By Ann Ormsby

To lifelong feminists like myself, the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade today should be a time of celebration, but instead it is a time of alarm.

The answer to the abortion question may be different for each woman, but each woman should make that decision for herself. The Supreme Court issued its opinion in 1973 that a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion. This should have brought the debate to an end. The highest court in the land had decided that a woman has the right to plan her family on her own terms and in her own time and it is solely her business.

According to a 2012 Gallup poll, 77 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances. Yet, a radicalized House of Representatives, spurred on by the religious right, is working to curtail reproductive rights, and state governments are aggressively dismantling family planning programs on which millions of women depend. Republicans are nibbling at the edges of the life preserver that Roe created, and soon women will fall through the hole in the middle.

Many states are passing laws to circumvent Roe. In 2011, state legislatures enacted 92 provisions restricting access to abortion services and this trend continued throughout 2012.

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In Texas, the state from which the Roe case originated, the law now requires women to submit to an ultrasound 24 hours before the procedure. Therefore, the woman must make two trips to the clinic and must listen to the doctor describe the fetus. Besides the obvious psychological cruelty, this creates practical problems for women. If they are working, they have to take time off twice. If they are caring for children they already have, this may require the expense of a baby sitter twice.

Other egregious examples include one in Mississippi, where there is only one clinic left that performs abortions, and under a new law doctors who work at the clinic must have admitting privileges at a local hospital. No hospital in Jackson, where the clinic is located, is willing to grant the doctors these privileges.

Last year in Virginia, a law was enacted that requires abortion clinics to meet the same building, parking and record-keeping requirements as hospitals. Tactics such as these, which strive to shut down abortion clinics by piling on regulations and making staff jump through hoops, are limiting women’s constitutional rights.

Here in New Jersey in 2010, Gov. Chris Christie cut $7.5 million from the state’s budget for 58 family planning centers in New Jersey. This was an ideological decision — not a funding decision. By cutting funding for family planning, including birth control, the governor probably raised the number of unintended pregnancies and, hence, abortions — surely, not what the governor intended. As we begin a new budget cycle this spring, the governor and Legislature must restore this funding.

The good news is that President Obama was re-elected and that the landmark Roe decision will probably be safe for the next four years. Funding for organizations such as Planned Parenthood, which Mitt Romney singled out for defunding, will be there for women, men and teens who need their services.

In addition, voters heard the disturbing comments by candidates such as Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock and went to the polls to make sure that these conservative extremists were not put in positions of power.

For now, the wisdom of Roe prevails. A just and free society gives women the tools they need to plan how many children they have and when to have them. Legislatures and governors should be spending their time helping women with the children they have instead of insisting they give birth to unwanted children that they cannot support emotionally or financially or both. Only the woman knows her private circumstances.

To quote Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. surgeon general, “We really need to get over this love affair with the fetus and start worrying about children.”

Ann Ormsby is a writer from Westfield and former senior vice president at the United Way of New York City.

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