Following the death of Supreme Court swing vote Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the same thought rested heavy on many young women in the Western world: ‘They’re going to ban abortion’. On Friday the matter settled in the worst way, with the US Supreme Court overturning the historic 1973 Roe V. Wade vote, which allowed safe and legal access to abortion for women in the United States.
It is assumed that 26 states will enact the new amendment, meaning that overnight, women in over half of all the American states have lost the right to make choices about their own bodies, in a decision so horrifying, it feels as though it were written by Margaret Atwood herself. Doctors will be labelled murderers; women will be walking incubators and the scale falls again to the powerful white males of the world.
The worst part? No one is surprised. When the fate of all women in America rested on the shoulders of an 87-year-old woman’s survival, it was only a matter of time before the ticking time-bomb exploded, bringing down half of the population with it.
The members of the Supreme Court will never have to look at the fear in the eyes of a woman who is laid out, dying, on a dirty backstreet operating table, the young girl who has just missed her period, the overworked mother, the abused girlfriend, the woman forced to give birth in a country currently suffering from a baby formula shortage.
America is not prepared for the increased pressure on the foster system, which is already overstretched with 400,000 children looking for homes. The children that already live in the US attend schools where the threat of being held at gunpoint is a daily problem, pro-life? Yeah, right.
We’re sorry to the women who will receive a phone call that their procedure isn’t going ahead tomorrow. We’re sorry to the women who will be forced to carry their abuser’s child. Sorry feels like such an inadequate word to say.
While we live in the 2020’s, we stepped back into the 1960’s today. This is only the monstrous first chapter in the devolution of women’s rights, the prelude to the dystopia we are continuously hurtling towards. Strap in.
Wow. This is such a well put together article but so incredibly sad to read as it brings to light even more horrifying consequences of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.