You’d think I would have stumbled across it before, but for the first time in my life, I recently saw an anti-abortion sticker on the back of an old woman’s truck. ‘Abortion stops a beating heart.’ Well yeah Susan, that’s kind of the point, so it’s good to know you got the memo. Now obviously, we’re lucky enough to live in a fine and dandy little country that has laws allowing women their right to choose, but a lot of the world doesn’t have that same luxury. America, land of the free, am I right?
Now, I know for a fact that America has some seriously fucked up laws about abortion in a lot of states, but I was not prepared for the extent of it when I looked them up. I looked at the laws in every single state, and some of the rules made me sick to my stomach. Out of the entire country, there were only eight states where abortion is legal with no gestational limit, and one of those places isn’t even technically a state (District of Columbia), it just has its own laws. So really, only seven states allow abortion with no gestational limit. And though the number of states that allow abortion before viability is larger than the number that allow it through every week of gestation, it’s still not a very high number. Eighteen states allow abortion before viability, viability being when a fetus would be able to survive on its own outside of the womb.
Every other state in America has laws where there is a full ban on abortion after a varied amount of weeks. Most states will allow an abortion if it’s being done in order to prevent the health of life of the mother; the exceptions being Georgia, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. In Georgia, abortions are banned after six weeks gestation, and there are only two exceptions to this law. The first is if there is a fatal fetal anomaly, which is a congenital condition which is highly likely to result in the death of the fetus, either at birth or in the womb. The second exception is if the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest and the victim has reported the incident, as long as they aren’t above 20 weeks gestation. North Carolina has these same exceptions, except for the fact that they only allow abortions for a fatal fetal anomaly up to 24 weeks. They also allow abortions for ectopic pregnancies; non-viable pregnancies where the egg has fertilized outside of the uterus. And Oklahoma, well, they just have a full ban. Full stop, no comments. Those states have seriously fucked up laws.
While there’s a lot of horrible opinions over there on the topic, I wanted to ask an American friend about her beliefs/experiences with abortion laws.
Personally, I believe abortion should be accessible to any woman in the United States. There have been far too many cases where a woman’s body is used to incubate the baby or getting an abortion is necessary for the mom’s health, but she does not have access to that sort of care in her state. Since the turn over of Roe v Wade there has been more negative outcomes than positives. It has become very difficult to not only find access to this sort of healthcare but it also makes it feel impossible to have access to contraceptives as well. In red states where women’s reproductive care is very limited, some women have resorted to travelling across the country to different states to receive the reproductive care they need and deserve.
And if you’re still one of those lovely human beings that believe abortion shouldn’t be legal, point me in the direction of your father. I’ll give him a child he’ll actually love. Let’s see how you feel about abortion then.
