First they came for Roe...
The war against reproductive rights has already reached our shores
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It seems only fitting that it started to rain.
It had been a glorious day. Sunny, windless, calm. But as a small crowd of around 100 or so people gathered outside the US Consulate in Edinburgh on Friday evening, brought together in horror at the overturning of Roe vs Wade by the US Supreme Court hours earlier, the sky darkened.
In the end, the actual downpour held off until the closing minutes of the impromptu rally, cutting short the group photo session and call and reply chants of “My Body”, “My Choice”. The crowd was already beginning to disperse, with hugs for each other and nods of acknowledgment to the bored looking police officers who’d kept their distance. The speeches had been made as the clouds rolled in.
There were a number of American women there, tearful and afraid. One spoke of the five-year-old daughter of a friend at home, named after her but set to grow up with vastly fewer rights. Some referenced cases in their own home states, children forced to carry children, women prevented from accessing gynaecological care for serious conditions. One speaker, a technology expert, urged her fellow Americans to delete their period tracking apps immediately – the data they hold could now be subpoenaed, she warned. In some states, it already is, with abortion restriction and ‘foetal-personhood’ laws effectively ushering in a new era of surveillance and the criminalisation of pregnancy, women running the risk of jail if they are seen to behave in a way which endangers a foetus.
In the hour or so that had passed between the judgment and the gathering, a number of states had already acted to enact abortion bans, many without exceptions for rape, incest, abuse or even threat to life. Of course, bodily autonomy should apply to all, not only those who have been brutalised – but the lack of exceptions remains a terrifying reminder of just how far women have fallen in the pecking order. Forget coathangers – how many will die as a result of ectopic pregnancy, pre-eclampsia and all manner of other pregnancy-related threats because they are now deemed less valuable than the foetus they carry? It is worth remembering that pregnancy is 30 times more dangerous than abortion.
It is also worth pointing out at this stage that while Friday’s ruling relates only to the USA, the gradual erosion of women’s rights is far from a purely American issue – something campaigners here in the UK, including the team from Back Off Scotland who spoke on Friday, are all too aware of.
In Scotland, as in a number of cities in England, forced birth advocates, emboldened by their links to a Texan group named 40 Days for Life, protest outside reproductive health clinics and hospitals. Each protest – or “round the clock prayer vigil” as the group would have it – lasts 40 days, and they’ve been popping up across Edinburgh and Glasgow for months now, heralding Back Off Scotland’s campaign for buffer zones around clinics to prevent the harassment of both patients and NHS staff. Nicola Sturgeon has said she is in favour of such an approach, but is yet to act to secure it. A meeting between the First Minister and the group is now set to take place tomorrow.
It’s safe to say Sturgeon has been busy. But I do wonder whether the lack of action on buffer zones until now tells us something about the complacency with which we’ve all of us, to some degree or another, treated our abortion rights in recent years.
Sure, we’ll advocate for the right to choose, shake our heads judgmentally at countries that still routinely deny women care. But even as we watched Trump’s rise to power and subsequent bench appointments, even as we muttered about the incoming reality version of The Handmaid’s Tale, did we really believe it could happen? Did we truly believe abortion rights would be retracted at a federal level? Do we now believe it could happen here too?
I’m not sure we do. But we should. It already is.
Last week in the UK, well before the SCOTUS judgement was passed, the inexplicable Jacob Rees Mogg was standing before Westminster, preaching on the benefits of Brexit. He seemed thrilled about the idea that we’d left the EU well before it decided to back standardised phone chargers – a draconian action if ever there was one, according to Rees Mogg, who appears hugely invested in the right to have as many tangled wires in his cable drawer as he pleases but distinctly unbothered about our individual rights to... well, anything else.
On Wednesday, the Minister for Brexit Opportunities (ahem) unveiled his dashboard of 2,400 ‘retained laws’ with their origins in the EU and asked the Great British public to get involved in selecting which should be scrapped. And while he might like to pretend it’s all about phone chargers and fish fingers (no, really), it’s a lot more dangerous than that. Among the laws now under consideration for the big Brexit bonfire are nine relating to maternity pay, leave and conditions, 366 relating to healthcare and medicines, four judgements relating to the equalities act and six which govern women’s pay and conditions at work.
There’s a certain irony to the fact that a man who has previously described himself as “completely opposed” to abortion in all circumstances – a man who was also asked to correct the record in parliament after spreading “harmful clinical falsehoods” about the morning-after pill – might now be responsible for removing laws which protect women’s livelihoods in order to enable them to have children in the first place. But then, foresight and joined up thinking are rarely the strong suit of those who seek to limit the choices of women.
For all that they want to force us to give birth, those seeking to limit reproductive healthcare rarely fight to make it easier to raise children. An unborn child is an easy thing to advocate for after all – neonatal care, paid maternity leave for its mum, affordable childcare, adequate housing and ample food and formula are all somewhat harder to secure. Yet those who believe so strongly in protecting a foetus in the womb seem to hold very little interest in protecting it once it is earth side. They’ll force you to carry a child you can’t provide for. But then you’re on your own.
This is the truth of the ‘activists’ who led the way to Friday’s horrific judgment in the US and who have already turned their attention to our shores. They’re outside our abortion clinics daily, praying for the same bans to be enacted here. And we seem to have simply accepted their appearance.
These people call themselves pro-life. In reality, they’re only pro NEW life. The honest truth is they don’t give a shit about yours.
Time to fight.
I’m so ready to fight this. Sign me up! When, where…
I just wish this summary of what’s happening was out there more to make people wake up and see what could quite easily and quickly happen here, once the rights are gone it’s too late