Stand for body autonomy – our lives depend on it

by Cindi Schwartz, Hamilton

Sixty-four thousand five hundred and sixty-five. 64,565 women aged 15-45. That’s three times the number of females of all ages in Ravalli County. 64,565 is the estimated number of impregnated rape victims in only 14 states since the Dobbs decision 18 months ago that were given little or no choice to receive an abortion after their rape (see citation and abstract at the end). In these states (AL, AR, ID, IN, KY, LA, MS, MO, ND, OK, SD, TN, TX, WV), raped women have already gone through the trauma of losing complete body autonomy and then are forced to attempt to carry a fetus created by rape to term, further losing her body autonomy. I say attempt, because pregnancy is one of the most dangerous medical conditions for women. Many women with pregnancies should be given the choice to terminate to protect her life or to give relief to a fetus that will not survive birth. Yet, states with these so-called exceptions don’t follow through. For example, the recent case of Kate Cox in Texas, who clearly met all criteria described in the TX state law for abortion exceptions, was still forced to travel to another state to receive medical care. These data also don’t account for child rape victims, like the 10-year old girl from Ohio who was forced to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion in June, 2022. 

We live in a country where Republican run state legislatures are zealously removing medical decisions from women via extremist legislation. An overwhelming majority of US citizens, both male and female, support abortion in some way. Somehow we get it that at bare minimum rape victims, children, women who are in danger of dying due to their pregnancy, and women with fetuses that will not survive birth should get the choice of an abortion. Why don’t elected Republican officials get it? We are protected by a Montana Supreme Court decision stating our private medical decisions, including abortion, are safe due to our constitutional right to privacy. Every woman in the United States thought we had similar protections since 1973 with Roe v. Wade, yet here we are in a country where some women have lost all body autonomy simply because of where they live.

Montanans need to stand up to our current Republican supermajority who has tried very hard since Dobbs to remove our own medical autonomy. We need to codify abortion and other body autonomy issues into law. We will not be able to do so with the current makeup of the Montana state legislature. This election season, put every candidate on notice that we will not stand for their nonsense. We stand for body autonomy. We stand for a woman’s right to choose safe and necessary abortions.

Dickman SL, et al., Rape-Related Pregnancies in the 14 US States With Total Abortion Bans. JAMA Intern Med. Published online January 24, 2024. Many US women report experiencing sexual violence, and many seek abortion for rape-related pregnancies. Following the US Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization (Dobbs) decision overturning Roe v Wade, 14 states have outlawed abortion at any gestational duration. Although 5 of these states allow exceptions for rape-related pregnancies, stringent gestational duration limits apply, and survivors must report the rape to law enforcement, a requirement likely to disqualify most survivors of rape, of whom only 21% report their rape to police. Post Dobbs, 10 or fewer legal abortions occurred monthly in each of the total abortion ban states. We estimated rape-related pregnancies by state to assess how abortion bans affected survivors of rape.