Womens reproductive rights: Whats at stake on Nov. 8?

By Amanda Horner
The presidential election has the power to decide the fate of womens reproductive rights
and not only in the ways you might think. Amidst the avalanche of coverage about SCOTUS
appointments, overturning Roe v. Wade, punishing women for having abortions, Obamacare,
Planned Parenthood, or any of the other 2016 political twitter-storms, what truly lies in the
balance for womens reproductive rights has been overshadowed and overlooked.
When talking about womens reproductive rights in the context of the 2016 elections, the
same things always come up, with Supreme court justice appointments and overturning Roe v.
Wade as the most popular. However, the media has failed to tell us that these things are really of
no relevance to the reality of womens reproductive rights. First of all, lets look at the
appointment of Supreme Court Justices. President Obamas attempt to nominate Merrick Garland
to the Supreme Court was blocked by the Senatewhich quickly became a heated subject of
partisan mediaand an often-talked about topic on the campaign trail and debate stage has been
about what kind of justice each candidate would nominate to the Supreme Court. According to
Dr. Sara Schiavoni, a political science professor at John Carroll University, the problem with all
the attention being focused on the Supreme Court is that people dont recognize that the Supreme
Court rarely makes decisions that affect womens reproductive rights in a way that could be felt
as an individual.
With the state of the Supreme Court as it is now (with one appointment waiting to be
made), it would be nearly impossible for Roe v. Wade to be overturned, according to Dr.
Schiavoni. This is because Justice Scalia was always counted on as a dissenter to Roe v. Wade,
and even if he was replaced with another conservative justice, the court would still be balanced
so that Roe v. Wade would be upheld. However, even if Roe v. Wade was at risk, abortion can be
made effectively illegal through state-specific legislation that makes it nearly impossible to
obtain a safe abortion.
This existence of this powerful state-specific legislation is where we can see how little
the appointment of pro-life versus pro-choice justices to the Supreme Court really means. As
Dr. Schiavoni explains in her interview, what really counts are the lower level courts because
district court judges areon the ground, they address these issues first and then the
legislation gets appealed, theres a ruling by the district court, then the court of appeals gets
involved, and this is where you have the TRAP laws coming out of Texas, making it clear that
the district court judges and the court of appeals judges are the ones making rulings that will
affect womens reproductive rights on the physical level.
Another important part of this election that hasnt received much coverage is that
whomever is elected president will be responsible for nominating many of these lower level
court judgeships, and as Dr. Schiavoni said, when you have 13 % of the bench of lower court
judgeships vacant, thats a huge impact. Its also important for voters to understand this fact,

because if you have a candidate who vows to appoint pro-life or pro-choice judges to all of the
vacant judgeships, it can have a far more significant effect on the reality of womens
reproductive rights than one Supreme Court appointment. This is critical because if there are
judges who have a firm stance on abortion regulation, and they refuse to issue an injunctiona
judicial order that restrains a person from beginning or continuing an act threatening or invading
the legal right of anotheron something that the Supreme Court would find unconstitutional, such
as TRAP laws, then those laws would be allowed to go into effect and by the time the Supreme
Court heard the case, the clinics would already be closed.
What are TRAP laws? How do these laws get passed, and what is the effect on womens
reproductive rights? Actually, the TRAP lawsalso known as the Targeted Regulation of
Abortion Providers lawsare only one way that pro-life advocates have attempted to circumvent
the legality of abortion. While overarching personhood laws (regarding the legal status of an
embryo as deserving the same rights as a born person) gain more attention, the laws that have the
most effect on womens reproductive rights are the ones that seek to impose regulations on
abortion providers which make it almost impossible for them to operate. According to the
Guttmacher Institute, 231 state-specific abortion regulations have been passed in the U.S. since
2010. Some of the regulations require that: procedure rooms must be a certain size, corridors
must be a specific width, abortion providers must be within a set distance from a hospital, and
doctors must have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Pro-life politicians have also sponsored
legislature that requires a pregnant woman to view an ultrasound, undergo a waiting period
before being allowed to receive an abortion, and ban abortions outright after 20 weeks.
According to the LA Times, these TRAP laws are designed to fly under the radar by mimicking
ordinary health regulations and use regulation to require renovations to abortion clinics that are
prohibitively expensive.
The purpose of going into detail about these state-specific abortion regulations is not to
pass judgement on the motives of those policymakers and advocates who support them, but
rather to demonstrate that voters should be aware of the importance of the lower level court
judges and the decisions they have the power to make regarding womens reproductive rights.
These state-specific regulations also essentially target disenfranchised voters, because when
TRAP laws get passed without appeals (which the lower-level state courts preside over) abortion
clinics are forced to close state-wide, and the ones left are only found around urban areas.
According to the position of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as stated
by NPR, what those laws do is they limit womens access and expose women to increased risk
by not enabling them to have a procedure near where they live. After being passed by the Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals, Texas Senate Bill 5 (which consisted of regulations that abortion
clinics meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers) made it so that out of 42 operational
state abortion clinics, only seven were able to meet the standards and stay open. Laws like these
have a direct effect on voters, and the media should feel obliged to instill into voters the
importance of their ballot in appointing lower-level courtships that align with their beliefs.
What does this all mean in the context of the 2016 elections? The political coverage of
womens reproductive rights in the presidential race have been focused on sensationalized sound

bites, as the coverage of candidate policy plans was tuned out in favor of more entertaining
reportage. Yet the two primary presidential candidates do have substantive positions on this
issue, and they are worth delving into.
Hillary Clinton and her vice presidential running mate, Tim Kaine have been consistently
pro-choice. While Tim Kaine is viewed as a moderate Democrat, in that he has said he is
personally opposed to abortion, but believes that the government should not interfere in womens
health and reproductive decisions, he is aligned with Clinton and the Democratic partys stance
on abortion. On Clintons website as well as on the campaign trail, she has vowed to fight to
keep Planned Parenthood funded; repeal the Hyde amendment, which prohibits the use of federal
funds for abortion except to save the life of the mother, or in cases of rape or incest, promote
sexual education in schools; and protect the Affordable Care Act.
Donald Trump hasnt been as clear on his position on abortion, however he maintains that
his current pro-life stance is a firm one that hes had for a long time. While he was quoted saying
that he is very pro-choice in an interview with Tim Russert in 1999, he also made headlines when
he stated during an interview with Chris Matthews on March 30, 2016, that he believes there
has to be some form of punishment for women who undergo an abortion. After the statements
went viral, he walked back what he said during the interview, instead sending out a tweet
declaring, The issue is unclear and should be put back into the states for determination. Like
Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions, which I have outlined numerous times. Trump
has also vowed to repeal Roe v. Wade, a belief that firmly aligns him with the official platform of
the GOP. The opinion of Trumps vice presidential running mate on this issue is possibly more
substantive, as Pence has a strong record of voting against abortion in the House of
Representatives. During Pences time as a politician in Indiana, the state became one of the
hardest in which to obtain an abortion, and when he was chosen as Trumps running mate, it was
obvious that his extreme stance on abortion would lead to controversy.
Media coverage of the primary candidates has relied on dramatized sound bites, with the
press parroting on about Trumps punishing women, Pences long[ing] for the day that Roe v.
Wade is sent to the ash heap of history, and Hillarys radical support for partial-birth abortion.
When the media chooses to only cover these kinds of news stories, they propagate the idea that
these are the stories that matter. They tell the public that all you have to know is that Donald
wants to punish women, and Hillary wants to abort babies, when in actuality these ideas only
represent an extremist slice of reality.
So why is the public willing to accept the idea that theres no way to have moderate
positions on this issue? In an interview with Dr. Elizabeth Stiles, a political science professor at
John Carroll University who specializes in mediating institutions such as governments, social
movements, and organizations, she helped shed light on why this issue is so polarizing, yet full
of technical gray areas. She spoke about how we have this individualist culture in the U.S
that makes pregnancy a fascinatingly complex scenario for lawmakers when we end up arguing
about is this a fetus, is it a person, is it viable, not viable when thats not really what were
asking. Dr. Stiles went on to clarify thatin the case of pregnancythis is not an individual. At
some point, theres two people in there. While she acknowledges the complexity of when the

two people begin to exist, Dr. Stiles expertly simplified the positions of either side of this issue
when she said Im saying that its not an individual ultimately, so how do we think of it? The
pro-life movement has chosen to focus on the fetus, and the baby, and the pro-choice movement
has chosen to focus on the woman.
Faced with the question of why she thought that there has been a recent flood of statespecific legislation/regulation targeting abortion, Dr. Stiles explained that the social
conservative movement really had two issues until 4 years ago: abortion and homosexuality. And
now, same-sex marriage is legal in all statesMarriage was this big, symbolic social issue, and
that fight was sort of lost by the social conservative movement, so theyve turned their focus
onto abortion regulation. The renewed fervor of the pro-life movement was also partly because
the sentiment against homosexuality and same-sex marriage was an issue that needed time,
whereas across the generations, people young and old have intense, passionate opinions about
abortion. According to Dr. Stiles, when you look at it, public opinion on abortion hasnt
changed much over the years and when Roe v. Wade passed, that really galvanized the
movement, whereas the federal law allowing same-sex marriage effectively ended it, as it came
with the shifting tides of public opinion.
History:
Abortion in its many forms has existed for thousands of years. The earliest recorded proof
of purposeful abortion can even be found dating as far back as 1550 BC, according to Martha
Campbells 2002 book History of Contraception. What hasnt existed for nearly as long is the
politicized nature of it, and therefore when considering what is at stake for womens reproductive
rights in the 2016 election, it is important to consult the history of this controversial issue. The
regulation of abortion, abortifacients, birth control and contraceptives began with the Comstock
Law, passed in 1873, which decreed that it was illegal to distribute abortifacientssubstances that
induce abortionand contraceptives (and information about them) via the U.S. Postal Service.
The country did not see any major changes until the landmark case of Roe v. Wade in 1973,
which acknowledged that women have the right to make her own personal medical decisions
without the interference of government, effectively legalizing abortion on a federal level.
Historically, state-specific abortion regulations are a recent phenomenon, which most notably
occurred when control of overall state legislative action shifted in Republican favor after 2010,
when the GOP dominated the midterm elections at every levelnot necessarily unified against
abortion, but unified around the idea that they would block every initiative that came their way
from Obama. In 2010, we saw the largest swing of power in over a half century, when
Republicans in the House of Representatives picked up 63 seats and took back the majority-they
now control 69 of 99 chambers and 31 of 50 governorshipsa fact that is relevant because after
the Planned Parenthood scandal of controversial videos, conservatives sought to take away
federal funds from Planned Parenthood health clinics, a measure which almost shut down the
government. While this didnt cause any new federal abortion laws, it renewed the fervor of antiabortion opinion leaders and lawmakers on a global level, prompting the flood of new state
regulations targeting abortion, a trend which had started in the 1990s, and has really picked up
since 2010.

When asked for an interview about womens reproductive rights and the upcoming
election, John Carrolls Respect for Life Club made available the three men and one woman who
are the executive board of the campus pro-life club: Anthony Shoplik, Sydney Kotoch, Justin
Bryant, and Tipton Woodward.
The four were asked to talk about when they formed a strong personal opinion about the
issue of access to abortion, birth control and contraceptives. All the present members of the
executive board agreed that their strong opinions about abortion stemmed from their Catholic
upbringing. However, according to Shoplik, president of the Respect for Life Club, faith
started his beliefs, but science enhanced it. His fellow board members agreed that, even if
they werent religious, abortion would still be a vital issue for them.
The Respect for Life Club serves as the pro-life voice on campus, promoting the pro-life
cause, which Shoplik describes as something that looks at life as a seamless entity. He added,
Life begins at the moment of conception, and ends at the moment of natural death, therefore
abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty would all be things we are against.
With regards to the 2016 election, the clubs executives said they want to remain
apolitical and dont believe that there are any current popular candidates that represent their
views, although they recognize what is at stake legislatively for their cause. Therefore, they
acknowledge that when it comes to voting, it is important to elect people who will nominate prolife judges to the U.S. Supreme Court, to achieve the sway required to undo current pro-choice
court precedents, such as Roe v. Wade, and pass more pro-life legislation.
When confronted with the question what could the next 4 years look like for womens
reproductive rights? many things come to mind. Nevertheless, as the candidates and their vice
presidential running mates have made their position on womens reproductive rights clear during
their campaigns, the real significance lies in this simple fact: presidents appoint judges. They
appoint judges to the United States Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals, and the District Courts,
and this election is especially important because of the number of lower-level courtships that are
vacant, and would be filled by our next president. There are 6 vacant seats on the United States
Court of Appeals, and 35 vacant seats on the United States District Courts, which means that the
next president will nominate 41 total judges, which then have to be confirmed by the United
States Senate. These are the facts that voters should be armed with as they walk into their voting
locations on November 8. These are the facts that the mainstream media has failed to impart on
voters, and is only one of the ways in which they have failed the American voter during the 2016
election season.