"Using civil or women’s rights as a facade to pass anti-abortion legislation is not a new strategy."

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GOP Representatives Push Abortion Bill Based On Asian Stereotypes
By Alex Zielinski, April 14, 2016

The House will hear arguments on a controversial anti-abortion bill Thursday — one that purports to combat discrimination but that actually relies on racist stereotypes.

The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) aims to penalize doctors who attempt to perform an abortion that is motivated by gender discrimination of a fetus. However, PRENDA is less an actual piece of effective legislation and more a way to perpetuate an entirely false trend — the notion that women are having abortions based on the the sex of their fetus. The bill is rooted in the assumption that Asian American women discriminate against daughters, which causes a disproportionate number of abortions of female fetuses.

This idea is backed by no legitimate studies or data in the United States. Instead, this idea is illustrated through anecdotes by anti-abortion activists that call this a “civil rights struggle that will define our generation.”

Few civil rights advocates agree.

“PRENDA threatens women’s health and perpetuates the racist myth that Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) families do not value girls,” said Miriam Yeung, Director of National Asian Pacific Women’s Forum in a Thursday press release. “Even though it is cloaked in the language of civil and women’s rights, this bill is antithetical to gender and racial equality. Rather than protect baby girls, this bill will endanger women’s health and restrict women’s rights.”

Using civil or women’s rights as a facade to pass anti-abortion legislation is not a new strategy. For the past year, anti-abortion lobbyists and lawmakers have pushed vehemently to shutter safe and necessary abortion clinics across the country to “protect women’s health.” One of these cases is now waiting for a Supreme Court decision.

“[PRENDA] is a veiled attempt to restrict health care for women of color under the guise of civil rights,” writes Wade Henderson, President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition made up of 200 national civil rights organizations.

In the coalition’s letter to Congress in opposition to PRENDA, Henderson points out that other reproductive health issues paired with civil rights, like the fact that African-American women and Latina have far less access to contraception and prenatal care than other women, are more important than a bill that “does nothing to address ongoing discrimination.”

“Instead of addressing these critical issues, this bill exacerbates the disparities by further restricting certain women’s access to comprehensive reproductive health care services, scrutinizing the health care decisions of women of color, and penalizing health care providers who serve communities of color,” he writes.

This isn’t the first time conservative lawmakers have tried to make PRENDA law. In 2011, radical right-wing members of congress fought for the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, an earlier version of the current bill that also contained a ban on hypothetical “race-selective” abortions. Both the bill’s title and intention attracted instant criticism from civil rights leaders.

Deemed “unconstitutional” by law experts, the bill failed to gather enough votes in the House. But its backers apparently weren’t ready to let it go. Following the 2011 decision, bill sponsor Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ) made this intent clear: “I am confident that this is not the end, but merely the opening salvo in ensuring the words, ‘It’s a girl,’ are no longer a death sentence for so many unborn girls.”
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