Texas is the most recent state to introduce an abortion ban after the U.S. Supreme Court decided to allow the bill to stand. This bill is completely unconstitutional. 

The ban, put into place by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, is on abortions after six weeks. Abortion is health care as it prevents damage to a person’s physical and economic well-being.  Many people who have periods wouldn’t know they were pregnant at that time and would assume their period is two weeks late, causing the person to not have the option of receiving an abortion if and when they found out they were pregnant. 

The ban has very few exceptions, excluding rape and incest. That means the victims, including minors, have to go through a pregnancy. This ban is forcing children and adults to carry a fetus to term, which can have severe physical and mental effects.

If the goal of this bill was truly related to the unborn child, and birth, then the focus should be on bettering the environment in which children are raised. There would be work done to the adoption system to fix it, there would be ways to fix the foster care system, as well as reduce the amount of children in the system. There is no guarantee that a child will grow up in a healthy environment. They could be in an abusive, neglectful household. In the 1990s, after Roe v. Wade, property and violent crime rates dropped 30 percent, according to the Becker Friedman Institute for Research. The adoption process should be improved and more accessible for this reason.

Abortion bans impact more than women and children. It affects anyone with a uterus, which can mean nonbinary people and transgender men. We should stop acting like abortion is a women’s rights issue when, in reality, it’s a class issue and issue for anyone with a uterus. These bans disproportionately affect low-income areas, people of color, the LGBT+ community and the youth. 

The law also allows individuals to sue those who preform an abortion as well as anyone involved in the process in any way, including rideshare drivers, motivated by a reward of at least 10,000 dollars. A website was even set up where people can post about anyone who they believe is violating the law. Why are we putting citizens in charge of other citizens and what they do with their bodies? Just because you think someone might have done something, it doesn’t mean they did. This means is people could say their neighbors or coworkers got an abortion that is illegal under this ban and can try to get money, even if it’s not true.

Furthermore, this ban is directly against the Supreme Court ruling that occurred nearly five decades ago, known as Roe v. Wade. Several women before Roe v. Wade resorted to illegal abortions that were incredibly dangerous, which is likely to happen again with these new bans. The case ended with the Supreme Court ruling that the ban was unconstitutional as a woman’s right to an abortion was implied in the right to privacy which is protected by the 14th Amendment.

Texas’s unconstitutional ban on abortions after six weeks has begun to spread to other states, who are considering following Texas’s lead. Those states are Arkansas, Florida, South Dakota, Idaho, Indiana and Oklahoma. All of these states have decided to go directly against the Supreme Court’s original ruling and the 14th Amendment in an attempt to control the population.

Abortion is healthcare so let’s treat it as such.