Roe v Wade, a Supreme Court case in the early 1970s, was one of the defining court cases of American history. The case decided that it was illegal unconstitional for states to restrict access to abortions during the first trimester of a pregnancy.
The right to abortion is an extremely vital right to women’s health, and it is a right that should be offored to every woman.
Why, you ask?
First of all, there’s the concept of bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is the idea that women should be allowed to make their own choices about what happens to their bodies. This is supported by the 14th Amendment, which implies that a person has the right to end a pregnancy without undue interference for the government because of the right to liberty in making choices about the family. It’s also supported by the Fourth Amendment, which grants the right to privacy, including medical privacy. In other words, the legal system has no business in whether or not a woman decides to have a baby or not.
Additionally, if a woman does not believe she has the ability to take care of a child financially or emotionally, or for any reason believes that she would be unable to provide a financially stable and healthy life for any child born to her at any given time, it should be her right to prevent the birth of that child.
Pro-lifers (those that oppose abortion) adamantly believe that abortion should be illegal because according to them, it is the murder of a child. In their eyes, a woman’s pregnancy is a consequence of participating in sexual activity, and that they must face the consequences of their decision, as the child should not have to pay for the actions of its parents.
If I’m being completely honest here, I strongly believe that pro-lifers aren’t actually pro-life. They’re just pro-forced-birth.
One argument that pro-lifers love to employ whenever one points out that not everybody is financially emotionally ready for a child is that she can give the child up for adoption, but the reality is that U.S. foster system is a grim place to be. On any given day, there are approximately 443,000 children in foster care (1.) In 2017, more than 69,000 kids were already waiting to be adopted (2.) Pressuring a woman to forego abortion only to give a child up for adoption is not exactly a pro-life argument, because first of all, there are already enough children in foster care waiting to be adopted into a better life, and foster conditions aren’t exactly spiffy, either. Approximately one third of foster children are abused during their time in foster care (3.) In a study conducted in Atlanta, GA, 34% had experienced abuse, neglect, or other harmful conditions (4.)
Forcing a woman to give birth to a child and then surrender that child to an environment where abuse is rampant is certainly not pro-life.
Additionally, a large portion of pro-lifers oppose government-subsidized welfare, in which the government supports low-income adults with money in order to help them get by. If pro-lifers truly wanted all babies to be healthy, wouldn’t they be supportive of making sure that mothers are supported financially to ensure that their children are happy and healthy? That is, if they truly cared about the life of the child rather than just the policing of the female body.
And what about if the woman was raped? Should she be forced to carry a physical manifestation of somebody violating her body and her literal personhood?
“But Shruthi, only 0.5% of abortions are because of rape! (5)”
That’s such a common argument I hear against abortion. If so few abortions occur because of rape, then surely that’s not a valid reason for abortions to be legal! First of all, the whole “0.5%” statistic was the result of ONE self-reported survey. Every time I read any article online, 9/10 times, somebody comments something along those lines because that’s the first statistic that pops up when you google “amount of abortions that happen after rape.”
But the reality is that the number is probably higher. Many women don’t want to report that they were raped for various reasons. Maybe their rapist is a partner, and they’re scared of any kind of legal activity that may happen if they admit they were raped. Sometimes, women aren’t even aware that they were raped, because a lot of people are unaware that coercive sex is rape. They may believe that because they said yes, it was consensual, even if they were coerced into having sex. Some cultures are extremely harsh against victims of rape. For instance, in some parts of Asia, women that are victims of rape are often killed to “maintain honor in the family”. So it’s entirely possible that some women may not want to admit that they were raped due to cultural stigmas.
In fact, the state of Florida records a reason for every abortion that occurs, and one response choice is “no reason”, which makes up the vast majority of responses. 75.4% of women who got an abortion procedure in Florida in 2018 elected “no reason” as their answer (6.) To say that the Florida statistic on abortions performed after rape is the actual statistic when most women decline to provide an answer is to grossly misinterpret the statistical information.
And honestly, even if a woman decides to have an abortion without having been violated, it should still be allowed. Remember the concept of bodily autonomy that I talked about before? That’s the same reason why you can’t legally be forced to donate blood. Even if somebody’s dying from blood loss and you’re the only other person in the world with their blood type, they still can’t force you to give blood. You need to consent fully in order to have any procedure done to your body. When a woman is pregnant, the fetus is using her body, her nutrients, and her blood to grow. If she decides she wants an abortion, it is because she no longer wants to share her body and give birth, for whatever reason. Using the same logic applied to the dying person example, nobody should be legally allowed to force you to give your blood/body to another being, as it violates our right to bodily autonomy.
“But Shruthi, abortion is murder!”
This discussion isn’t about whether or not its murder. Again, even if somebody is dying and you’re the only one that can save them by donating blood or a kidney or something, you cannot be forced to do so. Isn’t that technically murder too, because you’re letting somebody die when you could do something to stop it? Would you shame somebody for not donating their own kidney to somebody else? Legally speaking, you cannot even harvest organs from a corpse if that person did not consent to it during their life. So again, even if using a dead person’s kidney in a kidney transplant was the only way to save another person, we still cannot do so because it violates their rights to bodily autonomy. And it’s pretty whack that people, including the state governments in many states (I’m lookin’ at you, Alabama) are affording more rights to corpses than to actual living breathing women.
Roe v Wade was monumental in that it was one of the court cases that recognized our right to bodily autonomy and medical privacy, and it’s outcome shaped the lives of an uncountable amount of women throughout the country.
If states try to reverse that outcome, the consequences would be devastating. You know the saying that if people want something, they’re gonna find a way to get it? Well, that applies to abortions. If women want abortions, they’re gonna find a way to get them, whether it’s via a trained medical professional who’ll provide them with the service in a safe and healthy way or via a coat hanger stuck into their uterus.
So here’s an idea: how bout we KEEP the legal and safe abortions so that women don’t end up resorting to sticking something up their hoo-has in order to avoid biting off more than they can chew by completing a pregnancy and giving birth? How bout we understand that women’s rights to bodily autonomy should be respected that women shouldn’t be forced to keep something in their bodies that they do not want to be there?
How bout we stop policing women and respect that they have the right and liberty to do what they want with their bodies?
1. https://youthtoday.org/2017/09/abuse-in-foster-care-research-vs-the-chil…
2. https://youthtoday.org/2017/09/abuse-in-foster-care-research-vs-the-chil…
3. https://youthtoday.org/2017/09/abuse-in-foster-care-research-vs-the-chil…
4. https://youthtoday.org/2017/09/abuse-in-foster-care-research-vs-the-chil…
5. https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/
5. https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/