Shouldn’t the discussion be about women’s health instead of their reproductive function?
Speechless. Furious. Confused. Unimportant. Neglected. Second-class. Unsupported. No more than a baby-making machine.
These are words that women frequently use to describe how society perceives them — usually followed by a disappointing gesture and a shake of their heads in disbelief. But then women’s health is never the center of attention — though reproduction certainly is. And the current debate shows how much women are being simply reduced to their reproductive function and not their well-being.
Personally, I can’t believe that, even now, we are still having this conversation. But then, on second thought, the fact that we are, sadly shows that prioritizing equality isn’t what this country is focusing on. Further, the abortion discussion is simply a one-sided conversation because this society hasn’t yet created a world where women have equal opportunities.
Equality starts with women’s health: to have a fair and equal conversation about abortion, a state must first guarantee that a woman will not be discriminated against simply for having a child.
But , it is not surprising to have this conversation in a country where the choice is for women to have to pretend to be “mothers without a job” or to be “professionals without a child”. Equality in the United States is defined by the mere fact that women have to work as many hours as men — but this is on top of their work at home! Additionally, they are constantly facing the obstacles of having to prove that they are worthy of even being given a place at the table.
Looking at the average 740 hours of additional unpaid work every woman does every year. Imagine what you could do with your life if you had 740 hours to follow your passion? But unfortunately, as US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand states very clearly: “Fundamentally, to provide paid leave, you have to value women and their work — and valuing women and their work is a hard thing for the United States.”
Especially white patriarchal men tend to undervalue women’s additional work in this country. A great example of that is the recently proposed offer by Republican senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Mitt Romney of Utah, Joni Ernst of Iowa, and Mike Lee of Utah offering workers parental leave benefits that would have to be repaid — with interest — through cuts in their Social Security retirement benefits.
These politicians demonstrate that, in their eyes, raising a child is unworthy of recognition and, they believe, has no economic value for the country. In contradiction, the US now wants to burden a woman by forcing her into having a child no matter the circumstances. If you want to have a child you are a burden but, if you don’t want to have a child, you are not capable of making your own decision. It is difficult not to think of the expression ‘power for the sake of having power’.
A country that doesn’t have basic laws for maternity leave, free access to health care for pregnant women, and affordable childcare, simply doesn’t have the right to even discuss matters of abortion.
What does it mean to give women a choice? (Not just a simple choice — a genuinely fair choice?)
Let’s start with some basic needs that a mother has:
1. Time to prepare so she has the bundle of joy instead of the bundle of stress
2. Maternity leave that starts before giving birth
3. Free Healthcare, so it is not a burden solely to the woman (The current average for bringing a child into the world is $30,000 for a vaginal delivery without complications and $50,000 for a cesarean section (C-section)…and guess who is usually left to pay those costs.)
4. Free education so she can raise a child who will benefit society
5. Free childcare so she can go back to work and provide everything her child will need to thrive, and, last but not least,
6. Support so she can ensure that she stays healthy and continues to do so through the rest of her life.
Pregnancy is part of the cycle of life — no matter how inconvenient it may be to some narrow minds. How can we possibly justify asking a woman to go through it when so often we are also forcing her into poverty, excluding her from society, failing to provide necessary health care and psychological support…and not even caring whether or not she continues to thrive through life afterwards?
Who is impacted by the abortion conversation?
The abortion conversation should be taking place now between the 64.55% of women within reproductive age.
Since 10.3% are under the age of 20, they should be protected from the crazy opinions of extremists in order not to destroy their views of the world right away.
Let’s take a deeper look at some other statistics to understand what we are talking about:
92.7% of abortions were performed at or prior to 13 weeks of gestation. A smaller number of abortions (6.2%) were performed between 14 to 20 weeks gestation, and even fewer (<1.0%) were performed at or above 21 weeks.
42.3% of all abortions were early medical abortions which means that they were performed before week 7.
For the extremely religious, life starts with insemination but there is very little consensus that can be found in that regard. We are trying to argue science vs belief which is a fruitless and never-ending conversation. But let’s look at some numbers to see if it is justifiable to enforce a belief as a law.
About 47% of Americans belong to a church, mosque, or synagogue. Even though more Republicans classify themselves as religious, only 39% of Americans overall think that abortion should be illegal. More research is needed into the split between male and female and their socio-economic factors but, the early data suggests that the privileged white parts of America feel they have the right to overrule the majority opinion.
Pregnancy after rape is an opportunity?
What does Ohio state lawmaker Jean Schmidt mean when she says that pregnancy after
rape is an opportunity?
If we look closely at the numbers, the only opportunities rape victims are being given are those of being able to taste poverty, inequality and alienation. Calling pregnancy after rape an opportunity, sounds like an amazing social experiment to me, particularly in a society that still predominantly lacks access to mental health practices. Ms Schmidt is talking about the ages 12–34 that are at the highest risk years for rape and sexual assault. She effectively wants 1 out of 6 American women who have experienced an attempted or completed rape to be condemned to a trauma-filled life.
Just to put that into context 14.8% of American women have experienced rape… so the estimate is that about between 25,000 and 32,000 conceived as a result of their assault — that is a large number of ‘missed opportunities’ for Ms. Schmidt to ponder on.
But she should have been on the pill.
Let’s move on to the last argument we often hear. Why didn’t she use contraceptives?
Let me reverse that question, why didn’t he use contraceptives?
The choices for contraceptives for men are limited, Big Pharma isn’t focusing on developing more choices…even though it is scientifically proven to be much easier to make sperm inviable than to interfere with the female cycle.
Many researchers will argue that men, failing to perceive it as their responsibility, simply won’t use birth control — which really does show the other side of inequality! (Federal law doesn’t even see it as necessary to make vasectomies freely accessible for men and only five states, Illinois, Maryland, Vermont, Oregon, and Washington, do mandate that vasectomies be covered at no cost to patients).
There is not a 100% safe method for preventing a pregnancy, and, unfortunately, birth control still isn’t readily accessible to a great many women. Insurers sometimes don’t cover some contraceptive methods, even when they are supposed to cover most by law.
And then there is the issue of women needing to be controlled again! Even for long-established methods, like IUDs, insurers frequently make it hard for women to get coverage by requiring pre-approvals — in other words by making women ask permission for them! ‘“Please, sir, may I have an IUD?”
What is needed
No matter how you spin it, the burden, the responsibility and all the work is still placed firmly on the woman. This is ridiculously short-sighted! A woman who, without any support structure from society, has to single-handedly navigate access to birth control and reproductive health care, runs a huge risk of encountering the harshest results of pregnancy — or worse still pregnancy as a result of rape — and then having to live with the consequences for the rest of her life. All because this rich, world-leading society of ours is failing miserably in its duty to protect vulnerable women. It is our moral and ethical duty as a society to make it as easy as possible instead of treating it as simply another exercise of power.
Just for the record: statistics show that in countries with access to sufficient parental leave and child care, and with safe and caring abortion practices, abortion rates drastically decrease. So, doing the right thing is actually very possible! Why are we being so slow to catch on to this simple logic?
Dr. Kinga Mnich is an award-winning international social psychologist, educator, and speaker, specializing in emotions, positive psychology, bio-hacking, and gender. Her work solves the myths of emotions by breaking down the complexity of social & cultural concepts tied up inside emotions.
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