Politics

The Abortion Ban Is About Much More Than Just Abortions

It’s about the Right’s ongoing campaign to drive women out of the workforce.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

I know this is going to come as a shock, but sometimes birth control fails. It’s not because a woman is a bad person, or secretly trying to snare herself a man. It’s because stuff breaks, even a pill. It’s possible to forget.

Everyone thinks the agenda behind banning abortion is to “save the unborn”. You know what I’d like to save the unborn from? Life in our society since Trump.

But the larger agenda of the ban is to push women back into the home, if they have a home, or into poverty with a decimated welfare system and no access to affordable child care, and thereby stop their march up the economic ladder and reverse the progress they’ve made towards equality with men.

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the legality of abortion across the world actually has little to no effect on abortion rates throughout the world. Legal or not, abortions can, will, and do take place. The legality of abortion, however, does affect how safe those abortions are. Women who do not have access to a legal abortion frequently turn to illegal or “homemade” abortion options, which are typically much riskier…