Today we woke up to the news that the Supreme Court of the United States has repealed the federal constitutional right to abortion, which means that each state will determine whether women can freely decide about their bodies or not.
With the exception of Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the other twelve members of the Supreme Court of the United States have decided that women must bear a child, even if they do not have the minimum economic and emotional conditions to raise it.
And if the above argument were not enough, why not think of the thousands of women who die every day in the world from having clandestine abortions? Perhaps some people will think that I am exaggerating, that the United States is not the whole world, that even within the country there are states where this fundamental right is still respected, but it is worrying that this will generate a wave of setbacks in other parts of the world.
Women's right to make decisions about their own bodies is a public health issue that should not be legislated based on arguments of "conscience." It is an issue that has a significant impact on the physical, economic and emotional well-being not only of women, but of the entire community.
A month ago I wrote in this space about how literature has dealt with abortion, both in the genre of fiction and in autofiction, as in the case of Annie Ernaux.
Last year, the Monterrey publishing house An-Alfa-Beta, in co-edition with the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, published the book The bodies we inhabit. Fiction and non-fiction about our right to decide, compiled and prologued by Olivia Teroba.
Dahlia de la Cerda, who founded the Morras Help Morras Collective to help women of all ages and social conditions to have an abortion, focuses on the situation in a marginal neighborhood of Aguascalientes where 12-year-old girls have abortions with or without permission, with or without help. In this Mexican state, abortion is punishable by law: “If the pregnant woman causes her abortion or consents to another person performing it, she will be sentenced to 6 months to 1 year in prison and a fine of 40 to 80 days, as long as she does not have a bad reputation, has managed to hide her pregnancy, and that it is the result of an illegal union.”
The exceptions to imposing a prison sentence are: if the abortion was spontaneous, if the pregnancy was the result of rape or when the woman is in serious danger of death.
Prison is another possibility facing women who make this decision. Except in states that defend freedom of choice, this is going to happen in this country, and it is very likely that those most punished will be, as always, the most marginalized: black women, Latinas, the poor.
You may be interested in: Against the scandalous rollback of free choice
