Beyond Borders

Need a reminder of how important choice really is? Take a second to think outside our borders and ponder this excerpt from Saturday's Miami Herald (registration required for full article):

"[The] debate over the always-volatile issue of abortion boiled over this week in Brazil, the world's largest Roman Catholic nation, when two justices on the country's top court challenged each other to a fight while debating whether a woman may abort a fetus developing without a brain. Brazil forbids abortion except in cases of rape and severe danger to the woman's life, leaving that determination to judges. In its decision Wednesday, the court determined that abortion was too controversial to be decided on an order from a lone justice. Abortion in Brazil is a class issue as well as a religious, moral and public-health matter. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilian women who can afford to pay obtain abortions at private clinics. Those who can't afford that facility must go through the public-health system or turn to clandestine clinics, amateur abortionists and risky drug concoctions."

We Americans are not far from a similarly dangerous Supreme Court predicament. With recent news that Rehnquist has cancer, we can be even more certain of an imminent bench opening. Bush can, and will, work to outlaw abortion in this country by appointing Justices who oppose Roe. On your way to the polls on Nov. 2, consider that if our Court, like Brazil's, is anti-abortion, hundreds of thousands of American women will also have to "turn to clandestine clinics, amateur abortionists and risky drug concoctions." This is not a third world issue. This is an issue for women everywhere. Take it seriously.

--Hannah