The Week in Women

This week in writing

Hello subscribers! Apologies that The Week in Women podcast is not in your inbox today — I’ve had Covid all week which has made it difficult and painful to talk for extended periods of time, and so unfortunately recording a podcast wasn’t in the cards. Instead, The Week in Women is coming to you in written form this week: All the women’s rights and gender headlines you need to know, and a deeper exploration of one of the most important. I’ll be back in your inboxes and ears next Friday.

Thanks for subscribing, and for your understanding.

LGBTQ Rights Under Attack: Now that Roe is gone and the conservative movement is successfully outlawing abortions in states across the US, they’re also turning their sights toward gay and trans people. Issues that are publicly popular and that many believed were settled, same-sex marriage among them, are newly controversial on the right — not a single Republican running for governor in Michigan, for example, supports same-sex marriage rights. And Republican candidates and electeds alike are increasingly vocal about their belief that marriage equality should not be the law of the land — which makes it all the more egregious that 157 House Republicans voted against it. Make no mistake: Even marriage equality is under threat.

Republicans Reject Contraception Rights: And even more Republicans voted against a bill codifying Griswold v. Connecticut and other Supreme Court cases ensuring contraception access: 195 Republicans voted against that bill, with only 11 (!) supporting it. You know the old chestnut: When people show you who they are, believe them. Republicans are showing you exactly what they believe about birth control, and it’s that the right to contraception should not be protected.

Pregnant People at Risk: With 13 states outlawing abortion as soon as Roe was overturned, pregnant people and their doctors are now facing a terrifying problem: What counts as a sufficient and immediate enough threat to a person’s life to justify an abortion — or go to jail? Medicine is science, but it’s not math: When it comes to assessing risk in pregnancy, there is often no perfect calculus of “this will 100% cause death in precisely 35 minutes.” Every body is different; circumstances change quickly; very little is assured. Which is why laws that only allow exceptions for life or “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” are so fraught. Does “threat to a woman’s life” mean her death is more likely than not? Or does it have to be assured and imminent? What counts as a “major” bodily function, and how “substantial” does an irreversible impairment have to be? These are abhorrent, ugly calculuses to demand doctors make before they can simply treat a patient in need. But they are what “pro-life” laws demand. And they will inevitably kill people.

UK Removes Reproductive Rights Commitments: The UK has removed earlier commitments to abortion rights and sexual health from a public statement on gender equality and religious freedom. Norway, Denmark, and various human rights organizations are asking: Why?

Georgia Outlaws Abortion: In a stunning and highly unusual move, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Georgia’s broad abortion ban and ordered it to go into effect immediately (under normal circumstances, there would be a few weeks of lead time). As a result, patients who had booked appointments to end pregnancies saw those cancelled, and people across the state are frantic and scrambling.

Women Against Enforced Modesty: In Indonesia, women are protesting the strict dress codes that require their hair and bodies to be fully covered. Modesty rules are simply code for misogyny; if men can’t handle seeing women in public, maybe they should be the ones who stay home.

Legalizing Polygamy: In Cote d’Ivoire, a bill would legalize polygamy — but only for men. Women’s groups are, rightly, up in arms.

“Pro-Life,” Pro-Censorship, Pro-Death: And finally, South Carolina has proposed* a law that not only makes it extremely difficult to perform a life-saving abortion, but also criminalizes speech about abortion: South Carolina would throw you in jail for 25 years for providing people with information about how to get a safe abortion. That includes hosting or maintaining a website providing this information; giving a woman this information via telephone; funding a woman’s efforts to obtain an abortion; and even referring a woman to a place where she can get a safe abortion.

It’s hard to overstate how terrifying, chilling, and wholly insane this law is. South Carolina is proposing criminalizing free speech. It is criminalizing telling women the truth: That you can get a safe abortion in a neighboring state; that there are ways of self-inducing an abortion that are safer, and other ways that are much more dangerous and not worth the risk. This is life-saving information. And frankly, even if it wasn’t, the right to speak freely and publish freely is a bedrock American principle. It’s scary — and telling — that conservatives are so willing to toss the First Amendment aside if it means that they can crack down on women and doctors.

It’s also worth noting here that Republican members of the South Carolina legislature did not pen this legislation themselves; it’s modeled on legislation written by the National Right to Life Committee, that the anti-abortion movement is encouraging states across the nation to adopt. South Carolina will not be the only state that attempts to criminalize free speech and punish it with 25 years in prison.

And it goes even farther than that. The law bans abortions under nearly all circumstances, with exceptions only for a pregnant woman’s life, with a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison for any person who performs or induces an abortion. The rules for performing a life-saving abortion are also so obscenely strict that it seems virtually impossible to follow them in a medical emergency — which means that the incentive is for doctors to err on the side of letting women die.

The law requires that the treat to a pregnant woman’s life be immediate and severe, and still nonetheless requires that doctors treat her and her fetus with equal importance. And if a doctor does perform a life-saving abortion, she has to alert the state not only to the details of the procedure and the patient involved, but the patient’s entire obstetric history — including past abortions. Why is this relevant? The answer is it’s not — except to cast doubt on whether the patient was “really” in life-threatening distress, intimidate women, and potentially throw more doctors in jail.

The law also allows whatever man impregnated a woman — including an abusive partner; including a rapist — to sue anyone who helps her have an abortion in a “wrongful death” lawsuit. This is an open door for abusive men to walk through.

And this South Carolina law is the future for conservative US states — and all of us, if the anti-abortion movement has its way.

xx Jill

*CORRECTION: The original version of this piece said that South Carolina had passed this law. It has not (big error!). That’s what I get for trying to work with Covid brain fog. Apologies for the error.