All of the dystopian novels we middle-aged to oldsters read in school were right. The political and cultural climate of the modern U.S. is shaping up to be The Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World, and 1984, with a bit of Lord of the Flies for extra seasoning. This isn’t exactly a hot take, because many people have made that observation before. It’s just that the constant roll-out of new, disgusting additions to the bad news reignites anew the terrible recognition of the dumpster fire of awful that has been happening here.
The latest assault on women’s reproductive autonomy is that a Texas federal judge has ruled that the FDA’s approval of an abortion pill should be suspended. Even though this pill has been used in conjunction with another medication to perform abortions since 2000, this ruling effectively bans the sale of this particular drug throughout the United States. Even though the other drug is still available, because it has other uses besides abortion, the most effective usage for an abortion is to use both drugs in concert. Using only the one still available increases the possibility of complications necessitating surgery.
This is just another effort in a long line of conservatives working to completely ban abortion in the United States. What we know from history is that making certain things illegal doesn’t take away the need for them, and just drives the practice underground. Welcome back to the bad old days, where abortions were performed by unlicensed people, working in unsanitary conditions, and women were afraid to go for emergency medical care afterwards. But it’s okay for women to die of infection, blood loss, or be rendered infertile by incompetence, as long as we save the babies!
None of this is hyperbole. Making abortions harder and harder to get is not going to stop abortion. It only makes the women of our country more desperate, and forced to carry unwanted pregnancies. It is somewhat unreal that one conservative judge has the power to stop the production, sale and use of a drug that has been in use since 2000, but here we are, in the new Wild West of our country. Guns a’plenty, children getting killed nearly daily in our schools, but an equal daily assault on women’s reproductive choices to save every zygote. The hypocrisy is maddening.
