Local Opinion: How abortion laws are wrecking personal freedoms

Pretend for a moment, you’re a 25-year-old female who was just awarded a full-ride scholarship to the school of your dreams. Fall is approaching and you begin to feel fatigued. In all the excitement, you realize that you can’t remember when you last had your period and an instant panic comes over you. Your heart is racing and you head to the drugstore for a test. Your hands are cold with sweat as you check out but your mind is silent from the inability to form a thought. You get home, read the box, unwrap the stick and wait. The minutes drag, but finally the results appear. PREGNANT.

You feel guilty because this moment should be a happy one, but it’s not. After an incredibly hard decision, you conclude that abortion is the best choice. You discover you’re nine weeks along, but with the recent passing of SB1164 in Arizona, you have less than six weeks to have an abortion. So, you get on the phone and begin to contact clinic after clinic in Arizona. The panic starts settling in because abortion clinics are now overwhelmed with patients from surrounding states that have imposed stricter abortions laws. The next appointment available is in seven weeks, a week after you can legally obtain an abortion in Arizona. You realize your only option now is to travel to another state.

This post Roe v Wade scenario is based on true events and real experiences women are facing today. According to a recent report from the Arizona Department of Health Services, in 2021, 13,896 abortions were performed. Although this number may seem high, abortions have been on a steady decline since 2012. Amongst the demographics of women obtaining an abortion in Arizona, Hispanics were the highest, making up over 43% of abortion patients. Additionally, most were unmarried and have had previous pregnancies. Although only 10% of abortions occurred after 15 weeks of gestation, that is still a significant amount of women that are left with few options, or worse, forced to give birth against their will. To some, who are referred to as, “forced birth advocates” rulings like overturning Roe v Wade or SB1164 are seen as victorious, however, most who celebrated this victory forgot of the lasting consequences of their appeased values. Those consequences come at the expense of the most vulnerable and marginalized in our communities.

So, when we think of oppression, it is not a matter of whether we agree or disagree that oppression exists. Yet, it is a matter of how oppression exists and who it affects. In Arizona, a Hispanic, unmarried woman would be considered amongst the most likely to be oppressed and laws like SB1164 contribute to this perpetuation. In a country that boasts about personal freedoms, the juxtaposition of laws that oppress such freedoms continue to confuse a nation as a new Gallup report shares that a record high, 69%, of Americans support abortion within the first trimester. Despite our “bootstrap” values of personal responsibility, we must ask, how feasible is this within a complex legal system? Personal responsibility is the ability to legally access an abortion and should not be decided by our government or a random stranger’s morality. Freedom cannot exist when choice is absent.

For this reason, it is imperative that Arizona repeal laws like SB1164 and vote for representatives that express the true values of the people, not a minority. If laws like SB1164 become prevalent in America, then the next course of action should be to establish easier access to these healthcare services. This could be in the form of developing more clinics, requiring more transparency from impersonators fronting as abortion healthcare, or amending the 24-hour counseling requirement. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that abortions are fundamentally anti-oppressive and supporting abortion healthcare is supporting equity and the advancement of human rights.