The Liberal Patriot

Where Is the Pro Life Movement When It Counts?

Mary MacElveen - May 2, 2005

I was horrified by an article in a South Carolina news paper called the State in which a migrant worker from Mexico is being prosecuted for performing a self abortion. Gabriela Flores is a woman of little means and has struggled to support her three young children. When she became pregnant last year, the father refused to help her. I want to know-- Where is the pro life movement in protecting women like this? Where is Randall Terry now? Is he in front of any camera pleading this woman’s case when she found herself pregnant as he was in the Terri Schiavo case? Do you see those who stated they would have paid for Terri Schiavo’s care if the feeding tube was replaced donating funds to help women like Ms. Flores?

This past week congress passed a notification bill H.R. 748 which would prohibit our teenage daughters from crossing state lines in order to have an abortion. Will our teens now perform self abortions and get arrested as this young woman has? Gabriela Flores used was Cytotec, a drug used to prevent ulcers in people who take certain arthritis or pain medicines which she obtained illegally from her sister in Mexico. Will our teen age daughters also seek out this drug out using illegal means? Is there not a danger to their health should something go so terribly wrong? Will they too face prosecution as this woman is currently facing?

As the religious right seeks to further erode a woman’s right to choose, will we see more and more cases just like this in the coming years and more importantly, will these women be arrested? Will we as a society be putting women in prison when their government has surely let them down? Some will say that this woman is from Mexico and does not deserve our protection, but the children she has been supporting do need our protection and deserve it. Should their mother receive a two year prison sentence who will be there for her children? Ms. Flores also stands a chance of being fined $1,000 dollars. Where will she get that money?

Just this past week congress approved cuts to Medicaid. I know some out there would say it is not the responsibility of our government to help its’ people, but I do not buy that argument since some do need the protection of their government. Especially Ms. Flores’s children and others like them. Not everyone can pull themselves up by their boot straps. These poor folk deserve our protection and most of all compassion.

Those on the religious right do not get it when many of our poor find they are between a rock and a hard place and they continue to support a president and a party that looks to punish women like Ms. Flores.

After reading this paragraph in this news story, it burns me to think of similar pleas that are not being heard around this nation, “I knew that I was not going to be able to support four kids — two here and two in Mexico,” she said in a handwritten police statement in Spanish. “Please understand me. They need me a lot. They are little. Please forgive me.” In my opinion she is forgiven and I am horrified that she was forced to do this in a nation where those on the religious right will sanction funding cuts to Medicaid and expenditures of over $300 billion to fund a war in Iraq.

America, just how much degradation of the poor and powerless will you sanction?

I want to remind you of this my fellow Americans, some of you are just a paycheck away from being a Ms. Flores.

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