Roe v. Wade: My body my choice or My body your choice?

 

My body, My choice is something we have heard at least once as a woman but it makes me question whether is it really my choice to make for my body. The answer for some women is no. As women in the United States, we have been fighting this battle for our reproductive rights since colonial times. It started when men could become physicians and pushed midwives out of opportunities. One of the ways to minimize the influence of midwives was to ban abortions because that was a treatment provided only by midwives. One of the treatments is provided almost exclusively by midwives. Then we entered a progressive era where planned parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger. This era was not as progressive as we think because Margaret Sanger decided to open this planned parenthood in communities where she did not believe people should be able to reproduce. As a eugenist, she did not want black or Hispanic women to contribute to society. Even if we flash forward to the decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973, they compared women and fetal life to the Vaccination Act because the US Supreme Court granted the winner of that case the privacy to make medical decisions. They then decided that abortion decisions should fall under the rights of “personal privacy”.  The Roe v. Wade case decision was that the state could not regulate abortions during the first trimester, in the second trimester the states could regulate for the protection of the mother, and in the third trimester to protect the fetus. This was a step in the right direction for the reproductive rights of women. Even though more conservative states did not agree with this decision it finally gave women the right to choose. It is crazy to think that in this time period, we are still fighting for our own reproductive rights since the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022. We say my body is my choice but in reality, people in power choose for us. Even since the colonial times it has been someone higher up in power making these choices for us. We talk about reproductive rights as a part of women’s history but how can something be history if we are still fighting for it in present times?