In a vote doomed to fail, Democrats in the U.S. Senate proved unable to protect abortion rights for women. Superficially, the bill aimed to make the legality of abortion law. The endgame, however, was to get all Senators on record about their views on abortion, making it a contentious issue in the upcoming midterm elections.
Advocates agree that accountability is important, but they say that’s the long political play; what’s at stake now is a woman’s right to her own body.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris called the vote a failure “to defend a woman’s right make decisions about her own body," despite the majority of Americans believing in a woman’s right to chose. She took the opportunity to remind voters to elect pro-choice leaders.
As politicians wrangle for power, the struggle is real for millions of women across the U.S., especially the poor. Roe v. Wade is the legal case from 1972, in which the Supreme Court protected a woman’s liberty to have an abortion without government restriction. Despite being the backbone of American democracy for the last 50 years, a leaked draft from the Supreme Court now calls that decision egregiously wrong from the start. The top court looks set to strike it down as early as June, despite 70 per cent of Americans supporting abortion
For Tammi Kromenaker, director at Red River Women’s Clinic – it means moving to another state. Kromenaker runs the only abortion clinic in the Dakotas. If Roe v. Wade is struck down, “it is up to the Attorney General of North Dakota to basically declare abortion illegal, and then we'd have 30 days to close up shop and lights out,” she says.
What would result is a mishmash of access and rights across the country, with women in more than half the states unable to get an abortion. Those who can afford it would have to cross state lines to do so.
Kromenaker says the larger fear, however, is an assault on human rights, which she believes is already underway. Citing the “Don’t say gay” bill in Florida that forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for younger kids, Kromenaker says “they're coming for our human rights, and they're going to chip away at it.” She believes overturning abortion rights is just a salvo in a “long campaign to regulate people’s bodies,” one that raises the question of the sanctity of birth control.
Abortion rights supporter Chelsea White calls this a war on women’s rights that had previously “been fought and won by mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers.” She warns this could lead to back-alley abortions. “It’s never going to go away,” she says. “All they’re doing now is sacrificing women’s health.”
