Why Roe vs Wade's Overturning Epitomizes the End of Human Decency in the United States

On the 25th of June, 2022, the US Supreme Court enacted a long anticipated - and feared - ruling, in what has been for centuries the world's most purportedly advanced country. It siphoned from every American woman, nationwide, the federal decree which renders the act of undergoing an abortion legal. Through that one ruling, it erased 49 years' worth of legal precedents in defence of a woman's bodily autonomy, triggering restrictive laws on reproductive rights in nearly half of all US states.

Without a constitutional guarantor, there's no contention that thousands of women will lose their lives in the months and years to come, straddling a line between risking their life and risking their freedom. It's a near impossible dilemma, and one that no man can ever envision or feign an empathy with. It's tantamount, in principle, to being brutalized for an invisible cause; at the behest of unfounded religious doctrines you want nothing to do with; at the whims of sanctimonious ideologues who will advocate relentlessly for the unborn - and turn a blind eye immediately after their birth.

Bodily autonomy isn't a mere virtue for a tiny subset of human society; it's what, in many ways, confers onto an individual their right to self-determination. It's been deeply ingrained into human civilization for thousands of years, regardless of its recognitions in written law. There's a reason organ donation necessitates an uncompromising consent; even when deceased, you are accorded that right to self-determine. Your body is your own, and no one else's. There's nothing which usurps that tenet; no prospective life in conception, and no asinine belief in damnation. It's as fundamental, if not more, than any other universally acknowledged human right in the totality of Western jurisprudence.

Despite this, the legal institutions of the world's largest economic powerhouse wilfully chastise women for exercising their bodily freedoms. Many of them, unsurprisingly, are composed wholly or in part by men - an irony, given that they will never experience, nor confront a parallel to what they have imbibed into law.

It's no secret, of course, that criminalizing abortion will do nothing to deter it. In 2018, the Guttmacher Institute authored a report outlining exactly this paradigm: countries which place restrictions on abortions exhibit them with roughly the same frequency as countries that don't. It's only that now, financially disadvantaged women seeking an abortion will find themselves battling grave risks. With reluctant healthcare workers and volunteers, many of them will be compelled to travel for hundreds of miles under perilous circumstances. Those that are successful in securing an abortion, might not then be able to access the post-surgical care they need.

In the midst of all this, it's perhaps worth examining more closely the motives of the Pro-Life narrative. Contraceptive access and healthcare education, both proven to further reproductive progress and naturally lower birth rates, are nowhere near as accentuated as abortion bans are. It's not a movement designed to protect the unborn; it's one designed to tyrannize women through the Conservative status quo. Like all such movements in modern history, the end of its days are in our sight.