It’s been a bit more than a week since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, bringing 49 years of “settled law” – whatever that means now – and a constitutional right to an abortion to an end.
It feels surreal to have Roe gone so quickly. Part of that feeling comes from the lack of exit strategy. Suddenly, abortion is as illegal as a state wants to make it. In Texas, where I live, we will soon have three eras of abortion restrictions existing side-by-side: pre-Roe, post-Roe, and post-Roe removal.1 Together they provide a punitive grab-bag of laws to criminally and/or civilly punish people for aiding in abortion care.
The silver lining is that Texas, or any other state, can’t do anything about abortion care offered outside of its borders. Women can leave. And due to decades of passing laws restricting abortion access, there exists a strong network of abortion funds that are experts at helping women pay for and access abortion. They know how to connect people who need abortions to providers while also helping with the necessities needed for travel – from hotel rooms, to gas money, to childcare.
After the overturning of Roe, I feel heartened that these funds will step up their game. It’s going to take fundraising and it’s going to take strategizing. Abortion funds in states with abortion bans can in many cases no longer directly fund the procedure. But they’re a node in a larger network that is at the ready. It’s my hope that in cases where the primary barriers to abortion access are financial, these funds will be able to help close the gap in many cases.
What I have worse feeling about is women who run into issues during their pregnancy that would normally require an abortion – but end up injured or dead because of that abortion being delayed or denied.
All the state abortion restrictions I’ve heard about have exceptions to preserve the “life of the mother” or the “life and health of the mother” during medical emergencies. But reasonable people can disagree on what constitutes an emergency. If performing an abortion puts a doctor at risk for criminal charges, they will probably only reserve it for the most clear-cut situations. Even then, that might not be enough. Ectopic pregnancies are almost always non-viable and potentially deadly because they lead to the rupture of the fallopian tube or other organ in which they implant (yes, that can happen). Nevertheless, the National Network of Abortion Funds has reported a woman in Texas being denied an abortion under those exact circumstances.
Abortion funds can help women in red states go somewhere else for elective abortions. But pregnant women who find themselves facing medical complications may be in a much more precarious state. Doctors won’t be able to act for their general benefit – only to “save their life or health.” Not everyone will be saved once they’re already in such a critical situation.
Pregnancy is a systemic process for placental mammals. It affects our hormones, our blood flow, our organ function, our metabolism. It drastically impacts our health by intwining it with that of the fetus and placenta.
In her essay “Feminism: An Agenda” the writer and women’s rights activist Andrea Dworkin describes how all political movements are united by a common thread:
They are “committed to the belief that there are certain kinds of pain that people should not have to endure. They are unnecessary. They are gratuitous. They are not part of the God-given order. They are not biologically inevitable. They are acts of human will. They are acts done by some human beings to other human beings.”
Biology tethers the fetus, placenta, and pregnant woman together. But it’s the decisions of right-wing lawmakers – on the Supreme Court bench and in state houses across the country – that keep women bound except in the direst of circumstances.
Check out your local abortion fund here: https://abortionfunds.org/need-abortion/
Photo: A map showing the locations of the more than 80 reproductive justice organizations that make up the National Network of Abortion Funds. Credit: NNAF.
A bit more info on Texas abortion laws:
In 1925, Texas passed a law that made performing an abortion punishable by up to 2-10 years in prison. It also considers anyone who assists in procurement of an abortion an accomplice. As of July 2, 2002, this law is now in effect. (More on the law at the end of Texas AG Ken Paxton’s advisory)
Senate Bill 8 bans abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo or fetus (usually after 6 weeks of pregnancy). Instead of being enforced by the state, the law allows private citizens to file lawsuits against anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion in civil court. It has been in effect since August 2021.
House Bill 1280 – the so-called “trigger law” that is set to go into effect at the end of July 2022. It makes performing an abortion a second degree felony unless it’s done to save the life of the pregnant woman or prevent “major bodily impairment.”
The problem I have with this strategy is that politics always focuses on certain kinds of *people* when discussing certain kinds of pain. For a while, the kind of person America focused on may indeed have been the abandoned mother, the reluctant mother, the abused mother. But opponents of abortion sacralize the submissive, all-suffering mother as a blessed vessel for the vulnerable baby. Experience with irreverent, opportunistic, hedonistic women has hardened the religious right to the suffering of exploited mothers. When sincerely believing Christians are asked to weigh the innocence and victimhood of women and their unborn children, duty and responsibility will always tip the scale away from the mother.