If you are a woman being raped in Louisiana, you will now have to beg your rapist not to cum inside of you. Yes, it’s an unusual request. One that your rapist will probably reject and consider an undue burden on his attempt to rape you. But after last week’s Supreme Court ruling, this request might be your best bet on not having to go through with this type of pregnancy. Because abortion is now illegal in Louisiana.
If you are a woman in Louisiana, you can also no longer trust that your man has a strong pull-out game or has invested in the type of condoms that don’t break easily. Those days are over. These days, you have to take your reproductive health in your own hands. You have two options. You can either flat-out stop having sex or provide your own birth control. Otherwise, Louisiana law will demand you go through with your pregnancy unless you’re on the verge of dying.
That’ll be the case unless you find two brave doctors who aren’t afraid of lawsuits or jail time.They’ll be facing either or both because they’ll have to the pregnancy should come to an end because of possible deadly complications. Good luck and good fortune with that.
There is one other thing resembling an option, though. Presently, you can fly, drive, or walk 700 miles to the nearest state that still legalizes abortion. But at the rate Democrats vote in local elections, you may end up having to make a cross country trek in the future.
How did we get here? You know how we got here. While Republicans were crafting legal arguments against abortion in state legislatures, Democrats were running around making emotional pleas, the chief one being – you can’t tell a woman what to do with her body.
Related: SCOTUS might make more social changes
Well, there are all kinds of things women can’t do with their bodies. Like selling parts of it for sex or putting certain drugs into it. Yes, I know, those are prohibitions shared by all humans, and being pregnant is not. Still, simply being pregnant doesn’t legally grant a woman free reign to make decisions about her body.
Why? Because over the years, Republicans have used modern medical technology to chip away at the Roe vs Wade standard of legalizing abortion up to the point of fetal viability, which was 23 weeks. They have now successfully argued that present medical equipment has changed things. For example, they now claim that a fetus’ heartbeat can be detected way earlier than before. The same goes for its ability to feel pain.
This new standard has been the backdrop of the bills they’ve passed. They have incrementally limited the time span of when a woman can have an abortion. The point being that when a fetus develops a heart and can feel pain, it becomes a person and has a right to life just like any other person. Democrats have had no convincing legal or medical answer for this.
Abortion is Now Illegal in Louisiana
Saying that old white men are making medical decisions for women and that a woman can do what she wants with her body were not convincing rebuttals to Republicans equating abortion with murder. Arguing that an early fetus is not a person could have been one.
Framing abortion as not just some everyday medical procedure, conservatives in the Supreme Court pounced. They ruled that it is not protected under a right to privacy like other medical procedures. And just like that, abortion became a states’ rights issue.
You can foresee what’s about to happen next. There will be marches, like the one we’ve just had. There will be all kinds of vows and stern finger wagging saying how this will not stand and how there will be a blue wave of retribution blowing through Congress. Then November will come. And Republicans will take over the House and Senate.
That’ll just be the first round of course. Our politics are cyclical. Eventually, Democrats will bounce back, and may even find themselves with a big enough majority in Congress to make abortion legally federally. But as always, that majority won’t mean a thing if they don’t control public opinion.
It’s amazing. In this country personhood is the defining characteristic regarding our rights. But we have no clear-cut consensus on when a pregnancy produces a person. If Democrats want to change abortion laws, then they should start by changing their current narrative. No more blaming old white men and declaring what women can do with their bodies. Focusing on personhood and rights instead would be a good place to reboot and start.