helps create a world in which he does not belong to. Second, he is alienated from the act of production. A worker is no longer working for himself when he is forced to sell his labor power in order to survive. His labor power becomes someone else’s and exists external from himself, and the more he sells his labor, the more pronounced is his loss of self. A worker faces a third form of alienation from his “species-being,” that is his identity as a human being. As a human being, the worker’s free-activity defines his identity and purpose in life. In a society that practices division of labor, the labor that a worker performs transforms from free-activity to coerced labor, rendering him alienated from his species-being. Lastly, the worker also experiences estrangement from other men. Because the fruits of his labor are taken from him, he views those who own his products as alien and hostile.

Marxist-Feminist works are based on Marx’s work of course, and I believe this one in particular speaks very well of the current situation of women and her labor of reproduction. I will be addressing this piece in the second part of my project, where I move toward a more theoretical approach in discussing the repercussions of the unconstitutional state policies barring abortion on women’s advancement.

12) Page, C. (2006). How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex. New York: Basic Books.

The title of this book really says it all. Pro-choice author Cristina Page engages in an almost comical discussion about pro-lifers in the topics of sex, abortion, birth control and politics. What makes this book less comical is that her reports reflect a grim reality on how some of the pro-lifers operate and carry out their agenda. The inspiration for Page to write this book came after a failed attempt to create a lasting compromise of ideas with a former pro-life friend. Certain decisions by the pro-lifers really baffled Page, including their opposition on measures that would reduce abortion when they claim to be very much anti-abortion. Through her research, Page claims what pro-lifers are completely against all sex that is not intended for the purpose of procreation. While projecting themselves as righteous and moral, pro-lifers are trying to impose their own way of life on all those that do not agree with their lifestyle.  Some of the evidence she cites includes the way which some pro-life groups resort to using false or outdated (and since then updated and corrected) scientific statistics to scare people into not having sex. They distort figures and information to promote abstinence as the best form of protection against pregnancy, STDs and HIV. Using the support of a test that has been proven wrong in both methodology and results, pro-lifers cite that condoms are only 69% effective against HIV during regular use. Page also claims that the pro-choice movement is generally better at fulfilling the pro-life movement’s proposed goals, including reducing the need of abortions. Much of this stems from the pro-life’s opposition to methods of contraception other than abortion, such as birth control pills and condoms. Abortion is the last resort for most women, and they are driven to it because they do not use condoms or have access to birth control pills. Furthermore, disallowing abortion does not mean that women will be getting them less. Women will still seek other ways for aborting their pregnancy that will greatly induce harm to their health. Page cites certain examples in which mothers have done abortions on themselves, including a teenage girl who asked her boyfriend to hit her in her abdominal region with a baseball bat.

Initially I had not really intended to do much more than skim through the chapters of this book. However, I found myself easily immersed within it because claim after claim, Page’s straight-forwardness about how bad the pro-life movement is astounded me. While it was an entertaining read, it is a very blatantly one-sided piece. The book jumps to too many conclusions that do not leave room for pro-lifers to respond, at least respond without stating that her claims are completely wrong. She makes bold, sweeping statements such as, “Clearly, pro-life states are eager to prosecute women.” Her evidence however strong, are still too limited to justify her claims. Certain parts of her book might be useful to my project, such as her chapter on how the world would be like without the decision formed in Roe v. Wade. But overall, her book is the type of source that I probably would not draw my evidence from extensively.

13) Reagan, L. J. (1997). When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973. Berkeley: University of California Press.

In this book, author Leslie J. Reagan focuses on the three major players that helped shaped abortion law and policy, those in the medical profession, state authorities and law profession, as well as the women who continue to express their need for abortions during the time when abortion was made illegal. While women’s historians no longer think that public and private spheres to exist exclusively of each other, Reagan asserts that the private sphere has invaded the public sphere. Women communicating within the privacy of their households and physicians’ offices had helped shape abortion law as it is today, an important fact that is usually left out by studies of abortion that are bound only to the legal aspect of it. The century when abortion was a crime has often been given an obscure overview, mostly painting a black and white picture when things are much more complex.

This book details the history of abortion, which is useful to know when viewing the laws on it today. While knowing the social history and views on abortion might be helpful in arguing for the legitimacy of partial-birth abortion, it does not really have too much direct relevance to my project. As of now, this source will be put to the side for possible reference later on. What I might draw from it is the role of the physician, which doesn’t seem to have changed much overtime.

14) Solinger, R. (2001). Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States. New York: Hill and Wang.

In this book, Rickie Solinger analyzes the terminology popularized by Justice Blackmun in the Roe v. Wade case when referring to a woman’s decision to have an abortion. Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion activists claimed that women had the “right” to control their own bodies. After Roe v. Wade, the term “right” was replaced by “choice,” which Solinger asserts to be particularly damaging to women who cannot afford to make choice to terminate their pregnancy. The term “right” denotes a natural privilege or benefit that is given to women without any form of discrimination; they should be allowed to freely exercise their rights without any hindrance either by their economic background or state interference. However, replacing the word “right” with a market-based terminology reflects the monetary aspect of abortion, thus barring indigent women from it. The word “choice” as Solinger asserts, “underlies the very popular (though much denied) idea that motherhood should be a class privilege in the United States – a privilege appropriate only for women who can afford it.” In strengthening her claim, she studies the two developments that began after Roe v. Wade was decided: the denial of federal funding to abortion procedures for poor women, and the foreign adoption market.

This book is going to be one of the more important sources for my project, which I will be using when I discuss the unconstitutionality of the decision made in Beal v. Doe as well as the Hyde Amendment. This book is a useful read to prepare myself for the argument that the state policies do not directly ban women from obtaining abortions when excluding abortion from their Medicaid provisions. In general, it will also help me defend my overall claim that barriers to abortion more often than not have the same affect to many women as banning them from abortion altogether, which in turn severely hinders women’s advancement.

15) Wilcox, B.L., Robbennolt J.K., & O’Keeffe J.E. (1998). Federal Abortion Policy and Politics: 1973 to 1996. In L.J. Beckham & S.M. Harvey (Eds.), The new civil war: The psychology, culture, and politics of abortion (pp. 3-24)

The purpose of this article is to examine the aftermath of two Supreme Court decisions, namely the actions of both the legislative and executive branch. The two Supreme Court decisions (that being Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton) made it possible for gave women the right to choose abortion and made it unconstitutional for a state to keep women from exercising that right. The article separated the years following the two decisions into three periods: 1973-1988, 1989-1992, and 1993-1996. In doing so, the article covers all the abortion-related legislations, statutes, and Bill and Constitutional amendments if applicable within each of the time periods. It also discusses how Congress makes their annual appropriations in response to the abortion debate. The end of this article briefly dips into the psychological aspect of the abortion controversy. Although limited in its role, it does come into play when discussing such issues such as parental consent of minors who wish to seek abortion. Furthermore, the article states that the debate over abortion cannot be decided with science. Instead, it agrees with author Anne Hendershott in The Politics of Abortion in saying that at the center of the abortion discussion is the differences of values.

This article gives a general and comprehensive understanding of the legislations and policies enacted after the two Supreme Court decisions that advanced the pro-choice movement. This is most helpful since it helps me understand what direction the abortion debate has taken since then, including the gains and losses of both the pro-choice and pro-life movement. Going over amendments such as the Hyde amendment introduced by Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL) and other “Hyde-type” amendments, it is interesting to see how the pro-life movement can advocate ways to circumvent judgments handed down by the Supreme Court. This is important for my project because knowing how all the holes that the pro-life movement has made in their favor will help me understand the weaknesses to current pro-abortion legislation. It will also help me to prove that the decisions reached in the cases I’m focusing on are made on false legitimacy and are unconstitutional.

The methods of research in political science include reading from primary and secondary sources on theories and potential applications of theories. It also includes reading cases that deal with the political issues that are being examined. Being a field that deals heavily with precedents (for example, when a case gets decided upon), it will be important to examine those precedents in recent history as well.

I propose to examine Supreme Court decisions and the state policies they decide on that deal with prohibiting reproductive rights. In doing so, I hope to understand the basis in which the Supreme Court find the policies constitutional. While the Courts are right in determining that the policies are in accordance with the Equal Protection Clause under the Fourteenth Amendment (which disallows any discrimination in the application of the laws by the states), the policies drawn up by the states to hinder women from exercising their reproductive rights are in themselves unconstitutional and should be struck down as such.

In both the cases of Beal v. Doe, 432 U.S. 438 (1977), and Poelker v. Doe, 432 U.S. 519 (1977), the majority held that a state is allowed to exclude funding for and prohibit non-therapeutic abortion procedures within their Medicaid programs and hospitals. The reasoning of the Court is that such exclusions and prohibitions do not ban women from obtaining abortions; rather they just show encouragement from the state for an alternative option.

In Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992) however, state-sanctioned prayer in a public school was determined to be “pervasive, to the point of creating state-sponsored and state-directed religious exercise…” When the state decides to pick an option, it openly shows preference to that option over other options by default. What results is a form of peer pressure for the people exposed to such state sanctions. Moreover, “this pressure, though subtle and indirect, can be as real as any overt compulsion,” and thus was ruled to be unconstitutional by the majority.

In my study, I first want to set out on proving that state policies to deny women any form of contraception is unconstitutional based on the decision made in Lee v. Weisman (1992). I believe this comparison to be relevant because both deal with the state choosing alternative methods, and as a result shunning a legally protected activity. The sense of state coercion is just as strong in the cases dealing with reproductive rights as they are with freedom of religion. In a way, the sense of state coercion is even stronger in the policies regarding reproductive rights; it cannot pretend it has respect for those who seek abortion when it has very clearly banned the activity from being practiced in its institutions, as well as explicitly excluded it from their programs.

A second part of my study will by tying the first part of my research back to Marxist Feminist theory. I will argue that the struggle for gender equality is inherently a class struggle, and state policies that stifle a whole class of its citizens cannot be in any way constitutional. I will also reaffirm the position that reproduction is a form of labor. This is relevant because it will force a closer examination of the constitutionality of laws and policies that ban any form of reproductive rights, and through the comparison with the Marxian worker, will demonstrate exactly how the state prevents gender equality by controlling women’s labor. Within the comparison to the Marxian worker, I will also analyze the consequences that women suffer when they are deprived of their reproductive (labor) rights. For certain forms of deprivation that carry with them significant economic consequences, such as the exclusion of state funding for abortions, I will need to research demographic data. The data will help me better understand the impact it has on women who cannot afford to have an abortion without financial help from the state due to their economic situation.

Counter-arguments made against my claim that I will address will also be in two parts. First there is of course the majority opinions of the Courts that I have decided to argue against. I will have to address each part of them with the decision made in Lee v. Weisman (1992). I will also research related cases that support my claim. Equally as important, I will use dissents written by the Supreme Court justices that disagreed with the majority as another way to support my argument. Other counter-arguments that I will be dealing with is the choice of Marxist Feminism as opposed to other branches under feminism. To do so, I will look into the history of feminism and discuss why I believe the Marxist tradition holds best in the struggle for gender equality. I will also discuss which areas some branches of feminism has failed to cover, areas which Marxist Feminism has adequately addressed.

Falling under the category of Marxist Feminism, the purpose of my study is to examine the relationship between capitalism and reproduction. In Marxist theory, workers are ruled by the objects that they produce; as the value of his produce goes up, the value of the worker invariably goes down. Marx refers to this relationship as “object-bondage,” where the objects of the worker’s production enslave him within a capitalistic system. I believe a similar type of bondage is at work in regards to reproduction, a bondage which is also fueled by capitalism. My goal is to figure and plot out the correlation between the two in hopes of understanding how capitalism, as an antagonizing source of oppression, stifles the reproductive rights of women.

I can’t say that I have always been interested in Marxism, but discovering that interest has led to much enrichment and intellectual excitement in my academic career. Not only have Marxist theory taught me new things, but it has corrected many of my old preconceptions. That to me is simply one of the most rewarding feelings of the learning process. While I continued to advance my studies in Marxist theory, I stumbled into the field of Women’s Studies. Whether by luck or chance, I decided to pick up an introductory course to feminism and was just as intrigued with it as I was with Marxism. Knowing that I had a special liking for both of those subject areas, I was delighted when I found a piece by Heidi Hartmann, entitled “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism,” in which she discusses the necessary union of class and gender politics.

I was set on learning more about this branch of feminism, which embraces Marxist tradition as a guideline in resolving women’s issues. To my dismay however, there were no courses offered that dealt exclusively with this subject matter. Knowing that I would need some help in my studies, I decided to work with a professor that taught my Marxism course, and together we designed an independent study (that I’m taking this current semester) that would allow me to gain the knowledge I desire in this field. It would also provide me with the groundwork that I need for my thesis research.

As I am still exploring Marxist Feminism theories myself, I do not expect my readers to be complete experts of the field. Within my paper, I want to share the exploration and groundwork that I gain from my independent study. Because there are many branches under feminism, the traits of each branch have been defined and interpreted differently by a variety of sources. One of my tasks will be to provide a good, solid definition of Marxist Feminism that will help serve my purpose for my research paper. I will need to make clearer the fuzzy lines that separate Marxist Feminism from other feminism studies, such as Radical Feminism and Materialist Feminism. Basically, I need to make sure that before I start reporting my research, my readers and I are on the same page.

While I need to hash out some basic definitions, I do expect my readers to be familiar with at least the basics of Marxist theory since I will be utilizing it to examine the issue of reproduction. I will be relating heavily to his works, and making connections between Marxism and feminism continuously throughout my paper. I will provide some background information to all the Marxist concepts that I decide to use, however readers who have never dealt with Marx’s theories before might find some concepts hard to grasp. I know I certainly had a hard time struggling over some of Marx’s works when I read them for the first time!

Some of the key questions that I have at this point:

• How does a capitalistic system produce sources that oppress women?
• How does Marxism help refine the fundamental pillars of feminist theory?
• What tenants of Marxist tradition has feminism borrowed in order to further their goals?
• What makes Marxist Feminism different from all the other branches of feminism?
• What is the history of Marxist Feminism’s development?
• What kind of alienation do women face in the work environment when she chooses to reproduce?
• How does denying a woman reproductive rights alienate herself from her own body?
• How does women and reproduction fall under the dominion of capital?