Abortion Rights: Are We Stuck in a Cycle?

by Arwen Jones

This era has been called the era of acceptance. An age where differences are celebrated and diversity is at ‘an all time high in the workplace’. We are thought to be making progress in areas like woman’s rights for example. However might history be repeating itself? Are we stuck in a cycle of issues? I believe the topic of abortion to be a clear highlighter of said ‘progress’.

In recent years, while equality is supposedly booming, shocking events, like the banning of abortion, still happen around the world and nothing but studies and reports are to show for progress in solutions. Celebrities like Jameela Jamil and Busy Phillips are sharing their own stories of abortion to speak out, encouraging some normalisation for the women who may be struggling to come to terms with the process. You might have heard about the restrictive bans being put in place in some American states. Pro lifers- those with the view that abortion is wrong and the murder of ‘a natural human being’- want both women and the doctors, who help them get an abortion, to be prosecuted for ‘murdering a child’. Can you imagine wanting to try a doctor? They’ve gone through countless courses of education to get where they are, in order to help you. They could be given a sentence of up to 99 years.

The bans are trying to overturn a historic decision made by the Supreme Court in America. The Roe vs Wade trial took place in 1973 and used the 14th Amendment to legalise abortion. The final decision was that abortions in the first trimester were well within women’s rights and could not be prevented, second trimester abortions were only available if necessary and third trimester only in dire situations. The ACLU- the American Civil Liberties Union- have vowed to protest the laws and hope to take legal action in order to protect the Roe vs Wade decision. The bans have been introduced in two states so far at time of writing, those being Alabama and Georgia, but as they gain popularity with some governors they may start to pop up further across the country.

Law HB481 has been introduced in Georgia and says that no women may have an abortion once a fetal heartbeat has been detected. A heartbeat can be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, two weeks after a women has missed her period and so a lot earlier than many women know they are pregnant. This restrictive rule was already in place in Mississippi, Ohio and Kentucky. The law mainly punishes doctors, but pro lifers are in favour of punishing women too. The law bans abortions because it argues that once the fetus has a heartbeat it is a ‘natural human being’; the term ‘natural human being’ means legally that ‘human’ has rights. This means the law in Georgia recognises a fetus as being eligible for tax deductions, state income and determining population numbers in the state. It would mean miscarriages were possibly a felony.

Even more restricting is Alabama’s law. HB314 in Alabama outrightly bans abortion.

In 2016 the New York Times reported that a woman who miscarried twice at 24 weeks was charged with abuse of a corpse, a class C felony which means she could serve 3 to 10 years in Arkansas. Her bail is at 50,000 dollars and she still awaits trial. A Virginian woman was accused, after birthing a stillborn at home, of ‘concealing a body’, but she argued that since the fetus was never alive it cannot be dead. Pro lifers strongly disputed this and she was sentenced to five months.

Even regarding issues like rape and insesct the ban is still restrictive. Women are not allowed to abort after 20 weeks and even then, only when they report the case to law enforcement. Empathy has died. Nobody cares for the victims of a predator or the grieving relatives after the loss of a mother because of a difficult birth. Nobody talks about how another child could mean financial ruin for a family. Nobody talks about how both childbirth and pregnancy can be dangerous to women.

Recently I read that in some states there is a proposal which would allow a rapist to sue their victim if they attempted to abort ‘their child’. Does this not scream dystopia? Is nobody terrified of where this generation of politicians are leading us? These bans make some parts of America simply a dangerous place for women to even exist.

The theme of a cycle of history I feel relates to these bans because most the voters for these bans were men, are we heading back to the idea that women must take the backseat?

The media has noticed similarities between the restrictions and a popular show ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. The show is about a totalitarian society which treats women purely as property of men. It is supposedly a dystopian world, set in the past. Surely if links can be found between our ‘modern’ society and one from the past we are basically back where we started. Protests for women’s right and improvements have been for nothing. This is why I believe that in certain areas of our human nature we are simply progressing only to move back again. It is purely a cycle of history.