Jessica Valenti, a women's rights advocate from Brooklyn, New York who writes online columns for the British newspaper The Guardian, explained in this column why a Republican push in Congress to ban all abortions after the 20 weeks of a woman's pregnancy is especially dangerous:
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Republicans kicked off their first day in control of the US Congress this week by moving to ban all abortions after 20 weeks, first in the House and very soon in the Senate. The House already passed this back in 2013 – with exactly zero exceptions for women’s health, or rape or incest that hadn’t been reported to police.
But I must admit to being slightly confused: Why is the GOP trying to ban later abortions when they’re doing such a stellar job forcing women to get them?
After all, Republicans are the ones who want to spend millions on abstinence-only “education” – as in those medically inaccurate, ideology driven classes on sexuality telling students that condoms cause cancer and birth control pills cause sterility. I mean, why go through all the trouble of making up such fantastical lies if not to make sure that sexually active teens are more likely to have unwanted pregnancies, right? And it’s working! Teen pregnancy is highest in states with abstinence-only education.
Valenti is right: Republican policies on reproductive health, such banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, mandating that schools teach abstinence-only sex education, and other laws designed to restrict a woman's access to reproductive health care effectively force women to have abortions and then tell them that it's too late for them to have an abortion. Teaching abstinence-only sex education in schools doesn't work and results in more women who are effectively forced to have an abortion due to not being able to support the child if it were to be born. However, because of 20-week abortion bans, mandatory waiting periods before having an abortion, forced ultrasound laws in many states, and TRAP laws designed to force abortion clinics to close, obtaining an abortion is, for women in many states and jurisdictions, virtually impossible. The scary thing about all of that is that Republicans want to implement those types of dangerous, anti-woman policies nationwide.
This is why I strongly oppose anti-abortion legislation that Republicans are pushing in Congress and in the legislatures of many states. I also strongly recommend reading Jessica Valenti's columns, which you can find here.