If you haven’t had a chance to check out the show The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu, then don’t worry—you might just start experiencing it in real life.
As of September 1st, in Texas, abortions are now illegal after six weeks or when cardiac activity is detected, even in cases of rape or incest. However, most women are not even aware that they are pregnant by six weeks. This law, while not only attacking a woman’s bodily autonomy, also criminalizes those who are in compliance with a woman trying to get an abortion, such as Uber drivers who could happen to be taking a woman to her appointment to get an abortion.
This is yet another blatant show of disrespect and dehumanizing behavior from so-called “pro-lifers”. The terrifying thing is that this law could potentially be the first step in overturning Roe v Wade, a monumental case in reproductive rights. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, refused to block the law which is what allowed it to take effect. However, that decision goes against their precedence of not allowing laws that prohibit abortions prior to fetal viability, which is typically between 22 to 24 weeks.
Following the bill being passed, there was an uproar of opposition from those fighting for women’s reproductive rights, such as the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Companies like Lyft and Uber even stated that if any driver was sued for driving a woman to an abortion appointment that they would cover the legal costs. There have also been multiple reports of lawsuits filed against the Texas Right to Life group as well as challenges to the law in Texas courts.
While this law was certainly a win for conservatives, President Biden condemned the Texas government, stating that the White House would support safe and legal abortions for women in Texas. Among the dissenters on the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not hold back, stating that the five justices who supported the bill had “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”
Despite this law only being passed in one state, the fact remains that similar conservative states have no doubt been waiting to pass restrictive abortion laws as well. And now, seeing the support from the Supreme Court, it likely will not be long until those states follow suit. This idea that men who have not and will not ever face being pregnant are allowed to make laws about what a woman can or can’t do with her own body is outdated, misogynistic, and a complete violation of bodily autonomy.
The people who claim they are “pro-life” and advocate for the unborn fetuses fail to realize that they are not really advocating for life. If that were true, then there would be more efforts to help the children who are already alive in foster care, or abusive homes, or living in poverty in third world countries. Claiming to be pro-life is just not correct; they are pro-birth and pro-controlling women. More often than not, those people cite the Bible as to why abortion is wrong, but if that is what they believe, then what happened to the separation of church and state? The idea in the Bible that life begins at conception has been scientifically proven wrong, as the developing zygote in the womb has just been fertilized and would not survive on its own outside of a woman’s body. It does not share any characteristics of life with humans that are already alive, such as the ability to reproduce. Generally, the time frame for when a fetus can survive outside of the womb is between 24-28 weeks.
No one is really arguing that abortions are necessarily “good”, because the possible choice to terminate a pregnancy is one of the hardest decisions a woman might have to make. The argument is that women should have the right to make that decision only between her and her doctor. Because, if this was the other way around and it was women in government who were mandating vasectomies for all men, then this country would have been in flames. The disgusting double standard is a threat to women everywhere. Teen moms are shamed if they choose to keep their child, but also shamed if they choose to terminate it. But what about the fathers? You don’t hear anything about them.
While we are far from a complete patriarchal, totalitarian theocracy that The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in, the forced birth ideals are strikingly similar. This looming threat of women’s reproductive rights being destroyed needs to be taken seriously by women everywhere. The women that refuse to advocate for control over their own bodies are only condemning themselves by refusing to see how the consequences of the Texas abortion ban can impact not just women in America, but the rest of the world.