Yesterday I joined the protest against Hobby Lobby in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with over a hundred other people. The anger at this corporation and the Supreme Court was palpable and real. And it’s growing.
The thing is…the Hobby Lobby decision really seems more like the icing on a cake or, rather, the tip of a knife. A knife that has been sharpened by one state TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) law after another and is pointed directly at women and their rights. TRAP laws place such heavy restrictions on abortion providers that they force the closing of the remaining clinics in many areas. In the last three years, 73 abortion clinics have been shuttered!
There has been a full-fledged patronizing moralistic campaign against abortion and reproductive rights coupled with reactionary legislation that seeks to chip away at our access to reproductive health care.
The need for abortion or the use of contraception isn’t going to go away because the capitalist state—including the Supreme Court, the White House, Congress and the state legislatures and courts among other
institutions—denies us access. Nope. So what do women who need an abortion do now?
Women are turning to more modern versions of back alley abortions. At least we aren’t entirely relegated to coat hangers in hiding like our sisters of all those decades before we won Roe v. Wade. I say not entirely because many women living in the most impoverished communities with the least security—like undocumented immigrant women—still resort to these methods.
What is the modern version of a do-it-yourself abortion? A drug initially marketed to treat ulcers that cause miscarriages…called Misoprostol. It’s pretty effective and able to be used safely up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. In the United States, it’s available as a combination with Mifepristone or RU-486, if you can afford it. That particular cocktail can cost as much as $650. But the Misoprostol itself is available on the black market—flea markets, prescriptions through acquaintances and so on—or through a prescription for a tiny fraction of that cost.
And women are turning more and more to this type of abortion. There are potential consequences—medical consequences and legal consequences (it’s illegal in 39 states). But women have little choice because of the onslaught of right-wing bigots and their supporters in the establishment.
The thing is that abortion shouldn’t be a self-administered, potentially dangerous, totally shamed and hidden thing women have to do to themselves to escape the prospect of grinding poverty and an unwanted pregnancy. It’s part and parcel of HEALTH CARE. It’s a choice among many that should be available to women whose bodies belong to ourselves and no one else.
And it’s so utterly maddening, so frustrating that anyone in this society would seek to deny that. Our anger at the Supreme Court decision is real and valid. Our anger at all the politicians and pundits who are messing with women’s lives is real and valid. And the outlet for that anger should be and is the streets. We’ve got to take back control of our bodies and shatter the knife wielded against us.
