Women and men are so very different but when it comes down to the basic facts, we are the same. We are human, and yet we live in two completely different worlds. On June 24, 2022, the safety and protection of women was destroyed in much of the U.S.
To have access to an abortion used to be a right in the United States of America. Now, the government and courts have taken that right from women and stomped on it as if we are that far below our counter sex.
The choice of what to do with our own bodies was in the hands of people who never deserved to touch them.
Roe v. Wade refers to the legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. In simpler terms, the United States protected the right to have an abortion. Women were able to go into specific clinics catered to the termination of a pregnancy. Now, you can end up behind bars.
The legislation covered nearly 50 years providing legal and most importantly safe abortions since 1973.
Although I am a woman who lives in Canada, the idea of falling pregnant due to sexual assault is nauseating.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in five women in the United States experience completed or attempted rape during their lifetime. That’s around 25.5 million girls being put through pure hell.
Imagine one of them fall pregnant and must now live with that torment in a physical form for the rest of their lives. A constant reminder every single second of every single day. Forced to love something so abhorrent because that is now your child and your responsibility.
Instead of having the option to heal from something so extremely traumatic, the government willingly decided to rip any sort of reconciliation these women deserve.
The sexual abuse is only one of the many damaging scenarios that come forth with these changes.
Criminalising abortions does not stop the act, it simply just makes them incredibly less safe. The lack of access to safe, timely, affordable, and respectful abortion care is a critical public health and human rights issue, according to the World Health Organization.
Along with this being a huge violation of our basic human rights, people are now flying to developing countries to engage in harmful terminations.
As for Canadians, the latest update regarding the issue was made in a news release by the Government of Canada, in May 2023.
The release explains how everyone should have access to safe and consistent reproductive health services, including abortion. Stating that Canada will always defend a woman’s right to choose while improving access for everyone.
The scary thing about the future is that we have no way of telling how it will pan out. My biggest hope is that women get what we deserve in every country no matter the law. We have already battled one war for our human rights, and we will do it again. The year 1929 marks the historic decision to include women in the legal definition of “persons”, and I am not willing to let humanity forget that.
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