It’s the twenty-first century and still women and afab people (assigned female at birth) still do not have the rights to their own bodies. And they still do not have equality compared to cisgender men. Women and afab people are constantly belittled and ridiculed for their bodies. And now the government is trying to assert control over them by taking away their rights.

 

Roe v Wade was a legal decision that was issued on January 22 in 1973, in which the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas statue on banning abortion. This effectively legalized abortions across the United States. However, recently that law was overturned. By doing this the Supreme Court strip women and afab people of their rights to have an abortion.

 

This issue affects people with afab bodies as this directly takes away their own right to their own body. Meaning, many people feel as though they don’t own their own bodies. No matter anyone’s political or religious stance everyone should have the right to control their own body. This article will go into many discussions on the lives of women, afab people and unwanted children, it will also discuss male hierarchy, the patriarchy and women being slaves to the system. This blog post is inclusive to all those with uterus’ and will discuss the impact of banning abortion. Some of the topics I will discuss doesn’t include all men, but keep in mind it is enough men.

 

An abortion is the termination of a fetus from the uterus. Most abortions are carried out in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. And the decision to have an abortion is an afab persons choice. It is easy for a group of men to decide whether an afab person should carry a fetus in their womb but is it really their right when they aren’t the ones carrying it? (This may not include trans men.)

 

Whenever the discussion of abortion rights is brought up one of the main things that comes up is the discussion of Pro-life. People who identify as Pro-life oppose abortion and believe abortion is murder. Ideologies such as these do more harm than good as Pro-lifers often try to shove their disgust of abortion down many people’s throats. As they claim abortion is murder, however some Pro-lifers seem to be stuck in the beliefs of the 18th century.

 

Many Pro-lifters often protest outside of abortion clinics, which already makes a person’s hard choice even harder. This puts shame on those accessing their right to their choice and their body. Your body is your own and nobody should take that away from you.

 

Prohibiting women and afab people of the right to decide what they can and cannot do with their bodies is taking away their freedom and turns them into slaves of the patriarchy. People and the governments across the world who stand with the Pro-life ideology, only make things worse for the people of the world as it puts a huge risk on people who want to live the lifestyle they want. People should be able to choose the life they want to live.

 

Women have always been the slaves of male oppressors, as throughout history men have decided what a woman should and should not do. From a young age woman are taught how to please a man, how to dress and look so a man will like them. How if they aren’t married by mid-twenties and they begin to age they have no purpose in life because no man will want a woman who actually ages (this plays a lot into paedophilia and how many men date younger women because she’s ‘purer’ and more fertile – prime example of this is Princess Dianna and how Charles used her youth for children but didn’t actually want her beyond that). Many men fetishize younger women for sexual wants.

 

Many people, while abortion is illegal, will risk their lives with at home abortions. Which puts their life at a risk as they may die from such procedures. These procedures are extremely harmful to a person’s health both during and after the procedure is taken place. Many people will experience excessive bleeding, an incomplete process, mental trauma and if you’ve taken an illegal substance this can cause serious health concerns.

 

Accessing abortions medically is much safer and reduces all of those risks.

 

Abortion should be a human right not a privilege and many people who seek abortions have many different reasons for wanting one. One in five women experience sexual assault as an adult and one in six children have been sexually abused, within those a quarter of them become pregnant (and it is probably more). Victims of sexual assault and rape have to live with the trauma of that experience for the rest if their lives, and they did not ask for a child.

 

By making abortion illegal, it forces the person to raise an unwanted child, the traumatic effect of rape and the child’s relation to the rapist can create many problems within the relationship of the parent and child. The person raising the child may have challenges accepting the rape and this may leave a sore wound, and this could lead to the person putting blame on the child. This resulting in the child growing up in an environment where they can sense they aren’t loved. Which can lead to a lot of psychological problems as they grow up and can lead to them developing mental and physical struggles in life.

 

Forty-One percent of children are in foster care. Foster care centres are overrun with children and this number keeps increasing. Many children grow up in the foster system and grow up in an environment which does not provide what they need to feel loved, appreciated, safe and happy. Many foster systems are abusive and under staffed, meaning each child will not receive the love and care that they need.

 

Moreover, Sixty percent of homeless people have been in foster care at some point in their lives, which statistically shows that children in the system have a huge disadvantage in life. Many foster systems only allow children to stay until they’re eighteen, and many are forced to leave after that age. The trauma of foster care has a huge impact on how a person will be able to develop skills to gain a job and a home later on in life. And this is something a person needs to survive a lifestyle that supports them mentally and physically.

 

In Canada, Forty-Eight percent of children in the foster care system are indigenous and they are massively under-represented. Many indigenous family’s find it harder to find employment and many indigenous children are being taken away for other reasons. And the state of these housing situations, is inadequate – as Canada is known as a wealthy nation. However, within foster system you can see foster children living in bungalows with Sixteen to Eighteen people at a time.

 

To add more, Forty percent of foster children have learning difficulties, many of those children will not receive the extra support that they need. And with this suicides rates amongst children in foster care is Fifty-Six percent and although suicides of children under the age of Twelve are rarer the number is constantly increasing.

 

Taking away abortion leaves many unwanted children being brought into the world. Children from the age of six months can sense what makes the people around them happy or not. A child at six months often smiles, because they see the reaction of the people around them and they continue to smile to get praise and to please those around them. Therefore, a child born unwanted can grow up with a lot of pain that may never leave them as they grow older.

 

The quality of life for a woman or afab person who is forced to have an unwanted pregnancy can be miserable. Unwanted pregnancy would mean excessive hardships in life and not joy, that often people assume comes with having a child. Many people cannot afford to have children meaning life for that person may not go how they wanted, making dreams unattainable.

 

Many women in the United Kingdom who have children and cannot afford it are put into council housing and often can’t get out of the cycle of being unable to afford what they originally wanted in life. For a teenager who still has not left school, their life would no longer revolve around the life they wanted to live but instead their child’s life.

 

Peer pressure to have sex as a teenage girl, is high. And the education system on Sex Education in high school is not informative enough. Many teenagers feel embarrassed to talk about sex with their teachers and parents (this often is because of shame culture and women being told talking about their sexual wants is shameful). And often teenage girls feel embarrassed to ask the person they are about to have sex with to wear a condom (this is quite common!). And as recent debates have shown many men feel as if a condom restricts them and some even take it off during sex without the woman’s consent. (This is not all men, but it is enough men – and even if it was just one man, this still is wrong and it should be talked about.)

 

Many women are expected to marry a man and have children, and many women do not get a choice in the matter. Social pressures to be married and have children before thirty are immense. And many women fall into this ideology that they are worthless if they aren’t married by thirty and have children. The patriarchy has taught women that their worth is on their husband and their children. Some women do want this, but also some women don’t. Women forced or peer pressured into this lifestyle and it will only lead a life of misery. And may lead to divorce, which is quite impactful on a child’s life.

 

Many people can deny that the patriarchy exists but if you opened up your eyes and actually looked, you’d see how much it does exist. It exists in everyday life and many people are blinded to it because they don’t want to acknowledge that they are oppressed, because breaking out of oppression is a lot harder and staying blind to it can seem easier. Many people are blind to the oppression of the patriarchy and they suffer without realising it.

 

The statistics for abortions for people of colour are higher than those of white people, black women are one fifth more likely to get an abortion than white women along with hispanic women having more abortions than white women. These rates of higher unwanted pregnancies reflect on the many difficulties these people face that white people do not face. Many people of colour face many difficulties in accessing contraceptive services, to find the right form of contraception for them. The lack of sexual health services open to women of colour are lacking and this is too easily ignored.

 

Women of colour face discrimination in the workplace and many experience gendered racism while in the workplace. A sociologist Margaret Chin states that asian American women experience racialised forms of sexualised assault that leads to isolation and results in their exclusion from new leadership opportunities, this is something that white women don’t and won’t experience.

 

In the United States, there are only three percent of black women in the doctor profession. Black women that do work in the profession face racism in the workplace, from their colleagues and from patients. White women are the ones who benefit from a more balanced gendered workplaces and women of colour are less likely to receive roles in a workplace.

 

Many people choose to ignore these facts, but if we continue to ignore them, we continue to repeat history. Though during the twentieth century women won the right to vote, the suffragette movement was racist. Many white women refused to allow women of colour to join the marches and if they did join, they were often told to stand at the back. However, women such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper called the white women out on their racism and fought for the rights of all women, not just white women.

 

In December 2018, Marshae Jones, a black woman was shot in her stomach while she was pregnant. Instead of the shooter being charged, she was convicted of killing her own baby. With the new abortion laws cases like hers will be more common. Women of colour will be more likely charged for manslaughter after having stillbirths, miscarriages and abortions.

 

Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women told Insider "With the dismantling of Roe v. Wade, black, brown, and indigenous communities will carry the burden of the consequences, as well as other marginalized communities like LGBTQ+ and women in poverty,"

 

Women constantly have to fight to exist, women and afab people are harassed daily. Women barley make one quarter of governments. Men do not take women seriously and continue to belittle women because they think they’re weak. Women are underrepresented in key fields, especially women of colour, and many non-binary and transgender individuals experience high fields of discrimination within the workplace.

 

There is a huge gender bias in the workplace as women with a ‘male’ or gender-neutral name on their CV are seen to find more success in getting through to the next round of employment. Women who want or who are in leadership roles tend to come under a lot of scrutiny compared to their male counterparts who are told to be assertive and ambitious. Women are told and programmed from a very young age that they should come across as docile and kind, rather than ‘bossy’. Gender bias is still very active in today’s society.

 

Women in the sex industry are constantly shamed for their career choices. They deem women actually wanting sex as dirty, and women in the sex industry are constantly shamed. Women who have worked in the sex industry are less likely to be offered other job roles later on in life. And some of those who do work in the sex industry, don’t get a choice.

 

Women are often taught to keep quiet and to keep their husband happy, because women have been taught to be slaves to the system. Who knows how many women came up with scientific discoveries but had them stolen by a white man, or even those who could have come up with scientific discoveries but were told to stay at home and be a housewife?

 

By taking away abortion rights, we strip away any progress for women and afab rights that have been made in the last century. Taking away a person’s choice, is taking away their rights to their body. It allows women and afab people to be controlled by the patriarchy.