Everything’s bigger in Texas, especially restrictions

In case you haven’t heard or noticed women’s reproductive rights are constantly being debated by government.

Laws about abortion and birth control are constantly being changed. The laws may vary state to state but none (yet) overrule the decision made by the supreme court on Roe v. Wade. For some reason these policies are what are undergoing change during a pandemic.

Texas is the latest of the states trying to change their abortion laws.  

Under the new law, abortions would be banned as soon as a heartbeat can be detected and depends on the actions of private citizens to enforce its new law.

Less formally said: the law bans abortions a little over a month after a woman’s last period  and wants their residents to take out lawsuits on anyone helping women who are seeking abortions.

Which means that the lawsuit can’t be taken out against a woman for having an abortion but anyone who helps including: a doctor, a friend who drives them to the clinic, a boyfriend who pays for half of the procedure, or even some poor Lyft driver who’s just helping them get to a clinic could be sued. 

They wouldn’t be sued by the Texas government, they would be sued by their neighbors or any other Texas resident. In fact, the state encourages residents to turn in people helping women seeking abortions.

$10,000 is waiting as an incentive for anyone who feels like turning in their friend, neighbor, enemy, or just some poor stranger for helping a woman exercise her reproductive right to an abortion.

This law is limiting enough as it is with a fetal heartbeat but the ability to sue anyone that might even be barely involved is insane.

 It’s stripping a woman’s right to a safe abortion, because lets face it, even if this will lower the number of legal abortions, it’s not going to have the same affect on the total amount of abortions that are happening. That’s why abortion became legalized in the first place, because too many people were dying from unsafe abortions.

Let’s go back to the heartbeat part of the law. A fetal heartbeat can usually be found around five or six weeks into a pregnancy, sometimes before the fetus even develops its heart. A month is about four or five weeks and a woman’s reproductive cycle is usually around a month. 

That means if a woman has a longer cycle and has her period every five weeks she must assume that her period is not late and that she’s pregnant and get an abortion right away or she will be forced to have a child. Or even if her period is on a four week cycle than if she waits a week to see if it’s just late and then discovers she is pregnant, she has one week to get an abortion if she so desires. 

Abortions aren’t an easy decision either, sometimes it becomes a question of medical issues or a lack of funds or a ton of other reasons that usually aren’t settled in a weeks time. 

However, I understand that some people just can’t understand abortions. I could never have one myself, but I recognize that not everyone sees it the same and they deserve to have the choice. 

I ask for those who want to lower the amount of abortions to stop trying to restrict them. 

Instead rally for better sex education, consent education, a reformed foster care and adoption system, more support for pregnant women, better prenatal care, and further prosecution for rapists. 

If we do those things, the number of unplanned pregancies will go down, leading to less abortions plus better support for women who need it and the kids that we are forcing the women to have.

 If the government must control women’s bodies, can we at least regulate men’s too?