Every day seems to bring another legal assault on abortion rights: banning funding of Planned Parenthood, requiring a sonogram, mandating a physician certify that a woman has not chosen an abortion because of the race or sex of the fetus. These newest developments are on top of already established legal limitations, such as prohibitions against later-term abortions (often misnamed partial birth abortions) and requirements that women under 18 obtain parental or judicial permission.
Every day seems to bring another legal assault on abortion rights: banning funding of Planned Parenthood, requiring a sonogram, mandating a physician certify that a woman has not chosen an abortion because of the race or sex of the fetus. These newest developments are on top of already established legal limitations, such as prohibitions against later-term abortions (often misnamed partial birth abortions) and requirements that women under 18 obtain parental or judicial permission.
For many lesbians, the attacks on abortion availability can be background noise. We focus on problems that seem to affect lesbians more directly, such as same-sex marriage, the military’s dismantling of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, or even the newest lesbian celebrity gossip. When we think about our own reproductive rights, it is more often about becoming pregnant and raising our children. To the extent we consider abortion, it may seem an issue exclusively for our heterosexual sisters.
We may agree with the feminist insight that laws restricting women’s reproductive and sexual choices spring from a common patriarchal source. We may know that the legal arguments against reproductive and sexual restrictions are grounded in the same constitutional rights. And, depending upon how much recent history we know, we may wonder how it seems that abortion rights and lesbian rights have swapped places: If abortion was once more acceptable than lesbianism, now it seems more acceptable to be “out” as a lesbian, than to admit to having an abortion.
But access to abortion is essential to lesbians. It is not merely about ideas or legal theories, as important as those are, but about our ordinary lives.
First of all, there is rape. To be a lesbian does not mean that one is immune from being raped, and in fact it may make one more susceptible to it. According to the US Department of Justice, approximately 18% of women are raped sometime during their lives; a National Lesbian Health Care Survey revealed that 32% percent of lesbians polled had been raped or sexually assaulted. There has been much attention to the so-called “corrective rapes” of lesbians in South Africa, in which lesbians are specifically targeted for sexual assault with the supposed purpose of instilling heterosexuality in them. In the United States, the term “corrective rape” is not used, but there are certainly cases in which a victim’s lesbianism - - - or perceived lesbianism - - - has spurred the sexual assault or increased its violence.
No matter the motivation behind them, rapes raise the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy. One important variable predicting pregnancy is whether or not the victim was using some sort of contraception. Lesbians, unlike their heterosexually active counterparts, would presumably be more likely to become pregnant.
There are a few “rape exceptions” to restrictions on abortion, but fewer than one might think. The mandated ultrasound image with simultaneous explanation and display of the image? The mandatory waiting period? The mandated lecture on the “father’s responsibility for child-support”? None of these restrictions usually have an exception for rape. And abortion service providers do not become more plentiful or more geographically widespread because the pregnancy was a product of sexual violence.
Additionally, whether or not the sex was consensual, lesbians face particular obstacles because we may be “reproductive amateurs.” For example, it might take us longer to recognize we are pregnant. Maybe our formal sex education was so hostile to homosexuality that we didn’t pay attention to any of it. Maybe our informal sex education was not focused on contraception and pregnancy. We may not have the support networks that heterosexual women have, or we may be too embarrassed to ask for help, or we may be in denial about the possibility of pregnancy. For such lesbians, access to later term abortions is absolutely crucial.
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