The extent of the sheer malice and intense disdain of the Republican party toward women and anyone who might become pregnant has finally been clarified in stark terms for all Americans, thanks to proposed legislation that would impose a nationwide ban on abortion, as announced on Tuesday by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
In order to fully understand what is being proposed here, it’s necessary to highlight some of the legislative provisions, as drawn up and approved by the anti-abortion organizations whose adherents flanked Graham at the time of the bill’s formal announcement. To appreciate the consequences of what these proposals mean in “real-life” terms, it’s also helpful to look at what has occurred in other countries that have imposed such bans. As Graham explained at Tuesday’s unveiling, the legislation will move forward “if Republicans regain majority control after the midterm elections.”
First and foremost, contrary to the way it is being portrayed in some media, this legislation does not ban abortions only after 15 weeks’ gestation. From the legislation:
‘‘(1) GREATER PROTECTION.—Nothing in this section may be construed to preempt or limit any Federal, State, or local law that provides greater protections for an unborn child than those provided in this section.
What that means is that for any state that has imposed stricter laws, such as banning the procedure after six weeks or even outright; prohibiting people from crossing state lines to obtain an abortion; obtaining abortifacients through the mail; or even criminalizing the procedure itself against the pregnant person or those who assist them, those laws will continue to be enforced.
Since 13 Republican-dominated states now or very soon will ban nearly all abortions at any stage for persons who live within their geographic boundaries (with several other states imposing equally or more restrictive conditions than a 15-week ban), the practical effect of this legislation is to target those states that continue to allow abortions to occur as they did before Roe was overruled. Also, as a practical matter, forced-birth groups will not be content with a 15-week threshold and will continue to attempt to outlaw abortion in its entirety, either by modifying the terms of this bill (if passed), by lobbying for the passage of a “fetal personhood” law in order to impose criminal penalties on people who terminate their pregnancies, or by continuing their efforts to criminalize the procedure in the individual states.
The Republicans’ proposed bill (on its face) outlaws nearly all abortions performed after 15 weeks, and imposes onerous reporting and proof requirements upon physicians and others for the rare exceptions it allows. It also provides for a private right of action by parents of any minor who obtains an abortion, and allows them to sue the medical providers that performed it (including physicians and others authorized to perform the procedure):
ON WHOM AN ABORTION IS PERFORMED.—A parent of a minor upon whom an abortion has been performed or attempted under an exception provided for in subsection (b)(2)(B), and that was performed in violation of any provision of this section may, in a civil action against any person who committed the violation obtain appropriate relief, unless the pregnancy resulted from the plaintiff’s criminal conduct.
The proposed Republican bill also provides a right of action by the “woman” (defined as a “female human being”) against those who performed the procedure on her. Criminal penalties for violation of the proposed law include lengthy imprisonment and fines. It contains lengthy and explicit sections specifically written by the forced-birth lobby intended as a justification for its penalties and cites with approval the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs overruling Roe. v Wade.
So much for the letter of the (proposed) law. The effects of this pernicious legislation are ultimately what matter.
For women and those who become pregnant, the fact that the patchwork reality of each state’s individual laws will continue to be enforced suggests that they would face a bewildering and dangerous minefield of legal restrictions and likely criminal penalties should they attempt to terminate their pregnancies anywhere, whether in their state of residence or outside it. As noted above, laws currently being proposed that criminalize the crossing of state lines to obtain an abortion may result in the pregnant person facing prosecution and imprisonment should they return to their state of residence if they attempt to terminate their pregnancies elsewhere. This would be the case in roughly two-thirds of the nation’s land mass, most of it contiguous.
Of course, millions of abortions will continue to occur, but they will be performed in unauthorized and illegal facilities with no uniform health codes or sanitary restrictions in place, and most will be performed by non-physicians, particularly in those states that have already passed laws imposing criminal or civil penalties for obtaining the procedure.
A useful template for the social and economic impacts caused by the imposition of such a nationwide ban can be seen in the case of Romania. As explained in this 2019 report by Amy Mackinnon, writing for Foreign Policy, Romania, under the regime of Nikolai Ceausescu, outlawed all abortions in that country in 1966 in an effort to boost the country’s birth rate. Initially, the birth rate did jump, with the average number of children born nearly doubling. However, as women began to work around the ban, the birth rate quickly dropped again.
As Mackinnon notes, not only did the ban not achieve its “desired” result, the harm it caused was immense.
Romania’s prohibition of the procedure was disproportionately felt by low-income women and disadvantaged groups. ... As a last resort, many Romanian women turned to home and back-alley abortions, and by 1989, an estimated 10,000 women had died as a result of unsafe procedures. The real number of deaths might have been much higher, as women who sought abortions and those who helped them faced years of imprisonment if caught. Maternal mortality skyrocketed, doubling between 1965 and 1989.
As reported by Melody Schreiber, writing for The Guardian, current estimates of the impact of a national abortion ban in the U.S. suggest that maternal mortality rates will rise by 21%, with a substantially higher death rate for people of color.
A nationwide ban would result in a 21% increase in pregnancy-related mortality across the country, but it would be even worse for people of color, with a 33% rise in deaths, according to a study by Amanda Jean Stevenson, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The economic effects of a nationwide abortion ban are staggering, not only to those who are forced to give birth but to state and local economies. More harrowing is the fact of hundreds of thousands of children born to parents (or in most cases a single parent) who cannot or will not (for whatever reason) be capable of providing for them. In Romania—and presumably in this country as well, should such a nationwide ban on abortion take effect—many became wards of the state, with disastrous consequences.
Another consequence of Romania’s abortion ban was that hundreds of thousands of children were turned over to state orphanages. When communism collapsed in Romania in 1989, an estimated 170,000 children were found warehoused in filthy orphanages. Having previously been hidden from the world, images emerged of stick-thin children, many of whom had been beaten and abused. Some were left shackled to metal bed frames.
Charles Nelson, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School interviewed for Mackinnon’s article, noted that many of those children ”were left with severe developmental impairment and mental health issues.” In some, their actual, physical brain size was reduced.
Of course, Romania is not the United States. Perhaps Republicans in those states prohibiting abortion already have a plan to feed, house, and educate those unwanted children (and the many more they are likely to be responsible for if this legislation ever passes).
One of the most vivid recollections of that time frame in Romania—by women who suffered through it—was how the very act of sex became something to be fraught with fear and anxiety, rather than pleasure. As Mackinnon reports:
“Sometimes a woman couldn’t even tell her husband or best friend that she wanted to have an abortion as it would put them at risk as well,” said Irina Ilisei, an academic researcher and co-founder of the Front Association, a Romanian feminist group, and the Feminist Romania website.
“For many women, sexuality represented a fear and not a part of life that can be enjoyed,” Ilisei said.
And that, in sum, probably best represents the Republican Party’s ultimate goal here: to punish behavior of which they disapprove. Especially the behavior of women.
Now that the stakes for these 2022 elections have been made quite clear, hopefully, more people—including young people who will have to measure out their lives through this bleak and terrifying new world Republicans want to create for them—will choose to vote.