'Get off a woman’s body, it is not a hobby'
As a human rights activist, I find myself caught between a rock and a hard place concerning the recent ruling on the buffer zone legislation that demonstrators have their rights to demonstrate at or near abortion facilities. Firstly, I believe that people should have their freedoms of expression, whenever and wherever they please, provided they cause no harm to others. But as a women’s rights activist, I also uphold that those who wish to carryout abortions should not meet any encumbrances in the process. I do realize that my latter stance, overbears over my former one.
Taken as they are, developments, which can infringe on rights of women in theUnited States and elsewhere in the world, with a big nod from the judicial systems, can ultimately slow down any meaningful progress in the sphere of development such as reproductive health and rights. Indeed the Public health fraternity and human rights advocacy will be very disappointed by the two major court rulings in theUnited Statesas depicted in the buffer zone suit and the Hobby Lobby case. This is not good news because there are still major imbalances created between the pro-life agitators and the pro-choice women.
States’ obligations for RH Family planning
For so long, rights advocates have been calling for states to adopt legislative, budgetary, judicial and administrative measures to achieve women’s full right to family planning. And elements of these were being addressed in the US’s Affordable Care Act, which in January 2012, through the department of Health and human services, specified a set of preventive health services, that new insurance policies were required to cover.
Some of these to be covered would be vital commodities for family planning like the IUDs and emergency contraceptives. International treaties, conventions and declarations, explicitly, and sometimes implicitly urge states to prevent third parties from infringing on people’s access to reproductive health and rights. The Family planning 2020 strategic direction, working with several rights bodies is in total commitment for a full access, availability and acceptable, quality family planning services and commodities. In this regard it is targeting 120 million women for such contraceptives. This is why health rights advocates in the United States need to reinvigorate their advocacy to challenge both the buffer zone removals and issues in the Hobby Lobby suit that will promote deprivation of basic Family planning commodities for women. Women still own their bodies and they should be protected in planning for their future.
The buffer zone and Hobby Lobby
Because ofthe threats that institutions and even persons providing abortion may face, the United Statesgovernment had for long, rightly taken measured designs to afford legal protection of access to abortion. This legislation sought to guard certain facilities that provide induced abortion against obstruction and vandalism, in order to protect patients and employees of such facilities from harassment by pro-life agitators. At the federal level, this Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE), makes it an offense to use intimidation or physical force – such as forming a blockade – in order to prevent a person from entering a facility which provides reproductive health care. Hitherto, the law created specific penalties for destroying, or causing damage to, either of these facilities.
It is now, unfortunately apparent that, such restrictions were squashed in the recent US Supreme Court decision which struck down the states 35 – foot buffer zone (Massachusetts) around entrances to reproductive health clinics. This also creates more safety challenges for the abortion surgeons and individuals whose choice is abortion, based on circumstance in which they conceived, including rape.
In addition, the June 30, 2014, verdict of the Supreme Court which ruled 5-4 that Hobby Lobby and other "closely held" stock corporations can choose to be exempt from the law…the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, because of its inclusion of a provision mandating that companies provide access to emergency contraceptives based on religious preferences, will create unprecedented challenges for women.
Religious dogma — a threat to women’s rights
Much as those entities, have their own mandate to have their voices heard, it is debatable whether their actions can be implemented at the expense of women? As one of the directors of Hobby Lobby put it,
”Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions, which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the Biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one. If we refuse to comply, we could face $1.3 million per day in government fines”
The bigger challenge now will be that, with a win over the United States government, organizations like Hobby Lobby, will with the protection of the law abscond from providing insurance coverage for those FP commodities. And because they are still deeply religious, they may not be compelled to make any appropriate referral for their patients to enable them make informed decisions and choices. This is what it means for the law to come full force in their favor.
As promoters of women’s rights to total health and with renewed interest in closing the gap of 222 million women that do not have access to contraceptives, this is also a disappointment for both the duty bearers and rights holders.