M.A.G.A.: Make America Gestate Again
Pro-choice activists in a Mother’s Day rally last May (Photo from Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
It’s official: The US has banned abortions. In a landmark decision last Friday, Roe v. Wade was overturned by six—all Republican—Supreme Court justices, effectively removing federal abortion rights protections that have been in place for 50 years.
The ruling is likely to make abortion illegal in half the country. Mississipi’s abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy was upheld. Missouri bans it after eight. Six other states have banned it since Friday, while 10 more are set to ban or impose severe restrictions soon. The Guardian maps out the state of the States, as of Monday, here.
Anti-choice, anti-life
This not only strips American women of several liberties, but also implicates healthcare as we know it. What people without uteruses or periods most likely don’t understand is that abortion is needed for other medical conditions too so people don’t die—not very pro-life of them, we know.
Ectopic pregnancies, or pregnancies when the fertilized egg implants somewhere outside the uterus, require abortions to save the mother’s life. Did we mention that ectopic pregnancies are the top cause of maternal deaths in the first trimester? With the ruling, we can only expect mortality rates to rise.
Some cancer treatments aren’t safe for developing fetuses either. Continue treatments and effects may lead to miscarriage or birth defects. Stop treatments and again, the mother might die.
Then there’s miscarriage management. It’s unfortunate that people who actually want to be moms miscarry, but they need the same treatments as people who’ve just had abortions as well. Abortion bans are going to make access to care trickier.
Back to basics
Let’s forget for a while that there are other reasons people might not want to get pregnant—rape and incest are just some top of the mind things for us. Taken at face value, abortion is the go-to choice for people who simply hate children.
The Catholic Church hasn’t been much of a help either. While they regularly forget to separate Church from State, they seemingly forget that their religion isn’t the only one in the world too. To Jews, a fetus is only fully alive at birth. Muslim law prohibits it but sees it as a “lesser evil” if done to save the mother’s life. Therefore, taking abortion away from other religions in the US violates religious freedom.
It’s not like banning things has ever stopped them from happening anyway—again, rape and incest are just some top of the mind things for us. Research group Guttmacher Institute says nearly one in four women in the US get an abortion before turning 45. As we’ve written in a previous piece, removing access to safe and legal abortions could result in more unsafe procedures. It could lead to a variety of health complications, including infection, hemorrhage, and even death.
Abortion's "black market"
In the Philippines where abortion is overall illegal, Filipinos resort to backdoor procedures. One non-government organization runs an underground network that connects people to clinics that provide safe and secure abortions on a pay-what-you-can basis. In Brazil, they’ve turned to drug dealers for abortion pills.
While the budding “black market” for abortion all over the world still provides women with back-up support and a semblance of autonomy over their bodies, their health and safety won’t always be guaranteed.
There’s the economic implications of it too. Restrictions could cost the US upwards $105 billion due to less productivity and loss of talent, as women 15 to 44 years old lose work time, wages, and worst, health, trying to access quality reproductive services.
We could only imagine what banning abortions in “the greatest country in the world” (debatable) would mean for fledgling democracies that try to imitate its “power moves” (also debatable)—what more the effect it would have on other countries’ economies when said implications take place.
