Last month, Republicans dominated midterm elections across the nation. No one can deny the power right-wing lawmakers will hold once January rolls around as they now enjoy a strong grip on two-thirds of state legislative bodies.
Unfortunately, the flood of Republican victories has paved the way for more restrictive and aggressive anti-abortion legislation. As I write this column, abortion opponents in various states have already crafted and proposed laws that severely intrude on the reproductive rights of women. Mandatory ultrasounds, increased waiting periods, restrictions on medicated abortion and harsher regulations on clinics are just some of the ways these proposals would make it harder for women to obtain an abortion.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll also shows that 70 percent of Americans support Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protected abortion as a woman’s right. Despite the beliefs of the American public, extreme anti-abortion legislation continues to sweep the nation.
Elected politicians are supposed to serve the people of their country or state, but this troubling trend shows just how little regard some of them hold for the health and well-being of their constituents. Conservative lawmakers need to acknowledge that abortion is a socioeconomic issue with real and lasting implications for men, women and children, rather than just an ideological problem that they can arrogantly vote into oblivion.
Anti-abortion legislation disproportionately affects lower-income women. According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than 40 percent of women seeking abortions are at or below the federal poverty level. An additional 27 percent of women who obtain abortions earn slightly more but are still considered poor, and the majority of women seeking abortions already have one or more children.
Enacting restrictive anti-abortion legislation not only strips away a woman’s right to control her own body, but it also plunges families deeper into poverty. Depressingly, the politicians who try to restrict abortions are also the ones who tend to oppose social welfare programs, universal health care and minimum wage increases. Earlier this year, Senate Republicans defeated legislation that would raise the minimum wage, and House Republicans pushed for a bill that would cut billions of dollars from the federal food stamp program.
How can abortion opponents speak so vehemently about the value of life while they simultaneously push for legislation that worsens the plights of poverty-stricken men, women and children?
Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, put it best when she famously explained the difference between pro-life and “pro-birth.” Chittister argued that the morality behind restricting abortion becomes questionable when “all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed.”
Rather than enact overreaching laws that restrict a person’s right to make personal medical decisions and ability to provide for loved ones, abortion opponents should focus on solutions that are proven to reduce unintended pregnancies in the first place.
Even though many conservative lawmakers passionately argue against these measures, comprehensive sex education in schools and easy access to birth control has consistently been proven to lower the rate of unintended pregnancies. It is difficult to understand why these ideas have been so heavily challenged in conservative states. This is a solution that will significantly reduce abortions without forcing people to bear children they cannot take care of. It will not infringe upon the right of a person to have access to a safe and legal medical procedure.
If politicians want to restrict abortion but are unwilling to support policies that will reduce unintended pregnancies or programs that will help the affected families survive, they have no business discussing the matter further.
Moriah Camenker is a UF public relations senior. Her columns appear on Tuesdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 12/2/2014]
