…and a woman’s right to choose. How did I miss this largely symbolic but altogether reassuring statement by the President on protecting women’s health and reproductive freedom? So far he’s batting 1000 with me (I say with my eyes averted from the Pakistan border).
President Obama issued a statement defending Roe v. Wade for protecting “women’s health and reproductive freedom.”
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Obama affirmed his support for a woman’s “right to choose” on Thursday, the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that led to the legalization of abortion, as thousands of anti-abortion activists descended on the National Mall to challenge his position.
Roe v. Wade “not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters,” Obama said in a statement.
The landmark 1973 decision held that a woman’s right to abortion was protected by the right to privacy under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, voiding most state laws against abortion at the time.
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We’re all looking forward to near-future Supreme Court appointees so that they can halt the slow-but-frightening erosions of this civil liberty.
Right-to-life paraders were here in force along the San Francisco Embarcadero Saturday. So were “free choice” forces. I quote from the SF Chronicle:
“I feel for the other side,” said (name withheld by me for her privacy), 24, of San Francisco. She said she worked against abortion as a youth minister until three years ago, when she was raped by her pastor and had an abortion. Now, she said, “I can’t imagine my life without the fact that I can choose.”