Stephan: As of the decision of the Supreme Court today overturning Roe, women in the Red states have been reduced to second-class status, and what that means is no abstraction. For instance, in Republican-controlled states, if you are a woman who has a miscarriage, you may now be subject to police investigation, and criminal charges. Was that miscarriage naturally occurring, or did you take a medication that invoked the miscarriage, which would be a violation of state law? Are you carrying a fetus that is so damaged in some way that the child has no chance of living after birth, or will be born dead, too bad, you will have to carry that fetus to delivery. If you are a 13-year-old girl raped by a family member, a rape that left you pregnant, too bad you will have to carry the child to term. And then what? Six christofascist incompetent ideologues, three appointed by a lifelong criminal have now taken control of one of the most important and intimate aspects of being female and are telling a hundred million fertile women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.
At ten o'clock this morning the United States of America reverted to an earlier century and a nastier time. How do we deal with this? There is only one way. We must vote only for pro-choice Democrats. The anti-choice movement and today's Supreme Court decision is absolutely the result of a political effort created and controlled by Republicans.
Reproductive Health Services is one of the few remaining clinics that perform abortions in Alabama. Credit: Hannah Cauhepe/Hans Lucas / Reuters Connect
On Friday, the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in a decision by Justice Samuel Alito. Last month, when a draft of that decision had leaked, Leah Torres wrote about the future of medical care for women.
If you want to understand the future of medical care for pregnant women in a post-Roe world, look no further than what is happening in Alabama. As others have pointed out for Slate, the leaked draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization paves the way for criminalizing many aspects of pregnancy. While Texas’ abortion ban, S.B. 8, has essentially halted all abortions in the state, Alabama offers a glimpse of a troubling future in which the provision of medical care for pregnant people is deeply intertwined with the cultural attitudes that seek to criminalize “undesirable” pregnancy outcomes.
In the summer of 2020, I got a firsthand experience of these attitudes in action. Three weeks after starting to practice at West Alabama Women’s Center, […]
