What Does Overturning Roe v. Wade Mean?
The unprecedented leak of the Supreme Court draft entailed overturning Roe v. Wade. Many national protests and conversations have been discussed and repeated throughout the news and by political pundits. But what exactly is Roe V. Wade and what will happen due to this decision?
Roe V. Wade is the Supreme Court ruling in 1973 that decided the Constitution would defend the right to an abortion and that all women had the freedom to determine whether they wanted to carry a pregnancy to full term. This ruling ended many federal and state rulings that had limitations on abortions. The decision to overturn Roe V. Wade would mean the Constitution would no longer protect a women’s right to choose. It would allow individual state legislatures to make rulings on the legal specifications or bans on abortions. This would allow many red states to place bans on abortions, forcing women to carry out their pregnancies, perform unsafe back-alley abortions, or travel to other states to receive the medical procedure. Pro-life conservatives argue that overturning Roe V. Wade would simply allow state's rights or the right for states to rule on the legality of abortions, but ignore the fact that many women who may want or need abortions still live in the states where abortions may become criminalized in.
The banning of abortions is an extremely unpopular policy, as over 70% of American voters support abortions in the first trimester. This will not be the case if Roe V. Wade is overturned as it will give this decision up to the states. Since state representatives will rule upon the legality of abortions, many Republican states, or states that have a majority of Republican representatives, will ban abortions. This will not represent the democracy that America portrays, as the majority will not have a say, allowing the ban of abortions across a multitude of the United States including States like Texas, Florida, and at least another 10 states. This unpopular decision to ban abortions can be harmful as many states’ legislative proposals do not have exceptions to these abortion bans. This means that a woman would not be able to have an abortion even if her life was at risk. Not to mention, if the pregnancy is the result of incest or rape, there would be no opportunity for the woman to abort this fetus.
You may wonder why many Republicans are advocating to return to olden times and ban abortions, here is a multitude of talking points. To begin, a talking point many conservatives use to advocate for the banning of abortions includes the conversation that abortion is murdering a child or fetus. This leads to the controversial argument of when life begins. The uncertainty of when life begins leads many to question at what stage in the abortion should the fetus no longer be considered part of the mother, but a separate human. The general consensus is typical that abortions are immoral past the first trimester. This is not a fair limitation on abortions, although 93% of abortions occur during the first trimester.
Only 1% of abortions occur during the 3rd trimester, which is done 99% of the time as a last resort to save the mother and are done by mothers who had wished to see the pregnancy through. This overall argument of killing a human or murder is unreasonable as it shifts the overall focus of abortion away from allowing women to have full autonomy of their bodies and moves the argument towards the choice of an unborn insentient fetus. Not only, but it also takes away their rights which could in some cases save women’s lives from extreme poverty as raising children is expensive and in some cases the women’s actual physical life. The semantics arguments are unreasonable as they do not consider the lives of the women who will be forced to go through their pregnancies. Furthermore, another argument that many conservatives will hold dear is religious reasons as they believe that it is immoral as many Christians have advocated against abortions. Yet according to biblical scripts, there is no mention of abortions and views the unborn fetus as not an equal to human beings. This very clear distinction is the most crucial as the difference between the choice of the human mother whose life will be altered and the life of an unborn fetus is extremely important. The notion of taking away a right for women is not only dangerous for the women but can set bad precedents which have seen the lead to advocacy for making it illegal to travel out of your state for an abortion.
These main talking points used to advocate for the banning of abortions all drag the conversation away from the true message, that abortions are a choice that women should have, and should not be controlled by the state that they reside within. These bans will not stop abortions, but rather stop safe abortions as the banning of abortions in certain states will only cause rich Americans to travel to other states to achieve an abortion. This will then cause poor Americans to have to perform back-alley abortions and be at risk of an unsafe procedure that could cause them harm in an attempt to save their lives from a violent pregnancy.
