Roe v. Wade

Yesterday a news feed flashed across my iPhone announcing that Roe v. Wade had been overturned by the Supreme Court.  I shouldn't have been surprised as there had been a lot of talk about that happening this June.  I just honestly never thought that in my life time that it would occur.

Soon after the announcement, Meg started texting me.  There were a lot of memes, Tik Toks and Instagram posts slamming the decision.  One thing that surprised me from all of this was the fact that many in Meg's generation didn't understand that abortion was still legal, it just now became a states rights issue and not a federal mandate.  

That wasn't the only misinformation popping up on social media.  Several women argued that entoptic pregnancies could only be ended by abortion and now all of those women would die or that women who traveled to states that allowed abortions would be arrested when they returned home.  From my research, none of this seemed to be true.  Even in Utah, which had proposed the most restrictive abortion laws, exceptions were made for health concerns of the mother and victims of rape or incest.  Only doctors could be arrested for performing abortions outside of the states laws, not the mothers.

The other statement that I just couldn't understand was "My Body, My Choice."  In my opinion that totally negated the fact that the baby didn't have a choice with its body.  Even if the mother did not believe that a fetus was a baby until birth, didn't these women understand that they did have a choice?  They did not have to have unprotected sex.  That was definitely within their control.

Overall, I decided long ago not to have an opinion about abortion.  The topic was way too polarizing.  I do believe in what Pope Francis said about the ruling.  He said that being pro-life was not being anti-abortion.  It was to value all life including the health of the mother.  He also stated that being pro-life meant being in favor of laws to stop gun violence which had become one of the leading causes of death in children.  He said that it meant to be anti-death penalty and pro-adoption.  Those were all statements that I could get behind.