A Decision Up To Women
Pregnancy termination is a controversial but legal medical procedure. There is a strong opposition based on moral and religious concerns that, in many cases, comes from men who are never going to make any such decision about their body, but who talk as if they have rights over the life of others. This is a decision exclusively up to women, because they are the ones who will live with the result.
A few days ago, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a Texas law that requires abortion clinics to meet the same staffing and resources standards as a hospital, and that their doctors have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 kilometers. The law’s promoters say that those measures are needed to protect women, but what they are doing is actually imposing conditions difficult to comply with. Their purpose is to close down clinics that not only perform abortions, but also take care of other aspects of women’s reproductive health.
This is one of several strategies that for a long time have been used to prevent women from legally terminating their pregnancies in a safe way. Restrictive actions like waiting periods, required counseling – which sometimes result in wrong medical information – and sonogram requirements, among others, are obstacles that only lead towards the time of clandestine and unsafe abortions to which women in despair had to resort.
It is outrageous that, as opponents cannot ban abortion, they create inconveniences that harm especially poor women. One example is the federal ban on using public funds for abortions, another one is the strategy used in Texas, in which a woman needs to travel to another state to get the procedure. This is a deliberate attack against low-income women.
Abortion is not a family planning resource. It is a serious procedure to which one arrives due to many personal reasons. It is an issue where no one should interfere, nor should take medical options away from women for disagreements on specific religious values that are also personal.
