As a young woman with a long-term boyfriend, in a Trump-era world, I constantly worry about sex and protection. I have been on some form of birth control since ninth grade, and regulating my hormones feels like a stable and routine thing to do. With the constant security of the pill, or the lesser known Nuvaring, abortion has never been something I’ve had to worry about. Under the new Trump Administration, access to both abortion and birth control is becoming increasingly more limited. I believe that pro-life and pro-choice communities should come together to make access to birth control easier for all women to decrease the abortion rates and create more choice for women.
One day, while catching up on the news I stumbled across a very troubling article about a teenage immigrant whose abortion was delayed because of the Trump administration. Seventeen-year-old Jane Doe was granted judicial authorization and obtained private funding for her abortion, but the Office of Refugee Resettlement refused to take her to her appointment after recent policy changes, and instead drove her to an anti-abortion, religiously affiliated pregnancy clinic. I was completely shocked that the Trump administration could control whether or not this girl could get an abortion, and due to her status as an immigrant minority, she was completely stripped of her rights.
Trump’s talk about abortion is no longer just talk. He wants to ban abortion, and he has argued to shut down planned parenthood, which leaves a vast margin of people in a hopeless state. Recent surveys have demonstrated that access to abortion has been wearing down a lot. As much as 87 percent of all U.S. counties do not have one distinguishable abortion provider, and in a non-metropolitan city, this statistic rises to 97 percent. Because of this reality, women have to travel far distances to get to the nearest provider. Distance is not the only barrier women face. Many states have updated their abortion laws to make obtaining one more difficult and complicated than necessary; medical restrictions have been applied, which decreases the number of abortion providers.
There are 61 million women in the United States, and 70 percent are at risk of unintended pregnancy. With the diminishing access and negative stigma surrounding abortion, women must turn to other options. The Affordable Care Act under Obamacare provided millions of women with affordable contraceptives. The out-of-pocket expenditure rate dropped from 21 percent to 3 percent, meaning that the average pill-user saved $225 a year. As Trump makes an even greater effort to repeal Obamacare, he makes birth control less affordable and accessible to thousands of low-income women. If the government is not willing to help, then the pro-life and pro-choice communities need to come together to make access to birth control easier for all women to decrease the abortion rates and create more opportunities and choices for women.
Since the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade in 1973, which decided that abortion is a right protected by the Constitution, pro-life advocates have been violently protesting women’s right to abortions and claiming that it goes against religious beliefs. The ironic thing about pro-life and their religiously-rooted values is that contraceptives are common among women of all denominations. Ninety-nine percent of sexually experienced religious women use some form of contraceptive and 89 percent of at-risk Catholics use a contraceptive. This shows that even religion is not a justifiable reason to limit access to abortions or birth control. In order to make birth control accessible to all women, and therefore make abortion less likely, the pro-life and pro-choice fallacies need to be de-stigmatized.
There is no doubt that abortion is a difficult decision, and if we can prevent someone from ever having to make that decision, life would be much simpler. Birth control and science research can make this possible. The Fourteenth Amendment states that one is a citizen of the United States first and then considered a citizen of the state. No laws in the state that one resides can be made that go against one’s rights to live, be free or own property without due process of law. Nor can the state deny these rights within its reign of equal rights. Banning abortion violates a woman’s right to control her own body, which is an obstruction of the Fourteenth Amendment. In regards to the constitution or not, abortion and birth control is a right and it needs to be more attainable for all women.
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Source List
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- “Donald Trump on Reproductive Freedom.” NARAL Pro Choice America. 2018 NARAL Pro-Choice America, n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2018, https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/laws-policy/federal-government/donald-trump-abortion/.
- Katha Pollitt, “The Roots of Anti- Abortion Violence,” New York Times, [Page #], http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SSKSAB-0-5228&artno=0000378542&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Abortion%20pro%20choice%20movement&title=The%20Roots%20of%20Anti-Abortion%20Violence&res=N&ren=N&gov=N&lnk=N&ic=N.
- Levintova, Hannah. “Federal Court Allows Trump Administration to Delay Pregnant Teen’s, Abortion-again.” Mother Jones. N.p., 23 Oct. 2017. Web. 25 Jan. 2018, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/federal-court-allows-trump-administration-to-delay-pregnant-teens-abortion-again/. https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/2017/01/millions-of-womens-birth-control-depends-upon-aca/.
- Petulla, Sam. “3 Ways Obamacare Changed Birth Control.” CNN. 2016 Cable News Network., 7 Oct. 2017. Web. 25 Jan. 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/07/politics/obamacare-changed-birth-control-contraceptives/index.html.
- “Pro-choice,” National Abortion Federation, http://prochoice.org/.
- “Planned Parenthood,” “By the Numbers,” https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/9313/9611/7194/Planned_Parenthood_By_The_Numbers.pdf.