In a world where so many different types of people are beginning to get embraced for their differences rather than exiled, I would think I could do what I wanted with my body. Still, for a woman in America, the window of legal abortions seems to be closing at an uneasily slow and horrifyingly quiet rate.
In September, the Texas law approved prohibited abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy. Where women are forced into pregnancy by the rich and thought of as merely an object of breeding and waiting on the rich, a considerable concern with the six-week cut-off is that many women would not show definitive signs of pregnancy until about eight weeks into their term. Many took to social media to express their outrage and fear and emphasize their denial of human rights. They posted various memes relating the current world to the dystopian society we see on Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
With places such as Latin America finally lifting abortion bans, using the basis of Row V Wade, they turn to their path pavers and are dumbfounded how the clock is turning backward for women in America as theirs continues to move forward.
On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House passed Senate Bill 612. The bill would make performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The person convicted also could face a $100,000 fine. Worsening the laws telling a woman what she can and can’t do with her body, citizens are allowed to sue anyone who assisted in aborting or had an illegal abortion carried out. States like Texas and Oklahoma do not allow exceptions for rape victims and results of incest.
Yesterday, U.S. Vice President Kamila Harris took to Twitter, going as far as to call the new abortion laws shameful. “The Oklahoma legislature advanced a shameful bill that would prohibit almost all abortions if put into effect. If signed, this bill will only prevent women from getting the health care they need.” Her outrage fired out more than one tweet about the unfairness and misogyny behind these new laws, “Right now, reproductive rights are under attack in states across our nation,”
So far, Colorado is the latest of the fourteen other states to protect abortion rights to combat the unlikely possibility of a national abortion ban. The new Reproductive Health Equity Act affirms that pregnant women in Colorado have the right to continue a pregnancy and give birth or have an abortion. It blocks public entities from denying or restricting that right.
Seeing the apparent division in viewpoints, many are left to fear wherein the rabbit hole the division will stop and where unity will begin. Although many believe that an all-out abortion ban is unlikely, especially with a female Vice President in office, now is the best time to strike while nobody’s looking.
As women continue to get stigmatized and forced to live their lives the way their government dictates, there will be an increase in poverty, an increase in Orphans, and an increase in childhood neglect. All of these increases have the potential to worsen a person’s quality of life.
