By Claudia Ionita
My body, my choice: While many nowadays consider the battle over the right of abortion to be already won, recent events show that it is not necessarily the case. One of the more unexpected consequences of the Corona crisis is the endangering of this right, particularly in the United States. While the 1973 judgement in Roe v. Wade legalised abortion across all of the US, it would appear that certain states are using the newfound crisis as a means of weakening this right. As all non-essential service providers had to be closed during the ongoing epidemic, the states of Alabama, Iowa and Ohio have taken advantage of this and deemed abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood as non-essential. As a result, the abortion clinics in these states had to close down, leaving the women who needed them to travel to other states in order to get the needed procedure. Yet for some, that might be difficult, if not impossible to do. Other Republican governors from Alaska, Indiana, Mississippi, Texas and Oklahoma have also deemed abortions to be non-essential and are aiming to follow in these footsteps. While it is indeed important to save as much Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) as possible in these times when such resources are scarce, by no means is abortion non-essential. The right to terminate a pregnancy should be recognised as a fundamental human right. Forcing parenthood on those who do not want it could have negative impacts on everything from their mental health to their financial situation. For some women, completing a risky pregnancy can bring detriments to their physical health as well, endangering in certain cases even their life.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) together with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and other abortion providers have decided to take legal action against the states who have deemed abortion as a non-essential procedure. Elizabeth Watson, staff attorney for the ACLU has called these decisions politically motivated attacks, which are “not grounded in science or public health”. Not only do abortion providers help with the abortion procedure itself, they also provide pre-natal care and STI testing-closing them hurts a multitude of people in vulnerable situations.
What many fear, however, is that such legal action can backfire. The Supreme Court of the US, which ruled on making abortion legal in the 1970s has the power to overtrun such a ruling. While this possibility has been speculated about for many years, the difference now is that the court’s composition is predominantly Conservative. The appointment in 2018 of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who is firmly against abortion has raised worries regarding the future of this right. While it is still too soon to make concrete predictions, one can anticipate a gradual return to 1972.
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