Over the past few months, and years for that matter, there has been a growing number of attacks on women’s rights. In particular, a dangerous restriction on anyone with a uterus’ options for abortion.
In the foreground of these attacks on women stand the purveyors of the pseudo-deemed pro-life movement, who also often tend to be white Republican politicians. One of them, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has suggested there should be a 20-week ban on abortions. McConnell’s grotesque and harmful ideas aren’t based on a pro-life narrative, since putting bans at 20 weeks leaves people at risk. No, a 20-week abortion ban is nothing more than being fundamentally anti-women and an oppressive common piece in current right wing politics.
The bill stipulates that abortion providers would be banned from performing the operation and those found “guilty” could serve jail time and pay fees. This all-out war also uses fake “scientific” evidence and is polluted in pushing a twisted and incorrect narrative on the prevalence of 20-plus-week abortions.
The science that Republicans claim to be predicating their bill on is phony and the evidence doesn’t indicate that 20-week fetus’ could feel or react to pain. Additionally, it’s more likely that less than 2 percent of abortions occur after 20 weeks. So, if it’s not based on science, or on a staggeringly high number of occurrences and it’s certainly not based on the idea of protecting life, then 20-week abortion bans like the one McConnell and his cronies have brought up are based on unconstitutional goals of overthrowing and reversing Roe V. Wade and stripping women and all owners of uterus’ of their rights.
Additionally damming is that the politicians who vie for such abhorrently detrimental bills still have their mandate in both branches of Congress. This past October, the Republican-packed house voted 237-189 in favor of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, something that should be worrisome to anyone who even mildly has interest in politics or to anyone who cares about fundamental human rights.
Rhetoric that’s so overtly damaging has no room in politics and should not represent the values that we as a nation claim to uphold. Thus, it’s absolutely imperative to work toward increased voter turnout and voter eligibility in the upcoming midterms.
Think about it from a college student’s point of view — sex doesn’t solely serve a reproductive purpose. It’s about enjoyment, intimacy and casual connections among partners. What’s more, what comes with the territory of having sex, including safe, protected sex, is unwanted pregnancies. In their broader encroachment on Roe V. Wade, Republicans want to remove a person’s choice to have a child or not — a deeply personal decision a group of old, out of touch, white men shouldn’t determine. Also, Republicans are gravely ignoring the realities of rape and health complications in their attempts to eliminate abortion altogether.
For our age demographic in particular, simply not voting in November, or in any election is not acceptable. For college students, we’ve only averaged 50 percent for presidential voter turnout and for midterms, the turnout is far more dismal at 20 percent.
Standing idly by, you become complicit to the actions and goals of Republicans to wage war against all women. We as college students need to unequivocally draw a line in the sand for standing up for women’s and human rights because the dangers of remaining silent harbor too many dire consequences.
Adam Ramer (aramer2@wisc.edu) is a junior studying history and politics.