Preventing abortion depends on preventing unintended pregnancy
Overturning Roe v. Wade is not a ticket to ending abortion. Declaring abortion illegal does not prevent abortion from happening.
Preventing abortion depends on preventing unintended pregnancy. And how can we prevent unintended pregnancy? Reliable and accessible contraception for all.
Consider these two approaches:
A. Make abortion illegal. Make it illegal, while at the same time dismantling a national healthcare plan that guarantees coverage of contraception. Refuse to make contraception free and readily accessible.
B. Keep abortion legal. Provide women with education, resources and easy-to-access contraception.
By denying women services as in approach A, we are only asking for more unintended pregnancy, thus more abortion. Despite its criminalization. It does not make sense to deny a woman what she needs to prevent a pregnancy, then to put her in prison when she seeks abortion. This is utter disregard for the lives of women, their health and wellbeing, particularly poor women’s, who will suffer the most under this approach.
What if, instead, we poured our love into supporting women? Increase services, improve contraception options and coverages. What if a woman could walk into any Walgreens, CVS, or whatever’s on the street corner and get a free and safe contraception injection? What if we had an abundance of free physical and mental health counseling services for pregnant women? By focusing on providing compassionate care, there will be less need of abortion; it could become rare.
By focusing on reversing the law, we are setting up a society where women are judged and jailed, their freedoms taken (their children and communities thereby suffering) . . . all without ending abortion. Look at the countries where abortion is illegal. Should the 13-year-old victim of rape go to prison for swallowing a pill to terminate a resultant pregnancy? Should the married couple go to prison for ending a pregnancy that has put the mother’s life at risk? Why should we introduce these kinds of problems, when there is another way: we can drastically reduce abortion by avoiding unintended pregnancy. If men got pregnant, contraception would be in the hands of every man. Don’t you think women deserve this right?
