Feminist Spaces Summer 2022

Role Tide Amanda Banks Granny told me stories about the coat-hanger women. People who punctured their wombs trying to “hide their sin and avoid responsibility.”

It wasn’t always a coat-hanger, but the result was always the same—a gruesome death that could have been avoided if the person had just accepted the inevitable role of mother. Granny’s stories were intended to be a form of birth control in a state that believes abstinence is the best policy. A state where abortion’s roots twist and turn through hard-packed red clay.

Each year, around 11 million abortions are performed worldwide by untrained persons using dangerous or invasive methods (WHO, 2021).

WHO also estimates that up to 13% of maternal deaths can be attributed to unsafe abortions. People who survive these dangerous procedures can suffer from hemorrhage, infection, and life-long disability. This data is clear. We don’t save lives by restricting abortion; we trade lives by forcing people into a lifetime of slavery in the role of mother through corrupt and unjust laws.

I became a mother at 16. Granny’s coat-hanger stories were no match for the older boy with the fast car and free drugs. The environment my child was born into was dark, dirty, and dangerous. We struggled for years before finding a path to safety. However, millions of people never find support. Instead, their lives follow a pattern of poverty and trauma.

Removing the protections of Roe and Casey only serves to perpetuate that pattern, snaking more roots through the Alabama clay.

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