you aren't pro-life, you're anti-woman

Wednesday, May 19th, Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a "heartbeat bill" expected to take effect in September. This bill is meant to all but ban abortions for the women of Texas. He is one of many prominent Republican lawmakers pushing to eliminate a woman's right to have an abortion, while, in the same breath, advocating for the expansion of gun rights. Does anyone else see the irony here?

Here's what you need to know about heartbeat bills.

A heartbeat bill bans abortions after a fetal "heartbeat" is detected at 6 weeks of pregnancy, only 4 weeks after an embryo has started to develop and 2 weeks after a missed period. Clinical symptoms of pregnancy like nausea and fatigue don't typically start until after 6 weeks, which means that, under this new law, people not actively planning for a pregnancy don't know they are pregnant until after it is too late to abort. People with PCOS and other reproductive disorders with irregular menstruation, like me, may not know they are pregnant until months after a fetus starts to develop. This new law takes away their ability to make decisions that protect their individual rights and the health and safety of their own bodies.

Abbott's bill also makes no exceptions for rape or incest victims. As if this weren't enough of an attack on women's rights, the bill also includes a provision allowing individuals to sue any person or organization suspected of helping a pregnant person violate the ban. Abbott said the bill "...ensures that the life of every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion". I find his specificity appropriate given that he and many other anti-woman, pro-life advocates clearly care more about saving fetuses and protecting precious firearms than about saving living, breathing children and women and protecting the citizens that already live in their states.

Texas is stained with the blood of women and children who are victims of domestic and gun violence, neglect, and abuse. In 2019 3,683 people died from gun-related violence in Texas.

In 2018 59% of Texan women killed in domestic violence cases were killed by guns - more than all other means combined, according to the Texas Council on Family Violence. Women in Texas are 24% more likely to die in gun-related violence than women living in other states. In 2020 251 Texan children died in from abuse and neglect. Almost 200,000 Texan children live in a home with unlocked, loaded firearms, and in 2019 nearly 400 Texan children died due to gun-violence.

Texas, the state that cares more about a clump of cells and a loaded gun than the children and women dying every day from preventable deaths. Texas, the state of hypocrisy. But it isn't just Texas. Anti-woman Republicans in other states including Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama and Kentucky have or are trying to prevent access to abortion for women in their states.

Without legal abortions women have no choice but to turn to unsafe alternatives. This includes using clothes hangers in an attempt to break the amniotic sac, pumping the body with plant toxins, and overdosing on over the counter or illegal drugs. Approximately 8 to 11 percent of maternal deaths are caused by unsafe abortions globally.

In a world without legal abortions, victims of rape and incest, including children, are forced to carry a fetus to full-term and become a parent before they are even an adult. In a world without legal abortions, miscarriages become a reason to jail a woman.

Abortion is a human right. Demand better from lawmakers in your state.