And now, the good stuff

Now that I have addressed some of my general findings concerning legal issues and access issues facing women in the U.S. and Australia looking to have an abortion, I will begin to address the issue from a Transnational Feminist viewpoint. Women across the U.S. are either fighting for their right to keep abortion legal, or fighting for the rights of unborn children, but their main focus is centered around the legal issues. "No one" (i.e. none of the front runners of the debate) is concerned with the fact that legality may not be the only, nonetheless main, concern for some women; what about access? What about the woman in North Dakota who only has one abortion clinic in her whole state? Or the women harrassed verbally and sometimes physically, as they enter these clinics? What about women who do not have health insurance and cannot afford the procedure, or whose health insurance denies the coverage of abortion? Does legality matter to these women when access is the main issue? Within this issue of access lies a problem concerning "politics of location", and the underlying issues of these politics are many of the "ism's": classism, racism, ageism, and sexism. Because many of the abortion clinics are located in or around metro, or urban areas, one could argue they are only catering to a certian class of people- in this case the upper to upper-middle class. This could also be argued as the case with race and age. Unfortunately, many of our nation's poor are predominantly non-caucasian, and if they do live in the urban areas of the U.S. are not likely to be able to afford an abortion out of pocket, have health insurance, or if they do, they may be unlikely to have health unsurance that covers abortion adequately or at all. Ageism comes into play when you consider the amount of teenage women needing abortions in our country. In some states they're required to undergo mandatory counseling or must have parental consent. This is taking the autonomy out of her decision. Sexism in general is obviously at play when one considers the laws mandating women to give up more and more of their rights to make their own decisions.