Abortion

Abortion Plot Summary

Introduction

The fight for abortion rights represents one of the most critical human rights and democracy battles of our time. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Americans have witnessed a fundamental shift in their understanding of personal freedom and bodily autonomy. What was once considered a settled legal matter has transformed into a complex struggle that exposes deep tensions between religious values, democratic principles, and human rights frameworks. This fight extends far beyond individual medical decisions. It encompasses essential questions about who holds power in a democracy, whether and how the state can regulate personal choices, and what it means to have equal citizenship. The arguments throughout these pages build a comprehensive case for understanding abortion access not as a fringe issue or mere political talking point, but as a cornerstone of democratic values and human dignity. By examining both factual evidence and ethical reasoning, these arguments challenge us to think more deeply about the connections between reproductive freedom and core democratic principles like equality, liberty, and privacy.

Chapter 1: Abortion as a Fundamental Freedom and Moral Good

Abortion represents an essential freedom necessary for the self-determination of women and anyone with the ability to become pregnant. Contrary to narratives that frame it as tragic or regrettable, abortion access is proactively and objectively good for individuals and society. For too long, even supporters of reproductive rights have adopted apologetic or defensive postures, ceding moral high ground to those who oppose abortion. This defensive stance is unnecessary and counterproductive. The facts speak clearly: forcing someone to remain pregnant against their will causes profound harm. It's worth noting that over 80 percent of Americans don't want the government making pregnancy decisions at all. The extreme abortion bans enacted across the country are being passed against voters' express wishes, revealing a fundamental disconnect between public opinion and policy. One in four American women will have an abortion in her lifetime. The vast majority (99 percent) don't regret their decisions, and their most common emotional response is relief. Abortion doesn't just end pregnancies; it creates lives and possibilities. For many people, abortion has been the start of something—whether that's education, career advancement, escape from abusive relationships, or the ability to have children when they're truly ready. These individual liberations collectively strengthen communities and society. Medical evidence consistently shows that abortion is safe—safer, in fact, than pregnancy and childbirth. Despite this evidence, those opposed to abortion rights continue to spread misinformation about supposed health risks. They do this because they understand that if Americans see the truth—that basic healthcare is being denied in favor of ideological control—public outrage would be overwhelming. It's time to shed apologetic framing and speak plainly: abortion is normal, moral, and necessary in a free and equal society. The consequences of denying abortion access are well-documented. Research from the Turnaway Study, which followed women who received or were denied wanted abortions over five years, found that those denied abortions were more likely to experience serious complications during pregnancy, to remain with abusive partners, to suffer anxiety and poor physical health, and to live in poverty. Forcing someone to continue an unwanted pregnancy quadruples the odds that they and their children will live below the federal poverty line. These are not abstract concerns but real, devastating impacts on human lives.

Chapter 2: The Overwhelming Public Support for Abortion Rights

One of the most persistent myths about abortion is that public opinion is deeply divided on the issue. This is simply untrue. Abortion rights have consistently received strong public support for decades, and this support has only grown stronger since the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade. The reality is that abortion rights represent one of the most popular political positions in America today. Polling consistently shows overwhelming support for abortion access. Approximately 85 percent of voters say abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances. More than 70 percent want abortion medication to remain legal, and over 80 percent believe abortion should be a decision solely between patient and doctor. Even more striking, a 2023 Wall Street Journal poll found that 55 percent of voters, including one-third of Republicans, want abortion legal "for any reason." These numbers represent an extraordinary consensus in an otherwise polarized political landscape. This support extends across geographic and demographic lines. In traditionally conservative states like Tennessee, polls show that 65 percent of Republicans want their state's abortion ban loosened. In Florida, most Republican voters support ballot measures to restore abortion rights. When Ohio passed its abortion rights amendment in 2023, nearly one in four white evangelicals voted in favor. Young voters in particular show overwhelming support, with 74 percent of adults under thirty believing abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances. When voters have had the opportunity to directly weigh in on abortion rights through ballot measures, they have consistently supported reproductive freedom. Since Roe was overturned, abortion rights have won every single time they've appeared directly on a ballot, even in conservative states like Kansas and Kentucky. This reality has frightened anti-abortion legislators so much that they have launched extraordinary efforts to prevent voters from having a say, including changing ballot measure rules, manipulating ballot language, spreading misinformation, and attempting to raise the threshold for passage from simple majority to supermajority requirements. These anti-democratic maneuvers reveal a profound truth: the movement to ban abortion understands it lacks popular support. When Republican officials in Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio actively worked to keep abortion off the ballot or change voting rules specifically to block abortion rights amendments, they demonstrated their awareness that given a direct choice, Americans will choose reproductive freedom. The hypocrisy is not lost on voters, who increasingly recognize these tactics as attacks on both bodily autonomy and democratic principles.

Chapter 3: How Anti-Abortion Language Manipulates Public Discourse

The anti-abortion movement has invested decades in developing and deploying language designed to manipulate public understanding of abortion. Their linguistic strategy aims not just to win arguments but to fundamentally redefine reality in ways that advance their policy goals while obscuring their extremism. A prime example emerged in 2023 when Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell held a closed-door meeting about retiring the term "pro-life." Their polling revealed that Americans increasingly associate the label with extremism. This represented a remarkable shift, as for years conventional wisdom held that conservatives had won the language war with terms like "pro-life" that seemed more emotionally resonant than "pro-choice." But as the real-world consequences of abortion bans became clear—women denied care during miscarriages, cancer patients unable to access treatment, children forced to carry pregnancies—the rhetoric no longer matched reality. Perhaps the boldest linguistic move has been the attempt to redefine abortion itself. Anti-abortion advocates increasingly claim that abortion refers only to ending unwanted pregnancies—not treatment for ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, or life-threatening conditions. When Catherine Glenn Foster, president of Americans United for Life, testified before Congress about a ten-year-old rape victim who needed an abortion, she claimed: "If a ten-year-old became pregnant as a result of rape and it was threatening her life, then that's not an abortion." This redefinition strategy allows them to claim they're not against necessary healthcare while still supporting total bans. The movement has also invented entirely new medical terminology. They've begun using phrases like "maternal-fetal separation procedure" instead of "abortion" in legislation and public statements. This is not a medical term but a political creation designed to divorce abortion from healthcare. More dangerously, laws using this terminology often specify that such "separations" must be performed via C-section or induced vaginal delivery rather than standard abortion procedures—forcing women to undergo major surgery instead of safer, less invasive care. Since the Dobbs decision, conservatives have also systematically eliminated the word "ban" from their vocabulary. They now refer to abortion bans as "standards," "consensus," or "reasonable limits." This shift is explicitly strategic—internal communications and recordings reveal Republican officials instructing colleagues: "We should never use the word ban. That's the word they use." Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser explicitly redefined "ban" to mean only laws without any exceptions whatsoever, claiming "no state are all abortions forbidden"—a remarkable assertion given the near-total prohibitions in many states. These linguistic manipulations matter because they shape public understanding and policy. When journalists and lawmakers adopt this terminology, they do the anti-abortion movement's work for them—making extreme positions seem moderate and obscuring the real human impact of these laws. Understanding this language game is essential for identifying the true nature and goals of abortion restrictions.

Chapter 4: The Hidden War Against Birth Control Access

While public attention has focused primarily on abortion bans, a quieter but equally significant campaign against birth control access has been unfolding. Republicans and anti-abortion organizations are targeting contraception—not in some hypothetical future, but right now through a strategic, multi-pronged approach designed to limit access while maintaining plausible deniability about their true intentions. This attack operates through two primary strategies. First, they are systematically eroding access to contraception. Day by day, state by state, they pass laws allowing insurers to deny coverage for certain types of birth control, permitting pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraceptives, and replacing real reproductive health clinics with "crisis pregnancy centers" that refuse to discuss contraception. Whether birth control is technically legal becomes irrelevant if it's impossible to obtain. The second strategy involves redefining certain forms of contraception as abortion. Anti-abortion groups claim that IUDs, emergency contraception, and sometimes even regular birth control pills are not contraceptives but "abortifacients." They argue these methods prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg and therefore constitute abortion. This claim contradicts medical science—the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines pregnancy as beginning with implantation, not fertilization—but the scientific accuracy matters less than the political utility. The contraception-as-abortion argument has already gained significant legal traction. In 2014, Hobby Lobby successfully argued before the Supreme Court that it shouldn't have to cover employees' contraception costs because IUDs and emergency contraception supposedly end pregnancies. More recently, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law requiring parental consent for teenagers to access birth control, with Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan explicitly stating he opposed contraception access because it allows teenagers to "avoid certain consequences" of sex—namely, pregnancy as punishment. Anti-abortion groups are also waging a cultural campaign against hormonal contraception. Conservative influencers, particularly those promoting "traditional" gender roles, regularly claim that birth control is unnatural and harmful. They've launched coordinated social media campaigns targeting young women with messages that hormonal contraception causes depression, changes sexual preferences, and makes women choose "feminine" men. The goal is to convince a new generation to reject modern contraception entirely. Crisis pregnancy centers, which already outnumber legitimate health clinics three to one and receive massive state funding increases in anti-abortion states, represent another front in this war. These centers routinely spread misinformation about contraception, telling clients that birth control "causes abortion" or is "next to aborting your baby." With states like Tennessee boosting funding from $3 million to $20 million and Texas increasing from $5 million to $100 million, these anti-contraception centers are rapidly expanding their reach and influence. This multi-faceted attack on birth control reveals that opposition to abortion has never been solely about abortion itself. Rather, it reflects a broader agenda to control sexuality and reproduction, particularly for women. The anti-abortion movement's vision is fundamentally incompatible with modern contraception because effective birth control gives people—especially women—control over their reproductive futures.

Chapter 5: The Myth of Abortion Ban "Exceptions"

When defending abortion bans, politicians frequently point to "exceptions" for cases like rape, incest, or health emergencies. These supposed exceptions create the impression that even in states with strict prohibitions, patients in dire circumstances can still access care. The reality is starkly different: these exceptions exist primarily on paper, deliberately designed to be unusable in practice. Consider Mississippi, which has an abortion ban exception for rape victims. When investigative reporters from Mississippi Today searched for a single doctor in the state who would provide this legally permitted care, they found none. Not one physician was willing to provide an abortion to a sexual violence victim, despite the law explicitly allowing it. Similar situations have unfolded across the country. Louisiana women have been denied abortions despite fatal fetal diagnoses specifically named in the state's exceptions. In Texas, Amanda Zurawski wasn't given an abortion until she developed life-threatening sepsis, despite the law supposedly permitting abortions to protect women's lives. These exceptions fail by design. For rape and incest exceptions, lawmakers include requirements they know most victims cannot meet. Knowing that over two-thirds of sexual assault survivors never report their attacks to law enforcement, legislators require police reports as a prerequisite for care. Some states impose arbitrary time limits that ignore the psychological reality of trauma processing. Others, like South Carolina, mandate that doctors inform rape victims that their personal information will be reported to local sheriffs—an obvious intimidation tactic designed to deter victims from seeking legal care. For exceptions involving fetal abnormalities, the language is crafted to exclude virtually all real-world scenarios. North Carolina's law requires conditions to be "uniformly diagnosable"—an impossible standard that applies to only a handful of conditions. Other states define nonviable pregnancies in ways that exclude most fatal conditions or deliberately include no clear definition at all, leaving doctors to guess whether a court would agree with their medical judgment—at the risk of their license and freedom. Even life-saving exceptions contain deadly traps. Every "life of the mother" exception contains a significant caveat: they explicitly exclude suicide risk. If a pregnant woman is diagnosed as suicidal, these laws still prohibit abortion. This reveals something profound about these laws: their architects understand that forcing pregnancy causes such psychological distress that women may become suicidal—and they've decided that's an acceptable price to pay. The failure of exceptions isn't a bug but a feature. They exist not to provide care but to make abortion bans seem less cruel to the public. As Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute explains, "Exceptions function mainly as PR tools to make abortion bans seem less cruel than they are and to distract from the inhumanity of the ban itself." They allow politicians to claim they've shown compassion while still achieving their goal of preventing nearly all abortions. This reality raises a fundamental question: If exceptions don't work, what is their true purpose? The answer lies in how they divide women into categories of "deserving" and "undeserving." Those who have sex willingly are meant to be punished with forced pregnancy; those who were raped might be granted mercy (though in practice, rarely). This sorting of women based on sexual behavior reveals the fundamentally patriarchal and controlling nature of abortion bans.

Chapter 6: Criminalization: The True Intent Behind Abortion Bans

Despite repeated claims from anti-abortion groups that they have no interest in punishing women, criminalization has always been the logical endpoint of abortion bans. Since Roe was overturned, this reality has become increasingly apparent as pregnant people face arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment for their pregnancy outcomes. Brittany Watts's case exemplifies this brutal reality. After experiencing a miscarriage at home, Brittany went to a hospital for emergency treatment. There, a nurse called the police, falsely claiming Brittany had a "baby in a bucket" in her backyard. While Brittany was receiving treatment for life-threatening hemorrhaging, police searched her home, disassembled her toilet, and sifted through her bodily fluids looking for evidence. She was arrested and charged with "abuse of a corpse" for the supposed crime of flushing her miscarriage. Brittany's experience is not an isolated incident. Even before Roe was overturned, women were being criminalized for pregnancy outcomes. Purvi Patel was sentenced to twenty years in prison for "feticide" in Indiana despite maintaining she had miscarried. Rennie Gibbs, just sixteen years old, was indicted for "depraved-heart murder" in Mississippi after delivering a stillborn baby. In Alabama, Marshae Jones was charged with manslaughter after being shot in the stomach and miscarrying—prosecutors claimed she had "initiated" the dispute that led to her being shot. Since Dobbs, this criminalization has accelerated. Multiple states have introduced legislation that would classify abortion as homicide, making it punishable as murder. Some bills would even allow prosecutors to charge women with homicide if they were found to have somehow "caused" a miscarriage through "reckless" or "negligent" behavior—terms so vague they could include almost anything from lifting something heavy to not taking prenatal vitamins. The criminalization strategy relies heavily on surveillance and community betrayal. Research from the reproductive justice legal group If/When/How found that in cases where people were criminalized for self-managing abortions, 45 percent were reported by healthcare providers—the very people patients trust in their most vulnerable moments. Another 26 percent were reported by acquaintances. This "snitch culture" is deliberately cultivated by laws like Texas's "bounty hunter" provision, which gives citizens a $10,000 reward for successfully suing anyone involved in abortion care. Prosecutors and law enforcement also use creative charging strategies to circumvent any prohibitions against directly punishing abortion patients. Instead of charging women with having abortions, they bring seemingly unrelated charges like "abuse of a corpse," "concealing a birth," or "chemical endangerment of a child." In Alabama, the attorney general's office openly admitted their plan to use the state's chemical endangerment law to prosecute women who take abortion medication, despite the state's abortion ban explicitly exempting women from criminal penalties. The criminalization extends beyond individual patients to anyone who helps them. So-called "abortion trafficking" laws in states like Idaho and Tennessee make it a felony to help minors obtain out-of-state abortions. Under these laws, a grandmother who drives her granddaughter to another state for care could face fifteen years in prison. Texas counties have passed similar ordinances applying to adults as well, allowing civil suits against anyone who helps a woman leave the state for an abortion. These approaches to criminalization deliberately target the most vulnerable: young people, poor women, and women of color. By focusing on those whom society has historically marginalized, anti-abortion forces hope to normalize criminalization before extending it to everyone. The ultimate goal is clear: to make abortion so dangerous, so isolating, and so potentially devastating to one's freedom that no one will risk seeking it, regardless of what the law technically allows.

Chapter 7: How Abortion Bans Target Democracy and Personal Freedom

The attack on abortion rights represents more than a healthcare crisis—it constitutes a fundamental assault on democratic principles and personal freedom. This broader threat becomes clear when examining how anti-abortion forces have systematically undermined democratic processes and expanded their reach beyond abortion into other realms of personal autonomy. Since Roe was overturned, Republican legislators in states across the country have launched extraordinary efforts to prevent voters from directly weighing in on abortion. Why? Because they know their bans are wildly unpopular. When citizens in multiple states began gathering signatures to put abortion rights on the ballot, lawmakers responded with unprecedented tactics to block these democratic initiatives. In Ohio, Republican officials tried to raise the threshold for ballot measures from a simple majority to 60 percent—specifically to block a pending abortion rights amendment. When that failed, they colluded with anti-abortion groups to draft misleading ballot language designed to confuse voters. In Missouri, the attorney general refused to approve necessary paperwork for signature gathering until forced by the state supreme court. Mississippi Republicans even considered restoring the citizen ballot initiative process, but only if abortion rights were explicitly excluded as a possible topic. This pattern reveals a profound contempt for democratic principles. As Republican former senator Rick Santorum bluntly admitted after Ohio voters passed an abortion rights amendment: "Thank goodness that most of the states in this country don't allow you to put everything on the ballot, because pure democracies are not the way to run a country." This statement crystallizes the fundamental tension: when forced to choose between democracy and abortion bans, anti-abortion forces consistently choose the latter. The attacks on freedom extend beyond voting rights to free speech and movement. Idaho's No Public Funds for Abortion Act banned state employees—including public university professors—from "promoting" abortion or referring someone for care, with penalties including a fourteen-year prison sentence. Oklahoma librarians were instructed not to help patrons looking for information on abortion or even say the word "abortion." Multiple states have advanced bills making it illegal to operate websites with information about abortion. Perhaps most alarmingly, anti-abortion forces have begun targeting freedom of movement. In a 2023 court filing, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall argued that while Alabama doesn't yet "forbid" women from leaving the state for abortions, the state has the right to "restrict" travel when it has "strong, legitimate interests including preserving unborn life." His legal brief explicitly compared pregnant women to sex offenders, arguing that if the state can track and restrict the movement of predators, it can do the same to pregnant women to "protect" their fetuses. These expansive attacks reveal the true scope of the anti-abortion agenda. The movement has never been solely concerned with fetal life—it seeks fundamental control over women's bodies, speech, movement, and democratic participation. As women's rights advocate and author Moira Donegan observed, what's happening with abortion has "nothing to do with the middle." There is no compromise position between bodily autonomy and forced pregnancy, between democratic values and authoritarian control. The ultimate test of American democracy now lies in how the nation responds to this comprehensive assault on reproductive freedom. Will voters recognize these bans for what they are—not just healthcare restrictions but fundamental attacks on democratic principles and personal liberty? The early evidence suggests they might. The extraordinary surge in pro-choice sentiment since Dobbs, especially among young voters, indicates growing recognition that abortion rights are inseparable from the broader fight for democracy itself.

Summary

The struggle for abortion rights transcends traditional political categorization—it represents a fundamental conflict over democratic values, human rights, and the meaning of freedom in contemporary society. When examined through a clear, evidence-based lens, abortion emerges not merely as healthcare but as an essential component of human dignity and self-determination. The arguments throughout these pages reveal how abortion bans function as mechanisms of control that disproportionately harm the most vulnerable while undermining democratic processes and institutions. The interconnected nature of these threats demands a response that goes beyond conventional political organizing. It requires recognizing abortion access as part of a broader framework of rights that includes voting access, free speech, freedom of movement, and equal protection under law. The most compelling insight that emerges is that defending abortion rights means defending democracy itself—not as an abstract concept but as a lived reality where people have meaningful control over their bodies, lives, and futures. As restrictions continue to spread, the question becomes whether Americans will recognize what's truly at stake before more fundamental freedoms are lost. For those committed to democratic values and human dignity, there is no middle ground on abortion rights; the only path forward is uncompromising defense of reproductive freedom.

About Author

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Jessica Valenti

Award-winning writer and activist Jessica Valenti is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestseller Sex Object: A Memoir. Her groundbreaking anthology, Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, paved the way for legislation of the same name, setting what’s now considered the gold standard for sexual consent.Jessica has also been credited with sparking feminism’s online wave by founding the trailblazing blog Feministing. She’s been a columnist for The Guardian and The Nation, and her writing has been published everywhere from The New York Times and The Atlantic to Bitch magazine and The Toast. After the demise of Roe, Jessica founded Abortion, Every Day, an urgent synthesis of anything and everything happening with abortion rights in the United States. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

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