The US is a terrible place to be a poor woman
It leaves abortion rights to the states, meaning abortion is now illegal or soon-to-be illegal in 22 states in all or most circumstances, including, in some states, in cases of rape. It comes in the wake of already reduced access to abortion in many of those states as a result of practical restrictions on the operation of abortion clinics. It is a dramatic rollback of women’s rights in one of the world’s richest countries, which prides itself on its protection of individual liberties.
Richest and in some ways most advanced…and in others most regressive, by a huge margin.
It has been estimated that maternal mortality will increase by 20% in places with a ban. It is always inhumane and degrading to force a woman to give birth against her will, but there is something particularly chilling about doing it in a country as unequal as the US, where half of women seeking an abortion live below the poverty line. The US is a terrible place to be a poor woman: exceptional among nations belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in having zero national entitlement to maternity pay, it has no universal healthcare, the highest rates of maternal mortality of any wealthy nation and barely any support with the costs of childcare.
Those are some of the Most Regressive bits.
The US – a society in which individual rights are so prized, but in which women are treated as if they are men who just happen to have wombs – offers a cautionary tale. We forget at our peril that the patriarchal oppression of women is heavily rooted in our reproductive systems and that equality cannot be achieved without recognising that women are a sex class who need specific rights, to abortion for one, quite apart from those accorded to men. Yet even as conservative justices write that banning abortion does not amount to sex discrimination, “women” has become an offensive and exclusionary word to some on the American left.
And even now they’re popping up everywhere to squeak “It’s not just women who need abortion rights!!”
Oh yes it is.
