Texas Abortion Ban Won’t Stop Abortions
History will always remind us of the future
Abortion bans do not prevent abortions, they only change how women seek to have them. Think about that. We forget how common illegal abortions were before the 1973 Supreme Course decision — Roe v. Wade — which legalized abortions nationally.
During the year 1967, in North Carolina alone, nearly 1,000,000 women had an illegal or self-induced abortion. This number changes by state, but we know illegal abortions happened, and they happened often.
Texas Abortion Ban and History
The Texas Heartbeat Act, otherwise known as the Texas Abortion Ban, prevents women with unwanted pregnancies from access to a procedure to end their pregnancy once a fetal heartbeat is detected. This is usually around six weeks gestation, and before most women know they are pregnant.
Women’s constitutional rights to have an abortion are still intact, meaning they have a right to an abortion. However, it is now illegal to perform an abortion in the Lone Star State post the detection of cardiac activity.
We know, despite this ban, women will continue to have abortions. A law may make them illegal, but the law does not stop them, it only seeks to prevent them.
This was made clear through a different abortion ban in Texas during 2004. The state required all abortions after 15 weeks gestation to be performed in a hospital or surgical center. This resulted in a threefold increase in Texas residents seeking late-term abortions outside the state, according to a study in the Journal of Health Economics. Women did not stop getting abortions post 15 weeks gestation. Instead, they drove, in some cases, 100s of miles to a neighboring state to terminate their pregnancies legally.
We can look further at history to remind us of how women before 1973 ended unplanned pregnancies. They sought illegal abortions. Often in seedy clinics or through the help of someone who knew someone who performed these risky procedures when not performed in the safety of a sterile medical setting.
These types of illegal abortions often came at a substantial risk. The Center for Disease Control noted between the years 1942 and 1972, more than 75 percent of abortion deaths were associated with criminal procedures.
Women have always found a way to have an abortion, legal or illegal. Whether we are pro-choice or pro-life, we have to understand this, abortions will never stop, this will never change. How we as a society handle them and the safety of those seeking them is what changes.
The Inequality of the Unintended Pregnancy
In 2011, 45 percent of pregnancies were unintended, according to the CDC. This number jumps to a whooping 75 percent for teens ages 15–19 years old. During this same year, 42 percent of unintended pregnancies ended in abortion, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Unintended pregnancies are higher in low-income women whose income is less than 200 percent of the poverty level, between the ages of 18–24 and for women of color, according to a study posted in the American Journal of Public Health. Unintended pregnancies were lowest among high-income, white, college graduate women.
With a high proportion of teens and low-income women having unintended pregnancies, how will this new ban affect this group of young people and marginalized women, especially those of color? We talk of equality and equity as a nation, yet this ban does not serve that purpose. No, it does the opposite. For when a child is born, it will make a difference in the social-economic standing of the family and that child’s potential to succeed in life.
Researchers from Stanford Law School and University of Chicago suggest crime fell 20 percent between 1997 and 2014 due to legalized abortion. In their words, “the cumulative impact of legalized abortion on crime is roughly 45%, accounting for a very substantial portion of the roughly 50–55% overall decline from the peak of crime in the early 1990s.” They concluded unwanted children were “at an elevated risk for less favorable life outcomes on multiple dimensions, including criminal involvement.”
So Many Questions and Final Thoughts
If we know women will continue to have abortions, then how will this play out in Texas? Will they leave the state to have them or will they, like so many women before them, seek the help of a trained or untrained person and risk their lives to end their unwanted pregnancies. What will the parents of children who become pregnant do? What will the children do? The victims of rape? The victims of incest? The mother who has been told her unborn child has no chance of survival? The family whose economic situation can not bear the load of another child? Will we force them to have these children and expect them to put them up for adoption? Will we force them to have these children and support their decision to sign up for state assistance? Will we not then frown at them for not being able to take care of their children and relying on “help”? How will this affect them? How will this affect us?
I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg here. The story goes deeper and is an age-old argument we have yet to find a common ground on. It forces us to think about the rights and potential of woman and child, poor and rich, black and white. It forces us to question the here and now and not much less the future. It forces us to ask what is right and what is wrong. It forces us to face the fact that no law will ever prevent abortions. How do we as a society adjust to this, which issue do we choose to address then?
