*TRIGGER WARNING* This post discusses rape, assault, violence, racism and miscarriages in relation to abortion rights. If these topics might upset you, I would advise you to stop reading now.
I have always wanted to use this platform as a means of speaking up on things that I care about, and today it is going to be abortion rights. It’s been all over social media recently and rightly so – to give you a quick rundown, the most restrictive laws in Alabama make abortion illegal in virtually all cases, including incest and rape. A “heartbeat bill” is also being proposed in five other states which criminalises abortions after 6 weeks – that’s just 2 weeks after noticing a late period. Most women wouldn’t even know they were pregnant at that point.


Instead of worrying about a fetus, why don’t conservative pro-lifers worry about the 440,000 children in foster care in the US, or the millions of children who are growing up in abusive households? What are they doing about the number of people in the LGBTQ+ community that are abused and murdered every day? What are they doing about the ethnic minorities living in western countries that experience racially-driven violence on a daily basis? What are they doing about the children living in war-ridden countries that are not getting an education or food? They aren’t doing anything, because their morality ends at the point of it no longer being a means to oppress others. They are not pro-life. They are anti-women.
Here’s one of the major problems: they are against abortion, but they are also against contraception. Why? Because they want to control the sexuality of women. They want women to be used as a means to produce children (hello, The Handmaid’s Tale), where sex is not to be enjoyed and not to be embraced. Criminalising abortion is NOT going to reduce abortion rates. It is going to increase the number of unsafe abortions. It is going to keep people in poverty for generations, because let’s be honest, there will always be people at the top of the hierarchy that can go and get abortions somewhere. It is horrifying to think about women using coat hangers and throwing themselves down staircases because they were stripped of their bodily autonomy. I’ve read about women bathing in scorching hot water and whisky, people taking pills and going through miscarriages in school toilets, and much, much worse. They can’t ban abortions. They can only ban safe abortions.

It’s a common argument in rape cases where sex is apparently some *uncontrollable human urge*, and “how was he meant to control himself, look at what she was wearing” is often thrown around. But when a woman gets pregnant, she should have been more thoughtful about the consequence, as if a child is a punishment for having sex? Women get pressurised into unprotected sex every day, and we know the reason: there is no consequence for the men. There is no pregnancy scare, there is no panicked trip to get an emergency pill, there is no desperate wait for the next period. There is no consequence.

- better sex education
- free contraception and sexual/reproductive advice
- better neonatal care
- affordable health care
- increased rape sentences (or just any rape sentences, at this rate)
- better foster care systems
- better care for victims of rape and assault, and children in abusive homes
- financially feasible childcare
It’s more important now than ever before to stick together and look out for each other. This is a very real issue and we need to talk about it. We need to keep talking about it until everyone’s ears bleed. Check your information, make sure you’re spreading the correct word and keep fighting for rights whether it directly affects you or not.
Everyone’s situation is different and it is never our place to comment on anybody else’s decisions. I am not in a position of judgement and I would 100% support anyone who makes whatever choice is right for them. I know this post might have been a tough one to read (I found it incredibly difficult to do the background reading before I wrote this) so if you ever need to drop me a message, my Instagram and Twitter DMs are always open for a chat.
Thivya x
Other posts you might like to read:
Submitting to sex under pressure is not consent. It is acquiescence.
Why losing some friendships was the best thing that ever happened to me

