I guess God lives in Alabama

On May 15^th, 2019 the United States invoked the power of God and traveled back to the 1960’s. Women’s reproductive health legislature isn’t any better now than it was then. On Wednesday, Alabama state government passed one of the most extreme abortion laws in U.S. history. Other states like Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio are following Alabama with abortion laws of their own. The law basically outlaws abortion in any stage of pregnancy entirely, there aren’t even exceptions for rape or incest. The only exception is if the mother’s life is in danger. The law says that any doctor who performs the abortion could go to prison for 99 years, meaning, performing an abortion would be a felony. There is no punishment for the woman, but finding a doctor to safely perform the procedure will be nearly impossible. Other states such as Georgia and Ohio have “heartbeat” laws. Any fetus with a heartbeat cannot be aborted. Personally, I’m disgusted, I am absolutely outraged. Rape victims as young as 11 years old, who don’t even know how to care for themselves, will have to birth children. Since when did decisions about women’s reproductive health fall into the hands of men? Men who, in case anyone forgot, have no idea the struggles of pregnant women. Well, that’s not entirely true, they care about it when their mistresses’ aborted pregnancies get publicly exposed. Nobody has the right to decide if a woman should keep a baby except the woman herself. By banning abortions, you don’t get rid of them. All it does is take us back to a time when woman did abortions with coat hangers or get them from “doctors” on dirty, nasty, tables. Women will still get abortions, so why not make it as safe as possible? Oh yeah, because the fetus that doesn’t know what its missing is getting “murdered”. A woman may want an abortion for many reasons. She could not be financially, emotionally, or physically capable of having one. Or, a woman could be in an abusive or dangerous situation and doesn’t feel safe having a baby. Maybe she just doesn’t want a baby right now, the circumstances are always different. I saw a post that said “the baby you aborted could have cured cancer” and the first thing that came to my mind was, the woman who would have cured cancer couldn’t get an abortion and had to give up her career for a baby. There is so much wrong with the foster care system already, and all the unwanted children who are born will go into the overpopulated and underfunded system. Why don’t we help the living children first? Why don’t we fix our immigration system so little children don’t die in hospital beds? Why don’t we make better birth control so pregnancies can be prevented? And for God’s sake, why don’t we let women decide what happens to their bodies. Women are not objects, we are not incubators, we are not lesser, or property. We are people. We won’t stand for this.

-Madeline Kraemer, a pro choice feminist.