THE SHORT VERSION: Republicans want to make abortion illegal, Democrats want to make it unnecessary.
THE LONG VERSION: Criminalizing abortion tells women our bodies are not our own by codifying the radical idea that government is best suited to make decisions about our bodies, lives and healthcare.
THE QUESTIONS: Shouldn’t we deal with the real, core issue - unwanted pregnancies? Wouldn't it be more productive to focus our energies on preventing them? Do Republicans really think that criminalizing abortions will make them go away?
It's not that simple. The ramifications of outlawing abortion go far beyond criminalizing one procedure. Anti-abortion laws do not improve women and children's lives or their safety, nor do they support life. This article examines the complicating factors and negative effects of anti-abortion laws on interactions between women and medical professionals, and the legal system.
Pregnancy is not just morning sickness and an expanding waistline. It changes almost every aspect of a woman’s life in a way that no man will ever experience. Her life permanently shifts focus as she adjusts to physical changes that affect almost every key bodily process, and alters the trajectory of her life as new responsibilities claim priority on her future. By criminalizing abortion, the state will allow total strangers to intrude in a woman's personal life and sit in judgement on her lifestyle, how she makes medical decisions, and the day to day details of her life, such as food preferences, personal habits, and physical activities.
The Supreme Court Is Now Stacked With Anti-Abortion Ideologs
Reversing Roe v. Wade is a very real possibility and a number of Republican led states are positioning themselves with “trigger laws” that will ban abortion immediately should that happen. States will have free reign to deny women the right of bodily integrity and control their healthcare decisions. All women will be the losers - including women who are single-issue anti-abortion voters, and their daughters and granddaughters.
Anti-abortion zealots choose to ignore pregnancy's complexities and the difficult - at times tragic - life issues that can lead to a woman's abortion decision. For Republicans it's simply a-one-size-fits all authoritarian approach - criminalize it! This approach is short sighted. They vote against legislation that supports life, and fail to acknowledge that abortion rates fell at greater rates during Democratic administrations than during Republican administrations. They ignore studies that show legally induced abortions (0.6 deaths per 100,000) are markedly safer than childbirth (deaths 8.8 per 100,000).
If Republicans are sincere about protecting mothers and children, born and yet to be born, they would focus on making abortion unnecessary. Imagine what would be possible if they joined with Democrats in their efforts to support life by:
- Reversing the shortage of prenatal care in the United States. Today, 7 million women of childbearing age live in counties without access or with limited access to maternity care.
- Putting an end to our increasing maternity mortality rate. Ours is the highest of other developed countries, with women of color being disproportionately affected. This should not be happening.
- Focusing on initiatives that support life and serve to make abortion unnecessary, with legislation that:
- Guarantees a living wage,
- Alleviates the economic uncertainties that come with carrying and raising a child,
- Makes affordable high-quality childcare available for everyone,
- Insures every person has affordable, high-quality healthcare,
- Supports comprehensive fertility and sex education,
- Publicly funds access to family planning services and contraceptives that are proven to decrease unplanned and unwanted pregnancies,
- Prioritizes and fully funds all public schools,
- Ends domestic violence,
- Provides the resources necessary for safe, nurturing, and fully staffed foster care systems.
It strains credulity to believe Republicans consider women’s well-being a priority since they fail to warn us that criminalizing abortion will sharply increase the number of criminal prosecutions and forced medical interventions imposed on women who experience difficult pregnancies, miscarriages, and stillbirths. Criminalizing abortion is a pathway to legislation that will discourage physicians from providing necessary medical care to women suffering a miscarriage or stillbirth. Whether the harm is intentional or caused by willful ignorance, it is just plain wrong.
If this sounds overstated, consider this. Nearly all methods/procedures that are medically necessary for treating women who have health issues, or have suffered pregnancy complications, miscarriages, or stillbirths are the same methods used in therapeutic abortions. Criminalizing abortion will have an inhibiting effect on physicians which could hinder necessary medical care for women suffering from pregnancy loss. Physicians and other healthcare providers know all too well that one phone call from one anti-abortion zealot, who is sure he/she knows "truth" with a capital "T", can have law enforcement knocking on their door, and find themselves facing a criminal charge or scandal.
THE PAST AS PROLOGUE:
In a twitter post, David Avallone tells of his mother’s experience before the 1973 Supreme Court ruling - an experience that was not uncommon at the time.
“My mother was big in the abortion rights movement. In the early 1960s, when abortion was still illegal, she had a miscarriage at around six months. So she’s covered in blood, with a dead fetus between her legs, and the doctor told her she couldn’t be cleaned up yet.
GUESS WHY? A full examination had to be done, and presented to a POLICE OFFICER, to prove my mom hadn’t committed Manslaughter. Imagine that. Worst moment of your life, in pain, covered in blood, dead fetus. PLEASE WAIT LIKE THAT WHILE WE TREAT YOU LIKE A CRIMINAL.”
His mother, Fran Avallone, told a reporter years later, "I had to lay there with a fetus on the bed under me for an hour while the Board of Health came to certify I did not abort it [...] Things like that stay with me."
It’s Time To Get Real!
Republican’s are ignoring the reality of women’s reproductive health. They use inflammatory language, with little or no basis in medicine or science, that creates barriers to developing realistic policies that will make unwanted pregnancies a thing of the past. No matter how they try to rationalize their stance, criminalizing abortion will usher in a dangerous medical and legal environment for women that will:
- Increase women's vulnerability to criminal charges when experiencing a difficult pregnancy or pregnancy loss,
- Compromise the quality of, or interfere with, necessary and possibly lifesaving medical care because physicians or medical institutions will fear criminal prosecution or scandal,
- Undermine maternal, fetal, and child health by deterring women from seeking medical care and preventing women from communicating openly with doctors and other people who might be helpful to them,
- Interfere with in-vitro fertilization,
- Interfere with medical residents' ability to obtain adequate training and the case load experience necessary to be proficient in providing medical care in case of pregnancy emergencies, such as hemorrhage and infection.
AFTER ROE v WADE:
Roe v. Wade has made it easier, and legal, for women to control their reproductive destiny; however, it has not eliminated the practice of bedside interrogations, coerced medical interventions, arrests, and criminal prosecution. Although the1973 US Supreme Court decision explicitly rejected the claim that…” fetuses, even after attaining viability, are separate legal persons with rights independent of the pregnant women who carry, nurture, and sustain them…”, many states have misrepresented the decision. States justify intervention by asserting that viable fetuses, and sometimes non-viable fetuses, must be treated as a person separate of the pregnant woman.
In states where laws interfering with abortion are declared unconstitutional many states use existing laws, enacted for other purposes, to bring legal action against women. Should Roe v Wade be struck down and states be given free reign, we can expect to see more events like the following:
- “Alabama woman loses unborn child after being shot, gets arrested; shooter goes free.” An indictment handed down by the Jefferson County grand jury, Bessemer Division, concluded that Jones, knowing she was 5 months pregnant, intentionally caused the death of her fetus by initiating a fight. The shooter was not charged.
- "WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY? ANGIE CARTER LIVED A VERY SIMPLE LIFE… AND DIED A VERY COMPLICATED DEATH" Twenty-seven-year-old Angela Carter had been fighting cancer since age 13. She was twenty-six weeks pregnant when hospital administrators and Washington, D.C. Judge Emmet Sullivan forced her to undergo a C-section in the slim hope of saving the fetus, despite the serious risk to her. Both died.
- “Iowa Police Almost Prosecute Woman For Her Accidental Fall During Pregnancy…Seriously.” After leaving a Burlington, Iowa emergency room, twenty-two-year-old Christine Taylor was charged with attempted feticide after falling down the stairs at home. An emergency room nurse called the police because the distraught mother of two confided that her husband left her when she told him she was pregnant again; it was an unwanted pregnancy.
- A Pennsylvania court permitted a hospital to force “… a twenty-five-year-old woman, to undergo cesarean surgery.” Citing Roe v. Wade, they asserted that “…‘Baby Doe, a full-term viable fetus, has certain rights… independent of its parents…. The court awarded…the hospital custody of a fetus before, during, and after delivery…" and gave the hospital the right to force the patient to undergo cesarean delivery. The patient fled the hospital while in active labor and found a hospital that respected her decision to have a vaginal birth, which was successful.
These four cases are a sampling of 413 documented cases disclosed in Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973–2005: Implications for Women’s Legal Status and Public Health, by Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin. Unfortunately, these intrusions still occur; there are hundreds more that have not been as thoroughly documented.
Women Be Warned - BIG BROTHER MAY BE WATCHING!
If this heading sounds like fiction, think again. In true Orwellian fashion, Iowa introduced legislation to use “…proven search engine marketing techniques to reach pregnant women in real time….” In real life this means, Iowa’s government would hire an outside contractor that uses existing social media algorithms, such as those that track preferences in clothing, food, etc., to screen women’s social media. Their purpose, to monitor women’s personal discussions, healthcare, and reproductive decisions in order to preemptively put pressure on pregnant women and interfere with reproductive choices.
Really!!! Do we want the government prying into whether we got our period – or - snooping into our private conversations with friends or family to learn if we are pregnant. Although the bill didn’t make it out of committee this session, the fact that it was introduced is chilling. Iowa isn’t the only state that wants to snoop.
“Missouri health director kept spreadsheet of Planned Parenthood patients’ periods.” ST. LOUIS “The Missouri state health director, Dr. Randall Williams, testified at a state hearing Tuesday that he kept a spreadsheet to track the menstrual periods of women who visited Planned Parenthood…."
Oct. 30, 2019 Kansas City Star
Criminalizing Abortion Will Not Stop Abortion
Since ancient times, women all over the world have used a variety of methods to control their fertility - legal or not. Some methods were more successful than others; many women died as a result. Criminalizing abortion will create a legal and medical environment that can criminalize spontaneous pregnancy loss (aka spontaneous abortion), deny women's bodily integrity (which is rigorously protected for men) and interfere with physicians’ providing necessary medical care to women suffering from pregnancy complications and loss. Ultimately the real questions should be:
- Who should control women’s bodies – the government or women?
- Who should make our medical decisions - the government or doctors and patients?
If the answer is government, then lets address reproductive justice. A fertilized egg involves a man and a woman. If government is to be in control of human reproduction, isn't it only fair to discuss men's role in unwanted pregnancies? In a society that glorifies male sexual prowess, shouldn't men be held accountable and also risk criminal liability? Think about it - if we are to be fair, why shouldn't the government make decisions about men's bodies. Would government mandated vasectomies be any more radical than allowing the government to tell women that we don’t have a right to control their own bodies? How about a quota system to reign in male promiscuity and carelessness? Vasectomies can be reversed.
And, how about making male contraceptives a national health priority. Insurance companies are eager to cover profitable erectile dysfunction drugs, yet have had to be forced to cover female contraception. When pressed, pharmaceutical companies came out with a COVID-19 vaccine in a year, why not male contraceptives? In 2016 male contraception studies were halted when too many men dropped out of the studies because they weren't willing to put up with side effects like those experienced by millions of women. Reproductive stakes are much higher for us, so we deal with headaches, weight gain, acne, and tiredness to name a few. We bear the brunt of pregnancies, wanted and unwanted, so we cope. Isn't it time to level the playing field.
Today’s medical advances, including contraception, have given our daughters and granddaughters the freedom to look to a future full of possibilities; a future their grandmothers and great grandmothers could not have imagined. Will they thank us if we allow that freedom to be taken away from them? Republican are trying to do just that.
If we are to protect their futures, we must protest loud and long to our Representatives, Senators and Governors, and encourage others to do the same. And, we need to work to replace anti-abortion legislators in 2022 with leaders who believe in reproductive justice by truly supporting life, striving to make abortion unnecessary and guaranteeing reproductive freedom. The futures of our daughters and granddaughters, out to seven generations and beyond depend on it.