Dear John,
We celebrate Women’s Equality Day on August 26 in honor of the date in 1920 when our right to vote was finally enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. But this year, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, our celebrations are tinged with a cruel irony.
Three new abortion bans in Idaho, Tennessee and Texas took effect this week, joining a multitude of laws restricting access to abortion—including nine other states that prohibit abortions starting from fertilization with only very limited exceptions. A last-minute court victory by the Biden justice department ensured that Idaho’s ban excluded a portion of the law that criminalized providers who performed abortions in order to save the life of the pregnant woman; however, the rest of the ban has gone into effect at this time. Tennessee’s law bans nearly all abortions in the state, and Texas’s increases the existing penalties for anyone who performs an abortion to life in prison and fines of no less than $100,000.
These bans, as recent events have demonstrated, will fall hardest on those most vulnerable in our society. As a group of Ohio physicians pointed out in a piece we published in Ms. this week, the case of the Ohio 10-year-old who was raped and forced to travel to Indiana to obtain an abortion due to the 6-week ban in Ohio is not an isolated one: over 4,000 girls age 14 and under become pregnant in the United States each year. (Of note, abortions are now also illegal in Indiana, thanks to a ban enacted earlier this month.)
Without access to safe, legal abortion, these girls will be forced to carry pregnancies that could permanently disrupt their health and endanger their lives. Adolescent pregnancies are inherently higher risk for a multitude of reasons, the doctors write, ranging from barriers to care access to social stigma to life-threatening conditions including preterm labor, postpartum hemorrhage, preeclampsia, and more. I urge you to read the doctors’ expert assessment.
Women’s right to vote — which is still not fully realized, especially for Black women who are targeted by voter suppression laws and intimidation tactics — was always to be the first step in gaining full equality for women and girls. Yet, 102 years later, women’s equal rights under the law are still not recognized in the U.S. Constitution, despite the Equal Rights Amendment having been duly proposed by two-thirds majorities in Congress and ratified by the required 38 states.
With access to abortion is now dependent on which states a person lives in, the need for the ERA is more urgent than ever. Even as the fight continues to secure official recognition of the federal ERA as the 28th amendment, advocates are increasingly turning to state-level ERAs to secure our rights. See our article on the ERA for a tracker of all state-level ERAs and their current status.
Too many lives are at risk for us to give up this fight. As we say at Ms. — onward!
