Linda Dunn
June 24th, 2023, the Dodds decision overturned Roe, and agencies have been attempting since then to determine how effectively this has reduced abortion rates.
Unfortunately, while rates declined in Indiana and other traditionally red states; the rates rose in blue states.
New Mexico clinics had a 220 percent increase in services after the Dodd decision and that is not a typo. That is a tragedy.
Guttmacher has been tracking the number of legal abortions in the United States since 1973. For the year 2023, our nation had 1,037,000 abortions in the formal health care systems.
[15.9 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age – an 11% increase since 2020, which is the last year for which comprehensive estimates are available.]
Those statistics seem to fly in the face of common sense until we remember just how badly Prohibition – which began with good intentions – played out.
Most supporters of the 18th Amendment were in favor of outlawing “hard liquor” like whiskey but they hadn’t expected to be deprived of an evening beer or a glass of wine. Neither had they expected the degree of government intrusion into their lives that we’re now seeing once again.
We weren’t prepared for a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio being denied a legal abortion in that state and the uproar when she obtained that abortion in our own state. We also weren’t expecting women in some states to be instructed to wait in their cars in a hospital’s parking lot until their pregnancy crisis was “bad enough” for doctors to intervene.
What really caught our attention, however, was mom-of-two, Kate Cox, who literally went to court to obtain approval to abort a doomed pregnancy only to have Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton obtain a court order to block the procedure.
Lacking the luxury of time, Cox traveled to another state for an abortion that she and her husband chose, paradoxically, because they wanted to grow their family.
Since Dobbs overturned Roe, Texas has passed laws restricting access on many roads such that its illegal to travel on them for the purpose of seeking an abortion in another state.
[Are our car’s navigation systems and online maps being upgraded to include this information?]
Missouri, where the maternal death rate is twice the national average, attempted to one up Texas by introducing legislation giving their citizens the right to sue residents of other states who assist a Missouri resident with obtaining an abortion.
[That includes Uber drivers crossing the Mississippi river between St. Louis, Missouri and East St. Louis, Illinois.]
We were assured that in vitro fertilization (IVF) would not be affected by the Dodds ruling… but then Alabama ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children. This led to a “pause” on procedures already in the stage where frozen embryos had been thawed and prepared for transfer. Hospitals and clinics then had to grapple with the reality that these embryos might thus be damaged and unable to be transferred and that opened up another can of worms of legal issues that no one was prepared to address with more than a legal bandaid creating immunity for IVF providers in Alabama.
The Supreme Court is now hearing arguments against access to mifepristone, a medication that’s used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions nationally [restricted to the first ten weeks].
If this doesn’t sound extreme yet, please note that the long dominant Comstock Act is being dusted off by some as a means by which to restrict not just abortions but also contraceptives. We’ve been assured this will not occur… just as we were told many other things wouldn’t happen which have since become commonplace.
Despite our concerns about “Big Brother in our bedrooms,” many of us would still willingly tolerate these government intrusions if they just produced the desired results.
But they don’t. And the reason they don’t is because these measures fail to address the primary reason women seek abortions: unplanned pregnancies.
Last year, nine Republican House women members introduced the Orally Taken Contraception Act of 2023 – which was intended to expand access to over-the-counter contraceptives.
It’s a nice gesture but it barely scratches the surface of the problem of getting reliable and accessible birth control to those who need it most: low-income women in their 20s, most of whom already have at least one child.
The one over-the-counter birth control pill that finally became available this year will cost about $20 per month and while that might seem affordable to most of us, the reality is that this is $20 that’s going to need to come from the pocket of a woman who is probably already borrowing a car to drive to food pantries and struggling to find affordable housing, childcare and gainful employment.
An implant under the skin can be more effective than traditional birth control pills since you don’t have to remember to take a pill regularly; but the list price of Nexplanon is about a thousand dollars.
While there are non-profits that provide free or low-cost contraceptives, these are few and far between and it’s not surprising that many “contraceptive deserts” exist in the same states that have draconian maternal health care laws.
When Roe was first overturned, our nation saw a spike in appointments for tubal ligations [which can cost up to $6,000] and vasectomies [which can cost up to $1,000].
But that’s not a valid option for those who simply want to postpone bringing life into the world until they’re prepared to properly nurture it.
Why are we so opposed to providing our citizens the means with which to avoid unplanned pregnancies – the one surefire way to see those abortion numbers drop like a rock – but we’re just fine with adopting tactics that look like they’re straight out of a prequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale”?
We need to unshackle our medical professionals from laws that have forced many women to flee their states when suffering from miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and other conditions; put an end to these crazy Fugitive Slave-like laws; and elect people to government offices who actually care about the well-being of their citizens and are willing to focus on more effective (and hopefully kinder) measures.
Why haven’t we been doing this all along?
A lifelong resident of Hancock County, Linda Dunn is an author and retired Department of Defense employee.
