I had an abortion when I was 18. It was no walk in the park — in fact, it was painful and traumatic and not an experience I would like to repeat. But to me, the prospect of having to carry and birth a child I did not want, when I was barely an adult myself, was far more terrifying and I have absolutely no regrets about my decision.
I remember lying curled up on my mum’s bathroom floor, staring at the positive test stick in tears. I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong, I hadn’t had unprotected sex. But while I was scared and upset, at least I knew I had options. The thought of not having a choice feels so suffocating I can’t even imagine it. Ultimately, being able to make the choice I did saved my life — because my life mattered too — and I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.
But in the US, land of the free, millions of women are set to have this fundamental right over their own bodies taken away from them.
The Supreme Court has just overturned Roe V Wade, a landmark decision in which the same court previously ruled that the US Constitution generally protects a woman’s freedom to choose to have an abortion.
By overruling this, the court has set a new precedent for up to 26 states, now governed by those with anti-abortion views, to implement extreme limitations or even bans on abortions. This is expected to restrict access to abortions for tens of millions of women across the country.
The abortion debate
Abortion is an issue that continues to divide the world. On one side, there are those who define themselves as ‘pro-choice’, in favour of women having the right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term; on the other side are those who define themselves as ‘pro-life’, in favour of a foetus having an uncontested right to be born regardless of what the mother wants.
These differences of opinion are both, supposedly, born out of compassion . But while the pro-choice movement seeks to protect the rights of living, breathing people, the pro-life movement seeks to protect these rights only up until a baby is born — after which point, at least in the US, their compassion and dedication seems to fade.
Apart from its growing anti-abortion stance, the US demonstrates its commitment to protecting life in few other ways — its failure to fundamentally strengthen gun laws in the face of elementary school children being killed in mass-shootings, for instance. On Thursday, the Supreme Court actually voted to overturn a New York law that restricts the ability of people to carry guns outside their homes.
Its healthcare system, which in some cases charges upwards of $50,000 for cancer treatment for patients without insurance (insurance costs the average American $7,000 per year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation), is not hugely indicative of caring about protecting life at all costs, either. According to a poll conducted by KFF in 2019, one fifth of Americans did not support Medicaid, a program that helps people on lower incomes with their healthcare costs.
Rather, this latest decision feels rooted firmly in a desire to control women.
Roe V Wade did not force abortions on Americans. Those who did not want to have an abortion could simply choose not to have one. What it did do was ensure this choice was also extended to women who did want to have an abortion, at least in the first trimester of their pregnancy.
Passing the decision on whether to permit abortions down to state-level allows those in power, with their own opinions on the matter, to take that choice away. This will force desperate women to either go through with a pregnancy against their will, potentially at the expense of their physical or mental health, or choose a dangerous alternative that could cost them their lives.
In some cases, draconian new rules set to be implemented by several states could force women to birth children conceived as a result of rape or incest. There is no compassion for human life in any of this.
Pregnancy and birth can be extremely difficult and invasive, and both can have lasting physical and mental side effects. According to the NHS, nine in ten women who give birth naturally suffer tears in their muscles or pelvic skin, while one in three women may suffer incontinence for up to a year after giving birth. One in ten women suffers from post-natal depression.
This is a lot to endure if you do not want, or cannot take care of, the child at the end. Sex is a part of life, and seeking to punish people for this by forcing them to give birth against their will is, again, far from compassionate or humane.
I feel lucky — now more so than ever — to live in the UK and to still have the freedom to make decisions about my body. But even in the U.K, abortion is not available on demand—the procedure requires sign-off from two doctors, meaning this decision can still only be made at the discretion of strangers,who may have their own views. The unfolding situation in the US has reminded me that this freedom could be taken away completely at any time, given the right mix of circumstances, and that there is more we could still do to make this deeply personal decision just that—personal.
Women across the US will face huge challenges going forward, while the pro-life movement will hail this as a victory. But pro-lifers around the world now need to think hard about the extent to which they value human life outside the womb, because there is little that shows less regard for people’s lives than taking away their autonomy over their own bodies.
Words by Laura Purkess