7 pocrisy of those who claim to have “pro-life” values, as they prioritize violent, life threatening bills such as the heartbeat bill over tangible, lifesaving legislation. This includes family planning techniques, more comprehensive sex education, improving child care organizations, or improving food and water access for children across the country. This devastating attack on access to reproductive services produces horrifying consequences. Making abortion illegal will not rid the U.S. of attempts to end pregnancies. According to a study by Lisa B. Haddad, board certified physician and associate professor at Emory University, and Nawal M. Nour, an obstetrician and gynecologist, restricting access to reproductive justice services directly increases the rates of unsafe abortions performed, and endangers the 42 million people who annually utilize these services during an unplanned pregnancy. According to World Health Organization (WHO), one person dies of complications from an unsafe abortion every eight minutes. In addition, children who are results of unplanned pregnancies are likely to have negative experiences in very early stages of life which affect childhood development. According to Cristian Pop-Eleches, an associate professor at Columbia University, restricting access to abortion services impacts “a whole range of additional factors broadly related to [the parents’] physical and emotional well-being resulting from involuntary parenthood [which] might affect the development of children within a family.” These are only a few of many consequences that result from restricted access to reproductive health services. These restrictions are rooted in the values found in dominant traditional protestant ideologies; they seek to uphold society's “morals” because abortions have been historically demonized and demoralized in attempts to exert reproductive control. We are primarily socialized to consider abortions as morally corrupt, and people who terminate their pregnancies are often socially shamed and isolated. Destigmatizing abortion is an important component of making them safer and more accessible. Access to safe reproductive services can mean the difference between life and death for those who do not want to be pregnant. These laws severely limit the freedom of those whose bodies are impacted by them. Ironically, those spearheading the anti-abortion legislative takeover are predominantly cisgender, old, white men who are not directly affected by these laws and do not ever experience the bodily consequences. This blatant attack on reproductive justice is part of a larger attempt to overturn Jane Roe, et al. v. Henry Wade (1973). Roe v. Wade is the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision which allows people the right to decide to end a pregnancy up until “fetal viability.” This time period has been defined as 23 to 24 weeks and was the base timeline for most abortion access laws across the country. In 2016, over 30 states, including California, had laws allowing pregnancy termination up until 20 weeks or later into the second trimester. However, the increasing reintroduction of anti-abortion legislation is a serious threat to reproductive justice.
demographic of people who can get pregnant. The U.S. is not the only country in which reproductive justice is in danger. According to the Washington Post, countries like Ireland, Somalia, Brazil, El Salvador, Iran, Nepal, Kenya, and many others have very rigid – if not completely restricted – abortion laws which are currently putting many people in danger. Reproductive injustice is a global feminist issue because people around the world are dying, contributing to the staggering but highly preventable mortality rates of unsafe abortions. Children of unwanted pregnancies are born in environments where they are usually unsupported or unwanted. This global issue of restricted bodily autonomy is being met with resistance from many organizing groups. Organizations such as the National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda and Funders for Reproductive Equity are examples of smaller coalitions working at the community level to resist regressive and violent changes within the reproductive justice movement. Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides services that contribute to reproductive justice, is under continual threat of being defunded, although their services are crucial for reproductive health services other than abortions. On April 11 of this year, South Korea ruled that a 66-year-old law which criminalized abortion is unconstitutional, putting the country on track to make abortion legal and accessible by 2020. In 2017, Oregon became the first state to make all abortions free and accessible for all folks including undocumented immigrants. Although the fight for reproductive justice seems impossible at times, there is meaningful work being done by many grassroots organizations and leftist legislators to fight for abortion access and reproductive justice overall. The fight for reproductive justice does not end without dismantling the structures that cultivate environments which allow bodily autonomy to be compromised by legislation. Dominant religious ideologies and cis-hetero patriarchy lead the ongoing attack against reproductive justice. In order to liberate those who are targeted by these systems, work must be done daily to combat these institutions of oppressive power. Actions such as donating and supporting your local Planned Parenthood and other grassroots organizations undermine the cis-hetero patriarchy. The conversations we have with our peers about reproductive justice need to incorporate normalizing abortion and destigmatizing language surrounding reproductive issues. In addition, we need to vote for candidates who have a strong, intersectional, pro-reproductive justice stance in their voting record and primary ideology. Abortions need to be free, accessible, and available without time limits attached. Placing a time limit on the bodily autonomy of those who are pregnant is inherently violent and a gross lapse of justice.
The foundation of the heartbeat bill lies in the heteropatriarchal and religious exertion of power through social control, which puts bodies capable of reproduction on a timeline dictated by the oppressive State. The arbitrary, socially assigned six to seven week time frame obliterates the freedom needed in deciding to bring a child into this world. Unwanted parenthood is the punishment imposed onto those who deviate from the hegemonic religious expectations and the cis-hetero patriarchal expectation of nuclear family structures. Because restricted reproductive service access is directly linked to increased unsafe and often fatal abortions, this state-sanctioned violence targets transgender men, gender nonconforming folks, cisgender women, nonbinary folks and others who fall into the specific Politics