Revoking Abortion Rights Is an Assault on the Disabled
I spent most of the past week highly triggered, having flashbacks of the most horrific time in my life. It occurred as I was waging a 6-year battle for disability benefits, my attempts to work resulting in unfavorable ruling after unfavorable ruling — but what else was I to do with nobody to support me but myself?
During this time, I lost job after job — lack of healthcare and lack of time to seek it once I was awarded benefits left me to figure out on my own that my brain damage paired with absenteeism lurked behind my frequent dismissals. Long story short, I had soon exhausted my savings, including retirement, maxed my credit cards, and could no longer earn enough to survive. In desperation, I turned to sex work, then outright prostitution, to keep from homelessness and death. I knew I could never survive on the street, so I kept housing however I could.
I can’t put into words the constant fear I experienced. Fear that the next guy would kill me or give me AIDS. Fear that despite humiliating myself beyond anything I had ever imagined, I would lose my home, my precious cats (and sole companions), and my life.
One fear I never had: what would happen if I got pregnant.
The disability system in this country is a nightmare designed to help the elite — those with cushy private policies they can live off of while they navigate an impossible system. Additionally, the United States remains the only wealthy nation to deny its citizens healthcare.
The result? Millions upon millions of women already living lives of quiet desperation, struggling to make it through each day despite health conditions that make working problematic, if not impossible. Many, like me, have resorted to the sex trade to survive — it depresses me to no end how many fellow “healthcare hookers” I have met on my journey.
Even if they have support, an unplanned pregnancy could worsen their health outcomes, and perhaps even kill them. I’m not sure how to convince six justices, let alone the anti-life crowd (and yes, I call them anti-life because they are against women’s lives) that disabled women deserve an equal chance at life, given how the official U.S. policy during COVID seems to be “let them die, then, and decrease the surplus population.”
When the media talks about how abortion bans disproportionately affect the poor, they often focus on women of color, and rightfully so. Although they might mention higher disease levels among such populations, they too often ignore the vulnerable population that will be hurt by this ruling the most: the disabled, whether adjudicated so or not. Revoking abortion rights is nothing more than a full-on assault on disability rights.
The U.S.’s Long History of Disability Discrimination
Discrimination toward the disabled runs deep in America. It’s already bad enough that disabled people can’t marry the person of their choice without risking the loss of their needed benefits. Now, they’re supposed to take a vow of celibacy, too, all because of the antediluvian logic of six Supreme Court members?
It’s already bad enough that the U.S. has the highest maternal death rate of any wealthy nation. Now, the nation’s leaders — and yes, I hold all of them complicit because there have been ample opportunities to codify Roe into law — want to add even more disabled women to that list by denying them safe, legal abortions that could save their lives.
Even women who aren’t sick face elevated health risks during pregnancy, and not only while expecting. Between 15 and 20 million women experience permanently disabling injuries during their pregnancies, including anemia, incontinence, reproductive system damage, chronic pain, and infertility.
However, pregnancy can make existing health problems much worse. Women with high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, epilepsy, thyroid disease, heart or blood disorders, poorly controlled asthma, or certain infections can face fatal complications. Many of the women affected by the draconian reversal of basic abortion rights don’t even know they have these conditions, thanks to the staggering number of uninsured and underinsured. Even those with coverage might lack time to get to the doctor if they’re among the working poor and missing an afternoon of work means coming up short on rent.
Should these women be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy, they could die. Their only alternative is refraining from sexual activity — depriving them of what is to many a singular remaining joy and way to bond with their spouse — and praying they don’t become rape victims. Already, many states have bills in the works to make abortion a homicide. None have proposed similar punishments for the men responsible for making them pregnant in the first place.
Sentenced to Death — for the Crime of Being Sick
Having a chronic illness is tough enough. You live with pain and unpredictability every waking moment. It’s even worse in the United States, where you’re dependent on your employer or spouse for health care coverage if you’re between 19 and 64.
Now, six Supreme Court justices want to deprive disabled women of the right to enjoy normal adult sexual relationships. That includes their spouse. Leaving abortion up to the states means some will make no allowances for the life or health of the mother, regardless of how they conceived.
If I were the husband of one of these women, I’d be raising a fuss. Right now.
Certain women will have it even worse. I know that many people think I shouldn’t share my experiences; after all, I’m trying to succeed as a freelancer and gentle yoga instructor despite my disabilities. I realize that my past doesn’t look good to polite society. However, I don’t know how to explain that I had no other choice at the time. I might not have been coerced into sex work by anyone other than Poverty, but I was very much enslaved all the same.
I wish I could describe to you the depths of terror I felt during that period of my existence. Panic gripped me every hour of every day. Would today be the day I was killed, got raped, or contracted an STD? Would I get caught — not only could my health not survive a jail sentence but a conviction would also shatter my chances of rebuilding a life I could manage with accommodations?
I still wake up with panic gripping my heart today, unable to remember the dreams that inspired my racing heart, although I now attend therapy and work on self-healing every day.
At least I never had to worry about an unplanned pregnancy making my health conditions worse, if not downright killing me. As it was, my existence left me suicidal. An unplanned pregnancy may well have pushed me over the edge.
I don’t share my story to make people feel sorry for me but to raise awareness that I’m far from the only woman relegated to the sex trade because of poverty. People tend to think of women resorting to prostitution when they have no other financial means left as a relic of a distant past. My experiences have put me in touch with many others doing everything from OnlyFans to back-alley exchanges to stay afloat. Right here. In America. Today.
Now, six Supreme Court justices want to make the problem even worse. Even healthy women will suffer. It costs as much as $30,000 to give birth without insurance. That price tag can soar into six-figure territory, even surpassing a million dollars if the mother or baby has ongoing complications.
Furthermore, the U.S. is the only wealthy nation to offer no paid parental leave as a matter of law. Even many poorer nations afford this right to their citizens. Here, though, your employer can order you back to work the next day.
Imagine giving birth to a child you never wanted, getting stuck with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and then being ordered to report back to the office instead of taking a few days to bond with your new baby. Let’s not even get started on child care costs or breastfeeding needs. Does that sound like a nightmare scenario?
That’s the position that six hopelessly out-of-touch and downright cruel Supreme Court justices want to put countless women in. Using reasoning based on an old witch trial judge and eminent misogynist, they intend to create an existence so miserable for these women and their new babies that they’ll wish they had died during delivery. Many will.
Abortion Is Healthcare: Period
What’s truly tragic about the leaked Alito brief is that it denies the very basic personhood of women. A fetus with an XX chromosomal pair warrants more protection under the current Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law than a living, breathing, walking, talking woman with the same genes.
Abortion has existed nearly as long as pregnancy in every culture known to humankind for one very simple, practical reason: sometimes, it simply isn’t viable to continue a pregnancy. The rationale might vary — sometimes, it endangers a woman’s health and life. Sometimes, external conditions causing a shortage of resources make it impossible to feed another mouth — something many women forced into birth as a matter of law already face.
Abortion is healthcare. The full stop should be apparent to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of human biology who’s in touch with reality.
Wealthy women will always have ways to access safe, legal abortion. However, the vast majority of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, many of them with untreated disabilities, can’t afford this luxury.
Denying them an essential healthcare service based on little more than their socioeconomic standing and gender is beyond discriminatory. It borders on downright genocidal. The Supreme Court is de facto saying that the lives of poor women and the lives of disabled women — often one and the same — are not worth protecting by law. Such a precedent should terrify anyone concerned with basic human rights.
Revoking Abortion Rights is an Assault on the Disabled
It’s unbelievable that a nation as wealthy as ours treats the disabled as shabbily as we do already, given our deplorable healthcare system. Now, the Supreme Court wants to add insult to injury, sentencing countless women who are already suffering to death based on their gender and physical inability to carry a child to term.
Losing abortion rights is a blow to all women. However, it is particularly harsh to those with disabilities. The leaked Alito brief symbolizes one more assault on this vulnerable demographic. It leaves you to wonder whether they do hope we’ll all simply die and decrease the surplus population.
Once upon a time, America went to war to stop people from being systematically killed based on their religion. It’s high past time we wage a similar battle to protect the most vulnerable right here at home — and that means ensuring no woman ever gets sentenced to death for the “crime” of becoming pregnant while sick.
