By Yasmin Vejs Simsek, Staff Writer
Content warning: Mentions of sexual assault and anti-abortion sentiments
The US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. The decision undermines the bodily autonomy of just over half the country’s population. The original 1973 ruling guaranteed people a constitutional right to have an abortion. Flash forward to June 24, 2022 and the Supreme Court has now rewound the clocks by 50 years in an infuriating ruling that takes bodily autonomy away under the disgusting pretense of religious piety.
Zechariah 7:10 says: “Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner, or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.” God wants his worshippers to take care of the vulnerable, especially children. But the pro-life (anti-abortion) faithful have no interest in actually securing a good life for potential babies, as is evident from the lack of health care, parental leave, daycare, and decent education in the US. Thanks in part to those social failures, maternal mortality is over twice as high in the US compared to the next highest developed country — 17.4 women in every 100,000 in the US die at some point during the childbirth process, compared to 8.7 in France. The failure of American post-natal care extends to the country’s atrocious foster care system. But no calls to address those terrible failures make anti-abortionists’ chants. It’s clear that religious anti-abortionists are not loving their neighbor, nor are they acting as good samaritans by working to help the fetuses they forced birth upon.
The hypocrisy of failing to care for babies after they’re born is multiplied by the religious hypocrisy that’s shown over the course of the pregnancy. Genesis 2:7 preaches: “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” You don’t have to have a major in theology to understand that this passage refers to life starting at first breath, but here’s one anyway. Judaism is even clearer — according to the Talmud, the ancient rabbis saw the fetus as part of the mother until birth. Life begins, for them, at the moment of birth. But, as a result of the Supreme Court decision, people who accept this Jewish take on life have their religious freedom undermined. To turn the expression “life begins at conception” into law, is a violation of the freedom of those who say it begins at “first breath.”
Many anti-abortionists will use the phrase, “It is God’s will,” to support their argument. Pregnancies, they’ll say, are the result of divine intervention — whether they’re unplanned, the result of incest, or whether the baby won’t be able to survive in the real world. That argument generates a range of problematic questions. Impotence, for instance, is just as much God’s will as pregnancy, where is the ban on Viagra? Infertility, rape, murder, cancer — are these all God’s will? Absolutely not. Further, it is believed among Christians that an angel came down to ask Mary whether she wanted to carry baby Jesus. Key word, ask. God didn’t just force her to carry a child — He gave her the choice to carry one.
Of course, moralizing on religious thought isn’t the most important thing here. The US is technically a secular nation, which means it constitutionally separates the church and the state. The US should therefore not be able to make laws based on religious teachings, especially when 59% of Christians in the country and 89% of religiously-unaffiliated people did not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned. The freedom of belief stands as it should, but the freedom to not believe is also a constitutional right. If someone tried to impose Islam on Americans, the situation would be pretty different, I’m sure — as has been argued in light of another recent religious-based Supreme Court decision. No one, no Christian, no Muslim, no Jewish person, should impose their religion on someone else’s body.
A country that can now dole out harsher punishments for aborting a pregnancy that occurred as a result of rape, than for the crime itself, is a country that is at war with people who have uteruses.
And that’s the point.
Religion is being used as a pretext for misogynistic policymaking. It’s a smokescreen for a desire to see pregnant Americans as tools for birthing, rather than people. It’s a way to punish people for their sexuality. That’s why the very same court that just overturned Roe is now setting its sights on the right to contraception. The goal is to reduce agency from the moment of conception to childbirth to when the child reaches adulthood. Don’t be fooled by false displays of religious piety. The end of Roe is the result of a misogynistic push to reduce people to their reproductive organs and ability to give birth.
We need to keep an eye out for anti-abortionists in Canada. While our population is generally more agreeable towards abortion, we have a weak legal infrastructure that upholds the right to bodily autonomy that leaves us open to restrictions. We need to check those who would use religion as a pretext for reducing our rights. We deserve the choice over our own bodies. It’s an essential part of healthcare, and an essential part of living as a free citizen.
