In Cosmopolitan, that bastion of cerebral political thought, an author bemoans the fact that since the House even considered a ban on abortion at six weeks — the now-notorious “Heartbeat bill” — Republicans are awful people because a ban will cause women to die.
No, really. The title reads, “I Had an Abortion in 1965 and Could Have Bled to Death. We Can’t Go Back to Those Days.”
Headlines like this make me wonder, do Cosmo writers even read? Do they even understand law, politics, policy, and the intricate relationship between the three? To put it in their lingo: Do you even Roe v. Wade, bro?
First of all, the author’s story about having a botched, illegal abortion that threatened her life is sad. But it’s about as relevant as saying “Since Republicans Like Horses, We Might Ban Cars And Ride Horses Everywhere Now.” She writes:
Women will not go back to 1965. No out-of-touch politician will prevent us from controlling our own bodies and our destinies. Whether openly or in secret, we will always seek access to comprehensive reproductive health care. For many women, this abortion ban would be a death sentence, returning us to the days of unsafe and illegal abortions – I know, because I’ve had one.
Not only is it highly unlikely the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, but even if it did, states would merely take over decisions about it (as they often do now regarding abortion restrictions). Abortion would hardly become illegal, nor would it be suddenly rendered into a pre-1973 back-alley scenario the author is languishing over.
The author continues to hyperventilate about her right to abortion and what the passage of the “Heartbeat bill” could mean.
This is what it was like before Roe v. Wade. These are the choices women had to make, if you can even call what I faced any kind of choice. And this week, Republicans in the House of Representatives threaten to take us back to these dark, terrifying days. They’re holding a hearing on a bill they introduced that would ban abortion at six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant. Make no mistake: this bill would effectively ban abortions.
So let me get this straight: An undocumented teenage girl waltzed to America recently from Central America and got an abortion thanks to “equal protection” rights, but the author worries the GOP is going to force women to get abortions in dark alleys because conservatives are heartless and ghoulish? I can’t believe young women grow up so uninformed.
The “Heartbeat bill” isn’t going to pass. That doesn’t mean Republicans don’t want it to or that they don’t want abortion to be as limited as possible (because they do), but nor does it mean they want women to die in dark alleys trying to get abortions (because they don’t). In fact, it’s usually conservatives nowadays who try to pass legislation that requires abortion clinics to meet the same standards, in terms of health and safety, as hospitals and said clinics, because they care about women’s safety and about reducing abortions.
But liberals, and even the Supreme Court, have laughed and said, Nah: We’ll keep abortion clinics walking that thin line between shady and effective.
The “Heartbeat bill,” however ineffective, was meant to inform and educate people about the fact that babies are people too, and killing them in utero is the murder of an unborn baby. While I didn’t think a bill like this was the best way to inform the public about this solid truth, Republicans had no malicious intent toward women — and there was certainly no actual chance, the bill was going to pass and actually upend Roe.
Articles like this in places such as Cosmo perpetuate half-truths about the law, the realities of abortion, and unborn babies. As teenagers and young women gobble them up alongside the latest celebrity gossip and fashion how-to’s, the misinformation (not to mention, feigned hysteria) does them no favors. If and when the information is wrong, young women don’t know enough to correct it and they form factually wrong opinions about abortion, law, and what conservatives are trying to do to protect babies in society.
Not to mention, the author misses the larger point altogether: The best thing for society isn’t to make sure women don’t go back to the back-alley ways before Roe, but for women of all ages to finally understand one thing — just as they have “rights,” so do their unborn babies.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
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