The abortion laws in Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana were not made to protect the unborn — they were made to oppress women.
It’s 2019 and reproductive rights are being stripped away from women, trans men and anyone else who has a chance to get pregnant. Conservatives calling themselves pro-life is misleading because they are usually only pro-life until the child is born. Rather than focusing on making laws to help foster care, education and pediatric healthcare, they are breaking their backs to make sure women have no choice but to bear unborn children.
These people are not pro-life — they are anti-women, and that is what they should call themselves. Women don’t want to get abortions because they want to “kill a baby,” but rather because they want a safe and healthy life for their child. If they can’t give it to them, why should they be forced to birth that child?
Being pro-choice is not the same as being pro-abortion. Being pro-choice means allowing women to make their own choices about their own bodies. If a woman is pro-life, that is her choice, but it is not her or anyone else’s right to force a pro-life stance on anyone but themselves.
Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards made Louisiana the latest state to ban abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy on May 30. It came a day after the Louisiana House approved the strict new abortion measure barring the procedure once a heartbeat is detectable — a point before many women may realize they are pregnant.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed the “Fetal Heartbeat” abortion law on May 7, which will become effective in 2020. This law will not allow a woman to have an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Six weeks of being pregnant is only two weeks of a missed period. Some women won’t know they’re pregnant until after that, which makes this law much too restrictive.
In Alabama the abortion laws have changed. You can only get an abortion in Alabama to prevent a serious health risk happening to the mother of the unborn child, and there is no exception for rape or incest. Women are no longer safe in Alabama against men raping them. They don’t even have the comfort of knowing they won’t have to give birth to their rapist’s child anymore. Under this law, it’s likely that offenders — women who have abortions and doctors who provide them — would spend a longer time in prison than most rapists ever will. Never forget that Brock Turner, a man who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, only served six months in jail.
I don’t understand why women still have to fight for reproductive rights. Why is it that in 2019 women are having their rights stripped away from them? Roe v. Wade was voted on, with a 7-2 decision, in 1973.
When President Donald Trump was elected it was evident that things were going to change. The U.S. electoral college allowed an openly racist, sexist and homophobic man to run this country. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but that won’t save us from losing our rights now.
Almost half of the country thought voting in Trump was a good idea. They thought that a man who said things like, “Grab them by the pussy,” makes fun of a disabled reporter and wants to build a wall would be a good president.
Trump has a platform where he can say these things openly without repercussions. His fans feel as if they can do the same thing. More people are becoming openly hateful because the president of the U.S. is doing it.
The abortion bans are proposed to keep women from doing what they want with their bodies, and these laws will harm and kill women who can’t afford to leave states with archaic laws.
Republicans only want less government involvement when it is beneficial to straight, white men. They want the government to be involved to take rights away from women, keep immigrants out and ban trans people from the military.
Ashlon Lusk is a 20-year-old mass communication sophomore from Houston, Texas.