Heartbeats and Heartache: Abortion and the Fight for our Lives
Over the past two months, Ohio, Georgia, and Missouri have recently passed stricter versions of their own abortion bills – referred to popularly as “heartbeat bills” – which ban abortion after a heartbeat can be detected in a fetus (often at about six weeks and well before most women even know they are pregnant). Last Tuesday, Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed into law the nation’s strictest abortion law. It bans all abortion except in the case of “serious” health risks to the mother. This law is explicitly positioned to be appealed, which would set it on a trajectory to be heard in the United States Supreme Court. The bill’s sponsor, Republican Representative Terry Collins, said, “The bill is about challenging Roe v. Wade.” While the Supreme Court can select the cases it hears in each session, the recent proliferation of abortion-related legislation increases the likelihood that one of these cases will reach the highest court in the land, on which a majority of conservative judges currently sit.
Even conservative pundits have levied criticism against the Alabama bill, saying that it is too rigid and will not bring about the desired challenge to Roe. Others have attempted to provide clarity about the law amidst a melee of misinformation and to let people know that abortion clinics remain open until at least January 1, 2020. Individuals and institutions are fighting to overturn the Alabama law (and those like it) before it reaches the Supreme Court.
I thought long and hard about writing on this topic this week. Frankly, I’m afraid I’ll say something wrong and there’s a good chance I disappoint, grieve, and offend some readers. I thought about avoiding the topic in favor of something more explicitly related to education. But I think this legislative strategy and its real life outcomes are, in fact, related to education and the reasons I care about education, leadership, and gender. Below, I try to parse some of my thinking on exactly how they are related and why this moment matters so much.
Advocating for the good life across the span of life. I recognize the complexity of language and labels here so I’m borrowing Amartya Sen’s conception of life as the capability of building for oneself a life you deem worthy of living. Education is a vehicle by which individuals may have access to more choices and more freedom. I believe the same about housing, health care, work, worship, and relationships. The Alabama abortion bill is about control, particularly of women and of people with uteruses. Despite the pro-life rhetoric that surrounds the bill, the logic is inconsistent. If it were truly about flourishing, we would see a simultaneous push for other laws which protect life and make it worth living: housing, health care, nutrition, infrastructure, recreation, education, family reunification, pathways to citizenship, and job training. Those efforts are absent. The purported rationale for the Alabama bill is a lie.
Sex education is also education. I want abortions to be rare, but in order to be rare, they have to be safe and legal. Numerous sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported that the number of abortions reached an all-time low since Roe became law in 1973 and is half of the rate in 1980. Two specific reasons include improved access to contraception and reduced teenage sexual activity. These outcomes, then, are directly related – that is, as close to causal as this kind of research can get - to the clarity and availability of accurate information about sexual activity and access to contraceptives. Again, if Alabama lawmakers really wanted to continue to reduce the numbers of abortions, they would advocate for more sex education and more access to healthcare, particularly for women. Anti-abortion laws, in conjunction with reduced alternatives and reduced education, are in fact likely to drive up the abortion rate.
Women will die. The hashtag #youknowme trended on Twitter last week as women poured out their stories of needing and obtaining abortions. The point of the hashtag was to highlight that women and people who choose to terminate pregnancies are our neighbors, friends, coworkers, clergy, and family members. The pain was palpable. The decisions were never easy. The individuals who experience that pain and make the decisions are, in fact, people we know. Women bore that psychological pain publicly in order to make a case for reasonable treatment under the law. But we also know that women’s physical pain is more often downplayed by medical professionals, that the maternal mortality rate among Black women is staggering, and that Black women die in childbirth at three to four times the rate of white women. As the New York Times reported yesterday, abortion saves lives, especially those of poor women and minoritized women for whom pregnancy itself is a serious health risk. This reality, paired with systematic exclusion from and restriction within access to health care, means that access to legal, safe abortion is essential.
What we can do. The problems here are nuanced and layered. However, we are all capable to taking steps to keep women safe through access to the range of choice-oriented healthcare. (As a sidenote, much of my family is from the south and I implore us all to avoid reductionist, belittling descriptions of the south and southerners. If we claim to advocate for life, we necessarily advocate for the dignity of all people – no matter where they live.) Let us know in the comments how you’re supporting this effort and what resources you have found useful.
Donate to local, pro-choice organizations such as the Yellowhammer fund, which provides funding to eliminate barriers to abortion in Alabama.
Fight voter suppression and elect legislators who are explicitly pro-choice but also pro-healthcare, pro-affordable housing, pro-living wage, and pro-education.
Identify and support organizations that fight poverty and inequality. In Alabama, consider the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise and Alabama Arise.
-Lauren