The date is April 11th, 2019 and Governor Mike DeWine has just signed The Heartbeat bill into Ohio law. On this day, the reproductive rights of women in Ohio once again where shrunk. For those you who don’t know The Heartbeat bill prohibits abortion of a fetus if the presence of a fetal heartbeat can be found. Meaning that if a woman wants to abort her baby when a heartbeat is present, she can’t, she is forced to carry her baby to term. The only ways to get around this are if a physician deems the pregnancy to be a danger to the mother or if a method used to detect a fetal heartbeat malfunctioned. In none of these circumstances does the women get a say, another machine or person decides for her whether she will carry a baby to term. The other unfortunate part of this bill is that it’s not just law in Ohio, it’s law in many other states as well, making women all the over country forced to, in most cases, carry unwanted pregnancies. However, this not where this lack of rights ends, even in states where the heartbeat bill isn’t present, women still must jump through hoops to prevent and terminate pregnancies. I mean just think how hard it is to gain access to resources like birth control, the morning after pill, and other basics. Not only this, but women who seek these resources or those who seek abortion are often called names, looked down upon, and even are sometimes victims of crimes. Just think of all the news stories that showcase the mistreatment of women who enter and even work at places like Planned Parenthood. Because these mistreatments of women and the mistreatments of their rights is so prevalent, we have seen people expressing their opinion on these mistreatments in forms of media. Future Home of The Living God, is a current example of this, all throughout the book themes of mistreatment of pregnant women and woman’s reproductive rights are discussed. Cedar and most of the women she encounters are stripped of all rights pertaining to reproductive areas. First, there is an amendment made to the Patriot Act that allows The Government to obtain the medical records of all women and use the information in them to track down pregnant women. Once The Government finds a pregnant woman, the woman is taken against her will and put into compound, to be treated like a prisoner. Not only does this violate a women’s right to privacy it also paints pregnant women as criminals, therefore giving them no rights. In the compounds, which where renovated jails and old hospitals, the pregnant women are confined to single room, with the bare necessities needed to live, and forced to live out their terms in this room. On top of this women are forced to eat rotten and discussing food, forced to have daily checkups where they are tested, they are not told any information on their baby’s, can’t see their ultrasounds, and the compound where they are held is heavy guarded. What’s worse is that is that these women can’t leave and if they try to, they will be punished or worse killed after delivering a child. The number of rights that are stripped from pregnant women in this novel is astounding, they get no say in the care that their wombs receive, no say in the care they receive, and what I find to be the worse, they get no information on the health of their baby, they get no information or say about something inside of them, something they made. That’s just beyond nuts and to make matters worse, these women don’t even have the rights to their child after they are born, The Government does. Plus, if The Government deems the baby to be de-evolved or have some type of issue, they are killed, and the mothers never know about it. All of this would, very understandably, make women not want to children, however The Government in the novel doesn’t give women this choice. Most women are forced to have children, regardless of if they want them or not. This happens in a variety of ways; one is that The Government makes women sign up for draft to be womb donators. If a woman is picked they must be inseminated and carry a child to term while being held in a compound. To make matters worse there is no guaranty that once a woman has their child that they will be let free, especially if the women gave birth to normal baby. The women who gave birth could be forced to carry another child and live in the compound. The second way that women are forced to give birth is simply that if you get pregnant you have to have the child, you can’t get an abortion, for it’s outlawed. In relation to our world, as stated above, we also have strict laws about abortion, and even though it may seem crazy, some of the things I have described in the book happen in real life. Take immigrants for example, here in the U.S. along the border we have a compound where we keep immigrants who are trying to enter the country. A lot of these immigrants are pregnant women or women with baby’s, often at times these women are treated like criminals in this compound. They don’t get medical treatment, are forced to eat terrible food, and live-in conditions worse than Cedar in the novel. They have no rights and to makes matters worse they often have their children taken away from them, sometimes to never see them again. Even minorities who are U.S. citizens have less rights and accommodations when it comes to reproductive health and they often get their children taken away from them too. Something that Cedar, being indigenous, can relate to. Lastly, many women here and around the world, are forced to carry babies they don’t want all the time, with an abortion being almost impossible to obtain. There are even women in our country, like in the book, who are forcefully inseminated like in the case of Rape, who, because abortion is either outlawed or because rape isn’t deemed an exception to abortion law, are forced to carry children they don’t want. Future Home of The Living God, I think does a great job of highlighting the struggles women go through when it comes to reproductive rights and showcases what can happen when these rights are too restrictive or non-existent. We see a society in chaos, we see people turning a bigger blind eye to the issues at hand, and people who should be on the same side betraying each other. With the parallels this book has to real life, I fear that if reproductive rights are not taken seriously, we could see chaos like this unfold and it could lead to the downfall of society as we know it.
Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbeat_bill https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/USA/INT_CERD_NGO_USA_17560_E.pdf
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