The UW-Madison student organizations Our Bodies, Our Rights and Students for Choice sponsored a panel discussion Tuesday about the condition of abortion before the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision and what they said to be the current dismal fate of a woman's right to choose.
Elizabeth Schulte, an abortion rights activist whose articles have been featured in International Socialist review and Socialist Worker chronicled the conditions of abortions given to women illegally.
'In 1950, one rape victim was told by her abortionist, 'you can take your pants down now, but you should have thought of keeping them up before,'' Schulte said.
Members of the panel expressed concern with the lack of funds for underprivileged women seeking abortion. The Women's Medical Fund, a group designed to finance the abortions of low-income women of Wisconsin, expressed that they may soon be unable to provide the necessary amount of assistance.
'In 2005 the Women's Medical Fund helped about 850 women from all over the state, most with children and most on public assistance,' Co-founder of WMF Anne Nicole Gaylor said.
With the changing composition of the Supreme Court, many worry that the Roe v. Wade decision will be eroded or overturned.
Schulte said a woman's right to choose is currently being chipped away at with measures including partial birth abortion bans in 26 states, parental consent laws and mandatory counseling which she said are all attempts at appealing to people's emotions.
The panel expressed that getting an abortion is not shameful and is relatively common.
'One in three women will have an abortion by age 45,' UW-sophomore and member of Our Bodies, Our Rights Mingwei Huang said.
In order to continue forward with a woman's right to choose, Huang said the Christian right wing's growing strength must be exceeded by abortion right activists.
'Before the 2004 march for women's rights, there had not been a single march since 1992.'
