Today marks the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationcapsize Roe v. Wade and the legal standards that have governed abortion in the United States for decades. Much can be said about the impact of this decision, from direct changes to state abortion laws to its impact on politics, its failure to actually reduce the number of abortions, or to create new avenues in the war on drugs. But today I want to focus on a change that is somewhat obvious but often overlooked: Dobbs Shifting the focus of the abortion debate back to female life, not just the life of any potential offspring they carry.
two years later Dobbs As this decision is implemented, Americans appear to be increasingly concerned about how abortion bans affect women’s physical health, including those with: wanted Pregnant.
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preDobbs Discourse
For as long as I can remember, abortion discussions in the United States have focused on the fetus and the fertilized egg. When did they gain personality? When do they feel things? How early is their heartbeat? When can they survive outside the womb?
The anti-abortion movement’s most common slogans focus on the fetus, telling us that “abortion is murder” and “abortion stops the heart.” To the extent that women on the anti-abortion side participate in this debate, they are often victims and dupes – deceived by evil “abortionists” and Planned Parenthood workers against their own moral intuitions or best interests. We’re seeing a lot of focus on rules like pre-abortion ultrasounds and waiting periods, which are premised on the assumption that women having abortions don’t understand what they’re doing, or haven’t taken the time to think clearly.
On the pro-life side (yes, I realize these binary labels are pretty imperfect), we hear a lot about women needing to choose – to decide when and if to become mothers, and to control their own reproductive destiny. We heard about the many important reasons women choose to have abortions, and the need to destigmatize this choice.
If abortion is illegal, the potential risks to women’s health and lives are undoubtedly part is the focus of this discussion, but arguably not the central focus of the discussion about why abortion should be legal. When the focus is on the dangers to women’s lives, it is often framed as an issue of the dangers women face through illegal abortions.
Dobbs changed everything.
Concentrate risk on pregnant women
in a Dobbs Across the world, the physical dangers of pregnancy and the need to counteract those dangers through abortion have become perhaps the most central theme in advocacy against abortion bans.
Increasingly, we hear of women with serious and sometimes life-threatening pregnancy complications being denied abortions, forced to wait until their condition worsens before their doctor feels comfortable declaring an abortion is okay, or going through complex court processes to obtain permission to have an abortion.
Abortion as a treatment for emergency complications during pregnancy is at the heart of a Supreme Court case that will be decided soon.
Countless articles detail how abortion bans have negatively impacted pregnancy care, sometimes putting women “on the brink of death,” as an ABC News article put it, as well as the care of women who have had miscarriages.
I recently interviewed a number of people who identify as pro-life or are personally pro-life but who oppose abortion bans. What comes up again and again is the concern that these bans endanger the health and lives of women for whom abortion is a medical necessity and interfere with decisions that should be made between women and their doctors. People I spoke to (whose stories I will tell in future articles) believe that efforts to reduce the number of elective abortions must be done through means other than abortion bans because these bans pose too great a risk to pregnant women , and sometimes desperately want children.
Although bans often include exceptions for emergencies, hospitals and doctors can be anxious and overly cautious in interpreting emergencies and non-emergency situations, putting pregnant women in dangerous situations.
paradigm shift
Reproductive freedom advocates have long warned that things like this meeting It happens, but assumptions often don’t make headlines or capture people’s consciousness. The fact that there are now well-documented stories of such incidents occurring seems to have turned the tables dramatically.
A new CBS News poll finds that the message that abortion bans put pregnancy care at risk resonates with a majority of Americans. Some 67% said they were concerned that abortion bans would mean pregnant women may be at greater risk, and 61% were concerned that reproductive health care might be harder to access.
91% of Democrats, 65% of independents and 41% of Republicans are concerned that the ban will put pregnant women at risk. 88% of Democrats, 59% of independents and 33% of Republicans are concerned that the ban will make it difficult to access reproductive care.
Americans are faced with the reality of who will be punished or put at risk by abortion bans, and it’s not just the worst travesty of callous and irresponsible women. Not even just those who choose abortion amid widespread sympathy. This is true for anyone who is pregnant. This is a woman who wants to get pregnant. Women are already grieving miscarriages or fatal problems with their fetuses. Those who have done everything in the normal way are still ultimately faced with a choice between their own lives and continuing with the pregnancy, and may not even be able to survive.
To be sure, similar circumstances do not explain the circumstances of most people seeking abortions. But the past few years have shown us that they’re not uncommon either. The more Americans hear about the hoops women in these situations are forced to go through to get abortions, or are sent to death’s door before they can get life-saving care, the deeper the practical implications of abortion bans become. Rethink what these bans really mean.
More sex and tech news
• New legislation would repeal parts of the Comstock Act, a Victorian-era law that made mailing any drug that could be used to induce an abortion or anything “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or despicable” items are criminalized. But while the text of the bill has not yet been released, its sponsors say it would repeal only those parts of the law that apply to abortion.
• To deliver new AI services, companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google “will need more persistent and intimate access to our data than before,” noted New York Times Columnist Brian X. Chen. Will people feel comfortable handing it over?
• enjet Explores those who took Meta to small claims court over their Facebook and Instagram accounts being deleted.
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