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Irina Popescu is an assistant professor of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. These are her views and do not express those of Bowdoin College. She is a member of the Maine chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network, which brings together scholars across the country to address public challenges and their policy implications. Members’ columns appear in the BDN every other week.
Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, women-identifying subjects in the United States are experiencing extreme stress, fear and anger because their self-autonomy has been ridiculed by the federal and state governments. What happened to our rights? If 69 percent percent of Americans consider themselves pro-choice, then let me rephrase my desperation to ask: What happened and why?
The status of women-identifying subjects in this country is in peril in unprecedented ways. As our basic human rights slowly expire around us, a new feeling is starting to emerge: rage. This feeling of rage, illustrated within popular culture, can be used as a powerful political tool to create new methods of activism.
We desperately need a new kind of mobilization in this country around women’s rights. This mobilization should be obstinate, loud, highly visible like that of protest collectives Ni una menos in Argentina and Ni una Mas in Mexico. These groups continue activating a demand for women’s rights, from abortion to economic inequity to gender violence. Argentina, an overwhelmingly Catholic country, legalized abortion in 2020 in response to these persistent demands.
Overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022 was only the first step in the deterioration of women’s rights in the U.S. The persistent attacks on Planned Parenthood throughout the country, the bans on birth control and the persecution of OB-GYNs has transformed women’s rights into a battleground. In this battleground, women’s rights are continuously pushed into the private sphere, a phenomenon we have been disentangling ourselves from since the 19th century.
Idaho’s cessation of tracking maternal mortality rates is another example of attempting to eliminate women’s rights within the public sphere by rendering the deaths of birthing persons as irrelevant. In Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott signed the notorious six-week abortion ban into law before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, women with dangerous pregnancy complications have had to literally fight for their lives. Some have given birth to newborns who they, moments after, watched die in front of them due to developmental complications that OB-GYN’s predicated months before, all the while telling their patients that they had no legal options but to carry out the pregnancy. How is this “pro-life” exactly?
The persecution of OB-GYNs providing abortions throughout the country has made it so that physicians fear losing their jobs, getting sued or facing jail time. This means that even if a physician’s duty is to protect their patient’s life, something we all expect from our medical practitioners, this protection does not apply to the birthing person.
Luckily, by creatively eliminating the word “abortion” from a new bill, Texas state Rep. Ann Johnson ensured that individuals with complicated pregnancies receive the care they need. Johnson introduced a bill that broadly allows doctors to provide “medically necessary” services. This bill passed almost unanimously in August of this year, yet the erasure of abortion as a health care practice from the bill further muddles an intentional focus on women’s health and agency.
This censorship, along with the persistent fear felt by OB-GYNs across the country, will most likely mean that fewer doctors will want to work with women-identifying subjects in the future. This will have great impacts on everyone, including individuals who willingly want to continue with their pregnancies. This ban on women’s bodily autonomy has severe societal impacts that are long lasting.
While Maine has some of the least restrictive abortion laws now, this can certainly and easily change with a new administration. We should remain diligent and responsible, leaning into our rage to produce changes so that future generations do not have to wake up asking what happened to their rights.