Much of the press this past week that was not centered on the triumph of Sen. Barack Obama has focused on the narrow victory of California's Proposition 8, which defines marriage as the union of a man and woman. For those progressives despairing at what is obviously a step backwards for the rights of homosexuals, however, take comfort in the fact that the one great progressive leap of electing Obama has not suddenly thrown all other reforms into reverse. On Tuesday, both Colorado and South Dakota, two states that voted Republican in both the 2000 and 2004 elections, struck down ballot initiatives that would in effect illegalize abortion.
South Dakota's Measure 11 would have made abortion illegal except in cases of rape, incest or life-threatening danger to the mother resulting from the pregnancy. While this ballot initiative seems tame after one in 2006 that would have nearly banned abortion entirely, the people of South Dakota still struck it down, despite a large conservative population. If passed, Measure 11 would have also criminalized doctors who perform abortions for any but the aforementioned reasons.
Though Measure 11's stipulations have become standard exceptions in many pro-life proposals, Colorado's Amendment 48 was exponentially more extreme and more terrifying. Amendment 48 was an attempt to circumvent the ruling of Roe v. Wade by not directly addressing the issue of abortion, but instead focusing on "personhood," or when the fertilized egg becomes a person. The wording of Amendment 48, which sought to define life as beginning at the moment of fertilization, would not only have made any abortion tantamount to homicide, but also would have illegalized certain forms of birth control, like the morning after pill. Amendment 48 was soundly defeated by a wide margin of almost three to one.
The rejection of these ballot initiatives that so blatantly seek to infringe upon the rights of women is a refreshing breath of sanity after the success of California's Proposition 8. However, the fact that our country even allows something as large and far-reaching as the right to an abortion (or gay marriage for that matter) to be determined by majority vote is absolutely absurd, especially when history clearly shows that the majority rarely ever seeks to protect the rights of the minority.
Legislation that protected the African-American minority during the civil rights movement was heavily opposed by the majority of citizens in many areas of the country despite the fact that Brown v. the Board of Education had already made it clear that separate was inherently not equal.
Similarly, legislation that allowed women the right to vote was repeatedly shot down nationally and in many states until the 19th Amendment was finally passed in 1920. With history as the most unforgiving teacher, how is it then that the question of what a woman can do with her body can be governed by the votes of 70-year-old men? How can the difficult decision of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy be determined by a ballot cast by women who are fortunate enough to have never had to face such a choice?
For the many who remain unconvinced, consider: Passing legislation that dictates what a woman can do with her body violates the very nature of the individual citizen's right to privacy. Not only that, but passing any law that would allow the government to regulate something as personal as abortion opens a door for even more intrusive and binding bills that could extend beyond a woman's womb (although there are few things more private than that). And although many pro-life advocates say they would not push for laws limiting abortions in cases of rape or incest, it should be noted that the amount of time a normal court proceeding would take to prove rape or incest would be far longer than the human gestation period and certainly longer than the narrow window in which an abortion would be possible.
The question of abortion was debated and decided in 1973 by Roe v. Wade, regardless of whether or not that decision was in line with the majority opinion. This year, however, the majority opinion seems to be in accordance with the law.
