It is to say that violence against women, like restrictions on what women can do with their reproductive lives, is a tool of misogynist dominance. That isn’t to say that anti-abortion laws cause violence. In countries with the strictest anti-abortion laws, women face pervasive violence from men. The world’s most “pro-life” nations show us what could be in store. If abortion is outlawed, every indication is that more women, and certainly more doctors, will wind up behind bars. have already jailed women over suspected abortions. Wade Is Overturned, Our Clinic Will Stop Providing Abortions Immediately.
Others won’t know how to find help or where to look.
Other women, fearful of the law but desperate to not be pregnant and too scared or ashamed to ask for help, will take matters into their own hands. One estimate suggests that maternal mortality might increase by as much as 21% if abortion is outlawed nationwide. Some of those women will die because of that lack of choice. The criminalization of abortion will in and of itself discourage some women from pursuing abortion procedures, and those women will carry pregnancies to term against their wishes, making them more likely to be stuck in poverty and tied to abusive men.
Those of us who have reported on abortion rights and access, and women’s rights more broadly, know just how high the stakes are. aren’t surprised, although many of us are devastated and angry.
Those of us who have followed the long arc of reproductive-rights law in the U.S. Wade, the 1973 case that legalized abortion for American women.
There was a woman whose name I don’t know, but whose story I heard again and again in a Bangladeshi camp full of Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar – to end an unwanted pregnancy, she put a red-hot brick on her stomach, searing off her flesh.Ī leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion suggests that the Court is poised to overturn Roe v. There was Silvana, raped as a child during Colombia’s civil war, who starved herself into a miscarriage. There was Anita, the pseudonym for a woman who fled war in South Sudan and was forced into sex by her husband even after a doctor told them another pregnancy too soon could kill her she self-induced an abortion and nearly paid with her life. There was a girl I called Sofia when I wrote about her, also in Honduras, forced to have a child as a 12-year-old rape victim. Read More: Inside Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic-and the Biggest Fight for Abortion Rights in a GenerationĪlma was far from the only woman I’ve met whose body has borne the weight of abortion bans. Through both abortion restrictions and endemic violence, women hear one message: Your body isn’t yours. Sexual violence is commonplace, and women are barred from a basic tool to prevent pregnancy after rape, and then potentially jailed if they end an unwanted one. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.In Honduras, abortion is outlawed, along with emergency contraception. Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers Other steps you can take to protect your children are: More information about the RTA Label and compatible services can be found here. Parental tools that are compatible with the RTA label will block access to this site. We use the "Restricted To Adults" (RTA) website label to better enable parental filtering. Protect your children from adult content and block access to this site by using parental controls. PARENTS, PLEASE BE ADVISED: If you are a parent, it is your responsibility to keep any age-restricted content from being displayed to your children or wards. Furthermore, you represent and warrant that you will not allow any minor access to this site or services. This website should only be accessed if you are at least 18 years old or of legal age to view such material in your local jurisdiction, whichever is greater. You are about to enter a website that contains explicit material (pornography).