The Texas Abortion Law and the responsibilities of women - Writing Wednesday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
I was reading an article on the news recently about the new Texas Abortion Law that came into place on the 1st of September of this year. This new law stated that Texas abortion firms will not be allowed to carry out abortions on women who are 6 weeks into their pregnancy. On May 19th of this year, the Texas Heartbeat Act was signed which allowed the Texas Abortion Law to be put in place. The Texas Heartbeat Act stated that once doctors could detect a fetal heartbeat (about 6 weeks into a woman's pregnancy) abortion was not allowed to be carried out.
The introduction of this law was received with much annoyance by many women in America and other countries, and this is very much a sentiment that I uphold myself. I have heard many stories of women discovering that they were in fact pregnant a few months into their pregnancy. Although I agree that there should be a cut off point for when abortions can happen because for some women, having an abortion late in the pregnancy can be a very distressing experience, I also believe that clinical firms should give women enough time to discover that they're pregnant and enough time to make an informed decision on whether they should have an abortion. 6 weeks, clearly is not enough time for women to do both of those things.
The way that this law was enforced was also problematic because ultimately, the law relied on the public making accusations and suing clinical firms carrying out abortions on women who are 6 weeks into their pregnancy. This is completely inaccurate, inappropriate, and biased evidence to use in court. If America is attempting to create a democracy where individual freedoms are valued and the state is built on trust, I cannot understand as to why Texas would introduce such a law that would invoke people to become informants of each other. Whether the Supreme Court is able to see past people's bias or not, I think it is wrong for the court to introduce such laws that grants people with such overarching power.
Furthermore, it must be said that this law does not begin to think about the women who didn't choose to have a pregnancy in the first place. For the women who were raped and forced into an unwanted pregnancy, it is simply unfair that this law restricts their freedoms of getting an abortion. For many women, rape and sexual assault is a very traumatic experience and it can take women a long time to even come to terms with the experience, let alone think about whether it would be right to continue with a pregnancy under such traumatic circumstances. 6 weeks clearly isn't a long enough time to come to terms with any of these factors and the Texas Abortion Law clearly does not consider the psychological impact that unwanted pregnancies through rape have on women.
However, whilst I am very much against the way the Texas Abortion Law was enforced, I am also very much against the way that some women chose to respond to this. Being angry with the new law is perfectly acceptable and people should have the freedom to be annoyed with legislation. As I said before, I myself am annoyed with this new law because it takes away the rights of women. Nevertheless, I will not support women who will not take at least some level of responsibility over their own actions. Yes, some women are taken advantage of and therefore may justifiably come to the reasoned decision to not continue with a pregnancy. Yes, some women choose to have an abortion because they don't have the amenities to take care of a child. But, the truth of the matter is that most women do have the choice and yet some refuse to take responsibility and that's very problematic too.
I've been seeing lots of posts on Instagram where women have put all of the blame of unwanted pregnancies on men, just because men can get a woman pregnant all year around and women are only fertile around twice each month. To me, this doesn't show anything significant, especially when we now have the birth control pill where women can now take some control over their reproductive system. I think that a lot of women nowadays are quick to look past this because it takes a lot of discipline and organisation to take the birth control pill, but that's when the level of responsibility comes into play. Yes, males should use physical contraception but females also have ways of not getting pregnant at their disposal too. If unwanted pregnancies happen because of misuse of contraception, people should be taking the responsibility of deciding what happens next. For women to simply look at abortion as the first way out because technically the men are responsible for all pregnancies, is absolutely immature. In my opinion, abortion should be carried out because it is in the best interest of the child, not because a woman doesn't want to take responsibility for helping to create a life. The best case scenario for all pregnancies would be to continue with the pregnancy but, in my opinion, abortions should only be taken when either the mother didn't have a say in the instigation of the pregnancy, couldn't look after the child because she was too young, couldn't take care of the child for financial reasons, or because the child would generally not live the best possible life in that particular circumstance. The child always comes first. Abortions should not be treated lightly when making a child is in most cases, the responsibility of both parents.
Overall, I do agree that the Texas Abortion Law was a very harsh law that put many unnecessary restrictions on the rights of women. However, I do still think that women need to mainatin their integrity with responding to such issues. I believe that abortions should be granted to women but to consider an abortion without much thought is in most cases, irresponsible and immature. Apart from the religious opinions on abortion, one of the underlying motives as to why this law may have been enforced, was because more women were perhaps not considering other alternatives from abortion. I believe that abortion is reserved for emergencies and should not be used as a form of contraception. Women must take more responsibility for getting pregnant because, as most people say, it's their body and they should have autonomy over it when they have the ability to do so.
*If you would like to find out more about the Texas Abortion Law then feel free to check out Ben Shapiro's video where he gives you an in-depth analysis of its strengths and weaknesses. Ben delivers his video from a very religious perspective so I don't necessarily agree with everything that he says but I do admire how he justifies his opinions and I think that his video is worth watching if you would like to learn something new. The link is below.
What do you think of the new Texas Abortion Law? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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Bye,
XOX, Juliette
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