One thing that should have been clear from last week's post is that stronger restrictions on abortions not only result in deaths, but in other non-lethal forms of oppression.
That was brought home this week as another woman who miscarried at home (after two visits to the hospital; she was not avoiding medical care) is being prosecuted for abuse of a corpse.
This has started at least one thread of other women who have miscarried into toilets, and how traumatic it was, and the horror and cruelty of having criminal charges added to that.
Some people learn compassion from their experiences, some miraculously avoid it, but it is hard not to notice that the primary pushers of these laws are white men and that it is not just women but primarily women of color who get prosecuted.
We have examples of the horror and cruelty of ever more vicious prosecution and
control of women, but can we have a vision of what would be better, even superior to before Roe v. Wade was overturned?
One of the most inspiring things I have ever heard was a talk on reproductive justice by Imani Gandy.
The three primary principles of reproductive justice are...
- The right not to have a child.
- The right to have a child.
- The right to parent children in safe and healthy environments.
In reading about the environment, I have read terrible stories of birth defects that most often were not viable. The toxic pollution was most often dumped near reservations, but we can find stories of testing and storage on islands with brown populations as well.
We know there is more likely to be air pollution -- and asthma -- near primarily Black neighborhoods, and that the boundaries of those neighborhoods have been enforced by restrictive covenants and unfair banking practices.
We know that women of color have been subject to forced sterilization until at least the 1970s.
If we were to truly care about the well-being of all people, of all colors and all genders, therefore caring about those lives for longer than the human gestational period, then it would include freedom to have children as well as not to have children.
More people would feel safe having children.
For those who style themselves both pro-choice and pro-life, when they look at preventing abortions they will talk about things like better sex education and availability of birth control, as well as improving the adoption process.
Those aren't necessarily bad things, but they are thinking small.
Helping reduce teen pregnancy is a great idea, but if you want a world where women can feel safe having and raising children, then their access to health care and shelter and the necessities of life matter.
If you want a world where men are not trying to coerce women sexually, with or without reproduction, and a world where men are more likely to grasp that rape is wrong and that they shouldn't do it, then you need to work on misogyny, and the full equality of women.
I believe that world would have less abortion, and that it would be a good thing.
Abortions would probably still happen, and people would still likely fornicate too. There are people who find this unacceptable, and will do everything they can to prevent that, at least by other people.
I maintain that the world with this greater level of freedom and support is more Christ-like, and that will be the basis of the next post.
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