Abortion Access is Under Attack
I can't believe I have to talk about this again. It's just as I feared.
It was on October 27, 2020, that Amy Coney Barrett became one of the Supreme Court Judges on the behest of Donald Trump’s personal appointment. For abortion rights advocates such as I and many others, alarm bells started ringing from all angles. Human rights groups put the US as having a significant risk of abortion rights and access being overturned, the UN was warning the US that overturning Roe v Wade would be in violation of internationally ratified law 1, and many progressives such as myself had become scared of a new Supreme Court line up which could potentially overturn Roe v Wade and thus further plunge the country into a worse dystopia for women. The leaked draft opinion that Politico reported on has largely been accepted as true by Supreme Court officials 2 3. With Justice Thomas (one of the conservative appointed Justices) stating that the Supreme Court will not be “bullied” into a decision change 4. This clear breach of human rights was what I feared. On Dec 6 2021; about a month after the appointment of Justice Barrett. I discussed the potential of this new Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade and perhaps going even further in repealing other clauses such as gay marriage 5.
Furthering this issue. According to the New York Times, at least 13 states have “trigger laws” that would instantly restrict abortion access and effectively ban it in practice once Roe v Wade is officially overturned 6. In addition, all of these states are held by Republican legislators who have sought to restrict abortion in other ways by limiting the number of abortion clinics in their respective states. For example, 6 of these 13 states have just one abortion clinic in their entire state; this has increasingly prevented women in rural communities and low-income women to access abortion 7. But worse, this systemic effort to limit abortion access and to implement “trigger laws” is still not enough for Republicans. For example, Lousiana is now introducing legislation to criminalize abortion. Bill HB813 would allow the state to “subject people (women) to murder charges”. Furthermore, critics and opponents of the bill state that the broadness of the bill would also “criminalize in vitro fertilization, intrauterine birth control devices (IUDs), and emergency contraception as well” 8. In other words, if women were to use any method available to them to care for their reproductive health, the Louisiana state would charge them with murder. From Roe v Wade to Louisiana, I fully expect other states to also enact draconian restrictions on not just abortion but safe contraception and reproductive health support as well.
The United States of America is regressing as a society. These policies are telling of Republican lawmakers who are not just anti-abortion, but anti-woman. They violate international human rights laws that many countries have ratified (including the US itself), they will make American women poorer 9, and it is a systemic way to restrict women’s reproductive and sexual health.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/08/catastrophic-implications-un-health-expert-condemns-us-over-threat-to-abortion-rights
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/03/us/roe-wade-abortion-supreme-court
https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/crime-pmn/after-abortion-leak-justice-thomas-warns-supreme-court-cant-be-bullied
See ‘Abortion Access is a Human Right’ on this newsletter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/upshot/polling-abortion-states.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/29/health/six-states-with-1-abortion-clinic-map-trnd/index.html
https://www.wwno.org/2022-05-05/louisiana-bill-would-allow-murder-charges-for-abortions-opponents-call-it-barbaric
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-foster-abortion-socioeconomic-impact-20180122-story.html
The graphic used for this article goes to u/theoriginaltrinity who posted this on a group discussion thread that received over 3,000 upvotes. Their profile link. This is not their work but art showcased on an unsourced French paper.