The House just passed HR36 aka the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a law that would ban abortion after 20 weeks nationwide and punish those who perform them after that point with up to five years in prison.
Contact your senators and demand that they vote NO to eroding what’s left of our right to control our own bodies and reproductive fates.
Contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind.
Text RESIST to 50409.
Call the U.S. Senate Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
Call the U.S. House of Representative Switchboard at (202)225-3121.
Most abortions done after four months often mean that the fetus is non-viable. It’s usually a medical emergency which means either there is a health issue for the child or the mother. if you keep a dead or dying fetus inside of you, you may die too. please call your senator.
NOT ONE TO SCROLL PAST.
My body my choice. Tell your senate and your house to stop trying to police the bodies of women.
while i agree that law is shitty and y’all need to fight to change it if u can (Cant help sorry, in canada) They seriously can’t be that bad that they’d punish you for a medical reasons? Like as stated above keeping a dying fetus in you can kill you, so im sure they gotta have acceptations for cases like that
Please tell me the states isnt gone /that far/
They’re punishing the doctors.
And “exceptions for rape, incest, etc.” does not mean that those people will be safe.
There are lots of pro-lifers who have no intention of stopping there.
They have and will pass laws that will make it more difficult to report a rape, which would be required to be covered under that exception. It’s already legal in a couple of states for a rapist to sue for custody of a child conceived by rape. On top of that, it would force a person already traumatized by a rape experience to disclose that experience to people who hold massive amounts of power over how their lives will go for the foreseeable future. People who may not be sympathetic, who may blame them, or not believe them.
That, by itself, is an intensely humiliating experience for anyone to go through. It can make a victim feel as though they’re the one confessing to a crime. Many people will avoid getting an abortion just to avoid potentially being retraumatized in that way.
As for the medical exception, it would require that medical professionals break doctor-patient confidentiality and submit a person’s medical records to the government. Under Roe v. Wade, neither doctor nor patient are criminals and thus would have their rights to due process violated.
What is medically necessary is also up to the particular doctor. Not every doctor is going to understand medical necessity like their patients do. For example, a person with severe depression who would be at risk for suicide if they stayed pregnant would have a medical need…but their doctor may not believe depression is a legitimate reason.
“Just find another doctor” isn’t an answer either. Here in America, we have to pay out of pocket for our health care. Not all doctors accept Medicaid. Trump just killed the requirement that employers cover birth control in their insurance. Some of us live in places where Other Doctors just aren’t accessible. There’s several states where you can only find one or two abortion clinics in the entire state. People routinely have to cross state lines to get an abortion and sit through waiting periods as long as 72 hours – and that’s the way things are now, before the bill is passed.
Like I said, they don’t plan to stop there. They’ll try to push back the date. It’s 20 weeks in this bill. They’ll try to go 16, then 12, then 10, then 8, all the way up until they can ban it altogether.
Combine that with the fact that even people who want to be pregnant are being legally shat on. Trump and his ilk are already unraveling the rug of health care under pregnant people. There is still no legally mandated paid new parenthood leave. The life of a fetus is being used as an excuse to conduct gross violations of pregnant people’s privacy, autonomy and dignity, to the point of imprisoning women for having a miscarriage.
We do not treat pregnant people as people in this country. So many institutions – church, state, capital – have designs on human life even before it begins. Even if you believe it begins at conception, you have to acknowledge that these powers have vested interest in controlling when that conception happens.
At the end of the day, the only person you always have to take care of is you. Only you are capable of knowing what you really need, and can really deal with. Everyone else – your priest, your doctor, your therapist, your partner, your parents, your political leaders, your boss – can only offer you their best guess based on what they know and believe.
This is why there needs to be choice. People need to be able to make the best decision possible to take care of themselves. If it’s the life of the unborn you care about, support universal health care so that pregnant people can get the best care without fearing their ability to pay their bills. Support dismantling the oppressive structures of class that leave millions of children and their parents struggling to survive. Support affordable and accessible birth control and sex education beyond abstinence, both known to result in less unwanted pregnancies and, by extension, less abortions. Support LGBT adoption rights so that deserving and wanting parents might provide loving homes to unwanted children who would have otherwise spent years in the fucked up state adoption system.
On a personal note, my mother recently informed me that I would not have been conceived, let alone born, had she not been able to get an abortion before. I would literally not exist if it weren’t for abortion rights. The person going to the clinic to get an abortion now may be going there to have their monthly ultrasound later.
In the interest of life, we must have a choice.
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