Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today to decide whether to allow the Mississippi law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks. Chief Justice Roberts appears to believe that “reasonable restrictions” on when abortion is legal, may be appropriate. I beg to differ.
The real issue, rarely acknowledged in the 50-year-old battle for women's rights, is that this is a human rights issue, not a political issue. The question is whether the government should have the right to tell a woman to have a child, even if she chooses not to. It shouldn’t matter whether the woman is six weeks pregnant or 16 weeks pregnant. The determining factor is who should make that decision — and there is no precedence or logic that says anyone other than the person carrying that child should make that call.
The underlying reason for religious zealots to say the government should decide is their belief that a fetus deserves to live — even at the expense of the physical and mental well-being of the mother. They like to refer to this as “right to life” but it’s not — it’s right to birth. Once the unwanted child is born, it is not the religious zealots who rush to care for it. Once the child is born, the only assistance they consistently offer is to take the child from the mother, who has carried it for nine months in her body, and raise it to become another religious zealot. There is zero concern for the life, quality of life, or mental health of the mother.
Religious zealots like to say the fetus is “innocent” but what about the mother? With no exceptions for rape or incest, the implication is that the mothers in these scenarios are all guilty — guilty of something that justifies taking away their right to make decisions about their own bodies and their own families. What crime are they guilty of?
Ah, they had sex without wanting a child. Is that it? It must be. They conveniently forget that she may have been raped, which means she had sex by force — not choice. She’s still guilty. Even if the pregnancy is the result of incest, it’s still her fault. Why else take away her rights in favor of the so-called innocent fetus?
What’s even more illogical is the conservative resistance to providing financial support to what they like to call “welfare mothers.” This is the derogatory term for women who have children they can not afford and are forced to rely on government assistance to survive.
We all know birth control is fallible, so we can’t assume the women who have children they can’t afford to raise are all taking advantage of welfare — but even if they were, wouldn’t a religious zealot committed to repealing Roe V Wade and forcing all pregnancies to be carried to term want to give assistance to the child? Logic would say so, but logic is not part of the discussion for religious zealots.
How does it make sense to elevate the rights of a fetus with no lived experience above the life of a woman who has family, friends, co-workers, and a community of people who have established relationships with her? How is it better to take away a woman’s right to self-determination in favor of bringing a new child into the world under circumstances so dire that the mother has chosen to end that life?
Think about what those circumstances might be. Think hard, because until you have been pregnant and must make that choice, there is no way you can understand it. Therefore, logically, there is no way anybody other than the mother should ever make that choice — regardless of the individual circumstances, how far along the pregnancy is, or any other consideration.
Why do we insist on medical proxies before family members can make medical choices on behalf of another family member? It’s a violation of their basic human rights to do otherwise. Therefore, logically, there is no reason for anybody to make a decision about abortion except the person who is pregnant — unless women don’t deserve the same human rights as men.
Whether it’s due to religious zealotry, or misogyny, the real reason right-wing political hacks are promoting restrictions to abortions and/or the repeal of Roe V Wade, logic is absent.
If SCOTUS supports either the Mississippi law or chooses to overturn Roe V Wade entirely, it will prove one thing: America is no longer a democracy — and human rights, mean nothing — unless you’re a man.