You’re pregnant with your third baby. You are thrilled. You can’t wait to welcome your child. Then the baby is diagnosed with genetic abnormalities and will be dead at birth or survive only a few hours.
You’ve had two c-sections and carrying an unviable fetus to term could burst your uterus and cause future infertility at best and death from complications at worst. You’ve already been to the emergency room multiple times. The only answer is a medically induced abortion.
But you live in Texas. And even though it claims to have exceptions to its rigid and incredibly restrictive abortion laws for this situation, you’re told you and your doctors could be thrown in jail if you pursue your only life affirming option.
You gather your strength and go to open court. Baring your soul, you expose your private medical information, turmoil, pain and suffering to the world by begging the court to allow you the only procedure your healthcare providers document will ensure survival.
The judge agrees.
But Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, immediately rejects this decision and threatens to personally attack and incarcerate you and your doctors if you pursue this remedy.
Then the Supreme Court of Texas overturns the lower court’s decision, claiming the “extenuating circumstances” don’t apply here. If you remain in Texas the state will force you to give birth, no matter the cost.
This is what Kate Cox has been forced to endure. She fled the state. Her home. Her loved ones. And her trusted doctors. All at the worst time of her life, to get care in a state that doesn’t demand full authority over her womb.
Twenty other women are suing Texas for forcing them to stay pregnant and endangering their lives.
Where are the pro-lifers screaming to protect them?
This is happening now. To women across America, in Missouri, South Carolina, and Louisiana- states with a near total ban on abortions. Legislation has been introduced that will make it an act of murder for anyone who gets or aids a woman in getting an abortion.
In Kentucky, their near total abortion ban forced a woman to file a lawsuit to be allowed the right to terminate her pregnancy when all fetal cardiac activity had ceased, proving her fetus was dead.
Here in Arizona, an 1864 law went into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned. This archaic and little-known law created a near total ban on all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, unless a women’s life is in jeopardy. We’ve seen how well that exemption works. Now the high court is being asked by anti-abortion extremists to rule on the decision of a lower court that established doctors can’t be charged for performing an abortion in the first 15 weeks. The lower court’s decision was based on legal precedent- other laws had passed over the years that permitted doctors to provide such heath-care services. If the decision is overturned, women in our state will join over half the country in being denied bodily autonomy. Arizona is hoping to put it to the voters in 2024 and let them decide if a constitutional amendment should be added to enshrine women’s reproductive rights.
This is our reality.
Where a handful of state and federal lawmakers have decided they, and they alone, have the right to control a woman’s body.
Where a woman is forced to beg a court to allow her the freedom to choose.
In every state that put women’s rights to the vote, women’s rights have won.
But that hasn’t stopped those who believe they have the inalienable right to judge, destroy, harm and subjugate others to their will. Giving themselves full authority to punish those who don’t listen.
They have made their intentions clear- they want to pass a federal law denying all abortions at any time, for any reason and then prosecute mothers, healthcare providers and anyone who aids them for murder.
Many are advocating ending access to all birth control measures because they keep an egg from being fertilized and essentially “kill“ it every month.
Or calling those who hope to conceive through in vitro fertilization murderers when it doesn’t succeed.
Others are denying our constitutional right to travel freely by introducing laws that threaten prosecution for anyone who flees the state to get an abortion, effectively chaining women within their artificial boundaries.
When do we finally stand up and say enough?
Whatever reason a woman chooses to prevent or end a pregnancy is her decision.
Not the courts.
Not the state.
Not the government.
For too many of our sisters, mothers, wives, daughters, friends… time has already run out.
-https://apnews.com/article/abortion-kate-cox-texas-exceptions-e85664b2ab76bcb689b1b91913d3e33e
-https://apnews.com/article/abortion-kentucky-lawsuit-6c1b00702cf915486333bf54eb2db2de
-https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article282794193.html
-https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/11/15/1213188342/20-women-sue-texas-over-abortion-laws
-https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/missouri-lawmakers-propose-allowing-homicide-charges-for-women-who-have-abortions
-https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/here-are-the-states-where-abortion-access-may-be-on-the-ballot-in-2024