By Kaye Starke
CW: mentions of abortion, forced pregnancy, rape
Introducing us to Texas’ new abortion ban
On the 19th of May this year, the US Senate passed a bill which has become the latest weapon in the anti-choicer's arsenal against legal abortions. The bill, known as Senate Bill 8, is similar to other so-called ‘heartbeat’ bills passed in Texas’ red sister-states: Alabama, Missouri, Georgia, and Ohio. This is because it tries to prevent a pregnant person from accessing an abortion once a fetal heartbeat has been detected, which can be as early as six weeks. Bills such as these leave little room for human error, since six weeks post-conception is realistically often no more than two weeks after the first missed period—far too early for most people to know they’re pregnant.
The bill also doesn’t include provisions for pregnancies from rape or incest, only allowing abortion in the case of severe risk to maternal life. If it weren’t bad enough that lawmakers expect pregnant people to prove they’ve been raped in order to get their bodily autonomy back, the actual rate of incarceration of accused rapists is so low as to be negligible. Likewise, given that there is a precedent for women being disbelieved by doctors and having their health concerns dismissed by practitioners, the chances of easily obtaining an abortion on health grounds would not be promising—and besides this, why must one first be in mortal danger to win autonomy over one’s own body?
What’s more, doctors’ organisations are now suggesting that even the term ‘heartbeat’ is misleading: more accurately, the ‘heartbeat’ apparently detected at six weeks is actually little more than electronically induced fluttering in the group of cells within the fetus, which will later become the heart. Although only a minor detail in the much larger onslaught against bodily autonomy being enacted by Texas, it’s indicative of the complete lack of nuance and empathy of the whole anti-choice argument.
Semantics aside, the new ban proposed by Texas is as innovative as it is cruel, and its similarity to other ‘heartbeat bills’ ends at the misleading terminology and misguided defense of certain lives at the expense of others. Where other attempts at abortion bans are upheld and enforced by the state actor, S. B. 8 proposes that private individuals are able to bring civil lawsuits against people they suspect of having obtained or facilitated an abortion. This would include not only the pregnant person in question and the doctor performing the abortion, but also potentially the partner who took the day off work to look after them or the friend who drove them to the clinic. This privatisation of law enforcement and deputisation of every individual with a grudge against women, is problematic for multiple reasons, not least of which because it disrupts long-standing legal tenets, where a person must be injured to bring forward a civil lawsuit. It also encourages citizens to take the law into their own hands—otherwise known as vigilantism—and risks recasting the justice system as a cash cow.
But the most insidious aspect of this bill is the fact that, with no legitimate punitive bodies like the state upholding it, it is almost impossible for pro-choice groups to counter. Normally a group like Planned Parenthood would sue the state to stop the bill from passing, but with no state entity enforcing it, who is there to stop it passing into effect on the 1st September as planned, by suing it? This has not stopped one such coalition of organisations from trying; but due to the peculiar nature of the bill, the challenge is looked on with little optimism. Small comfort—the bill does not allow rapists to sue for the termination of their children. When confronted by the aforementioned fact that in America alone 975 out of every 1000 perpetrators of sexual assault never see a day in gaol, and that this number is paltry compared to the number of rapes never reported, we begin to see that this caveat is nothing more than a smokescreen of decency in front of another blatant attack on female bodily autonomy.
But the law protects women’s rights… Doesn’t it?
As many of us know, abortion has been a legal right in the US since 1973, protected by the Roe vs Wade ruling laid down by the Supreme Court—you would think that much is immutable. In theory, then, access to abortion is also an incontrovertible right enshrined in law. The increasing number of anti-choice overtures made by conservative lawmakers, highlights the fact that while abortion may be legal for now, access to abortion is becoming increasingly impossible because of ever-more stringent restrictions introduced in the name of morality. We may well say for now because experts caution that another danger of this bill is the precedent it could set for circumventing Roe vs Wade so effectively that, if challenged in the Supreme Court—an institution cultivated very deliberately by the Trump Administration to be rigidly conservative—this four-decade-old ruling could be overturned.
This brings us to the crux of the matter: for all this talk of laws and rights, we forget the lawmakers and enforcers. S. B. 8 is the result of an inequality in society so profound that the potential for life within the womb is counted as more important than the life and liberty of the person to whom that womb belongs. This demonstrates the damaging double impact of sexism in cultural and social systems becoming codified in law as institutionalised misogyny. The saturation of ideology in all levels of society has made it almost impossible to access family planning advice not coloured by considerations of morality and ethics—which naturally only leads to talk of guilt and blame. People with uteruses often bear all the responsibility of not becoming pregnant—and the culpability if they do—casting them in a pantomime of saint versus sinner, which effectively obscures men from the spotlight entirely.
This does not mean, however; that every pregnant person will experience this new ban in the same way. While Roe vs Wade remains intact, the Texan ban will not prohibit people clandestinely seeking abortions by travelling interstate; but as this is only an option for people with enough savings to take them across a border, with a job that will allow them to take the time off, and with a strong support network, this is hardly likely to be of any consolation to most people in this situation. What’s more, with poverty rates for Hispanic and black Texans twice as high as their white neighbours, the clear and disproportionate burden of poverty placed on them—despite them being far from a majority of the state’s population—means that black people and people of colour will become the perhaps not-so-unintended targets of S. B. 8. On top of this, undocumented women run the risk of becoming yet more marginalised by this push towards civil vigilantism, as it discourages them from trying to obtain safe abortions for fear of drawing attention to themselves and facing subsequent detention and deportation. So, we see that not only is the bill a further declaration of war against female bodily autonomy, but it’s also a targeted attack, in particular, against the most vulnerable groups who have no power to fight back, and for whom the intersection of race and gender represents an additional opportunity for victimisation by an iniquitous government.
What can we, as feminists, do about it?
If this article has incited fear, sadness or anger, the author asks for your forgiveness. To read about the curtailment of a person’s right to their own body anywhere is galling, let alone in such an ostensible paragon of liberty as the United States. But if indeed I’ve created some emotion in you, reader, to learn about the blatant disregard and disrespect for women that is behind bills like these, I also thank you. As Australians, this bill clearly doesn’t affect us; but as feminists we must necessarily hate all instances of manifested misogyny, whether or not it touches our lives. Outrage is a powerful tool in the feminist toolkit, and with it we can hope to hold lawmakers to account. The first step is in the knowing: we have to understand the nature of an institution to fight it. The second is in the doing: while the sexism embedded in social and cultural consciousness is more pernicious, and consequently more difficult to grapple with face-on, the misogyny that is coded in law has a more immediate point of contact. We can hold state representatives accountable by contacting them directly—even as Australians; bodily autonomy should not be nationally contingent—by making our outrage known through social media and other platforms, and by making as much noise as we can to draw attention to and stand behind those who are directly affected.
Even within Australia we can use the same tools to hold our own politicians accountable. Abortion has only recently become decriminalised in Queensland and South Australia, and in the Northern Territory and Western Australia it remains prohibited beyond 24 and 20 weeks, respectively. Until abortions are universally safe and legal, we must remain unsatisfied, because half a victory is not victory enough. Above all, though, the author counsels to remain tolerant to everything but oppression and to be kind to all, but especially to yourself. While outrage can be a powerful weapon it can also be a burden to bear; but not one that needs to be borne alone.
Reference List
Ament, Jill & Laura Rice 2021 ‘How Mississippi’s supreme court challenge could effectively ban abortion in Texas’, The Texas Standard 18 May. https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/why-a-mississippi-law-being-challenged-in-the-supreme-court-could-mean-abortion-will-be-effectively-banned-in-texas/
Kiesel, Laura 2017 ‘Women and pain: Disparities in experience and treatment’, Harvard Health Blog 9 October. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/women-and-pain-disparities-in-experience-and-treatment-2017100912562
Najmabadi, Shannon 2021 ‘Gov. Greg Abbott signs into law one of nation’s strictest abortion measures, banning procedure as early as six weeks into a pregnancy’, The Texas Tribune 19 May. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/18/texas-heartbeat-bill-abortions-law/
Porterfield, Carlie 2021 ‘Texas bans abortion as early as six weeks’, Forbes 19 May. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/05/19/texas-bans-abortion-as-early-as-six-weeks-with-new-heartbeat-bill/?sh=39613a812c0f
RAINN 2021 ‘The Criminal Justice System: Statistics. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system
Rivard, Robert 2019 ‘Abortion isn’t illegal in Texas. It’s just mostly impossible’, The Washington Post 13 August. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/14/many-women-texas-seeking-an-abortion-has-become-an-insurmountable-hurdle/
Smith, Jordan 2021 ‘Providers sue to block law that would eliminate nearly all abortions in Texas’, The Intercept 16 July. https://theintercept.com/2021/07/15/texas-abortion-lawsuit-sb8/
Ura, Alexa & Elbert Wang 2018 ‘Poverty in Texas drops to lowest levels in more than a decade’, The Texas Tribune 13 September. https://www.texastribune.org/2018/09/13/texas-poverty-census-2017-lowest-levels-decade/
Zilinksy, Andrea & Austin Bureau 2020 ‘Texas has spent close to $6 million fighting abortion. Here’s how’, The Houston Chronicle 1 January. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Texas-has-spent-close-to-6-million-fighting-14942477.php