The United States is no stranger to violating womens’ rights over their bodies in numerous ways. These include but are not limited to reproductive rights, right to abortion, right to affordable care and access to contraceptive measures, as well as relevant contraceptive counselling and services. A right which is notably and repeatedly challenged in the United States today is the legal right to abortion.
The legislative strive to gradually chip away the right to abortion is alive and well, so much so that it seems bills keep popping up left and right finding more ways to infringe upon and eventually make the path towards abortion an impossible one. The Texas Heartbeat bill is one of the most recent and harshest measures to be signed into law, making the path towards abortion in the United States an even more treacherous one.
Brief History
In 1973 the Supreme Court Case known as Roe v. Wade ruled safe and legal access to abortion to be a constitutional right. This right has been continuously challenged ever since it came to fruition. In Today’s America, the right to abortion is written but it is not upheld. These three words serve today to mostly veil and distract the public from the countless state restrictions, amendments, in addition to federal policies which make this supposed ‘Right to Abortion’ unattainable to so many American Citizens. It seems the only people left who would ever be able to get an abortion at all as of now are the wealthy and filthy rich.
Technicalities
The Texas Heartbeat ban prohibits abortions in the state of Texas from being performed after a fetal heartbeat has been detected. The only exception made is for medical emergencies. Meaning women impregnated via rape or incest are denied access to abortion after the fetal heartbeat is detected. Private citizens have now been given the power to sue any abortion provider or any other citizen that seeks to aid someone in getting an abortion after the detection of the fetal heartbeat.
Texan society as of September 1st once the law goes into effect, will bear more resemblance to George Orwell’s 1984, where Big Brothers’ mission is monitored and carried out by his spies.
Analysis
The law has been intricately designed to dismantle the right to abortion in its entirety. Targets of potentially expensive and time-consuming lawsuits include but are not limited to: Abortion funds, friends and family, medical professionals, and even rape crisis centers and their counsellors. To top it off, most women don’t even know they’re pregnant till after six weeks, and fetal heartbeat detection occurs around six weeks or sometimes earlier.
Furthermore, rape cases mostly go unreported and feelings of fear and shame in both rape and incest cases prevent women from seeking help or speaking up ever at all. Meaning their sentence has been dictated early on. What we have here are people who have created endless loopholes to the Roe v. Wade case. They have successfully found a way to make abortion so unattainable and severely limited in its access to the Texan people.
Conclusion
The Texas ‘Heartbeat Bill’ turned to ‘Ban’ is a law whose only mission is to make abortions impossible to attain. It intimidates loved ones from helping their friends and family members access abortions safely. It criminalizes institutions established to help women attain abortions. It sentences women to unwanted pregnancies, it sentences rape and incest victims to the will of their perpetrators, ridding them of the lives that they are entitled to as American citizen’s.
The woman’s right to abortion is being infringed upon daily, and this Texas law has further advanced the cause of those who wish to deprive women of the right to their bodies. Women will keep getting abortions, the only difference is that many more will die as their access to safe medical procedures has been denied. For women across all of the United States today, the statement ‘My Body My Choice’ continues to echo against the walls of the nations capitol slowly fading away.
References
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/18/texas-heartbeat-bill-abortions-law/
https://statusofwomendata.org/explore-the-data/reproductive-rights/
https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/roe-v-wade