Feminists Condemn Senate Passage of Deceptive Abortion Ban, Urge Activists to March on Washington

October 21, 2003

"No one is surprised by the Senate's passage today of the so-called partial birth abortion ban, but I know it will help us rally reproductive rights supporters across the country to join us in marching on Washington next April," said National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim Gandy. "This bill—-now on its way to Bush's desk—-is deceptively named and another step in the plan to ban all abortions."

"Try as you might, you won't find the term 'partial birth abortion' in any medical dictionary. That's because it doesn't exist in the medical world—-it's a fabrication of the anti-choice machine," Gandy said. "NOW calls this bill what it really is: an abortion procedures ban. Like each of its predecessors, this bill was intentionally worded so vaguely that it could criminalize even some of the safest and most common abortion procedures after twelve weeks and well before fetal viability. It doesn't even contain a provision to permit the procedure if it is necessary to preserve the woman's health and future fertility."

"This abortion procedures ban is a political game in which lawmakers in the pocket of the anti-abortion rights movement are using women's health and lives as the pawns to further a regressive agenda," Gandy said. "The bill is not supported by the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Women's Association, the American Nurses Association or the American Public Health Association. The country's top medical associations know that an abortion procedures ban—no matter what you call it—is bad medicine and bad public policy."

"Feminists and other supporters of reproductive rights won't stand for any attempt to send us back to pre-Roe days when countless women died from illegal abortions. That's why NOW, Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Federation of America are organizing a march on Washington next spring," Gandy said. Save Women's Lives: March for Freedom of Choice on April 25, 2004 will be the largest-ever mass action for reproductive freedom, with activists from coast to coast. "Those are voices and voters that even this White House won't be able to ignore."

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