In every teen angst movie, there is a scene where the newly beautiful swan has a moment of crisis. Relations with the new glam clique become strained and she is driven back to friends from her ugly duckling days.
Cady of the Mean Girls goes back to Janis and Damian, just as Veronica ended up with Betty Finn and Martha “Dumptruck” 16 years earlier in Heathers. The lesson is always the same: old friends that are a part of you will be there for the hard times, and you owe them the same.
Political alliances are no different. Every cause has a few coalition partners who are so integral to its identity that they can’t really be left behind. For the LGBT community, the reproductive rights movement is such an ally. They are currently under siege, and we need to stand with them.
Not so long ago, the LGBT community was something of a political ugly duckling. Our support simply wasn’t enough to offset the conservative money and votes lost due to our affiliation, much less the ensuing media storm from the Limbaughs and Coulters of the world. In forming coalitions, our clique was largely limited to other causes, like reproductive rights and labor, who similarly inspired conservative wrath.
Times have changed. Last year, Coulter spoke to the conservative LGBT group, GOProud, and declared herself the “right-wing Judy Garland.” Whether you consider that progress or blasphemy, it’s clear that the LGBT community has become more of a swan, with a longer line of political suitors.
Some are “one-election” stands, offering nothing more than a “we’ll vote for yours if you vote for ours.” Others offer something longer, though it may be a bit more complicated. Few will we ever rely on more than the coalition for reproductive rights.
The link between LGBT and reproductive rights is not always intuitive, even to activists. If LGBT rights are about equal protection, what does that have to do with a woman’s right to choose? Perhaps nothing. Currently, however, LGBT rights are not about equal protection, at least at the federal level.
In Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned laws against sodomy, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion was rooted in due process and a right to privacy. (Justice O’Connor did base her concurring opinion on Equal Protection.) Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southern Pa. v. Casey, both reproductive rights cases, were cited three and six times, respectively. Indeed, the final quotation comes from Casey: “It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.”
That realm of personal liberty is under attack on many fronts. The attempt by congressional Republicans to strip funding from Planned Parenthood failed, but was just the tip of the iceberg. More important and successful attacks have been going on at the state level for some time. In March, the governor of South Dakota signed legislation requiring women to have counseling at centers that discourage abortion and delay the procedure longer than anywhere in the nation. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who last year called for a “truce” on social issues, signed a law in May barring Planned Parenthood from receiving federal money. This despite the fact that only 3 percent of their services involve abortion and no federal money is ever used, in compliance with federal law.
Despite Roe and Casey, some legal experts have been resistant to challenge these new statutes in court. Gonzales v. Carhart, a 2003 Supreme Court decision endorsing a ban on so-called “partial-birth abortions,” suggests that the current justices are willing to chip away at the right to privacy. Just as part of the LGBT brain trust worries that Perry v. Schwarzenegger will end in a Supreme Court decision against same-sex marriage, there is a fear that the wrong challenge could allow the court to overturn Roe v. Wade, leaving reproductive rights up to the states. As we’ve learned so many times, putting rights to a vote is a dangerous proposition.
Another clause of the Indiana law would prohibit abortion after 20 weeks, instead of 24. I have participated in the delivery of a fetus at 20 weeks gestation. To be able to save that life is a miracle; attribute it to God or medicine as you will. Either way, it’s not an excuse for stripping women of control over their bodies.
As a liberal physician who was raised Catholic, I hope, as did President Clinton, that abortions are “safe, legal and rare.” As a gay man, I focus on legal. As a community, we should be on the front lines for a woman’s right to due process and privacy. If they are lost, our rights surely won’t be far behind.
