We like to tell ourselves that, as long as Roe stands, abortion is legal. We like to think that “reasonable” restrictions on abortion are … reasonable. We like to think that this is an issue best left ignored, shoved aside, open to compromise.
Two days after the GAO exposed underhanded political stonewalling on Plan B, I take the occasion to offer a different tale of what’s currently legal in the United States….
Five months ago, this post appeared relating one woman’s ordeal of find herself pregnant in this world where abortion is supposedly a Constitutionally-protected right:
Last October, Gabriela Flores ended her 16-week pregnancy by taking misoprostol pills sent by her sister from Mexico. She had no choice but to risk her life by taking illegally imported drugs, without any doctor’s supervision, because although abortion is technically legal in South Carolina, in Gabriela’s situation it may as well have been illegal.
South Carolina laws force women to get permission from their husbands, listen to biased anti-abortion “counseling” riddled with misinformation, and to undergo a mandatory waiting period. And abortions after 13 weeks are so restricted that no provider in the state will offer them.
Gabriela would have had to travel to another state, two and-a-half hours away, and since such a procedure is done over two days, she most likely would have lost her job. Gabriela was working in the fields supporting three children and herself on $150 per week. There is no way she could have afforded the $700 procedure.
The pills caused her to expel the dead fetus, which she buried in her back yard. One can only imagine the stress and pain of her whole situation. But her suffering was far from over.
She was reported to the police, who were told that the four-month-old fetus was born alive. Rather than showing concern for her health, sheriffs obtained a warrant and dug up the fetus. Prosecutors wanted to charge Gabriela with murder. They would have been legally able to do it if they’d been able to prove that the fetus would have survived on its own. Since there’s no way a four-month-old fetus could do this, they couldn’t get away with that charge. But had she been further along–say, five or six months pregnant–they probably would have been able to get away with it. Instead, they charged her with performing an abortion on herself–which is illegal under South Carolina law.
Let’s face it. Most women are not rich jet-setters going to cotillions and debutante balls and having weekly manicures. Most women cannot afford to not work. Most women are just trying to get by. These are the realities in this world. And these are the realities most women facing unwanted pregnancy have to accommodate.
Gabriela Flores is just one woman who’s invisible to the activists who say she, and all women of childbearing years, should be stripped of rights to self-determination and made breeders for the state.
This is happening now. Not next year. This is happening with Roe still recognized as law of the land
And this is happening as Republicans and Democrats turn their backs on reproductive rights to pander to the radical right in their battle for power.
The tragedy of all this is that the stakes aren’t measured by political calculus, but by human lives.
Forced to come to this country in order to survive, Gabriela had to leave two of her children behind on the other side of the razor wire and death fields of the border.
She broke her back in the fields for the privilege of trying to feed herself and her family on $150 a week and still have enough to send money to her children back home.
She had to endanger her health and her life to get an abortion. A snitch landed her in jail. The woman that helped her was arrested.
And now, she has been criminalized; she faces two years in prison and will likely face deportation. It’s unclear what will happen to the child she has here. Her whole life–never valued anyway–is being destroyed.
That’s just one result of the “pro-life” agenda. And it could get much much worse.
When rape victims can’t get Plan B prescriptions filled — even when Plan B prevents conception and in no way causes abortion (because pregnancy is prevented — we see how already existing politics are hurting women across the country.
Tell me that Gabriela Flores is not a victim of anti-abortion politics. Tell me that Gabriela Flores has people looking out for her. Tell me that the next Gabriela Flores cannot be your sister or your daughter or your best friend (or you).
And tell me again why a politician’s stance on governmental controls on abortion should not be important.
Please.
