Written by: Arishita Gupta. Edited by Giana Graziano.
A woman ducks into a phone booth and slides a coin into the slot. Instinct tells her to look around and make sure that no one overhears her conversation, but rationale tells her to act as if nothing is amiss. She looks forward, steadying her shaking hand.
“I’m calling for Jane,” she says into the phone. What she was really calling was an undercover collective providing women in need of abortions amateur resources to get them. Resources that could be anyone, from doctors who charged soaring fees to exploit the women in need to housewives and women who performed unqualified abortions on their own. Resources that women settle for when they live in places that do not protect their fundamental reproductive freedoms.
Another woman opens a tab in incognito mode to look up “how to get an abortion at home.” She is met with several resources, from holistic methods and herbs to Reddit forums that inform users about abroad medications. Whether these methods have been proven to be safe or whether they’ll interact with her well isn’t the primary concern: how she can get them without getting caught by society or her circle is.
The first story is from 1971, two years before the passage of the landmark case Roe v. Wade, a decision that applied the right to privacy to a pregnant person’s right to choose. The second is from December 2020, due to several states in the South passing laws that limited access to abortion care.
The only real difference between the two is the technology being used to find resources. The secrecy, fear, and danger continue to exist in a country that deems itself progressive and liberating in front of others. Thirty years later, the challenges that people with uteruses face in determining what happens to their own bodies are all the same.
America’s history of limiting reproductive freedoms is fraught with recurring battles. These disputes over to what degrees these freedoms are given change only slightly in dexterity every single time they rise to American courthouses and legislative assemblies, which tend to be dominated by those who do not personally know the complexities of childbirth but are well aware of the power they have in subjugating pregnant people. Decisions regarding who can use contraception, who can get an abortion, and how they can afford it are all decisions that have been made by the highest court in our land, comprised entirely of cisgender males.
The most recent nail in the coffin of autonomy is none other than Texas’s SB8, which took effect this month after being passed by over half of the state’s senate. Its breadth in punishing both pregnant people and anyone who chooses to side with them has classified it as one of the harshest bans to exist.
SB8 effectively bans all abortions in the state once the embryo reaches the age of 6 weeks and allows private citizens to sue anyone who performs, aids or abets, or intends to aid or abet an abortion in civil courts. The number of weeks is touted by the law to be when a fetus’s heartbeat can first be heard but is a marketing gimmick more than anything else, used to resonate in the hearts of the bill’s proponents. The subjective reality of those six weeks is that most pregnant people will not know that they are even pregnant. The scientific reality, according to Dr. Nisha Verma, a fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is that a fetus’s heart is not developed in those six weeks and that any noises that come up on ultrasonic examinations are electronic pulses.
But is it so shocking to any one of us that a bill like this ignores science and reason? The issue of abortion is, by far, one of the most contentious to grace American politics-- a comparatively high bar. Its dispute is enduring because every time one argument against abortion is discredited, several others arise. These arguments undoubtedly say the same thing but use a different pulpit to speak from. The most argued view is always either the religious one or the “moral” one.
To discredit the religious is to raise the point that the supreme law of the land draws a line between the church and the state. Numerous Supreme Court cases have established this distinction, the most notable amongst them being Lemon v. Kurtzman, which created what is colloquially known as the Lemon Test. This three-prong test states that laws must be secular, not promote or hinder any religion, and must not encourage the government to excessively work with any religious organization. As such, no religious entity should be allowed to dictate what has already been allocated to the Constitutional right to privacy.
To discredit the moral argument is to ask: where do those morals stem from, and how far do they go? If those morals equate abortion to murder, do consider looking at what one defines a life. Is it when the heart beats first, which recent scientific breakthroughs have determined to not be at the supposed six-week mark? Is it when the brain or other vital organs develop?
Suppose one argues that life is genuinely at conception, where a baby is nothing more than an embryo or a clump of cells. Does that make catching an infection that kills off cells in the body or having a heart attack that destroys the cardiovascular cells also qualifies as murder? And if life begins at the moment those form, how do financial benefits and support factor into this status? What should be done about maintaining the future of pregnant people and children?
Moreover, what does a future in Texas, and other states that choose to enforce variations of this law, look like? A state that arms private citizens with the ability to sue and use courts to condemn any neighbor under the label of “murderer” appears to be a nod to witch trials that once graced Colonial America, where women were demonized for outlandish things that were often out of their control. Will we see a repeat of this? Something worse, or hopefully, something new and better altogether? The answer to these questions and all others associated with this ongoing debate unfortunately and undoubtedly lies in the hands of courts and legislators, the majority of whom will never be able to fathom the consequences their decisions make for those they refuse to let rise.
The aforementioned answer is touted as one that is unsure or difficult to answer. But it truly should be clear, if only by the recurrence of historical events that define themselves by dominating pregnant people. Whether we look to the 17th century or the 20th, the issues are still the same. Those in power, often cisgender, wealthy, white men, fear the ability of a pregnant person who is allowed to stand their ground and define themselves by more than their offspring. The answer is evident: to empower them and let them be as they are.
The fine print on this answer is that whether a person is allowed to decide for themself, is that permission does not matter. If the desire and need to make such a decision exists, it will be made, regardless of whether it is safe. Giving this permission is a formality, if that at all, as the right to choose will always exist.
[The views expressed in this article are those of the author and the author alone; they do not necessarily represent the views of all members of the first RULR Editorial Board and Rutgers University.]
