If you really cared

I am very disappointed with certain American middle-aged men right now.

Twenty-five of them in Alabama’s state senate – which only has three women – have just passed a bill that outlaws abortion, making it a crime to perform the procedure at any stage of pregnancy.

The measure contains no exception for rape and incest – an amendment allowing those exceptions was voted down.

“You don’t have to raise that child. You don’t have to carry that child. You don’t have to provide for that child. You don’t have to do anything for that child, but yet you want to make the decision for that woman,” said state senator Vivian Davis Figures.

Vivian tried to introduce amendments such as requiring the state to expand Medicaid and making it a crime for men to get vasectomies. They failed.

I’m also not OK with making it a crime for men to get vasectomies, what’s that madness? But go Vivian on the expansion of Medicaid. It does my head in that those grey-haired blokes care SO MUCH about unborn babies, but don’t give a damn about keeping them healthy after they’ve left the womb.

It’s unfathomably hypocritical.

More than a quarter of children in Alabama live in poverty.

How about those 25 holier than thou blokes commit to doing weekly volunteer work with the babies and sponsoring a few? As if!

And don’t get me started on the double standard when it comes to gun control compared to abortion control. As Rewire notes “What If Buying a Gun Were Like Getting an Abortion?” 

Or the appalling way refugee children are treated in those border internment camps.

It’s so effed up.

The bill is part of a trend across the US that’s seen Republican-controlled states attempt to place draconian restrictions on abortion.

There are fears the legislation in Alabama will drive doctors to leave the state, which already has some of the highest rates of infant mortality and cervical cancer in the country.

Way to go Alabama lawmakers.

Banning abortion pushes it underground. According to WHO, at least 22,800 women die annually as a result of complications of unsafe abortion; and between two million and seven million women each year survive unsafe abortion, but sustain long-term damage or disease (incomplete abortion, infection (sepsis), haemorrhage, and injury to the internal organs, such as puncturing or tearing of the uterus).

I don’t have any personal experience with abortion. I can’t even begin to imagine how distressing it would be. I don’t know whether I could go through with it, but I can’t say for sure when I haven’t been in the situation.

However, I would never presume to tell other women what to do with their bodies.

Sure, in a perfect world there wouldn’t be abortion. But we live in an imperfect one. And I think it’s completely horrifying, for example, that young girls could be forced to continue with a pregnancy that was the result of a traumatic experience such as rape.

There’s also the psychological and physical damage inflicted on children born to mothers who don’t want them or have the ability to care for them.

As for waggling your finger and saying that women shouldn’t have sex if they don’t want babies … pffff … it takes two to tango. I don’t see anyone regulating male bodies.

It all gets a big Handmaid’s Tale made real tick from me.

Song of the day: George Michael “Freedom”