The End of Roe v Wade part 1

Ok, this has taken me a while to start and get down properly. See, I am a very passionate and emotional person but I know that can be off-putting at times. Now is not the time to put people off from the argument and the issue at hand, so I have done my very best to present facts and science and not get too worked up. But the issue is that this affects so much more than just a person being able to procure a safe and legal abortion; it affects women’s health and the health of the LGBTQ+ people all over the country. I am pro-choice, I am pro-people being able to choose what they do with their bodies, and overturning Roe v Wade will change and harm so many people beyond being able to end a pregnancy. Like I said, below I have outlined everything as factual and science-based as possible; there is so much debate on when life begins and who believes what, and here is why that doesn’t matter: your choices and beliefs do no get to dictate what others can or cannot do with their bodies. So let’s go through the facts and the actual laws that are being looked at and put into place. I intend to show and explain why this is all problematic, even for those who never wish to get an abortion or are never worried that they may end up in a position to need one. I also implore those who are pro-life to please read this to the very end. I have included as much medical and scientific research as possible and pulled as little from news sources as I could. I also would ask that everyone reading this remember to be incredibly compassionate: people get abortions for all kinds of reasons from all walks of life. They may live in a way or make a choice you do not understand, but they are none of your business and these people are still deserving of love, kindness, and compassion. Everyone deserves the right to make their own choices for their own bodies for their own reasons.

With all of that being said, let's dive in.

Being pro-life: Let’s start here. I am going to speak in some generalities and understand that people who are pro-life come from all walks of life and have come to this option in many different ways. This generality I am employing is going to be directed at politicians and those in power making these decisions. With that said, pro-life is not actually pro-life; it is pro-fetus. Pro-life advocates do not advocate for fiscal policy changes, governmental assistance, help for the mother after and during pregnancy, housing, jobs, and help with child care. The BMJ reports that people who get abortions for cost concerns and the inability to care for the child and themselves account for 70% of abortions. This piece even argues that someone choosing to get an abortion for financial reasons isn’t even a choice at all; these people feel forced and like there is no other option. While this is only one compilation of one study, and people get abortions for all kinds of reasons, it is important to look at the financial ramifications of having a child. Based on a study in 2015, a middle-income family would spend about $12,980 per child per year. Now mind you this is a simple estimation based on an average and does not account for the current inflation and housing crisis, the actual cost of pregnancy and birth, and does not account for any medical or special needs the child may have. This same study projected that raising a kid from the time they were out of the hospital to the time they are 17, would cost a middle-income family about $233,610. That is more than some people will make in their entire lifetime. Once again this does not account for the special needs of a child, or divorced parents, and assumes a middle-class income. This study is also very careful to explain that this can vary greatly depending on where the family lives and what resources are available to them (USDA).

There is no standard for maternity leave, paid leave, or anything else in the US. In 2020, they were able to estimate that about 31 million people in the US were uninsured. The same study also added a little later in 2020 that this number had likely increased due to the Covid 19 pandemic and the mass layoffs that occurred. This number has been steadily increasing over the years and without universal health insurance, this number is expected to keep going up (Policy Advice). In the US, it costs $30,000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth to $50,000 for a C-section without medical insurance. This does not account for complications, miscellaneous hospital fees, and prenatal care. Those numbers are much harder to find, but who among us could afford this out of pocket especially with all of the start-up costs of having a baby, on top of having to live life and the expenses of that (What to Expect)? This is also for one baby and does not account for the extra cost of having twins or triplets, etc. There is also no governmental assistance to new parents, especially if they are single parents. The NCSL has also done a very extensive study on how forced birth and no access to abortion perpetuates poverty and can even be the reason a parent and child can be sent into poverty. The woman is not cared for or supported once the child is born. She is left to struggle alone.

Making abortions illegal increases maternal death and botched abortions: I have seen a lot of speculation not grounded in fact circulating the internet about how abortions being made illegal will have no impact on maternal death or female injury, but this is simply not true. For starters, the US has the highest maternal death rate among the developed nations. This does not factor in any kind of abortion or procedure of that nature; this is simply women who die in America from complications that all other developed nations have somehow managed to fix. The last study was done in 2020 and estimates that 23.8 women die per 100,000 live births and these are due to preventable issues (CDC). This number has also continued to go up every year. This country cannot even keep the women alive who want to have these children.

There are many factors here, and one of them is that creating total abortion bans (which many states have created trigger laws for once Roe is overturned) is that the life of the mother will not be considered in the conversation of whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. This means that if a woman is having massive complications, an ectopic pregnancy, or any other life-threatening complications, the pregnancy will not be allowed to be terminated. So while mortality rates will go up from botched abortions, and unsafe abortions, there will also be a massive increase in maternal death from women who wanted and even planned for these pregnancies (CNN). This is a death sentence for so many women who have complications that need to have their pregnancy ended or their already dead child removed from them. The Guttmacher Institute has done extensive research and studies as well as gathered evidence on which states will enact these laws, and has shown that abortion will be banned for all reasons and miscarriages will be investigated to make sure the woman did not induce it. This could also lead to more maternal death as women will be afraid to be investigated and turned over to authorities when they go to the hospital to seek medical care. Complications in miscarriages will also likely lead to a higher mortality rate. I have linked this study below with all my other sources.

This does not include the likely spike we are to see in abortion-related death when women go back to back alleys and unsafe methods to induce abortions. Abortion rates actually go down when it is able to be accessed legally and safely, and drastically go up when there are heavy restrictions and bans on abortion and access to reproductive care and birth control (SciDev). If this is about being pro-life, then why are politicians so easily sentencing women to death?

Adoption is not the solution: This is a very common argument, one Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has even made, as to why people do not need to have an abortion. For all of the reasons I already listed above, many people cannot afford to even go through pregnancy in the first place, regardless of the cost of keeping the child. If a person just surrenders the child after the baby is born, they still have to pay for the costs of having a child. Not to mention the fact that having a baby is mentally, emotionally, and physically taxing and not a medical condition that everyone can shoulder. There are also many risk factors to the body of the person who is pregnant and not everyone can go through that to get to the endpoint where they would then give birth and give up the child. While having to raise a child is a big reason why people may not want to continue a pregnancy, some cannot even get to the point of giving up the baby.

On top of that, it costs roughly $40,000 to adopt one child from foster care. This does not look at people who go through private adoption attorneys or private adoption agencies; there are often extra fees associated with those situations and if prospective parents choose the child while still in utero, they often have to pay for the medical care of the mother. Now I do not think that is bad, or am saying that adoption is not a viable option for families and pregnant people to choose, but it should be a choice that both parties look through extensively and not a choice a pregnant person is forced into (Adopt Us Kids). In 2019, Children's Rights estimated that there were about 424,000 children in foster care waiting to be placed in permanent homes. The average age of a child in foster care is 8 years old, and most people looking to adopt are looking for young babies or toddlers to make their own families. 23,000 children will age out of the foster care system every year, with that number steadily going up every year, and 20% of those children who have aged out will immediately become homeless (NYFI). 7 out of 10 girls who were in the foster system will become pregnant before the age of 21 with at least one child, and then since they could potentially be on the street that is now a child being born homeless and most likely being taken and sent into the foster system. The cycle of poverty and mistreatment of these children perpetuates over and over again, making adoption or foster not a real solution.

Abortion for rape would not be allowed: I have seen many people sharing the fact that only 1% of abortions occur because of rape so it no longer being allowed to occur wouldn’t affect people that much but here is the thing: you do not have to state a reason for why you are getting an abortion so that stat of 1% only for rape is not accurate, in the same way, that we do not have an accurate statistic for how many women have actually been raped in this country due to the low level of reporting that occurs. This is for a variety of reasons but of them being the way that we see women treated for coming forward, and because rapists often see little to no jail time or any punishment for this incredibly heinous act. RAINN has a lot of information and resources on all of the trauma and pain a person can experience after being raped, and being forced to carry a pregnancy to term that was a result of that rape can be even more damaging and lead to a traumatic upbringing for that child as well. Most of the trigger laws on the books are also set to get rid of the medication Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill, which is yet another resource taken away from rape victims in their time of need.

The idea sex is a privilege and not a right: I have seen this also circulating heavily on social media and this is the only one I have included in this piece that is not based on concrete facts and evidence simply because this augment has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with someone’s philosophical ideals and religion which has no basis in the creation of laws. A person should never be forced into a sexual act, and there should be the age of consent at play, but aside from that sex is a biological human need that is a right and not a privilege. The image I included also says that people can just use condoms if they insist on having sex, but condoms are not 100% effective and many states who will be enacting total abortion bans also have laws ready that would make access to birth control illegal. I will be discussing these laws more in part 2.

I figured this had gone on long enough for part 1, so next week I will be coming out with the remainder of the research I have done and more information that just proves this is not actually about changing abortion laws and stopping abortions, it is about control over bodies that the white, male, politicians view as having too many freedoms. I hope you stayed to the end with an open mind, and are ready for part 2 next week!

Madey

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