By Cynthia Solis
Texas passed the “Heartbeat Bill”, banning all abortions after six weeks, making it a controversial and unconstitutional bill that does more harm than good.
The law explicitly bans all abortions after six weeks, when a fetal heartbeat is usually detected.
The bill also allows all citizens to sue any healthcare provider or woman who administered an abortion or sought to have an abortion, respectively.
This law has no exceptions for rape or incest.
The bill goes against Roe v. Wade, which was decided on January 22, 1973. In the landmark case, the United States Supreme Court said the Constitution protects all pregnant women’s liberty to have an abortion.
The Heartbeat Bill is exceptionally harmful to women who seek an abortion because it threatens their health and rights.
This bill interferes with a providers’ ability to give pregnant women the proper care since health care providers in Texas will be forced to choose between providing adequate healthcare to their patients or being sued and face possible imprisonment.
Banning abortions puts women at risk.
Just because abortions become illegal, does not mean they become obsolete. So, as a result, women will seek harmful and dangerous versions of the procedure.
Furthermore, the bill disproportionately impacts women of color.
According to a July research brief conducted by the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Policy Evaluation Project, it was determined that the law “would particularly affect Black patients and those living on low incomes or who live far from a facility that provides abortion because they often experience delays obtaining care.”
Some of these delays include not having enough money to pay for their healthcare visits since abortion isn’t covered by Medicaid or most private insurance plans in Texas.
Not only that, they may have more difficulty finding time to go to an appointment because of school, work, and possible child care scheduling conflicts.
The Biden Administration has already filed a lawsuit against Texas over the “clearly unconstitutional” abortion ban.
Vice President Kamala Harris, in an address, said that women have the right to make their own reproductive choices, and decisions about “their bodies” were “not negotiable.”
I firmly believe, as a pro-choice activist, that this ban goes against everything women in this country have fought so hard to have and needs to be made illegal.
According to the Texas Tribune, Governor Greg Abbott said during the bill signing ceremony, “Our creator endowed us with the right to life and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion… [The legislature] worked together on a bipartisan basis to pass a bill that I’m about to sign that ensures that the life of every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion.”
Pro-life Republicans are only pro-lifers when it comes to embryos in the womb.
This is the same party that harms women and families with their regressive policies.
This can be seen when they support the imprisonment of women who want access to abortion when they tore babies away from parents and locked their children in cages, when immigrants begain entering the United States illegally with absolutely no plan to reunite them. Or when they cut programs that feed hungry kids, and among half a dozen other reasons.
While these situations are mostly things that happened recently they still remain relevant because people are falling victim to the abuse the pro-life and conservative communities rampantly commit.
The present hypocrisy that is prevalent in the pro-life community makes me wonder how a person can be so firm in believing that they are “saving” these unborn children from the “ravages of abortion.” Yet these same people do not acknowledge the way that they ravage, abuse, and assault women and families, due to this ban and with past actions.
How can pro-life supporters be so firm in their beliefs yet not extend that same “rights” to the kids, teenagers, and parents that are being ravaged by society daily without so much as an inkling of support?
If a pro-lifer put as much energy into fixing the foster care system or world hunger, the world would be a much safer and more compassionate place.
If Texas can put this bill into effect, other states will try the same tactic, to the point that it doesn’t just affect the women in Texas. It could just as quickly affect all women.