This is the final post in my series addressing recent Supreme Court decisions. Just over a year ago, the Court overturned Roe sending abortion rights issues back to the states and thereby causing many women in red states to lose their right to access abortion care. This decision will affect the lives of women, men, children, and society.
Before we get into how we can respond to this ruling, I want to correct some misinformation that “pro-life” advocates have been spreading for years. I watched a few Congressional hearings on the topic that featured experienced OBGYNs. These experts were eager to address the lies circulating about abortion. OBGYNs emphatically asserted that late term abortions are rare, tragic, and medically necessary to save the life of the mother. No woman comes in at 38 weeks and requests an abortion because she has changed her mind! OBGYNs corrected the false narrative during these hearings that abortions are being performed on a fetus after birth. OBGYNs had to explain that by definition it isn’t possible to abort someone who is born and that killing a newborn is murder, not abortion and that we have laws that strictly prohibit murder. It was sad to watch medical professionals have to debunk the most outrageous claims about women’s healthcare. It was evident that many of the lawmakers were ignorant about the workings of the female body and completely unaware of the medical risks associated with pregnancy.
Comprehensive healthcare for women is complicated and necessary. Pregnancy is a serious undertaking. This is why I strongly believe in the use of birth control to prevent unplanned pregnancies whenever possible. In fact, in 1978, I was fitted for a diaphragm shortly before I got married and was confident that it would keep me from getting pregnant. Used with spermicide, it was said to be 95% effective. And it probably would have been effective if had I used it consistently before my first child. It worked perfectly between my second and third child. Here’s the story.
In my youth, my period was like clockwork, so I incorrectly assumed I could get away with not using the diaphragm for at least two weeks prior to my period. My Catholic friends used the rhythm method and so I thought there was something to it. I was wrong. A stubborn female sperm remained alive long enough to fertilize the egg I eventually released. After six visits to the doctor for nausea and my insistence that I couldn’t possibly be pregnant, the doctor finally suggested that I just take a pregnancy test anyway. I was shocked, but also happy about the news that I was pregnant. I was healthy, newly married, my husband had a great job, and we could certainly make this adjustment to our lives a little sooner than expected. I had an easy pregnancy, a long but natural delivery, and a very quick recovery. Both the baby and I were healthy the entire time. I was lucky.
Not all women are as fortunate as I was to A) have the ability to emotionally adjust to an unplanned pregnancy; B) to have a support system in place to care for me and a baby; C) to carry a healthy fetus to term without medical complications; and D) to have the financial resources required for prenatal, delivery, and post-natal care. If just one of these factors is missing, an abortion may be is a reasonable option for a woman.
Some people believe that abortion is murder at different points in a pregnancy. There are those who believe that conception is that point. Others believe it is somewhere between 8 and 20 weeks. Others believe it is at the point of viability, around 24 weeks. And still others believe it is at birth. Personally, I believe it is at the point when a fetus can survive outside the womb after being born. As I’ve explained in previous posts, I believe the human soul enters the body with the first breath as when God breathed the breath of life into Adam and he then became a living soul.
I think of the womb as a place of formation of the human body. It’s the formation of the house that a person may eventually live in. Many of these “houses” do not form correctly and are spontaneously aborted. Other times, a woman is unable to safely carry fetus to viability. There can be many medical reasons for this problem. We call these miscarriages, but they are technically aborted pregnancies. At times, doctors detect major medical problems in the forming fetus and recommend an abortion. The problem is that anti-abortion laws rarely consider the many things that can and do go wrong in a pregnancy that can endanger the life of the pregnant woman or will cause the unnecessary trauma of a doomed birth. I think that forcing a woman to give birth to a fetus without a skull and a fully formed brain because it has a heartbeat is cruel.
The consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to return abortion rights to the states is that poor women in red states who lack the ability to travel and are often without medical insurance will be giving birth. Prenatal care, delivery, and post-natal care are not inexpensive. And should there be any medical complications, the situation will be deadly. We can already foresee that black female mortality rates will only get worse in the post-Roe era in red states, increasing the rates of suicide, botched abortions, and maternal mortality. The number of black children born into poverty will rise along with the number of children born addicted to drugs or with major medical problems. It is evident that red states who have rejected Medicaid extension will face the greatest problems stemming from a rise in unplanned births. As OBGYNs flee red states in fear and frustration, even wealthy women with medical insurance will experience greater maternal hardships.
In the short term, the answer is expanded use of birth control, early pregnancy tests, and medication abortion. Women groups are already setting up funds to help poor women travel to get the care they need. I’m glad the FDA approved the sale of over-the-counter birth control pills, eliminating the need for a doctor’s visit and a prescription. This will benefit teenage girls and poor women, enabling them to prevent most unplanned pregnancies. We must all teach and encourage the young women among us to use birth control now more than ever. Pushing abstinence onto young people only increases unplanned pregnancies because abstinence ideals lead to unpreparedness when temptation strikes and eventually wins.
In the long term, we absolutely must join forces to vote for lawmakers at the state and federal levels who are sensitive to the healthcare needs of women, who listen to medical doctors, and who recognize that religious beliefs about when life begins and what constitutes actual murder of the unborn should remain an individual matter of conscience and not public policy. Simply put, if a woman believes abortion is murder, she shouldn’t have one.