Reproductive Rights are Women’s Rights
This women’s day, I encourage women to hold fiercely onto their rights.
This past September, Texas passed a law outlawing abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Private citizens are encouraged to sue medical providers who perform such task.
Not only does this effect all demographics of women but proportionately, African American women on a larger scale.
If you did not know before, African American women are among the highest in demographics effected by maternal mortality. This means black mothers are at a higher risk of dying during childbirth.
The CDC reported that black women experience maternal mortality at a rate two to three times higher than that of a white woman. This is due to the racial disparities in healthcare, and the health infrastructure in low-income communities.
More women will die as a result. Outlawing abortion will not keep them from happening, this will make them underground and unsafe. Abortion is healthcare, before it was legal and safe, abortions caused 1 in 6 pregnancy related deaths.
Conservatives who are against abortion believe that it is murder and believe that the supreme court's decision in Roe V. Wade (1973) was inhumane and against pro-life.
The question in this case was, does the constitution recognize a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy by abortion?
Ultimately, the supreme court reached the decision to protect pregnant women’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. This is the court ruling that made access to abortion safe and legal.
Texas’s Senate Bill will pave the way for other radical red states to mimic the decision to outlaw abortion.
This is the new reality as red states continue to sidestep the constitution violating women’s rights. You may ask yourself? How could a law ban something that is against the constitution? The Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett all have records of violating reproductive rights alongside three other justices who outlawed against abortion, this makes up more than half the justices serving in the supreme court.
Unfortunately, the act on women’s reproductive rights has taken a turn for the worst in the past three years to prevent avoidable deaths it is important for us to exercise our voting rights.
You can make an initiative by visiting state legislators that are pro-choice and stress the importance of voting to protect reproductive rights.
Women’s rights are reproductive rights, too, something we should have a major concern for. Unfortunately, anti-women right-wing politicians are slowly condemning the right to early pregnancy termination.
As women, our basic freedom is based on the ability to control our reproductive health, physical and mental well-being, financial resources, capacity to gain and maintain employment, and what we eat are all dependent on our reproductive choices.
“Reproductive choice is not only a dire issue concerning the rights of women and all people who may become pregnant, but one racial and economic justice. Limits on reproductive health services disproportionately impact black, black, and low-income communities, therefore upholding and perpetuating income inequality, and white supremacy” Said LWVUS Board president Dr. Deborah Ann Turner and LWV of Texas President Grace Chimene.
