Elites Stomp on Women’s Hope and Dignity
Blinded by the Lack of Educational Services on the Topic of Abortion
My mother always said, “Don’t be stupid like those other girls!” What she meant most of the time was, “Don’t get pregnant and ruin and your life!” Other mistakes seemed to pass by but the mistake of getting pregnant was always so looked down on ever since I was a teen, it turned to a point where I completely believed that making this mistake was really just stupid. Although the truth is, in our media, families, and schools, there is not a proper educational platform on why abortion is an important topic to discuss. A national survey of OB-GYN clerkship directors in 126 medical schools showed that even in medical school, there is not a particular necessity to learn about abortion where the survey’s results were:
Most of us live by thinking it is as simple as choosing pro-life or pro-choice based on what their surroundings say; it is because of the lack of education.
There is currently a law called the Hyde amendment that declares the prohibition of using federal funds to support any woman receiving an abortion except in cases of incest, rape, or endangerment of the life of the pregnant woman. Previoously, I thought the Hyde amendment made sense. I thought, “Why do people like me, who are being smart by using contraceptives or choosing abstinence have to pay for people who are not being smart? Why won’t people just learn their lesson by having to pay the cost of raising that child? Where are these women putting their priorities on? It’s not like they are going to die from celibacy.” I thought it was a bright decision that the government passed this amendment. Federal funds can be used for different causes like for people who are starving. In return, there will always be people that can financially support those women’s abortions through the National Network of Abortion Funds. Although after learning about how many abortions are surprisingly requested by women who are already married and have a child to support, lots of thoughts have changed and shifted especially when I put my feet in those women’s shoes.
The Hyde amendment affects the 42% of all the women who want an abortion. They are under the poverty level so before they got pregnant, problems like being under-insured and not being able to receive birth control pills were already in action. After getting pregnant, there is always a delay in abortions from the 24 hour — 72 hour waiting period and because of the amount of time women/families need to raise the abortion fund. Knowing that women on the South side are suffering from the situations they are in, having to come up with money that they do not have, makes the impression to lose hope and dignity to strive for a better life. It also affects women through the influence that states have picked up through this law. The state of South Dakota doesn’t even have the exceptions that the Hyde amendment presents like the cases of rape and incest. In the end, I believe it is ultimately the woman’s choice what she wants to do to her body.
This amendment is difficult to see in any public platform and especially difficult to see for those who are not interested to begin with. Our media is being controlled by the elite, comprised by educational institutions like universities, the government, and huge corporations, making it problematic and nearly impossible to see real damages that poor women are facing to live a normal decent life. We see a pattern in the media that these girls get pregnant by having a one night stand drunk, but we never see a scene of a poor married couple that used contraceptives but somehow still gets pregnant and has to face the horrible debate of keeping or aborting their child due to financial reasons and etc. Walter Lippman, a respected journalist says that we are giving a “manufacture of consent” from the elite swaying the public’s decisions by making the other possibility as irrelevant as possible. They do not like to see these kinds of hardworking poor women in the media because people will start to see the fault in the Hyde amendment and try to fight it and the federal government will have to start spending money on people trying to get an abortion.
The conclusion is that because of the lack of education that majority receives, we continue to believe that people who need these abortions are irresponsible and “bad” but the reality is that it is so much more complicated. There are plenty of women who deserve to choose what they want to do with their body whether they are poor or rich. Nobody’s hope or dignity should be on the line for any matter including on abortion.
