A Woman’s Right to Choose

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court of the United States, (SCOTUS,) launch the most ferocious attack on women's reproductive rights in the US for decades. Or that is how it seems anyway. There has been a provisional vote. The overturning of Roe vs Wade, which enshrines in law the rights of women in the US to have safe, legal abortions, albeit with restrictions, has not yet happened. It looks closer than it has done in the last forty years though. The writing is on the wall.

On Tuesday next week, I go to Warsaw, Poland, where abortion rights are also under fierce attack from a religiously conservative government. I am speaking on a panel at Ujazdowski Castle Gallery for Contemporary Art, about 'A Woman's Right to Choose.' Poland now has the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. Polish feminists have responded with mass, organised, fury and taken to the streets to protest. Women's human rights, but most particularly our reproductive rights are under attack in a way that I have not seen in my lifetime. Access to reproductive healthcare, including contraception and safe legal abortion, is all old hat now. I do not have personal memory of back street abortions but I do, just, recall the decriminalisation in 1967. I remember the beginnings of the availability of contraception and I remember the absolute terror an unwanted pregnancy could bring.

I remember women migrating from Ireland to England, week in, week out for decades, just to get a safe abortion. It still happens, though in small numbers, according to the Irish Times.

I have written a short discussion paper for the panel and will be showing some images of pots. I was asked to widen the question a bit and consider how much choice women had in a broader context. I shall be talking about how much - or little- control women, especially poor women, really have over bodily autonomy, sexual boundaries and, by extension, reproductive capacity.

The state will always try to control women's reproductive capacity and use it as the symbol of men's honour, family honour and the nations' honour. Abortion and access to safe, readily available contraception is absolutely fundamental to women's equality, and to our liberation and our ability to take part actively and productively in a liberal democracy. It cannot be an add on. For some women, it is access to birth control that is the key, for others, it is abortion. For some, being able to take a pregnancy to full term and nurse and raise the child herself, is the more important issue. In many parts of the world, to this day, impoverished women and minorities are subjected to forced sterilisation or experimented on with unsafe contraception methods. Women exploited in the sex trade are used to supply the surrogacy market. Either way, women's bodies are routinely used by the state, or by similarly powerful interests, for trade and nation building. We have to be vigilant. We can never take our rights for granted.