Let me make this perfectly clear:
I just went through a pregnancy for a much-wanted child. I endured morning sickness that lasted throughout the entire pregnancy. I became so short of breath that I had to stop and rest partway up the stairs in my own home. I dislocated a rib. My heartburn was so bad that I had to take two or three separate medications each day. I had a major placental abruption with a level of blood loss that the doctors termed “impressive,” and placental abruption carries risk to both mother and fetus. And if I want to go through that, that is my decision. And if I decide not to go through with that ever again, no matter what my reason is, that is also my decision.
And my reasons for it are no legislature’s business. Whether or not anybody else thinks it’s a good reason. If someone chooses to have an abortion because of the fetus’s sex, race, disability status–not anybody else’s business.
So how does the Ohio legislature plan to enforce its bill prohibiting abortion due to a fetus having Down’s syndrome? Do they plan to bug doctors’ offices? How would any policeman know what a given woman’s reasons for abortion are? Particularly given that the blood test that can tell you whether your fetus has trisomy-18 or Down’s Syndrome (trisomy 21) is done at nine weeks. That’s quite early. Women have abortions that early for any number of reasons. This is a symbolic bill, and what it symbolizes is that the conversations pregnant people have with our doctors are not private, are not ours. It symbolizes that our decisions are never free from the judgment of others. We are never trusted to make our own decisions about child-bearing. But they are our decisions, and our motivations are between us and those we choose to consult. Forced-birthers using disability rights advocacy as a cat’s paw to muddy the issue doesn’t change that.