In the Republican imagination, women seek abortions for the fun of it. In this dystopian fantasy, nothing is more fun than a late-term abortion. Yet only about 9,000 women seek such abortions each year—usually because of severe birth defects, the impending death of the fetus, and other tragic circumstances.
That hasn’t stopped anti-choicers from painting women who seek abortions as baby-killing monsters. Roe vs. Wade enshrined abortion as a Constitutional right, so anti-choice groups have resorted to tactics designed to steadily erode this right. What have they been up to this summer? A lot. Here are the abortion restrictions with which women now have to contend.
Banning Safe Abortion in Louisiana
Earlier this week, Louisiana’s Democrat governor signed into law a bill that bans the most common second trimester abortion procedure. Dilation and evacuation (D&E) is the safest option for women who seek these relatively late abortions. Its newly illegal status will force doctors to either find a less safe option or deny women their legal right to a second trimester abortion.
Second trimester abortions are already significantly more expensive than first trimester abortions, creating little incentive for women to delay. In most cases, women who seek second trimester abortions do so because of fetal genetic tests indicating severe birth defects—including those that mean a fetus will die within a few minutes of birth or will lead an extraordinarily painful life. Tay Sachs, for instance, usually kills a child within two years, and causes extreme suffering until then. Because most women don’t undergo genetic testing until the second trimester, women who make the painful decision to abort a fetus with Tay Sachs must seek second trimester abortions.
Treating Abortion Clinics Like Sex Offenders
Sex offender registries mean that sex offenders cannot live near schools. A newly enacted Alabama law will treat abortion clinics like sex offenders, preventing them from setting up show within 2,000 feet of elementary and middle schools. This conveniently makes the state’s current abortion clinics illegal.
The new law also contains a provision similar to Louisiana’s second trimester abortion law, prohibiting D&E and forcing women to choose a less safe procedure or forgo abortions.
Criminalizing Miscarriage
Lest there be any doubt that abortion restrictions are designed to punish women, a number of states have attempted to control miscarriages, treating them as potential abortions. Earlier this year, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a bill that would require women to have the remains of both aborted and miscarried fetuses buried.
The goal of course is to punish women for having abortions, though it’s unclear why Pence and his ilk also think women should be penalized for losing a pregnancy. The law suffers from a fatal flaw: most miscarriages occur very early in pregnancy. Indeed, many women who have experienced miscarriages might not know it, mistaking their miscarriages for heavy periods instead. Thus the law has made all women potential suspects. Critics argue that, because every period could be a miscarriage, it compels women to report their periods to the state. This claim gave birth to the Periods for Pence movement, which encourages women to share their menstrual cycles directly with the people who claim to understand them best—Republican legislators. So far, the movement has gained momentum, but has done nothing to change the law.
Aren’t These Restrictions Illegal?
If abortion is a Constitutional right, aren’t these draconian restrictions illegal? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The only way to get a law declared unconstitutional is to sue. That’s a process that takes months, and often years. Worse still, the lawsuit may end up in front of an extremist judge, setting bad legal precedent that further erodes women’s rights. Even if a judge declares the law unconstitutional, though, women will have suffered in the interim.
Lawsuits might prevent these laws from becoming permanent, but women are facing an unprecedented denial of their rights today. We don’t yet know how this will affect those women, but we do know that the futures of women denied abortions are often grim.
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