Looking Back at Roe v.s Wade More Than 100 Days After it Was Overturned
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Dr. Oz, Republican senate candidate and TV personality, said on Tuesday that “abortion should be the business of a woman, her doctor, and her local political leaders.”
Terrifyingly, this is the new normal in the U.S.
In June, the Supreme Court passed a 6-3 conservative majority opinion to overturn Roe vs. Wade, outlining: “the constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” The liberal minority opinion stated: “a woman will have to bear her rapist’s child or a young girl her father’s – no matter if doing so will destroy her life.” It should be noted that at that time, Gallup found that 85% of Americans supported abortion in “certain circumstances.”
Abortion is currently banned in 18 states. Total bans “without exceptions for rape or incest” are in place in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. Mississippi has exceptions for rape, but not incest. West Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Utah, and North Carolina ban abortions after a certain number of weeks. Attempted bans were blocked in other states, but it cannot be said whether this will hold. To humanise these statistics, the Washington Post reported in August that a staggering 20.9 million (1 in 3 American women between the ages of 15 and 44) had lost abortion access.
The ruling’s inherent discriminatory nature must be recognised, and the implications for gender equality should be evident—abortion laws will only ever affect people who can get pregnant. However, it goes much deeper than that.
The US has the highest maternal mortality rate of any “developed” nation, and black women are three times more likely to die than white women. Republican lawmakers are aware of this racial discrepancy, they just don’t think it matters. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy expressed: “About a third of our population is African American; African Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. So, if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier.”
Cassidy also denied that overturning Roe would increase maternal mortality. However, a recent study found that nationwide abortion bans (proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham) would increase overall mortality rates by 21% and mortality rates for people of colour rates by 33%. Explaining how elective abortions are often chosen due to health risks, the study elaborates: “The people who are currently having abortions are very likely to have higher rates of pregnancy-related deaths and maternal mortality than the people who are currently giving birth.”
Furthering that point, expert Rachel Hardeman stated: “We have to be thinking about the decision as a racist policy… [that will] fall the hardest on people of lower socioeconomic status… [The ban] disproportionately [harms] people of colour and [reinforces] a system of inequity and, frankly, of white supremacy.” The New York Times found that states banning abortion have the worst social welfare and highest poverty and infant and maternal mortality rates. Moreover, states that have higher black populations tend to provide far less welfare support. This further restricts abortion access, as out-of-state procedures are only an option for those who can afford to travel across state lines and take time off work.
Beyond revoking reproductive rights, this ruling has severely restricted women’s healthcare as a whole. For example, a Missouri woman with arthritis was denied her Methotrexate prescription (classed an essential medicine by WHO) until she could provide “evidence” that she would not use it to induce an abortion. Furthermore, numerous stories have highlighted how pregnant women have been denied life-saving medical treatment by doctors fearing legal repercussions. As one Texas physician expressed: “We’re no longer basing our judgement on the clinical needs of the woman, we’re basing it on what we understand the legal situation to be.”
In July, news of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim crossing state lines for an abortion attracted global attention. Conservative-leaning WSJ labelled it an “unlikely story from a biased source that neatly fits the progressive narrative but can’t be confirmed,” while Representative Jim Jordan tweeted: “Another lie. Anyone surprised?” However, once the story was confirmed to be true, the rhetoric shifted. In explaining why the child should carry her rapist’s baby, one pro-life lawyer said: “we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child… As heart-wrenching as those circumstances are, we don’t think we should devalue the life of the baby because of the sins of the father.”
The real question should be asking why we are devaluing the life of the mother who is a child herself?
You really don’t have to look far to find more examples of the lived reality of a post-Roe America. In September, a Louisiana woman with an unviable pregnancy was forced to travel 1400 miles to New York for an abortion. Speaking on Louisiana’s law, she stated: “I [would have] to carry my baby to bury my baby.” For the many who simply cannot afford to travel out-of-state, extraordinary measures have been considered. One such example, proposed by OB-GYN Meg Autry, comes in the form of a floating abortion clinic in the Gulf of Mexico. The use of international waters would bypass state jurisdiction, providing, according to Autry, “an option for patients who don’t have other options.”
Demonstrations of the remarkable measures women are taking to maintain their bodily autonomy highlight the necessity of safe and legal abortion access. As the International Planned Parenthood Federation outlined: “We know for a fact that banning abortion does not mean fewer abortions and that when abortion bans are enacted, pregnant people die… those who cannot access safe abortion care legally [will be] forced into unregulated and unsafe methods.”
Overturning Roe has undeniably pushed the United States several steps backwards in the fight against inequality. Almost two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the decision, but the high probability of a Republican congress come January makes it unlikely that lawmakers will act to codify Roe. That being said, the fallout of the Dobbs’ decision has raised some serious questions about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, and resistance is powerful.
A democracy should reflect the will of the people. Hopefully, this reckoning of the power imbalances hindering our political and judicial systems will push the United States to become a country that actually deserves the label - one that respects and protects the beliefs, values, and rights of its general population instead of the select few.