As the president of Delaware’s National Organization for Women (Delaware NOW), I follow with interest ongoing coverage by the Delaware State News on the recent ordinance passed by the City of Seaford. I attended that Dec. 14 hearing with about a dozen Delaware NOW members and nearly a hundred other opponents of the ordinance, women and men of all ages and backgrounds who were so disappointed in the Seaford City Council’s decision and who consider it an attempt to restrict access to abortion services for Delaware women.
As I listened to this group of men on the Seaford City Council, I was struck by the absence of women’s voices.
The impact on women’s lived experiences, dignity and the right to both medical privacy and to access to abortion were almost completely absent from their discussion. NOW membership includes mothers, those who chose to end a pregnancy and those who have been devastated by a pregnancy loss. Our membership is a microcosm of the women who rely on the care of clinics such as the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Seaford. A quarter of American women will access abortion services during their lifetimes and six in 10 of these women are already mothers. The perception that these women do not understand the mechanics of pregnancy and heavy responsibility of parenting is clearly flawed. Health care related to miscarriage or abortion should be determined privately between women and their doctors, not women, their doctors and Seaford councilmen.
In 2017, Delaware codified the right to abortion access into our state laws, making us a so-called abortion “safe haven” state, and we are one of only 12 states in the nation that have done so. More recently, Delaware decriminalized self managed abortion, reiterating that Delawareans, like most Americans, do not believe that abortion should be a criminal justice issue but a health issue. Delaware has also demonstrated that the best way to reduce unplanned pregnancies is by offering affordable, quality reproductive healthcare — essential health care which make up over 90% of the services offered by Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health clinics.
It is greatly disappointing that instead of using their time and energy to promote policies which would support women who wish to continue pregnancies — guaranteeing all Seaford employees have paid parental leave, funding prenatal care and providing affordable housing and child care — the Seaford City Council has instead lost sight of their role and have overstepped by participating in a broader national effort to fight legal abortion as a protected health care decision. They are wasting time and money fighting for a city ordinance that rejects laws passed by the Delaware legislature, rather than focusing on local issues within their purview. No city should be able to single handedly chip away at state-protected abortion access.
In response, Delaware NOW is filing our own lawsuit against Seaford City Council. We are suing because we believe it is essential that women’s personal interests are represented in this fight against an overtly woman-shaming and intentionally prohibitive ordinance. We stand ready to represent women’s interests not only in the fight to protect the right to abortion as health care in our state, but also to advocating for the expansion of abortion access for all women in Delaware.
Melissa Froemming is president of the Delaware chapter of National Organization for Women (NOW).
