The 5 Major Reasons Men, Women, and Children are Hurt by the Dobbs Ruling

Friday, Supreme Court Justice Alito used his power to erase a constitutional right that protected society from the dangers of illegal abortions.

The Dobbs decision to overthrow the Roe vs. Wade decision has rocked how we experience ourselves as women in this country.  All across America women are feeling enraged, terrified, grieved, confused, essentially violated, and devalued.

How the Supreme Court has let us down

One of the fundamental understandings of our Supreme Court has been that it is there to protect our constitutional rights. Nevermind, that most of the court is made up of white men. Most of us trusted the process of deliberating over cases would be held to the highest ethical and human rights standards. Naive as this now sounds, I, too held that assumption.

I assumed the Supreme Court of the United States could be trusted to uphold and further our rights, no matter the political affiliation of the justice. Afterall, that is what each of them claim when they were being vetted, questioned, and then sworn into their seats on the highest court in our nation.

Even the most conservative Judges would, in the past, concede the need to uphold and further our rights… until now.

Setting Women Back: Roe v Wade is Overturned

For the first time in our history the highest court in our land has chosen to walk back our human rights instead of adding to them.  And, it has started with women. Women who have relied on the 50-year-old precedent of Roe v Wade to assure them autonomy over their own health choices.  Now, of course, a predominantly white male Supreme Court has affirmed that we no longer have the right to determine how our healthcare choices, are made.

The extremists in the Christian world, the die hards, of the religious right of politics, insist that a “baby” is formed the instant of conception. There is, of course, no scientific justification for this belief but nonetheless, their definition of what it means to begin life will now be the way some of our most important health decisions will be made. More mothers will die as the doctors will be barred by the law and unable to address the woman’s health crisis.

This mother was forced to wait until the fetal heartbeat was gone before the doctor could administer emergency medical care to the mother. At that point, it was too late for her, she had lost too much blood. The doctor had to prioritize the unborn fetus’ over the mother’s viable life.

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What does this mean to us?

I mean, I’m well beyond child bearing years. This will have zero affect on my medical personal life.

Why do I care?

Why am I feeling all those intense feelings, including rage, violation, and being devalued? It’s because I recognize the true meaning of this immoral decision. The true meaning is that we, as women, do not have the right to say what happens to our bodies.

As a sexual trauma survivor, that is a familiar feeling. Men took advantage of my body, using it for their sexual pleasure with no concern for my well being. No concern for the pain, fear, horror, and desolation caused by their use of my body as a sex toy.  I lost all autonomy over my body.  Now, as this decision’s ramifications quake through the country, that feeling of violation and loss of autonomy vibrates in my bones.

The long-term effects

The long-term effects of this radical action are not only jarring, they are dangerous, and a sign of more loss of autonomy to come. Scientific advances in reproductive care has transformed how women experience their lives. When contraceptives became available in the 1960’s women, for the first time since the beginning of time, had the ability to choose when they became pregnant. This allowed women to make choices over how they lived their lives. No longer at the mercy of their body chemicals, they were free to wait until they are older, to limit how many children they bore, and to choose to mate with those who they would not want to marry.

Contraception

Of course, contraceptives are not always 100% effective, nor do they work well for everyone. Soon other ways of managing conception became available to address this problem. The “sponge” with sperm killing agents, the Diaphragm to block sperm from traveling to the uterus, the Intra Uterine Device, epidermal implants… all made it easier to live free as a woman.

But even those methods did not assure a woman she would not, accidentally became pregnant. Married or not, many other children or not, afford to care for that child or not, we could still accidentally find ourselves impregnated.

Carrying a potential child to term when we were raped, drunk, lied to and manipulated, or overburdened with financial and child care responsibilities, we would find ourselves needing another option.

Illegal Abortions

Before birth control, and access to safe abortions,  women took incredible risks with their lives to try to end their pregnancies. Maternal death rates were high, and botched abortions left them scared and hating the children they bore. Poverty, emotional instability, and helplessness set them up to raise children they didn’t want in environments which did not foster healthy development.

Re-Living History

Now we find ourselves returning, not to 50 years ago, but 60 years.  So not only are we now denied the ability to manage an unwanted pregnancy, or even worse, a pregnancy that threatens our health or the health of a baby with more heath problems than we are financial or emotionally equipped to care or, our ability to limit the chances of that unwanted pregnancy will soon be on the chopping block.  Members of the court have already said as much.

The Emotional Toll

The emotional and psychological impact of this attack on our autonomy as human beings is devastating.  When we are treated as having less importance, less value than  a few cells have, the psychological effect huge. Those of us who agree  with abortion being murder, feel vindicated, celebrate the protection of those poor helpless babies.  Yet, even among those very women who claim to believe life begins at conception, 70% of the abortions taking place in this country are undertaken by those women.

Economic Effects

This will affect every person in this country in some manner.

How Pain Management will be Affected

It will be themselves, unable to manage their PCOS pain because contraception is no longer available. Because your brother accidentally got a girl pregnant and now he will have to pay child support the rest of her life because she had to bear an unwanted child.

How Childcare will be Affected

Your nanny will have to stay home with her own children because she cannot afford child care for yet another child.

How Rape Victims will be Affected

Your daughter may be raped and forced to carry a child of her rapist. Your sister may find herself with an ectopic pregnancy and not be able to stop the pregnancy to save her life.

Increased Deaths of Mothers and Traumatic Experiences

Maybe your son’s wife has to live with a dead fetus in her body for 9 months because she cannot have it removed. Your husband accidentally impregnates his lover and you end up having to care for the child because she already has too many children of her own to care for.

Restrictions on Medical Professionals to Administer Life Saving Care

“In 2012, Savita Halappanavar, age 31 and 17 weeks pregnant, went to a hospital in Galway, Ireland. Doctors there determined that she was having a miscarriage. However, because the fetus still had a detectable heartbeat, it was protected by the Eighth Amendment. Doctors could not intervene – in legal terms, ending its life – even to save the mother. So she was admitted to the hospital for pain management while awaiting the miscarriage to progress naturally.

Over the course of three days, as her pain increased and signs of infection grew, she and her husband pleaded with hospital officials to terminate the pregnancy because of the health risk. The request was denied because the fetus still had a heartbeat.

By the time the fetal heartbeat could no longer be detected, Halappanavar had developed a massive infection in her uterus, which spread to her blood. After suffering organ failure and four days in intensive care, she died.

This was likely not the only time someone had suffered, or even died, as a result of being denied abortion in Ireland.” (Read the rest of this U.S. News article on Abortion in Ireland here.)

Disabled Children

Your neighbor may end up having to give birth to a child so damaged she is unable to live on her own until she finally dies months and tens of thousands of dollars later.

Foster Care

Your foster care agencies become overwhelmed with the number of unwanted and abused children they have to care for and don’t have enough staff to mange.

Rushed Abortions

States reducing abortion to shortened timelines like Texas to just six weeks after conception, leaves little time for thought about whether to do it or not. This forces the parents to make decisions faster than they may be ready, causing additional emotional damage since they weren’t able to work through the issues and be sure. More babies will be aborted, more women more die, more expenses will be created on society to manage and clean up the fallout from this horrible, horrible ruling.

Deaths of Mothers

Over the course of three days, as her pain increased and signs of infection grew, she and her husband pleaded with hospital officials to terminate the pregnancy because of the health risk. The request was denied because the fetus still had a heartbeat.

By the time the fetal heartbeat could no longer be detected, Halappanavar had developed a massive infection in her uterus, which spread to her blood. After suffering organ failure and four days in intensive care, she died.

This was likely not the only time someone had suffered, or even died, as a result of being denied abortion in Ireland.

Crime Rates

The crime rate goes up because of the poverty and abuse these children end up living.

Conclusion

These scenarios are the reason for the medical advances we have been able o take advantage of in our lives. My children and grandchildren, if this stands, will be at risk of living through the horror of the thought that if they are raped and impregnated they will have to carry that baby to term, that if their life is in danger their medical doctor will not be able to help them unless the fetal heartbeat is no longer detectable if it is a procedure that could endanger the life of the baby, which pretty much is most procedures that would be needed for the mother in a life or death crisis. My daughters and grandchildren now will have to live through having no privacy over their menstrual cycles and their female health. They will be pressured to inform the government and be under the will of whoever is in power at that day and time for what they decide for their bodies.

You don’t think that has an emotional toll on all women? On their husbands who actually love them enough to want them to have autonomy over their own bodies? The psychological toll of living in a country where our very being is considered to have less value than a few cells, sets us back a hundred years, back to when we didn’t even have the right to vote. And, yes, that is likely to be on the chopping block as well.

My “friend” on FB’s response was “well if you don’t like your states laws, move to another”  supports division in this country.  It supports the idea that one state can hold entirely different values than our country as a whole. It also says, if your state doesn’t allow abortion, thane your state doesn’t value women.

 

WORKING TITLE: 15

There is a special short film being produced that will be posted here.

court building on cnn blog about abortion bans in red states

A recipe for a lot of suffering: How abortion bans may strain the red states

The central paradox of the abortion debate is that the red states racing to outlaw or severely limit the procedure may be the places least prepared to deal with the practical consequences of the new restrictions. And that, experts project, could mean significantly more infant and maternal deaths and childhood poverty… [Read more on CNN]