I posted this to Facebook, but after I was done with it it felt like a good post for here as well.
"How did we get here?" is the question a lot of progressive feminists are asking after Trump was re-elected Tuesday and they're living with fear that they're going to die and lose all of their rights. First off, you did not lose any rights in the first Trump term, and you're not going to lose any in his second term either. If you're sincerely living in fear right now, you need to turn off mainstream media and the corporate press, decompress and take a breath, and come back to reality. And while you do that, let's answer the question of "how did we get here" and how did Roe v. Wade end up on the chopping block to begin with.
NBC wrote an article laying out the 5 events that led to Roe being overturned, and basically (according to them) it boils down to Trump getting elected, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh being named to the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsberg dying, and Amy Coney Barrett being named to the Supreme Court. That's it. Simple as. If not for Trump Roe v. Wade still stands today. Except that there was literally no political interest or will to go after Roe in any real or meaningful way. The states were content to continue testing the legal limits of how much they could restrict abortion without actually banning it and let everything go back and forth between appellate courts for eternity while neither side gained any ground either way. That is, until 2018 and the Mississippi Abortion Bill that went on to become the Supreme Court Case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Mississippi's "insanely restrictive" "abortion ban" was based off of data from Europe that showed the average cut-off for abortion in European nations was 15 weeks (most European countries restrict abortion after 12-18 weeks, with one country having a 22 week cutoff and a couple others holding it to 10 weeks). So Mississippi said no abortions after 15 weeks except in the case of rape, incest, health of the mother, or viability of the fetus. Seems reasonable. But the Jackson Women's Health Organization disagreed and got a stay placed on the bill while it went through the appeals process through the lower courts, all the way up to a federal appeals court before landing on the Supreme Court docket in 2020. As a number of other similar cases kept coming up around the country and getting bumped up to federal appellate courts, the Supreme Court finally decided to hear Dobbs and make a ruling. And that ruling was effectively to say that the Supreme Court does not have the standing to make laws at the state level, and that Roe v. Wade was an overreach of the Court's authority and that the question of abortion should be decided on a state-by-state level.
Most states were actually willing to be reasonable with the pro-choice crowd. Most states didn't have any interest in testing or pushing against Roe. Mississippi's bill was literally meant to be a compromise based off of global standards. But the extremist feminist agenda doesn't allow for compromise or concessions. It's all or nothing. And so, you get nothing. And now it's up to the states. And every state has different ways of going about making these sort of decisions. Four states have total bans with no exceptions (AL, LA, TN, and WV), while every other state considered to have an abortion "ban" still has the exceptions. It's also important to note that only 0.7% of all abortions are performed because of "rape, incest, health of the mother, or viability of the fetus." If you include non-terminal complications for the fetus (health issues that would not be life-threatening to the baby but could result in a really bad life) then it bumps up to 1.2% of all abortions. Which means 98.8% of abortions are totally elective. "But what about the women who can't afford the baby and are going to starve to death?" Well, those actually only account for 6.6% of all abortions. So if we add those to the total you still have 92.2% of ALL abortions being totally elective without really any reason other than "I messed up and don't want a kid." And if you really dig into the statistics you find that somewhere in the neighborhood of 33-36% of all abortions are for the express reason of "I don't know the father well enough/I don't know who the father is." 92% of women getting an abortion just want a get out of jail free card for their poor life choices. No accountability, no responsibility.
So, sorry I guess! Compromise was always an option, but y'all didn't want that. So now you reap what you've sown, and you have to be responsible for the choices you've made. And if you're in a state with rules you don't like, no one is restricting you from moving. Not now, and not after Trump gets back into office either...regardless of what the propagandist journalists might be telling you.
