The U.S. is Going Off the Deep End — Part II
Gun ownership is a civil right; a woman’s bodily autonomy is not
Hello again, America.
We’ve talked before about how life over there is getting increasingly crazy. You should know that we’re not trying to shame you. It’s not us Europeans getting all colonially condescending on you. The U.S., for all its faults (and they are many) is still a symbol of “the West” as we call it, the ideal of a modern, democratic country to which we all aspire.
It’s just that the “modern” part seems to be fading and threatening to also take the “democratic” part with it. One thing we’ve always admired about you is your justice system. Certainly a lot more than your electoral one. The fact that it’s more democratic than the average European, appointment-based justice system and the many landmark decisions that serve as precedents and often “update” the law with rulings that are grounded in real-world situations and not some abstract legal theory, gave your democracy more prestige than you can imagine.
And that’s because an independent justice system is the best safeguard of democracy. But your Supreme Court judges are still effectively appointed by the government.
And now your Supreme Court killed one of these landmark decisions, Roe v. Wade. Right on the heels of this other weird ruling, which effectively permits concealed handgun carry in the state of New York without a demonstrable need to do so. Ironically, this includes the city of Buffalo, where one of the two biggest mass shootings of last month took place. Not that it matters. The shooter used a legally acquired AR-15 style rifle, not a handgun, which he likely modified himself.
The ruling itself is less important than the message behind it. Your guns are safe, no matter what. The Senate might be pushing for somewhat more strict controls, but we will oppose them — even those barely adequate measures.
How is it that gun ownership is a sacrosanct civil right in America, even though it costs lives, but abortion isn’t? It’s the country where a man can shoot two women over a bad sandwich, while the child of one of the victims witnessed the shooting because his mother likely couldn’t afford proper daycare. It’s the country that will allow an obviously mentally unstable man to carry a weapon but not provide a working woman with the proper means to raise her child after it has been born.
I’m not the first to make this comment, but it bears repeating: It seems that the Supreme Court is more protective of the rights of the unborn, rather than the rights of the living. Including actual children.
You know what? We might have given you the benefit of the doubt if, along with repealing Roe v. Wade, the conservatives in the U.S. pushed for things such as better welfare support for single mothers and struggling families, improved daycare access, and taking steps to somehow stop this inexplicable increase in maternal mortality since the ‘80s, and the huge disparity in said mortality rate between Black and white women.
There’s a lot of talk about improving adoption procedures, from what I’ve heard. There’s very little about improving the chance of mothers surviving childbirth. Of course, the increase in maternal mortality is not so inexplicable, after all. The data is there for anyone who cares to look:
The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries. Obstetrician-gynecologists (ob-gyns) are overrepresented in its maternity care workforce relative to midwives, and there is an overall shortage of maternity care providers (both ob-gyns and midwives) relative to births. In most other countries, midwives outnumber ob-gyns by severalfold, and primary care plays a central role in the health system. Although a large share of its maternal deaths occur postbirth, the U.S. is the only country not to guarantee access to provider home visits or paid parental leave in the postpartum period.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development confirms this:
Apart from the healthcare-system deficiencies, and given the notoriously high healthcare costs in the U.S., is it any wonder that people skip unpaid leave or cut corners when it comes to maternity and postpartum care? Is it any wonder that mothers rush back to work, even though there are signs that their health has been compromised?
Did you know that mothers can die from complications related to childbirth up to a year later? Did you know that Black women are six times as likely to develop postpartum cardiomyopathy (the primary cause of late postpartum death) compared to White women? And even for them, statistics are not stellar. In most European countries, the number of maternal deaths per 100.000 live births is in the single digits. For white American women, the numbers for 2020 (13.7) are comparable to those of China. It’s twice that (26.5) for Native Americans (including Alaskans). For Black women (41.4) the numbers are well above those of Azerbaijan.
Women in the U.S. will no longer have an option to avoid childbirth, even if they wanted to, even if a pregnancy is deemed life-threatening. Or a product of rape or incest. Not only that, but some conservatives are considering strengthening legislation that could hold women accountable not just for abortions, but even for miscarriages.
Allowing random people to drag women in court for seeking abortions, like bounty hunters? Enforcing c-sections on women who wish to give birth naturally? Imprisoning women for miscarriages? And now opening the door to banning abortions altogether?
What the hell are you doing, America?
If the U.S. was a country that championed free public health and generous social policies, we might still not agree with the spirit of the SCOTUS ruling, but at least we’d see some honesty in the “pro-life” mentality.
But the richest country in the world shows an unwillingness to protect the lives of children at school and a callous indifference towards the up-to-13 million children who might at any given day go hungry.
Yes, we know you’re the land of the free, America, and that these policies we have in Europe are too “socialist” for your tastes. You value your freedom to bear arms, even if it kills innocents, to pull yourselves from your own bootstraps, even if it demonstrably leads to a declining life expectancy, maternal mortality, and overall diminishing quality of life. After all, guns will protect you from your government, if it turns tyrannical and tries to control your life. Isn’t that the deeper meaning of the Second Amendment?
Unless, of course, you’re a woman. In which case, the state has every right to control what you do with your life and your womb, while offering none of the assistance that every other developed country on the planet deems essential.
A teenager can shoot and kill two people in a riot and go free, but a woman can’t even have a miscarriage or terminate a pregnancy that was a product of rape without the danger of facing imprisonment for manslaughter on top of her personal tragedy.
Freedom is for white men with guns. Exactly the way it was in the good ol’ days of the 19th century.
