On May 29, the Gainesville chapter of the National Women’s Liberation wrote an aggressive opposition to Florida HB1047/SB918, regarding the termination of pregnancies.
In the article, the chapter claimed that the bill reduced women to “walking incubators,” among other outrageous assertions. As a woman, this article was disturbing to me, not because I felt my rights to abortion were being compromised, but because their claims of the bill’s purpose and effect were completely false.
Pregnancy can be terminated, and there is nothing vague about the bill’s language: A woman may have an abortion in the first trimester and even the second trimester of her pregnancy. When the third trimester arrives, however, the bill inserts a cautious protocol for doctors to assert whether the fetus could live outside the womb. If so, the planned abortion is logically and humanely put into question. An abortion in the third trimester is still an option if two physicians agree that the termination is “necessary to save the life or preserve the health of the pregnant woman.”
What the bill does not do is allow for a reckless termination of a baby that is alive and capable of living outside of the womb because the mother has whimsically decided in the third trimester that she doesn’t want to have it.
The NWL has also argued that the bill will “erode women’s rights even further with future changes in medical technology. This is an unfair assumption to make. The viability of a baby is defined as whether the fetus can live outside the womb under standard medical procedure. This means that while some babies have the potential to survive in the second trimester with extra medical help, an abortion may still be performed.
This is not good enough for the NWL. They are fighting for the right to have a baby aborted at any time during a pregnancy using the defense of an abortion being the woman’s decision at all costs. This is wrong.
The Florida Legislature is not perfect. However, this is a bill that has passed with bipartisan support, and two of the House bill sponsors are doctors themselves. The Senate version was even pushed through by two women. The main purpose of this bill is to provide a reasonable second look when determining the fate of a fetus. An organization like the National Women’s Liberation would have better luck if it knew the facts about the ideas it is protesting against. Stop disguising third trimester abortions as a “woman’s right to medical care.”
When another human life is at stake, a humane approach will and should rightfully be taken.
[Katherine Burns is a UF English junior. A version of this column ran on page 7 - 4 on 6/10/2014 under the headline "National Women’s Lib op-ed falsely describes HB 1047/SB 918"]
