Occupational Hazards

In a political movement dead set on depriving women’s medical agency, emergency abortions represent not special cases, but revolts to be crushed.

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In Texas, a woman suing to terminate a medically doomed pregnancy fled the state this week to receive an abortion. In Kentucky, a woman who is suing to end an unwanted pregnancy learned this week that her embryo no longer has a heartbeat. And in Ohio, a woman whose pregnancy ended in miscarriage at 22 weeks was charged in October with felony “abuse of a corpse” for leaving the fetal remains in a toilet where she’d miscarried.

Birth, even during a desired pregnancy, is difficult business. It is not synonymous with “life,” despite the best branding efforts of the “pro-life” movement. But as the recent weeks’ legal challenges have underscored, the anti-choice movement is not about life. It is about control and subjugation of women, without exception. Under this vision, no pregnancy, no matter how doomed or undesired, can rise to the level of a “special case” deserving of abortion. Instead, those appeals for medical care represent revolts to be crushed.

Even in its most soft-focus campaigns, the anti-choice movement casts childbirth as women’s purpose and duty. This depiction glosses over the work and the dangers of pregnancy, and feeds neatly into an effort to denigrate all maternal medical intervention, at the expense of women’s autonomy.