The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Republican lawmakers clearly demonstrate that their love of control is more important than our right to bodily autonomy. They now seek to extend their heavy-handed power against anyone with a womb all over the United States. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs lays the groundwork for resurgent assaults on our personal lives, trampling on our very freedoms of individuality and ability to make decisions for one’s own body.
Across America, measures to deny medical abortions, morning after pills, and contraception represent a dramatic escalation in the attack on our personal liberties. These proposed bills will put reproductive health care at severe risk. Republican legislators are forcing medical providers into precarious situations of worrying about legal jeopardy over delivering evidence-based health care. Even rideshare drivers could face felony imprisonment.
These forced-birth measures go far beyond philosophical hypotheticals and create a new age of trauma for families and health care professionals. These extreme pieces of proposed and passed legislation established the groundwork for an endless number of real life stories. People are forced to carry dead fetuses and 10-year-old rape victims are forced to relive the horrific reminder of both their assault and their rapist.
According to reports from last month, a Louisiana woman named Nancy Davis learned 10 weeks into her pregnancy that the fetus she carried had acrania, a rare congenital disorder in which a fetus’s skull does not form prior to birth. The Fetal Medicine Foundation states the prognosis for acrania is death within the first week of life. Due to Louisiana’s “no exceptions” abortion ban, Davis had to make an unimaginable decision whether to carry the fetus to term or travel across state lines to terminate the pregnancy. “Basically, they [the medical providers] said I had to carry my baby to bury my baby,” Davis said. “They seemed confused about the law and afraid of what would happen to them if they perform a criminal abortion, according to the law.”
Let’s stay focused. The overturning of Roe is not only an attack on our right to a legal and safe abortion. This is a reckless and unconscionable attack on the health care of all people who are able to become pregnant; this includes trans men. These health care decisions are between the person needing reproductive medical care and that person’s medical providers, and their trusted advisers such as family, friends, and clergy.
This fight for reproductive freedom is personal to me! I recently turned 51 and now my two daughters have fewer rights than I had. I have a unique perspective as a mother of 10-year-old triplets who were born on 11/11/11 and will turn 11 this November. My husband and I chose to have more children through in vitro fertilization (IVF). In this current world of stripping away reproductive freedom and with contraception on the chopping block next, I reflect heavily on whether my miracle children would exist today. Taking birth control pills is the first step in the IVF process. I was diagnosed with severe pre-eclampsia on the day of my triplets’ birth. If my medical team had hesitated, the four of us would have died.
With so much damage done to our reproductive freedom, there are no quick fixes. We will not accept the government tying the hands of experienced medical providers and patients in need of health care services. I definitely know that state-mandated pregnancy and forced birth is not the answer for anyone at any time or with any political affiliation. I have a clear response to those who tell us how to handle our bodies. The business of my womb is none of your business.
