Women’s rights are under attack in our country once again. Lawmakers in states such as Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Michigan, Kentucky and others have placed some form of ban on abortions.
Members of the Oklahoma House set House Bill 4327 into motion and Gov. Kevin Stitt signed it into law on Tuesday. HB 4327 outlaws any abortion that doesn’t cause danger to the mother’s life. It also criminalizes the act of performing the abortion; doctors could face up to 10 years in jail and $100,000 in fines.
One variable that tends to be left out of discussions on this bill, and bills like it in other states such as Texas, is how far endangering the mother’s life is allowed to go. NPR.org interviewed several women regarding the abortion ban in Texas in October 2021.
One woman said she became pregnant and had to move up her wedding date in order to accommodate and prepare for her baby. Unfortunately, her water broke on her wedding day at 19 weeks.
Despite telling her she was at risk of bleeding out or going septic, doctors were not allowed to perform a termination. The restrictive laws in Texas that state fetal heart tone detection is grounds for keeping the baby regardless of risk to the mother or unborn baby.
Unfortunately, HB 4327 also has no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, meaning women and young girls could be forced to carry babies they can’t take care of or don’t feel they would ever be happy with because of mental health struggles and trauma.
In Maryland, Alabama, Mississippi, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wyoming and New Mexico, women forced to carry their rapists’ baby could also face forced shared custody with her rapist if he decides he wants partial custody. In the instance the woman does decide to place her baby up for adoption, she could face the additional hurdle of getting permission from her rapist.
In many cases, the rapist will end up with more rights and less legal trouble than the rape victim seeking an abortion.
At The News, we believe the rate of safe abortions will go down when criminalized.
Yes, the abortion rate will decrease, but this does not mean they will stop. Sadly, women will begin to seek other measures of termination in completely unsafe ways. According to the World Health Organization, around 45% of abortions performed are unsafe, with 97% of these taking place in developed countries.
Lack of the right to a safe abortion care causes maternal deaths and consequences that are often irreversible, such as mental health complications and social and financial problems for these women. When women have to provide their own abortion self-care, complications are more likely to occur.
Several solutions exist, but the biggest solution is increasing the rate of education on this topic.
In rural areas, a lack of sex education is heavily present among young teens and even adults who want to lower the rate of abortions but have no idea how since stigmas exist surrounding the topic.
An increase in sex education would definitely aid in bringing the rate of abortion down. Only 22 states require sex education, and only 13 of these require the education to be medically accurate. To add to this, states with abstinence-only education have the highest rates of abortion in comparison to those that offer proper education.
A 2007 federal report found abstinence-only programs have “no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence.” Essentially, these programs aren’t preventing teens from having sex, they just aren’t educating them on how to safely do it.
In 2008, a University of Washington study found teenagers who received comprehensive sex education were 60% less likely to get pregnant than someone who received abstinence-only education. Teenagers from an uneducated background are also less likely to be able to afford an abortion procedure to begin with, and even less likely to be able to afford 18 years of childcare on their own.
In addition to comprehensive sex education, methods of birth control are often the subject of controversy in these abstinence-only programs. Although birth control methods are obviously the most effective way of preventing pregnancies, many people who receive an abstinence-only education are never aware of their options or are typically misinformed.
This stigma surrounding contraception often comes from the idea the birth control pill is some sort of “magical abortion pill” that acts similarly to a Plan B emergency contraceptive pill. Despite the belief that the pill induces abortion, this is usually spread around with no actual evidence.
A health system that operates properly includes logical, evidence-based policies that are not being allowed in states like Oklahoma. HB 4327 is hurtful to women and is a slap in the face to any woman who has dealt with elevated health risks as a result of an unhealthy pregnancy.
If these politicians wanted to show that they truly are “pro-life,” they have to do more than just sign bills that don’t affect them. The number of abortions will never really go down unless there is a focus on social programs after birth.
The “solution” of placing the child up for adoption is not cutting it anymore. As of 2020, there were around 420,000 children in the foster care system. These lawmakers don’t seem to have any ideas on how to reduce this number or ensure the children in the system are going to loving homes with proper care and resources.
The legislators would also need to be more concerned about sex education and encouragement of contraceptives to prevent these unwanted pregnancies. Without this, these bills will never be successful at managing the abortions, just keeping people in the dark about their options.
This bill is not about protecting innocent lives. It is about ensuring that women are given no choices to manage their own health and safety. Abortion restriction centers around mismanagement of health care and lack of care from male lawmakers with no experience in women’s issues or concern for proper education.