Texas women need to be given back their bodily autonomy. Senate Bill 8 which bans abortions, has taken away the rights of woman and her doctors to choose what medical decisions they make.
The death rate for newborns and infants has been on the rise since the ban was enacted in 2021.
In a study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, researchers found that when taking into account the data in Texas and the rest of the U.S.
“They found that between 2021 and 2022, infant deaths in Texas rose from 1,985 to 2,240, a year-over-year increase of 255 deaths.”
It’s not just baby deaths on the rise but instances of women being denied an abortion when their pregnancies are no longer viable or create a health complication.
Kate Cox, a Texas woman whose fetus was nonviable, went to the emergency room multiple times and was denied an abortion even after taking her case to the Texas Supreme Court, which rejected her two requests.
Cox ended up with severe medical complications, which may have resulted in her possibly having a uterine rupture or not being able to have more children in the future if she had not left the state to seek medical care.
There are exceptions on what actions do not violate the ban, such as when there is an extreme medical need that risks the mother’s life or if the victim was raped and wanted to terminate the pregnancy.
The problem is that the language is so vague that even the Texas Supreme Court cannot find where the threshold is for when a woman’s life is under immediate threat. It’s not just the courts but doctors who are also afraid of losing their license or their jobs if they perform an abortion. So, they are often waiting until women are in grave danger to step in and help her.
Cox and other women are resorting to leaving their states to get medical help from doctors in a state that hasn’t banned abortion yet.
This also opens the door for the possibility that women from some communities who cannot afford to leave their home state will bring back some archaic forms of home abortions, putting themselves at an increased risk of death and infection.
This issue goes beyond Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a 2022 supreme court case, that decided that the 14th Amendment does not protect a woman’s right to an abortion.
The Guttmacher Institute, a leading research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights worldwide, found that Texas and other States restrictions on clinics and care are having a nationwide impact.
“Altogether, these 15 states are home to almost 22 million women of reproductive age (aged 15–49), in addition to other people who may not identify as women but are capable of becoming pregnant and may need an abortion. The Guttmacher said that means almost one-third (29%) of the total US population of women of reproductive age are living in states where abortion is either unavailable or severely restricted.”
During this election cycle, we are seeing Democrats and Republicans using abortion as talking points to rally their base voters. A woman’s health is a matter of life and death and shouldn’t be used as a political tool by the right or left.
The religious right has been fighting a war on abortion for decades, with literature, advertisement and protests outside of clinic where they harassed woman in need of reproductive care.
Religion should never be used as a weapon against the rights of women and other groups.
Women in this country are fighting a losing war on multiple fronts: fair pay, equal opportunity, access to education and domestic violence. They are also fighting a battle to make their own reproductive decisions.
Women should not be told what they can and cannot do with their bodies. If you can trust them to make the right decisions in the military, and the Pentagon, frankly, it’s insulting and dangerous when woman are not trusted to make a decision about their own uterus.
