Opinion: Stop! Don’t Touch Me There! This is My Private Square!

I have always thought that it was an intuitive notion that there are no prerequisites for invoking your own constitutional rights. However, there are some who disagree with me. In January 1973, the Supreme Court, in the case of Roe v. Wade, ruled that women have the right to terminate their own pregnancy under the 14th Amendment. There are no stipulations attached. However according to the New York Times, the Virginia State Legislature is attempting to make women suffer through an unnecessary procedure before they are allowed to get an abortion as a means of impressing their ideological beliefs on women who may disagree with them.

The Virginia State Legislature passed a bill that would require a woman desiring to invoke her right to an abortion to have an ultrasound. Since most abortions are done before the 12th week of pregnancy, the baby would be too small for an abdominal ultrasound, so the bill mandates that the woman needs to have a transvaginal ultrasound. To clarify, the government is mandating a probe to be inserted into a woman and moved around until a picture of the baby is attained. An amendment to allow women to opt out of the probing was voted down 64-34. Currently this bill is waiting to be signed into law by Bob McDonell, who has already agreed to sign it, but is just waiting for the politically right time because he is a possible Republican candidate for vice president. If you ask me, there is no correct time to enact a bill that rapes women; yes I do mean rapes, under the federal definition, as they try to invoke a constitutional right. However, many other states have similar and even more severe laws. In Texas, a woman has to get the internal ultrasound, and then she is forced to view the picture and listen to the fetal heartbeat. If the woman chooses to divert her attention from the picture of her unborn baby, her doctor is mandated by the government to describe the picture to the woman in detail. It was not a man who ruled this Texas law as constitutional, but it was one of our very own who betrayed us, Judge Edith Jones.

However, there is hope. Recently an Oklahoma state judge blocked the enforcment of a law that would require pre-abortion sonograms in his state.  These bills are simply passive aggressive ways for the very conservative faction of Americans to espouse their unsolicited ideas. What angers me the most is that they use the argument that they are trying to help women with this legislation by giving them as much information as possible.

"The required disclosures of a sonogram, the fetal heartbeat, and their medical descriptions are the epitome of truthful, non-misleading information," which is Chief Judge Edith Jones’ rationalization for mandating this unnecessary medical procedure in Texas.

This would not be as bad if research did not show that giving information to women does not significantly change their minds about abortions. I am inclined to support the laws of Oklahoma that “the court has resoundingly affirmed what should not be a matter of controversy at all—that women have both a fundamental right to make their own choices about their reproductive health, and that government has no place in their decisions," said Nancy Northup, president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

This is not the only attack on abortion; earlier this year the Susan G. Komen Foundation attempted to pull their support from Planned Parenthood, which offers affordable abortions to women. There is a clear pattern of attacks on women’s rights. Who can be surprised at this when there is a lack of female government officials in the United States? According to Sheshouldrun.org, women only hold 17 percent of the seats in Congress, and only 12 percent of states have female governors. Women make up approximately 50 percent of the population; ergo, they should have 50 percent of the representation. Sadly, this is far from the reality. For a country that prides itself on equality, we should not be 87th in the rankings of countries with female representation. We are just pawns in a male dominated game of chess. The future is scary. Recent polls have shown a small margin of victory for Barack Obama over GOP front runner Willard Romney. The Republican hopeful does not often answer questions on birth control; he deflects these questions to his wife who is a privileged woman with five children and not an ounce of respect for the importance of birth control. This evidence is frightening. Our future president may be getting his understanding about women from a woman  who the majority of women cannot relate to. However, there is hope. Women have mobilized and gained rights in the past, just look at the 19th Amendment. Modern women have a political voice because the hard work of previous generations of women. It would be a shame if modern women did not use their voice and influence to protect their civil rights.