Roe v Wade was 50 years ago, but who's counting? Abortion rights became a bargaining chip for the Democratic Party, eg the Hyde Amendment, a fundraising bonanza and a method of blackmailing voters in the electoral arena. Vote for Democrats to save Abortion rights. However, prohibition of medical treatments and mandated vaccines for covid 19 erased the right to privacy and bodily autonomy, "my body, my choice," the universal rights upon which Roe v Wade rested. The Democratic Party was eager to set the stage for the overturn of Roe v Wade by eliminating the right to informed consent and right to choose or refuse medical treatments for covid 19.
According to Sheila Robatham in a chapter of "Hidden from History" (which I read in the 1970s), the Catholic Church was not opposed to abortion until the early 1800s, when the Pope selected by Napolean Bonaparte decided that abortion was murder, giving Bonaparte the opportunity to outlaw abortion as a population control measure. Prior to this, deliberately aborting a pregnancy was generally not a crime, unless it was done without the approval of a husband or father. Under the legal code of the Roman empire, women were the property of men with few rights. The decision to attempt to carry a pregnancy to term or to abort was usually not a women's decision to make.
Conditions of life for the proletariat and much of the peasantry in France of the early 1800s were driving down birth rates. The Papal encyclical which condemned abortion as a cardinal sin and capital crime in the eyes of Jesus was politically motivated. I never encountered a reference to abortion in the new or old testament of any edition of the Christian bible, even though abortion was not an uncommon practice before the emergence of the Christian religion.
Women won the right to choose abortion and other rights in the former Russian empire immediately after the Soviet government was established in 1917. However, laws that regulated or criminalized abortion were later promulgated in an attempt to increase birth rates.
The drive to ban abortion in the US today is at least in part a response to declining birth rates. Fertility rates are falling and a growing share of women of child bearing age want to postpone, limit or avoid pregnancies. The campaign for abortion rights in the US was not only a struggle for reproductive rights but was also promoted as a population control measure. The founder or a founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger is reputed to have been an advocate of Eugenics. However, the campaign for abortion rights which immediately preceded Roe v Wade was focused on the legalization of abortion as part a struggle against compulsory motherhood. Women were entering the workforce on a large scale and achieving a greater degree of autonomy or independence.
It is astonishing to read assertions such as "pregnancy is not a disease or medical condition" and therefore an elective abortion can't be considered a surgical procedure like other elective medical or surgical procedures that may be chosen unless carrying the pregnancy to term or far enough for a viable live birth poses a grave threat to a woman's life or long term health status. I have seen the employment of exactly this line of reasoning in commentaries which advocated the overturn of Roe v Wade or endorsed it after-the-fact
It was a pleasure reading your article
Roe v Wade was 50 years ago, but who's counting? Abortion rights became a bargaining chip for the Democratic Party, eg the Hyde Amendment, a fundraising bonanza and a method of blackmailing voters in the electoral arena. Vote for Democrats to save Abortion rights. However, prohibition of medical treatments and mandated vaccines for covid 19 erased the right to privacy and bodily autonomy, "my body, my choice," the universal rights upon which Roe v Wade rested. The Democratic Party was eager to set the stage for the overturn of Roe v Wade by eliminating the right to informed consent and right to choose or refuse medical treatments for covid 19.
According to Sheila Robatham in a chapter of "Hidden from History" (which I read in the 1970s), the Catholic Church was not opposed to abortion until the early 1800s, when the Pope selected by Napolean Bonaparte decided that abortion was murder, giving Bonaparte the opportunity to outlaw abortion as a population control measure. Prior to this, deliberately aborting a pregnancy was generally not a crime, unless it was done without the approval of a husband or father. Under the legal code of the Roman empire, women were the property of men with few rights. The decision to attempt to carry a pregnancy to term or to abort was usually not a women's decision to make.
Conditions of life for the proletariat and much of the peasantry in France of the early 1800s were driving down birth rates. The Papal encyclical which condemned abortion as a cardinal sin and capital crime in the eyes of Jesus was politically motivated. I never encountered a reference to abortion in the new or old testament of any edition of the Christian bible, even though abortion was not an uncommon practice before the emergence of the Christian religion.
Women won the right to choose abortion and other rights in the former Russian empire immediately after the Soviet government was established in 1917. However, laws that regulated or criminalized abortion were later promulgated in an attempt to increase birth rates.
The drive to ban abortion in the US today is at least in part a response to declining birth rates. Fertility rates are falling and a growing share of women of child bearing age want to postpone, limit or avoid pregnancies. The campaign for abortion rights in the US was not only a struggle for reproductive rights but was also promoted as a population control measure. The founder or a founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger is reputed to have been an advocate of Eugenics. However, the campaign for abortion rights which immediately preceded Roe v Wade was focused on the legalization of abortion as part a struggle against compulsory motherhood. Women were entering the workforce on a large scale and achieving a greater degree of autonomy or independence.
It is astonishing to read assertions such as "pregnancy is not a disease or medical condition" and therefore an elective abortion can't be considered a surgical procedure like other elective medical or surgical procedures that may be chosen unless carrying the pregnancy to term or far enough for a viable live birth poses a grave threat to a woman's life or long term health status. I have seen the employment of exactly this line of reasoning in commentaries which advocated the overturn of Roe v Wade or endorsed it after-the-fact