{"id":29620,"date":"2016-06-28T11:01:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T15:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=29620"},"modified":"2016-07-01T12:42:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T16:42:00","slug":"for-womens-health-and-innocent-lives-texas-governor-greg-abbotts-response-to-whole-womens-health-v-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/06\/for-womens-health-and-innocent-lives-texas-governor-greg-abbotts-response-to-whole-womens-health-v-texas.html","title":{"rendered":"For Women’s Health and Innocent Lives: Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Response to Whole Women’s Health v. Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down H.B. 2<\/a>, a Texas law\u00a0that restricted abortion access by requiring abortion facilities to adhere to unreasonable rules and regulations\u2014rules and regulations that would have forced most abortion facilities in the state to close their doors. This is all matter that has been discussed before\u2014abortions are incredibly safe procedures, safer than colonoscopies for instance, and there\u2019s no need for them to be performed only in ambulatory surgical centers.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court agreed.<\/p>\n

I want to focus on Texas Governor Greg Abbott\u2019s response<\/a>\u00a0to the ruling:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision erodes States\u2019 lawmaking authority to safeguard the health and safety of women and subjects more innocent life to being lost,\u201d said Texas Governor Greg Abbott. \u201cTexas\u2019 goal is to protect innocent life, while ensuring the highest health and safety standards for women.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In case it\u2019s not obvious, the references to protecting innocent life\u00a0are references to preventing abortion. In other words, Abbott is transparently admitting that H.B. 2 was passed in an effort to decrease the number of abortions performed, while claiming that it was also<\/em> passed to protect women\u2019s health and safety. If these two seem like they\u2019re in contradiction, that\u2019s good\u2014they are. Protecting women\u2019s health and safety, on the one hand, and making it harder for women\u00a0to access abortion on the other run at cross purposes. Of course,\u00a0conservatives like Abbott don\u2019t see it that way.<\/p>\n

I grew up in the religious right. The parades, the mailings, going\u00a0door-to-door, the rallies, working the polls\u2014all of it. At one point my politically active father campaigned using the slogan \u201cPro-Woman, Pro-Life\u201d\u2014and he believed it. My father genuinely believed that being pro-life was the most pro-woman position you could take, because abortion was fundamentally and inextricably harmful to women.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t the only one to use this slogan.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It is very likely that Abbott is of this same school of thought. Publicly, though, his administration has been claiming that they passed H.B. 2 in response to<\/a> the Kermit Gosnell scandal<\/a>. Gosnell ran an unsanitary and inhumane abortion clinic that preyed on low-income women for decades before he was shut down, arrested, and tried for murder. The problem with the Abbott administration\u2019s logic, though, is that Texas already had regular inspections<\/a> of clinics that provided abortions, inspections that would\u00a0catch\u00a0clinics like Gosnell\u2019s. In other words, H.B. 2 could\u00a0not be about ensuring that clinics are sanitary and humane, because\u00a0regulations to that effect were already in place.<\/p>\n

I knew, when the Kermit Gosnell scandal broke in the early 2010s, that it would be used as an excuse by anti-aboriton activists to push for more restrictions on abortion clinics\u2014restrictions that wouldn\u2019t stop at ensuring proper sanitation and medical procedures, but would go further in an attempt to shut abortion clinics down altogether. Anti-abortion tactics have evolved over time, and this is only the latest wave. I am all for ensuring that clinics that provide abortions are sanitary and humane.\u00a0I am not, however, okay with\u00a0rhetoric about protecting women\u2019s health and safety being\u00a0used as a trojan horse to make it harder for women to access basic reproductive healthcare.<\/p>\n

Abortion access is important to women\u2019s physical and mental health. Many women, including numerous women I personally know, have health conditions that would make pregnancy and childbirth a risky undertaking. This isn\u2019t all that rare, either now or in the past<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Death in childbirth was sufficiently common that many colonial women regarded pregnancy with dread. In their letters, women often referred to childbirth as \u201cthe Dreaded apperation,\u201d \u201cthe greatest of earthly miserys,\u201d or \u201cthat evel hour I loock forward to with dread.\u201d Many, like New England poet Anne Bradstreet, approached childbirth with a fear of impending death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes,\u00a0we have greater medical knowledge now and pregnancy and childbirth is safer today than it was in the past. But that doesn\u2019t mean it is safe for every woman, or that \u201csafe\u201d means \u201cwithout any risk of complication.\u201d I\u2019m at an age where an increasing number of my friends are having children, and experiencing some level of complications is typical. Women should be allowed to choose whether or not they want to run these medical risks, and abortion (as well as birth control, of course) allows them to do that.<\/p>\n

And this isn\u2019t even touching on mental health. There are many women who do not want to be pregnant or have a child because of a mental health condition, and many others whose mental health would be damaged by being forced to continue\u00a0an unwanted pregnancy. In other words, abortion access is important to women\u2019s mental healthcare as well.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s return to my father and his slogan for a moment. My father argued\u00a0that abortion was\u00a0harmful to women\u2014that women suffer trauma and mental health problems as a result of having an abortion, that they eventually regret their decision, and that abortion\u00a0comes with many health consequences, including an increased risk of breast cancer. The problem is that none<\/a> of this<\/a> is true<\/a>\u2014or at least, to the extent that\u00a0it is true that some women may experience some of these things some of the time, the results of denying abortions to women who want them are only worse<\/a>. The argument that abortion is bad for women makes concrete claims that can be tested\u2014and when tested, they fail.<\/p>\n

I am naturally skeptical of anyone who claims to be both in favor of banning abortion and in favor of making sure that the abortion procedure is safe and sanitary\u2014just as I would be skeptical of someone who claimed to both be in favor of equal pay for women and in favor of banning women from working outside of the home. In his statement yesterday, Governor Abbott spoke of protecting \u201cinnocent life.\u201d That term, in\u00a0the parlance of the anti-abortion movement, is a reference to embryos and fetuses, and\u00a0not<\/em> to ordinary women simply trying to access healthcare. With this reference\u2014this admission that H.B. 2 did make reducing the number of abortions performed one of its goals\u2014Governor Abbott made it crystal clear that the legislation\u00a0was never actually about protecting women\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw through the ruse<\/a>. This time.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down H.B. 2, a Texas law that restricted abortion access by requiring abortion facilities to adhere to unreasonable rules and regulations—rules and regulations that would have forced most abortion facilities in the state to close their doors. This is all matter that has been discussed before—abortions are incredibly safe procedures, safer than colonoscopies for instance, and there’s no need for them to be performed only in ambulatory surgical centers. The Supreme Court agreed. <\/p>\n

Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":29623,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-29620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-abortion-2"],"yoast_head":"\nFor Women's Health and Innocent Lives: Texas Governor Greg Abbott's Response to Whole Women's Health v. Texas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down H.B. 2, a Texas law that restricted abortion access by requiring abortion facilities to adhere to unreasonable rules and regulations---rules and regulations that would have forced most abortion facilities in the state to close their doors. 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