If you’re a woman in Louisiana, there comes a time when you realize that the entire state is against you.
Last year, the Center for American Progress revealed that Louisiana is the worst state to live in if you’re female. With a small percentage of congresswomen and the dismal ratio of practicing female OB-GYNs, our state is an unwelcoming one to women.
In an effort to keep this status, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed a bill that is actually entitled, the “Louisiana Unsafe Abortion Protection Act.” It is predicted that the bill, otherwise known as HB388, will close at least three of the state’s five abortion clinics.
Instead of advocating for the protection of women, our state is actively fighting for the protection of unsafe abortions. Louisiana politicians would rather take women’s right to bodily autonomy and watch them suffer from unsafe abortions than protect them.
The name of the bill itself is misleading and offensive. Much of the rhetoric surrounding this bill is concerned with making abortions safe for the women who want them. However, That’s the opposite of what HB388 would accomplish.
HB388 requires abortion-providing physicians to have “admitting privileges” at a hospital within at least 30 miles of wherever the abortion is performed. Admitting privileges let doctors admit a patient for hospital treatment.
Although this may sound like legislative mumbo-jumbo, it has incredibly dangerous implications for the women of this state.
A similar bill was implemented in Texas less than half a year ago. Using the same language as HB388, the Texas bill was responsible for closing about one-third of the state’s abortion providers. In a state of 26 million people, there are now only 19 clinics.
Louisiana  — with only five abortion clinics to its name — will likely suffer the same fate.
The writer and sponsor of HB388 is Rep. Katrina Jackson, a chairwoman of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus and an African-American woman.
This is particularly interesting because African-American women have consistently received the most abortions out of any race or ethnicity in America. According to the Guttmacher Institute, African-American women receive 37 percent of all abortions, compared to only 34 percent of white women and 22 percent of Latina women.
While many may cry for adoption instead of abortion, adoption clearly does not favor African-Americans. In 2010, the Center for Economic Policy Research found that non-black children were seven times more likely to be adopted than black children were. Even when black children were adopted, they cost significantly less than non-black children.
Therefore, Louisiana, with an African-American population more than twice the national average, is not the place to eradicate three-fifths of abortion clinics. Although it is not Jackson’s job to legislate on behalf of the women of her same race, I doubt that HB388 is a bill that accurately represents the thoughts of African-American women in this state.
There are countless protections against things like guns which have no other purpose but to maim and kill both people and animals. However, the legalization of abortion has various benefits.
In all countries where abortion has been legalized, the chances of dying in childbirth are 10 times greater than one’s chances from dying due to an abortion.
Additionally, once women no longer have to face the burden of having children they cannot provide for or do not want at the time of conception, they can fulfill other goals like education or pursue more demanding employment opportunities.
Jackson said on the House floor that HB388 was “about the safety of women.”
This is a blatant lie. Either that or believers of this statement have no idea what safety means.
Time after time, it has been proven that restricting access to safe, legal abortions does not stop abortions from happening.
Limitations like the ones posed in HB388 do nothing but force women to either resort to unsafe methods to induce miscarriage or have children that they cannot afford or simply do not want.
Despite personal views on the subject, abortion is a right that women, not only in this country, but everywhere, should have. Violating a conscious, fully grown being’s — meaning no fetuses — bodily autonomy is a devious crime against humanity.
SidneyRose Reynen is an 18-year-old film and art history freshman from New Orleans.
(all from the Guttmacher Institute and the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals )
71% of pregnancies in Louisiana resulted in live births. Only 14% resulted in abortion.
Abortions in Louisiana make up 1.2% of all US abortions.
In 2011, 89% of counties in the U.S. had no abortion clinic.
In 2011, 92% of parishes in Louisiana had no abortion clinics. 63% of Louisiana’s women lived in these parishes.
In 2010, 86% of abortions in Louisiana were completed before the end of the first trimester.
If Roe v. Wade were overturned, abortion would be banned in Louisiana.
Louisiana women must undergo ultrasounds and counseling designed to discourage her from obtaining an abortion.
Less than one percent of women experience complications due to an abortion.