Remember Roe - Defend Abortion Rights!
Share
I was 16 years old when I lost my first right. I was young, but I knew what it meant.
I’d always been an avid follower of politics and with that came an unfortunate understanding that the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision would overturn Roe vs. Wade. I knew what that meant for women in places less fortunate than me.
Four years ago today, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, trigger laws across the nation went into effect and millions of women lost the right to bodily autonomy. Laws that had been sitting dormant for decades snapped into place overnight. In states like Texas, Missouri and Alabama, abortion became illegal almost immediately, with little to no exceptions for rape or incest. Women who had gone to bed with a constitutional right woke up without one. Not because anything had changed about their lives or their bodies, but because a court had changed its mind.
What struck me then, and still does now, is how unevenly that moment landed. Where you happened to live determined what rights you had. A woman in New York experienced June 24, 2022 as a news event. A woman in Louisiana experienced it as a medical emergency waiting to happen. Same country. Same day. Completely different reality.
The stories that followed were not abstract. They were women being turned away from emergency rooms while miscarrying. They were doctors afraid to intervene until a patient was septic enough to legally qualify for care. They were teenage girls forced to travel across state lines, sometimes hundreds of miles, for healthcare their own state had decided they no longer deserved. Some couldn't make that trip. Some didn't have the money, the time off work, the ability to cross a state line without someone finding out.
When women can’t choose, we are forced into dangerous situations. In the year following the Dobbs decision, 210 women faced criminal charges related to their pregnancy, abortion, pregnancy loss, or birth. Living as a 20-year-old woman today, I understand now more than ever the privilege that I have to be born in a state that fights for my right to bodily autonomy. Four years after Dobbs, women are still being criminalized. And until it stops, the fight is not over. I implore everyone to take a moment to learn your state’s laws. Know your rights. Know who is making decisions about your body and whether they have your vote. Bodily autonomy is not a guarantee. It is something that has to be protected, over and over, by people who refuse to stop paying attention.
Mary Kate Coughlin is a Syracuse University student interning with Syracuse Cultural Workers this summer.