The debate between pro-lifers and pro-choicers has been ongoing for years, heightened in the last month after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a new bill that restricted abortion accessn measures to be taken as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. This isn’t out of character for A for the cartoon-villain-esque conservative politician that Abbott so clearly seems to like playing– who enjoys the role of cartoon villain conservative –, but the fact that it went through and that this is real life. This is where the humor dies.
The reproductive health of a person should be in their own hands, entirely. It is completely bogus to think that someone else – someone who probably doesn’t have a uterus – can pass legislation to control a sizably massive portion of the population who no longer have a say in what they can do with their own bodthe right to proper reproductive healthcarey. The fact of the matter is that the people who are advocate for this heinous law are not the people who deal with an unwanted reproductive issuespregnancy. They are speaking on behalf of others and asserting their chauvinist voices in places where they are truly not supposed to speak.
We can argue all day about whwhether or not a fetus is considered life at constitutes a fetus and what constitutes life, and whether anyone truly has theif people should have the power to terminate it or not. That still doesn’t detract from the fact that, by having this law come to effect, Texas is now a state where about half of the population has lost their bodily autonomy.
Argue all you want about whether whether it it is morally alright right to kill an “unborn baby” (which is a whole other bag of nonsense) because none of that even matters when you’re actively depriving actual humanspeople of the right to have and exist in their own body.
There are many pro-life activists who fall on a spectrum of allowing exceptions when it comes to abortions and reproductive rights. Some say it is a viable option if its the abortion is early on, some say it can be allowed in the cases of rape, or if the pregnancy couldis sure to kill harm thesthe person giving birth. Some have no exceptions and are actively fighting against living, breathing human beings with active minds and conscious souls, just to save a lump of cells indistinguishable to from a melanoma. How can these people beWho hurt these people enough to bring forth such so callousncallousess, that they could condemned an entire population of innocents for the sake of their so-called rights and beliefs, leading to the detriment and regression of feminism?
We joked about living in a dystopia for the past year, and even maybe before that during the early Trump administration. And while these wild times truly do reminisce a campy, introspective social commentary that we are forced to examine in junior year English lit class, we are straight up heading towards our own version of “The Handmaid’s Tale” if we allow things like this to go through.
The lawmakers who signed the Senate Bill 8 were clever, as it takes the heat off them and allows for bigoted private citizens to enact carry out their crusade for them. Unlike the whistleblower website, which can be mocked and spammed with Kpop fancams and Reddit-grade trolls, this law allows any private citizen to sue abortion providers. Abortion providers can’t even counterattackdefend themselves, since the law doesn’t implicate the state or any official, leaving them nobody to sue.
It is absolutely mind-boggling that we are having a fierce debate about things like gun control and ownership of weapons while we are being stripped of our own rights to exist and make choices about our bodies own body. You know, the that flesh sack we inherit at birth and are supposed to be in charge ofcare for until death? Thinking about it too hard makes me laugh because there is no way this is real life!
But it is, and that’s the worst part.
