(This story was originally published in The Elevator in June, 2023.)

The Overturning of Roe v. Wade

Current day U.S.A. has its citizens looking more closely at the parallels between the country’s situation regarding women’s reproductive rights and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Published in 1985, the dystopian novel takes place in New England and depicts a “Christian fundamentalist theocratic regime in the former United States,” as Britannica likes to call it.

Atwood maintained that every feature of the fictional world was drawn from things that once existed or still exist today with a hint of inspiration from the New England Puritans. 

BBC Culture reporter, Jennifer Armstrong, goes into depth on the symbolism within the book but more importantly how it’s becoming a symbol for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. She notes that the phrase Nolite te bastardes carborundorum has become a form of “feminist rallying cry.” Apparently many women have had the phrase tattooed to themselves. The made up Latin phrase, translated to “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” is supposed to represent fighting back against repressive powers or so Vanity Fair says.

Atwood explained to the Guardian, “Revellers dress up as Handmaids on Hallowe’en and also for protest marches – these two uses of its costume mirroring its doubleness.”

For fifty years women’s rights stayed a constitutional right and for the most part was something all political parties agreed on.

Who was Norma McCorvey?

In nineteen seventy, a pregnant woman identified as “Jane Roe,” filed a lawsuit against the Texas law that blocked women from receiving abortions unless it’s to save a life. This case became known as Roe v Wade. In 1973, The Supreme Court ruled seven to two for women to have constitutional rights to an abortion. Roe’s real name was Norma McCorvey, a twenty-two year old single woman in Dallas with a 9th-grade education.

The Washington Post quoted her saying to the Southern Baptist Convention news service, “I was a woman alone with no place to go and no job. No one wanted to hire a pregnant woman. I felt there was no one in the world who could help me.” 

While the case was still ongoing, McCorvey gave birth to her daughter of whom she gave up for adoption and later told the Supreme Court, “I’m glad the court decided that women, in consultation with a doctor, can control their own bodies.” The Supreme Court ruled that women have the right in the first three months of pregnancy to decide whether to go through with having a child.

Before Roe v. Wade?

Before Roe v Wade, two high-profile crises impacted the abortion ban. In the late nineteen fifties, thousands of babies “were born with severe birth defects after their mothers took the morning sickness drug thalidomide while pregnant,” reported Brenner. Following that, an epidemic of rubella “swept across the country. Babies that survived rubella in utero were often born with a wide range of disabilities such as deafness, heart defects, and liver damage.”

Beginning of the End

Back in 2018 the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Mississippi, filed a lawsuit against the Gestational Age Act which made abortions after 15 weeks illegal within the state. Mississippi “urged” the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania (1992 case that revisited many provisions surrounding abortion rights established by Roe v. Wade.) This case became what is known as Dobbs v. Jackson. 

Justice Alito was quoted saying, “procuring an abortion is not a fundamental constitutional right because such a right has no basis in the Constitution’s text or in our Nation’s history.” The League Of Women Voters explained that If people’s rights must be word for word spelled out in the Constitution or “deeply rooted in our history and tradition,” then people’s rights are coming from history and traditions that are rooted in sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.

Which States have put Bans in Place?

Currently the Washington Post records Idaho, Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia all having abortion bans put in place. 

Many of these states are in the South, which has a large percentage of Black and Hispanic women. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found from available statistics that in 2019 roughly 38% of abortions were among Black women, 33% were among White women, 21% among Hispanic women, and 7% among other racial ethnic groups.

KFF also found that women of color have “more limited access to health care, which affects women’s access to contraception and other sexual health services that are important for pregnancy planning.” Because “the health care system has a long history of racist practices targeting the sexual and reproductive health of people of color, including forced sterilization, medical experimentation, the systematic reduction of midwifery, just to name a few,” there is quite a bit of medical mistrust. 

Many women of color report “discrimination by individual providers, with reports of dismissive treatment, assumption of stereotypes, and inattention to conditions that take a disproportionate toll on women of color, such as fibroids.” Women of color also reportedly have more limited financial resources, limited transportation options, low income, and are less likely to have savings readily available to cover the costs of an abortion.

What do Doctors Think?

With the overturning of Roe v Wade brings challenges for doctors with providing healthcare. Depending on the state, some only allow abortions when a pregnant person’s life is on the line. CBS writes that doctors in these states who misjudge what the state will allow, can fall victim to “legal action.” 

Dr. Louise Perkins King, an OB-GYN and director of reproductive bioethics at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, told CBS News that the list of things that can go wrong during a pregnancy “is incredibly long…Pregnancy is dangerous, especially when carried to term.” 

Those who are pregnant can develop many issues that can easily become life-threatening. Pregnancy in general can take a “toll” on one’s body. Dr. King explained how women should be able to make the decision whether or not to go forward with the “risks and morbidities.”

With the overturning of Roe v Wade brings disregard for women who are victims of rape or incest, explains CBS. The Guardian brought up other factors such as high risk of death, health conditions, unsafe home environments, harassment due to identity, etc.

The Aftermath

Rikelman, senior director of litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights and quoted by OPB and NPR, predicts our country’s future to see “tremendous change in an incredibly short period of time.” The Guardian also predicts an increase in pregnancy related deaths, forced births, and an additional 75,000 births a year. 

Currently, the states that are restricting or banning abortion now have some of the “highest mortality rates around pregnancy and childbirth, as well as the highest child mortality rates.”

CBS found in 2020, 861 women in the U.S. died while pregnant or 42 days after, statistics acquired from the CDC. The doctors CBS News interviewed say those numbers will grow.

Carol Stabile, a Brown University graduate and acting University of Oregon dean said, in regards to standards placed on women in today’s day and age, “There is a general sense that women should be accommodating.”

Since the overturning of Roe v Wade, Biden wrote for the White House, “Americans across the country — from California to Kansas to Michigan — have made clear at the ballot box that they believe the right to choose is fundamental and should be preserved. Still, we know that the only way to truly secure the right to choose is for the Congress to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade.”

In regards to women voting against their best interest Stabile felt, “There are so many rewards for being a good girl.” She went on to explain that not conforming to those standards causes little reward from the world and makes “everything more difficult.” 

She then applauded people who fight for reproductive rights and women’s rights in general by saying, “It takes a lot of courage and an act of will to be able to identify those structures of power and to resist them because it does not make your life easy.” Stabile’s final note was, “The further you are from power, the less you have to lose.”