It’s that time of year again.
That time when state legislatures pre-file restrictive reproductive bills for upcoming 2019 sessions. The number of punitive anti-abortion and contraception bills grows each year in conservatively controlled states with many intended to revisit Roe v. Wade in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Just weeks after the 2018 midterm election, which produced historic turnout numbers of progressive voters, a record number of women elected to Congress and massive campaign volunteer efforts by women who had never before been involved, the GOP is doubling down in playing to their evangelical right-wing base with extreme abortion bills.
In Missouri, Rep. Nick Schroer, a nonphysician, has pre-filed HB126 prohibiting an abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected by a heartbeat detection test. Dr. Colleen McNicholas responded on Twitter: “What is a heartbeat detection device? Asking since I’m only an OBGYN and don’t understand your medical jargon.”
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Following their usual playbook, the GOP again failed to consult medical professionals when drafting a reproductive health care bill or, heaven forbid, confer with real live women.
Schroer’s bill won’t stand alone. Each session the Missouri GOP advances proposals affirming life begins at fertilization (which would outlaw birth control and fertility treatments), requiring two-parent notification for minors seeking abortion (guaranteeing severe child endangerment without abuse or incest exceptions) and many more that would severely restrict access to contraception and abortion.
Hypocrisy rules supreme under the Missouri Capitol dome. The current 46 female state legislators have limited their families to less than four children or have none at all due to modern medical science and the societal norms of the last half century. Yet Missouri GOP women legislators vote lockstep in complicity every year to make it increasingly difficult for others to have the same birth-control access they use.
Missouri women of every religion, political party, economic and marital status in every single county depend on access to abortion and contraception. Married GOP Christian women, including wives and girlfriends of legislators, and even abortion clinic protesters, have abortions for myriad reasons and are grateful for medical professionals who treat them ethically without judgment.
Regardless of ZIP code, we women count on managing our reproduction, which determines our future paths, academically, economically and socially. Our unique ability to reproduce does not supersede or circumvent our talents, skills and the use of our brains and we never ever consider asking legislators, specifically male ones, for permission when in our gynecologist’s office.
Statistics remain solid. One in four U.S. women have abortions and over 99 percent of women in childbearing years use some form of contraception.
One might expect that GOP male lawmakers like Rep. Schroer would confer with their wives, girlfriends and other women in their lives who depend on the same reproductive health care access they attempt to restrict. They would learn that essential miscarriage management includes medical abortion and that pregnancy diagnoses are often not made before a fetal heartbeat is detected. But I highly suspect they know women in their lives who are able to access specific reproductive health care whenever they need, including abortions, by affording the medical expense and travel to accessible clinics out of state.
Yet religious right legislators in their quest to control reproductive health care access, particularly of women of color or those in poverty, have neglected to acknowledge the increasing anger of the very women most affected. In ignoring or discounting thousands of Missouri women marching and protesting since November 2016 against blatant anti-women policies, lawmakers have failed to acknowledge the rage they’ve incited.
Women have turned their anger into action and created hundreds of resistance and political action groups throughout the state, many door-knocking and phone-banking this year for the first time. They stormed polling places this past November, particularly in suburban and urban districts, creating record midterm voter turnouts.
As author Rebecca Traister cites in her new bestseller, “Good and Mad, the Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger,” “Women’s rage has played parts in revolutionary social movements.” Anger of women has long been instrumental in monumental social change affecting slavery, child labor and workplace safety, voting rights, civil rights and particularly the phenomenal #MeToo movement.
Missouri anti-medical zealots are calculating their right-wing reproductive restrictive agendas will keep them in office and in power.
But in their quest to dictate government-mandated pregnancies, these anti-abortion zealots have grossly misunderestimated the extraordinary power of women’s fury. They will fail.
State Rep. Stacey Newman is a Democrat from Richmond Heights.
