This is the first article in a long time on reproductive rights issues for me. I think I have taken them for granted. When I was younger I was more active in protecting Roe v. Wade. But that was also during the 12 years of Reagan/Bush/ Quayle and the ultra right offensive.

I write this on the 28h anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court decision which guaranteed a woman’s right to choose whether to have a child or not.

The newly installed President, George W., as a cynical and symbolic gesture of his administration’s posture, just reversed former President Clinton’s executive order and pulled Federal funding of any organization which mentions abortion or any type of family planning in other countries.

I can’t take Roe v. Wade for granted any longer. None of us can.

NOW, NARAL and many other women’s rights groups have valiantly kept the banner high on the critical nature of reproductive health and rights to women’s equality. And that’s what the right to choose an abortion or not is, part of the struggle for women’s equality.

During the years of the Clinton administration the official line became making abortion "safe, legal and rare." This was a concession to the pro-life movement and some common sense. After all, with better and better sonograms, you can see a developing fetus, which gives us all pause on the beginnings of life.

To make abortion "rare," you have to guarantee equal access to health care and education, including sex education for all, regardless of income or age.

You have to have safe birth control methods available. You can try to promote abstinence for young people as birth control, but a recent study showed it will only work for a minority of them.

Women need to be able to decide for themselves when they want to have a child. Yes, in a perfect world a woman would talk it over with her partner, but the decision ultimately lies with her. As does the impact of that decision.

If a woman is going to be equal to men, who do not bear the brunt of childbearing or childrearing, then that control has to remain in the woman’s hands. If her religious or moral beliefs do not coincide with abortion or birth control, so be it. But don’t legislate your morality on me.

Family planning, including abortion, is not a moral question. It is linked to a woman’s quality of life. And the quality of life of her children.

In a recent New York Times article it was disturbing to read that, in one poll, Americans thought abortion was okay when it came to questions of health but not in questions of income status.

Someday, when we have true economic, racial and social equality, this concern won’t come to bear on a woman’s decision whether to have children, how many and when. But that’s not the world we live in.

Working-class and poor women face hard choices ­ sometimes as hard as whether to feed their children or pay for electricity. The situation which gave way to the early birth control movement in the U.S. was poor and working class women wanting to limit the number of children they had since their family’s ability to survive was in jeopardy.

What a renewed Republican effort in chipping away at abortion and reproductive rights will mean is a chipping away at democracy and equal rights for women.

The sanctimonious rhetoric of upholding the rights of the unborn is laid threadbare when you look at the lack of rights of the born.

How many children now live in poverty? How many children have inadequate health care and educational opportunities? How can you ask society to protect the unborn when it refuses to protect the born? Easy ­ because it’s not about that.

It’s about women being able to make their own choices regarding their ability to reproduce.

What I have learned from this anniversary and from Bush’s actions is this right can’t be taken for granted anymore. No democratic right ­ from voting rights to reproductive rights to labor rights ­ can be taken for granted.

An injury to a woman anywhere, is an injury to women everywhere.