While the rate of abortions is the lowest since the early
1970’s before the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized it and about half the
peak rate which occurred in 1984 Republicans aren’t satisfied. Several state
legislatures have recently all but outlawed abortions. Alabama’s new law is the
most restrictive only allowing exceptions "to avoid a serious health risk
to the unborn child's mother," for ectopic pregnancy and if the
"unborn child has a lethal anomaly."
You can tell a lot of the legislators passing such bills a
truly ignorant of human reproduction. Republican state Sen. Clyde Chambliss,
who pushed Alabama’s bill stated on the Senate floor that there is a
"window" of time between conception and when a woman knows for
certain that she's pregnant which he believes to be seven to ten days. Reality
is that most women don’t know they’re pregnant for six to eight weeks and often
longer.
Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ohio all passed bills
prohibiting abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, that’s six
weeks. In other words by the time a woman even knows she’s pregnant these
lawmakers have eliminated abortion as an option. In Missouri the governor
signed into law a bill banning abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy, without
exceptions in the cases of rape or incest.
Some state legislatures controlled by Democrats are
expanding abortion rights and access. In Maine new state law will allow nurse
practitioners to perform abortions, expanding the possible number of care
providers in the state. Nevada’s legislature voted to reverse some restrictions.
Vermont's legislature recognized “as a fundamental right the freedom of
reproductive choice," including “rights to choose or refuse contraception
or sterilization or to choose to carry a pregnancy to term, to give birth to a
child, or to obtain an abortion”—and its Republican governor won’t veto the
bill.
The Illinois state House has passed a bill that, like
Vermont’s, affirms reproductive freedoms and also repeals some restrictions on
the books in the state. Massachusetts is considering the ROE Act, which would
remove some restrictions, including a parental permission law for teens and a
waiting period that isn’t currently being enforced anyway, as well as expand
rights to abortion after 24 weeks in case of serious fetal abnormalities and
create a safety net to ensure that abortion is treated like other medical care
for women who don’t have other health coverage.
Research from around the globe shows restrictive laws don’t
actually seem to reduce abortion rates. Instead, they are linked to unsafe abortions,
which put women at risk of serious health problems and even death.
States that emphasize abstinence-only programs have the
highest rates of teen pregnancy and teen birth. In 2003, California lawmakers
instead passed the California Comprehensive Sexual Health and HIV/AIDS
Prevention Education Act which forbade public schools from promoting religious
doctrine or bias against people, and said that all sex education programs had
to be medically accurate, age-appropriate and comprehensive. By 2005,
California’s teen pregnancy rate was 75 per 1,000 teens, a more than 50 percent
decline that dwarfed the corresponding national decline of 37 percent.
To this day, a large minority of teen pregnancies tend to
end in abortion. But with California’s decline in teen pregnancy rates came
declines in both teen births and teen abortions. Abortions, in particular,
dropped from 76 per 1,000 teens in 1988 to 26 per 1,000 in 2005.
If Republicans really wanted to reduce abortions they’d
improve sex ed in our public schools, instead they just pander to religious
conservatives.
Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 31, 2019
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