Michelle Goldberg,
Opinion Columnist
Sure. I’ve often said that the question for me in abortion is not whether a fetus is a person, it’s whether a woman is a person and a woman’s desire for equality. The fact that the state does not support dependency is one reason that women get abortions, but it is by no means the only reason.
I’m sure I would agree with Leah that no woman should have to get an abortion because she can’t afford a wanted pregnancy. Although obviously today’s decision does nothing to support the women who will now be forced to go forward with pregnancies that they either can’t afford or desperately don’t want.
But there is just something so deeply invasive, degrading and dehumanizing about being forced to be pregnant against your will, about being forced to give birth, which is an experience of pain unlike any that most people will ever experience in their lives – it’s a degree of pain that would be considered torture in any other circumstance – that the state can force you to do that, that it can force you to give up your body in a way that it would never force you to give up your house, in a way that it would never force you to give up an organ.
You know, the state can’t compel you to donate a kidney to save someone’s life. It can’t compel you to donate your blood, but it can compel you – it can take from you your bodily autonomy. It is just an invasion and there is no way around it. I support all of the same policies that I’m sure Leah does, but none of those will ever change the fact that forced pregnancy and forced birth puts women in a position of second-class citizenship.
And then there’s a second-order concern, which is just that the regime necessary to sustain an abortion ban is invasive at best, and totalitarian at worst, because it’s just going to require a massive amount of surveillance of women and their choices.
In countries that ban abortion – and I’ve been to many of them – you constantly see miscarriages investigated and in some cases, criminalized, because the line between a miscarriage and an abortion is not clear. And so this is dangerous, not just for women who are going to affirmatively try to end unwanted pregnancies. It is dangerous for any woman who might get pregnant, period. I’m past that, but I mourn the world that I’m leaving for my daughter.
