The Danger of No More Roe v. Wade

I couldn't come up with a clever title because this topic is too important for a pun or some play on words.

The Supreme Court has voted to overturn Roe v. Wade according to a draft written by Justice Alito (Politico). This court case eventually led to the ruling that a woman has the right to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction.

This is an opinion piece, and a more informational piece can be found here.

There are a number of reasons why this is bad. First, this historical case changed US history just under 50 years ago. It’s given women the right to their own bodies, and decisions surrounding them. Taking this away just goes to show that so many lawmakers see women as second class citizens. Not even allowing half the population control over their own bodies?

And the other options pro-lifers give aren’t even realistic. Why not just put the baby up for adoption? Okay, so first, that’s nine months of changes to your body. Irreversible changes. The hormonal, physical, mental, emotional changes. Your organs move for the baby, your hormones are changed permanently. And during childbirth? Tearing, ripping, changes in blood pressure, breathing, heart rate. Hours and hours of pain and a million ways you can be permanently hurt or even killed.

The amount of changes you need to make in your life during pregnancy is also a factor. Your diet needs to change. Taking more calcium, vitamin D, vitamin B, iron, and protein. All these are needed to help your fetus grow strong and with minimal issues. Not everyone can afford a diet that is best for a fetus. You also need to stop eating certain things for the health of the fetus. Undercooked or raw fish, meat, or eggs. Processed and organ meat is also a no. Careful what produce you eat, unwashed or raw is not okay. Drinks? Say goodbye to coffee and wine. Another no is unpasteurized milk, cheese, and fruit juice. This is just scraping the surface. So who’s paying for this new diet? How can you ensure all these mothers are properly taking care of their bodies?

I haven’t even gotten into the medical part of pregnancy. Checkups, ultrasounds, prenatal vitamins. This also costs money. Are you going to pay for that? Because I can guarantee these women you’re forcing to become mothers aren’t going to want to. Or maybe they aren't even able to. Healthcare in the US is not going to help these women either. You want these babies to be born? How can you make sure they’re developing healthily or safely?

Alright, so this baby is born. The mother has permanent changes to her body, and is probably in severe debt. Now we give this child up for adoption. The mother can go through a private adoption or the baby can go to foster care. Hopefully the child can go to the perfect family the first time but that’s not often the case.

My mother is a social worker, and she works for DHS and CPS. So I hear a lot about children in the foster care system. Infants and toddlers are favored, and once a child is “too old,” it’s harder for them to stay in a foster home. Even if the baby is able to immediately go to a foster family, it's incredibly unlikely that they will stay in that home for long, and so many children don't have a stable home life for the entirety of their pre pubescent years. Foster home conditions are often poor and overcrowded, as many foster parents do it only for the money. There are currently 400,000 children in the foster care system, and adding more is not going to help. The industry is underpaid and understaffed. And within those staff, it’s hard to find social workers that are truly empathetic to the situations they deal with.

Using adoption as a catch-all solution without actually thinking about the process is dangerous for both mothers and children. Taking away safe medical abortions will hurt both these parties even more.

Criminalizing abortion doesn’t prevent abortions, it prevents safe abortions.

Abortions will never stop happening. Taking away safe methods only puts mothers in danger. Women will still attempt abortions in more dangerous ways. The coat hanger jokes are more than that, it’s a reality to many desperate people, and it kills.

If you still support this decision of SCOTUS, I need you to ask yourself, are you really pro-life? Or are you pro controlling women? Because the life of the mother and child become much more in danger if you take away that woman’s life to terminate her pregnancy before the baby is born, and ultimately forced into a horrible system with no escape.