Why reproductive justice is so important!

I have already written a blog about abortion and a woman’s right to choose and have power over her own body, but in light of the recent anniversary of Roe v Wade and the fact that it continues to be chipped away at and not enough of us seem to be aware or have an issue with it is really disturbing to me.

Now I think most people understand that Roe v. Wade is the day that women legally attained the right to make the decision whether to end a pregnancy, but are most people aware that with all the recent restrictions that federal and state legislatures have enacted that it’s making it harder for women, particularly low-income women, to gain access to health care options?

According to the most recent research from the Guttmacher Institute, during the 2014 state legislative session, lawmakers introduced 341 provisions specifically aimed at restricting access to abortion. By the end of 2014, 15 states had enacted 26 new abortion restrictions. Since 2010, states have adopted 231 new abortion restrictions nationwide.

For example, TRAP laws, which are unreasonable restrictions and unnecessary standards targeted at abortion clinics with the end goal of shutting them down, not to mention limitations on insurance coverage of abortion, bans on abortions after 20 weeks, mandatory waiting periods and ultrasounds, and limitations on medication abortion.

The sad reality is women rank very low on the totem pole when it comes to placing a high priority on issues that directly affect us.  And when it comes to making decisions on these issues, women need to be allowed to determine what is best for us.  Now, you can best believe if having an abortion was an option for men, this whole issue would have been handled differently from the get go! Let’s be real, most of the male legislators who sit on their high horse and proclaim it to be a sin to have or provide abortions, if it was suddenly possible for men to get pregnant, do you really believe they would continue to have the same opinion? I think not!

The bottom line is we need to put more importance on our reproductive rights! We need to stop allowing reproductive rights to be reduced to single-issue political gamesmanship, because millions of women will continue to face the consequences, and pay an unacceptably heavy price.