Have you heard of Kate Cox? She is a beautiful wife and mother of two children. She is also known as the woman who fought the Texas abortion ban.
The abortion ban is killing tens of thousands of mothers and teens each year, and Kate could have been a victim herself. Kate had received a fatal fetal diagnosis, and continuing the pregnancy would have posed risks to her health and future fertility. When she applied in December 2023 for a medical exemption to Texas’s abortion restriction, the state Supreme Court denied it, saying they would not allow her to get an abortion in Texas. Rather than uphold an abortion ruling that could kill women, Congress needs to explore ways to codify abortion rights into law. In addition to that, the Department of Education should make sex education programs mandatory to prevent unintended pregnancies and other issues a non-educated teen or adult could face.
Too many states are endangering women’s rights by banning abortions. The New York Times tells us that “Twenty-one states ban abortion or restrict the procedure earlier in pregnancy than the standard set by Roe v. Wade, which governed reproductive rights for nearly half a century until the Supreme Court overturned the decision [two years ago].” Some of these states allow abortions under certain circumstances, but just to be clear, the circumstances are very strict. In most states with abortion bans, there is a six-week limit after which you cannot get an abortion. A lot of women don’t even know they are pregnant until after that time frame! This makes it extremely difficult for the people in these states to get abortions if desperately needed in possibly a life-or-death situation. According to a report in American Progress, “Researchers have found that if abortion is banned throughout the United States, the overall number of maternal deaths would rise by 24 percent. This number is even worse for Black women, whose deaths would rise by 39 percent.” Overall, the bans across our country are pushing away women’s rights and could send us back to where we were before Roe v. Wade.
To solve the abortion rights crisis, we need to consider all aspects of the issue, and a large part of the problem is that some states limit or don’t require sex education for children and teens. How are our future generations supposed to protect themselves from pregnancy if they aren’t provided with education? If a state bans abortion and a minor gets pregnant due to a lack of sex education, what are they able to do? Are we just setting our future generations up for failure? We need Congress to codify the right to abortion and require schools to provide students with the needed sex education lessons. Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette says: “We’ve seen 11-year-old girls…having to take across state lines to get the medical services they need. But we also see everyday people who are making their reproductive choices having to make extraordinary efforts to go to other states and to get those services.” These are just some of the many examples of how the abortion ban is affecting people across the country. The BBC reported that an eleven-year-old American girl, and yes, I said eleven, was raped and denied an abortion. She found out at six weeks and three days that she was pregnant. She was forced to cross the state border just to get an abortion. NPR shared a story about Centers for Disease Control (CDC) researchers who estimate that 64,565 rape-caused pregnancies have occurred in states that banned abortion since the ban. With these bans in place, it’s tough and life-threatening, especially without the proper sex education. This includes the lack of education on safe sex and all the necessary education that some schools may not provide due to not being required to. With all this in mind, it doesn’t make sense not to restore our rights, considering the consequences of not having that option due to lack of education.
As stated, the abortion ban is causing so many deaths across our country. Luckily for Kate Cox, she was able to go to New Mexico to receive the abortion she needed. As a growing teen and woman in this society, it is terrifying watching the rights to my own body being taken away right before my eyes. If I cannot even have a say on what I can do with my own body, is it even mine? Let’s give our bodies back their rights.
